The Bottle of Tears

by Nick Alexander

  She thinks of Sosamma’s conceptual bottle of tears – such a delicate image for the pain we all hold.

  Our first reaction to death or loss is so often to avoid thinking about it, to block out whatever is causing the pain by thinking about other things or perhaps taking drugs – doing almost anything that will stop that pain. But not thinking about it can drive a person insane.

  She thinks, now, of her own life traumas. She compares them with Sosamma’s loss of her son, her house, her country . . . There’s no comparison, really, but every person’s biggest trauma is still that person’s biggest trauma. There is no relativity within the realm of one’s own subconscious. So Penny wonders if she perhaps doesn’t let herself think sufficiently about the things that have happened to her.

  She ‘dealt’ with them, of course, during her own therapy, before she even became a therapist in her own right. But as she has just told Sosamma, these things never go away. They only become easier to bear. And she wonders if she hasn’t been too busy helping everyone else, too overwhelmed by the heft and scale of their problems, to think about her own.

  She visualises again the bottle of pain, Sosamma’s bottle of tears. Because she still has her own bottle she carries around – of course she does.

  She takes a deep breath and pulls the box of tissues back to her own side of the desk. She glances briefly at the closed door and calculates the risk of a colleague coming in. And then she lets herself remember.

  The second Uncle Cecil had left (he had closed the front door behind him so quietly it was as if he were scared of waking someone) Ed and Vicky had begun to run riot.

  Their excitement about Christmas was bubbling over and, once they’d verified that Cecil had not taken his gifts with him, they’d started to run around the house, releasing pent-up energy. It was as if Cecil had been the cork holding all the fun in and, the second he was gone, they became happier and freer and lighter. Penny could feel it, too, and whatever had gone on before was now clearly over. Christmas could finally begin.

  The three of them had run around the house and then out into the small back garden. It was a sunny day, a windy day, and Penny can remember the sensation of her cold knees peeping out beneath her skirt, of the thick blue jumper she was wearing.

  Vicky had pushed her on the rusty old swing, and then Ed had taken over, pushing her higher and higher until the feet of the metal frame lifted and the rope went slack – until Penny got scared.

  But, unarguably, it was too cold outside, so when Marge had rapped on the lounge window and called them indoors, they had executed her orders immediately.

  Marge had been dozing, Penny recalls, and when she woke up she had been strange – both angry and sad at the same time. She had seemed, somehow, like a wind-up toy at the end of its spring. Indoors, Ed and Vicky, their energy inversely proportional to Marge’s, had chased each other around until she came to shout at them. She was watching a film, she said, and she couldn’t hear herself think.

  So they had all moved upstairs, first to Ed’s room at the top of the house, then to the landing, where they began to slide down the bannisters. But when Penny tried to join them, Ed had said she was too little. It was almost certainly true, Penny now realises. She had been unable to even hook her leg over the shiny mahogany bannisters without help from Ed or Vicky. But she had been upset, all the same, to be excluded from the fun and games.

  And so, she had gone down to tell Marge. Sliding down the bannisters, as fun as it undoubtedly was, was strictly prohibited, so she had opened the door to the lounge and sidled to her mother’s side with the intention of dobbing them in.

  Her mother was asleep again, and snoring loudly, a bottle of sherry and an empty glass at her side. On the television screen was a film. Penny can’t remember which film it was, but the star had been someone her mother adored, perhaps Errol Flynn or Mario Lanza. Yet despite the film, and the sherry – things which generally made Marge amenable – she had seemed, once woken, severe and irritated, or perhaps disappointed and upset. Whatever was wrong with her, it made Penny uneasy and hesitant about executing her plan to stop Ed and Vicky’s fun upstairs.

  ‘Shhh!’ Marge had slurred when Penny tried to speak to her. ‘I’m watching this.’

  At that moment, the clock had struck three. God! She had forgotten the grandfather clock, but she remembers it now, she remembers the exact sound of the chime. It had struck three and Marge had leaned forward in her chair, the better to concentrate on her film. Deciding to try again, Penny had reached for the sleeve of her cardigan and had tugged on it. ‘But Mum,’ she had started to say.

  And that’s when it had happened.

  There had been a thud – a horrible, sickly body-blow which had reverberated through the floorboards.

