Joey stumbled out of their bedroom. ‘Whit the hell,’ he said, trouser legs snaring his feet. He tried pulling them on properly and banged against the doorframe, almost falling. His hand felt about for the light switch in the hall and flicked it on.
‘It’s little Ally,’ Mary explained. One breast flopped from a tear in her nightie and from the waist down, her body was woaden with bruises and cold.
‘Mum! What about little Ally?’ Jo stood barefoot in the door of their room, her voice weighed down with sleep and her tousled mane covering some of the fear and disgust in her eyes as she, like her father, scrutinised her mum’s appearance.
Mary snapped on the light in the girls’ room. Ally’s blonde head was tucked up in bed. Her clothes for school were neatly laid out in the chair, untouched from the night before. Joey patted her on the shoulder as he leaned over her, checking out the room.
‘Whit you saying’s wrang with Ally this time?’ he asked.
Day 31
‘Hi Sweets.’ Janine met John as he shuffled out of his room. ‘We’ll need to stop meeting this way.’ She laughed. He didn’t join in. Instead he favoured a bruised and brooding equanimity, hurt that she had been avoiding him, his lip buttoned down, his eyes straying away from her face and finding an interest in Eddie pacing at the bottom end of the corridor, waiting for visitors so he could cadge fags off them. ‘Your parents coming today?’
‘Maybe.’ His voice was cautious. He studied her face and lifted his shoulders in a half-hearted shrug.
‘Hope so. You smell a bit ripe. Hope they’ve brought some of that Hai Karate.’
He tried on a shy smile, his fingers dipping into his pocket and pulling out a white square of toilet roll. ‘Afternoon meds,’ he whispered, and he ducked his head down as he slipped the package to her.
‘Aw, a present.’ Her voice was playful, palming and slipping it into the inside pocket of the pair of Levis she had changed into. ‘That’s a lot better than that other present you gave me.’
‘Whit?’
She tilted her chin up, stretching her long neck and moued her mouth. She dotted her index finger round her lips and chin. His eyes tracked her posing. ‘My mouth’s rubbed to a dishrag by your kisses, and my chin’s scraped raw by your bum fluff and your passion.’ She reached for his hand and drew him in closer. ‘Feel.’
His cheeks flamed and his arm jerked like Frankenstein reaching for a bathrobe, but his fingers were surprisingly gentle, circling and patting her mouth and chin.
‘Sorry.’ His hand flopped down to his side.
The fire doors were pegged open and they heard the tramp of feet. The first of the visitors were being ushered in by Karen, a stout woman who doubled up as a staff nurse on another ward.
‘That’s not the only place that’s bruised and needs kissing better.’ Her eyes met his, and he was drawn into her challenge, his head tilting and dropping sideways to meet her parted lips.
He kissed chastely at first. Then more feverishly, forcing her backwards, shoving her up against the wall with a gammy-legged urgency. How long they kissed, she was unsure –four or five minutes – she glanced sideways and pulled away, standing demurely. His head dropped, his eyes like something taken out of a kiln, he moved closer, the heat from his body like a physical presence. Her eyes darted towards the few visitors coming through the door. His mother was one of the new arrivals. She was stranded midstream in the corridor, her knuckles white as she clutched her flower-patterned bag against her stomach for protection as the last of the stragglers filed past her. Her eyes were fixed on them.
‘I’ll leave you to it.’ Janine slipped away, back into her room, shutting the door firmly behind her. She dallied at the window, examining without any purpose the same old sights of trees and grass and the Gothic architecture of the hospital wards. Sitting on the bed, she slid open the top drawer of the dresser where she kept knick-knacks. The palm of her hand slid along the side panel to the back. Her fingers pried off the old black-and-white photograph Blu-Tacked, face-up, to the plywood top shelf. She took a breather, unwrapped the cellophane from a fresh packet of Silk Cut Jocky had slipped to her, and put the photo in her lap. A cigarette soothed her nerves, allowed her to inspect her once fresh-faced father looking up at her. His trademark cigar never out of his mouth, stinking the place up. He wore a shirt and tie and a pearly grey double-breasted suit. She was little more than a baby then, bursting with pride as she peered up at him, and clutched his hand as if she would never let go. Her mum wore a dated cloche hat, her hair peeking out like raven’s wings. Janine had no memory of hearing her mum laughing, but she was smiling down at her in the photograph.
