by Sue Townsend
When he shouted for his coffee, Tamara glanced at the Mickey Mouse clock that stood on top of the television—12.15. She unwrapped herself from the coat and went through into the bedroom, taking Storme with her. He was lying on his back, smoking his first cigarette of the day—the one he enjoyed most. The ashtray on the floor next to the bed held a mound of ash and brown speckled filter tips. “What’s up?” he said, when he saw her face.
“She’s not very well,” she said, sitting beside him on the bed, causing the blankets to tighten around him, outlining his thin body. He shifted irritably.
“What’s up with her?” he said, flicking ash in the direction of the ashtray.
“She won’t wake up properly,” she said. “An’ she’s got a bruise.”
She undid the poppers on Storme’s babygrow and showed him.
“Fuckin’ hell,” he said, when he saw its green vividness. “How did she do that?” he said, looking into Tamara’s black-rimmed eyes. She looked back at him. It was like looking at herself. They were like twins, except that Crackle was clever, so clever that his teachers at school couldn’t teach him anything. She loved him. They had married each other in the middle of a wood at midnight in September, on Friday the 13th. Crackle had said that the devil would be their witness. They had drunk two cans of Special Brew each, and dropped some Es and Crackle had fucked her up against a tree, and afterwards he had said they would be together for ever.
“How did she do it, Tamara?” he repeated.
“She done it falling out of her cot,” she said, and started to refasten the poppers. “I’ll tell the doctor that, shall I, this afternoon?”
“Yeah, tell him that, it’s only the truth,” he said. “Tell him the truth. Honesty’s the best policy,” he said, recalling something somebody had once said to him. A teacher at school probably, or a solicitor, one of those stupid fuckers who believed it, anyway.
He got dressed and went out and bought an electric card. As good as gold, thought Tamara. He came back with a packet of Jaffa cakes, and they ate them, and drank Nescafe, and smoked cigarettes and watched a film about the olden days until it was time for afternoon surgery. Storme didn’t wake up, her breath now came in a series of little gasps. Tamara tried her with a bottle of warm milk at half-past two, but she wouldn’t take it.
“Stubborn in’t she?” said Crackle affectionately.
“She takes after you,” said Tamara, and she stroked his bristly hair with a loving hand. Together they zipped Storme into the snowsuit that Christopher had bought the day before. They each took one of the little red boots and pushed them on to her feet. Crackle lowered her gently into her pushchair and they left the flat and carried her between them down the three flights of stone steps, as though they were children playing Mummies and Daddies. As they went out into the street snow was falling.
Crackle took a delight in pushing the pushchair through the virgin snow on the pavement. Tamara laughed out loud as she tried to fit her own feet into his fresh snowy footprints. When the surgery came into sight Crackle said, “What time did she fall out her cot, Tam?”
“Last night; I don’t know what time,” she replied, not looking at him.
“About midnight, weren’t it?” he said, pulling her round to face him. In the fading light her face was eyes and mouth only. He kissed her black lips and thrust his tongue between them, possessing her on the pavement as thoroughly as if they were alone, in the dirty bed, at home.
♦
The doctor’s receptionist recognised immediately that Storme was very ill, and ushered Crackle and Tamara through the waiting room with its silent crowd of patients and into the doctor’s surgery. Dr Indu, a tiny Asian woman, asked Tamara to undress Storme. The doctor’s thin hands felt the swelling on the back of the baby’s head first, then she lifted the vest and saw the turquoise bruise on her back.
“What has happened to her?” she said.
“She fell out her cot, last night, about midnight,” said Tamara, looking at Crackle.
“Why didn’t you call me out?” said the doctor, feeling the baby’s pulse.
“We thought she would be all right,” said Crackle.
The doctor picked up the internal telephone and said, “Mrs Parker, ring for an ambulance and put a call out also for Mr Parker-Wright at casualty.” When she had finished examining the baby’s dirty body, the doctor could hardly bring herself to look at the baby’s parents, with their sour-smelling black clothes, and their ridiculous barbaric ornaments. But she said, as evenly as she could, “Mr Parker-Wright is a consultant paediatrician. Your baby is very ill.” She said again, “Why didn’t you call me?”
“She just went back to sleep,” said Crackle. “Like she is now.”
“She is not sleeping, she is in a coma! Can’t you tell the difference?”
The doctor was angry and sick of talking to such low-class people. They were as ignorant, despite their advantages, as the peasants she had cared for in the Indian villages where she had been sent after completing her training.
The receptionist came in and handed the doctor Storme’s medical notes. The doctor read through quickly. Her colleague in the group practice, Andrew Wilson, had written three months before: “The child shows signs of neglect, she is failing to thrive.”
“You have not brought her for her inoculations,” she said when she looked up.
“I kept getting the days wrong,” said Tamara.