  Both Marge and her daughter had frozen, perhaps for only a second, or perhaps for much longer. They had turned to look at the closed lounge door and they had frozen, mother and daughter in a shared moment of not-yet-actualised terror. And then Vicky had broken the absolute silence of the house with a scream.

  Marge ran to the hall. She began to wail in a way that Penny found terrifying. ‘No!’ she kept screaming, over and over. ‘No! No! No! ’

  Penny had stayed put. She’d stood there in the lounge, with Errol Flynn on the screen (yes, she’s sure now that it was Flynn), and the horrible wailing coming from the hallway, and she’d done absolutely nothing. She had been too scared to move.

  After another indeterminate amount of time, Marge had called for her help. ‘Penny!’ she had said, her voice so deformed by tears as to be almost unrecognisable. ‘Go get Cecil. Run to the station and make him come back. Penny! Go as fast as you can.’

  Penny had stood, her hand on the china door knob. It had tiny pink flowers painted on it. She was too scared to step out into the hallway, too scared to see whatever was out there, too scared to discover what had happened. ‘Penny!’ Marge had shouted again. ‘Now! Or you, Vicky! Jesus! Will one of you, please, go?’

  Eventually, though she doesn’t remember it, she must have slipped through that door. But there’s a gap here, a big black hole bang in the middle of her memories. She must have seen Ed’s body at the base of the stairs. She must, almost certainly, have stepped over him to get to the front door. But she cannot remember it. She never has been able to. Is it possible that she didn’t look? Is it possible she covered her eyes?

  Victoria had been standing at the top of the stairs; this, she remembers.

  Penny now covers her eyes with both hands and tries, yet again, to remember. But though she can see the pattern of the hall floor mosaic, though she can imagine, perfectly, the newel post, that bulbous final bannister which Ed’s head must have struck, there’s a vacuum right there in the middle of her memories.

  Next, outside in the chilled December air, Penny is running to the train station. They’d lived about half a mile away from it, but though she was crying, and though her little lungs were smarting from the freezing temperatures, she had run all the way.

  She had reached the station in time to see Cecil standing on platform three in his three-piece suit and his big grey overcoat, his brown leather suitcase at the side of his shiny brogues. But she did not run to his side. She did not call out.

  She would have needed, in theory at least, a platform ticket to reach him, and for the longest time she told herself that this – the lack of a platform ticket, the lack of money for a platform ticket, even – was the reason she had remained out of sight in the shadowy interior of the station building. But she had worked out years ago that this was not the truth. She still has no idea quite why she did not do as she was told, and even now, even at forty-five, other than remembering a sick feeling, a nightmare sensation of having jelly-legs which refused to advance, she can’t come up with a plausible explanation. But she could have stopped Uncle Cecil leaving. And she didn’t. Of this much she is sure.

  Eventually, a train arrived, blocking her view of Cecil, and when it vanished, he, too, had g
one.

  She remembers walking home slowly. Perhaps she was in shock, but whatever the reason, she was definitely in no hurry to return.

  She remembers, she thinks, banging a stick against some railings. She remembers sitting on a doorstep and running away when the front door suddenly opened. She remembers crying at one point, and a kind man asking her what was wrong.

  By the time she got home, Mr Michael from number nineteen was, incongruously, she thought, mopping their hall floor and Mrs Michael was standing at her gate in an overcoat.

  ‘There you are!’ she had exclaimed, speaking through a handkerchief. ‘We’ve been worried sick. Come inside. Everyone’s at ours.’

  By ‘everyone’, Penny had thought she meant everyone. As in, her mother, her sister and her brother. She remembers feeling elated, feeling momentarily overjoyed. She had misunderstood the situation, that was all. She remembers her confusion when she ran into the Michaels’ lounge to find only Victoria, wide-eyed and silent, and her mother, bent over on the sofa, still weeping.

  ‘Where’s Ed?’ she had asked, looking around the room and then up towards the Michaels’ own identical staircase.

  Victoria had blinked and shaken her head, and Penny hadn’t been sure if she was telling her not to ask this question or if the head-shake was somehow an answer in itself.

  ‘Where is he?’ she had asked again.

  ‘He . . .’ Mrs Michael had begun to say.