‘Witch,’ said Janine. The lit end of her fag hovered above the image of her mum’s face. She burned out one eye, then the other. ‘You knew. You knew and did nothing.’ Janine’s nose twitched in disgust. Her dad’s eyes had already experienced the same surgical procedure, two black holes in a once handsome face. She blew ash debris off her remodelling work. Her eyes remained pinned to Lily’s impish grin in the photograph, until the fag ash drifted down, greying the floor, and the side of her hand recoiled from the heat. She leaned across and stubbed the cigarette out, shaking her head at the mess she had made.
She hid the photograph. The Blu-Tack was losing its stickiness, but it held. What worried her more was she was forgetting what Lily sounded like, or even what she looked like. Her mind was also losing its glue. She flicked on the bedside radio and sprawled over the bed. The drone of chart-toppers Status Quo filled the room. In the rush to turn it off, she knocked the half-filled glass of water onto the floor. She giggled, dipping her hand into her pocket and pulled out the package John had given her. Swallowing both tablets dry, she swung her legs off the bed and sat waiting for the bandsaw buzzing of voices in her brain to stop chattering. She watched the drip, drip, drip of water falling onto the matted carpet by her bed. Outside her window, somebody screamed. A mock fight played out, with the raised voices of nurses jousting with each other before coming on shift. One of them was The Poof. Janine laughed and laughed and laughed.
John swept down the corridor to meet his mum, but his eyes skidded away from the concern in her eyes. She greeted him with a tight smile. ‘We better go through here.’ He addressed her like a stranger, guiding her along the corridor. They stood awkwardly for a moment, at the entrance to the day room.
‘I’ve brought you some stuff.’ She held out a brown-paper parcel bound by string.
‘Thanks, Mum. I’ll get you settled and go and stick it in my room.’
A few residents sat blank-faced with their visitors. John guided his mum between them. He noticed it was like sitting on a bus. The corner seats away from the telly in the day room always had somebody sitting in them. The seats nearest the door were the last to be filled. They found a few spare seats beside a bluff old couple, both with cropped white hair, as if they attended the same discount barber. Morag, their daughter, had a tendency to wander away for longer and longer periods of time. He sat across from his mum, the bag placed beneath the chair legs. He imagined himself a prisoner, perhaps Steve McQueen in one of those prison heists. Mary let her coat drop onto her chair and lit a fag. Her face was composed, but tired. She looked over his shoulder before speaking.
‘Your friend joining us?’ The emphasis was on friend.
‘Don’t think so.’
‘That’s good,’ she said with finality. She drew his hand across the table and squeezed his knuckles.
Something about the weariness in her voice, the way she sagged in the chair, bothered him. ‘You’re no’ well?’
‘Not the best.’ The palm of her hand masked her nose and mouth. Bent over like a drunkard, she barked cough after cough, her chest shuttling up and down and her eyes watering. ‘Ha-ah,’ she sighed and took another drag of her fag, before stuffing the lit end into the ashtray. She pulled a white hanky the size of a horse blanket out of her coat pocket behind her and honked into it. It was swept onto her lap, hidd
en under the table, but kept stashed in her fist.
‘Whit’s wrang with you?’ he asked.
‘Nothing much.’ There was a slight tremor in her hand as she picked up the Zippo lighter to light another cigarette. ‘Probably just a bug.’
‘You been to the doctor’s?’ He adopted the same stringent tone as his da.
She laughed at this through her nose and shook her head, her eyes lighting up in amusement. Fag smoke temporarily blurred the edges of her and she seemed better. Then the barking started again, and the hanky came up.
When she finished, he leaned across, swallowing down the lump in his throat. ‘You’ll need to go to the doctor’s, Mum.’
‘Calling him now would just be a waste of time.’ She met his eyes. ‘If I don’t get better I’ll call him.’ She added, ‘But I will get better.’
‘Mum!’ Even to his own ears it sounded like a child’s lowing.
‘Promise.’ She squeezed his hand in a mini-handshake to seal the deal.
‘But whit’s the matter with you?’ he asked.
‘Nothing much. Don’t sleep.’ She eased back into the chair and tapped fag ash into the ashtray. ‘I thought with you in here, I wouldn’t need to worry any more about people sleepwalking, but it seems,’ she took a long breath, ‘it’s a hundred times worse.’
