by Nathan Filer
‘Is that blood?’
‘What?’
‘On your top, there.’
‘I cut my thumb.’
‘Let me see.’
‘I’ve got to go Nanny, I’m late.’
‘You haven’t even put a plaster on.’ She put down the carrier bags and started to rummage in her handbag. ‘I know I’ve got some somewhere. You never know when—’
‘Please don’t make a fuss.’
‘It’s not a fuss. Here we are. Now give me your—’
She reached to take my hand. I pulled away. ‘I mean it. I have things to do. You can’t just turn up and expect to be let in. I’m busy, I have things to do.’
‘Yes. Of course. Of course, sweetheart. I’m sorry.’
I guess she looked a bit hurt. She dropped the plaster back into her handbag, and fastened the clip. She started to say something else, but I shut the door.
I watched her through the peephole.
She looked worried, but she didn’t knock again. She lifted her hand to the door and held it there a while, but she didn’t knock. That’s the thing with Nanny, she would never force her company on someone, no matter how much she might want to.
Ha.
She’s like a vampire. She has to be invited in.
I’ll tell her that when I next see her. She’ll like that a lot. She visits every other Thursday, but it’s not my turn today. I’ll have to remember the vampire joke for next week. You’ve got your granddad in you, she’ll laugh. The same wicked sense of humour. She says she doesn’t know what to do with us, but you can tell she likes it really. What she will NOT like is what I’m up to now; all this skiving from the Day Centre to write my story and ignoring the letters from Denise Lovell and not having my medicine.
She won’t like that one bit.
If it wasn’t for Nanny Noo I wouldn’t give a shit, but when somebody cares for you as much as she does, I know it’s not nice to make them worry. She’ll be worried this time, and she was worried back then too. I watched her through the peephole, waiting, hoping. She left the bags of groceries outside my door, and disappeared.
This is called a genogram.
It’s a family tree that doctors draw. It’s to help them see which branches bear the rotten fruit.
That’s me at the bottom, waving at you. I’m a male, which means I go in a square. And because this is my genogram, I get to go in an extra thick square. Simon is beside me, and he goes in a square too, but with an X through it, which means he’s dead.
Up a branch and to the left is my dad.
Hello Dad.
Beside Dad is Uncle Stew, he died of pancreatic cancer when he was thirty-eight years old. So sad, people said. So young, people said. Just goes to show, people said. Climbing up again we have Dad’s parents; XX. Dad comes from a long line of dead people.
Mum is a circle, and her side of the tree has a bit more life to it. That’s Aunt Jacqueline beside her, and then Aunty Mel, who is married – with a horizontal line – to Uncle Brian. They have three boys; my cousins Sam, Peter, and Aaron. Keep climbing. Careful now. Peter fell from a tree once. He hurt himself so badly that he was in Intensive Care for nearly a week, and everyone was worried he might die. He didn’t though.
No X, see.
Nanny Noo and Granddad are high up. And at the very top are my Great Granny and Great Grampa, who passed away within a month of each other when I was still a baby. Somewhere is a photograph of them holding me, and Great Grampa is making a funny stinky face because I have filled my nappy.
If you’re getting the hang of climbing then you can look around and take in the view. There are millions of trees like this one, but we haven’t found the rotten fruit yet, so don’t climb down.
‘Is that fizzy pop?’
I reached into one of the carrier bags that Nanny Noo had left for me. She had reached the end of the corridor, about to go down the stairwell. She stopped and turned around.
‘There are a few bits and bobs,’ she said. ‘Make sure you eat the vegetables.’
I swigged at the bottle of Coke. I hadn’t drunk anything all day.
‘I won’t interrupt you, sweetheart.’
‘Remember when I stayed with you and Granddad? You know, when I was little. When I came to stay for a bit, after, after Simon—’
‘Of course I remember. Is something the matter?’
‘Granddad took me to his allotment, to get me out from under your feet. Do you remember that?’
Nanny was back at my door, but I still didn’t invite her in. ‘Matthew, you’re all eyes. You look so tired.’
