No one understands, though. Even my brainy friend, the barrister-to-be, was pretty scathing about what she called the nutters. I didn’t let on that I was technically one myself. She might have refused to help. As it was, she was really very decent, said she’d get more details, look up all the books for me, type out what I needed. Once I’ve got her letter, got the whole thing clear, I’ll march to Matron’s office and confront her with the facts.
I spoon a few limp noodles from the bottom of my mug. Is it really worth the fuss? More rows and confrontations? To tell the truth, I’m feeling rather scared inside. In one way, I’m wild to go to Vegas, break out of my straitjacket, look forward to something more than ginger cake. And yet … Oh, I don’t know. Winning’s like so many things: it sounds wonderful until it really happens, or until you read the small print. The small print on this holiday is fine, in fact – exceptionally generous, with no hidden extras, as they say. It’s the small print in my head which is causing all the problems, the secret doubts and fears. I’ve never won before; well, just a steam-iron once, and a game of Chinese chequers as a runner-up, but nothing big, nothing like a holiday. I didn’t even known where Vegas was – America, of course, but I thought it was California, or maybe Mexico. Nevada sounds much duller, and it’s not that hot at all. I looked it up. It’s a furnace in the summer, but only fifty-five or so in winter. I’d rather have the furnace, so hot you’d just lie flat and think of nothing. I can’t stop thinking since I won – or Norah won, I should say. That’s the worst part. Supposing they find out she never entered, doesn’t even smoke? It’s like shoplifting again, stealing someone’s name. And I have to keep pretending so she won’t refuse to go, pretending it will be fun and hot and wonderful and that we’ll get on well together when she’s miles older than I am and …
“Jan …”
“Mm?” She’s talking to her flower-arrangement. If I were a birch twig or a spray of dwarf chrysanthemums, I’d have her full attention.
“Look, I’d take you if I could, Jan – if it was left to me, I mean. It would be something in return for all you’ve done for me. You know I’m … grateful, don’t you?”
“Yes, ’course. You’ve said it twenty times.”
She still sounds cross – no, not exactly cross, just on edge, as if she doesn’t really want me there. She’s wearing her best skirt and I’ve just noticed a fancy lemon cheesecake thawing on the side, which she hasn’t offered me. Is she expecting someone? A bloke, maybe? And if so, why hasn’t she mentioned him? We always confide about our boyfriends – or used to, anyway. I suppose she doesn’t trust me any more. I’m batty, like poor Norah. Must be, mustn’t I? Only loonies live in psychiatric hospitals.
I don’t know why I came, really. I suppose I imagined she’d support me, back me up, sympathise at least. And I felt so overwrought, I needed to get out, confide in my best mate. Now I just feel flat, and in the way.
I glance around her room – three walls painted orange, the fourth one papered in blue and yellow squiggles. I suspect the landlord got both paint and paper cheap – offcuts or odd lines which no one else would buy. The chairs look reject too, faded cretonne poppies blooming over broken springs. Jan’s done her best, prettied up the surface with ornaments and bits and bobs, hung a few small flower prints. The room looks bigger, somehow – perhaps because it’s tidy, far tidier than it ever was with me there. My sleeping bag is rolled up in a corner, my books and knick-knacks banished to a box. It’s as if she’s parcelled me away, wiped me off like a grease-mark on a table.
I watch her snip a stalk, ram it into chicken wire. She’s brought a few flowers home, snooty hothouse things, purplish-pink, with sort of pouting lips. Are they really only homework, or something to impress her guy, her new Mr Right who’ll soon move in with her? There won’t be room for three.
She repositions a flower head, moves back to admire it. “Does Norah want to go?”
I shrug. “Not really. I don’t think she wants anything. When you’ve been in a place like that for years and years, you don’t have any wants left. On the other hand, she’s scared about the move. It’s definite now. Everyone’s discussing it. Patients like her who aren’t batty or half-crippled or over eighty have to go into lodgings and she hates the very thought.”
“But how can a holiday change that? She’ll still have to move, won’t she, after the ten days?”
“Well, I suppose she thinks it’s …” I swallow a last noodle, push my mug away. “Longer.”
