Living In Perhaps

by Julia Widdows

  But Tillie was still here, alone in the quiet kitchen, weighing out butter and flour, and Tillie was enough.

  'Would you do something for me?' she said.

  She might not have been able to read minds but she ought to have been able to read faces. I blinked in case mine gave away too much. 'Of course I would. What?'

  'Go and pick me some rhubarb. About this much.' She gestured a vague measurement with her hands.

  It was disappointingly mundane, but, for Tillie, anything. 'Sure,' I said, and smiled.

  The rhubarb patch was down at the end of the garden, by the fruit trees, where some years, if he was feeling like it, Mr Van Hoog cultivated sprouts and kale, and leathery lettuce, and radishes like crimson bullets. (Vegetables were not his forte, too dull and demanding.) And where the children, if they were feeling like it, though usually they were not, hoed and raked and weeded for him. Or – more likely – raided the currant bushes.

  As I walked down the garden I could hear the grating, drumming sound, like stones in a grinder, of the lawn mower next door. My dad's lawn mower. These sounds were always lying there, just there, open to inspection if anyone cared to. Our lawn mower, our clacking shears. The Hennessy voices, their ringing self-confident cries. 'It was definitely out, Caro. That's thirty-love.' 'Unpeg that washing for me, Carolina, there's a honey.' 'Oh, come on, Caroline Clipper, can't you do better than that?'

  On the concrete base of the old summer house Patrick was putting up a new shed. He'd planned to for ages, said he needed somewhere for the less glamorous end of his business, the tools and spare bits of wood. Like most things he planned, nothing had come of it. But today, today I could see him standing there with a hammer in his hand, a panel of wood propped against the tree stump. The makings of a shed were all around him. And with him was a man, a young man, perhaps the most beautiful young man I had ever laid eyes on. They were surveying the pieces of wood laid out at their feet. I walked on down the path towards them.

  'It's just a simple piece of construction,' I could hear Patrick saying. 'Any fool could do it,' and the other man laughed. His head tipped, his dark curly hair fell back. I saw the shape of his brown throat. I've always been a fool for throats.

  'What are you laughing at?' Patrick growled, with fake displeasure. 'Laugh at an old man like me, would ya?' He rubbed his hands together as if he meant business and set his feet wide apart. 'We'll see about that, Eugene. We'll see about that.'

  But Eugene, a tall Florentine angel, a Portrait of a Young Man by Raphael, by Titian, by Giovanni Battista Moroni, just went on laughing.

  I walked past. I went on down the garden, ducking my head under the slumped branches of the apple trees. I found the neglected rhubarb thrusting its stalks snakily out of the couch grass. I pulled that phallic species of vegetable, fruit, whatever you want to call it, I pulled this much (a Tillie's-width, as indicated), just enough to make a fruit pie for all the Hennessys. And then, with the stalks tucked under my arm, I walked back.

  Eugene was stooping now, steadying a length of wood, using the tree stump as a saw-horse, and Patrick was standing with arms folded, watching him. I stopped on the path, six feet away, wondering if I might be introduced. But neither of them said a word, or looked my way.

  Despite it all, despite everything, everything they had ever done to me or said, I had become invisible again.

  47

  Going to the Bad

  I was in the high street one day when Stella drew up beside me in a car.

  'D'you want a lift?' she cried, and it would have been churlish to refuse, so I accepted to please her, willing to be driven somewhere, anywhere. The car was a Hillman with a wide bench seat in the front, luxuriously padded in fat corrugations. Stella patted the seat and I slid in. 'Now don't get mad at me, Carol. I haven't passed my test yet, but I needed to pop into town and Warren was away, so I just took the L-plates off.'

  She pulled the door of the glove compartment down and there they were, two white plastic squares with luminous red Ls and little pieces of string through the holes top and bottom.

  'Warren's present to me. Not brand new, of course, but it's in very good nick.' She drew smoothly away from the kerb with all the assurance of a legal driver. She was living with Warren by then, at his house out in the countryside. Openly living with him, as my mother insisted on putting it, every time she referred to Stella.