‘Whit?’ His body strained forward, but her mouth stopped framing words, her eyes sliding past him. She smoothed out the lap of her dress as if she had dropped ash onto it and took a long drag on her fag.
The scent of Janine’s perfume should have alerted him, but in the broth of ward smells and the low buzz of noise it failed to register. Janine’s arm flung casually over his shoulder startled him, and her body clung to the back of the chair.
‘Nothing.’ Mary fixed on a tight smile.
Janine slid into the seat next to him, pulling it in closer so their thighs squished together, taking his hand in hers. She beamed a lippy grin across the table at Mary. Then turned to him and in a cocky, playful voice asked, ‘Missed anything? Missed me?’
Mary’s feet scraped across the floor as she stood up. ‘I was just goin’. I’ve brought you some fresh pants and socks. That’s the main thing.’ She bent and lifted the parcel and shoved it across the table.
‘Mum.’ He tugged his fingers out of Janine’s hand and stood looking down on her. ‘You’re just here.’
She covered her mouth to cough again. ‘Ah, well.’ Her eyes watered, making her seem feebler and older. She knitted the hanky round her hand and nodded as if that concluded the conversation.
‘You don’t like me,’ butted in Janine.
Mary gave her a quick look. ‘No, I don’t.’
John expected kind words and evasions, some heeing and hawing from his mum, not the gunboat diplomacy of his da.
‘That’s alright,’ said Janine, scooping his hand into hers. ‘I don’t like me much either.’ She tugged him in close, perfumed shoulder to shoulder, her arm rubbing against his. ‘But your son, well, he likes me well enough for both of us.’
‘Mum’s not been that well.’ His voice had a fluting sound. He volunteered the information as a peace offering, the equivalent of a missionary directing the natives to the beads and baubles on offer. ‘My little sister’s been doing a power of sleepwalking and she’s not been getting much sleep.’
Mary bent her head in the way he recognised when she was considering something important. ‘How did you know that? How did you know about little Ally?’
‘You told me.’ He sat down, looked at Janine for support.
She shook her head. ‘No, I never.’
‘You told me that someone was having sleepwalking problems,’ he said. ‘And I figured it must have been Ally cause she’s the most like me.’
‘Has somebody been talkin’ to you on the phone or something?’
‘Whit?’ John made a face. ‘How could they dae that?’
Mary flapped her hands in surrender. ‘Never mind.’ She bent across and kissed him on his hair, above his ear.
‘I’ll see you out.’ He rose from the chair, shaking Janine’s hand from its grasp. ‘And thanks for the clothes, I really needed them,’ he added in a gushing tone.
‘My mum sleepwalked regularly,’ piped up Janine, stopping them both. She waited until she had their attention before continuing. ‘Dad soon cured her of that.’
‘Oh, aye?’ Mary said. ‘How did he do that?’
Janine clapped her hands together like a loud gunshot. They both flinched. Morag had briefly settled at the table next to them. Her head shot sideways, and she banged her legs against the chair legs in her haste to get up and escape. ‘A good clean shock. Never fails.’ Janine laughed, but it sounded like a sneer.
‘I feel sorry for you.’ Mary’s voice was low, without malice.
‘Ditto.’ Janine made that stupid showy-off sign with two fingers bent like antennae in the air.
On the train home, Mary thought she would have been able to shut her eyes and get a quick nap, but her chesty cough scuttled that idea. It spoiled her even enjoying a fag. Enough was enough. She determined to book an appointment with her General Practitioner. She realised Dr Fleming was quirky because, unlike most doctors, she could talk to him. She could mention John being in the hospital and ask for his help in getting him out. The argument was already framed in her mind and made her fume. All those people crying out for a hospital bed and he was taking up one – and there was nothing wrong with him.
The train jolted forward as it left Drumry Station. Mary started fussing in the open mouth of her handbag for the train ticket. But the bag was a fly trap. Her fingers snared on her frayed leather purse, her cigarettes, lighter, box of Bluebell matches, another lighter in case the first one did not work properly, a cloth hanky for emergencies, an unopened packet of paper hankies, Polo mints with two left, one of which had been half chewed, the other in the corner of her bag, a packet of Swizzles, a bent sixpence, a cloth badge with a pin at the back and a picture of the Virgin Mary on the front which had worked its way loose and hung like a button on its last thread, an opened packet of PK chewing gum that Joey had asked her to keep, a cardboard-backed photograph of Ally and her classmates wearing their school uniforms and sitting smugly on gym benches in three-tiered rows, with Mrs McGonagle, their teacher, as a bookend.