‘Granddad helped me lift up the heavy concrete slabs, so that I could look at the ants.’
Nanny smiled, ‘He said you liked doing that. That and playing on your computer games.’
‘I did like it.’
‘Why don’t we have a cup of—’
‘I liked it because it reminded me of when Simon and me used to do it. At our house, I mean. In our garden. It made me think about how he wanted an ant farm. Did you know that, Nanny?’
‘I didn’t, my darling. My memory isn’t—’
‘No. Well Mum said he wasn’t allowed. It wasn’t a big deal though, and even if he was disappointed, he would have gotten over it in half a second because he never really cared about stuff like that. I mean he never sulked or anything, did he?’
Nanny smiled again, but it was a sad smile. ‘No, he didn’t. He was a good boy.’
‘He was the best,’ I snapped.
Nanny looked startled, it wasn’t like me to raise my voice at her. I wasn’t angry, it wasn’t that. If anything I was frightened, the way adrenalin can seize hold of words and start throwing them out louder and faster, and the way they get muddled up.
‘He was the best, Nanny. So I decided to make him one. After he— for his birthday. After he— because dead people still have birthdays, don’t they?’
Nanny didn’t answer, she reached to stroke my hair.
‘Except I never did make it, not back then. I was going to, I took an empty marmalade jar into the garden, but then something happened. When I was looking for the ants, when I was digging in the ground. It’s hard to explain. I felt close to him, like he was still here. It’s happened other times too, but that was the first time, and I’ve been thinking about it a lot, and about how I never made him the ant farm.’
I held Nanny’s hand against my cheek, she was trembling. ‘Do you know what we’re made of Nanny?’
She didn’t know what to say, and started to say something stupid, to try to change the mood, ‘Slugs and snails and puppy dogs’ t—’
‘I’m serious.’
‘You look so tired.’
‘We’re made of these tiny little things called atoms. I learnt about it in school once, and I’ve been reading about them. Sort of teaching myself about it. Like how the different atoms look, stuff like that.’
‘It’s a bit beyond Nanny, my angel.’
‘It’s beyond everyone. That’s just it. This is something only I know. Do you think memories are made of atoms too?’
‘I really wouldn’t—’
‘Well they are. They’ve got to be. Everything is. So you can build them, you know? Stop them being memories, and make them real again, with the right ingredients, like the right sort of atoms and everything.’
‘Why don’t we get some fresh air?’
‘I can show you what I’ve been making, if you want?’
It must have been hard for her, and it wasn’t like I could properly explain either. Explaining my Special Project was like trying to explain a dream, how they can make sense right up until they hit reality, when they suddenly unravel.
‘You can help me if you want.’
Nanny didn’t answer. She looked a bit unsteady on her feet, her face had turned pale.
Nanny Noo visits me every other Thursday, and every other Thursday she visits Ernest. I’ve never met him, and I didn’t know anything about him until the school ho
lidays when Aunty Mel and Uncle Brian and the three boys came to stay with us. I was seven, or maybe eight.
It was brilliant because whilst the grown-ups talked over glasses of wine and chunks of cheese, us children were allowed to stay up late, sharing the sweets that Nanny Noo and Granddad would bring us. And it was even more brilliant because our cousins were better at swearing and fighting than we were, and even though Sam and Peter were the same ages as us, Simon and I still idolized them. Aaron’s the oldest. It was his idea that we built a den in Simon’s bedroom, crawling inside with torchlight to scoff sherbet and Iced Gems, whilst he set about trying to scare us with stories of what happens when you go to Big School, how if you don’t fit in, or if you wear the wrong trainers, the older boys will flush your head down the toilet.
‘How would you know?’ asked Peter. ‘You don’t even start ‘til next term.’
‘Everyone knows,’ insisted Aaron.
‘Then you’d better be worried yourself. Because it’s you it’s going to happen to.’
‘Get lost.’
‘Yeah,’ said Sam, straight on board for a chance assault of his big brother. ‘It’s you it’s going to happen to.’
‘No it won’t.’
‘It will. It will.’
