Second Skin

by Wendy Perriam

  ‘Insects. We saw some further back.’

  ‘I thought they ate birds?’ said Sam.

  ‘Well, they are called bird-eating spiders, but in fact they very rarely eat birds – or so it says here.’ Will was reading the details printed beside the cage. ‘Though they do like the odd mouse or lizard as a treat. And apparently a big meal can last them a year. I’m glad I’m not a spider – imagine only eating once a year. Good God!’ he exclaimed. ‘The female lays over a thousand eggs, would you believe. And this one is female – Sharon’s her name. Sorry, Sharon, for thinking you were a “he”.’ All at once he noticed Catherine’s stricken face. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Nothing. It’s just that … they make me think of Gerry. He loved spiders. Once he had to be one. At drama school. It was a sort of acting exercise.’

  ‘Who’s Gerry?’ Sam asked, sharp-eared as ever.

  ‘My, er, husband,’ she said.

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘He …’

  ‘Did he go away?’

  ‘Yes. Well, no …’ Desperately, she looked at Will. Why on earth had she mentioned him?

  ‘He died, Sam,’ Will said gently.

  She knew he believed in telling the truth to children, but the word sounded dreadfully harsh. Sam was staring at her fixedly, the tarantula forgotten. Several seconds passed. Will tried to show him a second spider, but he continued looking at her. ‘Barney died,’ he said at last.

  ‘Barney?’ A pet, perhaps?

  ‘He was in my class.’

  ‘Oh, a boy at school, you mean?’

  He nodded.

  ‘What happened to him, Sam?’

  ‘He was run over by a car.’

  Clumsily Will took his hand. ‘That was a long time ago, Sam, wasn’t it?’

  He pulled away and seemed to be speaking only to her. ‘We made him a card. We wrote our names and drawed pictures. I did a car. A red one.’

  ‘Was it the car that ran him over?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Will did his best to distract him by suggesting a visit to the zoo-shop, but she could see Sam wanted to talk. He was scuffing his shoes on the floor and still looking at her anxiously.

  ‘Do people go to heaven when they die?’

  She hesitated. They had told her that when she was little and it had upset her even more. Why should her mother live somewhere else, without her? ‘We’re not sure, Sam, where they go.’

  ‘Miss Collins said he went to see Baby Jesus.’

  ‘Yes, maybe he …’ She broke off. What right had she to tell him something Will regarded as myth? The whole issue of truth – or death – was so confusing for a seven-year-old.

  ‘Robin says they put dead people in boxes.’

  Will made an attempt to steer them towards the green light of the exit. ‘Sam, why don’t we go and see the otters? They’re right next door.’

  ‘It’s okay, Will.’ She put a hand on his arm. She knew how embarrassed people got about the subject, though she was surprised Will should be so edgy. No doubt he saw this episode as a blemish on a perfect day. But if the two boys had been close, perhaps Sam had never quite come to terms with Barney’s death. This was a chance to let him talk about it, and at least she knew what not to say.

  Suddenly she tensed. Out of the corner of her eye, she had detected a slight movement. The tarantula. Not scuttling, as she’d feared, but sidling across its cage in a ghastly furtive manner. Horrified, she looked away, tried to keep her eyes on Sam.

  ‘Why do they?’ he was asking.

  ‘Why do they what, darling?’

  ‘Put people in boxes.’

  ‘Well, it’s more comfortable like that. They’re very nice boxes, with silky stuff inside, and flowers on top.’

  ‘Flowers?’

  ‘Yes.’ It was grotesque. Flowers were for celebration, not for death.

  ‘What sort of flowers?’

  ‘Well, Gerry had roses.’ Red roses for undying love. And she had bought a rose bush, later, to be planted in the crematorium garden. It had seemed better than a plaque. At least it was alive, and would bloom in red profusion every year.

  ‘Did you cry when they put him in the box?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you cry a lot?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I cried when Barney died.’

  ‘Mm, I’m sure you did. Was he a special friend?’

  He looked at her a moment, then, without warning, two tears slid down his face. She crouched beside him, gingerly reaching out her arms, afraid he would want his mother and not her. Will, however, was shifting from foot to foot, patently ill at ease. ‘I expect you miss him, don’t you, Sam?’ she said.

  Sam didn’t answer, but more tears glistened on his lashes, threatening to spill over.