  'He's been giving me lessons. He's very good, very patient. Not like they're supposed to be – husbands, boyfriends.' She glanced in the rear-view mirror, changed gear, took a left into the next street. 'It can be the end of a marriage, so they say. Teaching your wife to drive.'

  She was all efficiency and composure. She wore a navy-blue dress with white buttons, and navy and white leather court shoes. Her earrings were little dots of white in her lobes. Warren was absolutely the best thing that had ever happened to her.

  'Where're we going then? Or are you happy with just a little drive round? A little sightseeing tour?'

  'Shouldn't you just do your errand and get back home as quickly as possible?' I asked nervously. Would I be an accessory if we were stopped?

  Stella let her head drop back and a rich, loose laugh came out.

  We turned against the traffic and came on to the seafront road. Stella drove regally along the front, looking out at the sea from time to time, or commenting on the passers-by. I knew it was all an act to impress me, and I was impressed.

  'I don't know, some of these people, they can't know what they look like or they'd never dress like they do. Look at that one!' She was enjoying herself. Her star was rising, while Bettina's was eclipsed.

  Bettina was having a baby. I wondered if it would have Mandy's mean-eyed features and Roy Tiltyard's lack of chin. Or did Mandy's looks come from her father, dead at twenty and cross about it ever since? Bettina was suffering, sick all the time, losing all her blossomy plumpness even as her abdomen expanded.

  'The flesh is just falling off her,' as Gloria said. 'It's awful. It reminds me of her mother, poor soul.' Bettina's mother, it turned out, had died of some sort of rapidly progressing cancer. Gloria could not name it, of course. She made a face and mentioned some 'internal trouble' and then 'a terrible complaint'. Bettina's mother had swelled right up like a balloon, and then just wasted away. Apparently.

  I still went to Gloria's at least one lunchtime every week, and heard about Warren on the one hand, gentlemanly and generous, and Roy Tiltyard on the other, still living in the flat over the hairdresser's, staring helplessly while Bettina retched over the basin, 'no help to man nor beast'. I trawled up the gossip for want of anything more interesting. I was very glad to hear that though fortunes could go down they could also go up.

  We came to the end of the promenade, did a U-turn in the car park and set off again.

  'There's your cousin,' Stella said, nodding and raising her eyebrows at the same time.

  I glanced over and saw Mandy, the nearest in a crowd of teenagers hanging around by one of the shelters. She was still skinny, still rather small, with a well-used look about her, and a repertoire of exaggerated gestures and expressions like a female impersonator. She favoured imitation leather motorbike jackets, and miniskirts when everyone else had switched to long, and bare mottled legs in clumpy shoes. As we looked she took a step backwards, slapping a boy on the arm of his leather jacket, either laughing or shouting, with her mouth wide open. It looked aggressive but it could have been a joke. No one else in the crowd took any notice. The boy's face, we saw as we passed, was transfixed in a snarl. Mandy swung away from him, twisting out of his grasp, beginning to walk off rapidly. The last we saw was her little white face screwed up and her wide mouth enunciating, even for those not trained in lip-reading, a clear instruction.

  'She'll come to the bad, that one,' Stella said, not, I thought, without a touch of satisfaction.

  But who did come to the bad? Not Mandy, or not more than might be predicted.

  It was us. Brian and I, the model citi
zens, the Scout and Guide, the church-going children of modest, careful parents. We were deemed in need of 'care and control'. Maybe it was our genes coming out, our doubtful inheritance. God knows what kind of stock we came from – horse thieves, mountebanks, cut-throats. Really, someone should be responsible for checking up on this sort of thing. Maybe that's how our parents explain it away, as they sit quietly over their tea, with the radio tuned to a light music programme.

  There were a number of reports written on us prior to the court case, to try and work out the state of our minds and the complications of our background. On paper Brian looked so much better than me. Of course he would. Perhaps that's what he'd been up to all those years, with his solemn church-going, his diligent Scouting, his excellent attendance record at school and work: making sure he appeared, to all intents and purposes, squeaky clean. He might have been an indifferent school pupil but he turned up without fail, and never cheeked his teachers or noticeably got in with the wrong crowd. In fact the only thing his teachers noticed about him was that he didn't seem to be a part of any crowd. And he'd clocked up enough responsible adults elsewhere to vouch for his character. They said he was a quiet boy, eager to please, even, one might say, easily led. Oh, and good with his hands.