The old man in the seat across from her mirrored her smile. He had a buzzing hearing-aid the size of a brick wedged inside his ear. The train slowed as it pulled into Singer Station, and her fingers grew frantic, running through the different compartments of her purse. She checked her pockets again, felt a tear in the lining of her coat, and played her fingers through it like an accordion, until she picked out the outline of the missing ticket.
‘Jesus,’ she said, to the man opposite. ‘That was close.’
He puckered his lips, nodded in acknowledgement and fiddled with his earpiece, fixedly staring out of the window at commuters leaving the train and others waiting to step on.
The doors closed, the guard’s window at the back of the train banged shut and he blew his whistle. The train pulled out of the station. Mary clutched the train ticket, her hands restless on her lap. Through the perimeter fence, Singers’ factory buildings flashed by. She had once hoped to get a job there, even as a cleaner, because it was regular, well-paid, work and that was you sorted for life. Hot air blowing from the heater under her legs made her feel drowsy, but it was less than a five-minute journey to Dalmuir Station. Her handbag was wedged in safely beside her, below the low frame of the train window. The old man tucked his feet under the chair as she stood up. Lifting her bag, body rolling with the passageway sway and tilt of the train, she anchored her feet as the train stopped, then stepped onto the platform.
The train pulled away. Mary sat alone on the damp slats of the wooden benches in the shed on Platform One. The ticket collector, a small man, shivered, his cap peak pulled low over the expression on his rain-dashed face. He was watching her, moving his feet, bloc
king access to the stairs and the exit onto the flats. Her bag was plopped on the bench beside her. She stirred through the contents, pulling out the class photograph. Running her index finger along the rows of banked, smiling children, her finger stopped on a girl’s face, front row and three along from Ally. A blackened circular burn mark obscured the face. But it looked too precise – as if somebody had held the pinprick of a lit match or cigarette to the picture. Smoothed out, it was little more than a grainy blip. Wind whipped through the shelter lifting her skirt. A drip of rainwater fell from the end of the ticket collector’s nose, but he didn’t move. Mary traced the pink bauble in the photograph that tied the girl’s hair.
Light faded early in the winter months. The streetlights squeaked in the wind and formed murky, moving shadows. Mary hurried up the hill and into her house. The front door was unlocked. She had once joked if anybody broke in they would end up leaving them something, but there was more to it than that, it was a trust that nothing bad could happen to her family. God was in every room, hanging from every wall. His saints fought with each other to find an inch on the mantelpiece. She dropped her bag at the door, but kept her coat on.
Matching beds, side by side in the girls’ bedroom, were tidy enough, the blankets with the creased edges of hospital corners. She flicked on the light to help her search. An oak-veneer chest of drawers with an oval swing mirror reflected back a wooden school ruler lying sideways. Two over-bright scraps of paper angel were abandoned beside a faded silver locket. Mary picked through a jewellery-box tangle that held no real jewellery. Kirbies that had lost their grip sprung out at her. A red and pink plastic headband. A frayed yellow ribbon, tied to a green ribbon. She breathed more easily. Clothing in the drawers was refolded. She found a spider playing dead in the bottom drawer, but no elastic bauble that matched the burnt-out face in the photograph. The wall cupboard near the window was flung open. Anorak pockets, duffle coats and jackets that had not been worn since they were knee-high, were turned inside out. She thanked God and all His angels in heaven the room was clear. Before she flicked the light off, she knelt down to probe under the beds. In the far corner, underneath Ally’s bed, lay the red-pinky bauble. Ally’s makeshift friend had blended so seamlessly into the house and into their lives, it was as if she had always been there. Sometimes, when Mary was on her own, she experienced an overpowering sense of being watched, accompanied by a whiff of vanilla overlaid with cigar smoke. Her hands shook as she lit a fag, waiting until the voices and the smell faded, but here was proof that whatever Joey said, it was not just her imagination.
Lily Poole Page 10