  She put her arms round him and spoke as gently as she could. ‘When people die, it’s sometimes quite a while before we stop feeling sad. They’ve been part of our life, you see, and then, one day, they’re just not there. And that’s awful for us, isn’t it? But you do make new friends, Sam.’ Behind his head she could see the tarantula, right up against the glass now, as if about to burs out of its cage. Her natural instinct was to turn and flee, but Sam needed her as mother, so she must overcome the sick churning in her stomach. ‘Have you got a new friend?’ she asked, wiping his eyes with her handkerchief.

  He nodded silently.

  ‘That’s nice. What’s his name?’

  ‘Robin.’

  ‘And do you sit next to him at school?’

  He shook his head, then unexpectedly pulled away, breaking the circle of her arms. ‘Can we have a camel ride?’ he asked.

  She was so thrown by this change of tack, she could only stare at him, but Will came to the rescue. ‘Of course, Sam. We’ll go there now.’ Hurriedly he began talking about camels and soon the two of them were deep in conversation.

  She followed a few paces behind, unable to shake off thoughts of death with quite such speed. Indeed, Gerry seemed to be here with them, studying his beloved spiders. She could hear his voice; see his absorbed expression. In two weeks’ time it would be his birthday and the rest of the family – Andrew and Antonia, Jack and Maureen – had suggested marking the occasion with a visit to the crematorium, as they’d done last year. Although she had agreed, secretly she dreaded the prospect of returning to that deodorized memorial-factory, which sold death at a profit. It wasn’t the money she begrudged, but its association with grief and love.

  ‘Why do they close their nostrils?’ Sam was asking his father.

  ‘Well, it protects them from the sand. Otherwise, on a windy day, it might blow into their noses.’

  Thankfully Sam was preoccupied and appeared to have forgotten Barney’s death. She still felt upset, and strangely exhausted all at once. And she was certainly more worried now about their proposed move to the north. Sam might well experience it as another loss in his life; a new source of rejection. After all, if he was still mourning Barney’s death, there could other things distressing him – his parents’ divorce for one. It would take time and patience on her part to persuade him to open up, but if he came for regular visits, he might gradually start to trust her and confide.

  Will and Sam were striding on ahead and she found it quite an effort to keep up. It seemed miles to the Riding Lawn, especially in the heat, and her steps began to flag, as if the burden of being a stepmother was already weighing heavily. When they finally got there, she was dismayed at the length of the queue, but there was no way they could deprive Sam of his promised treat.

  Will bought a ticket at the kiosk and they joined the line of parents and children. Two of the camels they’d seen earlier were lurching round the sand-strewn track with children on their backs. Sam observed them gravely, and as the queue shuffled slowly forwards, he began to take a closer interest in the details of the ride. He watched each child ahead of him clamber up the wooden steps, where a keeper swung him into the saddle. Then a second keeper led the cam
el on its circuit, after which the child was lifted down again and set gently back on the steps.

  ‘I wonder which one you’ll get, Sam – the brown or the white?’

  Sam didn’t appear to have heard his father, and just stood watching in silence. ‘Is it scary?’ he asked, at last.

  ‘Oh, no. You sit between the two humps and you’re very safe and snug.’

  Sam looked unconvinced and began to drag his feet, in danger of being left behind as people overtook them in the queue.

  ‘You’ll enjoy it,’ Will said, moving him firmly on. ‘It’s fun.’

  Again, Sam was silent; his gaze fixed on the keeper as each child was helped on or off. Finally it was his turn.

  ‘Right, off you go,’ said Will. ‘We’ll wave as you go round.’

  They both smiled encouragingly as the keeper led him up the steps. He reached the platform-top, looked back at them in panic for an instant, then came rushing down again, almost tripping in his haste.

  ‘I don’t want to go. I don’t want a ride.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Sam. You’ll love it.’

  She could see Will was getting exasperated, and gave him a warning frown. ‘Don’t force him, darling,’ she whispered.

  ‘But it’s such a shame when we’ve queued so long and bought his ticket and everything.’

  ‘Okay, I’ll go in his place.’

  ‘Catherine, you can’t!’

  ‘I jolly well can!’ Before he could stop her, she was climbing the steps. ‘You don’t mind adults, do you?’ she asked the keeper.

