Walking Alone

by Carolyn McCrae

  “Perhaps he’s showing some sense and keeping away from her.” Linda told her Mother during one of their weekly discussions on ‘what to do about Holly’.

  “Perhaps he’s busy doing other things.”

  “We can hope!”

  “You don’t like him do you?”

  “Nope. Conniving greasy piece of work. He’s after something. And I don’t mean sex.” Linda continued hurriedly. “They’re all after that, but he’s after something more. He seems to be working his way into her life but sometimes I don’t think he even likes her that much.”

  “Well she’ll have to come here and then you can take her to Oxford when you spend your fortnight with the boys. Has she said anything about going back to visit her grandparents in Canada?”

  “She’s taking it too calmly. She hasn’t said anything. I don’t know her at the moment, I mean we’ve got over hating the sight of each other like we did last autumn, but we don’t talk that much and she’s never said anything about her Mum. It’s like that never happened. I mean they wanted to give her special dispensation about her exams but she wasn’t having it. She just studies and does everything else just as if nothing has happened. Her mum had just been killed for Christ’s sake and she’s been acting as if nothing’s happened!”

  “Some people take grief in different ways, darling.”

  “But if it had been you. And me.”

  “As I said, darling, grief takes people in different ways. I don’t think you can doubt she loved her mother very much.”

  Graham hadn’t phoned to offer them a lift back to the Wirral as he had done at the end of every term since he had wheedled his way into their lives so they lugged their bags to the railway station.

  Holly was put out by Graham’s lack of interest. He hadn’t even been in touch to ask her how her exams had gone. It was as if he didn’t want to see her again, and it annoyed her that he hadn’t had the guts to tell her to her face.

  If he didn’t care, she wouldn’t.

  “What?” Holly had been dreaming as she gazed out of the train window when she realised Linda had been talking to her. “Sorry, I was just wondering what to do this summer. I should have stayed in Leicester, the only reason I’m going home is to clear the house. The agents wrote to say Dad hadn’t been near the place and the notice runs out next week. I’ve got to clear all our stuff out, all mum’s clothes, her books, everything. It’s got to be done.”

  Linda wondered why she hadn’t said anything about this before now.

  “Stay with us Holly. You can clear the house from there, you don’t have to stay there. Don’t worry about having to be nice and polite all the time to Mutt and Jeff. You’ve got to make it your own home where you could be in a bad mood and let everyone know it, where you can have tantrums and arguments and storm out of rooms, knowing that you can come straight back home and no one will say a thing. Just like I do.” She realised Holly wasn’t finding her funny so she finished rather lamely. “You wouldn’t have to think you’re living in someone else’s house.”

  Holly carried on talking as if she hadn’t heard anything Linda had said.

  “I’m not going begging to Dad. He made it clear that there was no room for me in his life. He wasn’t even interested in my results. He wants nothing to do with me.”

  Linda tried another tack.

  “Do you realise this is our last summer of freedom, next summer we’ll be looking for jobs even if we’re not working already. Let’s forget everything and just enjoy ourselves.”

  Holly looked at Linda as if she was only just realising how much her life had to change.

  “I’m not sure I like the idea of freedom.”

  Linda wondered how she would have coped if it were her who had lost her mother and her home.

  Three months of the summer seemed wonderful to her, filled with her family and doing the things that she had always done; but for Holly it must stretch out ahead frighteningly empty, a full three months before she would be back for her final year at Leicester.

  Linda heard Holly humming gently, eventually she recognised the song and the words went round and round in her head Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.

  They didn’t speak for the rest of the journey home.

  “You must be so tired darlings, all that work and then lugging all these bags home. You should have let Jeff meet you at the station. Come in, sit down and we’ll have a cup of coffee.” Pat was all enveloping in her welcome. “Holly, darling, you are so welcome,” she gave her an extra hug. “for as long as you like. The boys are coming up next weekend to take you down to Oxford. That’s if you want to go Holly? They’re expecting you both. They say you can spend as much time as you like down there now it’s your last summer before having to get jobs. They said it was your last summer of freedom so you should enjoy it!”

  “That’d be nice.” Holly didn’t sound enthusiastic but Linda did all the talking “How are they? They sent us good luck cards for the exams but never bothered to call to find out how we’d done. Have they got girl-friends yet? They’re far too old to be on their own. What are they up to now?”

  As ever she kept the most important question to last.

  “Will Carl be with them?”

  “They’re fine. Doing something really interesting at work I think. They’ve decided to leave their jobs and set up their own business though I haven’t a clue how they’re going about it. No, Carl won’t be coming up but he phoned last weekend and sends his love, to you both, and says he’ll see you down there.”

  Holly didn’t seem to be listening. “I don’t think I can go to Oxford. I’d like to but I’ve got to clear the house out. Dad won’t have done it. Then I should get a job. I need to earn some money somehow.”

  “Time enough to do that when you get back.”

