by Kat Gordon
“I think you’re right,” she says, scribbling it down.
“How did you know that, dear?” Aunt Gillian asks.
“Grandma had one.”
“How clever.”
“How was he?” Aunt Vivienne asks.
“Who?”
“The boy in the café.”
“Fine,” I say, sitting down. “I think I’ve scared him off for good now.”
It’s what I do, guys.
Toby was probably the most persistent, but I was stubborn, and eventually even he gave up.
I’d avoided him for the first week of summer term, but he managed to catch me once, grabbing my shoulder.
“Tal… Can you stop running off, please?”
If I hadn’t been so dumb, I would have talked to him then. I should have remembered that his childhood trauma was almost worse than mine, that he’d freaked in front of me too, but at the time all I could think was that I couldn’t listen to him tell me how much he liked me as a friend, or worse, how he didn’t want to be friends anymore because I was damaged and mental.
“Just get out of my way. Please.”
I remember he moved out of the way and sighed again, like I was the most irritating person in the world. “Off you go then.”
“Whatever,” I said, and walked past him.
Aunt Vivienne’s tapping the pen again. It sounds much louder in my brain than it really can be. I start to bite my thumbnail, then think better of it.
If I’d listened to Toby…
I hadn’t told Edith about what had happened on the camping trip, but she started acting jumpy around me anyway. The day after I ran into Toby, I saw her giving me little looks out of the corner of my eye, until I asked her what was up.
She giggled. “Nothing really.”
“Please stop staring at me then.”
We were probably going to gym class when we were having the conversation. I remember we were outside. Edith stopped walking suddenly, and said, “I have to tell you something.”
I heard footsteps behind us, they got faster, then someone tapped me on my right shoulder. “Hey,” Starr said. She’d dyed her hair blonde, with dark roots, making her look like Debbie Harry. The school had recently voted to scrap uniforms for the sixth-formers and she was wearing a tight striped top, a denim miniskirt and a bomber jacket with the sleeves rolled up. I remember looking down at myself, tugging at the hem of my too-short netball skirt, trying to make it seem less scandalous. Next to Starr, I looked like a child prostitute.
“Hey,” I said.
“Good holiday?”
“Yeah, alright. You?”
“Great. We went sailing for two weeks,” Starr said. She inspected her arm. “Think the tan’s wearing off already. Bloody weather.” I looked down at her beautiful honey-brown colour. “Look, I’ve got to run, but I came to tell you about this party the Drama Group’s having, for the end of our play. You coming?”
“The play or the party?”
“You don’t have to come to the play. It’s some weird Russian shit about an albatross or something.”
“The Seagull,” Edith said quietly.
“What?” Starr asked.
“It’s a play by Chekhov,” Edith said.
“Maybe,” Starr said. “I just do backstage.”
“Where’s the party?” I asked.
“It’s at the drama teacher’s house, on campus,” Starr said. “It’ll be crazy. She’s some weird hippy who makes us call her by her first name. Apparently she gets really drunk and cries at these things.”
“Oh?”
“It’s after the last night; two Fridays from now.”
“Cool.”
“Anyway,” Starr said. “See you there.” She started to jog in the other direction. Edith stared after her.
“Your cousin’s really pretty,” she said.
“What did you have to tell me?”
“Oh – nothing,” she said. “It can wait.”
I felt a strange sense of relief. Afterwards, I realised I knew all along what she was trying to tell me.
“I hope your boss understands about all of this,” Aunt Gillian’s saying.
“What?”
“Wasn’t it him you were calling earlier?”
I try not to meet her eye. “He doesn’t really have human emotions,” I say. “But he hasn’t fired me yet.”
“Oh.”
I want to tell her that, actually, I’m trying to get in touch with her errant brother – the one who went to jail and the whole family stopped mentioning. I need to ask him a few questions about my mother, and whether or not they were in love. And whether my father knew and that’s why he went so weird.
