A Kind of Vanishing

by Lesley Thomson

  ‘In this bloody climate, you’ll have six days’ use each year. It’s a crazy expense.’

  ‘Six days is better than nothing. It’ll be more than that anyway.’

  ‘The kids have grown up, what’s the point?’

  ‘They still like swimming. I like swimming. And we might have grandchildren.’

  Of course he had relented and as with the lilo Mark now used the pool more than anyone. Ten white plastic loungers that Jon had foisted on them were crowded around the edge. A semi-circular set of blue and white tiled steps led into the shallow end. To one side of the pool stood a brick-built barbecue used only when Jon came, sleeves rolled up and tongs rattling at the ready. Mark didn’t ‘do’ barbecues. Large tubs brimming with bright flowers were placed along a gravel path bordered with railway sleepers that wound around the side of the garage to meet the old path along the side of the house, skirted the lawn and led eventually up to the back door.

  A trellis, thickly woven with honeysuckle, was meant to screen the garages and Judge’s workshop from the pool, but the honeysuckle hadn’t yet taken off so Isabel tried to ignore the grimy stucco beyond. Mark had balked at building a brick wall between the pool and the garage and the cost had been too high for Isabel to argue. They had already spent a fortune on CCTV cameras posted high enough to cover the house and the garden. These were filled with real tapes, which Mark indexed and stored downstairs in the basement in a room next to his father’s trial transcripts. It had been Isabel’s idea, after a burglary ten years ago. Mark had quickly become enthusiastic, constantly checking to confirm the cameras were working and upgrading them regularly. Isabel had come to hate them. Sensors caught the slightest movement and directed the lenses accordingly. They eyed her as she dead-headed roses, cut flowers for the dining room or smoothed sun tan cream in upward strokes along her legs and across her stomach. If she homed in, she could hear the whirr as the camera swivelled, like the Judge’s eyes, following her wherever she went. Now Mark could spy on her even when he was in London. The growing library of tapes formed a staccato black and white film diary of the house. Hours and hours of brickwork, portico and lintel interrupted by strobe-puppets jerking through the garden, in and out the doors like characters in a Swiss clock. The only person who watched these interminable silent comedies was Kathleen Howland, the woman in the cottage next door to the village stores, who was still searching for her daughter after some thirty years and who many said had gone mad.

  Afterwards, Isabel remembered that Saturday in June 1999 as a terrific convergence of events both cataclysmic and minor. She fixed on the small things like sun loungers and the lilo as lifebuoys in a tumultuous sea.

  In a percussive flurry, the telephone bell pealed through the house, the doorknocker banged twice, and far above the attic hatch crashed open, as once again its bent catch gave way. Isabel had just found the cordless handset under a pile of medical journals in the downstairs lavatory and was heading to answer the door when she heard an engine revving right outside the kitchen window, louder and louder. She rushed back to the kitchen, forgetting about the front door and the telephone. Tyres squealed, and as she reached the kitchen door she felt the windows shake as there came a tremendous sound like an avalanche from the direction of the garden, involving glass and wood and metal and climaxing with a splash like a gigantic belly flop. Then there was an eerie stillness.

  Isabel answered the phone.

  ‘Mum?’

  ‘Gina? Is that you?’

  ‘Of course it’s me. What’s going on? I was calling to say we are nearly there but you took so long that now we are here. What the Hell’s going on?’ It annoyed Mark that Gina and Jon would ring to announce their arrival only seconds in advance, which offered no practical advantage and was always disruptive. He said it was because Jon liked to show off his technology.

  Without hanging up, Isabel hurried across the lawn, the telephone in one hand and her drink in the other.

  Blinking in the glare of the sunshine, she made no sense of what she saw. The bottom of the garden was in ruins. She could only have been gone five minutes.

  For a wild moment she thought a plane had fallen out of the sky. She reached the pool and later had no memory of placing her gin and the telephone down beside her book and sun tan cream.

  ‘Mark?’ There was no sign of him. He had gone to Lewes.

