Lily Poole

by Jack O'Donnell

  But there she was, glowing in her white dress, her arm through Joey’s, floating on a misty veil with the dis­covery of him and herself. Her sisters had all said how beautiful she was and she hadn’t believed them, not then. She held the lit end of the fag over her face in the photograph, tracing an arc from left to right, darting in and out, like an old school game of dares, daring herself to do it, burn and obliterate that dreaming girl. The arc widened. She took another draw and waved the fag-end over Joey’s face. He looked just the same as he did now, she thought, because he was spoiled and got to sleep soundly every night. His eyes winked up at her, sporting a smile so wide it would split the stars, stocky, bursting out of his shiny double-breasted suit, tie shoogled to the side to give him a bit of breathing space. Joey thought she was a virgin. But she had been with a married man. Handsome enough to turn a girl’s head, but he reeked of the slaughterhouse. God’s punishment, he raped her on the first date and blackmailed her into seeing him again and again. Joey, with his temper, would have killed him. Killed them both. But then the rapist disappeared and life was so sweet after John was born. She convinced herself John was Joey’s, kept looking in the blind mirror of the baby’s face for a sign there was something wrong with him. Soon the only face she could see was John’s. She did not mean to, but with not sleeping, the foggy tiredness in her bones, and her thoughts so far apart a double-decker bus could park between them, the burning smell startled her. Joey’s portrait was singed. She flicked at it and harrowed away his face with chewed fingernails.

  ‘Jesus.’ She sat upright, looking to see if anybody was watching her.

  Her fag was forgotten, left smouldering in the ashtray. She rolled out of bed and into her slippers like a sailor on shore leave, the photo pincered between index finger and thumb. The air was colder in the hall and warmer in the living room. Fairy liquid stood sentry on the sink and the pile of unwashed dishes were a reminder of how lazy and sluttish she was getting. In the kitchen hallway, she tugged the back door open and a gust of wind flashed into the house.

  Snow lay on the grass outside, soft and melting into silhouettes and circular smears of grey footprints where a neighbour had walked. She pulled her nightgown round her, bunching the material and clipping it closer to her chest, the photo sticking out of her hand like a used ticket. Her slippers flopped about on her feet, but she was careful of the slippery stretch on the back stairwell and stairs. Below her was the spire of St Stephen’s and, next to it, Ally’s school. Above her was the thrum of a plane with cloud hanging low and cloaking its passage. Snow cotton-woolled the noise of traffic and trains. The quieter sounds were allowed to breathe, the drip, drip of water falling and slush sliding from roofs and garden huts.

  She knocked snow from the top of the bin. Before chucking the photo in, she scanned the windows in the four-in-a-blocks to check if any neighbours were noseying out. For a fraction of a second she thought she saw a man with a cigar clenched between his teeth looking down from Daft Rab’s house, who winked at her. But she was havering. She put the vision down to tiredness.

  Tearing at the photo she ripped it into pieces, letting it fall like confetti among crumpled newspapers, potato and turnip peelings and the empty, crushed shells of peas and bean tins, all covered in a layer of fag ash and empty cartons of Regal King Size.

  When Ally came in from school, Mary knew from the set of her shoulders, the way she kicked her shoes off in the hall and let her bag drop from her shoulders and, in particular, the slide of her bottom lip, that she was in a strop.

  ‘What’s the matter darlin’?’ Mary asked.

  That was enough to release a cloudburst of tears. ‘Nobody wants to talk to me or be my friend,’ she cried. ‘When Mrs Hone asked us to split into groups for maps of the world I was left sitting by myself.’

  Mary took a drag on her cigarette and switched hands so she could pat Ally on the head and make cooing noises. She bent down to lift her up and let Ally bunch together the capped sleeve on her blouse and play with the split ends of her hair. She took another nip of her fag, her daughter’s head flopped over her shoulder like a beanbag, when the front doorbell rang repeatedly, with somebody in a hurry to get in.

  ‘Don’t answer it, Mum.’

  The tone of her voice made Mary shrug her daughter from her torso. It sounded like Lily speaking, but Ally’s red-rimmed eyes looked up at her. She was no longer convinced which was which or who her little girl was.

