The Weight of Angels

by Catriona McPherson

  Chapter 9

  The words bothered me. Kids make up their own minds what words mean. When Angelo was tiny, just before he threw up like Vesuvius one time, he said his waist was hurting. Not his tummy, which might have warned us: his waist. And then another time when he was toddling along beside me on our way to the shops he heard me wincing and turned his face up, squinting through the hair he wouldn’t let me cut. ‘What a matter, Mummy?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘I’ve just got a crick in my neck.’ I was all aches and pains that summer, couldn’t get comfy to sleep no matter what I tried.

  He stopped dead and gazed, as if at some undreamed-of wonder. ‘You swallow it?’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘It fly in your mouth?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Jimmy Cricket,’ he said.

  ‘Not my throat, Angel-boy,’ I said. ‘My neck. Here.’ I touched him under the curling ends of his mop of hair, tickling him, making him shriek and scoot away from me. And, of course, we all said ‘a cricket in your neck’ from that day on. Until Angelo started rolling his eyes and snorting anyway.

  So ‘I hurt his middle’ could mean anything. She might have elbowed him in the ribs when she got into her parents’ bed in the morning for a cuddle. Or maybe she was on his lap and she trampled him and he yelled and frightened her. But I knew what I thought it meant. I could think of ways a little girl could hurt her daddy’s ‘middle’ and then years later would fantasize that she’d killed him to make the memory go away.

  If he was even dead. He might be living with her mother, happy and clueless. Or, like Lars said, maybe he’d left his family for pastures new and his daughter made up a more dramatic story. I would ask at the staff meeting if he was still alive.

  As quietly as I could, I drew a folder of paperwork out from the tray under the table, my face so close to Julia’s that I could hear the little popping sounds she made as each breath out made her lips part.

  I moved a bale of clothes, still in their plastic wrappers from the mail order, keeping my movements slow and soft. Then I sat down to study my resident list and start to plan.

  Six boys, three junkies and three alkies, and seven girls, four ana-mias, two alkies and Julia. A handful of women with various depressions, although I’d have to study the difference between chronic, acute and major, which all sounded pretty bad. One with late-stage terminal dementia and, of course, Sylvie.

  I tapped my pen against my cheek and thought about it. There’s not much that massage doesn’t help. Even the woman dying of Alzheimer’s would no doubt appreciate a bit of gentle effleurage. It would calm the alkies and reinvigorate the junkies. As for the girls who were scared to eat? I could tell them I’d strip toxins and excess water and they’d be queuing up. And depression was made for it.

  Touch is a problem for British people, maybe Scots most of all. We’re not huggers. But gentle touch can do wonders for someone feeling the ache of loss or loneliness. Gentle touch, fresh air and exercise is what did it for me. That and determination. I made a note to ask Dr Ferris whether they insisted on residents going outside and walking every day. Maybe they had a physio with her own ideas – I didn’t want to step on any toes – but there were still footpaths all over this land, despite the army, and any day they weren’t firing live rounds we could all be out there, getting good-tired; so different from the bad-tired you got from staying inside rooms and thinking too much. I lifted my head and looked out of Julia’s bedroom window. All I could see was a square of grey sky, the wind strong enough to fling the seagulls where it chose, making me think of ice-skaters, pushing off, then suddenly wheeling away. I closed my eyes and listened to the soft snores and the faint shushing that came through the closed window.

  I was drifting when I heard it. ‘Mmmhmmm.’

  I leaped up. The chair tipped and hit the floor.

  ‘Mmmmhmmm-ah!’ Julia said. ‘This fucking face masque has set like concrete. I can’t move!’

  I picked up the chair and put the bale of wrapped clothes back on it. ‘Ssh,’ I said. ‘You’re supposed to be relaxing.’

  ‘Look who’s talking,’ she said, glaring up at me. ‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’

  ‘Shush while I wash you,’ I said. ‘I left it a bit longer than I would have because you were so peaceful. Sorry it freaked you out.’

  ‘Take more than that,’ she said, through the hot towel I had laid over her face.

  ‘Ssh,’ I said again, as I pressed it down.

  ‘Have you got kids?’ she said, squinting up at me, once I had wiped away every trace of the masque and was holding my hands cupped over her ears. I always do that as part of a facial, just gently.