  Piles of mud had come from nowhere, hundreds of splinters of wood and branches floated in the water and were strewn over the plastic furniture, which of course hadn’t moved an inch. Sheets of wet newspaper, a pair of nail scissors, a nail file and a sodden box of man-size tissues were scattered along the side of the pool. Isabel tripped over a face-down copy of the London A to Z at her feet and at the same moment recognised the scissors as her own. She had been manicuring her nails. The street atlas came from Mark’s glove box. There was something else, she bent down to read the words ‘What to do in an Accident’ on the bloated cover of a booklet with a ballpoint pen still clipped to the back cover floating at the edge of the swimming pool. She fleetingly observed that it was considerate to provide an advice manual with the mayhem. Spreading lake-like puddles on the patio reflected a cloudless blue sky. Perhaps it was this image that reminded Isabel about the lilo. She put a hand to her throat as she realised the shiny flaccid heap flopped on a platform of racing-green metal in the centre of the pool was her beloved lilo. There was a rip down its middle. Gradually, it seemed, although it must have been only a split second, Isabel took in the situation. It wasn’t a plane or the total collapse of the garage which was now in full view because the trellis was splintered to pieces at her feet. She jolted into action.

  ‘Mark!’

  Gina heard her mother’s scream from the drive. Instantly she understood that it was all over. She went cold as if the sun had been eclipsed and stared uncomprehending as Jon dashed away up the side path of the house. As he leapt over the gate to the old tradesman’s entrance, he bellowed back to Gina over his shoulder:

  ‘Ambulance, police, fire brigade, get the lot!’

  Gina fumbled with her new mobile phone, trying to unlock the keypad. She shook it furiously and then held it to her ear. Nothing but the sound of the sea. She glared at it. Where was the bloody asterisk key? She found it. Then flustered, she stabbed at the nought button three times. She had had nightmares like this when no matter how hard she tried, limbs moving in treacle, panic descending, she always dialled the wrong number. The person always died because her agitation woke her up in a shivering sweat before she could save them.

  As Gina gave the police her parents’ address she passionately wished she had stayed at home. If she had kept indoors then nothing would have happened, because at home it never did.

  Isabel skidded down the steps into the shallow end, wading out until the water was around her neck. She took a deep breath and dived down between the car and the tiled wall of the pool, knocking her knee against the bumper and grazing her bare thigh on the back door handle as she felt her way along. She couldn’t keep her eyes open for long because the high level of chlorine made them sting. Only that morning she had complained to Mark that he was pouring far too much in. Mark was cavalier about quantities of anything that wasn’t medicine.

  All the windows were open and already the inside was full of water, but there was not enough room between the car and the side of the pool to allow Isabel to manoeuvre herself into the car or to open the door. She was by the passenger side and she didn’t have the breath or the time to get over the bonnet of the car to where Mark was. Besides she wouldn’t be able to open the driver’s door either. She pulled on the passenger door handle and managed to open it a little, but the gap was too narrow for her to squeeze more than her arm through. There was no way of reaching Mark. By twisting her body sideways she could just strain in through the passenger window. Isabel’s fingers were only inches from his leg, if she just could touch him, he might stir into action and help himself. She dared go no further in case she got stu
ck. Then she ran out of breath and explosively exhaled as she pushed up to the surface. Without waiting to recover, she took another gulp of air and ducked downwards again.

  Mark’s head was tilted forward, his chin touching his chest, he might have been napping at the wheel. As usual he didn’t acknowledge her presence although his hair floated in gentle waves around his head as she flailed towards him creating undulations in the water. He had put on trousers and a blue shirt while she was in the house, and these ballooned at the sides where air bubbles were trapped making him look deformed. His eyes were shut and his cheeks trembled in and out because his mouth hung open and was full of water. How could he breathe with his mouth open? Isabel pushed against the water to slam her hand on the dashboard to get his attention. It made no sound.

  There was no point.