  Linda did her bit to try to cheer Holly up “I know it’s going to be a long hot summer and we’re going to get brown and read lots of trashy novels and meet loads of dishy guys and have fun! It’s our last summer…”

  “Oh shut up about freedom! What’s so great about being able to do anything you want without anyone caring what you do?” And Holly burst into tears.

  “I can do anything I want now. There’s no one to tell me not to. I always thought it’d be great to be able to do what I wanted. But it isn’t.”

  Half an hour later she was sobbing quietly, her head resting on her folded arms on the kitchen table. Pat was gently rubbed her back whilst handing her tissue after tissue.

  “Do you want to talk?”

  Holly shook her head.

  “Linda is very fond of you, you know, even if it may sometimes seem that she doesn’t. You know we all are. You must know you’ve always got a home with us.” She continued as there was still no response from Holly “I have no idea what you are feeling, how can I? Nor can Linda or anyone else. You have a lot to come to terms with and you’ve just worked your guts out for your exams and you’re worn out. Just know that you have got people who care about you. You aren’t on your own, however much it must feel like it now. We’ve cleared out the spare room for you, it’s usually got some of Carl’s stuff but he’s said he’s not coming back up for a while so you’re absolutely no bother at all. Just get some rest, some sleep, build up some of that resilience I know you’ve got.”

  By the time Crispin and Oliver arrived a few days later Holly was beginning to take more of an interest in the holiday. She had slept late every day while Linda had gone swimming or taken the dogs for long walks on Thurstaston Hill. She had begun to eat at mealtimes after several days of simply forking the food around her plate.

  “But Mum, she’s indulging herself. She’s wallowing in it.”

  “She’s finally facing up to it,” Pat explained to her daughter “give her time, she’ll be the old Holly soon enough.”

  “It’s months since the accident, why’s it hitting her now?”

  “Only two. And she will have pushed it to the back of her mind while
she had exams to worry about but now she hasn’t got them as a prop. Now she looks out of her window at night and sees the garden where it all happened. She sees the garden where she was happy and where it all went wrong. I think you’re being a wee bit harsh saying she’s being self-indulgent.”

  “Maybe,” was all Linda would say.

  The morning the boys were due home Holly got up before five o’clock. It was going to be a hot day and she wanted it to be over with. She’d left it to the last moment, which was so unlike her. She crept out of the house, down through what was left of the gap in the hedge into ‘her’ back garden. The garden looked unkempt, she made herself not think about all the time her Mother had spent making the garden look nice. She sat down, cross legged and stared at the grass where her Mother had died.

  Linda had heard Holly leave the house and had been going to leave her alone reasoning that she needed her space. But after she had watched her sit down on the grass and not move for several minutes she decided to go down to her. She would probably tell her to bugger off but she might just need a friend.

  She sat down on the grass beside Holly who looked across at her and smiled grimly.

  “Do you want some company? I’ll piss off if you want to be alone.”

  “No. I mean yes. Company would be good.”

  “I’ll help if you want.”

  It was some minutes before Holly stood up. “Come on, let’s get this over with.”

  They peered through the windows and saw that, although some things had been removed, there was still a lot of stuff in the house.

  “Shall we break in?” Linda tried the window and the back door, wondering how they would manage.

  “We don’t need to. I’ve got this.” Holly took a key from her pocket and put it into the lock. “I hope no one bolted it on the inside.” She turned the key and turned the doorknob, pushing gently. The door opened.

  They walked around the house, looking at the rooms that had been a home just a few weeks before. Linda followed Holly as she went up the stairs and into her parents’ bedroom. “It’s all empty,” she sounded devastated, “he’s emptied all the wardrobes and drawers. I wonder when he did it. What’s he done with all of mum’s stuff? When the agent wrote he said it was all here.”

  Linda, wisely, said nothing as Holly turned round and walked across the landing to what had been her bedroom. They had had so much fun there.

  “All the posters are still here. Nothing much seems to have changed.”

  “I wonder what he thought would happen to all this stuff.” Holly checked the drawers of dressing table. They hadn’t been touched since six weeks earlier she had thrown what she needed for the term in a rucksack and left, refusing to admit to herself that she would never be coming back.

  “We can sort out what you want and you can keep it in your room with us. Anything else can go in our loft.

  “Most of it’s rubbish. I suppose I’ll have to get a house clearer in and all this will all get dumped. There’s some stuff I’d like though.”

  “I’ll go up to the house and get some bags.” So Linda left Holly alone.

  It took Linda only a couple of minutes and when she got back Holly was ripping down the last poster from the wall. “I remember when you stuck that one up. I always liked Marc Bolan.” She watched Holly screw it up in a ball and throw it behind the door to join the others. “Silly really, look at the mess it’s made of the wall. Mom,” she hesitated “Mom, always told me not to put them up, she told me it would ruin the wall when they came down. She was right.”

  “Someone else’s problem.”

  As Holly sorted through the drawers she threw more stuff behind the door than she handed to Linda to put into the bags.

  “You can’t throw all those books away!” Linda argued. “I’ll have them if you don’t want them.” So she put them in the bags. “And what about all your A level notes! You might need those, you never know, you might end up teaching and they’d be useful.”