“Carole, you didn’t let her think that, did you?”
“No, I bloody didn’t. I can’t help it, can I, if she refuses to read the bumph? She’s had three letters now and hasn’t glanced at one of them. She assumes all sorts of things without me saying anything – not just about Las Vegas, but …”
“Look, Carole, she’s obviously confused. There’s just no point in going with her. She’ll be a total drag. Or maybe worse. Supposing she goes funny, or has a fit or something? It’s quite a responsibility, you realise, travelling all that way with a loony in your charge.”
“She’s not a loony. I wish you wouldn’t use that word.” I touch the squashy package in my pocket – a piece of mushroom flan wrapped in pale pink Kleenex, the pastry damp and blackened from the mushrooms. Norah saved it from her dinner, a treasure which had somehow missed the mincer, hoarded it for me. “We do have loonies, sure, quite a choice selection. In fact, it could have been far worse. Imagine ten days in Las Vegas with Flora Thompson who’s got only half a face and less than half her brain cells, or Meg O’Riley who thinks she’s still in Ireland.”
Jan grimaces. I suppose she loathes the hospital because her life is prettying things. Exotic scented flowers to follow bloody tearing births or smelly sordid illnesses, or to patch up deadly quarrels.
Even death itself strewn with coloured petals. Floral tributes, they call the wreaths in Mayfair.
My mother sent a wreath from both of us, a ghastly thing with silver lurex ribbons dangling from self-important lilies; wrote “To Father” on it. He wasn’t her father, only mine, and anyway I never called him that. I stole out later with a pair of kitchen scissors and snipped my name neatly off the card (which was vile itself – a white and silver cross with a disembodied hand held up in blessing.) I scoured every money-box and hiding-place I’d ever used since I was a kid, tipped the pile of coins into a plastic bag (they were too heavy for a purse), blew the lot on cheerful non-snob flowers – marigolds and cornflowers, sweet williams, scented stocks; spent all day clinging on to them. They were awkward to carry and the damp stems made my skirt wet, but I couldn’t bear to leave them in that sapless crematorium, or slighted by my Mother’s fancy wreath. By evening, they were drooping. One marigold was just a stalk. I must have knocked its head off and not noticed. In the end, I left them on a bench, one Dad often sat on in the park, happy doing nothing – whittling sticks or patting dogs or exchanging words with strangers who walked by. (My mother never spoke to anyone unless she had a formal signed certificate – in triplicate – that they were clean, English, insured, and right of centre.) Perhaps someone picked them up, a dirty stranger or left-wing foreign tramp.
I hate the smell of stocks now – smell of death. Even the next day, I could still smell their sickly scent, as if it had seeped into my bloodstream, or was oozing from my pores.
“Carole …”
“What?”
“I wish you’d stop those pills, love. You just don’t concentrate. I’ve asked you – twice – do you want an egg?”
“No, thanks.” I did miss supper, actually, but I hate to be a sponger. Jan doesn’t earn too much and that lemon cheesecake must have cost a bomb, with those piped rosettes of cream on top and that ruff thing round the middle. I hope he likes it.
“You don’t mind if I eat, do you?” Jan brushes bits of laurel off the table, removes them to the bin.
“Course not. Pig yourself. Aren’t you cooking for him, though?”
“What?”
&
nbsp; “Oh, nothing.” Jan’s staring at me, frying pan in one hand, corn oil in the other. I think she suspects I’m going really nuts, keeps watching me for signs. It’s spoiling our friendship. She doesn’t quite trust me any more, seems always a bit wary and reserved. I’ve noticed it when she visits. We don’t giggle like we used to, and sometimes there are actual silences, which we’ve never ever had in fourteen years.
I ease up from my chair, go and sprawl on her divan. I feel utterly flaked out, as if I’ve just lived through that funeral day again, carrying a corpse made of cornflowers and sweet williams. I’m also feeling queasy, the smell of cooking oil seeping through my stomach like greasy fish and chips through newspaper.