I stand up and walk around the room once, pretending to be looking for something. No one’s even talking about why we’re here anymore.
“Last one,” Aunt Vivienne says. “Six letters, beginning with ‘d’. At great cost.”
Another week passed before I saw Toby again. I knew Edith had been hanging out with the boys, but she was vague when I asked her what they’d been up to. Then, on Friday, Toby was waiting outside after my biology class. I felt a half-embarrassed grin spread over my face – I hadn’t completely driven him away then. “Hey,” I said.
“Hey yourself. Where you going now?”
“French.”
“Can I walk with you?”
“Sure.”
“Look – I just wanna say I’m sorry,” he said. “For what happened. You know, on the trip. That’s what I was trying to tell you last time.”
“It’s fine. I’m sorry too.”
“Okay, good.” He looked relieved.
We fell into step. Toby was cracking his knuckles. I looked at him properly; he was wearing a white t-shirt that made his eyes seem greener, navy blue shorts that he’d rolled up at the bottom so they stopped just above the knee and grey plimsolls. I tried not to think of his body underneath, how warm it had been when we were kissing.
“What’s wrong?”
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“You seem kinda nervous.”
Toby shook his head. “Tal, we’re friends right?” he said. “Nothing’s going to come between us, yeah?”
“Yeah,” I said.
We reached the door of my French class, and he stood in front of it so I couldn’t go in. “Cool,” he said. “Have lunch with us?”
“Yeah, alright.”
French class felt longer than usual; I ran out of the door when the bell rang, heading to our old spot outside. John and Francis were kicking a football around.
“Hi,” I said, sitting down on the picnic bench. “You okay?”
“Hey, Tal,” Francis said, coming over. “You’re looking… nice.”
“Thanks,” I said, surprised.
“Hey, Tal.” John joined us. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”
“I haven’t been kicked out yet.”
“No, I meant, about Toby.”
“What about him?”
Francis shoved John. “Nothing,” he said.
“I mean about Toby and Edith,” John said.
“What?”
“You didn’t know?” John asked.
Francis gave him a dirty look; John smirked. “Was I not supposed to say anything?” he asked. “Shame. Oh well, Toby’s coming now. You can ask him about it.”
“Yo,” Toby said, dropping his bag on the floor. He saw our faces. “What happened?”
“John told Tal,” Francis said. He shrugged helplessly. John was still grinning. Toby looked at them and then at me. “You prick,” he said to John.
I called my grandmother, but she was sleeping. The nurse was on her way out.
“It’s my afternoon off,” she said. “I’ll wake her up this evening and tell her you called.”
“Can you leave a note at least?”
“Fine.”
I kicked the phone-booth when I hung up.
I went to bed early and lay there staring at the
ceiling, wondering if my insomnia was back. I must have fallen asleep though, because I woke in the middle of the night, arms and legs strangely heavy. I heard the telephone ring downstairs in the Housemistress’ office, and footsteps shuffling out to answer it; it must have been the phone that woke me.
I got out of bed to pee. On the way back, I stopped at the top of the stairs. The Housemistress was sitting on the bottom step, rabbit-faced slippers on her feet. Normally the sight would have made me laugh, but this time something made me lean over the banister and call down to her quietly. “Who was that?”
She started and turned to face me. “Tallulah. How long have you been there?”
“Not long.”
“Oh, goodness. It’s so strange that it should be you up.” She seemed flustered.
“What is it?”
She hesitated.
“What?”
“That was your father on the telephone. It’s your grandmother.”
I sat down too, on the top step, with my knees pressed together. “What about her?” I asked, as the Housemistress started climbing up towards me. “Is she okay?”
“She had a nasty fall,” she said, kneeling in front of me. “You know, maybe we should get you a hot drink or something.”
I clutched the banister. “Why?”
“The nursing company just called your father,” she said. “The nurse found your grandmother when she got back this evening.”