They heard the ambulance coming towards the surgery. The doctor took a blanket from the examination couch and wrapped Storme up against the cold air outside. Crackle lit a cigarette when they were outside on the pavement. He dragged greedily on it, then threw it down regretfully before climbing into the back of the ambulance with Tamara. The doctor held Storme tightly to her as they rode through the streets towards the hospital. Tamara could not take her eyes off the red boots dangling from beneath the blanket. They could have been worn by a puppet whose strings had been cut.
∨ Ghost Children ∧
Eighteen
When Angela saw Christopher push the agency door open she got up quickly from her computer, which was displaying a list of charter flights to Tenerife, and went into the back. She needed a few moments to compose herself. She both resented and welcomed his presence at her workplace. She combed through her hair with her fingers and smoothed her jacket over her hips: it was an habitual gesture.
He would always be able to find her here, she thought. From nine until five-thirty, six days a week. And if she changed her job, or moved to another country he would track her down eventually, she knew that. Sjie felt an emotion she couldn’t identify immediately, a mixture of excitement and fear—a fairground emotion. She saw herself, the timid child, being urged on to the big wheel by her mother, who did not want to ride in the lucent night air with a stranger beside her in the swaying carriage.
She came back into the shop. When she saw his smiling face she was lost. Who else would ever be so happy to see her? Snowflakes were melting into his hair. She looked away from him to the windows and saw that the street outside had been transformed from grey to mellow white. The flakes were so fat that it was possible to follow their individual progress before they settled with the uncountable millions on the pavement. They watched the snow fall in silence for a while, then Christopher said, “I can’t stop thinking about you,” as though he were explaining to her the nature of an illness he was suffering from. Angela glanced towards her colleagues, but they were busy with customers and hadn’t heard his oblique declaration of love. His coat was open, he had unfastened the top button of his shirt and loosened his tie. She wanted to slip her hand inside his shirt and stroke the back of his neck as she had often done before, when they were young. It had been a prelude to making love. One of the many signals between them. She became aware of her nipples inside the utilitarian cotton bra she had to wear now. She was close enough to him to feel his breath on her face. She said softly, “I’ll get my coat,” and went back behind the counter. She
told Lisa, Claire and Andrea that she had been called away to attend to urgent family business. After she had left the shop her colleagues speculated on the nature of the ‘family business’. They decided that it would have to be an imminent or sudden death. Angela was always so punctilious about the hours she worked; she never took advantage of her seniority.
Christopher stood at the rack where the brochures were displayed, and read about holidays where it was possible to combine both the wedding and the honeymoon. There were photographs of attractive couples in wedding clothes posing against a tropical background of setting sun and palm trees. After two minutes, as arranged, he replaced the brochure on the rack and left the shop. They met a quarter of a mile away on the stinking stairs of the multistorey carpark, but it was not until they got into the car that they took each other into their arms and smelt the breath and the skin of each other, and tasted the saliva and felt the scrape of eyelashes against their faces, and heard the wordless sounds of desire and longing that passed between them.
In his ticket booth, Lionel watched on a closed-circuit TV camera as the Fat Woman and the Tall Man embraced in the front seats of the Volvo. He knew they weren’t man and wife. He’d seen the Fat Woman’s husband, he was a small bloke with a moustache who never said please or thank you when Lionel gave him his change.
When Angela eventually drove up to the booth and handed Lionel her ticket, he spoke to her.
“Leaving work early today, madam?” he said.
“No,” she said. “It’s my day off.”
A stupid lie, thought Lionel, who could clearly see her work uniform underneath her overcoat.
The dog met them in the hall of Christopher’s house. It was happy to have human company, but neither of them could be bothered with it. They could think of nothing but themselves and each other. They went upstairs to the bedroom and closed the door. The dog followed them and lay outside with its nose pressed into the gap under the door, waiting for its master to reappear. They lay together on the bed dressed in their winter clothes, the compacted snow from the soles of their shoes melting on to the duvet cover. They lay still for a long while, bulky in their overcoats and scarves and gloves, their faces pressed together. The light gradually faded.
Then Angela turned her head and said, “Chris, I’ve put rather a lot of weight on.”
Christopher said, “I know, I love you.”
He turned her head back towards him and found her mouth and covered it with his own. She took her glove off and slid her hand inside the bulk of clothing around his neck and pulled him towards her, crushing his mouth against hers. She felt his tongue and his teeth with her own tongue and teeth. They removed as much clothing as they could without losing touch, breaking away only for seconds to remove shoes and boots and underwear.
When they were naked they knelt on the bed and each looked at the unfamiliar middle-aged body of the other. Christopher lovingly stroked the rolls of fat that Angela hated, and she touched the grey hair on his chest that reminded Christopher of his own grandfather whenever he caught sight of his naked self in the mirror. They kissed the fat and the skin tags and the moles and callouses and broken veins, and the wrinkles and bags that middle age had visited upon them, and each thought the other beautiful. Christopher could still feel the skeleton of her, and Angela recognised the young Christopher and began to love him now in middle age. “We’re together again,” he said, before he gathered her heavy breasts together and brought them towards his mouth.