  ‘I do. Why?’

  ‘Wish you were my mum.’ She closed her eyes again and didn’t say another word, through toning, serum and deep moisture, until I was taking the band off her hair and telling her to sit up slowly.

  ‘So what’s on the cards for the rest of your day?’ I asked her. She shrugged. ‘Would you do something for me then?’ She shrugged the other shoulder. ‘Just to start things off,’ I said. ‘It’ll only take twenty minutes.’

  I took her into the room with the circle of chairs, settled her at a table in front of the window and spread out a big sheet of paper. I handed her a soft pencil. ‘They said you’ve already drawn a house, a tree and a person,’ I told her, ‘but would you draw them for me?’

  ‘This again,’ she said, but the pencil was moving already. I put my chin into my hand and watched the lines come spilling out of its tip. Her house was a tiny roof hidden in the distance in a mountain range, only recognizable because of a smoking chimney. Her tree was leafless and jagged, more like a gibbet or a radio antenna than a living thing. And her person was a sack tied with a chain, just one eye peering out of a hole that one finger was holding open.

  ‘Is that you?’ I said, pointing at the eye.

  ‘Your turn,’ she told me, turning the paper over and shoving the pencil at me point first.

  I drew a proper house: a door in the middle and four windows. One face in each window, everyone waving. I drew two chimneys and a garden gate with a welcome sign on it. Behind the gate, I drew a cartoon tree with an Afro of fluffy leaves and a swing hanging down. I drew an apple in it, just one, and a bird with its beak open. I was trying to make it look like it was chirping. I drew grass round the bottom of the tree trunk and a rabbit sniffing a flower. And I drew my person on the swing. A little girl with a big ribbon tied in a bow on the top of her head. I gave her a pinafore and scalloped edges to her socks, buttons on the straps of her shoes. I couldn’t draw her hands on the swing chains so I folded them in her lap. I worked hard on it but when I looked up at Julia she had stopped watching me. She was staring out of the window.

  I rolled the paper up and touched her arm. ‘I’d better get a move on now,’ I said. ‘Don’t wash your face again today and try not to touch it. I’ll bring some samples of the scrub in tomorrow, if you liked it.’

  She nodded. ‘Are you sure you couldn’t cut my hair?’ she said. ‘Now you’ve started me thinking about it, it’s like a dead dog hanging on my neck. It’s disgusting.’

  ‘Wash it,’ I said to her, joke-nagging.

  ‘And you’ll cut it tomorrow?’

  ‘I’ll ask Dr Ferris if we can get a hairdresser in,’ I promised her. ‘You staying here or going back to your room? You could tidy up a bit, just so the chairs don’t actually fall over backwards from the weight of all the stuff, you know.’

  ‘God, I was wrong. You are my mum,’ she said.

  There was no one in the staff kitchen, so I went on a round of the lounge where the two women were at their jigsaw again. Harriet and Jo, their names were, although I wasn’t entirely sure which was which. I sat and helped them for a bit, then asked them what they’d like to have done as their introduction.

  ‘I’m just saying hello by giving out treats,’ I said, hoping they didn’t think I was making them sound like dogs.
‘Manicure, pedicure, massage, facial. Anything you like.’

  ‘Can you do that hot stones?’ said one, looking up with the first glint of life I had seen in her eyes.

  ‘Certainly can,’ I said, wondering where in the eaves I had stuffed my stones and heater. ‘Have you had that before?’

  ‘Had it at a hotel on a mini-break,’ she said. ‘She had this great big stone she put on the base of my back, so heavy I could hardly move. I could feel it drawing out all the poison. God help the next one they put it on after me.’

  ‘We detox the stones between clients,’ I said. ‘Anyway, they’re more like conduits than receptacles. The poison passes through.’

  The other woman was watching me out of the corner of her eye. ‘I don’t want you burying me under heavy stones,’ she said.

  ‘Aromatherapy massage,’ I suggested. ‘Light as a feather. And you choose the aroma. Geranium, lavender, citrus. Depends whether you want to be soothed or pepped up. I’ll help you decide.’

  ‘Have you got nightshade?’ she said. ‘That’s all I want, love. Lie down, close my eyes and never open them again. No more. That’ll do me.’

