by Sarah Jasmon
By the feeble light from the door, I look in the mirror of the window and see a floating head, shaven and pathetic; I am like les femmes tondues shamed in a hundred grainy post-war photographs. I finally identify the scent of cowardice. I have been running away from the knowledge for more than half of my life. It is time to find out what happened.
I have to talk to my mother.
Chapter Thirty
1983
She wasn’t sure who was laughing. Not her, because it wasn’t funny. Victoria leaned over. She said something Helen couldn’t quite catch.
‘What?’ The tree she was sitting against was handy, because it stopped her from falling down. She liked the way you could get your fingertips caught in the bark. She missed what Victoria said again.
‘Have some more.’ Victoria was holding out a bottle. ‘More hurt—’ She stopped and giggled. ‘I mean more heart medicine.’
Helen it out in front of her, trying to get the label into focus. The letters jiggled about. The glass was clear, though, and so was the liquid inside. She tilted it up. ‘There’s not much left.’ Vodka. She remembered the name as it burned down her throat. Talking and drinking at the same time made her choke, and the words came out in jolts. ‘There isn’t any left.’
She let the bottle drop to the ground and closed her eyes to try and remember who it was who was sitting under a tree. But when she closed her eyes, the world began to spin too fast, so she opened them again and she was the one sitting under a tree, which was the funniest thing she’d ever heard of. Where was Victoria? She had to tell her, she’d love it. She stood up with care, grabbing at the trunk.
‘Boo!’
The sound made Helen lose her grip and she stepped back and leant over to hold on to her knees. She must have told Victoria about the tree already, because Victoria was laughing. She was laughing so much that she fell over, so Helen let her knees bend and fell over as well and they lay there and staring up into the tree, which was in front of something orange.
‘Why is it orange?’ She heard herself say it, but she didn’t know why, so it was OK that Victoria didn’t answer. And, anyway, there was something wrong with Victoria’s head, only she couldn’t put her finger on it. ‘Where has your hair gone?’
She needn’t have worried, though, because Victoria was laughing so much. Helen tried to get up, but it was so very difficult to balance. On the third go she managed, and reached across with great care to touch the spiky bits sticking up over Victoria’s face. Her finger slid down, though, because they were so high up, and then she had her hand on Victoria’s cheek and underneath the skin she could feel the line of bone, and underneath that her jaw, and then she was touching her ear and the back of her head.
It was all so very, very sad. It was the saddest thing she had ever thought.
‘You’re going, you see.’ She took hold of Victoria’s shoulder and shook it to make her understand. ‘I love you all so much and now you’re going to go away.’ She had real, actual tears in her eyes now. ‘Because it’s only good when you’re here.’
They fell down to the ground at the same time and lay there, quite still. Helen heard the sound of their breath floating on the subdued crackle of background noise. She could feel each tiny vibration feeding through her brain, being allocated sense and dropping off into her subconscious being. Her hand was resting on Victoria’s cheek again. She let her fingers drift downwards and over to Victoria’s mouth. Her hand was moving by itself but she didn’t do anything to stop its journey. The skin of Victoria’s lips felt different, smoother than the skin of her cheek. There were tiny muscles flexing under her fingertips, and her body was nothing but a carrier for a thousand nerve endings. Even if she’d wanted to, she wouldn’t have been able to stop. She would be here for the rest of her life.
‘Helen.’ Victoria was trying to sit up. Helen sympathized. It was a difficult thing to do when the world went round so much. She let her hand fall down, watched it lie motionless on the grass. The grass should be green, she thought. Victoria was leaning over, resting her forehead against the side of her head. Her voice was a breathy whisper right in Helen’s ear. ‘Helen—’
‘Yes?’
‘Helen, I don’t fancy you.’ Victoria paused for a second before letting a giggle escape. That didn’t make sense, because what she was saying wasn’t funny. ‘So that’s two of us who don’t.’ She pulled herself up to a wobbly balance and held up a hand, the fingers curled down. Using her other hand, she unpeeled the first two fingers and held them up straight. ‘One, two.’ She pointed them both at Helen. ‘I saw you snogging Seth before. Who are you going to try next?’
