Nina Todd Has Gone

by Lesley Glaister

  ‘I’d just like a bit of time alone with her,’ he said, ‘but come along for the ride if you want.’

  ‘We could go for a drink on the way back,’ I said.

  ‘I’m setting the clock for five-thirty,’ he said. ‘I need a clear head.’

  He held me at arm’s length for a moment and studied my face, which I kept a smile on though it nearly killed me. Then we hugged and the moment stretched. I could hear the clock ticking and then Charlie was swallowing and swallowing as if he had something to say. The budgie was cheeping downstairs. Charlie spoke into my hair. ‘Anything you want to tell me?’ he said.

  I started to pull away from him and then pushed my face back into his shoulder. My heart scrabbled up my ribs as if it was trying to get out. I arched back so that he would not feel it. We held still, as if frozen.

  ‘I love you,’ I said at last, ‘is that it?’

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘that isn’t it.’

  ‘We haven’t been saying that much lately, have we?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Is it still true?’

  ‘Nina.’ He said it in that exasperated way that means, yes, of course.

  I went to the window and stared at the hard glass but saw nothing beyond it. I took a deep breath. ‘What did you mean then?’

  He didn’t answer. I went to him and held the top of his arms. I could feel the muscles of his biceps through the woolliness. ‘What?’ I said. I was ready then, I could have handled it then. I would have simply said it was all a lie, that Rupert was a troublemaker, a stalker, a lunatic, anything.

  He stared at me, his eyes the same blue as Fay’s, so liquid they seemed about to spill.

  ‘Nothing,’ he said, and turned away. And the moment went off the boil, like milk snatched from the heat.

  The tap was dripping. I turned it off and noticed how smeary it was. I scrubbed at it with a J-cloth until it shone. I heard Charlie take his car-keys off the key-rack in the hall. Just a small silver chink of a sound but it was the sort of thing I wouldn’t be hearing any more. Not for a while. But that was all right. The car would be on the drive and he’d shown me how to turn the engine over every week or so, just so it didn’t seize up. I would be in charge of the house and his mother and the car and everything would be safe and fine.

  ‘Tell Fay I’ll see her tomorrow,’ I said.

  ‘I will.’

  ‘And send her my love.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘We are all right then?’ I asked.

  ‘Okey-dokey.’ He looked at his watch, awkwardly like a man in a play. ‘Better get going or they won’t let me in.’

  I listened to the car start and drive away. Another sound I wouldn’t be hearing for a while. When it had faded to nothing, I listened to the house, for the throb of its heart. A curtain stirred though the window wasn’t open; a floor creaked. Downstairs the budgie shrieked. I went and fetched him. He clung to the bars and watched me with the bright dots of his eyes. I put his cage on the kitchen windowsill. He fluttered about and little feathers and wisps of down floated out. A blue curl of feather on the breadboard. He would be all right there. He would be company.

  I watched the sun rise, a sickly yellow line soon squashed under a bundle of clouds. I hardly ever look out at the street so early. Curtains still drawn, an upstairs light on here and there. How obedient everyone is. It’s not prison, there are no banging-up times, yet everyone conforms. And so do I.

  He’d brought me up a cup of tea before he’d gone. The favourite white mug.

  ‘Thanks,’ I’d said. ‘I love you.’

  He’d kissed the top of my head. ‘You take care now.’

  ‘Ring me when you get there.’

  ‘If I can.’

  ‘It’ll only be a couple of weeks. I’ll book a flight.’

  ‘Better wait and see how Mum is.’ He went to the window and twitched about with the curtains. ‘And what the scene is there.’

  ‘Scene?’

  The urge to cling to him was overwhelming. I once saw a man with a baby orang-utan, in a zoo. He was trying to make it stay in its enclosure but it clung to his leg like a furry boot. That is how I felt and yet I looked up at him and even cracked a smile.

  ‘Bon voyage,’ I said.

  He made a kind of salute and went downstairs. I listened to the clump of his feet, heard him say something to Charlie Two in the kitchen and the opening and closing of the door.

  I got out of bed, moved the curtain aside and watched him walk away, a little man with wild hair, rucksack as high as his head. At the corner he turned to look back. My face was pressed against the glass; I raised my hand but I don’t think he could have seen me.

