by Louise Beech
‘I only wanted one thing when I grew up,’ he said very softly, so that goose pimples spread over my arms. ‘I wanted a daughter. Most men want sons, you know, to carry on their names, and do “guy” stuff with. But girls are way cooler.’
I think that moment was the last time I was absolutely happy. It wasn’t long after this that he died. That happiness faded like his photographs. Now I don’t even fully recall how it felt to be that happy.
Mother called us again, slightly louder. Dad ruffled my hair and we went to eat with her.
Now I tried to cling to the memory. To him. I imagined Dad stroking my hair and kissing my nose and saying he’d got everything he wanted and nothing bad would ever happen.
9
Losing with four aces
It was the day of my first Flood Crisis shift. I’d not slept more than a few hours. Fern stood next to the sofa, silhouetted in the dawn’s half-light. Face shadowy but white shirt luminous, she leaned close to my cheek and said, ‘I’m freaked out. He had me pretend to be a psychiatric nurse and wash him and shine a light in his eyes and put him in a strait jacket; we made one from a sheet!’
‘Who the hell are you talking about?’ I pulled the pillow over my head.
‘Paul.’ She sat on the sofa and handed me a coffee. ‘He was surprisingly seductive last night. Sexy in an intellectual way. When we kissed, he suggested shock-treatment role play – even that I could have gone with if he hadn’t wanted me to say, “Bite down on this strap, big boy.”’
I spat my coffee out. ‘This cannot start my first day at Flood Crisis.’
‘I think it’s the best start – fake shock treatment to suicide.’ Fern unclipped her hair. ‘Anyway, I have a column to write.’
She disappeared and I had a shower. The phone rang as I dried my hair. John, the man in charge of the builders renovating my house, said there were some serious problems with my wiring. He needed to meet me to discuss it before the floor went down. Could I meet him later, he asked. I said I had a commitment. He said that this was important stuff. Wires were life-changing. We agreed to meet at the house the next morning.
My mother rang straight after, asking if I was going to visit on Sunday, because if so she would bake a cake and maybe buy a balloon or two for my birthday. My birthday always reminded me of Nanny Eve, hers being a week later. How old would she have been? Did she see that I never forgot hers now?
When the phone rang a third time, I ignored it.
I’d soon be answering them non-stop.
At one I left for the bus. I like to be early for a first shift anywhere, and with so many streets blocked by caravans and renovations the buses were irregular. I put playing cards, a book, an apple, some crisps and my key into a bag.
Outside, puddles from the previous night’s sleet had frozen. Grey clouds drifted by like old sheep, and stiff trees lined the street. Ten minutes’ shivering in a graffiti-covered shelter later, the bus arrived; I dropped the correct money into the driver’s tray and turned and looked straight at Will. His lips parted slightly as though anticipating a kiss. Had he seen me in the bus shelter, watched me climb on the bus, stupid and unknowing? His being there was as strange as if a horse sat cross-legged in the front seat wearing a tutu.
A woman with a baby on her hip and a buggy in her hand pushed me and said, ‘Come on love, you’re blocking the bloody aisle.’
‘Sorry.’ I was shoved closer to Will.
‘My car’s in the garage,’ he said. ‘They think it’s the alternator.’
Long hair curled about ears I’d once stroked and whispered encouragement into. Two shirt buttons had popped open, freeing the fine chain his grandma had left him when she died. I realised he held a hand; a hand adorned with a silver bracelet from which dangled charms. A hand I imagined would resist being tied to a bedpost.
‘This is Miranda,’ he said of the hand.
I clung to the overhead railing as the bus lurched from one stop to the next. Miranda was beautiful; like Audrey Hepburn. Black hair framed a creamy complexion. She was purity on a dirty bus, with a lace blouse and long eyelashes, not stubby, uncurlable ones like mine. I loved her hands; they made me want to cry.
An old man with a plaid shopping trolley got up from the seat adjacent to theirs and shuffled to the doors. It would have been silly not to take his place, so I put my scruffy bag over my ravaged, unladylike hands and sat.
‘This is Catherine,’ said Will, and Miranda nodded.
Had they discussed me in detail? Had he described my many moods and oddities?
