The blue shoes didn’t look at me the next day. Not in the smoking room or the Airing Court or the dining room. Blue shoes was mouse pretending he had a hole to hide in, he was Boot pretending the night visit never was, looking anywhere but in my eyes.
Hot water dripped from under my hair, down my face; hot water in my eyes stopped me seeing. Hot water down my back, under my arms, down my legs. I shook, I couldn’t stand. Jesus played his drum in my head. I vomited on my knees in the Airing Court. I vomited in the washing room while a blue shoes washed me. I vomited while Nurse Clegg and a blue shoes took me to the sick room and locked me in. I vomited green and then I vomited nothing but grey air and heat. Needles went into my bone and the world turned to moving cloud. I was tied down inside the cloud with straps.
You breathed hard with your mouth wide open – it was a laugh you were doing! It was the devil’s language you spoke. This was the loudest laugh you ever made, your mouth was the hole the laugh came through but it was your body that made this laugh. This laugh made your body go long short long short, this laugh hurt you but could you stop it? No! This laugh did what it wanted, this laugh was bigger than you. It was bigger than the green-sheeted bed you lay on, bigger than the sick room Nurse Clegg locked you in, bigger than One Cott Road and the dark street. This laugh came at the end of the world; this was the last laugh.
The song was loud in your head with words that played over and over, lovely words, loud like bells. ‘I danced on the Sabbath when I cured the lame, The holy people said it was a shame; They whipped and they stripped and they hung me high; And they left me there on a cross to die.’ Your feet felt warm. This warmth moved up from your feet into your legs and then into your middle. The middle of you grew hotter hotter, heat spread through you – Hester you were a girl on fire! It was you in the red wood stove, you burning up, flame and fire coming from your fingers and toes and tongue as you screamed more wood more wood! It was your turn to burn, like tree, axe and spoon. God the Bird and Jesus watched. They waited to see if you would go to them where they waited in eternity.
From somewhere behind your song you heard cool voices. The voices moved you to another room, they wrapped you in green-water sheets but you did not cool no no. You kept burning! You were too hot for them. The cool voices tried to touch you and you left little red spiders on their arms and faces. You burned a long time. Burn burn burn until the world turned to ash.
God the Bird came down, he landed on the branch of a burnt black tree. He held out his wing. Just as I was about to climb on he opened his beak and said, ‘Remember the promise you made.’
My promise floated in front of me in the shape of a kite made of a golden dress. It flew in circles through the air, turning itself into a question then back to a kite again. I held on to the string and I was lifted over the world where I saw all the people’s faces turned up to see me flying over. As I floated, carried by the promise, I saw Norma’s face and it had a tear and it had hope. Hope is what Jesus gave to the corrupted.
I was out of the sick bed and back in the morning room. Some of my pile of sin was left behind in the sick bed, and some in the hands of the white dress who put needles in me and said you’ll live. My green suit hung off me like I was an empty coat in the cupboard. I sat with my back against the wall. Norma came over to me. She was crying. ‘What happened to you? Where did you go?’ I had no strength in my bones for moving. I couldn’t lift a fag for smoking. The wall held me up. Norma hit me on the chest. ‘Where did you go? You said you wouldn’t go!’
A blues shoes came over and put Norma back against the wall. ‘Easy, Norma. She’s been sick.’
Norma was breathing hard, her body filling up and emptying fast. ‘Did you get sick?’ she asked me. ‘Did you? Is that what happened?’
I looked over Norma’s head for the black birds. There were none. ‘I made a promise,’ I told Norma and then I gave her my biggest smile. Norma’s body slowly emptied, then she leaned back against the wall and took my hand.
We were walking in the Airing Court when Norma stopped me. ‘I spoke to my brother last night, Hester. He asked me to come and live with him again. He wants to take care of me.’ We leaned against the wire and looked out at the green world beyond. The wire broke the green world into pieces. ‘I think I could do it now, Hester. The devil’s not coming back because of you. He’s gone.’ She put her fingers into the holes and pulled. ‘I mean if I wanted to, I could do it.’
There was a long quiet. I closed my eyes and I saw the happy face of Norma looking at a river of fast-running water without the walls of Renton telling it when to stop. I took a long breath of air deep inside me. ‘You can go, Norma,’ I said.
She turned to me. ‘But I’d never leave you. You know that. I’d find a way for you to come too, or I wouldn’t go.’
‘Norma, you can go.’
Norma started to cry. ‘But I’d find a way for you to come too. That’s what I’d do.’
‘You can go and live with your brother near the river. The devil’s gone now, he’s not coming back.’
‘But—’
I took her hand, ‘I will be alright – you can go.’
‘I love you, Hester.’
