Doll

by Nicky Singer

  That I would take off the coat and the ground would open under my feet, swallow me whole? That Mercy’s howl of derision would give me an excuse to curl up and die? Is this what I planned, I hoped? Well, no one has so much as twitched, especially not Mercy. Her eyes are fixed on the stage. Mine are fixed on her. There is something wrong with her face. It no longer blooms. It’s tense, screwed up, etched with anxiety. She looks ugly. Can Mercy look ugly? I’m spellbound. It’s the music, I suppose, or rather the noise which used to be music. The band is colliding with itself, keyboard and drums crashing together. Johnny Zando has tried to play Jan in, twice, but he has not begun, and so the band flounders. Listening to the desperate cacophony, Mercy’s face is a tight prayer: he must begin, must be again her Inca god.

  Then I hear it, through the crashing, a note. Just a tiny note, a puff of breath, but I’d recognise it anywhere. The Antara. Mercy’s face registers disbelief. The note comes across the room as if it were directed at me alone. I turn towards the stage. Jan has the pipes around his neck, his lips to the openings. Johnny Zando, standing now, waves the band into a jerky silence. Another note. And another. Someone coughs, embarrassed. But the notes are pure and mellow and I know the tune. It is the music of the bridge, the melody he played when I cut myself and saw the blood flow. And I feel that blood again and also hear the high, melancholy wind of the bridge. And it seems to me that it is his song but also mine. That, looking at me now, facing me across the dark, he’s playing for me. Which is, of course, absurd.

  “Absurd,” says Gerda.

  But this is what I feel.

  “Lift me out,” commands Gerda.

  I take her from the pouch.

  “Hold me.”

  I do as she asks, hold her in my hands.

  “Against your heart,” she says.

  I press her there. The notes are fluent now, the tune from the bridge only deeper, more haunting. And also more lovely. Whereas before there was something missing – a tone, a colour – now there is a heartbreaking completeness.

  “He doesn’t love you,” says Gerda.

  Gerda says this because she knows this is what I’m thinking, because this is what the song says. This is for someone. She knows who she is. Through the rags at my breast I feel the sharp edges of the beads around Gerda’s wrist.

  “How could he love you?” Gerda says. The beads are like little knife pricks. And then she says: “Not even your own mother loved you.”

  Did I have my nail against Gerda’s wrist, was I pulling at those beads? Because now they are falling, like tiny red petals on to the floor. I watch them spin, but there is no noise when they hit the carpet, just a series of tiny, tiny splashes.

  And then I’m back in that room again, the place where I’ve tried so hard not to be all this time. My mother’s room on the night that she died.

  And didn’t die.

  I see it as if in a film. Me coming home from school, unusually jaunty, book bag slung across my back. No Grandma in the house. Wednesday, her bridge day. But too much silence nonetheless. No mother sounds. No treadling, no Pluie d’amour, no radio, no kitchen clatter, no tremulous call from the sofa in the living room: “Is that you, Tilly?”

  Is that why I ran? Because I did run, straight up the stairs and into my mother’s bedroom. Because of course she’d done it before. Or tried to. The door wasn’t locked, so I guess she wanted to be found.

  “Grandma says it was you who found her,” my father said.

  Of course, she knew what time I’d be back. Had it planned I suppose. Or maybe not, maybe it was just when the vodka ran out. Lying beside her was one Vladivar miniature and one full-sized Smirnoff bottle. Both empty.

  She was kneeling by the bed. I can’t have stood looking for more than a few seconds but the picture has freeze-framed in my mind. I mainly see the cut. She’d dragged the knife – the thin-bladed carving knife – across her wrist and was just staring at the wound, a kind of beatific smile on her face. The cut gaped, red-rimmed like a mouth. We both looked at the blood that ran along the edges, and also at the bright yellow buttery fat just inside the lips. The blood collected at the edge of the wound, some dribbled down her arm, some splashed on to the floor. Surprisingly little blood really, just small dots, like someone had got a brush and flicked red paint about. But I knew it was serious, because of that smile, and also because it was clear that she felt nothing.

