They waited a minute and the animal edged slowly away.
They drove on. Betsy was very quiet. Helena glanced over at her little face, tight with terror. She wanted to stop the car and just hug her, hold her tiny body close to her own and kiss her. But she knew that they both had to be brave and move on.
The horses were behind them now and they were surrounded by green bushes and trees. A few rabbits nibbled the grass on the verge.
‘Look, bunny rabbits. You like rabbits.’
No response.
‘You know, you’re going to be fine. It will feel a bit strange at the beginning but you’ll soon settle. Everyone there is very nice.’
‘But what happens if they don’t like me?’
‘Of course they’ll like you.’ Helena laughed to show how ridiculous that idea was. ‘Everyone is new at the beginning. And then they settle.’
‘Will I have any friends?’
Helena felt tears prick her eyes. Would she ever stop feeling protective of her?
‘Of course you will. Wherever you go, people like you. You’re so friendly.’
‘What will we do there?’ Betsy’s voice was small and slightly squeaky.
‘Oh, all sorts of lovely things. Maybe some painting or drawing. Baking. Singing. All things you enjoy and you’re good at.’
Outside, Helena saw the first signs of early blossom sprigging the trees. Maybe they were a good omen. Was that even a bit of blue in the otherwise granite sky?
‘Will I have lunch there?’
‘Yes. You’ll enjoy that. I’ve told them that you don’t have a huge appetite.’
‘Will I have to eat all of it?’
‘No. Just leave what you don’t want. Okay?’
Betsy nodded.
‘And then I’ll pick you up at three and see how you’ve got on.’
Helena sighed. She was pleased that there were no other cars on the forest road today. She needed as much calm as she could get. Why was life so hard? Why did she find leaving Betsy so difficult? Would she settle? Would it improve as time went on?
She had to admit that her devotion to Betsy had probably destroyed her relationship with Miles. He had felt excluded from the tight bond that the two of them had and he could not break in. He had pleaded with Helena to let Betsy make her own decisions, to stop mollycoddling her.
‘She has to look after herself,’ he would say. ‘Think for herself. She’s too reliant on you.’
‘She needs me,’ would be Helena’s response and then she would storm out. Except that on one occasion Miles did the storming out and he hadn’t returned.
A ray of sunlight broke through the trees now. More blossom. The trees were bushier here, as if they were bursting with life and freshness. The foliage was the green of hope and new beginnings.
They left the forest now and entered the outskirts of Lyndhurst. Betsy was playing with the toggles of her coat, twiddling them in her tiny hands.
‘I’d like to stay at home with you.’
‘I know,’ said Helena, ‘but I have to go work and you’d be lonely and bored all day on your own.’
Betsy shook her head in disagreement. She could be stubborn although at times she seemed rather defeated.
Helena thought now of Betsy’s belongings, pink with prettiness everywhere: white linen hearts; floral bags; trays and boxes full of shiny brooches and tinny trinkets. How they belied this vulnerability.
They drove up to the gate which was open onto the drive.
‘Here we are,’ said Helena as cheerfully as she could.
The red brick building was solid and smart. There was an attractive garden in the front with picnic benches where lunch could be eaten on sunny days. A neat pattern of gravel paths and trimmed bushes edging them; a buddleia attracting butterflies; feeders filled with nuts for the birds.
Helena got out of the car and went round to help Betsy undo her seatbelt. She came tentatively out. They walked together, hand in hand, to the front door, Betsy clutching her pretty floral bag.
There was a sign, letters engraved into a gold plaque: Lyndhurst Care Home for the Elderly.
She rang the bell and a petite Chinese lady in a pale blue uniform answered.
‘Hello,’ she said warmly, ‘you must be Betsy.’
Betsy didn’t answer. She looked to Helena for reassurance.
‘Yes,’ said Helena for her, ‘my mother has come for her trial day.’
She let go of Betsy’s hand and passed it to the lady. ‘Come with me, then,’ said the woman to Betsy. ‘I’ll look after you. We’ll see you at three,’ she said to Helena.
