by Jackie Kay
She had planned to make me take a walk today, but she underestimated how heavy my limbs are. I managed down the stairs and I waded into the kitchen. I opened my cupboards and saw that she had rearranged my jars of treacle and honey, and ordered my spices. I looked inside my bread bin and saw that she had tidied it up. ‘Your kitchen is a mess,’ she said, matter-of-factly. ‘You have all these spices – cardamom, cumin, coriander, chilli, paprika . . . Yet I don’t ever see you cook.’ ‘I don’t cook when you are here,’ I say to her, right to her tight, dour face. I don’t need to speak behind her long back. ‘I wouldn’t cook for you if my life depended on it.’ I would rather be dead than have her descend on me. ‘Who do you think you are to turn up here and sort out my cupboards?’ She shrugs and smiles her fixed smile, pleased to have got a reaction from me. ‘It’s hardly a crime, cleaning your cupboards,’ she says. ‘Besides you deserved it.’
It is a long time I think since she first arrived, though I can’t be sure. One day has slid into the next, and the snow is still here, covering everything. There have been extra inches of it fluttering and floating to the ground, every day she has made me eat her porridge, her soup and her stew. She is not a good cook; she seems to take pleasure in serving up gruel. Every day she has dressed in more or less the same clothes, heavy long tweed skirts, wool tights, polo neck jumpers and cardigans. I can see she has grown to depend on looking after me. I’m going to have some trouble kicking her out. I wonder who I could ring to get rid of her. It occurs to me that you can ring all sorts of people to get rid of all sorts of things from your house: cockroaches, wasps, bluebottles, wood lice, mice, rats, burglars, fire. But I have no one to ring to get rid of her. What would I say if I called the police exactly? There is a woman claiming to know me who has moved into my house and is making me eat porridge every day? I would sound ridiculous. Even I know that. There’s nothing I can do except wait for her to shift of her own accord.
At least now that she has unpacked and settled in and been here for two weeks or is it three, maybe even four, I’m not so scared of her. She makes me come down to the table to eat the meals, and when I come into the kitchen she stands up, and rubs her hands together. ‘Good. Now we will eat,’ she says. And we eat in silence. We don’t do anything else. Sometimes I go through to the living room and we sit on the sofa and stare at the wall together in a most companionable fashion. ‘There is absolutely nothing on television,’ she says every day. ‘And anyway you don’t want to become a couch potato.’
One day I ask her where she comes from. Where does she live when she is not living with me? But she refuses to answer personal questions, though I imagine she is from a cold place, a very cold place, since these extremes don’t bother her at all. Today, she says, I insist that we go for a walk. She ties a scarf around my neck and buttons my coat, as if I were incapable of doing these things for myself. ‘I am not a child,’ I say. ‘I am a middle-aged woman.’ ‘You certainly could have fooled me,’ she says, and for the first time I see a real smile on her face, and catch a glimpse of her teeth.
‘If you don’t walk, I will carry you on my back like a sack of potatoes,’ she says. This amuses me because although she is taller than me, she is much slimmer, and I weigh thirteen stone and four pounds. Her arms are strong looking and full of muscle. I picture me being carried across her back through the snow like a bag of coal or a sack of potatoes or a dead body heading for a mortuary. I choose to walk. She opens the front door and there it is: the freezing cold air. ‘Minus nine today,’ she says, almost cheerfully. We brace the bitter wind together. She even loops her arm through mine. We go as far as Chorlton Park. The school is closed. In the park are huge snow penises and massive snow men, but the penises are the surprise, I’ve never seen one before, a snow penis, complete with balls and everything. She stares at me staring at it. ‘You’ve never seen one before?’ she asks me. ‘No,’ I say. ‘Never.’ She laughs, and her laugh has a trill to it, like a little frill on the end of a serious skirt. ‘You haven’t lived,’ she says. I realize she has quite a sense of humour; when I’m with her I can see the absurd things in life. There are lots of birds on the trees in the park, robin redbreasts and other birds whose names I forget. ‘So many birds will die,’ she says sadly. ‘Can we feed them?’ I say. ‘Can we go and get some bird feed?’ She looks at me astonished, as if I’d asked her if we could fly to the moon. ‘Can we go and get some bird feed?’ she echoes. I nod. ‘It is early for you to be asking such a question,’ she says, sounding a little sad. ‘What do you mean?’ I say. But she doesn’t reply. She trudges with me through the thick snow. I hate the thought of the birds dying because of the snow. The snow lies on the fields in the park and it looks blameless, implacable, like it would never admit to anything, to tripping anyone up or trapping an old person in a house.