Helen wasn’t rooted to the spot, she was turned to stone.
She knew she was somewhere different, but she couldn’t remember how she’d got there. The ground felt damp, and was pressing into her cheek. The pounding in her head got worse when she lifted it up, so she let it stay where it was. The fire was getting bigger, with flames that shredded off and jumped into the sky. But as she lay there, the flames began to take over the sky. Alice came into her field of vision, and she must have liked the flames as well, because she was dancing with them, holding out her arms to catch them as they flew around. She was so beautiful. Helen wanted to get up and dance with her, but it was hard, because the ground was so sticky.
Seth. There was something about Seth she needed to remember. She’d done something, she was sure, something that was bad and would make Seth run away, but she couldn’t think what it was. Then the air was full of smoke. Someone must have put the wrong wood on the bonfire. The smoke bowed down, reaching out to her and wrapping her up. It was nice to be noticed, but it made her cough, and she was sure there were eyes peering out, and she’d see them if only she could turn her head. Before she could spot them, the smoke had retreated, back behind the mountain of crackling fire.
She tried her head again, and this time she managed to lift it up. Where was Victoria? Helen couldn’t see her anywhere. It wasn’t fair. Helen felt a wail rising up in her throat, expanding and growing until she couldn’t breathe. Victoria was always going off somewhere, leaving her behind. There were people running past now, but none of them had faces. They were all leaving her behind.
Screaming. Helen put her hands over her ears because she didn’t like screaming. But if her hands were over her ears, what were the hands that were pulling her up? Why was her mother here? She wasn’t supposed to be here. She didn’t live here any more. Her mother wouldn’t let her sit back down. It was because of the lights. They were blue, too blue, and they kept flashing on, and flashing off. Flashing on, flashing off. She wanted to stop and count them, but the hands kept pulling, pulling.
They were in the lane, and Mrs Weaver’s face was there too. Why was she there? She hadn’t been invited. Helen tried to tell her, to point out that it was rude, turning up at other people’s parties, but it was difficult because she couldn’t walk and talk at the same time. ‘Drugs, I shouldn’t wonder …’ Mrs Weaver’s mouth was talking by itself. ‘Disgraceful. A total lack of supervision.’ One minute she was there, and the next she’d turned into Helen’s mother. ‘Thank you, Officer … yes … home with me …’ And she was going to be sick, nausea sending her head into a spin, sweat enveloping every bit of her. Hands were turning her about, holding her down, and she heaved and heaved until all she wanted to do was lie down and die. Her feet were a very long way away and she tried to tell someone, but they couldn’t hear her. The hands forced her along, with her stranger’s feet, and then she was lying in a car and her mother was there, saying something she couldn’t hear.
And then she was gone.
Chapter Thirty-one
Rain was pounding in a steady stream against the window. Helen made her eyes focus on the spot beyond the rain but before the houses opposite, so it all merged into a grey blur. She couldn’t hold it for long. Out in the street, an old lady pushed her way along behind a walker frame, and the cat from the house opposite bounded up on to the w
all and made a slinking run over to the other side, hiding under a parked car. Behind her, she could hear her mother rummaging through her handbag for the car keys. She swung the cord with a final vicious force, wishing she could break the glass.
‘I don’t see why I can’t go.’
‘Because there’s nobody there and there’s nothing you can do.’ The impatient tone was back in her mother’s voice. ‘You’ve been ill and you need to rest.’ Her bag closed with a snap. ‘I have to go to work today, and you need to make a start on the book list from the sixth form.’
‘I’m not going to the sixth form.’
‘Helen.’ Her mum made her turn round. ‘We’ve been through this, and I don’t want to argue.’ She came up to Helen and put a hand on her forehead. ‘How is your head feeling today?’