  I couldn’t answer her for a few moments. The way she put it, it was hard to argue. ‘It’s my first proper day,’ I said eventually. ‘You’ll get me the sack.’

  Her friend gave a short laugh, then bent lower over the jigsaw, but the nightshade woman just stared at me out of her blank eyes. ‘You’ll fit right in,’ she said.

  I couldn’t avoid the acute side for ever, so I steeled myself. But on the way through, I met Lars coming back and turned round gladly for a break instead of going to sell my services to the boys being dried out. I could imagine what they’d make of a masseuse and I needed tips about how to handle things if they got cheeky.

  ‘Head smashed in,’ Lars said, as a greeting, swiping his card and pushing through.

  I felt my eyes widen. ‘Through there?’ I said, as the door swung and latched behind him.

  ‘The body in the abbey,’ he said. ‘Head stoved in with a blunt instrument. A shovel, they think. I just got an update.’

  ‘They’ve put that on the news already?’

  Lars waggled his phone. ‘Update from Boney. My pal? They said his skull was in smithereens, totally bashed to— Whoa! Whoa! You okay?’

  He caught me by the forearms and led me towards a windowsill to let me sit. It was deep from the thickness of the walls but I heard the glass grate in the frame when I leaned back so I bent forward again. Probably best anyway when you’re woozy.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘It’s just so close to my house.’ But he was still frowning so I pulled the trump card. ‘You got kids?’

  ‘Three, but they live in Malta,’ he said. ‘Come on. I’ll make you a sweet cuppa. And Marion’s got a tub of Jaffa Cakes.’

  There was no one in the kitchenette, only a lot of mugs draining on paper towels by the sink, as if we’d just missed everyone. Lars tutted and grabbed a tea-towel.

  ‘I got Julia to draw the three things, by the way,’ I said.

  ‘This should be good.’ He sat down beside me as I spread the sheet of paper. After a long hard look, he shook his head, laughing. ‘Wow,’ he said.

  I studied it again trying to see one single thing to laugh about in any of it: the tiny house lost in the mountains, the tree of jagged wire, the person in the sack peering out. ‘How long have you worked in psychiatric nursing?’ I said. ‘You’re jaded if you think that’s funny.’

  ‘She’s faking,’ said Lars. ‘Come on! The tree I’ll give you. At least it’s a tree. But no one draws a roof like a needle in a haystack when somebody says, “Draw a house”, do they? And nobody for sure draws a sack and an eye instead of a person. She did that deliberately to make you worry about how ill she is.’

  ‘So there’s nothing to learn from it?’ I said.

  ‘Except that she’s faking,’ he said, and started rolling the paper up again. ‘Wait, though. What’s this?’

  I put my hand out to stop him, then pulled it back just as fast and rubbed my nose, laughing. ‘Oh, that was me,’ I said. ‘Nothing going on there.’

  He waggled his eyebrows and unrolled the paper slowly, spreading it out with my drawing face up. ‘Let’s see what all your secrets are then, Alison McGovern.’

  ‘Feel free,’ I said. I could feel my cheeks flaming but what was he going to say about a proper house, like everyone draws, and an ordinary tree and a pretty girl with a bow in her hair? I looked back at his face and saw that the smile had gone. He was frowning.

  ‘What?’ I said.

  ‘Just winding you up,’ he told me, the frown smoothing. ‘So what did Pollyanna do to get stuck out in the garden?’

  ‘What?’ I said. I glanced between the paper and his face, not sure if he was joking.

  ‘Perfect family all cosy inside,’ he said. ‘Mum and Dad and two kids, and this wee lassie with the cares of the world on her head, sent out to sit on the naughty step all on her own?’

  ‘What the hell are you on about?’ I said. ‘It’s four people because there’s four windows. And there’s another one because you have to draw another one. Are you serious?’

  Lars bent until his face was close to mine and spoke softly: ‘No. I’m not. It’s a load of bollocks and you can use it to say anything. That’s why we don’t use it.’

  I sat back and fanned myself, laughing with relief. ‘You had me going for a minute there.’ I rolled up the paper. ‘And that was a bow, by the way. A ribbon. Not the cares of the world.’

  ‘Yeah, I was crap at art, too,’ he said. ‘But you’re wrong about the windows. If you give a kid a picture of a house and say, “Draw the family that lives there”, they always draw the people in their family. Pets too.’