We walk along Barlow Moor Road till we come to the shop opposite the post office. ‘We can get bird feed here,’ she says, softly. ‘You go.’ ‘On my own?’ I ask her. ‘Yes, of course. You can do it.’ Her eyes are welling up. When I come out with a bag of seed for wild birds in my hands, she is gone. I can’t see her anywhere. I stand waiting for a while, thinking she might have gone to post a letter. Then I cross the road and look in the post office, but she isn’t there. The last time she came, I remember she disappeared just as suddenly. Odd behaviour, really. I make it home, alone. I listen in the hall just in case she’s come home early to test me. I look for her in the kitchen; she might be putting the kettle on for our tea. I go upstairs to check she hasn’t started on the bathroom cupboards. The last time she came she did them. But no, she is nowhere, nowhere to be seen. I don’t know what to feel. I don’t feel relief. I feel something more complicated than that. I look out my bedroom window to see if I might see her in the street. Something puzzles me. There is no snow on the ground at all.
Acknowledgements
Some of these stories have been published in Granta, the Sunday Herald, and the Independent on Sunday. Others have been broadcast on BBC Radio 4. ‘Mind Away’ was commissioned by Sky Arts and shown in a dramatized version as part of the Theatre Live Series. ‘The First Lady of Song’ was commissioned by Glyndebourne and was first published in Midsummer Nights (ed. Jeanette Winterson). ‘Hadassah’ was formed as part of the 66 writers retelling the Bible and was performed at the Bush Theatre. ‘Reality, Reality’ came from a joint commission by Aye Write and the Scots Malt Whisky Society. ‘The White Cot’ was partly inspired by Charlotte Perkins Gillman’s The Yellow Wallpaper.
A very big thank you to Kate Harvey, Camilla Elworthy, Sarah Chalfant, Catherine Marcangeli, Nick Drake and Ali Smith.
Permissions Acknowledgements
‘At Seventeen’ – Words and music by Janis Ian © 1974, reproduced by permission of EMI Music Publishing Ltd, London W8 5SW.
‘Bye Bye Blackbird’ – Words by Mort Dixon / Music by Ray Henderson © 1926 (Renewed) Ray Henderson Music Corp., / Old Clover Leaf Music, / Redwood Music Ltd., – All Rights Reserved – International Copyright Secured – Lyric reproduction by kind permission of Redwood Music Ltd.
‘Ev’ry Time We Say Goodbye’ – Words and music by Cole Porter © 1944 (Renewed) Chappell and Co., Inc. (ASCAP). All rights reserved.
‘I Feel The Earth Move’ – Words and music by Carole King © 1971, reproduced by permission of Screen Gems-Emi Music Ltd, London W8 5SW.
‘I Say A Little Prayer’ – Words by Hal David / Music by Burt Bacharach © Copyright 1966 Casa David Music Incorporated. Universal/MCA Music Limited. All Rights Reserved. International Copyright Secured. Used by permission of Music Sales Limited.
‘I’ve Got You Under My Skin’ – Words and music by Cole Porter. © 1936 (Renewed) Chappell and Co., Inc. (ASCAP). All rights reserved.
‘Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien’ – Words and Music by Michel Vaucaire and Charles Dumont / © 1960 Société d’Editions Musicales Int., (S.E.M.I.) Paris.
‘Summertime’ – Words and music by George Gershwin, Du Bose Heyward, Dorothy He
yward and Ira Gershwin. © 1935 (renewed) Chappell & Co., Inc. (ASCAP). All rights administered by Warner/Chappell North America Ltd. All rights reserved.
‘The Last Time I Saw Richard’ – Words and Music by Joni Mitchell. © 1971 Crazy Crow Music. All Rights Administered by Sony/ATV Music Publishing, 8 Music Square West, Nashville, TN 37203. All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission.
‘They Can’t Take That Away from Me’ – Words and music by George Gershwin and Ira Gershwin. © 1936 (renewed) Chappell & Co., Inc. (ASCAP). All rights administered by Warner/Chappell North America Ltd. All rights reserved.
ALSO BY JACKIE KAY
Red Dust Road
Wish I Was Here
Why Don’t You Stop Talking
Trumpet
Poetry
Fiere
The Lamplighter
Darling
Life Mask
Off Colour
Other Lovers
The Adoption Papers
First published 2012 by Picador
This electronic edition published 2012 by Picador
an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR
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www.panmacmillan.com
ISBN 978-1-4472-0440-4
Copyright © Jackie Kay 2012
The right of Jackie Kay to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
The acknowledgements on this page constitute an extension to this copyright page.
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