  I didn't go down so well. It was known – how was it known? – that my doctor prescribed the contraceptive pill for me; that I had smoked and consumed illegal substances; that I was identified as one of a group who stole from local shops. I was a compulsive liar. Added to which, I had been a poor achiever throughout my school life, and a sloppy and casual figure behind the counter at the dry cleaner's. I had dropped out of all improving activities and appeared to have no aim in life. How all occasions do inform against me. I was clearly out of my parents' control at an early point in my adolescence. Witnesses attested to my unreliable temper, my short fuse. A disturbed start in life was blamed, and defects of character, which the valiant efforts of my hard-pressed adoptive parents failed to correct. I was trouble. I had all the potential for bad that Brian appeared so lacking in. It was a puzzle to them.

  No one seemed to think I might have been persuadable, susceptible. That I might have been easily led by more experienced and manipulative souls. That at numerous points in my life I might have done things, not because I wanted to, because I deliberately and unreservedly made the decision to, but because there wasn't any choice.

  Also I wouldn't cooperate. I wouldn't answer their questions. I wouldn't talk. That really got to them. Even worse, sometimes when they were questioning me I wanted to laugh. Perhaps they saw the ghost of it flitting about my features, a twitch of a smile, too much glitter in my eye. No one likes to think that a house burned down with someone inside it can provoke a little flicker of laughter. No one wants to think that death, accidental or deliberately caused, would make anybody snigger. I can't wholly blame them for taking against me, in the circumstances.

  But I was thinking of the weight of evidence they already had racked up against me and here's what made me want to smile: if only they had seen my portraits as well, my bold and naked flesh, the way I stared out of the canvas, furious and provoking. Then they would have formed an opinion, unshakeable and black, of my defective character. Then there would have been no room in their hearts for doubt.

  Dr Travis spoke to me today. I oscillate between thinking he's Lorna's boss and Lorna's minion. I don't know. He could have been putting in a good word, a kind hint, while she was out of the room. Or he could have been giving me an ultimatum. The final word, from the top man.

  Yes, on second thoughts, I think that's it. I don't think he's training to be anything, I think he is it.

  What he said was 'Carol.' My heart warmed to him. It's pathetic to think I have sunk so low that I feel the use of my name is a kindness. My real name. My own name, the name that I am used to. Or one of them, at any rate.

  'Carol, I want you to think hard about this.'

  I began thinking hard straight away. It was like the Intelligence Test, like my examinations. I thought hard, and my capacious mind, my razor-sharp mind, flew to bits.

  'This is a place of treatment. You will not stay here indefinitely if they think the treatment is not helping you.'

  I could tell his words were carefully chosen, but, for once, carefully chosen words didn't offend me. I don't like to think of people feeling that they have to plan how they are going to speak to me. I hate feeling that they are treating me like a piece of glass. A stick of dynamite.

  'We would like to think that you are being helped. Making progress. But you must do some of the hard work, too. You must try to help yourself.'

  I don't know why I thought his words were kind.

  'Will you try to do that? Will you? Carol?'

  I nodded.

  Smoke in the air: the smell of ruin. My head buzzed. I couldn't think straight.

  Mandy had come round, Mandy, who we hadn't seen in months, had dropped in for a visit, hot on the scent of disaster. The fire engines had only just gone.

  Skinny as a twig in her drainpipe jeans and studded denim jacket, she sat in our lounge delicately drinking tea. 'Burned to the ground?' she asked, craning to see out of the window. The hedge was battered, but still intact.

  'Not to the ground,' my mother said. 'But pretty bad. Bad enough.'

  'Who raised the alarm?'

  'The lady at number twelve. She saw the smoke when she was hanging out her wash.'

  'Anyone hurt?'

  Mum pulled a face.

  'Jesus,' said Mandy, and I saw my mother flinch. 'They're best mates of yours, aren't they, Carol? You were always in and out.'

  My mother was staring at me, but I was staring at Mandy.

