First Aid

by Janet Davey

  ‘Well, you said straight away there was nothing untoward. Then, when Joanna came off the phone, she said you were going to give her a lift home.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  ‘I thought you must be up in London,’ Dilys said.

  ‘I told you he wasn’t,’ Jo said.

  Dilys glared at her and Peter looked inept.

  ‘It’s good of you to come all this way to fetch them,’ Geoff said.

  He sounded grateful, though Jo knew he didn’t want them to leave. His remark was a reflex – some bygone male solidarity.

  ‘You’d tell us if anything was the matter, wouldn’t you?’ said Dilys.

  ‘Yes,’ Peter said. ‘Yes, of course.’

  It was bare as a reply, but it would do. He had always colluded with Jo in fielding Dilys’s interrogations, without getting any better at it. She could hear how she and her ex-husband sounded – as if they were in some kind of conspiracy. She marvelled that loyalty could be piecemeal; some aspects of it, like this, ingrained and others sent flying. He could be unfaithful and go and live with another woman. But he wouldn’t call her names in front of her grandparents, or give anything away.

  ‘You look under the weather,’ said Dilys.

  Peter looked as if he hadn’t slept, but Dilys wouldn’t put it like that. It would invoke bed and aspects of life best not drawn attention to.

  ‘This extra driving won’t do you any good,’ Dilys said, ‘if you’re going down with something.’

  ‘You can’t rely on Sunday trains,’ said Geoff. ‘Engineering works. Rob got stuck last year when he came to stay with us, do you remember? He sat outside Dover Priory station for an hour and a half.’

  ‘They could have stopped longer if they’d wanted,’ said Dilys. ‘They’ve only just arrived. I can’t see what the hurry is.’

  ‘It’s easier by car,’ said Geoff. ‘They want to take the opportunity.’

  ‘We’ll be here again soon,’ Jo said. ‘I promise.’

  She knew she’d compromised her grandparents. With Peter there as a third party she could hear them, circling the situation, not understanding, but unable to leave well alone. They were too decent to be false. She should never have come. She hadn’t run back to them when Peter had left. She had had more sense.

  When had she and Peter last been here together? She couldn’t remember a particular occasion. She must have been pregnant with Annie. She hadn’t known it was the last time, or the day might have stood out more clearly. Visits to East Greenwich revolved around meals and hot drinks between meals, board games and card games, turns round the garden. Peter’s parents had laid on more elaborate arrangements. Trips to local beauty spots and lunches out in country places.

  ‘Are you ready to go, Rob?’ Jo said. ‘We’ll be leaving soon.’

  She and Geoff and Peter were still standing up. Annie was heavy in her arms, but she didn’t want to put her down. She used her as a shield. Annie clung on.

  ‘Nothing to do. Done it all,’ Rob said, shaking himself awake, surprised to be spoken to. He had taken himself off to some comfortable hollow where he hoped not to be disturbed until ordinary life returned. ‘There’s just that stuff.’

  The bags were still stacked in the middle of the floor, like overnight contributions to the charity shop. The best place for them, Jo thought. Or in the back garden with a match put to them. Only she hadn’t got the nerve to do it. She would have to pretend they weren’t so numerous, have the family help her carry them to Peter’s car, move them across the country and rediscover them at the other end.

  ‘There’s always a lot to carry with children,’ said Geoff.

  No one contradicted him and Annie was too little to know what was being heaped on her. Jo looked down at her. The clothes she had on could have been squashed into a mug.

  ‘We’d better think about going,’ said Peter. ‘Beat the Sunday drivers.’

  ‘That’s right. There’ll be plenty of them,’ said Geoff. ‘The forecast’s good.’

  Peter and Geoff began to pick up the bags. They went to and from the car. Dilys watched them from the front window as they went up and down the short garden path. When the removal was complete the whole family ended up in the narrow hall with the door shut again. Proper hospitality demanded this.

  ‘You look after that cut of yours,’ Dilys said.

  ‘I’m all right, Gran,’ Jo said automatically. ‘Don’t worry about me.’

  They didn’t take long to leave, once they had made up their minds to go. The claustrophobic goodbyes and kind intentions in the small hallway became airborne when the door was opened.

