He actually drove carefully, his over-caution underlining the fact he shouldn’t have been doing it at all. In fact he was going so slowly that some kids rounded a traffic island on the wrong side of the road to pass him. I don’t know what infuriated him the most, the temerity, the danger or being overtaken. He was straight after them, and caught them at the next lights. I was hoping they’d go right through, but they didn’t. Their lawlessness only went so far. I guess when he got out of the car and strolled up to theirs he expected them to make off. If they had everyone might have saved face. They could have laughed. He could say he had frightened the life out of them. And I … There was nothing in it for me.
They didn’t make off though. They got out of their car. There were four of them, just kids, seventeen, maybe eighteen years old. He started threatening them, telling them what he would do to them if he ever caught them pulling a trick like that again. They burst out laughing. Of course he wouldn’t catch them again, not in a city of six million. They weren’t amused though, weren’t laughing because a joke had tickled their fancy. They were laughing in cold-blood, relishing an opportunity that had come their way. They really were lawless. The rules dictated they provide a few obscenities, maybe a few threats and then make off, scarper as fast as they could, but no, they were happy with this, loving it.
They approached Donald, chins protruding, lips pursed, leering, and then without any preamble one of them started hitting him. Again there was no let out. The boy was hitting him hard, brutally, smashing his fist into his face and kicking him. The others kicked him as the opportunity allowed. I began to scream and jumped out of the car as well. One of them came straight for me. Donald started shouting, shouting at me, telling me to get away, get back in the car, but it was too late. I had stumbled into existence as well; I wasn’t to be allowed to back out.
I stood my ground. What else was there to do? It was obvious he was coming to hit me. He came right up. I saw his arm go back. Before he could do anything I struck, slapping him in the centre of his face. I caught him with the edge of my palm. It took him by surprise, but incensed him. I hit him again in the same place. Bubbles of blood appeared at his nostrils. At the sight I began to scream. Having drawn blood I was terrified.
I screamed with all the strength I could muster, declaring aloud: I am deaf and I am pregnant. I screamed it over and over, trying to defend myself with it, trying to settle the world with its terrible reason.
I don’t know whether the complaint had any affect. By then other cars had stopped and the kids took off anyway. As their car sped away I was sobbing, still repeating the reality that only a small behind ear device offered. I am deaf and I am pregnant.
Eventually I quietened down, refusing any assistance that was offered. I went up to Donald. He was sitting on the ground, conscious, his knees up, his head hanging between. Drops of blood splashed slowly onto the pavement in front of him from his nose. I knelt down beside him wanting him to accept my concern, wanting him to want me. I spoke his name, trying to shape my feeling for him in the word, as if experimenting with it.
He cocked his head towards me. He growled bitterly: Why the hell did you say that?
I didn’t reply. What could I say to him? It was true, I said it because it was true.
He jumped to his feet. He stood over me, his face twisted with distaste. He asked the same question: Why the hell did you say that?
I shook my head slightly, inquisitively, at a loss. I told him I thought they were killing him.
I was sure he was going to shout again, make another complaint, but instead he slapped me. As soon as he had done it he looked horrified. He moaned aloud, hesitated for a moment, obviously in two minds as to what he should do next, and then quickly made his way back to the car.
I thought he intended to drive off, but he waited. I got to my feet and followed. I sat down beside him without uttering a word. He immediately started the engine and drove me back to Camden. I got out of the car still without either of us speaking. As soon as I slammed the door he drove off.