  Again Isabel screamed Mark’s name and a gush of water shot down into her windpipe. She felt strong hands grab her under the arms and suddenly she was being hauled up to the surface, away from Mark. Jon carried her up the wide steps at the end and carefully laid her on a sodden sun lounger where she curled on her side heaving and retching. Barely pausing and still in his precision ironed chinos Jon leapt straight back into the pool. Isabel winced as he overshot and fell against the car.

  Action Man.

  Later Isabel could only remember that she tried to follow Jon into the water. She had to speak to Mark before Jon did. She would remember that Gina had held on to her and that they had struggled violently in the shallow end as Jon kept bobbing to the surface gasping. Again and again he dived down to the car in a futile effort to pull his father-in-law free and to save his life.

  Isabel had no words to explain that she had had to know that Mark had battled frantically to get himself out from the submerged car. She needed to believe he had wanted to stay with her but had got trapped behind the wheel. There was no way of saying any of this because she knew it wasn’t true.

  Gina had been right; her mother’s shrill howl had signalled the end.

  After the arrival of the emergency services, the violent attempts to resuscitate Mark on the slippery paving amidst a gaggle of garden furniture and sodden paraphernalia, the eventual removal of his body and the stolid arrival of Lucian from London, demanding the return of his father to life, someone had complained that a huge cardboard box had been dumped right by the front door entirely blocking the porch.

  It was Isabel’s long-awaited luxury lounger.

  Twelve

  Alice traced the pattern on the lace curtain, as if trying to find a Braille message assuring her she wasn’t alone. She sank back into her chair, the message was prosaic: the lace was in need of a wash. In mounting despair, she looked around the room seeing other things that needed a good scrub, a thorough polish. Her despondency increased, for really the whole flat should be spring-cleaned, but spring had passed, it was a sweltering hot Monday afternoon in June, too hot to move, too hot to think.

  Alice’s view through the greying curtain was much the same as James Stewart’s in Rear Window. Rows of windows, mostly like her own screened from prying eyes by net curtains or blinds, filled the frame. But there were still many tenants who were oblivious or unworried about creating a tableau of their lives for all to see. Their windows were flung wide and after dark were brightly lit. For these Alice was grateful. She watched the young mother, who had yesterday had her long black hair cut short, tend her window boxes or pace around the room pacifying her baby. Three windows along and one up was the woman with the iron-grey pudding bowl haircut who Chris said worked in the supermarket on the main road. When she was at home she sat motionless at her desk in the far corner of the room in a pool of angle-poise light working late into the night. Alice had to be careful not to be seen by her, as she would jump up without warning and come to the window where she would stand utterly still for a long time just staring out. Below was a wide concrete yard closed in on opposite sides by the two six-storey Victorian flats in the middle of which stood the new estate office. The other flats cut out most of the traffic noise from the Old Kent Road beyond, but also shut out the evening sunlight and curtailed her view. To her left was a twenty-foot brick wall topped with spikes upon which on her bad days Alice would impale the heads of her enemies. This wall segregated the estate from the Baptist church next door. Now, as on many days, Alice could hear the sound of a packed congregation singing.

  ‘…This is the day the Lord has made, that all may see his love displayed…’

  To her right was The World Turned Upside Down from whose juke box Manchester United’s song ‘Lift It High’ mingled discordantly with the strains of the church choir.

  Alice was forty, but today she felt eighty.

  The lace curtains had soaked up London’s grime, the pattern of usually fluffy birds perched in repetition on twisty branches down its length – a design she had chosen more for company than appearance – had wind blown feathers. They too looked tired and old. Alice was an empty barn, with patches of her roof missing. Ravens flapped back and forth, wings smacking against the creaking rafters of her ribs. If she were ill, who would care? But if the ravens abandoned her, would that spell doom?

  The obvious answer to the first question was Alice’s eighteen-year-old daughter, Chris. Nevertheless the cloud of self pity conjured up by this scenario enveloped Alice in deeper gloom.