  Did I go to her, help her, bind her wrist with the clean tea towel she had so thoughtfully placed on the bed beside her? No, I did not. I thought about Grandma washing and ironing that towel. I wondered where the Savlon was. Often my mother put Savlon by the towel. No Savlon that afternoon. Just the knife, still in her right hand and me making no effort whatsoever to take it from her. She said nothing to me and I said nothing to her, not even: “How could you do it? How could you dare?” Because we’d been through all that.

  “How could you do it, if you love me?”

  “I do love you.”

  “Then you can’t do it, won’t do it, ever again. Promise me?”

  “I promise.”

  Which is why, I suppose, I collected the cream candles and the incense, brought the red roses from the garden. I’m not saying I actually fetched these things, maybe I did and maybe I didn’t. I just knew I needed something to fill the space inside me and these seemed like good things. Things she might have chosen herself, if she’d been in any fit state to choose.

  No. That’s a lie. And I do have to stop lying. I brought the candles and the roses and the cinnamon for myself, because I wanted there to be a different story, one that was beautiful and also one that I could finally bring to an end. So it was about control, I suppose, and the fact that I had none.

  Grandma arrived then. I’m not at all sure what would have happened if she hadn’t come back early that day. Sometimes I think I would have taken that knife and plunged it in my mother’s breast myself. But maybe not. You have to have emotions for that sort of thing, and that afternoon, I was without emotion.

  Grandma cleared up, of course. Drove my mother to the hospital. Spoke to whoever she spoke to, the Liaison Nurse probably, Alison, who works in A&E but is also a member of the Substance Misuse team. Alison, who knows my mother well. Anyway, Grandma fixed it, sorted it as she always did, always has. And then she returned. Alone.

  The tune is very high now, and far away. And of course I know Jan is not playing for me. I am foolish, but not that foolish. I look down at my hands. They feel tight and hot, as if they have been burned by a rope. Gerda is in pieces. Her head, her arms, her legs, pulled from her trunk. Her spine bent, her blue eyes ripped from her face.

  It was me. There’s a broken piece of sequin under one of my nails. I’ve blinded her. I’ve torn her limb from limb.

  But then Gerda is only a doll.

  Jan has never seen a condor, at least not with his own eyes, but there is one in his music. It is flying over a mountain at daybreak, wheeling, gliding, magnificent. The sun is bright and the air clear. Jan can see for miles. And of course he knows it is not Violeta Veron. How could it be? It’s not even a woman and certainly not a middle-aged woman. It’s a young girl. (Although of course, in the Chilean dream his mother is young, unblemished, for in dreams you never grow old.) But this girl is just the one from the bridge, Tilly.

  Did he deliberately mistake her? Was he afraid to see what he actually saw? A dark and agitated creature whom he might also love? Did he want it to be his mother because his mother would love him (must love him) whereas Tilly might not? Can he have been so afraid? For it is Tilly. The clench and tumult of her, her hands pulling at something, as though she was pulling pieces out of herself. And yet this is why the song soars, because he is not just playing for the loss of his Chilean mother, or his distant homeland, or even for the theft of his blood name, he’s playing for the girl and for her losses, for whatever it is that makes her claw so bitterly at her own flesh. And, whereas before, he wanted to bring this song (which he has dreamt so man
y times) to an end, now he would play forever, for the song is his kiss for her, one she may understand. But the song is no longer his own, it is spiralling upwards and he hears it reaching for an end. The song is going to end.

  I put the dismembered pieces of Gerda into the pouch of the rag dress and pick up my coat from the floor. Around me people fidget. The novelty of the pipes is wearing off. They want more drinks, more and louder music, they want to be able to talk, laugh, isn’t this what they’ve paid for? Jan is taking too long, his allotted time is over. He’s an embarrassment, isn’t he? And yet no one wants to be the first to move.

  I move. I hug the walls, skirt the empty dance floor, I have to get to my grandmother. She is sitting with Audrey, her back to me. She gives a little shriek as I touch her on the shoulder.

  “Tilly!” she exclaims, and then she sees my dress. “Oh – Tilly.”

