Everyone was really quiet when I stopped saying it and they were all looking at me. Dad said Christ, Valerie. Everything was calm then. I felt calm too, even though it was the worst night of my whole life, even worse than the night of my birthday when you weren’t there because you were dead.
Dad put both his hands on my shoulders and looked at me right in the face. I could smell his breath. Then he let go and he said something to Nan and Grandad about the trouble with not telling me and I could tell by their voices that they were talking about you. Grandad said I was too young to understand. His voice was even quieter than normal. Then Dad’s voice got quite loud. He said Look what she thinks instead! He held my shoulders again, really tight this time and said But not really, eh, Indy? You don’t really think I killed Mummy, he said. I didn’t say anything back because he called you Mummy not Mum and that made me cry.
Nobody talked to me or came near me. There was a space around me, as if I had a disease that was catching. There was a disgusting feeling all around, a bit like at your funeral when I felt car-sick the whole time even though I wasn’t in a car. The disgusting feeling was because of the night and the lemony smell of the mosquito candles and because of the stick man fighting Zami and because of Tonyhog. Sometimes when the feeling in the room isn’t right I just want it to be normal but now I wanted it to stay like it was because it felt right to feel so horrible. Everything was horrible and everyone was feeling horrible so it was good that it stayed that way even though the feeling itself was horrible.
KAREN DROVE TO THE outskirts of the town. The bus stops were deserted, even though it was only ten o’clock. She drove over the roundabout and into the industrial estate. The woodland flanking the darkened buildings was still and quiet. The supermarket glowed like a citadel, its luminous twenty-four-hour petrol station tinting the night sky yellow.
Inside the shop she trawled the aisles, filling her trolley at a leisurely pace. A packet of biscuits was balanced on top of the other items in her trolley, and something about the way it teetered on the pile moved Karen. The image on the packet showed the different coloured icing on wafers, and the inadequacy of the representation, coupled with the certain knowledge that the biscuits themselves were no better than the picture, winded her. The paleness of the yellow icing and the indeterminate nature of the pink were too insubstantial to tolerate. The biscuits could only disappoint, and, as she stood in the brightly lit supermarket aisle, this seemed true of everything.
She and Ian had travelled the world. They had climbed Kilimanjaro and swum off the Great Barrier Reef. Yet she had brought them back to this ugly little corner of the planet. She put the biscuits more securely in the trolley and tried to carry on. There were good reasons why she was shopping at a late-night supermarket in the middle of a dull industrial estate in England. It was her daughter’s birthday the next day.
She couldn’t help glancing at the biscuit packet again. The brown icing was bad, too, like the worst cup of coffee possible in icing form and suggestive of all that was weak and bitter in the world. She knew it was foolish to be so affected by a food packaging design but she felt powerless in the face of what it implied about the sheer hopelessness of human enterprise.
She looked up to the ceiling, wanting to burn out her eyes in the glare of the overhead strip-lighting. If it were daytime she would go outside and stare into the sun. She gripped the supermarket trolley and pushed it forward a few feet, trying to resist the force pressing against her skull from the inside and trying to think about beautiful things. But the woodland walk of only a few weeks ago was forgotten. The delicate winter light forgotten. Her children’s vigour as they thrashed through undergrowth with sticks in the pale afternoon, forgotten. Her husband’s tenderness as he took her hand on the path and later that night as he caressed her, all forgotten.
She made a mental list of beautiful places she had been but could only think that she was too ugly for those places. She was the ugliest entity on the planet – not wicked or cruel, but possibly something worse: a negative, draining what was positive around her. In a bid to remain rational, she dared to recall attempts of hers over the years to locate the origins of this feeling of unworthiness. A doctor she had seen suggested that it might be a purely chemical issue, an imbalance in her brain chemistry. That was Ian’s theory too. He had been immeasurably patient and loving, urging her to accept her condition. ‘Don’t fight yourself,’ he said. ‘You won’t win.’ She was frightened she might have transferred her curse to Robin and Indigo, via the placenta or in a poison secreted along with her breast milk. Even if they had managed not to ingest it, she thought, they would feel its impact, especially as they grew older. Her negative would drain their positive – there was no escape.
She loosened her fingers from the plastic of the trolley and sank to the floor. It was comforting to lay her cheek against the smooth, cool surface. A woman bent to address her.
‘You alright, love?’
‘I’m fine.’
‘Want me to fetch someone?’
Karen got to her feet.
‘Felt a bit faint, did you?’ the woman asked.
‘A bit, yes.’
‘Happens to me all the time,’ said the woman. ‘My blood pressure’s terrible.’
The woman moved off. Karen turned in the other direction. She walked briskly through the supermarket, leaving behind the iced biscuits in their incriminating packet. She walked past the cashiers chatting at their tills and into the black night.