I lay in bed that night, lifted my arms from the covers and drew pictures in the air of Norma’s brother driving in circles over the roof of Renton in his white chariot. Wings grew from the sides, just under the windows. Pebblinghaus ran out onto the gravel path, looked up and pointed at Harrison. All the blue shoes ran out and stood beside Pebblinghaus. Teacups sat on their heads. Nurse Clegg poured pink into the teacups. The blue shoes bent over and drank from each other’s cups and then they fell asleep where they stood as Norma’s brother drove right through the front door of Renton. Norma climbed into the chariot and waved to me as she flew away with her brother, lights shining from the wheels.
‘Goodbye, Norma,’ I said to the picture hanging in the darkness over my head. In my throat there was stone.
We sat in the games room. Ladies looked at the box of tricks. Soldiers locked in the box ran towards a ball. Some fell over and that’s when ladies laughed. Norma laughed too; her face was a flower. There was no laugh in me. In the box of tricks was a world without Norma.
Nurse Clegg came to us in the Airing Court. ‘Your brother is here for you, Norma.’ Norma took hold of me and held me tight; I could feel her heart beat against my chest through her thin shirt. It was the living Norma. She held me and then she let me go. I watched her follow Nurse Clegg back inside.
I sat down on the hard ground. I leaned my head back against the wire and closed my eyes. I looked for patterns behind my lids but there was nothing, not light or dark – only emptiness, the same emptiness that was in the fish’s head when you pulled out the eye. There was no bottom to it. I don’t know how long I sat – was it one hour, one day or eighteen years? A foot touched mine.
‘Up you get, time to go back inside.’ Nurse Clegg frowned down at me.
I was sitting in front of the box of tricks in the games room. ‘Will you come with me? I spoke to Harrison. We can buy you out of here. I will take care of you. You’ve got to come or I’m not going.’ It was Norma.
I started to cry. It was the loud sound of life. Norma held me tight. ‘I told you I’d find a way, Hester. Harrison’s going to offer Pebblinghaus the money from when he sold my mother’s house so that you can come with us. He said nothing will stand between Pebblinghaus and a bucket of money, not even you.’
I lay in my bed and watched my paintings fly around the dormitory, their paper wings rustling and flapping. When they stopped still they turned themselves into the walls of a paper house for Norma, Harrison and me.
We were in the front room at Renton. Norma’s brother was coming soon. Norma had a suitcase but I had nothing. I was wearing the dress that I wore when I first came to Renton. It was too big for me now; I floated small inside it. Norma looked scared; she held on to me as though I would float away if she didn’t.
We sat on two
hard-backed chairs. Pebblinghaus was behind the desk but she never looked at us. She was busy watering the garden with the bucket of money that Harrison was going to give her. The clock above the desk ticked loudly as the hands turned around. Neither of us moved.
A man came through the door. Norma ran to him. ‘Harrison!’ She jumped on him. He nearly fell backwards. He put her down. ‘This is Harrison,’ said Norma. Harrison’s face was hiding in hair. Some of the hair was grey, some of it was red and some of it was brown. He smiled. He had a gap too, on the other side from Norma. His eyes were the colour of leaves in the autumn.
Pebblinghaus said, ‘Goodbye, Norma,’ from behind a desk. She pretended she couldn’t see me but she didn’t stop me leaving.
‘Come on, Hester,’ said Norma. I didn’t know where I was going. But wherever I was going it was with Norma. I made a promise. I followed Norma and Harrison to the chariot. This time it was a brown one with a tray-box on the back.
The three of us sat in the front seat. When Harrison got in the chariot he put a hat with a lot of holes in it on his head and pulled the sleeves of his shirt up. On his arms there were drawings of an anchor and a boat but the boat wasn’t inside a bottle. It was sailing on the sea and a lady with a fish tail was jumping out of the sea beside it. It was Lot’s wife; she had gone to the deepest bottom where it was all salty and she had come up half made of fish and she could swim and wave. Harrison saw me looking. ‘That’s Lillian. My good luck girl. It looks like she’s worked her magic – Norma’s coming home. She says she wouldn’t be coming home if it weren’t for you. I figure I owe you as well as her.’
‘And now we got no money,’ said Norma, smiling her gap. She had an arm through her brother’s. Lillian the good luck girl sat close to the streets cut into Norma’s arm.
‘But we got a home,’ said Harrison.
We were on the road away from Renton. The wind blew in through the open window. Tall trees on the sides waved their silver leaves. The sun was shining on us from her big home. We didn’t speak but we sent pictures along the ropes to each other. Harrison sent one to me of him and Norma when they were little. They were eating cobs of corn and jumping through water. I sent one to Norma, of me and Mary standing at the edge of the puddle, and Norma sent one to me and Harrison of her by herself at Renton looking at the streets across her arms and not knowing what would happen next. I turned back and looked to see if I could see myself holding on to the wire in the Airing Court of Renton, but Renton was too far behind.