  Jo got in the car next to Peter. The kids were strapped in the back. Geoff and Dilys stood by the gate to see them off. This was how things used to be. They hadn’t made much progress. Geoff waved. He always put a lot into a wave and Jo always felt sad when she saw it.

  2

  KNEES WERE WHAT you noticed, and hands, when you sat next to someone in a car. Jo had spent time looking at them only a few days ago. Felpo had to concentrate on the road, but she enjoyed sitting next to him. It never felt as if they were locked up together. This morning, in Peter’s passenger seat, it was easier to stare out, rely on steady speed through the moving landscape. He had changed his car. The old one had been smaller and less plush. She did her best to be lulled, but travelling eastwards, stopping fitfully through the outer London suburbs, with the sun shining brilliantly through the glass, she had to make an effort. She looked vaguely at the houses as they peeled back, then, with more attention, at those beside the traffic lights, fated to be examined a thousand times a day. Home improvement was the only drama, windows flung open, rooms exposed like stage sets, ladders propped against walls, skips wedged against garages. Other upheavals stayed hidden.

  They drew level with another family. Jo looked at them. Four heads under a low roof, the dad with his arms wrapped round the steering wheel for comfort, the mum offering none, two kids in the back, already in a trance. So they also must have appeared – no one speaking.

  The road broadened into a dual carriageway. She stretched her legs, relaxed into the seat. Peter shifted slightly next to her. Speed calmed them. There would be an end to this journey. There was flat built-over land to the north, no sign of the Thames, flat bitty countryside to the south, no sign of the Downs. The traffic ahead coalesced again, channelled into a single lane. The temporary signs had an air of permanence. They were back to stopping and starting, watching brake lights, breathing in exhaust fumes through the open windows. Peter would say something soon. Free Recovery, Jo read silently, Await Rescue. Excuses formed like bubbles, overblown, then popped before she’d caught them. She had no excuses.

  ‘Your grandparents seem well,’ he said.

  ‘Yes. They’re fine, I think,’ she said.

  ‘Older, of course. But in pretty good shape,’ he said.

  This wasn’t what she had expected. He fell silent again. More minutes passed.

  ‘Would you ever have bothered to find out where she was?’ he said.

  So, that was how he’d begin. The pleasantries hadn’t continued. She had guessed the tone, though not the exact words.

  ‘What kind of question is that?’ she said.

  ‘It’s a question.’

  ‘Yes, then I would have bothered, as you say.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘I don’t know. I told you it was no kind of question.’

  She could have stopped all this by initiating what he would consider to be a grown-up conversation about Ella’s welfare. She could stop it now.

  ‘She’ll be all right. I’ll talk to her,’ she said.

  ‘I should bloody well think so.’

  ‘I just said I would.’

  ‘That’s not the point, though, is it?’

  Jo didn’t reply.

  ‘What are you going to say to her, then?’ he said.

  ‘I don’t know. In advance.’

  ‘You must have some idea.’

/>   ‘I can’t rehearse conversations like that.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘We live together.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘We’re used to each other. I’ll know what to say when I see her. Her face.’

  ‘Pity it didn’t work before.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘This understanding between you, based on living together.’

  Jo knew she had asked for that. She said nothing. He saw in her replies a travesty of calm rationality. She knew they were based on inattention. Because his own way of talking was functional he assumed everyone else’s was. She should have stuck to particular points.

  Checking up on what Ella was doing every minute of the day was impossible. Peter didn’t understand. He’d left when Ella had been a real child, only reaching as far as his chest. Life had been different. Jo tried to keep track of where Ella was, as if accompanying her daughter in her mind would ward off trouble, but this was superstition. Mothers weren’t meant to be guardian angels. Whenever she tried to follow her daughter mentally, she failed to get past the first five minutes. She didn’t know where to put herself. Whether to be a shadow tagging along behind, or to be herself, pretending to be Ella. It was simpler to keep Ella at the back of her mind, then, when she wasn’t where she had said she’d be, or too much time had elapsed, to trouble herself with inflammatory images. The car spinning off the road, the hands round the throat, the tide coming in too fast. This was what passed for concern, love even. It was the way mothers thought.

  Since Friday, she had lost the will to think.