  Back in bed, I lay on his side, breathing in the smell of his hair on the pillow and listening to the sounds of a street waking up: a dog barking; the grey scrape of a car’s engine; the lime squeal of a bird. I shut my eyes and plummeted back to sleep.

  I was late to work, stretching the very limits of the flexitime. Gary raised his eyebrows as I walked past but said nothing. When I sat down Christine pulled a face. ‘He’s on the warpath,’ she whispered. ‘He had a complaint – you cocked something up.’

  ‘Oh?’ I sat down and looked at the mess on my desk. My intray was overflowing and I knew that there were hundreds of emails too. It was coming in faster and faster, the work, and just when I couldn’t think straight.

  I stared at the columns of things on my screen and clicked the mouse on something. Are you sure you want to delete file? came up and I did delete it, and then something else and something else. It was lovely the way they simply vanished. My finger just kept on clicking.

  Christine craned her neck to see my screen. ‘Nina! What the hell are you doing?’

  I said, ‘Nothing.’ But I stopped deleting.

  ‘You’re gonna be in deep doodoo. What’s up with you?’

  I shrugged and started typing rubbish. I was supposed to be processing orders for components. I don’t even know what for.

  ‘Coffee?’ She burst into my thoughts.

  ‘Not yet.’ I squinted at the screen, trying to work out what I was doing.

  ‘You look like you need one.’

  ‘Go on then.’

  ‘I’ll put an extra spoon in, to perk you up,’ she said and smiled with a kind of complicity. ‘And then we’ll see if we can retrieve those files, shall we?’

  My extension rang and it was Rupert. I was almost glad. I was ready for him. Before he could say a word I said, ‘Charlie’s gone off to think things over.’

  I heard him suck in a breath. ‘Where?’

  ‘Away.’

  ‘Has he left you?’

  ‘Why don’t you ask John Smith?’

  ‘Did you tell him the rest?’

  There was a long silence. I could hear him breathing and picture his face, the narrowed eyes, the half-smile.

  ‘I’ll be round tonight.’ And then he rang off.

  ‘You’re white as a flipping sheet.’ Christine put a mug of coffee on my desk. ‘I’ll get you a couple of Jammie Dodgers.’

  The phone rang again and I jumped.

  ‘Blimey,’ Christine said, ‘hang on.’ She leant over my desk and I caught a breezy whiff of her deodorant. ‘Nina Todd’s phone,’ she said. ‘She’s away from her desk at the moment,’ she winked at me, ‘can I help?’

  I could hear that it was a woman’s voice and my hands relaxed. I hadn’t realised how tight my fists had been. I opened my palms and looked down; each line was bright with sweat. Christine scribbled on my jotter, her big breast jiggling a few inches from my eyes. I could see the stretched white lace of her bra-cup through her pink blouse.

  ‘OK, have a nice day,’ she said and put the phone down.

  ‘Ta,’ I said.

  ‘No probs. Just bung her a blue form and a grovelling letter. Why don’t you go home?’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘but thanks.’

  I didn’t go out of the building for lunch. I did ring Rupert, thou
gh, while Christine was out, dialling the mobile number on his card. His phone was switched off. I left a message saying, ‘Don’t come round, people will be there. Ring me again and I’ll meet you.’

  It seemed best, better. How did he know where I lived – unless there was a John Smith.

  All afternoon I tried to concentrate on the orders, but I was tensed up for Rupert’s call and waiting for Charlie’s. Whenever I went to the window there was another plane trail scrawled across the sky, I’m sure there are not usually that many.

  Rupert didn’t ring but Charlie did, at last, towards the end of the afternoon. He was full of skies and skuas and how in another universe he felt.

  ‘You were right about getting away,’ he said. ‘I’ve hardly arrived and already I’m starting to feel …’ he paused and I heard the miles between us rushing down the line, ‘renewed or refreshed or something. Better anyway. Thanks, Nina. Sorry I’ve been a bit …’ His voice sounded more loving than for ages.

  ‘Don’t be sorry,’ I said. A big warm gush of relief welled around my heart. ‘After all you’ve been through.’