We drove in the chariot until the day turned to night. The sun sank into a bed of bright orange. There were black lines mixed in, the way black paint cuts through a red painting. Norma slept with her head on my shoulder, then on Harrison’s shoulder, then back to mine. Harrison stopped at a place as light as Renton, full of other chariots. He said, ‘You girls can go to the bathroom, and I’ll get something for us to eat.’ I followed Norma to the toilets. There were no blue shoes. I asked Norma, I said, ‘Where are the blue shoes?’ She said, ‘Those days are over.’ Harrison came back to the car with pink sweets and biscuits with chocolate and a pie. We ate them as he drove. The sweetness filled me. I was made of light. Eternity was inside me and it had no walls, floors or ceiling. It was dark as night and light as the stars and it was full of pencils.
In the morning, when the sun came out again, we were in the forest that Norma had told me about in the Renton washing room. Norma stretched and yawned. ‘Are we there yet?’ she asked.
Harrison said, ‘You’ve been asking that since you were five.’
‘Well, are we?’ Norma rubbed her eyes.
‘Just at the end of this track.’
The chariot bounced up and down as we drove. The road was made of small rocks and dirt and it got thinner as we went along. Branches from the trees on the side pushed at the windows. There was a bird with feathers that curled up. The bird whistled. Harrison said, ‘That’s my friend, Douglas. He’s a lyrebird. If I could catch him I could play a tune on his tail.’
Harrison stopped the chariot in front of a wooden house. It was the same colour as the trees all around it. A dog came out. ‘This is Harvey,’ said Harrison. ‘It’s only been me, Douglas and Harvey for a long time. We’re not used to female company. You’ll have to teach us the ropes.’ He showed his tooth gap to us again when he smiled and then Norma bent down and Harvey licked her face.
Harrison took us inside. A long wooden table stood in the middle of the room. It had lots of things on it; oranges, candles, tea cups, lemons, ash trays and scattered pencils with paper. Not one chair around the table was the same as another. The window on the wall above one end of the table was a picture made of coloured glass – Christ was forgiving the hunter in blue and purple. The hunter was on his knee with the spear down low. There were spider webs in the corners of the room and dust on the ledges. The sun showed it floating. Harvey jumped up and sat on a big brown chair between a hat and a book. Paintings of creeks, setting suns and horses hung on the walls. Somebody did them with pencils.
Harrison filled a kettle with water. ‘I built it myself, so there’s none of the mod cons. But I made up a couple of beds for you. You can figure out how you want to set things up.’
‘You’ve done so much Harrison. It looks great. It’s big enough.’ Norma looked around. She picked a plate up from the table, then she put it down. Then she picked up a dirty pot, put that down and started to cry. I cried too and then so did Harrison. Harrison looked away and blew his nose on a handkerchief. Norma didn’t look away and neither did I. Harrison gave her a cuddle. ‘It’s over now. I’ll look after you this time. I can take care of everything.’
Norma stepped back, ‘Come with me, Hester.’ She saw me looking at the pencils. ‘You can use those as much as you want later, can’t she, Harrison? Come on, come with me.’
I followed Norma out of the house that Harrison built. At the bottom of the garden was a rusted gate made of lace with no fence on either side. Norma laughed as she opened the gate, and we passed through into a forest. Trees came close, red birds flew down, the ground was moving with beetles, worms, flies. The wind sang along with the birds. Alleluia dance for joy. Somebody played a tune on Douglas’ blue tail. It was the forbidden outside.
Norma walked along the track in front of me. I followed her bare feet over dirt and fallen leaves. The sun was hot on my shoulders. I looked up to the empty, blue sky. It never ended and I was part of it.
Norma and me stepped out of the edge of the forest and there was the river. It was made of wild running water and white bubbles. The river laughed as it rushed, tickled by the green ropy branches that hung on the sides and touched its bubbling surface.
Norma and me pulled off our clothes. Our bodies were shining. We stepped into the water. It was cold on my legs and then it was cold on my stomach. The pebbles were smooth under my feet. Norma went under like John the Baptist. I went under too. Water rushed over my head. I opened my eyes and Harrison’s good luck girl swam towards me. She touched my hair. I came up into the warm light. Norma flipped like a fish. ‘I love you, Hester!’
We lay on the bank of the river, the earth gritty and cool on our backs and legs. The sun dried our skin. A beetle with green and pink spirals in its wing crawled across my hills to the other side then it flew into the reeds. We sat up, trailing our toes in the water. Norma picked up my shirt and put it across my shoulders. She lit two cigarettes. The fire sticks crackled as we sucked back the smoke. When we let it out, the smoke billowed around our faces then it lifted, drifting over us, slowly curling up and around the trees, over the house that Harrison built, over the river, over the forest, then higher, into the light of the sun, and beyond, into eternity.
But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night.
2 Peter 3:10
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