How You See Me

by S. E. Craythorne

  ‘Only girls have hair like yours,’ Mab called from her place by the church wall. ‘Are you a girl, Sebastian?’

  I can’t remember him speaking. Try as I might, I can’t remember the sound of Sebastian Collie’s voice. He may have shaken his head, or maybe he just tried to walk on and leave us behind. I think that’s what I would have done. Maybe he just stood there.

  The others took up the call, and I suppose my voice joined them. ‘Girl! He’s a girl! Sebastian Collie wears dresses! He wears skirts! Want a go with my skipping rope, Sebastian?’ We surrounded him; we caged him in, still gripping the handlebars of his new bike. There was no escape.

  I don’t know when the shoving started; I don’t know when Mab joined us, but I know it was her voice that shouted, ‘If he’s a boy, he better prove it. Let’s pull down his pants and see.’

  We took hold of him, pressing him down on to the sticky tarmac. He was small, and we were stronger than him. His arm was pale and rounded like a doll’s, his skin rubbery as he twisted under my hands. I don’t remember him saying a word.

  I don’t know what it was that made us pull back. I’d like to think it was a moment of self-awareness: that we suddenly saw ourselves and what we were doing. Maybe it was Sebastian’s silence, his lack of any real resistance. Someone probably thought they saw a grown-up coming. Mab must have gone home, because it was just me and my friends. We crossed the street and stood together by the church wall, leaving Sebastian sitting in the road with his bicycle by his side. In the end Martin went over to check on him.

  ‘Pissed himself,’ Martin told us when he came back. ‘Right through his trousers. It stinks over there.’

  The Collie children didn’t join us at the local primary school for the next term. Maggie told us their parents had dipped into their university fund to pay for a private school. Airs and graces, Maggie said. Sebastian’s curls were cut and he had to wear a blazer and a tie. The daily commute to London must have proved too much for Mr Collie, because the family started using the village house only at weekends. Then they put it up for sale. I didn’t see much of Sebastian after that. He never rode his bike past the studio; he would take the long route across the fields.

  I’ve often wondered why Mab took against Sebastian like that. Whether, if it weren’t for her, anything would actually have taken place. I don’t think it was his hair and clothes that offended her so much as his obvious difference from the rest of us. Sebastian had the magazine version of a happy family: Father, Mother, Son and Daughter all lined up in little steps; and, latched to his well-groomed back, he had London. Sebastian Collie had somewhere to escape to.

  It was only a year before Mab followed the Collies’ example and turned out on to the dual carriageway, away from the village, away from her mother and away from us. After that she never stopped running, but she would always send me postcards from everywhere she visited. I would pin them up round the window frame in my bedroom, a circular chart of my sister’s flight from city to city, continent to continent. Their messages were generally simple: I was here – love to you, Mab. A biro line would stretch around to the front of the card, where arrowheads plunged into foreign cities, with white houses piled one on top of the other like building blocks or clinging limpet-like to the sides of cliffs; they speared tropical beaches and sun-washed seas; and once even a dirty French street with rubbish piled in its gutters and a street sign reading ‘Paradis’.

  On occasion, Mab would veer close enough to visit and we would have couple of snatched hours. She would arrive bearing gifts of carved wood, silks and stories, like a visiting foreign merchant, the scents of strange places on her skin. I’d make her breakfast as she filled the ashtray and told me of her adventures. She never had much to say to Dad.

  Once, she turned up early in the morning, glittering with coloured beads, her skirts heavy with rainwater; her hair was dreadlocked and she had sewn bells and ribbons into the matted lengths which flapped against her cheeks. A carnival sister. Her face was swollen and she looked as if she hadn’t slept in days. It was the only time I managed to convince her to stay the night and meet some of my friends at a burger bar in town. She arrived creaking in a leather suit and stinking of motorbike grease, her hair shorn and twisted into tight little spikes across her brow. Each spike’s tip had been dipped into bleach or colour. A row of poisoned arrows. She charmed my friends within minutes. They gathered to share her anecdotes; to taste that wild, loose laughter. I hardly recognised her.

  Mab was never one to be captured. Not even by me. I pity the people that attached themselves to her. She did have a way of making you feel important. But there was always somewhere else to be, someone else to meet, and the friends and lovers would be left behind. A row of bodies with biro arrows embedded in their chests. Mab was here.

  Only once did my father ever try to paint her. It was one of the early summers in the studio. Mab had fallen asleep on the armchair in the work-room. I watched my father creep around her, gathering his paints, slotting the easel into place. He stretched a piece of fabric across the top of the chair, its tattered ends whispering against her brow. He lifted one of her hands and laid it against her cheek. Once satisfied with his composition, he took his place behind the easel. I didn’t like it – too sentimental.

  When he works with his feet on the floor, my father paints like a fencer, straight-backed, his arm extended in front of him, his brush a foil held in his languid grip. He attacks a canvas with smooth slick strokes, leaning for a moment on his back foot and pausing before his riposte. As Mab slept she was gathered into oils and I trundled my toy train around my father’s feet. He whispered to himself as he worked, but I couldn’t catch what he said.