  ‘And I rang the hospital and got to speak to Mum,’ he continued. ‘She was back to normal, complaining away! They’re discharging her at the weekend if she continues like this.’

  ‘Told you so.’

  ‘Bruno drove me right round the island,’ Charlie said. ‘You wouldn’t believe it, Nina, so tiny yet so much sky. Makes me feel free.’

  ‘Can’t wait to see for myself,’ I said. I could hear voices in the background. ‘By the way,’ I said. ‘Do you know anyone called John Smith?’

  ‘Smithy? Why?’ Someone called his name. ‘OK,’ he said, ‘coming. Sorry, Nina, got to go. Speak later.’

  When he’d put his receiver down, my ear was filled with bees.

  After work, I went to visit Fay. I took her some fruit jellies. She was in the last bed in the ward, propped up with enormous pillows.

  ‘Has something happened between you and Charlie?’ she said, as if she had been waiting all day to ask.

  ‘No.’ I handed her the sweets, but she scarcely glanced at them. ‘Except that he’s gone away. That’s something. Why?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said, ‘just his demeanour last night.’ She plucked at the sheet.

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘Do sit down,’ she said, ‘don’t loom over me like that.’ She looked at the jellies. ‘Thank you.’ I pulled a chair over and sat down. The bed was high so that, for the first time ever, her head was above my own. She’d painted herself up ready for visiting time. For me? But her hair was greasy and stuck thinly to her scalp.

  ‘What?’ I said.

  ‘He seemed uncharacteristically evasive.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Oh …’ she raised her hand, ‘I don’t know, can’t put my finger on it, call it a mother’s intuition.’

  ‘Well, everything’s fine,’ I said. ‘Soon as you’re up and about I’m going to visit him.’

  ‘Are you sure that’s wise?’ she said. ‘It’s true, you know, that absence makes the heart grow fonder.’

  ‘The heart is fond,’ I said. ‘I told you.’

  She looked at me from under her heavy silver lids. ‘Good,’ she said. ‘I haven’t the stamina to get used to anyone else.’ And she gave the faintest smile.

  It was the nicest thing she had ever said to me. I sat and treasured it for a moment while she complained away about standards of hygiene and the decline of the National Health Service.

  ‘I’m being discharged on Saturday,’ she said.

  ‘I hope you’ll stay upstairs with me,’ I said.

  ‘Do you?’ Birdlike she cocked her head.

  ‘Of course I do. I can take time off to look after you.’

  ‘No need. Maisie’s already offered.’

  ‘Well anyway I’ll cook for you. Cauliflower cheese, chops, whatever you fancy. No curry!’

  ‘It’ll be an improvement on hospital food, anyway.’

  We were quiet for a moment. The theme tune to EastEnders drifted through the ward.

  ‘I’ve brought Charlie Two upstairs,’ I said.

  ‘Is he all right?’

  ‘Right as rain.’

  ‘Perhaps you’d like to take those.’ She jerked her chin at a box of Quality Street. ‘I know you’re partial to a chocolate.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said. As I left, I bent over to kiss her cheek. The hospital smell was overlaid with her perfume and I felt a tug of true fondness for her crabby old bones. She accepted the kiss, and, looking away, grasped my hand and let it go.

  When I got home I drew the curtains and locked the door. I would have to see Rupert soon and sort things out, but not that night. Not then. The budgie gave me a critical look. I sat all evening in the darkness eating Quality Street, even the orange creams that I can’t stand, until I felt sick. I couldn’t play music or put the TV on. I needed to listen for the sound of the gate. People who know us come to the back door, strangers to the front. The doorbell did ring once but I didn’t answer or even look to see who was there. Whoever it was gave up easily and went away.

  Chapter 26

  ~

  The following afternoon they returned to the well. She wore blue jeans and her black school plimsolls. Jeffrey called for her and Joan chatted with him in the kitchen – he’d got his A level grades that day – good enough to get into Birmingham. She kept her face in order, expression open and pleasant, while she listened.

  As they went out, Joan patted her on the arm and gave her an approving smile, approving of her with this nice, clever boy, this good influence. He had a little rucksack on his back.

  ‘What’s in there?’ she asked.

  ‘Rope,’ he said, ‘to make it easier.’

