by Jackie Kay
We went practically everywhere else: Russia, Scandinavia, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Japan, the Caribbean, the United States, Chile, Peru, Cuba, Argentina, Paris, Germany, Italy, Holland. Joss’s trumpet was like a magician’s hat. The minute we came back from one of those places, he somehow managed to capture the atmosphere of the place and slide that into his music. It is not yet dawn. I can see the darkness will soon open up. But for now the sun is in hiding. I make myself some toast and take it back to bed. I climb into my bed and go to eat my toast. I’ve got a plate of butter in my hand. I go back downstairs and search for my toast. I find it finally in the fridge. I am definitely losing it. There is no doubt about it. I have lost my grip. Coming upstairs with my cold buttered toast, I have the sensation that the stairs keep taking a step back from my foot. The carpet is going from under my feet. I feel myself sink and come back, sink and come back. Since Joss died, I have lost my sense of gravity. I get back into bed and lie flat on my back. I lie still like this for a few moments, staring up at the cracked white ceiling. There are some strange bumps in the plaster I’ve never noticed before. I try to focus on one of the bumps. It looks to me as if it is getting heavier, as if the ceiling could just give in any day now. I tell myself I am being ridiculous, but I get up again and go downstairs holding onto the side.
It is raining outside. Horizontal rain, slicing across the sky in sheets. I can’t really go out in this. I pick up ‘Fantasy Africa’ and look at the picture of Joss on the back. Big Red McCall (Joss’s drummer for ten years) was quoted in the newspaper as saying that some members of the audience would make jokes about Moody’s baby face and high singing voice. Big Red flatly denied this. He said, ‘I’d fight anybody who said that. I never suspected a thing.’ I look at the picture on the album cover, but no matter how hard I try, I can’t see him as anything other than him, my Joss, my husband. It has always been that way since the first day he told me. I can’t remember what I thought the day he first told me. I remember feeling stupid, then angry. I remember the terrible shock of it all; how even after he told me I still couldn’t quite believe it. I remember the expression on his face; the fear, that I would suddenly stop loving him. I remember covering his mouth with my hand and then kissing it. But I don’t think I ever thought he was wrong. I don’t think so.
I kiss his picture on the cover. He looks suave, sophisticated. ‘What do you think of it, Millie? Do you think it looks good. Do I look good?’ He can’t believe his luck. He has a wife and he has an album. He can’t contain his excitement at his own success. He has got none of the blasé sophistication that he will acquire in years to come. He tells me it is all down to me, that I have created him, that I am responsible for his success.
He sings a Pearl Bailey song into my ear, changing the name to my own. Oh, Millie had to go and lose it at the Astor/ She wouldn’t take her mother’s good advice. We dance around the room, Joss kissing me and singing at the same time. Had to go and lose at the Astor, at the Astor last night. We make love on the living room floor. He pulls my hair and kisses me all over my face. He pushes himself into me. He mutters things in my ear. I am possessed.
When the love of your life dies, the problem is not that some part of you dies too, which it does, but that some part of you is still alive. Sitting here in our small living-room at Torr, opposite his armchair, what hurts me most is the fact that I am still alive. If it weren’t for Colman, I would not be sitting here feeling this strange sharp pain of the living. Every single tiny thing I do has an odd feeling to it. Stirring my cup of tea. Opening the curtains. Making my bed. I can’t sit at peace. I am up and down the stairs like a yo-yo. I don’t know how to be myself any more. I don’t even know if I am being genuine. I question my own actions as I might question the actions of an actress. The only thing that feels authentic to me is my past.
One day early in my marriage, I’m out walking and I see this beautiful baby. He smiles at me. I ask the mother his age. All the way home to Rose Street, I have that baby’s smile in my head. That night I dream I am pregnant, standing in front of my mirror, turning this way and that, admiring my swollen belly, my heavy breasts, my dark nipples, like dark fruit. Joss lies sleeping next to me, his arm hanging over me. I take his hand and move it away. I feel furious with him. Why can’t he give me a child? He can do everything else. Walk like a man, talk like a man, dress like a man, blow his horn like a man. Why can’t he get me pregnant. My old autograph book from school haunts me. Margaret Baxter writing the daft ditty: ‘First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes Millie pushing a baby carriage.’ It’s pathetic, I know, but here I am saying it in my head and bursting into tears. Will I ever get to push a baby carriage?