‘See you later, Mum,’ said Helena, as she left them, and went back to her car. ‘Have a lovely day.’
She looked up.
The door was firmly closed.
Go Wild in the Country
ALAN McCORMICK
AS NADINE WALKS slowly towards the entrance to the Villa, she ties her dressing gown tight around her waist and slides the palms of her hands down from her thighs as if she’s rubbing away something. Renzo sits casually on the brow of the hill smoking a cigarette, not caring if anyone sees him, the sleeves of his grey porter’s jacket rolled up his arms, the collar up around his neck as if he’s an extra in Grease. When he exhales it looks like he’s whistling. As Nadine comes up the entrance stairs she sees me and gives me the finger.
Since qualifying, I’ve been running writing sessions for the Villa’s younger patients. Nadine is a disruptive influence when she bothers to turn up, her snaking moods, sometimes enchanting, but more often sullen, brooding something within. Today she’s the first to arrive, and, after shedding her anger outside the nurses’ office – what are you fucking looking at? I can talk to the porters if I want to, and I can fuck them if I want to! – she seems different, the hormonal blush of anger on her neck already fading into blotchy pink and white, calmer, ready to be open . . . opened.
‘I saw you looking, Tom.’
‘Renzo is not a good guy.’
Nadine pretends to be surprised and then stares at me, holding her gaze a little too long, then suddenly laughs.
‘I like his cock, Tom, I don’t like him.’
‘Okay, Nadine, I get it.’
She mimics what I say with a heavy, breathy accent: ‘Okay, Nadine, I get it. Do you get it, Tom?’ she adds lightly in her own voice.
‘You could express your thoughts on the page.’
She stifles a laugh and tries the same trick, mimicking what I say, but her eyes soften a little when repeating the phrase ‘thoughts on the page’ as if it were suggesting something quaint, safe to dive into.
‘I still have the poem you wrote when you came the first time.’
‘Poor you.’
‘It was honest.’
‘It was bollocks.’
‘You said the marks on your wrists were the “blade’s curse”, your “flesh tattoos”, I remember those phrases.’
‘Poetry bollocks, Tom, I said it so you’d like me.’
‘I like the words, Nadine.’
‘Not me? Or these?’
She pulls up the sleeves on her dressing gown and stretches out her arms, palms up to the ceiling. The cuts look surprisingly deep and purpling, and a few are fresh, red and angry, jagged at the edges like wild bite marks.
She steps closer. ‘You can touch them if you want.’
‘Do the nurses know?’
‘Tom, it’s okay.’
The surfaces of the old cuts feel hard and knobbly like reptile skin but the new cuts are too real.
‘You know they can get infected?’
‘So?’
‘Well, you’d get sick.’
‘Duh, Tom! I’m already sick.’ She smiles. ‘You can press harder, you won’t hurt me, nothing really hurts me.’
Nadine would never show the nurses her cuts, and I would never tell them. Elaine, their leader, likes to sit on the table in the staffroom and address the other nurses as if she were giving a sermon. In their tank tops, cheesecloth shirts and pale blue jeans, they look like the Manson family, a joke I would share if everyone weren’t part of the cult.
I first talked to Elaine at the social club at the end of my first week at work. She came up to me as I chose a song on the jukebox: Bow Wow Wow’s ‘Go Wild in the Country’.
‘It’s Tom, isn’t it? I love the singer, so cute. What’s her name?’
‘Annabella.’
‘I’ve been observing you at work so I thought you’d know her name. She’s really pretty, don’t you think?’
‘She’s got a great voice.’
‘Good tits too though, eh, Tom? But she’s only fourteen. Makes me feel a little uneasy, that Manet painting on the cover of the single with her in the nude, it’s not right, is it?’
‘No, I suppose it isn’t.’
‘I’m joking, Tom, she’s beautiful. Why shouldn’t she be naked?’
She watches me closely, waiting for a response.
‘But if I weren’t joking, I’d be saying she shouldn’t be naked on the cover of a single that sad little men are going to take into their bedrooms to fondle and drool over. But am I joking or not joking?’