  ‘Not at all, ma’am,’ he said, though not before a moment’s hesitation. In the fifteen minutes they had been there, no one over ten had volunteered for a ride, let alone any over-forties. She realized people were gawping, not least Sam and Will, but as the camel set off round the track she was so taken with the marvellous swaying motion, she soon forgot her embarrassment. There was a sense of power about being so high up, no longer dwarfed by the trees. And she liked the firm feel of the hump pressing into her back, and the warm woolly fur beneath her hand, and the creak of the leather saddle. Even the smell of dung was strangely pleasing – an earthy smell which gave her more sense of the camel’s living, breathing, eating, excreting existence. She wondered why the creatures were said to be bad-tempered; this one seemed docility itself. The only thing she resented was the stripling of a keeper leading her like a novice on a rein. But she could simply block him out, forget she was in a zoo at all, plodding round a cramped Riding Lawn, ringed with mums and dads.

  No, this was her own camel – a mystic white one, who knew her voice and her touch, and she was crossing the Gobi Desert with the nomads. Bells from another camel-train tinkled faintly on the breeze, and the graceful fronds of date palms seemed to sway to the rhythm of the camel’s tireless feet, the great rocking ship of its body. The light was blurring in a blue and golden haze; the world expanding with each step. Ordinary life had stopped. There was no time in the desert; no work save the task of crossing it; no problem children, or hateful crematorium visits; no rush, or noise, or hustle.

  This is what I was born to do, she thought, with a jolt of surprise, as she gazed into the distance at the rippled sea of sand, stretching shining and unbroken to the horizon.

  Chapter Twenty Six

  ‘Such a pity.’ Maureen stood leaning on her stick, looking at the wreaths and bouquets laid out on the flagstones behind the chapel. ‘All those lovely flowers dying in the heat.’

  Andrew hovered solicitously beside her. ‘Come and sit down, Grandma. There’s a bench over there.’

  ‘Just a moment, dear. I like reading the messages. Some of them break your heart. See that poem, Catherine, with the white chrysanthemums – isn’t it beautiful?’

  Catherine grunted noncommittally as she read the limping lines – the sort of ghastly sentiment you found on greetings cards. They should have called on Will for help. She couldn’t seem to get him out of her mind. Even the once-white cushion of chrysanthemums, now semi-bald and withered, reminded her of the moulting camels at the zoo. And like that day, two weeks ago, this was another sunny Sunday when again she was playing truant from the market. But there the similarities ended.

  She linked her arm through Maureen’s, returning resolutely to the bosom of her family. In any case, Maureen needed support – physical as well as emotional. Her movements had become pathetically slow, and even with the stick she seemed unsteady on her feet.

  ‘Look, Catherine dear, a cricket bat! Isn’t it amazing what they can do with flowers these days?’

  ‘Mm.’ Catherine gave it a cursory glance. The bat-shape was sculpted in carnations, but like the cushion was long past its prime. Stupid bloody thing, she thought.

  ‘I wish we’d done more for Gerry.’ Maureen shook her head in distress. ‘Our wreath wasn’t as special as some of these. But at the time you’re so numb, you can hardly think straight.’

  Catherine steered her towards the next display of flowers. Yes, numb was the word. Frozen in grief, she had left the funeral arrangements to Andrew. Only later did she begin to resent his choice – this prissy, manicured Superstore of Death. She knew Gerry would have loathed it; ridiculed the pompous plaques set into the courtyard wall and ranged around the fountain. Jack was reading the inscriptions out to Antonia – more sentimental claptrap. The whole place was fake, though who was she to talk? She too was bogus, encased in a prim navy frock instead of her normal bohemian clothes. She had even put on a hat, though less for the sake of formality than to conceal her hair from Andrew. Neither he nor Maureen had become reconciled to its ‘butchered’ shape, let alone its colour, and saw it as a worrying symptom of her wayward life in London.

  ‘Oh, look,’ said Maureen, stooping to read another card. ‘A little girl of five. How terrible! We did at least have our darling Gerry for nearly fifty years.’

  Catherine murmured some response, wishing she didn’t feel so irritable. But there was something about the sultry weather combined with the air of gilt-edged sanctity which made her want to scream. Little huddles of people were standing around in lugubrious silence or speaking in hushed tones. Only she was out of tune, restless and distracted.

  Jack shuffled over, leaning on Antonia. ‘Let’s go and sit near Gerry for a while.’