  But Marge had interrupted her. ‘He’s at the hospital,’ she had croaked. ‘The ambulance took him, and he’s at the hospital.’

  Victoria, she noticed, was still shaking her head.

  It is 10 a.m. on Saturday, and Penny, still in bed, is reading The Guardian on her smartphone. It’s the first weekend of August and the sun is streaming in through the salt-stained windows, warming her shoulders. From outside, through a cracked window, she can hear waves, seagulls and some shrieking swimmers. It’s a gorgeous combination.

  As she clicks on the Culture section of The Guardian website, Sander’s phone begins to buzz on the bedside table.

  ‘Sander?’ she calls out. ‘Sander! Pho-oh-ne . . .’ But Sander, next door in the en suite, does not reply, so she rolls to her side and reaches for his phone.

  ‘Will’, the screen says, which is strange, because Will is her friend, not Sander’s. In fact, she’s not sure she can ever remember Will having phoned Sander. What’s more, she has been waiting for Will’s call herself. He is due to pick Marge up and bring her down for the weekend, and he almost always calls before they set off from London.

  She swipes at the screen and raises the phone to her ear. ‘Hey, Will,’ she says. ‘You got the wrong number. This is Sander’s phone.’ On the other end of the line she hears what sounds like the faintest of groans, and then a click, before the line goes dead.

  ‘That’s weird,’ she tells Sander, who, still naked, is re-entering the room. ‘That was Will, but on your phone, not mine. And as soon as I answered, he hung up.’

  Sander smiles and as he rounds the bed says, ‘Maybe he wanted to talk to me.’ Then, jiggling his privates, he adds, ‘Maybe he wants a bit of this. Maybe Will and me have secret things going.’

  ‘Really?’ Penny laughs as he climbs back into bed. She places the phone in Sander’s outstretched hand and then pokes him in the ribs. ‘You’re welcome to each other,’ she says. ‘Be my guest. Call your boyfriend and see what he wants.’

  Sander snorts and taps at the screen before raising the phone to his ear. ‘Hey, Will,’ he says. ‘My wife says you want to talk to me, and only me. Which I kind of understand. She does get boring sometimes.’

  Penny rolls on to her side and watches her husband’s expression as the smile slips away to be replaced with confusion, and then a deep, wrinkled frown. ‘Um, yeah. Of course,’ Sander says, his voice transformed as he slides from the bed. ‘Hang on.’ He stands and heads back towards the en suite. ‘Just, um, wait a minute,’ he tells Penny. ‘There’s some kind of problem.’

  Penny watches as the door to the en suite closes, then pulls a face. She sits up and plumps the pillows behind her as she tries to imagine what possible kind of problem would involve Will speaking to Sander rather than herself. A problem with Will’s old car, perhaps? But if that’s the case, Will really has phoned the wrong number. Sander wouldn’t even know where the engine was.

  For the first minute, Penny stares at the closed door as she waits for Sander to return. She then turns her attention back to her telephone and attempts to continue reading the newspaper article on the screen. But she quickly gives up – she can’t concentrate – and stands, instead, and pulls on her dressing gown.

  ‘Sander?’ she whines, knocking on the door. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Just a minute,’ he calls back. After this she hears him say quietly, ‘Yes. God! Yes, of course.’

  When he finally does open the door again, he finds Penny sitting on the edge of the bed, waiting for him. ‘Well?’ she asks.

  Sander looks at her strangely. He chews his bottom lip.

  ‘What is it?’ she asks again.

  ‘It’s Marge,’ Sander says. ‘She’s . . .’ He clears his throat. ‘Look, there’s no easy way to do this, hon.’ He exhales sharply before continuing, ‘She’s dead, I’m afraid, Penny. Your mother’s dead.’

  Penny blinks at him exaggeratedly and smiles crookedly. ‘I’m sorry?’ she says.

  ‘Will and Ben,’ Sander explains. ‘They just turned up at Marge’s place. And . . .’ He shrugs, unable to make himself say the words a second time.

  ‘If you’re joking,’ Penny says, ‘then it’s in very bad taste, Sander. Because that’s not funny at all.’

