‘Just a little accident,’ she says to me. ‘Up to your room now, Gloria, time for a nap,’ which is all wrong because I’ve only just had breakfast.
‘I don’t want to,’ I say.
‘Go on now,’ she says, sharply. She is never sharp. This and the blood make me scared and being scared makes me obstinate.
‘No.’
‘Gloria, please.’
The blood drips down onto her dress. It’s my favourite one with the yellow flowers and I cry because the stain won’t come out in the wash.
‘Course it will,’ she says, ‘A bit of bicarb will do it.’
I tell Gwen about it when she comes home from school that afternoon. I think she will be shocked, but she turns away as I say it, pretending to be concentrating on something else.
‘It was an accident,’ she says.
‘No, Gwen,’ I say, trying to think how I can make her understand. He had hit Mum and then he had left her standing there in the kitchen, with an empty milk bottle in her hand and blood dripping onto her prettiest dress. ‘It wasn’t.’
‘Yes,’ she says. ‘It was.’
‘But you weren’t there!’ I feel angry tears in my eyes.
She bites her lip and says nothing. Then she comes and sits next to me on the bed. She picks up Ursula, my teddy, and looks at her rather sombre face and glassy eyes as she speaks, as if she is talking to Ursula, not me.
‘Father loves Mum,’ she says in a silly, growly voice, pretending it is Ursula who is speaking. ‘That’s what matters, isn’t it? And she loves him.’
I look at Gwen and I think that there are other things that matter, and that being in love doesn’t sound like a very good idea at all.
She hands the teddy to me. ‘Here. Give Ursula a cuddle. She’ll make you feel better.’ She puts on the growly Ursula voice again. ‘Cheer up, Gloria. You’re too young to understand. ‘When you’re older and you fall in love and get married you’ll see.’
I lie down on my bed with my back to Gwen and don’t say anything. When she goes downstairs I hide Ursula in the back of the wardrobe behind our old shoes and boots, along with the Snow White book with the scary picture of the witch that gives me nightmares. But I know she is there and in time, in my mind, she becomes bigger and grows claws, hiding in the shadows at the back of the wardrobe and at night she comes to replace the witch in my nightmares.
The windows of the house where all this happened stare back blankly at me now, but I see inside them. I see the pink roses in a jam jar on the table. I see a stiff, rather ugly teddy bear hidden at the back of a cupboard. I see a girl sneaking out of the back door and running out of the back gate and down the alley to the Common to meet the boy she loves. I hear the tread of feet that shouldn’t be there coming down the stairs. I see a mirror, shattered, on a tiled floor. I see a place where the pattern of the wallpaper does not align and I must not take my eyes off it—
Perhaps it was wrong to come back.
I look at her – Hattie – and see concern in her eyes.
‘Are you okay?’ she says. ‘Do you want to go now?’
I am not scared. The words recite themselves in my head. If I say it often enough perhaps I can make it true.
On the way back to Gloria’s flat I can’t stop thinking about everything she told me, about what she had been like when she was my age and about Nan and Vinnie – my grandfather. Dad’s father. If Gloria couldn’t tell me anything about Dad, the next best thing was finding out about his family, the father who died when he was a just a kid.
‘Why didn’t you like Vinnie?’ I ask, hoping to prompt her into more stories, but she doesn’t answer.
She invites me in when we get to the flat and pours herself a large gin. After investigating the fridge I discover that Malcolm’s supermarket run included a couple of frozen pizzas so I stick these in the oven.
‘Was your father really different before the war?’ I try again as we sit in Gloria’s cluttered sitting room waiting for the pizzas to cook.
‘How would I know?’ she says, drinking the gin and tonic she’d poured for me, even though I told her twice I didn’t want one. ‘I was born during the war. When he came back, he wasn’t the man my mother thought she’d married but that may not have had anything to do with the war. I can’t say.’
‘Was Sam your boyfriend?’
She hesitates. ‘Yes.’
I watch her closely. Her voice had changed when she’d talked about him. Her face too. I could almost see a glimpse of the girl she’d been.
‘Was it serious?’ I say. ‘Between you and Sam? I mean, were you in love with him?’