“How is she?” I asked, but even before I asked I knew what was coming next.
“I’m sorry, Tallulah. She’s dead.”
We hear voices suddenly coming from my father’s room. Someone shouts “Check the monitor”, and then footsteps are slapping along the corridor floor, much too heavy for a child this time.
“Doctor,” the voices start up again. “You’re needed.”
We’re frozen, all turning towards the sounds but none of us daring to go out into the hallway to see what’s happening. No one looks shocked. I feel like we knew this was coming.
“Oh fuck,” Aunt Gillian says in a whisper; I think it must be the first time I’ve heard her swear.
A surgeon comes into the waiting-room, dressed in full operating gear. “Miss Park?” he says, looking straight at me. “I’m afraid your father’s situation is deteriorating. He’s being prepped for surgery now.”
“What happened?”
“He’s tamponading – an artery must have been punctured during the PCI. It’s not uncommon. We’ll do everything we can.”
We follow him into the hallway. They wheel my father out and into the operating room.
“He’ll be alright,” Aunt Gillian says, putting her hand on my shoulder. I can feel her shaking.
“Ladies, if you don’t mind waiting in the room down the hall,” a nurse says, her arms full of bandages.
“But… ” Aunt Gillian starts.
The nurse goes into the theatre, and we catch a glimpse of tubes and instruments and people moving around, with my father in the middle, before the door swings shut.
Fifteen
The night before the funeral, we stayed at Aunt Gillian’s house, me, my father, Aunt Gillian, Uncle George, Michael and Georgia. James was away on a school trip, and no one was talking about Vivienne. I’d heard Aunt Gillian pleading with her down the telephone. “Of course we tried. No one knows how to get in touch with him, Viv. Anyway, it’s Mother’s funeral. It’s not the time for grudges… ”
Uncle George had burst in on Aunt Gillian then. He was out of sight, but I’d heard him demanding the telephone, waving aside her objections. “It’s bloody work, Gillian.”
We drove to my grandmother’s the next day. The church was just around the corner from the house; it was cold and the minister droned on, without ever saying my grandmother’s name. I stared at the back of Uncle George’s head in the pew in front of me and noticed how little flecks of white skin kept dropping from his hair onto his shoulders. He seemed even more irritable than normal; halfway through the service he got a phone call and went outside. I heard his voice raising over the minister’s from time to time, shouting about ‘liability’, ‘betrayal’, and once, ‘little shit’.
As soon as we got back to the house, my cousins were sent upstairs to pack my grandmother’s things into boxes. Uncle George had brought some over in the boot of the car.
“No sense in wasting time,” he said. “We’ll have to recuperate the cost of the funeral anyway.”
“George,” Aunt Gillian said, looking scandalised.
“Well it’s true. You said the old bird was down to her last penny, so that rules out a nice big inheritance.” He looked gloomy.
“This is hardly the time to discuss it.”
“Oh yes, I forgot how close you all were.”
“She was my mother.”
“Grow up, Gillian. If you’re going to get hormonal maybe I’ll go for a walk.”
“Perhaps you should walk off a cliff,” I suggested.
“Tallulah,” Aunt Gillian said.
“Sorry, Aunt Gillian. I didn’t mean you.”
“This isn’t getting us anywhere,” my father said. “We’ve all had a stressful morning. Gillian, if you want to put the kettle on, I’ll go up and see how the packing is coming along.” He adjusted a shirt cuff.
“You don’t seem that broken up, either,” I said. For some reason, looking at my father’s blank face made me angrier than looking at Uncle George’s red one.
“Why doesn’t someone just put her down?” Uncle George said.
“George.”
“She’s pretty much a wild animal anyway.”
He didn’t see the plate leave my hand and fly towards him. It happened so quickly, I wasn’t sure I’d seen it either. The sound of his glasses, knocked off his ears and cracking on the floor, woke me up and I turned on my heels and ran.