‘I don’t know.’
One of the gang called Steve came over: ‘Are you playing with the mind of our new member of staff, Lane?’
‘I’m not playing with your mind, am I, Tom? I’m too old to be playing with Tom’s mind. I think he’d prefer younger girls to play with . . . his mind. Wouldn’t you, Tom?’
‘Come on, Lane, that’s enough.’ And then Steve looked at me with a sympathetic smile. ‘Sorry, old chap, Lane makes her mind up pretty quickly about people. If I was you I’d lie low.’
I started to walk away.
‘Heh, Largactyl boy, keep moving because I’ve got you in my sights,’ Elaine said and shaped her hand like a pistol, one eye cocked like Travis Bickle, and pretended to shoot.
When I started at the Villa, Nadine was thick with a boy called Gavin. During workshops I’d often find myself looking out into the grounds. One afternoon I saw them walking hand in hand towards the sheep fields on the asylum farm. One of the patients said they were going to pick magic mushrooms.
When they came back later they were laughing like coyotes, running up and down the paths in purposeful patterns as if creating a topographic maze together, one only seen by them or by an imaginary bird hovering overhead.
A nurse ambled out and talked to them, shared a toke on a cigarette and brought them inside.
One night Gavin walked out of the Villa without telling anyone. He went home to see his mother who hadn’t been answering his letters. His mother was a paranoid schizophrenic and didn’t let him in the house because she was scared what he might do. Gavin smashed the lounge window and then hung himself from the rope swing under the tree at the bottom of their garden.
When Nadine was told, she said nothing for weeks. She was taken to the main hospital for special treatment. Six ECT sessions were prescribed and when she returned, she’d chopped her hair, smudged raven’s lipstick on her lips like a charred clown and talked slowly and deeply as if she were underwater. She came silently into a writing session and wrote on the wall:
‘The angel boy that flew down to peck out my eyes made me see.
I dream of him still and he touches me, holds me,
Smiles as he tightens his grip on my heart, carries it into the sky, and then lets go.’
Lola, my girlfriend, likes to call Nadine ‘Crazy Cat’.
Funny that, because cats have taken over the intimacy of our relationship: bromide in our tea. We stare at the television in dead-eyed awe, empty mugs collecting in front of us on the table; Roger, the tabby on my lap, Tabatha, the mottled sphinx, purring into Lola’s thigh. The cats speak for us or rather we speak through them. My voice is a bass growl for Roger: ‘Daddy would like to watch The Professionals now.’
‘Tell Daddy to earn some more money and buy a video recorder. Otherwise he’ll have to wait for All Creatures Great and Small to finish.’ I have grown to hate Lola’s soft velvet kitten tone for Tabatha: rejection with a cartoon Aristocats girly voice when the voice, like its message, should be spiky and cold.
When I slide my hand across the sofa I have to go under Tabatha’s purring belly to reach Lola’s skirt. As I attempt a lift I feel a claw and hear Lola’s Tabatha voice: ‘When Daddy stops behaving like The Son of Sam he may have a kiss. Until then he can relieve himself in the bathroom.’
When I stand up, Roger rolls casually onto the floor and lies on his back waiting for his tummy to be stroked. I fall on him as if enacting the rug scene in Sons and Lovers; Roger is Oliver Reed.
After I finish the workshop I find Renzo and Nadine sitting on the steps by the Villa entrance. She has a huge red love bite on her neck, and Renzo gives me a wink.
‘Did you just wink at me, Renzo?’
‘Yeah, and I can give you a kiss too if you want.’ He squeezes his lips grotesquely together for an imaginary snog and Nadine laughs.
‘You’re an animal!’
He growls and Nadine tilts her head back and howls.
‘And you’re a pussy boy.’
‘Why don’t you leave her alone?’
‘So you can have your taste, pussy boy?’
Nadine laughs at this.
‘Fuck off, Renzo!’
‘Pussy words! I fuck, you fuck off!’
Elaine throws open the entrance door. ‘No, you can both fuck off. Nadine, leave your little fan club and get inside, now!’