She hesitates again, for longer this time.
‘Yes,’ she says at last. ‘I was. I thought I was anyway. I was young.’
I think again about how she had been when she talked about the past. It was so clear to her, as if she could see it, touch it. She seemed so certain, so animated. In the present she is different, more distant. From my hasty research into dementia I know that old memories are often clear, while more recent ones can be confused. Perhaps she feels less confident in the present and the distance is her protection.
‘What was he like?’ I say. ‘How did you meet him?’
She pauses, as though she’s considering answering.
‘You’re asking an awful lot of questions,’ she says at last. ‘Isn’t it my turn now?’
I shrug. ‘Ask away. But I haven’t got anything interesting to tell you. I’m really very boring.’
‘Are you going to keep your baby?’ she says.
I wasn’t expecting that. I feel myself go red, and my heart thuds. I’d almost hoped she might have forgotten that I’m pregnant. But I suppose even if she does it’s all written down in that notebook of hers. Why did I tell her? I was angry, I suppose. Maybe I wanted to tell someone, someone who wouldn’t care one way or the other. It felt like such a big secret to be keeping. And after all I’d thought I’d never see her again, and that she’d forget.
‘No,’ I say. ‘I mean . . . well, I can’t.’
She watches me and I wonder what she’s thinking.
‘I want to go to university,’ I say. ‘And Reuben – well, he’s not really . . .’
I can’t even begin to find all the words for the things Reuben isn’t really.
‘Reuben?’ she says, her eyes lighting up. ‘Is he the father?’
‘Yes,’ I say and as she takes out her book and starts scribbling it strikes me how preposterous it is, how laughable and yet at the same time not very funny. Reuben, a father. He can’t even look after himself. ‘He’s not my boyfriend or anything. He’s just a friend.’
She looks sceptical.
‘Really,’ I say. ‘It was just the once that we . . .’ I blush again. ‘You know.’
She smiles. ‘I certainly do.’
‘It was stupid really.’
‘Tell me about him,’ she says.
‘Oh, God,’ I say. ‘I don’t know where to begin.’
‘At the beginning?’ she suggests.
Reuben Wilde.
The first time I heard his name was three years ago. And two months. And five days. Give or take.
A few of Mum’s mates had come round, supposedly for ‘Book Group’, but when I ventured into the kitchen to get a glass of juice there was only one lonely copy of Wolf Hall on the table and it had a bowl of Twiglets on top of it. By contrast, there were quite a few empty wine bottles.
I tried to sneak in and out without being noticed but Mum’s friend Sally spotted me.
‘Ooh, now, Hattie,’ she said. ‘You’ve got a treat in store ,my dear, if the rumours are true.’
‘What rumours?’
Sally smiled. ‘He’s Trouble. You’ll like him. But he’s definitely Trouble.’
I had no idea what she was on about, but what with all the empty bottles and the fact that Sally was a bit flushed I just smiled back. ‘Who is?’
‘Reuben Wilde.’
Even his name sent a
little thrill through me. Did it? Or do I just think that now, looking back on it?
‘What are you on about, Sal?’ Mum said. ‘Pass the crisps down here will you?’
‘We’re sending you lot at Mayfield a present. A St Augustine’s cast-off. Rather an interesting one too.’ Sally’s an art teacher at St Augustine’s, a super-posh private school where loads of celebs and Russian oligarchs send their kids.
‘He’s been to more expensive schools than you’ve had hot dinners. Started at Harrow and worked his way down from there. Been kicked out of all of them for assorted and inventive misdemeanours. Anyway, the rumour in the staff room is that now his old man’s run out of patience or money or schools that will take him, depending on who you believe. So now he’s off to Mayfield. Because whatever he does they’ll never kick him out.’
‘What did he get kicked out of all the schools for? Is he a psychopath? Sociopath? Habitual drug user? Anarchist?’ I asked.
‘Oh.’ Sally stifled a hiccup. ‘I couldn’t possibly say. It would be completely unprofessional.’
‘Like this whole conversation hasn’t been completely unprofessional,’ Mum said.