  “Me? Teach? Never.” But she allowed Linda to put them in the bags anyway.

  As they left her room she shut the door behind her with finality.

  “I’ll take these up to the house.” Linda wasn’t normally tactful but she realised Holly needed a little time on her own.

  When she got back Holly was downstairs looking into the sideboard.

  “All our good plates and glasses. Dad hasn’t taken anything. I remember when we bought them. She was so pleased with them, she thought they were so English.”

  “You can’t leave them for the clearers. I’ll go and get some boxes, you can’t leave all these. Your Mum loved them.”

  So Linda left Holly alone again in the house.

  When she got back there was another pile of rubbish behind the door. There had been ornaments on their shelves, gathering a thin layer of dust, and pictures on the walls. They were all in a heap of broken china and glass. “Dad hated photographs, so we never had any. These are all crap. Cheap crap. Bought to fill gaps on walls. Why haven’t we got any photos of us? There’s none of me and Mum and Dad as a family. Not like you’ve got all over your house. You can’t move for photos of you and Crisp and Olly, even Carl and he’s not even proper family.”

  “We’ve got ones of you. Look through the ones the boys have taken, Take whatever you want.”

  “What I want to find is something that is Mum. Something small that I can always carry with me, that’s her, something that I can always hold on to when I need to feel close to her, something personal, precious and important. You know what I mean?”

  Linda nodded. “You’ve smashed all the ornaments. How about a book, here, there’s a small book of poetry here.”

  “Something small.” She ran her finger along the rows of orange and turquoise paperbacks that filled most of the shelves. She stopped at a guidebook of New York.

  “We took a trip when I was about 10. We went on a boat trip around Manhattan, just Mom and me. I can’t remember where Dad had gone. Mom paid the fare and got a quarter in the change that had been painted red. We kept it to remind us of that day. Mom wrapped it in tissue paper and put it in the little plastic pocket…” she paused as she opened the book “…in the guidebook! It’s still here!”

  She unwrapped it from the tissue paper and held it tightly in her fist before putting it in her pocket. “That’s it. As long as I’ve got that coin Mom’s with me.”

  Linda gave her a hug. “What about the books? You don’t want to leave these? Come on let’s pack them up – if you don’t want them then we can find someone who does.”

  It took four journeys for Linda to take all the books back up the garden. Before they left for the fifth and final time they sat down for a final coffee at the kitchen table. Holly’s thoughts, inevitably, were of the morning when everything had seemed perfect until she’d heard the silence behind the radio. When you walk, through a storm…

  “You know he’s taken one plate, one mug, one knife, one fork, one spoon, one dish, one of everything.” There was nothing Linda could say. It was so obvious to both of them that Matt had no intention of doing anything for his daughter.

  “Thanks for your help.” Holly took one of the remaining mugs off a hook and they walked out of the house. Holly locked the door behind her and threw the key into the bushes.

  It was not yet eight o’clock.

  The change in Holly was immediate. She was talkative, laughing and insisting on making the coffee, toast and orange juice which was the Forster’s staple breakfast during the week.

  “You’ve worked some magic clearing the house. She’s just like her old self.” Pat said to Linda when Holly went to answer the doorbell.

  The boys were home.

  When Holly left the table an hour later Pat spoke quietly and firmly to her sons. “Holly’s been having a tough time, we’ve been very worried.”

  “She seems pretty normal to me.” Oliver commented.

  “Only more so.” Linda added. “It’s almost as if she’s on
something.”

  “She wouldn’t do drugs would she?” Pat was concerned “Perhaps all the strain had sent her over the edge.”

  “I don’t think so. Where would she have got them anyway?”

  “You, my dear children, are far more likely to know the answer to that than I am!”

  As they heard Holly coming back down the stairs Pat added “Look after her, won’t you?”

  Crispin’s reply was heartfelt.

  “We always try.”

  They argued with her when Holly said she wanted to visit her father.

  “Get it all over with in one day.” She had insisted “Then tomorrow is the beginning of the rest of my life.”

  “I’ll come with you.” Linda offered

  “I’ll drive.” Crispin volunteered.

  “I’m coming too.” Oliver wasn’t going to be left out.

  “Good luck” they said as she left them in the car.

  Holly walked across the wide pavement, through the door between the two shops and up two flights of carpet-less stairs to the door marked ‘Eccleston’.

  “She’ll be OK won’t she?” Crispin asked.

  “Of course idiot. She’s fine.”

  “I hope so.”

  They waited.

  “Are you sure she’s OK?”

  “Of course she is.”

  Five minutes later Holly was fleeing down the stairs.

  When he had answered the door he had made her stand there while he told her he didn’t have a daughter, didn’t want a daughter, had never wanted a daughter.

  She wondered if he was drunk even though it wasn’t eleven o’clock yet.

  A son he could have done something with, he said, but a daughter was a drain, a burden, no use at all. Only a pathetic woman like her mother could have given him a daughter. If he had chosen a better wife he would have had a son, someone to carry on his name, someone to make a difference in the world, to fight for the things that were right and proper.