The crowd is about to break. He can feel it in the voices, in the push of bodies behind him. He looks at the doorway.
Walter Bishop doesn’t stand a chance.
Just as he thinks it will happen, just as he braces himself for the surge, Eric hears a shout from the back of the crowd.
‘Police,’ it says.
And it’s like loosening a knot. The crowd unfastens, men walk back across the avenue, along pavements, down alleys.
Harold Forbes turns and, as he does, Walter Bishop’s front door slams shut.
‘That was close,’ Eric Lamb says. ‘I was getting worried there.’
‘Worried? He took a baby, Eric. He took a bloody child.’ Harold looked back at the door.
‘At least the police came before it got nasty.’
Harold looks back as he walks away. ‘This time,’ he says.
Number Four, The Avenue
13 August 1976
‘I want to go to the hospital.’
I said it to my mother and my father, I said it to Mrs Morton, and I said it into the darkness each night, as I lay in bed trying to find my sleep.
No one gave me an answer. They just smiled or hugged my shoulders instead, as though I hadn’t said a real sentence. Sometimes, they tried to distract me with sweets or magazines, and every time my father spoke, it started with Let’s.
Let’s watch the television.
Let’s go to the park.
Let’s have a game of Monopoly, Grace. You can teach me.
I didn’t want to do any of his Let’s, I just wanted to see Tilly.
My mother circled rooms, containing her worrying at the edges of the house. She tried to hide it behind wide, shiny eyes, and a smile so tight and untruthful, I wondered if I would be able to trust her smiling ever again.
Mrs Morton came round a lot. She sat in the kitchen with my parents, and drank tea and ate biscuits. I wasn’t sure why I hadn’t noticed before, but just when I wasn’t looking, Mrs Morton had become old. It must have been when I was eating my tea or reading my book, or when I had turned away to watch the television, but I could see that she had changed. Her face had been tugged into creases, and her jaw quarrelled with itself as she ate.
I decided to confront them all, as they sat in the kitchen one day, passing quiet words around the table between themselves.
I stood in the doorway, and the quiet words stopped. My mother stretched a smile across her face and Mrs Morton tried to reorganize the sadness in her eyes.
‘I want to go to the hospital,’ I said.
My father stood up. ‘Let’s get you something to eat, shall we? Do you fancy a bowl of Angel Delight? Or some crisps?’
‘I want to go to the hospital,’ I said.
My father sat down again.
‘A hospital isn’t a place for children.’ My mother stretched her smile even more.
‘Tilly is there,’ I said. ‘Tilly is a child.’
My father leaned forward. ‘Tilly is feeling very poorly, Grace. She has to stay there until she’s well again.’
I saw my mother look at my father.
‘She’s been in hospital before,’ I said. ‘The nurses wore tinsel in their hair. She got better.’ I felt a ball of tears move into my throat. ‘She came home.’
‘I think we should leave the nurses and the doctors to look after her.’ My mother weighed out her words. ‘They need to work out what the matter is.’
‘She had something wrong with her blood.’ I knew my voice must be getting louder, because Remington walked over and sat by my feet. ‘We need to go and tell them. Perhaps the nurses and doctors don’t know.’
‘They know that, Grace,’ said Mrs Morton. ‘They’re just trying to find out how to stop it.’
I stared at the three of them, and they stared back, a wall of grown-ups.
‘I want to go to the hospital. She’s my friend, and I have a present for her. If your friend was in hospital, you would want to go and visit them as well.’
Mrs Morton put her cup on to her saucer very slowly, and looked at my parents. ‘I think,’ she said, ‘it’s sometimes better for children to see for themselves. Otherwise, they fill the gaps with all sorts of things.’
My father nodded, and looked at my mother.
Everyone was looking at my mother.
‘Fine,’ she said, after a moment. ‘Don’t mind me. You do whatever you think is best.’
‘Fine,’ said my father. ‘We’ll go.’