  On stage, I hear a sudden spiral of notes and then a spinning fall, as if a stone had been thrown into a ravine. It is over.

  “Grandma,” I say, “I want to see my mother.”

  Jan lets go of the pipes. They would fall to the floor, but for the plait of brightly coloured Bolivian wool which hold them about his neck. The light goes out on the stage. There is a silence and then a sudden burst of applause, a single person clapping ecstatically. Whether other people join in or not, Jan neither hears nor cares. He’s looking out to where he last saw Tilly. She has disappeared.

  The stage lights come back on. They are waiting for a bow, perhaps. Jan turns for the steps. Where has she gone? His eyes are so focused on the faraway dark space which used to be her that he doesn’t notice the figure hurrying towards him. They collide. Jan begins a mumbled apology.

  “No,” says the figure, and puts a finger to his lips.

  It is his mother. Mrs Susan Spark.

  “I never knew,” she says. “Why didn’t you say?” There are tears in her eyes. “Jan Veron.”

  “Where’s Tilly?” he asks.

  14

  Sanctuary Ward is less than a mile from Oakwood.

  “It’s ridiculous to go now,” whispers Grandma. She looks at her watch. “It’s seven-fifteen already. Visiting hours finish at eight.” As I don’t believe she has ever visited my mother in the hospital, I’m not sure how she knows this or if it’s true.

  “Now,” I say doggedly. “I have to go now.”

  “And you can’t go in that … dress,” Grandma hisses.

  “Do you think anyone in that place is going to care about what I’m wearing? Anyhow, I’ve got my coat.” I pull it on.

  Audrey Phillips, who is sitting with her back to us, apparently engrossed in conversation with someone else, turns around then. At once Grandma rises, she nods towards her friend.

  “Tilly’s not feeling too good,” she says in a normal voice. “We need to go home. I hope you’ll excuse me.”

  “Oh – I’m so sorry,” says Audrey.

  I look Audrey in the eye and smile robustly. Grandma hurries then. We exchange the white raffle ticket for her coat and make our way to the car.

  “This really isn’t wise,” Grandma says.

  I know exactly where the hospital is, although I’ve never been inside. I’ve stood in the car park though, looking up, wondering which window was hers. I’ve also watched people going in and out of the front door, tried to guess which are the staff and which the heroin addicts. It’s not as easy as you’d think.

  “Just drive,” I say to Grandma.

  “There’s no need to be rude,” she says.

  But she does drive. The rest of the journey we spend in silence. She pulls up in Raglan Road, four streets away from the hospital.

  “Take me to the car park,” I say. “The hospital’s got a car park.”

  “You can walk, you’ve plenty of time,” Grandma says.

  “No,” I say. “Take me to the car park. Drive in.”

  “No,” she says.

  “Why? Why not!”

  “It’s not raining, is it?” she says.

  “No, it’s not raining. But that’s not the point is it?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” says Grandma.

  “The point is my mother – your daughter – is a drunk. An alcoholic.”

  Grandma actually puts her hands over her ears, as if this information is a shock, as if this is the first time anyone has let her in on the secret.

  “And you think,” I continue, “that if you don’t actually look, if you don’t actually drive to the hospital and park in the car park, that it isn’t really happening. That your daughter isn’t really in there with a bunch of other drunks and smackheads.” The anger is suddenly going up my throat like sick. “Just like you think if you don’t actually drive me right to the school gate, then no one will know my mother’s in the sin bin. Again. But they do know. They all know!”

  “There’s no need to shout, Tilly.”

  But I am shouting. “Drive me,” I shout.

  She doesn’t respond.

  “Do you think if Grandad was alive—”

  “Don’t pull Gerry into this.”

  But I pull him in: “Do you think Grandad Gerry would have swept it all under the carpet all these years? Refused to talk about it. Refused to act? Just cleared up, cleaned up, shut up?”

  “You know nothing about Gerry.”

  “I know everything about Gerry. You’ve been telling me for fourteen years. Gerry was a good man. A caring man. A decent man. Gerry had morals.”

  “Gerry loved me. Really loved me.”