THE POLICE CAME AND we had to tell them everything that happened. What about Tony, I said, and Dad said Never mind about Tony, Tony’s dead. He made it seem to the police that Zami had done something bad by taking me on safari so late at night even though it was my idea. Robin told them about us going to Zami’s sister’s house. Nan was shaking her head while he was telling them. I told them how some African people think it’s good luck to bury a baby under their new house and maybe the stick man was Zami’s sister’s husband and he wanted her baby as a sacrifice but the police didn’t think so.
When they left, Dad asked who wanted a drink – hot chocolate or something stronger? Robin said something stronger. Nan started making hot chocolate but she was dropping things so Dad told her to come and sit down. He made everyone sit on the two sofas facing each other. Nan and Grandad were on one; me, Robin and Dad were on the other. Dad’s hands were brown with Tonyhog’s dried blood and his blood was on Grandad’s shirt too. I asked if they were sure Tonyhog was dead and Dad said it was definite and we would have to bury him before the jackals came but he didn’t want to talk about Tony, he wanted to talk about you.
Dad said You know Mum was ill and I said Yes. He said it was more of a sickness really. I don’t know what’s the difference between ill and sick, I said. I heard a noise outside that I thought might be jackals but Dad got angry and told me to forget about the bloody jackals. I couldn’t forget about the jackals, though, and I couldn’t forget about Tonyhog. He said you had a kind of sickness in your brain that meant you didn’t feel normal and made you think you would be better off dead. I said At least she got her wish then but Robin shouted at me She killed herself you idiot.
Robin knew. He used to hear you crying. I never heard you. I never saw you.
I said to Robin Why didn’t you tell me and he said What was I going to say – Mum’s upset, go and make her better? Yes, I said but Robin just shook his head like I was some dumb kid.
Dad said no one could make you better. Your sadness was a feeling that nothing could stop. You had it for a long time. You got some medicine from the doctor but it didn’t help. Nan said Well the tablets helped for a while, Ian, and her mouth went into a straight line after she said it. You’ve changed your tune, Valerie, Dad said – you were against antidepressants in the beginning. I saw how they helped her, Nan said. They didn’t though, Dad said, not really. But she couldn’t stop crying before, Nan said. She couldn’t function! No one said anything and then Dad told us that you took medicine t
o make you better but the medicine made you feel like someone else instead of making you feel like yourself. When it made you better you stopped taking it but then you felt too much.
Grandad’s face was covered with his hands. His shoulders were shaking. Nan was sitting next to him but she wasn’t looking at him. I wanted to go over to him but it felt like I wasn’t allowed to move from where I was.
Dad told us that he was in a group of people who were accusing the company that made your medicine because when you stopped taking it you felt even worse than you did before and you didn’t want to feel like that again so you killed yourself. Grandad made a weird sound and Nan said Doug, you’re upsetting the children. I went and sat next to him and he put his head against my shoulder and he accidentally called me Kaz, which was his name for you, I know. Robin came over and Nan had to move along because we were all squashed on one sofa. The other sofa was completely empty.
Dad said you tried to kill yourself when you were a teenager, too, when you were older than Robin but younger than a grown-up woman. Some people have that feeling inside of them all of the time. Luckily you were saved because you took too many pills but not quite enough. Grandad found you and saved you. Dad wasn’t there because you weren’t married and he didn’t know you then.
Grandad was leaning on me really heavily and his crying was making my hoody all wet. It was like he was a different person because we had never seen him cry before. People look and sound like they’re completely different people when they cry. Their crying self is a private one that no one sees and I had never seen Grandad’s, not even at your funeral when I saw Dad and Nan and your friends crying. Me and Robin and Grandad were the only ones who didn’t cry.
Dad crouched on the floor next to me and next to Robin and he said that we were different people from you and him and there was no reason why we should feel the same as you did when you were young. I asked how you did it, did you take enough pills this time? Nan said Yes but Dad said No more secrets Valerie and he told us you went to some woods and strangled yourself.
Grandad sat up and wiped his face when Dad said that. Him and Nan looked straight ahead, like they were statues. I tried looking at what they were looking at but it wasn’t anything. They were just staring straight ahead. Dad was looking at me and it was as if he was looking for something but I didn’t know what.
It was late at night, Dad said, with not many people about, and it was dark in the woods and you had a rope. You hanged yourself from a tree. A man was walking his dog the next morning and he found you hanging from the tree.
I didn’t look at Robin when Dad was telling us and he didn’t look at me. I asked what the man’s name was but Dad didn’t know who I was talking about. I meant the man who found you. Dad said he didn’t know his name. I asked if he was at your funeral but Dad said no, he wasn’t. He didn’t know you. He was a stranger. It was the night before my birthday when I was nine and you went to the supermarket to get all the things for my party – all the party food and the paper plates – but you had a rope as well. It was in the car in case it broke down. You said to Dad that you were going to the shops and those were the last words anyone ever heard from your mouth.
Dad said there was nothing anybody could do about you dying and it was nobody’s fault. He said he certainly didn’t murder you and he didn’t know where I got that idea. This was the problem with not speaking about stuff, he said, and Robin said Why didn’t you tell us? We knew already and Dad said I’m very very sorry about that, Robin, I made a mistake.
