by Lucy Wood
Over the next few weeks we went back to our normal routine of crosswords and cookery shows during my breaks. Mrs Tivoli’s eyes kept straying away from the TV and falling on certain points in the room: the door, my chair, somewhere near the window. I was always ready for her to start talking about what she’d shown me, but she never did. ‘It’s cold in here. Don’t you think it’s cold?’ she would say instead, tucking a blanket around her legs. It wasn’t cold at all. The heating would be on and clunking away through the radiators. Most of the other residents had turned theirs down.
‘It is a bit nippy,’ I’d tell her, and she would nod and ask me to make hot chocolate, so strong and sweet it would make your teeth ache.
I was spending more time away from reception. Most days the phone wouldn’t ring at all so I was roped into doing extra cleaning. There had been a spate of pentagrams appearing on the common room carpet, marked out in salt, and I had to hoover them up. It’s a real pain because the grains bind themselves to the carpet fibres and won’t shift unless you keep a pinch of salt on your tongue. By the end of it you’re parched.
Normally I wouldn’t miss anything when I was away from the desk but yesterday was different. When I got back, the appointment book was out. One of the porters or the nurses must have taken a call for me. I flicked through to see who had a visit scheduled. It was Mrs Tivoli and she had a Mr Webb booked in for the next day.
I didn’t sleep well last night – I kept seeing planes wrapped in green wool, a swan’s feather caught in a spider’s web. When I got into work this morning I stayed on reception without budging. Mrs Tivoli had never had a visitor before and there was no way I was going to miss seeing who he was. Mr Webb wasn’t booked in for a specific time, though. That’s the problem when someone else does your job for you – they don’t ever do it properly. You’re meant to specify an exact time for the visit so that everyone can be prepared. I ate my sandwich at the desk and didn’t even leave to go for a wee. I just clenched and tried to forget about it. By mid-afternoon I thought he wasn’t coming and my shift was about to finish. When he finally walked into the lobby my bladder almost gave out. He had the same face, the same hair as that man I’d watched leaving Mrs Tivoli’s room just a few weeks ago. He came up to the desk and I signed him in, trying all the time to maintain my professional veneer, trying not to stare at his green jumper or the small shaving cut on his cheek.
I took him up to Mrs Tivoli’s room myself and knocked on the door. While we waited, I smiled at him and found myself bobbing at the knees. I’m better over the phone than face to face, I’ll be honest, but I think I just wanted to calm him down, he looked so apprehensive. He was tall and skinny, and when I say skinny, I mean skinny so that his face looked gaunt and shadowy. He had dark, heavy eyebrows that frayed out at each end. They made him look as if he was constantly frowning, but there were laughter lines radiating out from the corners of his eyes. I kept having to wipe my sweaty palms on my blouse and it seemed like hours before Mrs Tivoli called him in.
She’d tidied and changed the room around – her slippers and blankets had gone and there was a throw covering the television. She’d brought her telescope out and set it up by the window and her almanacs were stacked up in place of the magazines. There were also three chairs in the room. I didn’t know where she’d got the other one from. She gestured for both of us to sit down. I stared at that third chair and then up at Mrs Tivoli. ‘I’d better get back,’ I told her.
‘You’ve finished your shift,’ she said.
I sat down. My heavy bunch of keys clanked at the belt of my skirt. Mr Webb glanced over but didn’t say anything. I backed my chair quietly into the corner and huddled down in it.
Mr Webb went up to Mrs Tivoli and bent over her head. As his lips lingered against her hair she closed her eyes, just for a moment. He pulled back slowly and then wandered around the room, picking things up and putting them back down again. He went over to the shelf where she keeps her wrinkled potatoes stuck full of pins.
‘What are these for?’ he asked.
‘You know what they’re for,’ she told him.
Mr Webb picked one up and turned it over. ‘I thought you weren’t going to do that any more,’ he said.
She shrugged. ‘Now and again.’
He put it back down quickly. ‘This is a nice place,’ he said to her. Next door’s toilet flushed and we heard muffled footsteps and the creak of someone sitting down on a bed.