He came to see me the next day, early, before he was due at work. He apologised, but his voice remained angry so there was a complete mismatch between words and meaning. It was either a lie or there was something more complex going through his mind than simply saying sorry. I would have queried that rough, raging apology, except his top lip was swollen and he spluttered his anger, reducing it somehow, for me, making it absurd, making him absurd. The man who had nine hours earlier struck me was making a demanding apology and seemed ridiculous. It was all I could do to stop myself laughing, though I couldn’t suppress a smile. To layer absurdity on absurdity he took that smile as a gesture of consolation, took it as the response he wanted: an indulgence towards his shamefaced penitence. So, I realised, it was all about him, the slapping and the being sorry, his story. I shook my head. It didn’t matter. He would take anything I did in his own way. He said he couldn’t stand it, blurting the words out, assailing me with them. My being pregnant, I queried? No, deafness. Deafness? He couldn’t stand my being deaf, I queried again, uncertain then whether I wanted to laugh or cry? He shouted aloud, at the ceiling – at the sky, I suppose, sun or moon, immaterial – no, no, no, using it, abusing it, playing it for deranged young thugs.
I told him quietly, without any fuss, that it was my choice. He blustered without managing a single word. He looked ever more absurd, his lip swollen beneath his nostril which was pulled slightly out of shape. The more I looked the more I realised that the whole of one side of his face was misshapen. One eye was deeper inside the orbit than the other, the flesh around it plump and mottled. In another day or so he was going to be black and blue. Strangely, he didn’t provoke my sympathy, but then, that wasn’t what he had come for. He would say he despised sympathy. He had come to explain himself, without explanation, other than the inference that his rage conveyed that his was a complex world-view.
I don’t think the radiologist saw himself as anything less than a rebel, an individualist, an artist maybe. He was the one who had broken with his Presbyterian background, the elder brother staying put, though deep down it was all pretence and lies. He could never fully relinquish it. He was always a member of his church, whether he admitted it or not. He never abandoned the notion that it was God who was seeking him, not the other way round. That was why he was always at war with himself: reasonably he wanted to believe one thing, emotionally quite the opposite. At heart he was a very traditional, conservative man, who wanted to be completely different and insisted he was. In all honesty, as an artist, a poet, he could never have produced anything beyond: Collected Silences, Selected Nothing.
If I had laughed at that moment what would have happened?
I couldn’t do it, even though it would have been my choice.
Maybe it would have freed us both. Who knows?
Laughter is always the most difficult thing to predict.
He said he had to go, needed to be at work. He was floundering for words, though I didn’t know whether he was eaten up by remorse, anger or blind confusion. When he reached the door I called to him. He turned expectantly. I shook my head. He banged out. I was only going to ask whether he was sure he should go to work with his fat lip and swollen orbit.
I was relieved when he had gone. If he had ventured any closer he might have smelt the gin on my breath from the previous evening. I knew I shouldn’t, just as I knew I shouldn’t still be smoking, but I am not going to pretend, not now, not going to deny that after he had driven off and I had gone inside I had drunk, three, maybe four glasses, even though there is no one to know.
Chapter Eleven
I went to see Mr Drake. He lived in the same small terraced house he always had. Even houses on the same row differ enormously in terms of grandeur and design. Mr Drake’s was smaller than most. He examined me on the doorstep, his entire poult face involved, eyeing me, sniffing me, listening for something, guarding, all of his expression pulled into it, giving him a suspicious, y
et hurt air.
‘‘Am I not welcome? I was once. We were friends. You said we were friends.’’
He looked around me, weighing something up, almost as if he hadn’t understood a word I had said and was bemused by his lack of understanding.
He smoothed his hand over his thin, neatly cut grey hair, moved his silver glasses for no apparent reason and then said: ‘‘The Shed’s gone, long gone.’’
‘‘There’s a meat van, but nothing else.’’
‘‘I don’t know about that.’’
‘‘Don’t know there’s a meat van?’’
‘‘Don’t know there’s nothing else.’’
I smiled. ‘‘You always liked to tease, Mr Drake, that’s what I always think about you, that you liked to tease.’’
‘‘A bit of fun does no harm.’’
I shook my head. ‘‘Do you still like to tease?’’
‘‘I don’t know about that.’’
I shrugged, and in a lowering voice – which I meant to be teasing, but whether alluring, I can’t say – said: ‘‘For a man who has seen so much, suddenly you don’t know very much.’’
