Tattletale

by Sarah J. Naughton

  8. Jody

  The card is still lying open on the floor where I dropped it, like a crocodile’s mouth waiting to snap at my ankles. I want to put it in the bin but I can’t bring myself to touch it.

  It’s small, half the size of a normal card, as if it doesn’t want to be seen, as if it can hide behind the others. If there were any others.

  On the front is a pastel picture of a rose: more a sympathy card than a birthday card. Another year alive. Poor you.

  To dearest Jody

  Always thinking of you and wishing you the very best on your birthday. I’ll drop your present around to the flat.

  Helen x

  It’s Helen now, not Mum.

  I can’t see her. I can’t. I can’t bear to see the pity and revulsion in her eyes. It’s guilt that brings her here, twice a year, on my birthday and at Christmas. The cards are only ever signed by her.

  I know we made a commitment to you but that was on condition that …

  If we’d known …

  We’re not capable of providing for your needs …

  Jeanie and Tom were capable. I stayed with them for two years. Jeanie taught me to knit, Tom took me fishing. They said they would have adopted me if they hadn’t been too old. I said I didn’t care how old they were. But Tabby cared. She said they might not be there for me during the most important periods of life, like leaving home, getting my first job, having my first relationship. Turns out she was right. Tom had a heart attack a few months after I left and Jeanie’s in a home with Alzheimer’s now. You would have liked them, Abe. I can still smell the scent of Tom’s fingers as he tucked me in: soil and cigars. I used to beg him to stop smoking but he said he was too old to change.

  Nobody’s too old to change. I changed. I was better, because of you. I didn’t need to rely on pills with you in my life. I was so happy I threw them away.

  But now I need them. Now … this card … I can’t think straight. My blood is racing. My vision is all blotchy.

  If I think about you, about us, it will make me feel better.

  For days and days I kept wearing the rain dress, in case I saw you, but eventually it got too smelly under the arms. I realised then that all my clothes were dull and ugly. This is a good sign. In depression questionnaires they always ask if you have lost interest in your appearance, and I had. But now, because of you, I wanted to look pretty.

  That Saturday morning I pulled on my jeans and anorak and went down to the charity shop. I had to wait for it to open, stamping my feet in the cold because the sun was still down behind the buildings.

  Eventually the fat lady who runs it came waddling up and we went in together and she let me look around while she set everything up. She trusted me, even when she was in the back room, which was nice. I was tempted by a cocktail dress in iridescent navy taffeta. Perhaps if I wore it with a jumper and boots it wouldn’t look too over the top.

  While I was deliberating the old lady from the ground floor came in and she started oohing and aahing over it, so I put it back and went to the blouses section. I was lucky: there was a lacy white top in my size, from a shop I would never have been able to afford normally. I tried it on in the tiny cubicle. The curtain didn’t fit properly and the old lady peered in and announced that it really suited me. I tried to smile but she was making me nervous. I wanted to bolt from the shop, but I didn’t want to leave without the blouse, so I forced myself to take some deep breaths and calm down.

  I could feel her eyes on my body as I slipped the blouse off, and I yanked the curtain across and held it while I got dressed one-handed. I thought about saying something about people deserving some privacy, and had wound myself up so much that my heart was hammering when I came out, the blouse balled in my fist. But she was at the back of the shop now, picking through a basket of cheap-looking beads. Under the heavy panstick make-up she was ancient and her gnarled hand gripped a walking stick, so I changed my mind.

  ‘Ooh, lovely,’ said the lady at the till. ‘Wish I could get into something like that. You’re so lovely and slim!’

  I forced myself to say thank you even though my face was burning. Then I pointed to the label and added, ‘I like that shop but it’s so expensive.’

  ‘We do get stuff from them sometimes – the people in the big houses by the station bring them in,’ she said. Her name label read Marion. ‘If I see anything in your size – an eight, is it? – I’ll keep them for you.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘That would be really nice.’

