House. Tree. Person.

by Catriona McPherson

  She took another drag of her cigarette and then pinged it with thumb and forefinger, sending it sailing in a bright coral-blue arc onto the grass, where the damp doused it.

  “Do you pop blackheads?”

  “You haven’t got any,” I told her. “Stop being so awkward.”

  “What about my bikini line?”

  “I’m not touching you with a bargepole till you’ve had a bath,” I said.

  She opened the neck of her nightie and stuck her head down, sniffing hard. “You’ve got a point.”

  “That’s the second time you’ve smelled yourself and pretended to be surprised,” I said. “You’re not fooling me this time, Julia.”

  She tuned round and gave me the look I knew so well from Angelo, the look of outraged injustice, because this time there really was a wolf and the villagers down the mountain should learn to tell the difference.

  “I’m not trying to fool you!” she said. “I forgot. I drift. They’re still trying to get my meds right and they keep changing the balance. I forgot where I fucking was yesterday morning. I thought I was in a hotel. Thought I had a hangover.”

  “A facial and then we’ll sit together and do something lovely and relaxing, eh?” I said. I stood and held out my hand to her. For a minute I thought she was going to take it and then she rolled her eyes and got to her feet, brushing past me.

  She was quiet, as quiet as Sylvie, as I worked on her. And gradually she relaxed, her face smoothing to serenity. I dug my hands in under her head and worked on the knots in her neck.

  “You’ve got a good skull,” I said. “Nice neck and jaw.” She said nothing. “You would suit your hair cut close. Like Halle Berry.”

  “Or Julius Caesar,” she murmured, and I laughed softly.

  “You would, though.” What I really meant was that the frizzy hair bushing out round her face, along with the hooked nose, made her look like a clown. But if she went all out for bone structure—wore that nose proudly—she’d look magnificent instead of ridiculous.

  “Do you cut hair?”

  “I could take you into town to a salon,” I said. “Do you get days out?” She didn’t answer. “Course, you’d have to lose the robe and actually put on some of these new clothes you keep buying.” I looked again at the heaps of shopping littering her room.

  “I don’t think my fairy godmother would be very happy about me going off the reservation,” she said. Her voice was slack and gravelly, either from the massage or from the meds she was taking.

  “Dr. Ferris?” I asked. “I’m just going to masque you now.”

  “Pretty sure the deal with my mum was to keep me bricked up in the tower so I can’t do any more damage,” she said, hardly moving her mouth as I smeared the warm paste over her face and down her neck.

  “What did you really do, Julia?” I said softly.

  “I hurt my daddy,” she answered even softer.

  “Hurt him how?”

  “I hurt his middle.”

  “That doesn’t sound like the end of the world.”

  Her voice was no more than a whisper now. “I killed my father?”

  “Ssh,” I said, and I listened as her breaths grew deeper and slower and then I listened to her sleeping.

  Nine

  The words bothered me. Kids make up their own minds what words mean. When Angelo was tiny, just before he threw up like Vesuvius one time, he said his waist was hurting. Not his tummy, which might have warned us, but his waist. And then another time when he was toddling along beside me on our way to the shops he heard me suck in a sharp breath and turned his face up, squinting through the hair he wouldn’t let me cut.

  “What a matter, Mummy?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “I’ve just got a crick in my neck.” I was all aches and pains that summer, couldn’t get comfy to sleep no matter what I tried.

  He stopped dead and gazed, as if at some undreamed-of wonder.

  “You swallow it?” he said.

  “What?”

  “It fly in your mouth?”

  “What?”

  “Jimmy cricket,” he said.

  “Not my throat, Angel-boy,” I said. “My neck. Here.” I touched him under the curling ends of his mop of hair, tickling him, making him shriek and scoot away from me. And of course we all said “a cricket in your neck” from that day on. Until Angelo started rolling his eyes and snorting, anyway.

  So “I hurt his middle” could mean anything. She might have elbowed him in the ribs when she got into her parents’ bed in the morning for a cuddle. Or maybe she was on his lap and she trampled him and he yelled and frightened her. But I knew what I thought it meant. I could think of ways a little girl could hurt her daddy’s “middle” and then years later would fantasise that she’d killed him to make the memory go away.

  If he was even dead. He might be living with a new wife and clueless. Or, like Lars said, maybe he ignored her once he left them for pastures new and his daughter made up a more dramatic story. I would ask at the staff meeting if he was still alive.

  As quietly as I could, I drew a folder of paperwork out from the tray under the table, my face so close to Julia’s that I could hear the little popping sounds she made as each breath out made her lips part.

  I moved a bale of clothes, still in their plastic wrappers from the mail order, keeping my movements slow and soft. Then I sat down to study my resident list and start to plan.

  Six boys, three junkies and three alkies; and seven girls, four ana-mias, two alkies, and Julia. A handful of women with various depressions, although I’d have to study up on the difference between chronic, acute, and major, which all sounded pretty bad. One with late-stage terminal dementia and, of course, Sylvie.