  ‘Dogs and cats, though, right?’ I said. ‘Not hamsters and goldfish?’ Lars shrugged. ‘What about nits?’

  It felt good to make someone laugh. It had been months since Marco had laughed properly, apart from the night of the job advert, and it had been years since Angelo had thought I was funny.

  ‘Right, then,’ Lars said, standing. Awkward, suddenly. ‘I’d better get back to it. The wee shites won’t straighten their own faces, will they?’

  As he was leaving, I called him back. ‘Why didn’t she play games with the tree?’ I said. ‘Julia. Why just the house and the person? She drew a tree for the tree.’

  Lars grunted. ‘Good point,’ he said. ‘If I bought any of this crap – which I do not because nobody does, it’s one step up from stage hypnotism – but if I did, I’d say her issues are about herself and her home life, so that’s where she plays the games.’

  I nodded as if I thought it was a good answer, but when I thought it over, I wasn’t so sure. How could anyone have issues with a tree? What would it mean? Unless you were a forester anyway.

  By the time I got home at the end of the afternoon I was wiped. I’d forgotten how much stress you can take on when you lay your hands on stressed people all day. It used to make me glad of things like eyebrow tints and lip waxings. They weren’t great earners but they didn’t leave me with a load on my back like Buckaroo.

  The two boys I had caught up with playing ping-pong in the old billiards room had hooted with laughter, of course. I’d thought I’d played it canny – told them all their football heroes got pounded by the physio and nobody would call them sissies.

  ‘Ah fucken would,’ said the smaller one. He was a classic wee ned, from the over-gelled hair poking downwards in spikes on his spotty brow to the pristine trainers like puffballs at the ends of his skinny legs. Who was paying his bill to be here instead of in a community centre twice a week and drinking in a bus shelter between times?

  The bigger one sniggered.

  ‘Different if you did the likes of tatts or piercing,’ the little one said.

  ‘I don’t think that would go down very well with the doc,’ I said. ‘Do you . . .?’

  ‘Ryan,’ he said. He pointed his bat at the other
. ‘And Byron.’

  ‘Byron?’ I said, and saw the flare of panic in the other boy’s eyes. Ryan had no idea who Byron’s namesake was and Byron didn’t want me blabbing. ‘So, if you were getting a tattoo, what would you get? You can design them with my pens and paper if you like and take them to the tattoo parlour when you’re out and you’re eighteen.’

  ‘Ah um eighteen,’ Ryan said. ‘Cheeky bitch. No offence.’

  ‘I’m sixteen,’ Byron said, and I couldn’t mistake the pride in his voice. He might have a daft name and a posh voice but he had managed to get himself into rehab two years earlier than the hard man and that counted for something.

  ‘Well, I’ll be back to bug you when I’ve got my timetable sorted,’ I said. ‘Just giving you warning. You don’t need to let me do anything, but we should talk.’ I pointed at Byron’s fingers. ‘I can help you with your nail biting, for instance,’ I said. ‘And, Ryan, well . . . let’s talk.’

  ‘Whit aboot?’ he demanded. I stared at the spots that crusted his face from the points of his fringe to his collar, swollen and angry on his cheekbones, big, painful-looking lumps.

  ‘Relaxation,’ I lied

  ‘Ha, Pizza-face!’ Byron shouted, shaking his floppy locks back from a perfect complexion. Then he ran.

  ‘Ya fucken bastard,’ said Ryan, hurling his table tennis bat at the net and setting off in pursuit, both of them clattering along the corridor, whooping like maniacs. From somewhere else in the house an answering wail rose. I was shaking as I trotted after them.

  I met Dr F pattering towards me from the direction of Dr Ferris’s office. Or maybe they shared it. He took a look at my face and immediately stopped moving. ‘Are you all right?’ he said. ‘Has something happened?’

  ‘That’s my fault,’ I said, jerking my head towards the noise. ‘I was clumsy and upset Ryan. Byron was unkind to him, but it’s my fault.’

  ‘Upset?’ said Dr F. ‘Unkind? Oh, Ali, please. Don’t give it a moment’s thought. It sounds like high spirits to me. Sounds like two boys being boys. I was only concerned that one of them might have assaulted you.’