‘We’re going to meet the estate agent. Last-minute things to arrange. I sold the flat last week – got the asking price too. We’re moving away.’
I wished he would stop telling me things I hadn’t asked to hear; things that invited questions I was too stubborn to ask.
‘Where are you going?’ I had to ask that.
‘Glasgow,’ she said, and the accent told me it was her home.
‘Lovely.’ I couldn’t think of anything else to say. ‘When?’
‘A week on Friday.’ She smiled, showing perfect teeth.
‘Lovely.’ My palms felt like a million ants were crawling over them.
‘Where are you going?’ asked Will.
‘My first shift at Flood Crisis.’
‘You’re going through with it, then?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ I said.
His free hand fingered his brown belt, and I remembered the time he suggested we tie one another up: only with scarves that could easily be undone, only for fun and only if I wanted to. I was nervous and felt self-conscious at first. But then I’d insisted he tie me so I couldn’t pull free. It was so much easier to be fastened to his brass bedpost and have my neck bitten and his hands inside me than to consider whether I loved him. If he tied me, I couldn’t leave. If he’d gagged me too, we might still have been together.
‘Will you volunteer for Crisis Care in Glasgow?’ I asked him.
‘No. This is a good time to leave the place – new doors and all that.’
He’d loved it at Crisis Care, so I wondered if Miranda had influenced the decision. I studied his mouth – he bit his lower lip like he always did when nervous. He’d done it when he first said he loved me. I’d told him he didn’t. He’d insisted he’d never loved anyone like this, and I said that even if he did, I’d probably only ruin it. He never said it again.
And I ruined it.
‘I’ve given Crisis Care two years,’ he said. ‘It’s time to move on.’
That’s how I’d felt about our relationship; it only lasted five months but it was the longest I’d had. It wasn’t that I didn’t love him – I might have done. It wasn’t that he was unattractive – quite the opposite. It was that I preferred it when he hurt me. Or when I hurt him and we argued and then made up. When we were at Crisis Care more than away from it, that’s when I felt alive.
I’d often heard a line in my head and was never sure if someone had once said it to me or if I’d read it somewhere: It’s not love unless it hurts. I said it aloud once to Will, and he’d asked what I meant. I wasn’t sure but now I thought it might just be true.
‘I bet you have a pack of cards in your bag.’ He motioned to my lap.
‘Why would she?’ Miranda’s charms tinkled as she laughed.
I opened my bag and took them out. They had Marilyn Monroe on them; she wore a different swimming costume for each suit. My favourite was the hearts: she wore a green bikini and still had mousy hair; was looking over her shoulder with a big smile.
‘You never beat me,’ said Will. ‘You could have four aces and still lose. Remember – I took all your fruit pastilles and you still wanted to play? When you find another bad player, that’ll be your soul mate.’ He fidgeted with his belt again.
‘You know I don’t believe in that soul-mate stuff,’ I said.
‘We should play cards, sweetheart,’ said Miranda.
‘Catherine and me used to play at Crisis Care.’ Will touc
hed her cheek and she nuzzled against him; I looked out the window. ‘They were long nights and we had to stay awake somehow.’
He didn’t tell her what else we did when it was just the two of us and the nights were long and the phones mercifully silent. I wondered if he ever thought about when I undid his jeans and straddled him in the worn, corduroy chair. The phone had disturbed us halfway. Will had pulled my hair as I withdrew, saying, ‘Just leave it,’ and I’d said, ‘We can’t, we can’t.’ I answered the telephone with my shirt undone, whispering the line I’d said a hundred times, ‘Crisis Care, can I help you?’ She said her baby was stillborn. She was Gina. Gina had taken two bottles of paracetamol. Only sixteen and didn’t want an ambulance.
I had talked to her until my breathing synchronised and sympathised with hers. The words slowed too. Words like ‘cold’ and ‘beautiful’. I listened. Questions would have intruded, so I only spoke to remind her I was there. When she’d been silent for fifteen minutes Will took the phone from me and put it back in its cradle. I didn’t cry. I asked him to take me back to the chair. As Will pulled me back onto him my breaths were as erratic as Gina’s.
My search for release came faster.