  I tapped my pen against my cheek and thought about it. There’s not much that massage doesn’t help. Even the woman dying of Alzheimer’s would no doubt appreciate a bit of gentle effleurage. It would calm the alkies and reinvigorate the junkies. As for the girls who were scared to eat? I could tell them I’d strip toxins and excess water and they’d be queuing up. And depression was made for it.

  Touch is a problem for British people and maybe Scots most of all. We’re not huggers. But gentle touch can do wonders for someone feeling the ache of loss or loneliness. Gentle touch, fresh air, and exercise is what did it for me. That and determination. I made a note to ask Dr. Ferris whether they insisted on residents going outside and walking every day. Maybe they had a physio with her own ideas—I didn’t want to step on any toes—but there were still footpaths all over this land, despite the army, and any day they weren’t firing live rounds we could all be out there, getting good-tired; so different from the bad-tired you got from staying inside rooms and thinking too much.

  I lifted my head and looked out of Julia’s bedroom window. All I could see was a square of grey sky, the wind strong enough to fling the seagulls where it chose, making me think of ice-skaters, pushing off and then suddenly wheeling away. I closed my eyes and listened to the soft snores and the faint shushing that came through the closed window.

  I was drifting when I heard it. “Mmmhmmm.”

  I leapt up and felt the chair tip and hit the floor.

  “Mmmmhmmm-ah!” Julia said. “This fucking face masque has set like concrete. I can’t move!”

  I picked up the chair and put the bale of wrapped clothes back on it. “Ssh,” I said. “You’re supposed to be relaxing.”

  “Look who’s talking,” she said, glaring up at me. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “Shush while I wash you,” I said. “I left it a bit longer than I would have because you were so peaceful. Sorry it freaked you out.”

  “Takes more than that,” she said through the hot towel I had laid over her face.

  “Sshh,” I said again as I pressed it down.

  “Have you got kids?” she s
aid, squinting up at me once I had wiped away every trace of the masque and was holding my hands cupped over her ears. I always do that as part of a facial, just gently.

  “I do. Why?”

  “Wish you were my mum.” She closed her eyes again and didn’t say another word through toning, serum, and deep moisture, until I was taking the band off her hair and telling her to sit up slowly.

  “So what’s on the cards for the rest of your day?” I asked her. She shrugged. “Would you do something for me then?” She shrugged the other shoulder. “Just to start things off,” I said. “It’ll only take twenty minutes.”

  I took her into the room with the circle of chairs, settled her at a table in front of the window, and spread out a big sheet of paper. I handed her a soft pencil.

  “They said you’d already drawn a house, a tree, and a person,” I told her, “but would you draw one for me?”

  “This again,” she said, but the pencil was moving already. I put my chin in my hand and watched the lines come spilling out of its tip. Her house was a tiny roof hidden in the distance in a mountain range, only recognisable because of a smoking chimney. Her tree was leafless and jagged, more like a gibbet or a radio antenna than a living thing. And her person was a sack tied with a chain, just one eye peering out of a hole that one finger was holding open.

  “Is that you?” I said, pointing at the eye.

  “Your turn,” she told me, turning the paper over and shoving the pencil at me point first.

  I drew a proper house: a door in the middle and four windows. One face in each window, everyone waving. I drew two chimneys and a garden gate with a welcome sign on it. Behind the gate, I drew a cartoon tree with an afro of fluffy leaves and a swing hanging down. I drew an apple in it, just one, and a bird with its beak open. I was trying to make it look like it was chirping. I drew grass round the bottom of the tree trunk and a rabbit sniffing a flower. And I drew my person on the swing. A little girl with a big ribbon tied in a bow on the top of her head. I gave her a pinafore and scalloped edges to her socks, buttons on the straps of her shoes. I couldn’t draw her hands on the swing chains so I folded them in her lap. I worked hard on it, but when I looked up at Julia she had stopped watching me. She was staring out the window.

  I rolled the paper up and touched her arm. “I better get a move on now,” I said. “Don’t wash your face again today and try not to touch it. I’ll bring some samples of the scrub in tomorrow if you liked it.”

  She nodded. “Are you sure you couldn’t cut my hair?” she said. “Now you’ve started me thinking about it, it’s like a dead dog hanging on my neck. It’s disgusting.”

  “Wash it,” I said to her, joke-nagging.

  “And you’ll cut it tomorrow?”

  “I’ll ask Dr. Ferris if we can get a hairdresser in,” I promised her. “You staying here or going back to your room? You could tidy up a bit, just so the chairs don’t actually fall over backwards from the weight of all the stuff, you know.”

  “God, I was wrong. You are my mum,” she said.

  There was no one in the staff kitchen, so I went on a round of the lounge where the two women were at their jigsaw again. Harriet and Jo their names were, although I wasn’t entirely sure which was which. I sat and helped them for a bit and then asked them what they’d like to have done as their introduction.

  “I’m just saying hello by giving out treats,” I said, hoping they didn’t think I was making them sound like dogs. “Manicure, pedicure, massage, facial. Anything you like.”

  “Can you do that hot stones?” said one, looking up with the first glint of life I had seen in her eyes.