∨ Ghost Children ∧
Nineteen
Gregory rang Heavenly Travel in the late afternoon and asked to speak to Angela, but she wasn’t at work. She was sitting on the end of the bed in the dark. She was holding hands with Christopher and looking out of the window on to the new white snow world. They were both naked. Christopher’s semen was drying between her legs. Angela was talking about Gregory.
“I’m not going to say I didn’t love him Chris, I did love him, but it was nothing like this.” Christopher squeezed her hand, but didn’t look at her. She had asked him not to. She had also asked him not to talk about their dead baby.
“But I can’t leave him.”
“You can’t go home to him now, ”said Christopher. “Ring him up and tell him you’re going to come and live with me, in this house.”
“I can’t do that!” She almost laughed.
“We love each other don’t we?” Christopher was puzzled now. What was stopping her from leaving a man she didn’t love, and going to live with a man she did love?
“Yes, we love each other,” she answered, “But I can’t just walk out on seventeen years of marriage, not just like that, can I?”
Christopher didn’t see the problem. He didn’t know Gregory and he didn’t want to. He wondered if he ought to tell Angela about this premonition he had of his own death; there might not be time to worry about Gregory’s feelings. He turned his attention back to her. She was talking about mortgage payments and joint savings accounts, and a shared pension plan and a holiday that she and Gregory had planned in a hotel for January in Barbados. He saw that, apart from himself, his body, he had almost nothing else to offer her.
Angela knew that she was gabbling, but she couldn’t stop herself from talking about money and her financial responsibilities, which she saw as an invisible web, entangling her and preventing her escape. In her mind’s eye she travelled through the rooms of her house, noting their comfort and warmth, feeling the soft carpets under her feet, fingering the thick texture of the heavy curtains, the dark solidity of the furniture. She’d worked on the garden until there was a green lushness there that delighted her every summer. How could she leave her grapevine, or the sweet-smelling jasmine that framed the kitchen window?
She saw a policeman at the door breaking the news. She saw herself weeping over Gregory’s grave. She saw herself and Christopher in the garden, sitting at the iron table on the terrace, drinking wine in the fading light.
“I’ll come to you when he dies,” she said.
“I hope he dies soon, then,” said Christopher. And he let go of her hand, and began to get dressed. It was time to walk the dog.
∨ Ghost Children ∧
Twenty
Crackle and Tamara didn’t understand the words the tall posh doctor used when he told them what was wrong with Storme. But after he’d finished talking, when he said to them both, “Do you understand?” they said, “Yes.”
“Is there anything you’d like to ask me?” he said.
They looked at each other and then looked at him and said, “No.”
“Perhaps you’d like to go and have a cup of tea?” He wanted them out of the way. He couldn’t bear the stench of them in the small hot room. He was disgusted by their stupidity. He knew, almost for certain, that the child’s injuries were non-accidental. He had already informed the police. “There’s a cafeteria downstairs. She should be out of theatre by half-past seven.”
“Two hours,” said Tamara.
There was a big clock with severe black hands on the wall of the Parents’ Room.
Congratulations, you can tell the bloody time, thought Mr Parker-Wright who was the father of Julian, Felix, Harriet and Jessica. All of whom, at that very moment, were at music practice in the dining room of the Georgian house his wife kept so beautifully. He would miss their bedtime again. He went to the door and held it open for Crackle and Tamara. Obediently they got up off the hard sofa which doubled as a bed at night, and walked out into the corridor. They passed the room where Storme was being prepared for exploratory surgery and were steered to the lift by Mr Parker-Wright.
“So if we need you, we’ll find you…?”
“We’ll be downstairs,” said Crackle.
♦
He couldn’t wait to get outside. The heat was killing him. He was sweating under his leather, and he was desperate for a fag. When the lift door closed he battered the large ‘No Smoking’ sign with his fist.
“Fucking stupid!” he said.
“Just when you need a fag, when your kid’s filled up with tubes, you can’t have one.”
Tamara couldn’t get the picture out of her mind. The one where Storme was lying on a high cot, wearing no clothes, with a thick tube that looked like a vacuum-cleaner hose in her mouth, and other see-through tubes in her nose and wrists. The nappy-rash sores looked scarlet next to the pure white sheet on which she had been laid. The brightness of the overhead light illuminated the accumulated grime on her body. And she could see now that, apart from the big green bruise, there were other bruises; smaller and in the pastel colour range. Tamara had watched Mr Parker-Wright counting these bruises. He handled Storme’s body as gently as a man taking fragile eggs from a nest. They wouldn’t allow Tamara inside the room because of the germs, but they allowed her to look through a window in the door.
Occasionally the staff nurse and the other nurses would straighten up from their work on Storme, and look at her. Tamara wished that they would smile, but their faces were set hard, which wasn’t fair because she was the mother of a baby who needed an emergency operation. Crackle couldn’t bring himself to look through the window, he was too sensitive.
♦
Every pale, wooden table in the cafeteria displayed a small Perspex sign which said, “This is a non-smoking table.”