  After I left the shop, swinging the bag by my side, I felt sort of electrified. Avoiding contact with people is another sign of depression, and there I was making conversation with a complete stranger. See what you had done for me already?

  The sun was shining and the flat was as warm as toast. I put the blouse on and some lipstick and tied up my hair, and then I got my new book, which I’d dried out on the windowsill, and went outside. I sat on the bench by the playground and waited.

  I didn’t know what you did for a living then, but I knew you didn’t work on Saturdays. I had seen you coming back from the high road, with a newspaper and a bag from the local bakery. Once I had seen you eating a croissant from the bag, so I knew you weren’t having breakfast with anyone, which meant you might be single.

  The children came out and wanted me to time them as they tried to do the mini assault course, and we were all laughing our heads off because one of the big boys got stuck in the baby swings when a voice said, ‘Aren’t you cold?’

  I was glad you had found me like this, laughing with the children, my cheeks pink from the wind. Out of the sun it was freezing and I wasn’t sure how much longer I could have lasted.

  You looked terrible, tired and hollow-eyed, with a rash around your mouth. I wanted to put my arms around you and look after you.

  ‘Oh, I don’t feel the cold,’ I said, trying not to shiver.

  ‘Lucky you! I was going to get a paper, but I don’t think I can face it.’

  ‘I’ll get it for you,’ I said. ‘I was heading that way anyway. I need to get milk. The Guardian, is it?’

  ‘Is it that obvious?’

  ‘I can push it under the door.’

  ‘No, no, no.’ You were shivering under your thin jacket. ‘Don’t. Borrow some of my milk.’

  It was so tempting to share the same carton you had used, but I wanted to do this thing for you.

  I smiled. ‘It would be a pleasure.’

  ‘You’re an angel,’ you said, closing your eyes and letting your long dark eyelashes rest on your cheek. ‘If you really don’t mind, then I think I’ll go back to bed.’

  I watched you jog back to the door, hunched against the cold, but you didn’t turn back.

  ‘Time me now!’ one of the little boys cried, but I was already halfway to Gordon Terrace.

  After I’d pushed the paper under your door, which I had to do in sections because there was so much of it, I waited for a while outside my flat, with my key poised, so that if you came out to thank me it would look as if I was just on my way back in. But you didn’t come out. I imagined you curled up in your bed, all warm and musty-smelling from sleep. I imagined myself curled up behind you, my arm around your waist, my face in your hair.

  Later on I found a folded piece of paper pushed under my door. It was a biro drawing of an angel with a little heart over its head.

  For the rest of the weekend I couldn’t stop smiling.

  After that day I never took another pill. I never needed to. I woke up with a song in my heart, literally. All the songs I’d learned when I was little came flooding back to me. Songs about love and trust, perfect days and endless nights. Just cheesy pop songs really, but suddenly every word meant something.

  I still feel the same Abe. Even now. Even in the hospital, watching you struggle to breathe, watching the machine pump air into your lungs.

  It’s a perfect day because I’m spending it with you.

  9. Mags

  Flat Eleven is sile
nt. As silent as Flat Twelve, though I know that Jody’s in there. What’s she doing? Listening, like me?

  I breathe as quietly as possible, though my lungs are burning from the long climb carrying the load of folded laundry, still hot from the drier. I thought about dropping it back at the flat, but changed my mind. If I speak to them with it tucked under my arm my questions will seem more casual. I was just passing and thought I’d introduce myself …

  I haven’t hit any of the light switches on the way up, and the floor and walls are crazy-paved with colour from the stained-glass window. The brass latches of the doors gleam red from Jesus’s cloak. The stairwell is a yawning chasm behind me. Again I feel its pull: a dark pool I can dive into and lose myself forever.

  Did Abe feel the same? Was he incapable of resisting? Or did something else happen? I try to imagine his slim fingers digging into Jody’s collarbone. It seems so out of character from the boy I knew, who was so self-contained, so restrained. I never knew him express any emotion, barely ever saw him smile. But I suppose he was as fucked up as I was, pushing everything down to stop himself getting hurt. Who knows what his personality was really like under there? Once that lid, so tightly wedged on, was allowed to come off, did he become a monster?