I didn’t know.
I was thinking If only you hadn’t died on my birthday. I started crying because I was thinking about the policewoman who came and did some drawing with me on that day and I was thinking about my red bike and how I never rode it much and how it was probably too small for me now.
THE PILOT GREETED his passengers and announced the temperature in Cape Town.
‘Twenty-one degrees will do nicely,’ said the woman sitting next to Ian.
The plane began to move slowly forward and he clasped his hands together. The woman gave him a sympathetic smile, perhaps assuming that he was a nervous flier.
He looked away.
The tremor of the engine shuddered in his chest as the plane took off. Out of the window, England, with both his children in it, tilted away. He had left them with their grandparents before, many times, while he was establishing the new life he was making for all of them, but it was a risk he was taking, making this move permanent. Fields and roads grew miniature as the plane climbed and were suddenly lost as they entered cloud. He would Skype every day as usual, but Robin and Indy could be strangers the next time he saw them. Their lifestyle with Val and Doug was so different from the one he and Karen had planned. Then again, nothing was as they’d planned.
‘Your first trip to South Africa?’ his fellow passenger asked once the seatbelt sign had been turned off. She unclipped her belt with manicured fingernails.
‘No, I’ve been before,’ Ian answered. He didn’t return her question, and remembered a cardboard sign he’d made once for Indy to play shop with, with the words Open and Closed written on it.
He shut his eyes and leaned his head back against the headrest. Indy had a new habit of fidgeting with a scarf she carried about – a comfort blanket by any other name. Her grandmother called her ‘Mrs Fiddle’. He had asked Valerie not to draw attention to the habit in this way, pointing out that Robin occasionally used the nickname against his sister, but Val told him it was harmless and that it was helpful for girls to have what she called ‘their corners’ knocked off by an older brother.
Indy dreamed about her mother and in the mornings, when she described the appearances her mother made during the night – calling to Indy from clifftops, standing watching her from doorways, forever on a threshold, it seemed – she would twist and twist her scarf. Ian wished Karen would come to him in his dreams, even just to call to him from a far clifftop. He wanted to hear her voice. He missed her.
IT WAS CLEAR AND COLD outside and even with the security lights there were loads of stars. The yard smelled of petrol. Tonyhog was on the ground next to the Jeep. There were tyre marks on the ground and blood was coming out from under the blanket that covered him. There were no lights on in Zami’s shed. I asked Dad where he was and Dad said the village, probably. When he comes back, don’t tell him off, I said, and I made Dad promise.
We had to make Tonyhog a grave otherwise the jackals would get him. The spade was heavy. Rust from its handle flaked off in my hand. We went to the far corner of the garden where the security lights were faintest and it was almost dark and we started to dig. Jack didn’t bark and Dad said what a good guard dog he was because he only barked when something was wrong, like earlier when the horrible stick man was there. It made me shiver to think of the stick man’s yellow eyes and his snake voice and his hitting.
I could dig up the grass easily but underneath it was earth so dry and hard we had to chip it with the pointed edges of our spades first. Soon we were making a hole. I said to Dad Maybe Zami’s sister could come and live here and work for you like Zami does but he said it wasn’t as simple as that. I asked him why not and he said People have their own lives and that he didn’t have room in his life for a baby on top of everything else. Like you don’t have room for us, I said, and that made him stop digging. He said of course he had room for us, wasn’t he the one who wanted us to come and live with him? I told him I didn’t want him and Beautiful to be girlfriend and boyfriend and he called me sweetheart like he was being kind but what he said wasn’t kind. He said there were some things that weren’t anything to do with me. Without the security lights it was dark so I couldn’t see what his face looked like when he said it.
Grandad came out to help us and after ages the grave was ready. My hands were sore from holding the spade. We tried to carry Tony over to it but he was so heavy me and Grandad couldn’t lift our end so Dad had to carry him by himself. He held him like a big baby. His bod
y was warm like it was when he was alive and sunbathing with me and Zami scratching his back.
When Dad tipped Tony into the hole, a gasping noise came out of me, I couldn’t help it. No one paid any attention to me crying and I was glad. Tony’s poor tusks wouldn’t fit so his neck got crooked at a funny angle and Dad had to push him in with both hands. He packed some straw around the body and then we shovelled all the earth back in and Dad said he would get some big rocks to put on top. Nan and Robin came out to help and we all got a rock each. Nan said be careful not to drop them because we could break our toes. Hers was the smallest rock, then mine, then Grandad’s and Robin’s were about the same size and Dad’s was the biggest. In the end when we had done it we all stood around like at a funeral. Dad said Tony was one of the family. We were all standing there and it felt like we were all separate inside our family. I was separate and Dad and Robin and Nan and Grandad were all separate. You were separate from all of us. Tony had joined our family but in the end he was separate too, just a bushpig that had to be buried quickly so the jackals didn’t get him.
Alarm Girl Page 13