“You’re just proving my point,” he yelled after me. I heard a scuffle, and saw over my shoulder that my father and Aunt Gillian were physically restraining him. “You need a bloody psychiatrist, girl.”
I went outside and sat in the rose garden, my thoughts even blacker than my dress. I heard Georgia and Michael calling to each other from upstairs, through open windows.
“Look at this spaniel-clock! Isn’t it cute?”
“It’s bloody hideous. Put it in the bin-bag to throw out.”
“I’m keeping it. I love it.”
I clenched my fists. I felt a weird hatred for Georgia, claiming things that had belonged to our grandmother when she hadn’t even really known her.
My father found me and started trying to give me a lecture, polishing his glasses on his sleeve.
“Save it,” I told him. “I’m not in the mood.” I went to walk off but he caught my arm.
“Try to think of others, Tallulah,” he said. “We’re all going through this together.”
“Please don’t touch me,” I said, shaking him off.
We troop back into the waiting-room. I feel disconnected from my body, and wonder if that’s how my father feels too – if he’s conscious somehow, but not within himself.
I was so angry with him it’s hard to believe. Yesterday, the day before. Most of my life. I left the day after my grandmother’s funeral; I couldn’t bear to stay in the house if my grandmother wasn’t there anymore.
I remember my father already being gone – due back at work – and Michael dropping me off at the station. I remember he gave me a plastic bag and said, “We found these. Georgia thought you might want them.”
“Thanks. And thanks for the lift.”
“Aren’t you going to see what they are?”
“Okay.” Inside the bag was every picture I’d ever drawn or painted for my grandmother.
“They’re good,” he’d said. “Especially that one of the landscape, you know… the cliff-top and the beach. That somewhere you’ve been?”
“It was a photo I found in a magazine. Somewhere in South America.”
I remember him turnin
g the engine off and shifting to face me. He was wearing jeans and a tight red jumper that clung to the muscles on his arms; he looked so much older. “Smoke?”
“Cheers.”
I slump back into one of the waiting-room chairs. What then? Smoking, stubbing out the cigarette, shaking the plastic bag. “Thanks for these, again.” Opening the door.
“It was Georgia’s idea. She’s the sweet one.”
“Say thanks to her too.”
“Yeah. Take care, Tallie.”
Was it really only a few days ago that I got the telephone call about my father? It feels like I’ve been here forever. But that memory in the car feels like yesterday. I can almost smell the dusty upholstery, Michael, the wet paint of the benches along the station platform. The car fumes as I walked back to our house, mingling with the flowers spilling through the park railings. The windows of the houses I passed were going gold and burnt orange in the setting sun. Then our house, gloomy with all the lights off. I stood outside, wishing my father was dead, wishing I could speak to Toby, or Edith, imagining them together as I stood there, rage building up inside me.
As soon as I opened the door I knew that something was wrong. Same hallway – dark, parquet flooring and deep red runner. Same steady tick of the Great Western Railway clock that hung in my father’s study, coming muffled through the wall. There was a smell that I couldn’t put my finger on, though. Something musty and sweet at the same time, and I kicked off my shoes, running through the house to look for Mr Tickles, who would normally have been at my feet by now.
I know exactly where I went looking for him. All his favourite places first: sofa, washing-machine, under my bed. Then my wardrobe, calling him, getting more and more frantic.
Did you not notice he was gone, Dad? Were you more shaken by Grandma’s death than I realised? At the time I thought you just didn’t care.
I rest my face in my hands. Even now it makes my stomach drop, thinking of how I found him, eventually, in my laundry basket. He must have been dead for a while, because his body was stiff and his eyes looked flat. I cradled him to me. I let my tears fall onto his coat, already greasy and matted from old age and showing patches of greyish skin underneath. For a second I thought I saw his chest rise and fall, and I had a sudden crazy thought that my tears had brought him back to life, but it must have been some air escaping, because his heart never started beating again.