  Her heart sank. She had hoped he’d forgotten. A sea mist was clinging to the coast, everything damp and faded, moisture visibly suspended in the air. From the top of the Spa Gardens you couldn’t see the sea but you could hear the grate of shingle rolling in the waves. There was no one about though the ice-cream van sat there, the man inside turning the pages of a newspaper.

  They went through the private gate and the shrubs. A blackbird defied them, stood a moment cocking its head before giving up and jerking back into the shelter of a bush. Jeffrey heaved up the lid and the gap opened into a black smile. He took a coil of blue nylon rope out of his rucksack.

  ‘Right,’ he said. ‘I’ll go first and then I’ll help you.’ He swung easily down, found the ladder and dropped to the bottom. It did seem easier this time, she told herself, it didn’t seem so deep. You can get used to anything, she did know that much.

  ‘Chuck me down the torch,’ he said, ‘and I’ll shine it for you.’ She looked around, half hoping for a man in council overalls to come and shout at them for trespassing, but there was no one.

  ‘Come on,’ Jeffrey called. She dropped the torch.

  ‘Ouch!’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Come on.’ The light flickered up at her, watery on the slimy brick. She sat on the edge and dangled her feet inside.

  ‘Turn round and let yourself down over the edge,’ he said, ‘just lower yourself a bit, your feet will touch the ladder, then I can help you.’

  The smell of the walls was cold mushrooms. Her hands slid on the rope, her foot flailed for the ladder, found nothing and she let go, didn’t mean to, it was just too much, too black all in her nose and eyes and mouth and she gave up. She fell on Jeffrey. The torch was knocked from his hand and went off.

  ‘Jeff?’ she said, terrified for a moment that she had knocked him out, but he laughed.

  ‘God, you weigh a ton,’ he said. ‘You all right?’

  They stood up; underfoot was crunchy and moist; all sorts of rotting things, she supposed, maybe even rats. She couldn’t see him or even herself. The light reached as far as the top of the ladder. It looked bright up there in the white crescent of daylight, much brighter than it really was.

 
‘Well done,’ he said.

  ‘Now what?’ Her eyes were beginning to accustom themselves to the dark so that she could see the outline of his head.

  ‘This,’ he said and began kissing her – tastes of toothpaste, smell of Clearasil – with the new hard kiss. He pushed his body against hers, moving his hips.

  ‘We didn’t have to come down here for that,’ she said, pulling her face away.

  ‘Can I touch you?’ he said.

  ‘But how are we going to get out?’

  He put his chilly hand up her jumper and clamped it on her breast outside her bra, and breathed out a long juddery sigh. ‘Lovely,’ he said.

  ‘Let’s go up,’ she pleaded. ‘Jeffrey, we can do this up there. Somewhere nice.’

  ‘Don’t you think it’s sexy down here?’ He twisted his hand so that he could wangle a couple of fingers inside her bra, wriggle them against her nipple.

  ‘No.’

  ‘When we go up, I’ll buy you a ninety-nine,’ he said and kissed her again. ‘When I was a kid I always had a funny feeling down here in my … well you know. I always thought when I had a girlfriend I’ll bring her down here.’

  Girlfriend. How she loved that word.

  ‘Have you been here with other girls?’ she asked.

  ‘You’re the first.’ He twiddled the end of her nipple between his fingers intently, as if he was tuning a radio. ‘Have you, I mean are you, I mean have you, you know, done it before?’

  ‘No.’ She looked up at the light. Something crunched under her feet as she shifted; like the splintering of a tiny bone.

  ‘Can I?’ He slid his hand down her tummy. She sighed and pulled it in to make more room. His hand reached the edge of her knickers – and stopped.

  ‘Go on then.’ She smiled into the blackness. A hot tear rose in her eye and trickled down her invisible face. She undid her zip to make it easier for him and then his cold fingers were feeling about, a finger jabbing trying to find a way in. His breathing was hard and concentrated as if he was playing his music. ‘It’s complicated down there, isn’t it?’ he breathed. ‘Lovely. Just lovely. Will you …’ He took her hand and pressed it over the ridge of erection under his cords. He shuddered. His dabbling finger was beginning, despite everything, to interest her but just as she thought that, he sobbed and moaned, grabbed himself and pulled away.