My mother looked disappointed. She was used to her words being escorted by a translation.
The Drainpipe
13 August 1976
‘Post!’ Keithie dropped a pile of letters on to Sheila Dakin’s knee, and his bike disappeared around the corner of the garages.
‘Jesus Christ, Keithie,’ Sheila snapped open her eyes and sat forwards in the deckchair, ‘you’ll give me a bloody heart attack.’
There was one interesting typed, white envelope. She held on to it and let the brown envelopes slide to the grass. Brian reached down to pick them up.
‘Don’t bother, Brian,’ she said, ‘if I lose them, the electricity board are always kind enough to send me another one.’
She looked at the empty deckchairs. ‘Quiet, isn’t it?’
Brian sat back again. ‘Harold’s gone. He says he’s not even sure it’s Jesus any more. He says we’ve probably all been fooling ourselves.’
Sheila looked over at Jesus and squinted. ‘Where’s everyone else?’
‘Dorothy was here a while ago, but then she said she was too upset about Tilly. She said she couldn’t face Jesus any more, and she went home to lie down.’
‘Any news?’
Brian shook his head and stared at the ground.
‘Poor little bugger.’ Sheila sat up straighter and put her legs on the tyre, which she’d reinvented as a footstool. ‘It breaks my heart, it does. You’ll understand when you’ve got kids of your own.’
‘Not much chance of that.’ Brian laughed, but his eyes didn’t go along with it.
She watched him. Skinny and unsure, a man who had never shed the awkward skin of adolescence. Even Keithie had more confidence.
‘You want to move out of number two before it’s too late. Cut those apron strings, Brian.’
‘She’s tied the knots too tight,’ he said. ‘Not much chance of that either.’
Sheila shook her head and looked back at the envelope. ‘I think this is from the council,’ she said. ‘About voluntary work. Margaret said I’d enjoy it.’ She held it out to Brian. ‘Read it to me, would you. I haven’t got my glasses down here.’
The envelope stayed in her hand.
She looked over at him. ‘Brian?’
‘You don’t have to read it now,’ he said. ‘It’s not going anywhere, is it? Read it later.’
‘But I want to know what they say.’ She held the letter out a little further. ‘I want to know if they’ll have me.’
He looked at her. ‘I can’t, Sheila,’ he said.
‘What do you mean, you can’t?’ She watched a flush crawl from Brian’s neck and on to his face. He looked at the deckchairs, the drainpipe, his feet – anywhere but her eyes.
‘Brian?’
‘I mean I can’t,’ he said. ‘I just can’t.’
*
‘You daft sod, why didn’t you say something?’
Brian was standing by the drainpipe, smoking one of Sheila’s cigarettes, even though he didn’t smoke any more and hadn’t been able to speak for the first ten minutes for the coughing.
‘How could I?’ he said. ‘How could I tell people that?’
‘They’d understand, Brian.’
‘They’d understand I was thick,’ he said. ‘They’d understand I was bloody stupid.’
‘You’re not bloody stupid. And you must be able to read a bit? Some of the words?’
‘Some of them.’ He took another drag on the cigarette. ‘But the letters all swim around on the page, and I can’t get
them in the right order. They get mixed up.’
He looked at her, and she realized she was staring at him. ‘You see, even you don’t understand. Even you think I’m thick.’
‘I don’t, Brian.’ She could see his frustration twisting itself into anger. ‘I’m trying to understand, really I am.’
‘Margaret Creasy understood.’ He pulled a last lungful out of the cigarette. ‘She was helping me.’
‘How was she helping you?’
‘That appointment,’ he said, ‘she was teaching me to read. She told me to get a book out of the library. Something I liked the look of.’
‘Oh, Brian.’ Sheila put the letter down and stood up. ‘Why did you leave it so late? Why on earth didn’t you tell one of us sooner?’