  The traffic from the opposite carriageway was cutting across on the diagonal. A lorry swayed past them, a looming shape blocking the light. Jo flinched.

  ‘What did you do that for?’ asked Peter.

  ‘I didn’t mean to. I thought the lorry was going to hit us,’ she said.

  In a moment they would be through the road-works. There it was – Free Recovery At An End. The oncoming cars were safe back on their own side. Peter put on speed again, but the trick didn’t work a second time.

  ‘So this fellow’s gone for good, has he? He won’t be living with you.’ Peter paused between the words in the wrong places. He was embarrassed.

  ‘I wouldn’t have thought so. I don’t know,’ she said.

  ‘So you might still see him?’

  ‘Probably not,’ she said.

  ‘What does it depend on?’

  ‘I don’t know. Whether he’s around or not, for a start. He won’t be. I don’t expect he will be.’

  ‘You could decide not to see him. Couldn’t you? Or is that beyond you?’

  Jo said nothing.

  ‘Have you gone stupid or something?’

  ‘That sort of thing.’

  She undid her seat belt.

  ‘What are you doing?’ he said.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘I thought you were going to jump out.’

  ‘The family failing. No. I couldn’t breathe.’

  She snapped the fastening shut again.

  ‘He’s violent,’ he said.

  ‘He isn’t. Once. That was all.’

  ‘That’s enough, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes. Yes it is.’

  ‘You’re contradicting yourself.’

  ‘Yes. It happens.’

  ‘I need something more positive than this from you.’

  ‘OK,’ she said.

  ‘The kids are in the back,’ he said.

  ‘I realise.’

  ‘So, I’m being careful what I say. Don’t take advantage of that.’

  Their children were entirely silent. Annie either asleep or listening in that intent way that small children do. The dissonance repels and attracts them. The uneven speech and threadbare intervals. They’re able to reproduce them perfectly themselves in later life. Rob would be trying not to hear, trusting that at some point the conversation would end, convinced his own adult life would be saner. Jo hoped for his sake it would be. She didn’t turn round to look at him.

  ‘You were frightened when it happened. Admit it. You ran away from him. Back to Geoff and Dilys,’ Peter said.

  ‘Thanks. It was a mistake. I didn’t think about what I was doing.’

  ‘And you are doing now?’

  ‘No. I don’t know. I’ve already said I don’t know.’

  Only once she had said, as though isolated cases had immunity. She guessed, though she couldn’t be sure, that there was a difference between the piling up of fear and its sudden impact. It had been so quick. There had been no time to adjust. She had said so few words to Felpo – but that moment had been her chance. It could have gone either way. People said that sometimes. Either way. She should have laughed as if she meant it. He’d have seen it too. They would both have laughed. They could be laughing now. She should have been angry. I-can’t-believe-what’s-happening. Yelling, running all the words together. They were quite similar, laughing and shouting. They required energy and noise. She hadn’t managed either response. She and Felpo hadn’t been used to falling out. Those patterns in which, after five minutes’ injection of new material, she says what she said last time and he says what he said last time – the familiar pitching which ends more often in faintly nauseous sleep than in plunging over the side – they hadn’t even begun to form, they were years away. They had been too close to be of use to each other.

  Peter had hit her once. He’d grabbed her right hand and held it tight while he slapped her arm. That was well before Tara. It had happened near the beginning of their marriage. She couldn’t remember what the row had been about but she could remember exactly where she had been standing. Next to the bath in the bathroom of their old house. There had been a lot of wet washing hanging over a rack. Surely the row couldn’t have been about washing? Perhaps she had shrunk something or the colours had run. She had hit him back.

  ‘What do you want to do when we get there?’ Peter said.

  His voice was different. He was trying. She would try too.

  ‘I don’t mind.’

  She hesitated. ‘There’ had no meaning. It had vanished. She had always liked getting home after being away, carrying on with the present after a shot of something different which was already the past. Now she had to concentrate to remind herself what home was.

  For a while they were silent.

  ‘Have you been on holiday yet? You went to Spain in September last year, didn’t you?’ she asked.

  He didn’t reply straight away. ‘I thought we were talking about making arrangements,’ he said.

  ‘Sorry. Yes, we were. What are the choices?’