‘It’s all right.’ Helen shrugged her hand away. She heard her mother sigh as she reached for her coat and crossed the room. Then came the sound of the door opening and Helen willed her mother to leave quickly, to leave her alone. But the door didn’t close.
‘Why don’t you give one of your friends a call? Find out what results they got?’
Helen clamped her mouth tight and leaned against the window. Once again, she struggled to pin down how she’d ended up here. The days she’d spent in bed, blinded by headache and nausea, were impossible to fit into the time she could see had passed on the calendar. She didn’t trust herself, was scared of the shaky episodes of unreality that swept over her when she tried to put things together in a proper chronology. The cat reappeared from underneath the car and ran across the road. Helen held her breath as a car drove past, but the cat was disappearing through its flap, one leg left outside as it eased its way in.
The flat was silent. Helen went into ‘her’ room and lay down on the bed, trying to calm the throbbing over her right eye. It was nothing like it had been, when she couldn’t get away from the pain. Those days had been awful, the walls breathing themselves in and out with the whooshing sound of a huge set of bellows and the air as dense as water, swirling faces past too fast for her to recognize them, shooting words in rapids and whirls before sucking them away and leaving her stranded.
The worst was the not remembering. All her mother would say was that she’d be better off forgetting about it. It was bad enough knowing she’d been sick in the car, and she couldn’t bring herself to press for more. So she kept it inside, the knowledge that she was crazy, or that she was going to die. One or the other seemed a certainty. The pain had made every day seem the same, the aureole of light on the edges of her vision and the rocking instability forcing her to lie still, but not letting her sleep. Was it four days? Five?
One thing she couldn’t believe was that the Dovers had gone. Was her mother making it up? She said the house had been damaged by the fire, but the bonfire hadn’t been that big. She closed her eyes and tried to remember something, anything, of what had happened after she’d seen Seth and Moira. The vision played out in her head endlessly, sometimes as though she stood there hidden, and sometimes with Moira laughing up at her face. Anything later, however hard she tried to summon it up, slid away. Sometimes she was sure she’d seen the bonfire dying away, but then the certainty would dissolve and she’d be back at the start. Hidden away in a corner of her mind was the feeling she’d done something. Why else would Victoria leave without saying anything? She’d mentioned leaving at the end of the summer more than once, but they were going to stay in touch, visit each other.
She went through to the kitchen and lifted the telephone receiver, listening to the dial tone making its indifferent sound. Her finger went to the first digit of her dad’s number before she put the receiver down. She hadn’t seen him since the fire, either. Sometimes her mother made excuses about him being busy, and sometimes she let slip a comment that showed she was angry with him, but would never explain why. She hadn’t exactly said that Helen couldn’t talk to him, but she hadn’t suggested it either. Helen picked the receiver up again but stopped with it halfway. Was it that he didn’t want to talk to her? Slowly, she carried it on up until it rested against her ear. It was worse not knowing.
There was no answer.
Propped against the row of new and shiny cookbooks was the envelope with her exam results. She had refused to open it, had left the room when her mother read the list aloud. Now it sat there, containing within its square brown corners everything that was wrong: the flat, the town. The dreary and endless clouds, the grey line of sand that went on and on towards a sea that knew better than to come any closer. Grabbing it, she tore at the edges, ripping again and again. Her breath came in sobs and the envelope wasn’t enough. She wanted – no needed – more. But the kitchen offered nothing. The edges of the worktops were too smooth, the drawers too efficient. She sank to the floor, her fingers writhing into her hair, catching, pulling, dragging her forehead down against her knees and making it bang into them over and over.
Afterwards, nothing had changed. The apples sat in the bowl on the table, the clock on the cooker made its click as the numbers turned over.
But Helen knew what she could do.
She searched for coins in pockets, drawers, and the jar on the kitchen shelf. There was enough for the bus. She couldn’t find a key, but it didn’t matter. She wasn’t coming back. The door slammed behind her, and she picked up speed as she went down the stairs and out into the road.
