In front of me on the desk where I wrote was my school photo. I’d been tall for my age, stretched, but not all the pieces of me had grown in sync: my teeth were too big for my head, my hands and feet huge on the end of skinny limbs. Small breasts and a child’s narrow hips. Pieces of a woman tacked on to a girl. Where was the mother to guide me until I was ready?
The pot plant I’ve brought is on Peter’s bedside table: chrysanthemums, cheap and colourful, the same kind he used to buy for Mum. I always hated them, and I know Mum did too, but she was afraid to tell him in case he stopped buying her flowers altogether. The yellow petals are as bright as if they’ve been injected with dye, and they suck the colour from everything around them, turning the universe of the room insipid and grey. In the heated room their perfume is a chemical vapour.
I pick a small flower, one recently opened from a bud, and roll the stem in my fingers. The petals bruise along opaque lines the second they are bent. I put the flower in my pocket next to the little bones I found outside Seamus’s caravan, then stand and stare at Peter. He sours into the bed. When he goes to speak I press my hand hard on his wet mouth, remembering the adult currency he traded with a child’s infatuation. I think of him one day soon reverting to his base elements, as my mother has already done: oxygen, carbon, hydrogen – the molecules separating and no longer able to do harm.
Let him fester, and rot, and disappear.
20
1981
A layer of soft hair covers my face and body. It’s grown quite slowly over the last year but mostly it’s on my forearms. Luckily it’s quite fair, not like the hair on my head. I like to pinch some of the strands together and roll the hairs between my fingers so they pull a bit. My skin looks like it belongs to a newborn calf, but I don’t feel very pure. More of a beast.
Around my chest, I strap myself up with lengths from a torn sheet, then a tight vest over which I wear a baggy top. I’ve tested the look in the mirror and I’m flat like a plank. Girls at school chant a rhyme when I pass them in the corridor, ‘She’s so boring, she’s got no tits, she never puts out, and she never gets her kicks’. The boys tease me too, they call me spaghetti. None of them have asked me to go out with them; none of them would want to if they knew. Only Mike gives me lifts home on his bike. He French kisses me with a pointy tongue when he drops me off. Mrs Simpson over the road watches through her net curtains. I think Mike’s my boyfriend, but Melanie Blacksmith’s going out with his brother, and she says that Mike’s not interested in girls who are frigid.
For supper Mum’s cooked what’s left in the fridge: a mishmash of cheese on toast, some cabbage and half a pie. We sit opposite each other and I eat slowly, worrying about how long I can leave the food in my stomach before it gets absorbed. Now that Uncle Peter’s stopped coming round, there’s nothing to break up the evening, and the meal seems to take ages.
‘How was your day then, darling?’ Mum says in a squeaky voice, pecking her food with a fork. The cutlery clangs on the china. She won’t finish the meal, but she’ll expect me to finish mine.
‘Fine.’
‘Did you get your homework in on time?’ Her words are all shaky. ‘I expect to see great things from you at the next parents’ evening.’ That’ll be the first one she’s ever made it to then.
Mum dabs her mouth on an ironed napkin and her lipstick prints satsuma shapes on the cloth. Earlier today before I went to school, she opened the front curtains, placed herself by the window and wrestled the rusty ironing board open. When I came home, everything from the laundry basket had been ironed, even the dress I wore for my twelfth birthday which no longer fits me. She’s hung it in my wardrobe anyway.
We finish the meal in silence. I scrape my knife and fork together and put them to the left of my plate. Mum lights a cigarette and inhales a big lungful of smoke. She looks out of the window and flicks cylinders of ash into an ashtray. Normally she uses her plate.
‘You know, you mustn’t talk about this,’ she says with a sniff.
I stare at my plate.
‘There’s just no need.’ She pulls on her cigarette – it’s nearly finished, in record time – and she stubs out the butt and looks at me. ‘It’ll only cause a load of problems. They’ll ask lots of questions, of me as well as you. No good will come from airing your problems. Mistakes are best hidden.’
Her eyes scorch into me. She fiddles with the packet of cigarettes then lights another. I wish I could smoke and take big breaths like that.
‘Well,’ she says, her voice all high-pitched, ‘we’ll have to make sure we concentrate on your studies now, shan’t we? Get you into that university you’re always talking about.’ Her words start to quiver. ‘Get all this sex stuff out of your head.’
The gravy from the pie has made brown rainbows on my plate. I think about the food in my stomach, mixed up into a thick sauce like in a giant food processor. No one would eat if they had a TV of their insides, they’d take space pills instead.
Mum’s crying now. ‘You didn’t have to do that.’ She wipes her eyes with her dirty napkin and a bit of lipstick smears on her cheek. ‘Is it too much to ask, for me to have something for myself? The one good thing that’s happened to me in all these years, and you had to come along and ruin it. After all I’ve done for you, after all I’ve given up.’ She stands and paces the floor. ‘Did you think we could share him? Was that your idea?’ Mum looks at me but carries on walking and puffing on her cigarette. She holds the butt in the V of her fingers and jabs it at me while she talks. ‘If you were a grown-up I’d call you a little bitch. But you’re only skin and bones, a stupid little girl. I don’t know what you think you’ve got to offer that I haven’t.’