  ‘Don’t answer it, Mum.’

  ‘Don’t be a silly billy,’ Mary tried to adopt a jocular tone, but the words snagged.

  Uncle Lonnie stood at the door twisting his fingers, sweat running off his blubbery face. There was no good pinstripe suit, not today, just a blimp of dark, work-worn trousers and a long black coat with stains on it that smelled goatish. A hackney cab was parked half on the pavement with the engine running and the door wedged open.

  ‘There’s been an accident,’ Uncle Lonnie said.

  Ally pushed away from her mum, so he could see her and give her ten pence for sweets.

  ‘A terrible accident.’

  Then he bent over as if he had been gut-punched and started bawling. ‘Ah,’m sorry, Ah just cannae believe it. He’s deid.’

  ‘Who’s dead?’ Mary asked, and he slumped into her, hugging her hip and gripping her shoulder to help himself stand and steady himself, his jaw in a turnip-faced gurn.

  ‘Who’s dead?’ Mary repeated.

  ‘Joe.’ He wiped the sweat off his forehead with an oily rag plucked from his pocket as he looked at Mary for what seemed like the first time.

  Jo came up the path, sloshing through slush, and the way she walked showed she meant business. Her squinty eyes missed nothing: the idling taxi; Uncle Lonnie going from being hugged to hanging on to her mum, holding her upright like a telly aerial; Ally squawking and greeting because her mum was howling, a noise that seemed to come from a cave-dwelling animal; the upstairs neighbour, Daft Rab, with his nose speared against the window as he tried to find out what was happening.

  ‘Whit’s the matter?’ Jo said.

  ‘Your da’s been in a terrible accident,’ Uncle Lonnie said. He peered over the top of Mary’s head. As she sunk into him, he had grown taller and he tried a gumsy grin to reassure Ally.

  ‘If it was an accident, maybe it wisnae him,’ Mary said. ‘Maybe it was somebody else.’

  ‘No, it was him alright.’

  ‘But how do you know?’

  ‘Cause I was standing beside him when it happened. He pushed me out of the road.’ Uncle Lonnie waved a fist at the taxi driver who had wound down his window, signalling that he would not be much longer. ‘One of the slings on the cranes snapped, dropped a steel beam.’ He shook his head and took a deep breath. ‘He didn’t stand a chance.’ Then his voice grew angry. ‘Ah’d take the­bastards the whole way.’

  Jo sobbed, ‘It’s not true. It’s not true. It’s not true.’

  The taxi driver tooted his horn.

  ‘Let’s get inside,’ Mary said.

  Shutting the door behind them, they heard Uncle Lonnie shouting and bawling at the taxi driver.

  ‘What am I gonnae dae? What am I gonnae dae?’ Mary said. Her body crumbled, and head sagged onto her chest, her neck as wobbly as a baby’s. The girls unable to bear her weight, stepped aside. Mary reclaimed her feet. Drawing them into her arms, and her maternal warmth, the scent of fag smoke, was a long remembered perfume; these were the stamps of reassurance that everything was going to be as it was.

  Day 44

  John lay on top of his bed, fingers a wickerwork bassinet supporting his head, his weight creating a frown in the plumped pillowcase. He yawned, tired of being tired, longing to be outside the hospital and to be home. The light bulb hung off-centre; somebody had looped two knots in the cord, a practise at suicide. He watched as twilight was chased from the window. The darkness outside reflected the darkness inside the ward and crept up the faraway wall. He was determined not to think about Janin
e. Her mind games were making him screwy. He rehearsed scenarios in which he might love her, or even like her, wondering if there was any difference between the two. His feet were getting cold as he had taken off his socks. He had become lazy, wriggling his bum to scratch it rather than move. His armpits reeked of hospital decay. The skin on his arms and even his fingers was growing flabby. He scratched behind his ear, hair now a matted, unwashed Brillo pad, while trying to figure things. The problem was the more he tried not to think about her, the more he did. She was like one of those Japanese knotweed plants that rooted itself under buildings and pulled them down, wormhole by wormhole. He tried to be logical and think of the pros and cons of finishing with her, but all he could think about was his hard-on.