“Hey, mind that bedspread, Carole. I only washed it just last week. And look, please don’t take this wrong, love, but could you try and phone before you come? I’m really pushed this evening. Once I’ve had my supper, I’ve got to have a bath and wash my hair and …”
“Go ahead. Wash it. Wash the fucking bedspread, if you like. I’m not stopping you.”
I’m really hurt. Jan’s never turfed me out before just because she needed to tart up. In fact, we always shared the bathroom, dried each other’s hair, played our favourite records while we messed about with eye gloss. And why the paranoia about that cheap and tatty bedspread? I suppose she washed it in his honour, plans to lie there with him later, when I’ve gone. I can see the cosy pair of them, curled up in each other’s arms; no room or thought for me. He might own a place himself, invite Jan to live with him, even propose. Jan’s the type to marry early, settle down with some boring decent guy, raise her 2.5 children. I’d lose her then, completely. Married friends are different, don’t need you any more; share things with their husbands, not with you.
I watch her crack an egg, neat again, the white a perfect circle. My fried eggs tend to run or break, or get little black bits on them. God! I envy her. Even at school, she was form captain, flower monitor, always wore her hat, had loads of eager girlfriends. Maybe it’s not a guy at all, but a girl, another room-mate, one who pays the rent this time, shares all the expenses, doesn’t let the side down by nicking things, landing up in loony bins. Jan’s probably learnt her lesson, found a different sort of friend; some high-powered career girl who needs impressing with clean hair and party food. Hell! She must be really greedy if she plans to polish off that cheesecake. I’m so empty, I can hardly bear to look at it.
I punch Jan’s pillow, lean back on it against the wall. All my past is breaking up – first my father and now Jan. I’ve known her all my life, for heaven’s sake. She’s part of my whole childhood. Why should I lose her to some odd acquaintance?
“Hey, Jan …”
“Where’s the pepper? Damn! I had it here a moment ago.”
“Shall we go away – just you and me? In the spring, maybe. Somewhere nice.”
“We can’t afford it.”
“If I win, we can.”
“Win?”
“In Las Vegas. They give us these free gambling chips, stacks of them. It’s part of the whole deal.”
“Okay, you can take me to Paris and we’ll have slap-up meals each day. No more size-five eggs. But on the ferry, please. You know how I hate flying. God! I wouldn’t want that journey. Eleven hours, isn’t it?”
“Yeah. More, I think.” I close my eyes a moment to block out the orange walls (dying marigolds). “It’s odd, you know, that’s the one thing Norah’s mad about – flying – the only bit she ever mentions, actually. She keeps on asking questions. How high would we fly? Are there windows? Would we see mountains from the sky? She’s started watching planes now – and drawing them in Art.”
Jan cuts a piece of bread in half, adds it to the pan, jumps back as it splutters. “I’d like the gambling. You know, just to try it – see a real casino, have a giggle.”
I grin. That’s more like the old Jan. Maybe the cheesecake’s only homework, part of some new-fangled flower arrangement. Lemon cream poinsettias. “A guy won half a million dollars just last week. I read it in the Mail – an ordinary sort of bloke, a house-painter, I think he was, no one special. He lived in Arizona and went to Las Vegas just for one weekend. He’d never gambled in his life before, yet he won the jackpot the Friday he arrived.”
Jan seems quite impressed, even turns round from the pan. I don’t let on he lost it all again – and more – was stony broke by Sunday. Frightening really, sums as big as that. Losing them or winning, they’re still enough to change you totally – not just your life, your self. “Tell you what,” I say. “I’ll bet half my chips for you. Whatever I win on yours, I’ll bring home and you keep.”
“That’s generous, love, but since they’re refusing to let you go …”
“I’m going.”
“Oh, Carole, don’t be silly. How can you go, when Sister’s put her foot down? And there’ll be another row if you don’t get back there now. It’s almost nine, d’ you realise?”
“Okay, okay, I’m off. But you just wait and see. I intend to get those chips down on the table, make my fortune – and yours – buy us a Mayfair mansion with a florist shop attached. Just keep your fingers crossed.”
“I can’t eat with them crossed.”