  ‘I’m not joking,’ Sander replies, now moving to her side and sitting. He slides one arm around her shoulders and takes her hand in his. ‘I wish I was.’

  ‘Really?’ Penny says. ‘Maybe Will’s joking. He can be a real arsehole sometimes.’

  Sander shakes his head soulfully. ‘It’s not a joke, Penny.’

  Penny raises one hand to cover her mouth. ‘But how?’ she murmurs, as tears start to well up, clouding her vision. ‘I spoke to her yesterday and she was fine.’

  ‘In her sleep, they said. They found her when they went to call her for breakfast.’

  Penny shakes her head at Sander. ‘But that doesn’t make sense,’ she whispers. ‘They serve breakfast at silly o’clock over there. Mum’s always complaining about it. If they’d found her at six or seven or whatever, they would have phoned, surely? There must be some mistake.’

  ‘That’s the other thing,’ Sander says. ‘They did. They phoned Vicky, apparently. They told her hours ago.’

  Victoria squeezes the button on her car key and opens the hatchback of the BMW. ‘Here you go,’ she says. ‘Put that bag in there.’

  ‘Are you sure this is a good idea, Mum?’ Bertie asks.

  ‘Why wouldn’t it be a good idea?’

  ‘It’s just that Dad said he’d be home by lunchtime,’ Bertie points out. ‘Maybe we should wait and all go together.’

  ‘No, he had his adventure in Spain,’ Victoria says. ‘It’s our turn, now.’

  She walks around the car to the driver’s side and climbs in. ‘Well, come on!’ she shouts.

  Bertie is still peering at her warily through the open hatchback.

  ‘Weird,’ Bertie mumbles. ‘Truly weird.’ He slams the hatch and rounds the car, then climbs into the passenger seat. ‘Why won’t you tell me where we’re going?’ he asks as he fastens his seatbelt.

  ‘I told you, it’s a surprise,’ Victoria says, smiling blandly at him.

  Bertie shakes his head. There’s something wrong with his mother this morning, but he can’t put his finger on what it is. Beyond her sudden, inexplicable desire for adventure, her eyes have a crazed glassy stare about them. Her face seems expressionless, her make-up thicker and her skin looks somehow smoother, younger – robotic, almost. Even her movements, usually nervous and jerky, like a
scared little rodent, are smooth and placid this morning. It’s most unsettling.

  Victoria starts the engine and then claps her hands. ‘Right!’ she says.

  ‘Do you know where we’re going?’ Bertie asks, noticing his mother’s hesitation.

  ‘Hmm,’ Victoria says. ‘Well, I know where we’re going. I’m just not that sure how to get there.’ She reaches for the GPS and starts to jab at the screen. ‘But I’m sure this little box knows the way. You can be my map reader, if you want.’

  ‘You don’t need a map reader with a GPS,’ Bertie says. ‘That’s the whole point.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘The GPS is a map reader, Mum.’

  ‘You can still look at the screen and tell me what’s coming up, can’t you? I hate having to look at it while I’m driving.’

  Bertie sighs and shakes his head. ‘Whatever,’ he says, despairingly.

  He watches as Victoria configures the GPS but, as she clips it to the screen, it momentarily displays the destination. ‘Blackpool?’ Bertie says. ‘Why are we going to Blackpool, Mum?’

  ‘Damn,’ Victoria says. ‘You weren’t supposed to see that.’

  ‘That’s miles and miles and miles away. That’s, like, up north or something, isn’t it?’

  ‘It’s not that far.’

  ‘Mum,’ Bertie says. ‘You’re scaring me.’

  ‘Scaring you?’ Victoria repeats, reaching down and engaging Drive. ‘Don’t be so silly. Don’t you want to go on a mini-adventure with your old mum?’

  ‘Yeah . . . No . . . Not really. Why Blackpool?’

  ‘I have my reasons, trust me,’ Victoria says, glancing in the wing mirror and pulling out into traffic. ‘Can you look at that thing and tell me if I’m going the right way? I’m never sure which direction to take at the beginning. I always end up having to turn around.’

  ‘If you mean to go to Blackpool, then you’re going the right way, yeah,’ Bertie says, wriggling to pull his phone from his pocket.

  Victoria glances at him and frowns. ‘What are you doing?’ she asks suspiciously.