Chapter Thirty-two
The rain was plastering her hair against her cheeks and her neck. She didn’t care. It didn’t seem to be enough, in fact. The cottage was nothing but an empty shell, a black and broken tooth at the end of the row. The roof was gone, the rafters crossing the gap, but themselves eaten away, ready to crumble. And the smell: it had been there even as she got off the bus, a trail of scent that hadn’t seemed real. Coming down the lane, it became stronger, building into a heavy and acrid weight that settled in her throat and scoured the lining of her nose.
The furniture was piled out in the rain: armchairs, a broken-fronted cupboard from the living room, all of them blackened and wet. She picked up a couple of books, scorched from the fire and pulped by the rain. One had half a cover remaining: War and … Through the rain and the mud and the smell of the ash, she recalled the sound of the flames and realised she was standing in the blackened circle where the bonfire had been. It was so small, so contained. Something was sticking out of the ground and she crouched down to pick it up. A spout of white china, the inside edges stained with brown, and half of a pink flower visible on the broken end. She could picture the teapot, standing on the top shelf of the sideboard in the kitchen. Her fingers curled around it, and she felt the sharp edge digging into the heel of her hand. This was why they’d had to go, she could understand now. A ball of anger squeezed at her stomach, displacing the suppressed sense of unease. How could her mother not have told her? And obviously Victoria hadn’t been in contact; she’d have so much to do with settling in to a new place. There would be so much to replace as well. She heard Victoria’s voice: You should learn to travel light, Helen. Who knows when you’ll need to get somewhere fast? It was only a matter of time. She’d hear from her.
The doors were boarded up, but one side was loose. Helen squeezed through, hearing nothing but the flapping of the plastic, which covered the holes where the windows had been.
There was nothing left of the kitchen. The sink was hanging from the wall and a trellis of lath was visible where the plaster had fallen off. She stepped across to the living room door. There was a pattern of smoke on the walls, but the devastation was less than in the kitchen, although everything was sodden, mould already spreading up the walls. On the wall behind the couch, a pale rectangle marked the position of the painting of Alice. Helen stood and stared at the space, imagining the paint blistering, Alice’s beautiful skin bubbling away from the canvas, running over the frame and sliding away down the wall, and she turned to run, clawing at the plastic sheeting.
How had it happened? Again, she felt cert
ain she’d watched the bonfire dying away. None of it made any sense. The trembling started to rock at the pit of her stomach. If she imagined it hard enough, Victoria would stick her head out of an upstairs window, asking her where she’d been. Pippa would come running around the corner of the house, full of a scheme to turn the garden into a swimming pool or something. She tried harder. Was it only a week ago they’d all been sitting around the bonfire, with music pouring out and Seth’s hand on her arm?
The trembling carried on up the left side of her body and spread over her chest until she couldn’t breathe. She was going to die here, with the cold, dead smell of spent ash swamping her senses. It was everywhere, layered on the walls and the grass, swallowing up the smell of the canal, mocking the pathetic ring of blackened grass where they had sat and watched the docile flames of the party. Why couldn’t she remember? Everything was turning grey. And she was crying, but she didn’t know who for, and the shadow of it all blew up like a mushroom cloud and was going to bury her. With an effort, she forced her feet to lift and fall, and soon she was staggering down the side of the house and back to the canal.
The boat was there, tied to its mooring pins and shifting very gently under the onslaught of the rain. Had it been there when she arrived? She couldn’t remember seeing it, and now it seemed too normal. She peered in through the window, holding her breath for something, she didn’t know what, but there was no one there. A couple of mugs stood on the upturned box, a crate of empty beer bottles sat against the edge. Everyone had gone. She stepped back, keeping one hand against the side of the cabin.
‘Won’t find nobody there, my dear.’
The voice came from behind, making her jump. The boat rocked and she almost lost her balance on the edge of the bank. It was Mrs Tyler, under an umbrella, her head bobbing.