I cross my own, collect my bag and jacket, rattle down the stairs, out into the dark. It’s raining still, and cold. I unwrap Norah’s damp pink mushroom package, bite into the pastry. It’s cold as well, wet-cold. No cream rosettes, no fancy ruffs, but at least it fills the hole, was given as a love-offering.
“Thanks, Norah. You’re a pal.” I’m speaking to her flan, to a flabby chunk of mushroom. “We’re going, you and me, whatever Sister says. We’re winners, right? So nobody can stop us.”
Chapter Six
We’re flying. Carole said so. It doesn’t feel like flying. I’m strapped into a seat. I can’t see out at all. I’m in the middle of a middle row. Carole is on one side and a fat man on the other. Carole says we’re late.
I was very disappointed in the airport. You couldn’t see the planes. I had expected hundreds of them with great shining silver wings. But there were only crowds of people and shops and stairs and everybody pushing. There weren’t even any windows in the airport. We walked miles along a corridor and still didn’t see a plane.
Then we turned a corner and went down a step and through a door and a lady in a uniform said good morning and our seats were on the left, further down. That was the plane. We were on it already, and hadn’t even seen it. It didn’t have wings. It was more like the coach we take to Littlehampton, but much much bigger, with rows and rows of seats stretching back for ever. We kept on walking, past all these heads and heads, and then Carole said “This is us” and we climbed in past the fat man and it was really quite a squash.
We had to be strapped in. I said I’d rather not, but the lady in uniform did the strap up for me, so tight that it was hurting. In a coach, you can always see outside; always see the driver, even talk to him. Here, there isn’t any driver, and the windows are quite tiny and very far away.
We sat there a long time, not moving, and they played nice music and then a man’s voice boomed out of the ceiling. I couldn’t understand the voice, but Carole said they were doing some repair. That made me really frightened, especially when two ladies in uniform stood in the aisles and started putting on masks, horrid things like gas masks in the War. She said we’d have masks as well. They’d drop down from above our seats and we’d have to pull them on, right across our nose and mouth, with the elastic strap pulled tight.
I hate things over my face. They choked me in a mask like that when I had all my top teeth out. When I woke up again, my face had gone a different shape and I couldn’t speak or eat. No one ever told me you wore masks in aeroplanes. I was so afraid, I could hardly breathe at all, and I missed what they said next.
It was something about vests. The lady said to unfold our vest and slip it over our head. But my vest was on already, underneath my dress. I checked it to make sure. Wh
en I looked up again, the ladies both had jackets on, funny-looking yellow ones with tubes and whistles hanging from them, and strings to do them up.
“As you leave the aircraft, inflate your vest by pulling down sharply on …”
“Why do we have to leave?” I whispered. “We’ve only just got on.”
Carole didn’t answer. She was watching the two ladies who were holding up their seat cushions, explaining how to take them off the seats. I tugged at mine, but Carole said, “Not now, you nut. Only if we crash into the sea.”
“Crash?”
“Yeah. We float on them like rafts.”
Another lady was coming down the aisle. I stopped her, clutched her arm. “Yes, I will get out,” I told her. “Right away.”
She said Ssh, she’d help me later, but later never came. There was only a load roar, a really deafening noise which went right through your whole body, and then you lost your body, so you thought that you were dead, and then Carole said “We’re up” and that was flying.
I’ve always wanted to fly. I was clumsy as a child, and fat, the biggest girl in my infant school. I knew I’d be more beautiful with wings. We did a school play once; a Nativity, they called it. The prettiest girl was Mary and the cleverest boy was Joseph. I wanted to be an Angel, but they made me be a Tree. Angels fly.
I wish we could get up. We’ve been sitting here two hours, and we haven’t had our dinner yet. Dinner’s at twelve sharp in the hospital. Sometimes five past, but never later. It’s nearly five past two now and there’s not a sign of it. We didn’t have any breakfast. Carole said not to because we’d have coffee and doughnuts at the airport. But we spent all the time queuing at a desk and after that we queued again, upstairs, and a woman touched my body, ran her hands all over it, up and down, so she could feel my stocking tops and vest straps. Even at the hospital, they never do that. The doctor examines you when you first come in, but only with his stethoscope. He doesn’t use his hands. I think he’s scared of germs.
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