Will looked at me as the bus bounced over a speed bump, and I hid my blush with a sleeve. Miranda played with her charms, studying me.
‘I prefer to read cards than play with them,’ I said.
‘I remember. We could never have a game without you telling volunteers they’d come into money next week or they’d be redundant by Tuesday.’
One of the charms on Miranda’s bracelet was a silver rabbit with tiny diamond eyes. It winked at me in the weak light. She stroked Will’s hand and the rabbit jiggled. I’d loved his hands. I wondered if she also enjoyed them scratching her thighs until they drew blood.
‘Will your house be ready soon?’ he asked.
‘After Christmas.’
‘Christmas. Where has the year gone?’
‘I love Christmas,’ said Miranda. ‘I’ll be putting the decorations up as soon as we get to Scotland, and they won’t come down until the twelfth of January. Will loves it all too.’
He nodded, but I knew different. We met just before Christmas and one of the things we had in common was our loathing of all things festive, agreeing that we should just stay in bed from Christmas Eve to Boxing Day.
The bus passed the football stadium and trundled up the flyover.
‘My stop’s next,’ I said. ‘Nice to meet you, Miranda. Congratulations on the move.’
‘Enjoy volunteering.’ She barely looked at me.
‘Enjoy Scotland,’ I said to Will.
He held my gaze as I fumbled for my bag, dropping it and spilling keys and cards on the floor. One card fluttered free and landed near Will’s foot; Marilyn smiled at me from the back. He bent down and turned it over, like a player taking his last chance: the two of spades.
‘What does that mean?’ He handed it to me. Our fingers touched for a moment – his beautiful, mine cracked.
‘Separate ways,’ I said.
The bus stopped, and he let go of the card.
Dizzy from suddenly standing, passengers swam before my eyes. ‘Later, Will.’
As the name left my mouth I recalled that it irritated him. I started to apologise but he shook his head gently. For a second his lips parted, and I thought he would kiss me goodbye, that when he raised his hand he was reaching for my face. But he just turned away.
‘You want this stop?’ demanded the driver.
I stepped onto the path and watched the bus disappear, spitting stones and icy water from its wheels. Even if Will hadn’t said he was moving to Scotland, even if Miranda hadn’t held his hand so tightly, and even if I hadn’t dropped the two of spades, I knew I’d never see him again. I knew it like I knew my mother would insist I was a fool for letting him go. I knew it like I knew Fern would say that there were plenty more fish in the sea.
When my house had flooded and the carpets were saturated with sewage water and the wallpaper came away like old skin, I was helpless. This time it was not water or weather. I had nothing to blame but myself. I could have tried harder with Will. I’d likely never meet anyone with a kinder heart than his, with more tolerance.
But even with four aces, I always chose to lose.
10
The weight of words
A woman in a man’s coat at least three sizes too big pushed a trolley full of dog food up the street, mumbling about mobile phones and cancer. I watched for a moment before returning my attention to the Flood Crisis building.
I had already used the door code, but I couldn’t remember if I’d stored it on my phone under F for Flood Crisis, V for Voluntary Stuff or D for Depression. Climbing the stairs to the front door, I scrolled through numbers. Misjudging the last step, I fell heavily against the concrete, grabbing a railing that wasn’t there. The edge of the step cut me just below the knee. Blood dripped onto the ice.
I found the five-digit code under C for Code, bloodying my phone and then the door as I tapped it in. My DNA stained everything – handles, bricks, wall.
In the mustard-tiled kitchen I searched for kitchen roll, bleeding onto the lino. None. In the windowless toilet I groped for tissue, marking the tiles crimson. I tried to wrap the cheap toilet roll around my knee.
A sound.
I turned. In the hall was a person by the door. I screamed in surprise. Christopher – holding an armful of gold tinsel. His black hair was wet, as if he’d just washed it.
‘I’m hurt,’ I said.
‘What happened?’
‘I fell up the step,’ I said.
‘Up the step?’
‘Yes.’ I imagined the magnified plop of my blood hitting the floor.
‘We should check that. Let me see.’ He put the gold tinsel on the radiator, took off his coat, bent down and looked at my leg.