  I think of the handwriting on the Christmas card and the security panel downstairs. Small and neat, but pleasantly looping; surely not the handwriting of a bully. But what do I know? I know nothing about him. Only that we have the same taste in shoes and coffee.

  The light on the ground floor goes on and I hear one of the flat doors close. Then a rhythmic tapping begins, like bones clacking together. My brain throws up an image of a skeleton shuffling across the concrete and I can’t stop myself looking over the banister. A woman with a stick is making her painful way across the foyer to the door.

  And then it’s as if she feels me looking. She stops, and her head tips back.

  When our eyes meet she starts, and her stick clatters to the floor.

  Her reaction so unnerves me that I shrink back from the banisters, breathing heavily.

  Agonisingly long minutes later the tapping resumes, then the outer door closes and silence falls.

  The light ticks off and I stand in the dim puddles of colour, my heart pounding.

  The place is playing tricks with my mind, bringing back all those fight or flight impulses from my childhood.

  I force myself to calm down, employing the techniques I had to use when I was first called to the bar. Jackson would laugh if he could see me now, sweating and trembling in the dark like a child after a nightmare. My clients would be panic-stricken, my opponents in court would rub their hands with glee: the iron bitch finally brought low.

  Eventually my heartbeat is back to its normal rhythm and I tap on the door of Flat Eleven.

  Minutes pass, and then I hear a soft rustling behind the door. Someone is there. I tap again and the rustling stops sharply.

  ‘Hello?’ I say, as quietly as possible. ‘I’m your new neighbour. Just come to say hello.’

  I glance at Jody’s door with its black spyhole. Is she standing behind it also? A church full of whispering and listening, everyone watching everyone else for signs of sin.

  The door opens.

  It’s the Muslim woman I saw earlier.

  ‘Hi,’ I say and stretch out my free hand. ‘I’m Mags, Abe’s sister. From number ten.’

  We shake, stiffly. Her eyes are alert, darting around nervously, seeing if anyone’s behind me. It makes the hair at the back of my neck bristle.

  ‘I am sorry for what happened to your brother,’ she says. ‘He was a good man.’

  I don’t pick her up on the past tense.

  ‘Could I come in?’

  Her face blanks. ‘I am sorry but …’

  ‘Just for a moment,’ and before she can stop me, I step over the threshold.

  She holds up her hands. ‘But …’

  I press on and, as if fearful of my touch, she backs up against the wall.

  The inner door is open and I walk briskly up the corridor and into the flat, where Jody is less likely to be able to hear us.

  A vivid blue line slashes across the carpet. It’s caused by the afternoon sun shining through the robe of the woman in the stained-glass window that rises up from the floor. Around her head is a yellow disc and it takes me a moment to realise that the smaller disc, at her shoulder, must belong to the Baby Jesus, separated from his mother by the ceiling of the flat below.

  This flat is at the back of the church and directly below the window is a small, empty car park. The place has the damp, heavy smell of boiled vegetables.

  A naked light bulb dangling from the centre of the ceiling goes on. The woman stands in the doorway, her eyes wide with alarm. I should not have done this to her. She’s clearly new to this country and though she knows what I’ve done isn’t right, she doesn’t know how to go about making me leave.

  I smile, partly to reassure her that I mean no harm, partly to make her think this is all perfectly normal.

  The flat is spotlessly clean and tidy, but all that does is emphasise its bleakness. They don’t seem to have added anything to the original cheap furniture provided by the housing association, aside from a paisley throw on the back of the burgundy velour sofa, and a couple of mountain scenes on the wall.

  A pair of furry slippers and some cement-encrusted workboots are lined up neatly by the door. I wonder why she doesn’t put the slippers on since the flat is so cold, but her feet are bare.

  ‘Sorry, what was your name?’ I say.

  ‘Mira.’