‘Maria thinks my room has damp,’ she replied.
‘Everywhere’s damp to Maria; she lives in a bloody fish tank!’ he said and laughed like he was gasping. He cleared his throat. ‘How is she, anyway?’
‘You never liked Maria,’ Mrs Tivoli said to him.
‘We had our differences,’ he said, gesturing at the tank. Maria picked up a stone and spat it out. ‘I told you I would have got used to her.’ His jumper sleeve was fraying and he kept pulling on the loose threads so that it unravelled more. ‘She’s not looking quite as sprightly these days.’
‘Time marches on,’ she said.
‘Not for you, though,’ he said. He looked at Mrs Tivoli intently. His profile was so angular, so hollowed out, that there was something almost beautiful about it. ‘Soon I’ll overtake you.’
Mrs Tivoli sat stiff and regal in her armchair. She’d hidden her walking stick and her pain-relief medication. There was a single rune on the table.
Mr Webb started to pace around again and neither of them said anything for a few minutes. ‘I’ve been transferred,’ he said finally.
Mrs Tivoli turned her neck slowly and looked out of the window. There were goosebumps on her bare arms. ‘Yes,’ she said.
‘They’re opening a new research centre. They want me to run it.’ He sat down in his chair and leaned forwards.
‘What will you research?’ she asked.
‘Weather systems,’ he said. They looked at each other.
Mrs Tivoli tilted her head to one side and frowned slightly. ‘Don’t you already know everything about those?’ she asked.
‘They’re always changing,’ he said. ‘You know that. And they vary. We’ve done all the work here so now we need to look further afield.’ He looked like he was going to carry on but he stopped himself. ‘Anyway, I’ve got a few more days to decide about it.’
‘Does this have to be in Scotland?’ Mrs Tivoli asked.
‘We need somewhere that gets a lot of rain,’ Mr Webb said. He didn’t seem surprised that Mrs Tivoli knew where the job was.
‘It rains a lot here, this close to the moor,’ she said.
Mr Webb sighed. ‘It’s to do with the mountains. We need to chart the specific volume and the density and …’ He trailed off, rubbed across his eyes.
‘The rain in Scotland is full of despair,’ she told him.
He unfolded himself out of the chair and stood up again. ‘That’s what I … That’s the reason I came you see. If I didn’t go … I came because …’
She shook her head quickly and interrupted him. ‘You have a small wart coming on your left hand. You wanted me to remove it.’
He looked down at his hand and rubbed over the palm. He looked up and back down again until Mrs Tivoli beckoned him over. He knelt down in front of her. He breathed out slowly. She took a pin out from behind her ear and asked Mr Webb to reach over for a jar. She blew on the pin for a moment then took his hand and eased the pin into it. He winced. She looked steadily at him as she moved it in a circle. Maria had turned her tail on the room and was facing the wall. The bubbles in her tank streamed out and broke on the surface.
‘That window looks a little draughty,’ he said. He rested his cheek against Mrs Tivoli’s thigh. ‘Do you get cold?’
‘Not often,’ she said, circling the pin.
‘I could look at it for you. I could come over in the next few days and look at it for you,’ he said.
She sighed. ‘There are porters.’ The pin circled like a clock’s hand. Mrs Tivoli held Mr Webb’s ha
nd in hers, which was plump and smooth but riddled with invisible arthritis. Nothing moved for a long time except the pin. Then Mrs Tivoli blinked and seemed to come to. She slipped the pin out, breathed into the jar and dropped it inside. You could see her breath winding around in there like a trapped storm. Mr Webb raised his head reluctantly and Mrs Tivoli shifted. The weight must have been hurting her bad leg.
‘You remember what to do with it?’ she asked. He said that he did. ‘It’ll be gone in a few days. You’ll never know you had it.’
Mr Webb backed into his chair. Mrs Tivoli glanced at him, then closed her eyes and tipped her head back.