‘Well, you’ll have to ask him,’ Sally said. ‘He hasn’t had an easy time of it really. He’s a good kid underneath it all. Well, maybe not good exactly. Likeable?’ She thinks about it. ‘Interesting. Not like some of them. Just . . . well, like I say, Trouble.’
‘Hmm,’ I said, trying not to sound too interested, ‘I’ll look out for him.’
‘Oh, you won’t need to,’ Sally said. ‘He’ll make himself noticed.’
So when Reuben strolled into my history lesson two weeks later, all tall and stylishly bedraggled, hair hanging down over his left eye, a cigarette behind one ear and several earrings in the other, and only the most token of gestures towards school uniform, I’d been waiting for him, anticipating him. He smiled dazzlingly at Ms Horace (who he’d caught mid bubonic plague symptoms and was none too happy about being interrupted) and said in his poshest voice, ‘So sorry I’m late. Got a little held up. Have I missed all the fun?’, like he was attending a soiree in 1920s Belgravia, probably with Jay Gatsby and/or Noel Coward. And I actually had to stop myself from smiling a big, embarrassing smile. Ever since Sally had told me about him I’d been building him up to be something exciting and dangerous and complicated and magnificent.
And he was.
Ms Horace didn’t seem to share my opinion. She gave him her best and most contemptuous death stare, whipped the cigarette from behind his ear and snapped, ‘Sit down, will you?’, gesturing towards the only empty chair in the room – which was next to me – before moving seamlessly back to pustules. I half smiled at him as he slid into his seat, trying to look conspiratorial rather than adoring, and he winked at me before turning to survey the rest of the room. His gaze settled quickly on Soraya Jones (everyone’s gaze always does – she’s eye-hurtingly beautiful) and he leaned over to me and whispered, ‘Hey, babe, what’s her name? With the long black hair?’
Ms Horace fixed Reuben with a look that left us in no doubt that she fervently wished it was within her power to inflict the Black Death upon him, and continued with her graphic descriptions of buboes in the underarm and nether regions and the vomiting of blood, without once taking her eyes off him. And I remember thinking that really I should have found him quite ridiculous, not to mention annoying. But instead I just felt happy that he was sitting next to me.
So when Ms Horace told us to write a paragraph from the perspective of a plague-ridden villager, I scribbled him a note that said:
Soraya. But her boyfriend Paddy is a boxer. Just so you know. Also never call me ‘babe’ again. EVER. I’m Hattie ☺
He sent me back a note that said:
Thanks Babe ☺ Do you think Ms H is fantasizing about me dying in agony of exploding armpits and groin? I do.
So I sent back a note that said:
Yes Babe, I suspect she really is
Which was when Ms Horace spotted me and gave me a half-hour detention on Friday afternoon. And that was where I was, in a stuffy classroom that smelt of stale sweat and hormones and cheese-and-onion crisps, when I spotted Reuben through the window, walking arm in arm in the sunshine with Soraya Jones.
* * *
Next time I saw Reuben, a couple of days later, he had a black eye and a really nasty cut across his cheekbone, and a split lip just for good measure.
I caught up with him as we pushed our way out of the classroom and down the stairs and grimaced in a way that could have been sympathetic or repulsed. ‘Warned you about Paddy.’
He put his hand up to the cut and pressed it gently, wincing a bit.
‘Sore?’ I said.
He nodded and smiled. ‘Kind of attractive, though, right?’ he said hopefully, heading through the door out to the lower-school playground and then holding it open for me with his foot. ‘It’ll make girls want to look after me?’
‘No,’ I said, walking next to him down the steps. ‘You just look . . . misshapen. And thuggish. A misshapen thug. That’s not attractive in any possible way.’
‘You say the sweetest things, babe,’ he said.
‘Don’t—’
‘I’m kidding,’ he said, elbowing me in the ribs. ‘Holly.’
‘Hattie.’
He laughed, flinching because it made his lip hurt. ‘I know,’ he said. And I couldn’t tell whether he was lying or not.
It’s all been pretty much like that ever since.
Gloria takes out her notebook and writes a few notes as I’m talking. I try to read upside down but she spots me and holds the book at an angle so I can’t.