Aaron punched Sam hard on the arm, ‘Shut up. It won’t. Because if anyone comes near me, I’ll set Uncle Ernest on them. And if you don’t shut up, I’ll set him on you too.’
The two younger boys went quiet. Simon scooped another wet finger-load of sherbet. ‘Who’s Uncle Ernest?’
‘What? You don’t know who Uncle Ernest is?’
We both shook our heads.
Aaron smiled, and Sam whispered excitedly, ‘Tell ’em Aaron. Do it like you told us, with the torch.’
Aaron made us switch our torches off. Then he pressed his under his chin so we could only see his face, floating in the darkness – like you do with ghost stories. He made us swear we’d never breathe a word.
‘We swear.’
‘Cross your heart and hope to die?’
I nodded, gravely.
‘Uncle Ernest is Nanny’s brother,’ he explained. ‘But the reason we never see him is because—’
‘Do it properly,’ Sam squealed. ‘Do the bit with the axe.’
‘Shut up, dickhead. You’ll ruin it.’
‘Yeah, shut up,’ said Peter. ‘Let Aaron tell it.’
Aaron shoved a Black Jack in his mouth and adjusted his torch. ‘The reason we never see him, is because he’s locked up. In the cold, dark basement of an insane asylum.’
‘A what?’
‘You two don’t know anything, do you?’
‘It’s like a prison,’ Peter offered helpfully. ‘Where the psychos get locked up.’
Simon sucked an audible gasp. I couldn’t make out his face properly, but I can still picture it in my mind, even now.
That’s a fear when someone you love dies, isn’t it? Especially if you’re only young when it happens, you might worry that over time you’ll stop being able to picture them properly. Or that the sound of their voice will merge into other voices, so that you can no longer be sure how it was they sounded.
I don’t worry about that.
Simon’s voice was all mischief and excitement as he leaned in close and whispered, ‘Is Uncle Ernest a psycho?’
‘Is he, Aaron? Is he? Tell us.’
Aaron wiped a glob of Simon’s spit from his cheek, ‘He wasn’t, not when he was little. He was normal, like us.’
‘Simon’s not normal,’ Sam mumbled.
Simon didn’t hear him though, or if he did he never let on. And he didn’t see me crush Sam’s fingers against the floorboards, making him wail.
Aaron switched off his torch, ‘Forget it.’
‘No tell us. Tell us.’
‘Last chance, I mean it.’
I should say that Aaron’s story wasn’t true. Some of it was, but not the part with the axe. Nanny’s brother has never hurt anyone in his life. Whatever Aaron had once discovered, it wasn’t this.
He made it up to scare Peter and Sam, and now he had a chance to scare me and Simon too. That doesn’t make him a bad person, because he was just a little boy, and I know Nanny Noo felt terrible for what she did, when she came upstairs, and overheard.
‘He was normal,’ Aaron said. ‘Right up until he went to Big School, when the other children bullied him.’
‘And flushed his head down the toilet?’
‘Exactly,’ said Aaron. ‘And worse things too.’
‘Is that what made him psycho?’ I asked.
‘No. What made him psycho, was what the bullies did to Nanny.’
I felt Simon take hold of my hand, ‘What did they do?’
‘If you shut up, I’m telling you. She went to a different school, for girls. But they used to walk home together, her and Uncle Ernest. And because they lived in the countryside back then, they had to walk through these fields, where there’s really tall crops and stuff, so it’s easy to hide. And one day that’s what the bullies were doing, three or four of them, or maybe even more, and their big brothers too. They were all hiding, waiting for Nanny and Uncle Ernest to come by, and when they did, they all jumped out. And they held Uncle Ernest back.’
Aaron paused for effect.
‘Tell ’em about the axe,’ Sam squealed.
Aaron couldn’t say what happened to Nanny Noo, because he didn’t understand it himself. In the adult conversation he had long ago overheard, these details were locked away behind unfamiliar words. I’ve tried to imagine how Aunty Mel talked about it, turning a family tragedy into an anecdote to share with friends, if she had paused for effect too, if the story was interrupted with the arrival of dessert. I think about how the passing of time makes everything seem less real.