Weeks go by with me obsessing about babies. The very sight of them makes me want to cry. I feel jealous of mothers; spiteful. Joss pulled the wool over my eyes. He keeps asking me if something is the matter because I don’t want to make love any more. I only want to make love if it can get me pregnant. One night we are in bed and Joss is drunk after a gig. He starts to climb on top of me. I push him off. He doesn’t stop. I push him off again. And so I tell him. ‘I want a baby.’ The room goes quite still. I can hear the air outside listening to us. Joss is silent. He looks like I’ve slapped him in the face. Like I’m playing dirty. I tell him he tricked me, he made me fall in love with him, that I couldn’t do anything else but marry him. He keeps saying, ‘This is not fair, Millie. Don’t be like this.’ If he could, he tells me, he would love to get me pregnant. If he could he would love to watch a baby grow inside me. If he could, he’d love to get into bed at night and stroke my big belly and listen to our baby’s heartbeat. If he could, he’d be a good daddy. A baby made out of both of us would be beautiful. I am crying. He’s crying too. Everything comes crashing in. Miracles are not possible. He says, ‘You never said I was expected to perform a fucking miracle, did you? Did you? Did you?’ I can see his anger now, flaring suddenly out of his tears. His love for me is being shaved into small curls of wood on the floor. Sawdust. His heart is made of wood. ‘If you want a baby that badly,’ he says coldly, ‘you’d better leave me while you are still young.’ It is my turn. I pull his head towards me and kiss his face. I lay his head across my chest. Stroke his back. His back trembles like an injured animal. We listen to the night together, to the odd car rumbling past, to somebody whistling in the dark. Then sleep takes both of us and holds us too tightly.
When we finally wake up, it is as if we are waking in another time. Things are so different between us. I wish I hadn’t said anything. Now this imaginary baby is in both of our heads, wreaking havoc, having tantrums. Joss gives me a cold look that cuts through me. It is awful to see cold looks on your loved one’s face. I feel like I’m in a nightmare. We have never rowed before. I thought we’d sorted it out last night, but he has woken this morning, sour. ‘Joss?’ I say, softly, ‘Joss?’ ‘What!’ he says roughly. On his face, underneath the coldness, I can see a bright fire blazing. Fury. I pluck up the courage to ask, ‘Are you angry with me?’
‘What do you think?’ He’s getting himself dressed violently, pulling on his trousers, tying the belt too tight.
‘Where are you going, Joss?’
‘Out. I’m going out.’ I try to stop him. I tell him I’m sorry but none of it works. I have hurt his pride. I think I have hurt his manhood.
I will have to let it go, my image of the small baby in the Silvercross pram with a navy hood, sleeping snug under a white blanket, oblivious to the world, like a dream. I will have to let go of her, my imaginary daughter. I feel like there is no tomorrow. If I can’t have a baby, I can’t have tomorrow. I’ll be trapped in today and never have tomorrow. Joss doesn’t understand. He doesn’t want a baby. He wants me. That’s all he wants.
Late afternoon, Joss returns and announces quite unexpectedly that if wanting a baby so badly is making me unhappy, I can have one. He says it as if it is a simple matter of going down to a shop and buying one, like you would a puppy. ‘How c
an I have one?’ You could sleep with someone else, he tells me. ‘I’m sure it wouldn’t be difficult. Go on holiday and get off with somebody. What about Brett? I’m sure he fancies you anyway. You needn’t tell him what you’re up to. You can just let him think you’re being unfaithful to me.’
‘I could never do that,’ I say, shocked. ‘What do you take me for? I could never sleep with anyone but you.’ A big smile smudges Joss’s face. ‘Well,’ he says, ‘we could adopt a baby.’
‘But we wouldn’t know what we’d be getting,’ I say.
‘Don’t be daft. We wouldn’t know that anyway.’
‘What would we say was our reason for adopting?’ I ask.