I’m left with Renzo at the top of the steps. He squeezes out two cigarettes from the top pocket of his porter’s jacket, lights both, and then offers me one.
‘Women are cunts,’ he says and spits his gum over my shoulder.
In Taxi Driver, Robert De Niro shoots the pimp, Harvey Keitel, in the belly. I take his cigarette, inhale, and block him out and fantasise about how I can save her and save myself.
I find a bench at the back of the Villa. It’s mid October and the grass has been full of damp and dew for weeks but there hasn’t been a frost yet. A mist hangs over the sheep fields at the edge of the asylum grounds. I was told earlier by Jonny, one of the porters who looks a little too much like Jim Davidson, that today is perfect for picking mushrooms. He told me to what to look for: a small white pointed dome with a kink half way down a tall spindly stalk. He told how to dry and prepare them and warned me not to eat too many the first time.
Nadine appears from around the building and joins me. ‘You were right about the wop,’ she says. ‘He’s fucking another nutcase now.’
‘He’ll get his comeuppance.’
‘I doubt it, Tom. That sort get to rule the world, don’t they? But you’re not like that, are you?’
‘Not normally.’
‘Fancy a stroll?’ she says.
We walk out towards the sheep fields. When we get there we find that the sheep have been moved from the farthest field.
‘Perfect!’ she says. ‘I’m going to get out of it. Will you keep watch?’
‘I’m not one of the patients, Nadine.’
‘Are you sure about that, Tom?’
‘Anyway, I’m partial to a magic mushroom now and then.’
‘Fuck off, you’re way too straight.’
‘It’s the silent ones you should look out for, Nadine.’
‘If you say so. Here, be useful for once and take my hand.’
I help her over the stile into the empty field, and we start picking.
‘You need to wipe them clean to get off any sheep shit. Then eat a few at a time,’ she says.
I have maybe forty in
my hand and eat them in front of her.
‘You stupid bastard, that’s way too many in one go.’
I eat another handful – they taste rank, putrid – and then sit on the grass and watch her get her measure. She is careful, artful, bent over so she can examine them as she picks, rejecting some and discarding them back onto the ground, keeping the good ones and dropping them onto the curled hem of her skirt. She wipes away the dirt and eats a few at a time, sipping from a bottle of water between each mouthful. As I watch her my nausea starts, takes me in a tidal wash so that I suddenly tip forward, my gut twisting, falling hard and wrenching tufts of grass out from the earth with my hands and my teeth. I lie there for what seems like ages and fight to let the poison out.
My stomach quietens for a moment. Looking up, it is as if the earth is lying on its side, the asylum tipped up like a drowning Titanic, the clouds disappearing into the earth. Nadine looks at me from an angle and smiles and it’s the smile of the ancients in the here and now, at once wizened and wise but also pixotic and mischievous. I am crying and when I rub my eyes, dirty salty rainwater spits up and dribbles into my mouth. The nausea is overwhelming again and I want to be sick but can’t. I want Mum. Nadine is by my hot head, a curious monkey girl flicking ticks from my hair and rubbing my head. But her hand is cool porcelain; a shop dummy girl in a Victorian dress shop and I start laughing, the Victorian asylum, her Victorian doll-like face, a Victorian clockwork monkey beating a drum, Keith Moon gurning on snare, the pale moon a cymbal, the ley lines that travel beneath me and through the grounds and out onto the Downs, a secret swirling snake . . . wild, go wild in the country . . .
‘Where snakes in the grass are free?’ Nadine asks.
Her face changes, cheekbones heightening and sharpening, and she’s Annabella, her voice like the cooling breeze tingling my skin. I want to shit and it makes sense to do it here on the earth, shit to shit, dust to dust, ashes to ashes, my brain hot-wiring connections as a greater awareness keeps promising to emerge. I try to take my trousers off but my fingers are weak and I can’t unclasp the belt. And then I feel her arms around me like warm insulating wings. I want her to hold me like this forever but things never stay still for a single moment.
Best British Short Stories 2015 Page 15