  Karen banged through the door without chapping. Her breasts seemed to have grown bigger since he had last seen her, warring jellos under her white blouse, as she waddled over and looked down at him.

  ‘Williams wants to see you.’ Her voice carried an inflection of irritation, and she avoided meeting his eyes.

  He lifted one knee over the other, hiding his crotch.

  ‘Hurry up, then.’ She flicked sweat from her forehead before toddling towards the door.

  He waited for the door to close before springing out of bed, pulling on denims, rearranging his lime-green T-shirt in a fashionable, baggy formation around his midriff, and giving a final sniff to his oxters. He yanked open the door.

  He was uncertain if Janine was waiting outside his room for him, or just hanging about to annoy him, but when she leered with a kittenish smile, he grinned back.

  ‘What did that cow want?’ she asked.

  ‘Dunno.’ He shrugged. ‘Williams wants to see me.’

  ‘Jesus, ugly people, and ugly fat people in particular, bug me.’ She motioned in a circular movement of her cigarette towards Karen, who was standing alongside the pool room waiting for him. ‘You’d think she’d do something with herself, go on a diet or something, but you know what?’ She took another look, her face hardening into disgust. ‘If she did she wouldn’t be working here.’ Her eyes met his, challenging him to disagree. But he shrugged and laughed, a hollow sound. ‘Consultants in the medical wards want a hard on, not a headache – that’s why they get rid of those hardheads, those with thick necks, the butch and the bitches. They’re perfect for psychy training. Check it out.’

  ‘I will,’ John said.

  ‘Have fun,’ said Janine.

  Her gaze held his. Oceanic blue. He thought he saw the future in them. She could see things in him others missed. Then he felt dizzy. It was as if the ward was a shoebox tipped up sideways and emptied out, and they had been godforsaken. Shapes brightened and dissolved. A shadow flapped and waved its wings at him, there was a buzzing in his ears and snatches of a nursery rhyme played inside his head. He stumbled and she held onto his arm. For a moment she looked as if she understood and was going to tell him something.

  ‘I’ll not be long.’ He broke away from her.

  Karen held the consultant’s door open. Williams rose and met him with a handshake, as if they had not met before. He stank of fags and wheezed like an accordion when he sat down again. He shuffled paper, creating a space on his desk and seemed nervous. ‘Take a seat.’

  John squeezed past and sat facing him. His heart was pounding and his hands waxy as lemons, but he wasn’t sure why. He glanced up. Jocky was loitering at the door beside the fat SEN.

  The consultant launched straight in. ‘I have received a bit of sad news from home.’

  A shroud touched Williams’s arm; his mouth was working, but he vanished bit by bit into the darkness. As he talked the psychiatrist’s body wavered at the edges. It was as if someone had taken John’s life apart, polished bits of it, stacked it like Lego blocks one on top of the other, and said it was finished. John already knew what Williams was going to say and he was falling, tumbling into a void.

  John was laid out like a fish supper, in the recovery position, on the floor beside the desk. The office chair yanked sideways to give him breathing space. Head pounding. Light darted from wall to wall. Williams’s face hovered bright and close, burning with knowing, with Karen’s and Jocky’s bunching behind his. Confident faces full of fattening foods and untested eyes that had no experience of lurking terror.

  ‘You fainted.’ William’s accent grated, but John was grateful for him not breathing smoky breath into his face and for ushering the others out of the room.

  He was brusquer when he returned to stand guard over him. ‘Can you sit up?’

  ‘Yeh.’ John eased himself up, conscious that his body had been taken by surprise; his arms and legs were flighty things. The psychiatrist tracked his movements. He scraped the chair across the floor for John to sit on. ‘Da’s deid?’ he spluttered.

  ‘Yes,’ Williams replied. His diminutive size and straggle of facial hair reminded John of a child playing at doctors in a baggy white coat.

  The psychiatrist’s eyes narrowed and he reached for the cigarette packet on the desk. He took his time lighting up. ‘You want one?