‘We’d say you’ve had a hysterectomy,’ Joss says.
‘No, we’ll say your sperm count is too low!’ The look on his face is a picture. I laugh so much my stomach hurts.
One of the bits in the papers said something like, ‘Millie Moody must have felt lonely and frightened. Must have felt she was sitting on a time bomb.’ But of course it didn’t feel like that at all. I was never lonely, seldom frightened. I am frightened and lonely now. Our secretary said to me the day before I left to come here, ‘You’ll get over it.’ From the look in her eyes, even she didn’t believe that. I miss Joss. All this fuss has made the missing worse. I am the only one who can remember him the way he wanted to be remembered.
When I came down the stairs this morning, there it was lying in wait for me. The letter.
Already lying there on the hall floor like that, it looked far from innocent. It looked culpable. Or am I going mad? I trust my instincts. I always have trusted my instincts. I had a bad feeling the moment I saw that letter lying there and I was right. I should have burned it. I should not have bothered to open it. It has this address on it. It hasn’t been forwarded on. It is not Colman’s writing. Somebody else knows I am here. Who else can know I’m here? I put the letter on the mantelpiece to play for time. It ticks beside the clock. I try to finish my breakfast.
I start lighting my fire. I snap the kindling and tear up the newspaper. I roll it and tie it. I take a match out of the large box of matches and light the fire. Then I bend down and light the letter, holding it in my fingers. I watch the ends of the paper curl and recoil, blackening first round the edges, until the whole thing is sucked into my fire. Now it is ashes. She is a liar. This Sophie Stones is a liar. There is no doubt about that. It is all I need at this moment in my life – a nasty liar. Colman would never talk to such a person let alone ‘collaborate’. If she had talked to Colman, she would surely know how to spell his name. ‘I am interviewing Coleman,’ she writes, ‘about Joss Moody. I’d like to talk to you about her too.’ How vicious of her to try to pit my own son against me. She has the nerve to offer me money if I ‘cooperate’. I mustn’t even think about it. I must put the letter out of my mind.
But phrases from the letter flicker in my head. ‘I’m not being funny but—’ ‘Both sides of things.’
PEOPLE:
The Doctor
Doctor Krishnamurty arrived at the house of Joss Moody at three in the morning. Weekend duty. As soon as she entered the house she smelt the unmistakable smell of death. From the smell of it, this man had been a long time dying. The doctor did not relish a home death. It was the only time when she wished she was a hospital doctor and could hide in the sanitized hygiene of hospital death.
The doctor asked the wife if she had noticed the exact time when her husband had drawn his last breath. Mrs Moody had. She said it was the first time she’d actually looked at the clock in what seemed like days. It had been 1.12 a.m. She had phoned some time later after she had sat with him alone for a while. She knew, she said, it was the last bit of peace she would get with him. Mrs Moody had the air of someone who has been coping for so long so well she didn’t know how to stop. The look of someone who would not cry for some time, who would organize the funeral efficiently and then break down in a heap in six months. Doctor Krishnamurty patted Mrs Moody on the arm and said, ‘You must be exhausted. Would you like me to prescribe a sleeping pill?’ Mrs Moody didn’t want a sleeping pill. She wanted the doctor to get on with it and leave her house. She wanted to be alone.
Doctor Krishnamurty was shown up the stairs and left in the room alone with Mr Moody. There is a strange quality to an ordinary room with a dead person in it. A new kind of silence. A stillness. It was not just a room with a body in it. Everyone called it ‘the body’, but for Doctor Krishnamurty, so soon after the death itself, it was not just a body to her. It was a man, a person. Even a soul. Perhaps that was what she could feel in the room, the tangible sense of the soul departing. Or perhaps it was to do with the company the dead keep. Not emptiness. Not nothing. But something.
Doctor Krishnamurty got out her medical certificate and started filling in the obvious, prior to her own examination. Time of death: 1.12. Date: 21 July 1997. Sex: Male. She then felt the pulse which was quite empty and listened to the heart which was silent. She undid the pyjamas to examine the body. There were many bandages wrapped around the chest of the deceased which she had to undo. The bandages were sticky and sweaty. They were very difficult to remove. Doctor Krishnamurty felt as if she was removing skin, each wrapping of bandage that she peeled off felt unmistakably like a layer of skin. So much so that the doctor became quite apprehensive about what kind of injury the bandages could be hiding.