They were silent for a while and I wondered whether it would be possible to sneak out. I felt as if I could barely breathe. I had imagined myself creeping out so many times that, as time passed and nobody spoke, it was almost a surprise to find that I was still there in the room.
‘I need to ask you something,’ Mr Webb said after a while. ‘It’s important. I think it’s important.’
‘I don’t think it’s as important as you think,’ she said.
‘But it is.’
‘When you go to Scotland,’ she said, ‘something will happen to you, something good.’
He shook his head.
‘I’ve seen it,’ she told him.
He glanced over at her black glass mirror. ‘I told you not to,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t mean anything.’
‘It does mean something.’
‘Well it doesn’t matter,’ he said. ‘Look at you. Nothing’s changed.’
This time, Mrs Tivoli shook her head.
Mr Webb put his elbow on his knee and cupped his face in his palm. ‘It doesn’t mean anything,’ he said again, but more quietly this time. A wind chime caught the trace of a draught from under the door and clacked its hollow wooden legs together. Nothing else in the room moved for a long time. When Mr Webb got up to leave he kissed Mrs Tivoli on her pale forehead. She kept her eyes open and her neck very still.
‘It’s for the best,’ she said. It wasn’t clear exactly who she was addressing.
Mr Webb tucked his hands deep into his pockets. He smiled at Mrs Tivoli, then walked towards the door, looked back once, fumbled with the handle, opened it and walked through into the corridor. He’d left his fogged-up jar on the floor.
I wondered if Mrs Tivoli had forgotten I was there and I thought I’d better get up and leave her alone. We listened to Mr Webb’s slow footsteps as they crossed the corridor. Mrs Tivoli was sitting very still. She looked tired and older than I had ever seen her before, as if another body had risen up underneath her skin. She stood up after me and brushed down her skirt and I noticed how much her hands were trembling. Her eyes were going wide and she was breathing heavily, heaving her chest and shoulders up in big movements. Her feet tapped quickly on the carpet and then it happened before I had a chance to do anything. Her shoulders dropped right down so that her arms were dangling towards the floor. She slumped on all fours; her chest stiffened and seemed to cave in and then extend again into a tight, rounded drum. A sudden coating of brown fur moulded itself over her clothes and skin, as if a bristling layer of iron filings had been magnetised on to her. Her hair scattered silver clips and split into thick halves that sprang up on top of her head in two black-tipped ears. She shrank in seconds and crouched motionless against the floor. Then she snapped into frantic, hysterical movement. She scrabbled over the bookcase and the bed frame, upsetting books and digging pale marks into the wood with her claws. Her first scream was like nothing I’ve ever heard. I didn’t think anything was capable of making a noise like that – it sounded like it should have cut her stomach and throat to pieces on the way out. It made my spine clench and the backs of my eyes sting. That’s when she got under the bookcase and I noticed the door was open.
After I’d slammed it shut, Mrs Tivoli quietened down a little. She stopped in the middle of the carpet and nibbled it, still shuddering, still breathing in deep, heaving groans. I was expecting the closed door to have an adverse effect. I was expecting it, but I didn’t know what to do if it happened. I was meant to have pushed the assistance button by now but it was on the other side of the room and I should have placed a substantial object between us. I didn’t care about that, though. I had a terrible fear that she would try to break out through the double glazing, bruising and battering her frail body. But she didn’t. She bowed her head down and seemed to gather back into herself. We looked at each other and as her eyes shifted from brown to green I realised why she had needed me here. She knew that Mr Webb would leave the door open. She must have watched him do it a thousand times before she showed me. She knew that she wouldn’t have any control over herself, so she needed me to be the one that closed the door and sealed her inside. I felt heavy and sick. I stayed leaning against the door and watched as she lifted her nose and sniffed the air, mapping out her room, her world, in ways I couldn’t even guess.
Wisht
(adj.) melancholy, pale, lonely. The wisht hounds run across the moors hunting the lost and the dying.