‘It’s nothing interesting,’ she says. ‘Just the key facts so I don’t forget. He doesn’t know you’re pregnant?’
‘No.’
‘Are you going to tell him?’
‘NO. I mean, yes. I don’t know. Does he really have to know?’
She doesn’t say anything, just watches me intently.
‘He’s in France at the moment anyway,’ I say. ‘I can’t tell him in an email or on the phone, can I?’
‘What’s he doing in France?’
‘I dunno. Travelling. Finding Himself. Getting drunk and stoned a lot, I expect. Having sex with lots of people. That kind of thing.’
‘Well, yes,’ she says, putting her notebook away. ‘They do go in for all that in France, don’t they? Always liked the French.’
‘Have you been? To France, I mean?’
‘Yes, lots of times. I don’t suppose I’ll ever see Paris again now.’
I look at her, trying to imagine how it would feel to know you didn’t have long.
‘Well, instead of sitting here feeling sorry for yourself why don’t you go? I told you, I’ll take you wherever you want to go. What’s on your bucket list?’
‘My what?’
‘It’s a list people make of things they want to do before they . . . well, you know.’
She looks at me.
‘Kick the bucket. You know, like – I dunno. Go up the Eiffel Tower. Or run a marathon. Bungee-jumping. Threesomes. Go to the Maldives. I mean, I’m not saying that’s what you’d have on yours obviously—’
‘Threesomes?’
‘Yes,’ I say, wishing I hadn’t mentioned it now. She looks at me questioningly.
‘It’s when, um, people – three of them – have . . . you know . . .’ I try to work out whether ‘sex’ or ‘intercourse’ would be better and I realize that neither would.
‘I know perfectly well what a threesome is, thank you very much. But I thought you said this bucket list was supposed to be things I’d never tried before.’
‘You mean you’ve . . .’
She looks at me and raises an eyebrow.
‘Well,’ I say, coughing and feeling myself go red. ‘Anyway. The point is, it’s up to you what goes on it. It could be anything. Stuff you’ve always wanted to do. Or maybe going to more places you care about like we did today, or pe
ople you want to see while . . . while you can still remember. I could take you. Just like today. Just tell me where you want to go. They call it a trip down memory lane, don’t they? Well, we can literally do it.’
Gloria looks uncertain.
‘“Tis in my memory lock’d and you yourself shall keep the key of it,”’ she says thoughtfully, more to herself than me.
‘What?’ I ask.
‘Ophelia,’ she says. ‘Act one, scene three.’
‘Does that mean yes?’ I say hopefully.
‘Let me think about it.’
It’s starting to get dark by the time I leave. When I get to the door I turn to her.
‘What made you change your mind?’ I say.
‘About what?’
‘About me. About all of it.’
She stops and there’s a long pause. I wonder whether I’ve offended her in some way, or whether she’s forgotten we were having a conversation.
‘It was because of something you said.’
I look at her.
‘What?’
She doesn’t answer me.
‘Do you remember what I said about memories?’ she says at last. ‘Without them we are nobody.’
I nod.
‘Well, I don’t want to be nobody,’ she says quietly, to herself more than me, I think.
I’m starting to understand. If Gloria tells me her memories, they can’t be lost. She can’t be lost.
‘There you are,’ I say, as Gloria saunters elegantly into the Savoy bar as if she own the place. She’s an hour and ten minutes late, and I’ve been sitting feeling unbelievably self-conscious, because I feel horribly out of place, not to mention broke, as the drinks are a bit beyond my price bracket. I’ve made my glass of sparkling mineral water last as long as possible, watching the barman mix incredibly beautiful jewel-coloured cocktails for well-dressed tourists, and checking my phone, trying to look calm and sophisticated. My fake-serenity hasn’t been helped by the fact that a text arrived about fifteen minutes ago from Kat saying: You’re 8 weeks now, right? Embryo is size of a raspberry according to book. Have u seen doc yet? I’ll try and call u soon xxxxxxx. So, all in all, I’m in a pretty bad mood, but even in my annoyance I can’t help admiring Gloria’s poise as she walks in.
How Not to Disappear Page 10