  Finally, Dad stood back from his painting. A streak of burnt sienna painted a deep scar from his left cheekbone to his lip. He looked exhausted.

  I pulled myself to my feet to look at the canvas. There was Mab sleeping in her chair, the throw folded over her, its corner reaching down to her like a beneficent hand. But there were flaws: her nose was wrong, and her lips seemed plumper than I had ever seen them. This was back when I took my father’s work literally. I looked for truth, not beauty. It was not quite her face. I thought there was something wrong with his eyes.

  Mab woke up; she stretched and kicked her feet out from under her. Then she saw my father. I had never seen her so angry.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Oh, you’re awake – that’s a shame, but I think I’ve done all I need to today. Come and see, darling. You looked so lovely I couldn’t resist. Look what your daddy’s made of you.’

  ‘What have you done?’

  My father turned the easel and Mab screamed. She ripped the drape down from above her head and balled it.

  ‘Now, Mabel – ’

  Mab ran at the painting and my father caught her hands before she could push a fist into it.

  The next day the painting was missing from the workroom. Maggie found it a week later stuffed into the corner of the woodshed. The frame had been broken and the image, or what remained of it, had been obscured by liberal doses of my black poster paint. Someone had tried to set it on fire; the edges of the torn canvas were rotten with stale ashes. My father took the broken portrait from Maggie without a word. No one was punished. But there were no more family portraits.

  From that day on Mab seemed never to sleep if there was anyone there to catch her. She was the blur at the edge of photographs, darting out of shot, swinging her head, faster than any camera shutter. I was always there in the background of those family shots. The little brother, his face lit up by the camera flash, his expression caught in every detail, his eyes following his sister’s constant departure. Watch the birdie, Daniel.

  (Later)

  I look back over what I’ve written and wonder why I’ve told you all this. If I were reading this letter I would believe my sister to be fierce and brutal and proud and glamorous and even a little dangerous. She is all these, but many other things besides. T
his is a long letter, but there is not enough paper to tell all the stories and memories I have of just this one person. I have tried to do what my father tried before me, to paint a portrait, and it’s as misshapen as his. Mab would hate it.

  I know why I’m telling you these things. I feel that I know all of you, because of the hours I’ve spent writing down your words; but perhaps each of those hours was another flawed portrait. What haven’t you told me?

  Missing you,

  Your Daniel xx

  3rd November

  The streets of Upchurch

  Dear Mab –

  Tatty and I went for a walk today. This is not counting our daily trudges at dawn and twilight so I can watch her piss and shit on the tracks round the back field. We have other companions on those jaunts, men and women with their own dogs and discreetly held little bags of dog turd. It took me some time to learn the rules. One woman stopped me pointedly to tell me they were considering starting DNA testing of dogs fouling the pathways. Would I care to sign a petition and agree to Tatty being sampled?

  We all make a fuss of each other’s dogs and look on like proud parents as they sniff each other’s arses. Most of the women, though, seem to know me or someone I went to school with. They ignore me or scuttle past in groups, their dogs placed firmly between us, but I can see them aching for gossip. I’m aching for gossip, but I’ve none to give.

  Dad is much as he was. The arrival of the district nurse was the reason for our departure. She’s small and pretty and hates Tatty and me in equal measure. I know this because she complains about us loudly to Dad in a stage whisper.

  ‘Should get that son of yours to give you a better wash in the evening, shouldn’t we, Michael?’

  ‘I’m sure I’ve told that son of yours a thousand times how to tie a dressing. But does he listen, Michael?’

  ‘There’s that dreadful dog of yours, Michael. Bringing all that mess and dirt up to bother you. Needs a brush, that dog. Sure that son of yours could have a go at that, if he took the time.’

  All this in a bright and breezy falsetto and all addressed to Dad. She’s so sweet to him, while being so rude to me, that I don’t dare question her. Who knows what a replacement would be like? So ‘that dog’ and ‘that son’ have made a habit of taking a walk when she arrives.

  Love to Freya – I enclose a letter from a furry friend.

  Daniel x

  3rd November

  My warm bed by the fire

  Dear Freya –

  My name is Tatty. It’s short for Princess Tatiana, who was a Russian princess, but I’m a dog so you should call me Tatty. I am a small dog with lots of fur. Some people say I’m not a proper dog because I’m small and because I am made up of lots of different types of dog. But I think that is how the best dogs are made. My fur is different colours: brown and white and black and gold. It hangs together in big locks. I think it looks like feathers.

  There are two things I would like best in the world: 1. To fly like a bird, and 2. Lots of friends. Your Uncle Dan is my friend. He takes me for walks, and laughs when I bark at the birds with their clever flying, and feeds me tasty bits of food that Grandad can’t finish. Would you be my friend too, Freya? Uncle Dan says you’re very nice.

  One of my favourite things is the nice warm fire and going to sleep on Grandad’s feet. Uncle Dan says that I snore and when I dream my paws go running, but I don’t go anywhere. He laughs, but I don’t mind. He seems to like laughing.