‘My mam. She said it didn’t matter.’ He looked at Sheila. A child’s look, a look that didn’t question. ‘She said if I needed to read anything, she’d always be there to read it for me.’
He dropped the cigarette and pushed it into the chippings with his boot. ‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘how could I tell anyone? How could I face that kind of shame?’ He started to walk away. ‘You’d all think I was weird.’
Number Four, The Avenue
15 August 1976
‘You know that you won’t be able to go into the room?’ my father said.
I told him that yes, I knew this, because I had already been told four times.
‘Because they don’t want Tilly catching any of your germs,’ he said. ‘They have to keep everything really clean.’
‘I am clean,’ I said.
‘Extra clean.’ He picked up the car keys.
My mother stood in the doorway, tapping her fingers against the wood. ‘Let’s just get this over with,’ she said.
*
I had never been to the hospital before, except when I was born, which I decided didn’t really count. It was a long, snaking building right at the edge of the town, and you could see where other buildings had been added on to the snake, as more and more people became poorly and they had to find somewhere to put them all.
We had to park the car a long way from the entrance and trail across the car park, my mother folded into her arms and my father pushing his thoughts into his pockets. When we did finally get to the main corridor, we had no idea where to go. When you visit a hospital, I think you can always tell the people who work there, because they have very quiet shoes and always look straight ahead when they’re walking. Everyone else stares at up the signs hanging over the corridors and points at maps, and follows little arrows painted into the floor.
‘It’s this way,’ said my father, and we walked to the end of a very long hall, filled with pictures of flowers and very quiet shoes. At the end of a corridor was the Children’s Ward. There was a painting of Tigger on the wall outside.
‘Well, Tilly won’t enjoy that at all,’ I said. ‘She doesn’t even like Tigger. She thinks he’s too noisy.’
*
My father spoke to the nurse at the desk, and the nurse at the desk looked at me over my father’s shoulder, and she smiled into a nod.
While they were talking, I wandered around. I couldn’t see Tilly anywhere.
I expected it to be louder on a children’s ward. I thought there would be games and felt tips and cartoons. I thought there would be shouting. Like school, but with nurses instead of teachers. There was none of these things. Children lay on narrow mattresses, parents’ chairs were pulled close to beds, and sleeping mothers lay with their hands reached into cots. Only one little girl sat at a table, painting. When she turned to me and smiled, I saw a tube coming out of her nose, which looped and twisted around one of her ears.
I went back to my mother and pushed into her legs.
She put her arm around my shoulder, and said ‘I knew it,’ and glared at my father’s back.
*
The nurse led us down another corridor, past more paintings and giant sink units, and stacks of towels in metal cages.
I saw my father look at my mother.
‘It’s this way,’ said the nurse. ‘Tilly’s mum has just gone to the canteen.’
I took more steps to catch up with her.
‘I know I’m not allowed to go in,’ I said, ‘but I have a present for Tilly.’
We stopped outside a door. The door said ‘WASH YOUR HANDS’ in loud capitals, as though it was shouting at everybody.
‘We can’t take anything in there,’ said the nurse. ‘It’s an infection risk.’
‘But it’s important.’ My words came out all tall and shaky.
‘Perhaps,’ my father said to the nurse, ‘perhaps you can give it to Tilly when she’s better?’
I saw the nurse look at my father. ‘Okay,’ she said, without taking her eyes from him. ‘We’ll do that then.’
I handed it to her, and she slipped it into her pocket.
*
There was a big window at the side of the door, and the blind was open. It was too high, and my father had to lift me so I could look through.
The room wasn’t lit, and I couldn’t make sense of very much to start with. There was the edge of a bed and the corner of a sink unit, but everything else seemed to disappear into darkness. It was only when my eyes got used to it, only when the shapes began to join together and make a room that I realized I was staring straight at Tilly.