  ‘Na.’ John inwardly cursed. He could have taken one, stuck it behind his ear and kept it for Janine.

  Williams took a long puff. ‘I’m curious, who told you about your father’s death?’

  ‘You did.’

  Mr Williams shook his head. ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘It must have been Karen then.

  A shake of his head.

  ‘Jocky?

  Williams poked around the inside of his ear as he mulled this over. ‘No, I don’t think he’d been made aware of your father’s sad demise.’

  ‘Dunno then.’ It was John’s turn to shrug. ‘You know whit this place is like.’

  Williams considered this. ‘Indeed I do,’ he said. ‘Indeed I do.’

  ‘You need to let me out now.’

  The consultant studied John as if he was trying to solve an algebra problem.

  ‘My mum’ll need me.’ John’s voice had risen, but laden with that subservient tone Da always hated. He could almost hear him saying, For fuck sake, be a man. He swallowed tears and spoke more matter-of-factly. ‘The girls’ll need me.’

  Williams pulled open the top drawer in his desk and flicked his ash into an ashtray. ‘Yes, I appreciate that, but what worries me is the girls.’

  ‘Whit dae yeh mean?’

  ‘Well,’ he took a final draw, stabbed the fag out in the ashtray and pushed the drawer shut, ‘you have these fugue states when you’re sleeping and they have become part of your more conscious experience.’ He glanced over, checking John understood what he was talking about – and in a way he did. ‘And you’ve got to remember you admitted to violent fantasies of rape and incest. It would be unprofessional, with the added stress of bereavement, to let you go home at this stage.’

  ‘Fuck right off,’ John spluttered, half rising out of his chair.

  The tired sullen droop of Williams’s eyelids and the sceptical curl of his mouth softened. ‘I’ll try to arrange an escort for the funeral,’ he offered.

  John bit his bottom lip to keep from sobbing, his head wilting onto his chest. Williams stood up, the interview over. He stuck his hand out for John to shake.

  ‘Fuck off,’ he spat, brushing past him into the brighter lights of the hospital corridors.

  Patients stole past him, smoke a ghostly presence in their wake. He spotted Jocky coming out of Janine’s room. The care assistant swivelled his big neck and grinned as he passed him. John gazed at his feet and kept walking, standing outside his room, his face flaming with jealousy and rage that he had not challenged Jocky because he was too scared. He spun round and barged into Janine’s room. She was sitting on top of her bed, bare feet curled beneath her like a cat’s tail, reading Jackie.

  ‘Whit did he want?’

  She let the magazine drop onto the bed. ‘He wanted to ravish me because I’m so gorgeous,’ she said. She tipped her chin up, throwing her arms behind her head so that her wee tits
stuck out like a Hollywood film star’s.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ His head dropped to hide his tears.

  She scrambled off the bed and reached for his hand, nursing it gently in her own, until he managed to look at her. He thought she was as incapable of crying as a house brick, but there were watery blue tears in her eyes.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ she asked.

  ‘My da’s deid.’

  He put his arms around her. She rested her head on his shoulders. Rain drifted like cobwebs outside and he realised he needed to stop playing at getting out of the ward and really escape. She sobbed silently then with great clean gulps of air; rivulets of mascara and foundation fractured her face. Her fingers latched more firmly onto his shoulder to keep her balance. Her sobbing slowed to a stain on his Adidas top, and her neck was a tender, broken stalk as their eyes met.

  ‘Love you.’ She chewed her bottom lip. ‘Really love you.’

  They stood apart, lost for a few seconds. He put his arm round her and leaned his head on her shoulder. He stroked her hair. For once she did not know what to do with her hands.

  ‘I don’t know if I even liked my da much,’ he said.

  She cried in the anxious, bitten-off way of someone crying with no one to listen. Their faces collided like a pile-up on the M8. Crooked tongues finding space, becoming everything unsaid. Warmth flooded through him and he realised he had been shivering. The locked sadness – the image of Da’s face – was opened, allowed out. He sucked in the warmth of her breath, but they disengaged, their bodies floating away from each other. Their lips remained the only place they touched. She was crying his tears for him.