  He took his eyes off the road for a second and looked at her. You don’t have to look at someone’s face if you’re driving and up till now he hadn’t. He looked ahead again.

  ‘I think it would be best if I took Rob and Annie home with me,’ he said. ‘Then dropped you off with all your stuff and made sure everything was all right.’

  ‘What do you mean, all my stuff?’

  ‘All your bags. In the boot.’

  ‘Oh, them. Yes. I’d forgotten about them.’

  Jo could see them cluttering up the pavement, but nothing behind them. An infinite stretch of paving, without a house in sight.

  ‘You’ve worked it all out then?’ she said. ‘What we should do?’

  ‘It was a suggestion. You don’t have to agree. There’s no need to be touchy.’

  ‘I just wondered what was the point of asking, if you’ve worked it all out.’

  He didn’t reply.

  ‘Was it witches who had to choose their own punishment?’ she said. ‘They could say whether they preferred to be burned or drowned? I’m sure I’ve read that somewhere.’

  ‘I don’t know. It was a test, wasn’t it? Is that what you’re thinking of?’

  ‘Could be,’ she said.

  ‘If they stuck the witch in water and she survived, it showed she was a witch. If she drowned, they knew she must
have been normal,’ he said. ‘No, that can’t be it.’

  It seemed likely enough, Jo thought.

  ‘What made you think of that?’ he said.

  ‘I was thinking about choices. I thought we were talking about them.’

  He seemed to take a slow breath.

  ‘Is your back hurting?’ she asked.

  ‘No, it’s fine. Why?’

  ‘You used to get backache from driving.’

  ‘Tension, probably,’ he said.

  ‘What did you mean, make sure everything’s all right?’ she said.

  ‘It’s obvious, isn’t it?’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘For God’s sake, Jo.’

  ‘Leave her alone, Dad,’ Rob said, suddenly. ‘Mum, do you want to stop? We can stop. Or we can go back to Gran’s.’

  ‘Christ Almighty,’ said Peter. ‘What is all this? Believe me, we are not going back anywhere.’

  Jo could only see the surface of the road. Her feet were pulled along it. She was on the train again, but too close to the rails. There was no floor but the train was moving, the metal passing suavely on both sides, the wooden sleepers flicking by underneath her.

  ‘Mum. Are you OK?’ The voice came from very far away.

  She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. When she opened them, the road was outside again.

  ‘It’s all right, Rob,’ she said. ‘We’ll go on.’

  Having parked the car, Peter came up to the flat with her, Rob and Annie tagged behind. When they got to the small landing at the top of the stairs Jo realised that the place was banal and empty, at peace with itself. She noticed Peter’s fists relax as soon as he got inside. He hesitated, listening, but there was nothing to hear but the household sounds of the kitchen clock and the fridge working hard in the heat. Perhaps he’d expected blood on the walls. He seemed to be staring at them. Two of her drawings, dog-eared at the corners, were pinned next to the calendar. One was of a pair of glass candlesticks standing one behind the other, the second of the stairs rising up through the shop. Peter asked if Ella had done them and Rob said, no, they were Mum’s. Peter said they were interesting; she should do more of that sort of thing. Jo shook her head.

  Rob said he’d stay at home with her, but Jo didn’t encourage him. She said that she was going to go to sleep and all three of them – even Annie – looked at her as if she were in a hospital bed. Perhaps she had said it too wearily. Then they said goodbye, glad that visiting time was over. She heard Annie minutes later in the street outside, talking, happy. They drove off with all the bags in the car with them. That was tactful. The flat was as tidy as a desert. Jo had never seen it look like that. She couldn’t remember having cleared up on Friday afternoon. Everything was washed up and put away, Annie’s toys out of sight, the rubbish put out. It would have smelled in the heat. The assortment of chairs, squared-up round the table, looked across at each other like difficult guests. The windows had been left slightly open, top and bottom, and two of the main lights were still on. Sixty watts outshone by daylight. Jo didn’t switch them off. She wandered round the rooms looking for other signs of previous occupancy, but found none. Nothing extra in the fridge, nothing taken out of it, the bed properly made, the towels dry in the bathroom. He must have been back, though, because his things weren’t there – nothing. What remained, her own belongings, she looked at with hostility.