  My biggest secret is that when I dream I don’t go running. I go flying. Do you know how secrets work? When someone tells you a secret you have to listen very carefully and then curl it up tight in your mind, as if it’s a little bit of paper that you crumple up in your hand. When it is very small, so small you can barely see it, then you have to pretend you are a little dog like me and dig a deep hole. Then you drop the secret into the hole and cover it up with earth. When you’ve cleaned your paws, nobody else will ever know where to find the secret except you.

  Now I’ve told you a secret, will you tell me one of yours? I like digging holes.

  Lots of love and woofs,

  Tatty

  4th November

  The Studio

  Dear Aubrey –

  I have a case study for you. One I think you’ll appreciate. It involves a story that’s been told before. Certainly I’ve heard it or overheard it. Maybe it will bore you, you’re the one with all the connections, after all. But it’s a story that bears retelling – according to the men of Upchurch, at least.

  Man walks into a pub. He shouldn’t have left his house, but he’s just lost an argument with his sick father for a bottle of whisky and now the sick father is drunk and snoring. It’s still early and frankly this man is starved of company. He takes the paper he’s already read and its half-completed crossword. He nods to the men standing at the bar and takes his pint and his paper to the corner of the snug.

  ‘Back looking after your dad, are you?’ The man at the bar doesn’t turn until he has asked the question.

  Our guy nods his head and folds up his paper; clicks his pen open and pretends to study the next clue. These sweet steps of masculine etiquette. Do both men know the game they’re playing? Another man turns at the bar; both settle back on their elbows, drink in hand, unfavoured foot finding the shelf in the wooden panelling. Our man is observed.

  ‘Who’s this, then?’

  ‘This is the artist’s boy. Been up north, haven’t you, Danny?’

  ‘Danny Laird. Went to school with my Sam, you did. What you up to these days?’

  ‘His dad’s just out of the hospital. Stroke, wasn’t it?’

  ‘I heard something like, but you never know with our resident artist, do you? Lot of rumours. That girl of Laird’s.’

  ‘Not in front of the boy.’

  ‘No, you’re right there. Still up at Miracle’s place?’

  ‘Now there’s a name I haven’t heard for years.’

  ‘You know that story about Miracle, do you, Danny?’

  Of course he knows the story – it helped make him… but he keeps his mouth shut. It’s not often you get to hear your life discussed by strangers while you’re in the same room.

  ‘Lives in Miracle’s house, doesn’t he? And it’s not like old Maggie is one to hold her tongue when there’s something to be said.’

  ‘That’s no story you’d tell a kid.’

  ‘Never know what went on in that house. Naked girls doing flits across the garden.’

  ‘You’d know all about that, Ron. Wasn’t your wife one of them?’

  ‘She wasn’t the one that ran screaming.’

  ‘Not in front of the boy.’

  Would they notice if Danny Laird got up and walked away? Is he necessary to this plot?

  ‘Miracle was the name he got from that illness he had as a kid. There was something growing in his brain and no hospital or doctor could do a thing to stop it. Then there was talk about some special operation in America. Said it was his last hope. My dad used to talk about that mother of his walking up and down the streets with a plastic ice-cream tub, photo of the boy stuck to the side of it, begging for donations to help. There was nothing that woman didn’t do: sponsored events and letters to all the rich people she could think of. It was worse than the church roof.

  ‘The boy, though – well, he ran wild. Used to plough that bike of his right through the allotments and broke all the windows in one of the sheds. Never saw him at the school. But no one had the heart to chide him, not with him dying and all. The mother had no control and anyway she was too busy with her fund-raising to notice much else that went on.

  ‘Anyhow, they were getting close to their target, but the tumour in his head had its own clock and the doctors here said they’d have to do something soon. America or no America, they were going to operate. Well, the mother was desperate and took up pleading and begging for more time. In the end, probably just to shut the woman up, they agreed to one more scan. And it was gone. That
massive tumour had completely disappeared.

  ‘The mother went round and gave everyone back their money, I’ll give her that. And Miracle went back to school. That’s what they called him in the papers. “The Miracle Boy”. Used to have a clipping in a frame up in here at one time.’

  ‘Killed himself, though, didn’t he?’

  ‘Blew his brains out.’

  ‘Only in his forties, wasn’t he? That’s no age.’

  ‘I heard it was his vanity. Some dentist told him he needed a set of false teeth, so he drove home and did himself in.’

  ‘No. He hit that woman on the dual carriageway. Must have been nearly twenty years ago now. Couldn’t live with himself after that.’

  ‘Not in front of the boy, Clive.’

  ‘Still, they took his house over, didn’t they. Lived there. It’s no wonder what happened next.’

  Not much of a case study for you really. Certainly not as difficult as today’s cryptic proved to be. Pretty easy for you to form a hypothesis and draw a conclusion. But I wonder if it explains anything at all.

  Regards,

  Daniel

  5th November

  The Studio

  Dear Alice –

  A dream last night:

  There is a small boy and the boy is me. He is holding his mother’s hand. They are walking on a footpath towards a bridge. The bridge is not a real bridge because there is no water to cross. Instead of water there is a road and fast fast cars that never stop, so people have to walk over them instead of through them. There are steps up one side, from house and shops and the footpath, and then steps down the other side to more houses and a school, where the boy is going, and a tall church, where his mother is going.