  'That boy – that Tom – you know, the one you fancied? Don't tell me he's got hurt?'

  My mother was staring at the carpet now, looking as if she had swallowed a fly. Mandy sipped her tea, unperturbed. 'Where's Brian today, then?' she said. 'What's he get up to these days?'

  'How's your mother, Mandy?' my mother asked. 'Is she blooming?'

  'Bloomin' obsessed. She's papering the spare room with teddy bears. All over.'

  'What, in her condition? Isn't Roy doing it?'

  Mandy reached over to the sugar bowl and popped a lump of sugar into her mouth.

  'Roy doesn't know his arse from his elbow. He'd be no help.'

  I sat listening to this conversation, saying nothing. The buzzing in my head diminished and then rose again, like a swarm of bees getting closer. And it stayed there until the next morning, when at breakfast my mother opened the front door to two policemen. She looked back down the hallway at me: horrified, but not, I saw, surprised.

  48

  Fun

  Every year in the first week of August the funfair came to town. It set up in a straggly park behind the high street, and local boys got into fights and local girls got up the duff and local everyone got fleeced, and then the fair moved on. My mother disapproved of it on various grounds: it was common and dangerous and a waste of money. I went once with Barbara and Jillian, and I agreed; even on a sunny afternoon you could feel the menace. Dubious-looking men – far worse than the bikers at the café – hung off the rides, calling out to us and cat-calling across the alleyways of mangled turf to each other. They took our money and shut us into rattling seats, peering up our skirts as we whirled away. They laughed when we clutched at our hems and clung to the rail and each other and screamed. And when we stumbled off and staggered away they still shouted after us, though their eyes and hands were busy with the next customers. We drank Coca-Cola and ate candyfloss to calm our stomachs, lurched between the stalls where tides of evil music clashed, and shook our heads at the hard-looking women who promised we'd win a giant teddy with a mere handful of hoops. I hugged my arms around myself, longing for Barbara and Jill to say they'd had enough. To my mind, all this fun was deeply depressing. I never went again.

  Until last summer. Last summer Tom said, 'First week in August, isn't it? Is the old f
air still in town? We've got to go.'

  We were sitting in the garden of the Crown and Anchor, Gloria and Eddy's local pub. It was only a backyard, but the sun slanted down into it nicely, and Tom Rose and I were tired after a day earning money. Tom had been on the beach. The slope of his nose was pink with sun, and his habitual pallor was beginning to shift into something healthier. He kicked my outstretched foot and said, 'Come on, we must. All the fun of the fair?'

  'We're tired,' I said. I admit my tone might have been a bit whiny.

  'What's all this we ?' Tom glanced from me to Tom Rose and back again, his eyes bright with wickedness.

  'I mean we've been hard at work all day. Unlike you.' Tom had taken up his job as a waiter again, but he only worked the busy weekend shifts.

  'All the more in need of a bit of recreation, then.'

  'Anyway, the fair's not fun,' I said.

  Tom gave me his scathing look. 'It's a funfair, no?'

  'Are we going or not?' Tom Rose asked. He picked up his pint glass and drained it obligingly.

  'One more drink first?' I pleaded, which was not like me.

  Tom and I said nothing until Tom Rose had come outside again with fresh glasses. Then he turned on me and said, 'You're in a rut, Caro. A big fat stinking rut. Like this whole town.'

  I looked at his reddening nose. 'And you've had too much sun. It's made you cross.' But everything made him cross these days.

  He ignored me. 'Can't you see it? You've been in a rut your whole life.'

  'I don't think that's exactly possible. I—'

  'I'm trying to help you, can't you see? You could do something good.'

  Now Tom Rose made his contribution: 'You could do something spectacular.'

  'Yeah – spectacular.' Tom liked that word.

  'Like what?'

  Tom's wide bony shoulders made the most eloquent shrug. 'I dunno. Firebomb the dry cleaner's, for a start.'

  'That'd go down well,' Tom Rose agreed.

  'That'd give this town a hint.'

  The sun had slipped behind the houses by the time we left, and the air was getting chilly: a stiff breeze straight off the North Sea. I was still in the respectable blouse and skirt I had to wear for work and beginning to shiver.