‘It’s fine.’ I felt uncomfortable with him being there. ‘What’s with the tinsel? Are you a Christmas fairy in your spare time?’
‘You should tie something tight around to stop the flow and elevate your leg.’ He glanced at the tinsel, dangling festively. ‘We need decorations – those are my mother’s cast-offs.’
He went into the kitchen and returned with a damp ‘Thirty-Five Years of Coronation Street’ tea towel. Ripping Deidre Barlow in two, he put the strips over his arm and invited me into the lounge, calling me Hurricane Katrina. I considered telling him my real name but decided I liked the storm-inspired one more. It was a gift I had given myself. No one could ruin it. So I said nothing; I followed him into the lounge and sat in one of the velvet chairs.
‘Put your leg on the coffee table,’ he said.
‘I don’t want to bleed on Barbara Cartland.’
He laughed. ‘She only wants your tears.’ He dabbed my leg with the damp tea towel.
‘I can do that.’ I reached for the cloth, pulling my skirt lower and wishing I’d shaved my legs more recently. My mother would hang her head in shame.
‘You think a man of the world like me hasn’t bandaged a woman up before? This is going to be tight. There. Now, keep it up for a while.’ He wrapped the strip twice around my leg and tied it in a knot. Deirdre Barlow’s bespectacled eye stared at me. I felt foolish and awkward. My coppery hands burned and I scratched the palm. Christopher looked at them but didn’t say anything.
‘You certainly know how to make an entrance,’ he said. ‘Tea?’
Listening to him clinking cups and teaspoons in the kitchen, I stared at the two pink booths. I’d never let go of the rope that tied me to these phones. I thought I’d let it slip away when I left Crisis Care, but, after the flood, moving house, the night shifts and the end of a relationship, I found it kept surfacing. Now it tightened, bound me again. It was why I was back here; I couldn’t cut it.
The door opened. It was Jane who was really Jane. Jangly Jane. She took biscuits and crisps from her bag and put them on the shelf under the table. Her earrings, tassel
led skirt and bangles jangled like wind chimes in a storm.
‘It’s you,’ she said. There was no response to that. She searched on Norman’s desk for something. ‘What happened to your knee?’ she asked. ‘Did you record the injury in the Accident Book?’
I insisted I was OK, that I’d just fallen up the step.
‘We have to follow procedure. Did you bang your head?’
Christopher kicked the door open and brought in two mugs, the gold tinsel wrapped around his neck. He put a drink next to me and dropped the garland into a box labelled ‘Xmas Decos’.
‘Did she bang her head?’ Jangly asked him. ‘If she gets concussion and falls on the way home she could sue us. We’d best cover ourselves.’
Christopher touched her arm, insisting it was just a flesh wound and that I was unlikely to sue a temporary crisis service.
‘Best get the phones on,’ he said, slurping tea. ‘Do you want to wait before answering them?’ He looked at me.
He didn’t know that I already had. I wondered if I should say anything, and wasn’t sure why I felt guilty.
‘I’d like to answer them,’ I said.
‘Should give your leg another half-hour before you move,’ he suggested.
Jangly Jane activated the phones at the main switchboard, and I expected the shrill siren of desperation to start immediately. Nothing. Disappointment uncurled in my stomach. Or maybe it was relief.
‘There was a fault with them the other night,’ she said.
‘What do you mean?’ asked Christopher.
He pinned back a shutter, letting buttery light penetrate the room. Jane grabbed a copy of Horse & Hound magazine and sat on the paisley sofa. Her bracelets tinkled as she flicked through the pages.
‘They were ringing all night when no one was on shift.’ She looked up from the page. ‘We had loads of complaints when no one answered.’
I avoided her eyes.
The telephone rang in cubicle one. It was a sound I often heard in my sleep, in shrieking car tyres on a wet road, on a speeding train, in thunder. I sat up, alert.
‘I’ll get it,’ said Christopher. He took his drink into the cubicle and picked the phone up on its fourth ring. At Crisis Care we were supposed to answer by the third if we could. If it was to keep the caller from waiting it was senseless. Someone who had waited twenty years to talk about something was unlikely to think us cruel for adding another few seconds and hang up in a sulk.