  The five of them trooped towards the Garden of Remembrance, at the halting pace necessitated by Jack’s shortness of breath and Maureen’s arthritic joints. With every step, thought Catherine, they were walking over the dead: trampling husbands, lovers, parents, children. Countless people’s ashes had been scattered here; urns and caskets interred. Even the garden seats bristled with plaques. She had a sudden jarring vision of Gerry as a garden seat – her rumbustious husband reduced to a sedentary object, rooted for eternity in one confining space.

  ‘What a shame the roses are still only in bud,’ Maureen said as they finally reached the garden. ‘They were further forward this time last year. I remember that glorious scent.’

  ‘Well, we’ll be here again on the anniversary.’ Jack squeezed his wife’s hand. ‘They should be in full bloom by then.’

  Oh God, thought Catherine, I shan’t be here – I’ll be living in Carlisle. But missing the anniversary was unthinkable. She would have to drive down from the north.

  ‘I thought it would have been taller by now,’ Jack observed, as they gathered in a group round Gerry’s rosebush. ‘And isn’t that black-spot on the leaves?’

  ‘I’d better talk to that nice man about it,’ Maureen said, peering at a leaf. ‘He was such a help last time.’

  Catherine bit back a retort. The Memorial Consultant, as he liked to style himself, was a hardened salesman dressed in pious black. He had waxed lyrical over the range of urns, especially the most expensive: the ‘Grosvenor’ in inlaid mahogany, or the ‘Aristocrat’ in two-tone polished bronze. She had sensed his disdain when she ordered a mere rosebush, and purchased not in perpetuity – which here meant eighty years – only a measly five.
After that, if she hadn’t enough money to renew it, Gerry’s rose would revert to someone else. Not even death was permanent: plaques were removed, plots reverted, unless you coughed up the appropriate sum every five, ten, fifteen years. Jack and Maureen had paid for Gerry to be entered in the Book of Remembrance in the Hall of Memory (hand-lettered script at £30 a line; emblem £69 extra). His entry ran to an emblem and six lines and, amazingly, cost no more for perpetuity.

  ‘Let’s sit down,’ Maureen suggested, ‘and have a quiet moment for Gerry.’

  The nearest seat was copiously inscribed, sacred to the memory of an entire family: Simon, John, Eliza, Ann and Arthur Grayson. Catherine felt guilty sitting there – the Joneses encroaching on Grayson territory, when the going rate for garden seats was a cool two thousand pounds. She squeezed up to make room for Jack – the bench was built for four, not five. Five was such a difficult number: two loving couples and a hanger-on. She tried, and failed, to imagine Will beside her. He didn’t belong in this part of her life – her former life, as she thought of it now. She glanced at the others, as if through his eyes. Andrew’s face was respectfully composed as he observed the silence for his father; Jack looked close to tears; Maureen was crying openly and Antonia’s head was bowed.

  She fixed her gaze on the rosebush, trying to be equally dutiful. This time last year she too had wept, her grief still painfully raw. Had she become hardened now, inured? The problem was, she had too much on her mind: Nicky’s imminent departure, Fiona’s unexpected return to Gosforth Road, and her own move to Carlisle with Will. She still hadn’t told the family, dreading the protest that would inevitably ensue. In fact, it did seem callous now, turning her back on them all, even Gerry. And disloyal, to be going off with another man.

  Angrily, she clamped her eyes shut. She mustn’t think about it now. And if sorrow wouldn’t come naturally, then she must have the decency to feign it. She put on a sombre expression and tried to concentrate her mind by repeating Gerry’s name to herself.

  ‘Gerry. Gerry. Gerry.’ Irreverent birds were mimicking her; mocking with their exuberant song. A plane droned overhead, a baby wailed, the brutal sun scalded her bare arms. Her eyes refused to stay shut, but darted about, watching other families, seeing Grayson ghosts. The moment’s silence had lasted aeons. She would go mad if it continued any longer – run amok, take an axe to the Memorial Consultant and hack him into pieces. She snatched off her hat, loosened her tight belt. She was hot and tense and sticky, ready to explode. Last night, too, was hot, lying under Will. Hot, but passionately noisy. The man upstairs had banged on the floor in annoyance, and they had paused guiltily, but only for an second. They couldn’t stop – not then – not when she was almost, almost coming.