There was no torch blinking its way back towards the house. No arm and then body followed behind. No click of the gate and footsteps along gravel. It was the same every night that he went out, which was often. She would lean on the windowsill and stare outside, waiting. If she left the light on, a pale version of her room hung behind the glass – her walls, her clock, her desk – see-through and only half familiar. And inside that other room, her own small face leaning forwards to look back in. When she turned the light off, she couldn’t make out anything beyond an inch of the window, then, after a while, shapes would emerge: a fence, a hedge, trees. There were fields and then there was the moor, stretching away like a strange blanket. That’s where his torch would come from, when it finally appeared. But for now it was just shapes behind darker shapes.
She always pretended to be asleep when her father came in to check on her. The important thing was not to stay too still; she made sure she rolled over, or kicked out a leg or mumbled into the pillow. But he still talked to her as if she was awake. ‘I’m going out,’ he would say, standing in the doorway. ‘I’m locking up.’ Then after a while: ‘I won’t be long.’ Once he had gone, she would get up and go downstairs. His glass would be on the draining board, empty except for two lumps of ice. The fridge light would glow green in the dark kitchen. He might have left the TV on mute and she would sit in the narrow dent he had left behind and watch whatever came on.
After a while, she would go back upstairs and start waiting at the window. Her stick insects would be asleep inside the tank. If she tapped the side, their legs and antennae would open out like leaves searching for light. She had three. Her favourite was Cat Stevens, who always escaped. Often, he would end up on the back of one of the chairs in the kitchen and her father would almost squash him when he leaned back. ‘Wait!’ she would shout. ‘There’s Cat Stevens.’ And he would jerk forwards as far away as possible and wait for her to pick him up. ‘He’s OK,’ she would tell her father. ‘Look. He’s OK.’
‘Cat Stevens was a fucking genius,’ her father would say, bending his head down towards a newspaper, towards coffee.
‘Look, he’s all right.’
‘A genius,’ he would say again, and he would shake his head slowly and lean back in the chair.
Sometimes she would fall asleep with her cheek on the shiny paint, sometimes with her forehead pressed against the glass. Sometimes she counted the gaps where she had lost teeth with her tongue: one, two, three; another wobbly and tough as a carousel horse.
Most nights she heard the wisht hounds howling across the moor, maybe following her father, maybe further away than she thought. What did their howling sound like most? Like the wail a cloth made when you wiped wet windows. He had told her a story about them once, about how they stalked across the moor, and now she heard them almost every night and she was sure that they were following him and that soon they would catch up. ‘It must be the wind,’ her father
said when she told him that she had started hearing them. ‘Moors are windy. It was only a story.’ But he couldn’t back out of it now – the wisht hounds were one of those things she had always known existed, she just hadn’t known the name or the shape of them. It wasn’t as if she believed any story he happened to tell, but the thing was, whenever she was lying in bed and the night seemed to stretch on for ever into the distance without ending, or when, on the edge of the moor, there were hare’s bones or narrow, arcing tracks through the long grass, then it seemed quite obvious that this story was true.
‘I know it was only a story,’ she told him. ‘I know.’
‘Jesus. It’s only a story.’
She glared at him, narrowed her eyes and didn’t tell him when she heard them again, or about the deep scratch that had appeared at the bottom of the gate.
When her head fell forwards against the window, her short hair brushed the corners of her mouth. It never stayed behind her ears even though she kept tucking it there. She tucked and tucked her hair. The clock ticked in odd rhythms. A few times, when her father came back, he had come upstairs and hung wet clothes over the bath: trousers soaked to the thighs, shoes dripping river water. The clock sounded like his clothes dripping dry over the bath.
Tucking her hair, the clock ticking, sometimes she got so tired that all she could do was crawl into bed and sleep before he got back. But most nights she waited and the whole night would be black in front of her until his torch appeared in the distance, a fleeting flash like a cat’s eye or a kingfisher, so that she wasn’t sure at first whether it was there or not. Then it would move closer and the light would bob around and get bigger until finally she could see her father behind it, walking through the field. Then she was in bed and practically asleep already by the time he came in the door and stumbled around, banging cupboards and glasses and cursing quietly and tiredly under his breath.