  ‘Mira. Hi.’ I try and think of a compliment, but there is nothing positive to say about her home. Even the view is dreadful. Above the car park the sky is a flat November grey. The wind whines through a cracked windowpane.

  She watches me warily, as if afraid I will make some sudden movement. I may as well get to the point.

  ‘I was just wondering,’ I begin slowly, ‘if you’d heard anything the night my brother fell. Any raised voices? My brother shouting, perhaps?’

  Her face closes up at once. I kick myself. If there was anything to reveal she won’t tell me now.

  ‘Sorry, but English not good. Do not understand.’

  Like hell you don’t.

  I try turning on the waterworks, screwing up my face and looking away. ‘It was such a shock. I just want to know what happened. For our parents’ sakes.’

  This usually works with Europeans, who worship at the altar of The Family.

  ‘I very sorry but I not hear anything.’

  So, your English isn’t all that bad then.

  ‘Didn’t you go out of the flat to see what was going on?’

  She hesitates.

  ‘It’s just that someone saw you,’ I hazard. ‘From downstairs. They thought you might have seen what happened.’

  Her eyes flash with something. Could it be fear? Has she come from a country where you are always being watched, and if someone reports you, you might be taken away and never seen again?

  ‘Maybe they were mistaken,’ I add.

  ‘There was no one else. Just your brother and the girl.’

  ‘Jody.’

  She nods.

  ‘What made you go outside? Did you hear something?’

  ‘The girl screaming.’

  ‘Jody?’

  Another nod.

  ‘You didn’t hear any shouting before that? Any sounds of an argument?’

  As she shakes her head her eyes slide away from mine, but I cannot think of a reason why this woman would lie for Jody. Evidently she doesn’t even know her name.

  ‘What about your husband? Could he have seen something?’

  ‘He is at the gym then pub. All night. He sees nothing.’

  ‘What gym?’

  ‘Stone’s Boxing Club.’

  She seems tired, and as she leans back against the wall her robe settles against her stomach. She’s pregnant. No wonder she was scared when I pushed past her.
I shouldn’t have come.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say, ‘to barge in like this.’

  ‘It’s OK. You are upset about your brother.’

  ‘I think he was depressed.’

  ‘Yes. It must be that. He seemed always very sad.’

  ‘I’ll leave you to rest.’

  I pass back along the darkened hallway and pause at the front door. ‘What are you hoping for?’ I gesture to the bump.

  ‘A boy, of course,’ she says. ‘Like everybody.’

  ‘Not me,’ I say. ‘I’d want a girl. I’m a feminist.’

  As she laughs her faces alters, like the sun coming out. ‘Not many of these in Albania.’

  As Mira closes the door I walk to the banister and try to imagine what she would have seen as she emerged from her flat that night. Jody running down the stairs, screaming for help, my brother splayed out on the concrete far below, in a halo of blood.

  An overweight woman is puffing up the stairs, carrying a glittery gift bag that sparkles in the light from the second-floor lamp. I head for Abe’s flat and am just turning the latch when the woman puffs out onto the landing. Before I can go inside Jody’s door opens.

  ‘Hello, darling,’ the woman says warmly. ‘I’ve come to give you your birthday present!’ As she waggles the bag the light goes off and we are plunged into the habitual red-stained gloom.

  I pause at the door to see if Jody will introduce us before she invites the woman in. She does neither. In fact, she says nothing, and doesn’t even reach to take the proffered bag.

  ‘There’s a cake that Tyra made. Chocolate and orange. She reckons it’s her signature dish!’ The woman gives a bubbly laugh, seemingly unfazed by Jody’s taciturnity. I retreat into the flat and close the door, though I can still hear the conversation that follows perfectly clearly.

  ‘How is everything?’

  ‘Fine,’ Jody says.

  I wait to hear if she will elaborate, tell her friend about Abe’s prognosis, but either she has already told the woman, or doesn’t want to.

  ‘You’re eating OK?’

  ‘Yes.’ There’s a spike of irritation in Jody’s voice that I haven’t heard before.