  “Certainly can,” I said, wondering where in the eaves storage I had stuffed my stones and heater. “Have you had that before?”

  “Had it at a hotel on a mini-break,” she said. “She had this great big stone she put on the base of my back, so heavy I could hardly move. I could feel it drawing out all the poison. God help the next one they put it onto after me.”

  “We detox the stones in between clients,” I said. “Anyway, they’re more like conduits than receptacles. The poison passes through.”

  The other woman was watching me out of the corner of her eye. “I don’t want you burying me under heavy stones,” she said.

  “Aromatherapy massage,” I suggested. “Light as a feather. And you choose the aroma. Geranium, lavender, citrus. Depends whether you want to feel soothed or pepped up. I’ll help you decide.”

  “Have you got nightshade?” she said. “That’s all I want, love. Lie down and close my eyes and never open them again. No more. That’ll do me.”

  I couldn’t answer her for a few moments. The way she put it, it was hard to argue.

  “It’s my first proper day,” I said. “You’ll get me the sack.”

  Her friend gave a short laugh and then bent lower over the jigsaw, but the nightshade woman just stared at me out of her blank eyes. “You’ll fit right in,” she said.

  I couldn’t avoid the acute side forever, so I steeled myself. But on the way through, I met Lars coming back and turned round gladly for a break instead of going to sell my services to the boys being dried out. I could imagine what they’d make of a masseuse and I needed tips about how to handle things if they got cheeky.

  “Head smashed in,” Lars said as a greeting, swiping his card and pushing through.

  I felt my eyes widen. “Through there?” I said, as the door swung and latched behind him.

  “The body in the Abbey,” he said. “Head stoved in with a blunt instrument. A shovel, they think. I just got an update.”

  “They’ve put that on the news already?”

  Lars waggled his phone. “Update from Boney. My pal? They said his skull was in smithereens, totally bashed to—Whoa! Whoa! You okay?”

  He caught me by the forearms and led me towards a windowsill to let me sit. It was deep from the thickness of the walls but I heard the glass grate in the frame when I leaned back so I bent forward again. Probably best anyway when you’re woozy.

  “Sorry,” I said. “It’s just so close to my house.” But he was still frowning, so I pulled the trump card. “You got kids?”

  “Three but they live in Malta,” he said. “Come on and I’ll make you a sweet cuppa. And Marion’s got a tub of Jaffa-cakes.”

  There was no one in the kitchenette, just a lot of mugs draining on paper towels by the sink, as if we’d just missed everyone. Lars tutted and grabbed a tea towel.

  “I got Julia to draw the three things, by the way,” I said.

  “This should be good.” He sat down beside me as I spread the sheet of paper. After a long hard look, he shook his head, laughing. “Wow,” he said.

  I studied it again trying to see one single thing to laugh about in any of it: the tiny house lost in the mountains, the tree of jagged wire, the person in the sack peering out. “How long have you worked in psychiatric nursing?” I said. “You’re jaded if you think that’s funny.”

  “She’s faking,” said Lars. “Come on! The tree I’ll give you. At least it’s a tree. But no one draws a roof like a needle in a haystack when somebody says ‘draw a house,’ do they? And nobody for sure draws a sack and an eye instead of a person. She did that deliberately to make you worry about how ill she is.”

  “So there’s nothing to learn from it?” I said.

  “Except that she’s faking,” he said and started rolling the paper up again. “Wait, though. What’s this?”

  I put my hand out to stop him and then pulled it back just as fast and rubbed my nose, laughing. “Oh, that was me,” I said. “Nothing going on there.”

  He waggled his eyebrows and unrolled the paper slowly, spreading it out with my drawing face up. “Let’s see what all your secrets are then, Alison McGovern.”

  “Feel free,” I said. I could feel my cheeks flaming, but what was he goin
g to say about a proper house like everyone draws and an ordinary tree and a pretty girl with a bow in her hair? I looked back at his face and saw that the smile had gone. He was frowning.

  “What?” I said.

  “Just winding you up,” he told me, the frown smoothing. “So what did Pollyanna do to get stuck out in the garden?”

  “What?” I said. I glanced between the paper and his face, not sure if he was joking.

  “Perfect family all cosy inside,” he said. “Mum and dad and two kids and this wee lassie with the cares of the world on her head, sent out to sit on the naughty step all on her own?”

  “What the hell are you on about?” I said. “It’s four people because there’s four windows. And there’s another one because you have to draw another one. Are you serious?”

  Lars bent until his face was close to mine and spoke softly. “No. I’m not. It’s a load of bollocks and you can use it to say anything. That’s why we don’t use it.”

  I sat back and fanned myself, laughing with relief. “You had me going for a minute there.” I rolled up the paper. “And that was a bow, by the way. A ribbon. Not the cares of the world.”

  “Yeah, I was crap at art too,” he said. “But you’re wrong about the windows. If you give a kid a picture of a house and say draw the family that lives there, they always draw the people in their family. Pets too.”

  “Dogs and cats, though right?” I said. “Not hamsters and goldfish?” Lars shrugged. “What about nits?”