Aaron had spied them from his own Watching Stair, sleepiness sinking over him, then came the words he had understood. Words like guilt and shame and nightmares – the kind of nightmares that drag you from sleep, and leave you reaching for something no longer there.
‘He refused to leave his room. For a whole year.’
Aaron stretched out the word year, he was a good storyteller. We were all so engrossed, not one of us heard the footsteps climbing the stairs.
‘Whenever anyone tried to see him, he would scream and scream until they left him alone. Then at night they would hear him through the door, talking and laughing, like there was someone else there. Until one morning, he appeared at the breakfast table, with his school uniform on, his hair neatly combed, and he quietly ate his breakfast with Great Grampa and Great Granma and Nanny, as if nothing had happened. He said that he’d had a terrible dream, that Nanny was in it, and he was so pleased it wasn’t real. He cleared his plates and kissed her on the cheek, saying he would walk her home from school like normal, but he couldn’t walk her there, because he had something important to do first. It wasn’t until later that morning, when Great Grampa was in the garden, that he noticed the shed door was unlocked, blowing open in the wind. And as he heard the first—’
Aaron stopped; we thought we could hear something. He was scaring himself as much as us. Simon squeezed my hand tighter. Aaron searched for the right words to finish his story.
He was a good storyteller. He works for a bank now, and every Christmas I get a card from him and his fiancée, who I think is called Jenny or Gemma or one of those names. It always says the same thing: How we must catch up, that we should go for a beer if I ever happen to be in London. It’s kind of them to say it, to pretend they think I’m that sort of person, living a life where I might just happen to be London. Anyway, even if I was that person, I still wouldn’t remind Aaron of what a good storyteller he used to be, because I reckon this is one childhood memory he’d rather forget.
He looked slowly between us, making us wait. ‘As Great Grampa heard the first terrified screams from across the fields, he looked in his shed, and realized that his axe—’
The roof of the den was sudd
enly torn away; Nanny Noo was standing over us.
‘You little— You little—’
You’re getting to know Nanny Noo by now, even if you’ve never met her. You know the sort of person she is, that she’s kind and generous and loving and patient, that she doesn’t have a bad word to say about anyone.
‘You little shit.’
Aaron tried to say he was sorry, but Nanny was already dragging him across the room. He was too shocked to cry as she put him over her knee, and took off her slipper. Moments later Mum and Aunty Mel appeared in the doorway, their mouths wide open.
‘You can help me,’ I said again. ‘I can show you how it works, Nanny. We can finish it together.’
Nanny looked around my living room; her face was pale. I think she needed to sit down, but there wasn’t any space. The whole floor, the chairs, the table, every surface was taken over. I had filled hundreds of bottles and jars with earth, connecting groups of them together with plastic tubing. The Hydrogens were already up and running – they’re the easiest to build – a single proton and a single electron. I had made ten of these because we are made of ten per cent hydrogen. The Oxygens took more work, two electrons in the first shell, and six in the outer shell. Then I would pair them up, colliding a pair of electrons from each to make the covalent bonds. This often smashed the glass, so most of the ants had escaped. The carpet was crawling with them.
Nanny pressed a tissue to her lips, ‘We need to get you some help.’
‘What do you mean? I’m fine. You don’t get it, Nanny. I’m going to bring him back.’
‘Matthew, please.’
‘Don’t talk to me like that.’
‘Like what?’
‘Like Mum does, like you all do. Don’t tell me what to do.’
‘I wasn’t—’
‘You were. I should never have let you in, this is private. I knew I couldn’t trust you. You’re just like the others.’
‘Please, I’m worried.’
‘Go home then. Leave me alone.’
‘I can’t. Not like this, try and understand.’
‘I’m going to be late, I’ll be late for work.’
‘Matthew, you can’t—’
‘Stop it. Don’t tell me what I can’t do. I’ve got to, okay? You don’t understand. I’m not trying to upset you, Nanny. It isn’t that. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have let you in.’