  On her bad days Alice would picture herself working through the tasks she had set herself in advance of doing them. She would sit as now, in her armchair looking out through the lace at the concrete quadrangle below, and plan her chores and activities, anticipating potential problems and contemplating how to overcome them. So detailed were Alice’s mental campaigns that when she came to do the tasks, she performed them perfectly with no extraneous elements or movement. This ruthless efficiency made her impatient when Chris made one small mistake. As a mistake could be that Chris had chosen a different way to achieve the same end, this meant Alice was frequently annoyed with her daughter. Their relationship was fraught with mutual frustration.

  Sometimes Alice imagined completed tasks so vividly, she was bewildered to discover the washing basket full or, as in this case, the curtains dirty. Then her sense of control would slip and jerk through clenched fists. Alice had to breathe in and out, in and out until the panic passed, then struggle to her bedroom, brushing the walls for balance and reassurance and tapping the door frame an ever increasing number of set times before she could lie still and regain her composure. That morning she had told Chris she would have to go to the launderette after supper. Chris had been sulky, so that it was almost not worth asking. Except they both knew that Chris had no choice.

  ‘No one understands what it’s like not being able to nip down the shops for a pint of milk.’

  ‘No one believes I’m ill because I have a natural bloom to my skin.’

  Everyone adored Chris. Chattering voices down the telephone, scribbled school reports and holiday postcards – Wish you had been able to come – told Alice how Chris was kind and always smiling. They all marvelled at how lucky Alice was to have such a clever, thoughtful daughter. Those who came into the flat, the doctor, the woman about agoraphobia, the community dentist, all of them said Chris was like her mother. Alice knew Chris was the spit image of herself so that much was true. She liked the notion that they could be sisters. The doctor had said Alice couldn’t be old enough to have such a grownup daughter. Although she had appreciated the comment, she had been anxious in case he was flirting or worse, judging. Alice wished she looked how she felt, because then people might be more sympathetic. She had no respect for the agoraphobic specialist because she had failed to spot the truth about Alice and must therefore be a fake too. Compliments about her wonderful complexion, or the lustre in her hair annoyed Alice because they meant people didn’t appreciate how it was for her.

  But then Alice went to great pains to ensure they did not.

  She imagined people beyond the archway of the flats leading to the Old Kent Road
– the extent of her world – admiring Chris for caring for her sick mother. On good days Alice basked in the dreams where they praised her too, disbelieving that she coped with a chronic illness while running a home, being a mother and an expert at invisible mending.

  Alice invented faces for the invisible people in her daughter’s life most of whom she had never met: teachers, bus conductors, friends and their parents who seldom rang now that Chris was older. There was one mother she had liked who if things had been different might even have been a friend. She was usually smoking when she called which would normally have revolted Alice, but the mellifluous speech punctuated by sucking and puffing was warm and caressing. Alice would see smoke rings rising around the woman’s head as she talked, the phone propped on her shoulder, a cigarette in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other. When she had reluctantly to end a conversation with this woman, Alice would briefly be content, then filled with anguish at her fettered state. This was some years ago and now she couldn’t think of her name and anyway the woman didn’t telephone any more. It was the busy, fussy lady who wanted to take her daughter to France one half term who had riled Alice the most.

  ‘You must be proud, she is so witty, had us in stitches…’

  Alice waited for the reason for her call, horrified that this stranger thought she knew her daughter better than Alice did.

  ‘… I know it will be hard while she is away, is there anyone who could stay with you? It will be lovely for the girls, Chrissie’s French will help us all! I can ask for things but once they start rattling back, I’m…Chrissie doesn’t know I’m calling, Rachael – my daughter, had her number. I wanted to put my pennyworth…’ Later Alice informed Chris, no, she could not go to France. How could Alice manage for a week by herself? Suppose she fell, suppose she ran out of food?

  Suppose.

  Chris had said she didn’t mind if she stayed at home and Alice convinced herself that Chris hadn’t wanted to go. That she had been happy to use her mother’s condition as an excuse. But still this was an uncomfortable memory.