  “Course he did. Well, lucky you. Lucky, lucky you!”

  “On the night he died—”

  “Gran, I know. On the night he died, he had more Tupperware receipts in his pocket than all the other salesmen put together.”

  “On the night he died—” says Grandma.

  “Drive, Grandma.”

  “On the night he died—”

  “Yeah, yeah. He had so many receipts he still got Salesman of the Week, even though he died on a Thursday. Now drive. Do what a decent man would have done, what Grandad would have done, go to the hospital. Face up to it, Gran.”

  Grandma puts the key in the ignition, starts the engine.

  “That night—”

  “I know!”

  She slips the brake. “You don’t know.”

  And there’s something in her tone of voice that finally shuts me up.

  “The night he died he wasn’t alone.” Grandma pauses. “She was with him.”

  “What?”

  This is not the right story, the story is that Grandad Gerry wrapped his car round a tree on the long road home to Grandma, when he was driving—alone – the two hundred loyal miles back to his wife. The story is the steering column broke. And you can’t tell when a steering column is going to break. So whatever happened it wasn’t his fault, not his fault at all. Grandpa Gerry was blameless.

  I look at Grandma, but she is staring straight ahead, watching the traffic through the car windscreen.

  “Sylvia Burnley. I only found out her name at the inquest. She came of course, in person, in her high-heeled shoes. He was killed and she wasn’t even scratched. There’s consideration for you. Gerry all over. She cried in court. Cried and cried. Like she owned him. The affair had been going on for eighteen months. She was wearing an engagement ring.”

  I am stupefied. I focus on a red car in front of us, on its particularly shiny bumper. It takes me two roads to articulate this question: “Does Mum know?”

  “Of course not.”

  Grandma turns into the hospital car park. “And there weren’t any Tupperware receipts in his pockets that day. There was an empty bottle of whisky. He was drunk, Tilly. Blind drunk.”

  She reverses into a parking space, brakes and then continues to stare straight ahead.

  When do they hand out the books that tell you what emotion you’re supposed to be feeling at any given time? I don’t think I can have been in school that day. I’m sure I should
feel sorry for my grandmother, extend some sort of hand to her. But my hands are folded in my lap, and I have only one thought in my head and it is this: that all those years my mother lived in the shadow of a perfect parent and a perfect marriage, which weren’t perfect at all.

  I get out of the car. “Thanks,” I say. “Are you coming in?”

  In response Grandma slumps over the steering wheel and begins to sob.

  I stand there for maybe thirty seconds and then I shut the door and walk away.

  The building is Victorian, two-storey, and has coloured tissue paper in the downstairs windows as though it were a slightly dilapidated nursery school. There is a glass entrance porch with a bell labelled “Please ring for attention”. If only it were so simple.

  I ring anyway and am buzzed in as far as Reception. A woman asks my business.

  “I’ve come to see Judith Weaver. On Sanctuary Ward.”

  The woman observes my mac and my bare feet but says only: “And you are?”

  “Tilly Weaver, her daughter.”

  The woman nods. Maybe there is nothing they have not already seen in here. “Sanctuary’s upstairs.”

  I thank her and ascend the cream painted stairway with the chocolate brown carpet. The stairs twist past a window which looks out over a garden where four institutionally beige bucket chairs sit joined together, small pools of rainwater in their seats. At the top of the stairway is a glass door with a coded keypad for entry. I stand and wait at the shut door. Surely the Reception woman will have buzzed ahead? Through the glass I can see, directly ahead of me, what looks like an office and, slightly to the right, an open door labelled “Day Room”. I don’t like to knock, but I don’t like just standing here either. A woman comes out of the office with a busy look on her face, sees me, backtracks and opens the door.

  “Yes?” she says. In her hand are pills.

  “I’m Tilly Weaver, Judith Weaver’s daughter.”

  “Oh,” says the woman, and she waves me in. She also looks at my feet but says nothing. She’s not wearing a uniform, in fact she’s dressed in a denim skirt and multicoloured cardigan, but her name label reads: “Marcia Wells, Staff Nurse”.