I believe he was going to treat me to the same refrain, but thought better of it. Instead he got straight to the point, his voice soft yet sharp, quiet but not without its own warning. ‘‘What do you want anyway?’’
‘‘To talk, catch up, you know, find out what’s new.’’
‘‘Nothing’s new. Nothing’s going on. I do my own thing. I’m retired now, got the time.’’
‘‘And you gave up The Shed?’’
‘‘No, not really. The Shed gave up me. I still watch, all of the time, matter of fact, but just for my own amusement, just for myself.’’
‘‘Do I still need a ticket?’’
‘‘I said, I told you,’’ he began irritably, and then laughed instead, quietly, correcting himself. ‘‘Oh, I see, you’re teasing me. Very good. Yes, very good. No, no, you don’t need a ticket, but the proprietor reserves the right to eject anyone found misbehaving.’’
‘‘Did you ever?’’
‘‘Boys sometimes, bit rowdy, high spirits, nothing serious. Always came back. Made it up, sort of style.’’
‘‘Of course.’’
He led the way indoors, carefully as was his manner, everything lithe but with intent. The living-room was small and cluttered, every surface covered in magazines and knick-knacks, porcelain dogs, horses, ducks and other farm-yard creatures, all manner of vases and jugs, picture ash-trays, plastic and pot, with beach scenes and rudimentary maps. Mr Drake was a hoarder.
He moved some magazines and a pile of clothes and made somewhere for me to sit. I commented on his collection. He gave a brief smile and said he liked to pick up little things, odds and ends he found in town. Besides, a lot of it was his mother’s. It was still her house, after all. I suggested he must be a seasoned traveller these days, there was so much beach memorabilia. He frowned and said that people, other people, friends, brought him things, always thought of him on their travels. People were always gallivanting off these days, he said, day trips to Bowness, Morecambe, Blackpool, and God only knew where. I smiled, acknowledging his popularity. Of course, I knew he was lying and he bought everything himself. He knew people, but he didn’t have friends, and the only family I was aware of was his mother. He had never left her. She died of heart-failure just a few years previously. Her photographs were everywhere.
‘‘You must miss her.’’
‘‘Of course I do,’’ he replied quietly, ‘‘she was a saint, in her own way.’’
‘‘The last years must have been hard.’’
‘‘Why?’’
‘‘Well, I was told she needed a great deal of care.’’
‘‘She was like a feather, and could take her own weight. She never gave up on that. Always managed her own weight. There we are, dear, I’d say, holding her close, so much easier on the spine, down you go, gently does it, and there we are, and shout when you’re finished.’’
‘‘Didn’t you mind?’’ I asked.
‘‘Do you think I should mind,’’ he snapped, ‘‘mind popping my mother on the toilet, mind wiping her bottom? Is that what I should mind? Did she ever mind?’’
‘‘No, I don’t suppose she did.’’
‘‘No, I don’t suppose she did,’’ he repeated, echoing my sentence exactly. ‘‘People have such minds, you know.’’
‘‘I never meant …’’
‘‘Never meant what? Hah, nothing to say. And yet you felt free to say it, free to be hurtful.’’
He turned away and began to pick around the room, pointlessly moving bits of clutter from one place to another as if tidying, a smile apparent across his sharp features. He looked triumphant. He had wrong-footed me and he knew it. There was nothing for it but to apologise. He greeted that with a derisory smile. Nothing was said for a moment or two then he shook his head, dispensed with his fussing and sat down opposite me, quite close, leaning forward, his head bowed slightly. He spoke quietly. ‘‘It doesn’t matter. I know you, Judith Salt, know what you mean. Just a way of talking. But, you’d think it was wrong to care, the attitude of some. I never wanted a medal, but I didn’t want anything else either. You’re right though, she was frail, frail but strong. Maybe she went on too long, but not long enough for me. It’s a quiet, closed world, the one we live in.’’
I smiled, coaxing him: ‘‘You showed us the world Mr Drake, showed us the only other world we knew for such a long time.’’