When she first saw the breasts (and she thought of them again driving home, how strange they looked, how preserved they looked) she thought that they weren’t real breasts at all. At least not women’s breasts. She thought Mr Moody must be one of those men that had extra flab on top – male breasts. But they really were too big for that. They were even a different colour slightly from the rest of the body. Also, the doctor was struck by how young these breasts looked compared to the rest of the body. They hadn’t aged. It took her pulling down the pyjama bottoms for her to be quite certain. Doctor Krishnamurty wondered at the woman waiting for her downstairs.
She got her red pen out from her doctor’s bag. What she thought of as her emergency red pen. She crossed ‘male’ out and wrote ‘female’ in her rather bad doctor’s handwriting. She looked at the word ‘female’ and thought it wasn’t quite clear enough. She crossed that out, tutting to herself, and printed ‘female’ in large childish letters. Then she put the medical certificate in the envelope, wondered what the registrar would make of it, sealed the envelope and closed the door on the dead woman. The last thing she saw before the door had closed completely was the bandage lying curled on the bed like a snake.
She handed Mrs Moody the medical certificate certifying the death in an envelope. She gave Mrs Moody a searching look, but found nothing in her face to indicate anything. She decided to say nothing except, ‘You will need to take this envelope with you to the registrar when you go to register the death.’ Mrs Moody nodded, said politely, ‘Thank you, doctor,’ and the doctor left. She drove off in her white car at quite a considerable speed.
The pale, bloodless light dawned on her.
COVER STORY
He never hit me. Never raised a hand or a fist. A belt, a buckle or a boot. I’ll say that for him. Not once. Hardly ever raised his voice. Didn’t need to. He’d hold my hand in the street. Liked that. Holding my hand in the street for people to see. Father and son out and about in the street. People that didn’t know I was adopted said things like, ‘You’re your father’s spitting image, you are.’ What I wanted when I was a kid was to look like my father. You could write a list of things after his name. Good-looking. Talented. Charismatic. When I was little, I could coast, bask in his glory. ‘Joss Moody’s son.’ It was all right, it was, being Joss Moody’s son. Only when I became Colman Moody did everything start to become a total fucking drag. It’s a tall order when you are expected to be somebody just because your father is somebody. The children of famous people aren’t allowed to be talentless, ordinary fuckwits like me. It’s the enhanced gene pool theory. Except I d
idn’t have his genes which should have got me off the talent hook scot-free, but didn’t somehow. I never figured that out. I mean, what am I? Colman Moody the guy who tried to be an au pair in France and got knocked back. The guy who did two years of a four-year course. The bloke who hung out in India for a year taking people on trips on his rubber dinghy. The guy who flopped his A-levels first time round. Colman Moody, son of Joss Moody, the famous trumpet player. You know the one. The one who pretended to be a man and fetched up a woman at his death. Conned his own son. That boy must have been thick. Two planks. Colman Moody the guy who didn’t do nothing.
I can tell you things. I’ll tell you things, no problem, anything that interests you, right. But my life isn’t all that eventful. Scandals don’t make events happen, do they? I mean it has only become eventful now; after his death. Then the life, the one I thought I knew I’d lived, changed. Now I don’t know what I lived. It suddenly isn’t the same life. It’s a whole different ball game. Know what I mean. I haven’t got the same life.
When I’d tell people I was adopted they’d say things like, you could have been brought up in another part of the world, with rich parents, poor parents, Mormons, communists, fascists, bankers, Catholics, Methodists, zoo-keepers, serial killers. You could have gone straight to a cold old orphanage. Yes, Cole, you could have been a Barnardo boy. Or one of them poor sods that’s been abused by those psychos in care. Let’s face it, a pal of mine said, adoption is a lucky dip. Lucky you ended up where you did. I’d like to find some of those fuckers now. Ask them what they think of this. The children of lovers are orphans anyway. I forget who it was that said that. Some bright spark. It about sums me up.