She hadn’t got her glasses, or her bobbles, and she looked tiny and pale. The bed seemed to overwhelm her. Her head was too small for the pillows, and her hands were gripping the blankets, as though she was trying her very best to keep holding on to the world.
Even though her eyes were closed, I waved at her. I waved harder and harder, because it felt as though, if I waved hard enough, she was bound to hear and open her eyes.
I shouted her name.
‘Don’t shout, Grace,’ my father said.
I shouted again. And again.
Wake up, I shouted, wake up, wake up, wake up.
‘Grace!’ My father let me slide to the floor. ‘This is a hospital, you can’t shout!’ He was shouting.
‘It’s not Tilly,’ I said. ‘If it was Tilly, she’d know it was me and wake up.’
The nurse crouched down to me. ‘She’s very poorly, Grace. She’s too poorly to wake up right now.’
‘And what do you bloody know?’ I shouted.
I got to my feet and started running. I ran past the pictures and the sinks and the towels, and my mother and father ran after me, and out on to the corridor.
‘Tilly can’t disappear,’ I shouted. ‘You can’t let Tilly disappear.’
My mother stopped running. I could hear her voice echoing down the corridor.
‘I told you this was a bad idea, Derek,’ she shouted. ‘I bloody damned well told you.’
All the quiet shoes turned around and stared.
The Drainpipe
15 August 1976
I sat on the chippings in front of Jesus.
When we got home, I went straight back out again. My mother wanted me to stay in, but my father said it was better for me to get it out of my system.
I didn’t know what was in my system, but I thought it might help if I went to see Jesus, although I had been talking to Him for ten minutes now, and I still didn’t feel any different.
Mr Forbes had taken all the deckchairs away, and the card table, and the only thing that said any of us had ever been there in the first place was one of Sheila Dakin’s slippers, propped up against the far garage wall.
I stared at Jesus. ‘Why are you making Tilly disappear?’ I said.
He looked back at me with creosote eyes.
‘I thought if I found you, it would keep everyone safe. I thought if you were here, it meant we could all stay where we belong?’
An afternoon sun crept up the side of the garage. It rolled over Jesus and the drainpipe, and lifted itself up to the top of the wall, where it found a spider, weaving and plotting and planning out its web.
Tilly loved spiders. She
said they were clever and patient and gentle. She couldn’t understand why everyone was so afraid of them, and I wanted her to see it. But Tilly wasn’t there.
The only thing that was there was the emptiness, the space in my life where Tilly used to be.
Jesus just watched. His corners had started to blur, and the edges of his face had begun to flake and crumble.
‘Please don’t let her go,’ I said.
But it seemed, along with everybody else, Jesus would quite like to disappear as well.
Number Four, The Avenue
17 August 1976
We sat in the front room. Me, my parents, and the bowl of Angel Delight my mother had made for me.
‘Don’t you want it?’ she said.
I stared out of the window. ‘I’m not really hungry.’
I could see Mrs Dakin on her deckchair and Eric Lamb pruning something in his front garden, and Mrs Forbes wandering up and down her chippings with a sweeping brush. It felt as though nothing had changed, as though the world was just carrying on, even though a piece of it was fading away.
‘Why don’t we look through the catalogue?’ my mother said. ‘That always cheers you up.’
She tried very hard. She turned the pages, pointing and trying to make fun of the models, and choosing imaginary presents for all of us.
We got to one of my green circles, and she looked at my father. ‘You can have those mules, Grace, if you want them,’ she said.
I stared up at her. ‘We can’t afford them,’ I said. ‘We’re poor.’
‘We can afford twenty-five pence a week in forty-eight easy instalments.’ She hugged my shoulder, and pointed to the green lines.
I looked at the mules. ‘Actually,’ I said, ‘I don’t think they’d suit me after all. I think I’d rather just stick with my sandals.’
My mother brushed the hair from my face and did a shiny smile.
*
‘It’s a police car,’ my father said.
The Trouble with Goats and Sheep Page 28