‘‘Made up, but fun.’’
‘‘And you still, you said?’’
He smiled broadly, like a mischievous child: ‘‘All of the time. The greats, Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, Wuthering Heights, War and Peace, Love. I could watch them all the time. It doesn’t have to be Sunday or Christmas. I watch in the mornings.’’
The Shed was a makeshift cinema. Mr Drake ran it as a sideline, fitting film showings around his shift pattern in the brick factory where he worked as tea-boy, post-boy and ran any other general errands they could think of. He had acquired what he considered a classical education courtesy of films, albeit limited and not always accurate. He said that if a film started with the image of a book with turning pages you knew you were on to a winner, though he was never tempted by the books themselves.
The Shed itself was more or less just that, a small wood frame and panel construction, daubed with creosote, which would hold at most twenty people. He acquired his films from someone he described as a fellow enthusiast who worked in the large cinema in town, The Queens. Presumably he acquired his rolls of cinema tickets from the same source. Mr Drake sat at the entrance with his small cash-box, doling them out and tearing them at the same time. The only heating came from a small oil-burner so people brought flasks of tea and soup. You could smoke in the Shed. Its popularity waned as people acquired their Defiant televisions, paid off on a two weekly Co-op card, but it never closed. If no one turned up Mr Drake would show the film anyway. I don’t know that it ever formally closed. As Mr Drake said, The Shed gave up on him. My last recollections of it are of a decrepit, damp blackened shell, beyond repair.
My first memories are of magic. Our first film was free of charge, though he insisted we have a ticket and he tear it as they did in all the movie palaces. I have no idea what that first film was called. It was about some kids and a horse, someone stealing it and the kids rescuing it. All I remember is an image of the kids looking over a fence, three faces looking straight ahead in my direction and talking in the strangest of accents. I wanted to look over my shoulder to see what they were looking at, though I knew that was stupid and never actually did it. I told myself that behind me there was only Mr Drake and his projector. I never quite got rid of that strange sensation though, and never really worked out whether I liked it or not.
I could never tell whether Abby had taken to the pictures or not. She could never really settle, but fidgeted on her chair, flopping from side to side, loo
king all around, very rarely just at the screen. There must have been something that took her fancy, though, she certainly uttered her name often enough. It wasn’t her usual declaration of existence though, but an awkward, troubled announcement, as if she were shy of herself, which she certainly wasn’t.
After that first film Mr Drake offered each of us a boiled sweet, one red, one green and one orange. Grace and I both said bags red, but Abby wasn’t at all sure. I can still see her, her whole figure and face curling at the same time, again as if she were shy and didn’t know how to take it. Grace took the orange one and dangled it in front of Abby’s face. Abby began to shake and eventually hit it out of her hand.
Mr Drake asked if Abby was all right. There was no displeasure or sympathy in his expression, just enquiry. Grace said she couldn’t hear, that she wouldn’t have heard any of the film, not like us, and maybe that had upset her, though it never had before. We could hear; we had our Medresco hearing aids by then.
After that Mr Drake added special silent features – Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, Mack Sennett – for us, he said, though Grace said the other films were so loud we could hear most of what went on. Abby watched with curiosity and confusion. Sometimes she laughed, but sometimes she laughed when she was scared, even when she was hurt. Harold could never understand or tolerate that. He hated her laughter more than anything. He would growl and demand of Agnes to explain what Abby was laughing at. He knew there was nothing funny, and he knew she wasn’t laughing in that way, but he just couldn’t fathom what it meant. So, as much as he tried to beat language into her, he tried to beat laughter out.
‘‘Yes, made up, but fun,’’ I agreed, methodically, without warmth. Both of our voices had reduced to whispers. ‘‘Where did you get our films from, for The Shed, I mean?’’
‘‘I knew someone in the trade. Like minded. On loan from the big places, a couple of nights, a few pound in his pocket.’’
My Name is E Page 17