Raindrops of mascara trickle down her cheeks. She wipes the black on to her hand. At the kitchen window she stops and looks out, turning her back on me. Big yellow roses burst round the window frame. Their leaves are dry and the outer petals are starting to crisp. They’d last out a few more weeks if someone bothered to water them.
I stand to leave the room but my legs won’t move. I run my fingernail up and down the edge of the table, making a small dent in the wood where the Formica has come away and gritty bits of old food are stuck. I wish I had a time machine to take me back to one of those other meals, before all of this started.
‘You could be in so much trouble, young lady.’ Mum sniffs back her tears, takes another drag and stubs out the cigarette, but she doesn’t turn from the window. She fills the sink with water and washing-up liquid, and clanks the plates and cutlery into the volcano of bubbles.
‘I love him.’ I say the words under my breath.
Mum swivels on the balls of her feet to face me, her face damp and red. Soap suds are on her hands and up her wrists.
‘What did you say?’
‘He said he loved me.’
‘Love!’ she shouts. ‘What would you know about love? You’re only fourteen.’ Her head juts forward from her shoulders and she waves her hands in the air. White clumps of bubbles fly around the room; some land on my face. She screams and I’m glad the windows are shut, even though the room is hot and smells foodie. ‘Look at yourself, Rachel. What do you see? I see a silly little girl flaunting herself in front of a grown man.’
‘I didn’t. I wouldn’t have let him . . . I thought . . . I thought that’s what I was meant to do.’
‘Liar.’ Her voice is getting louder. ‘You’re a liar!’ I stare at the floor and mumble. Tears drop on to the lino.
‘I only wanted—’
Mum flies at me and holds me by the shoulders, digging her fingernails into my skin. Her lips are shrivelled round her clenched teeth and her bottom jaw sticks out. She shakes me and my head bobbles back and forth on my neck until my brain goes fizzy. ‘Wanted what?’ she screams.
‘A hug.’
‘Liar. I bet you loved every minute of it. Don’t tell me this wasn’t your plan all along. You’re jealous.’
My legs go weak and she pushes me away. ‘Dear Go
d!’ She wipes her head with her forearm, leaving a line of suds on her hair. ‘I don’t know what we’re going to do without your father’s support. It’s bad enough what you did, but why the hell did you have to tell him? You and your stupid letters. Did you think it would bring him back? Did you? Well, it won’t. Your plan’s backfired. He’s disgusted with you. We’re on our own now, Rachel, totally alone, thanks to you.’
I sink into my chair. I can’t get enough air in my lungs.
‘Now it’s all down on paper; if anyone else finds out, you’ll end up in prison. Peter is a policeman, he could lock you up and throw away the key. You’d be stuck in there with all those rapists and murderers, all those bad people like you.’ I start to cry out loud. ‘In fact,’ she says, ‘that’s what you deserve. I rue the day I ever gave birth to you, you little demon. You’re a thief and a liar.’
She grabs my hair. I scream and grapple at her hands as she pulls me out of the room, but she keeps on yanking and hauls me up the stairs, and I’m scared my hair’s going to come out in a big lump. I stumble halfway up the staircase and she lets go and holds my arm instead, pulling me on to the landing and then into my bedroom, where she launches me towards my bed. I flop down and she slams the door behind her as she leaves the room.
Her footsteps clomp down the stairs, and when I hear the pans bashing in the sink in the kitchen, I get up and go over to the airing cupboard. Inside is the little chair that’s too small for me now. I sit on it anyway, and my knees do a diagonal up towards my chin. On the back of the door is the padlock and hinge I bought from the hardware shop. I fitted it myself, sneaking Dad’s screwdriver back into the shed before Mum saw. I lock up the cupboard and test the door – it’s jammed shut. After a while I stop shaking and wipe my snot on my sleeve.
It’s very dark in here, but the edges of the door make a square of daylight. On the floor is my biology textbook, my exercise book and also the torch I put in here earlier. I flick on the light to read about ‘the bolus’: ‘A small rounded mass of a substance, esp. of chewed food at the moment of swallowing.’ I have to put it into my own words, so I write: ‘You chew and mix the food up in your mouth, then push the lump to the back with your tongue. Next, your oesophagus squeezes it down to the stomach where the acid breaks it down. It would even work if you stood on your head.’
My legs cramp. There isn’t enough room to stretch out. When I was little I could squeeze behind the immersion tank, but once I got stuck and it took ages to get out. After that I put the chair in here and sometimes I fall asleep. I need a wee and I’m not sure how long I can hold it in, but mostly I worry about the supper I’ve eaten. I’ll have to do more sit-ups tomorrow. From downstairs comes Mum’s voice. She sounds like she’s shouting through a pillow, but I can still make out what she’s saying: ‘You little bitch. I’ll leave you and go on a long holiday, then you’ll really be able to starve yourself to death. That’s what you deserve.’
The outline of light round the door slowly disappears until there’s nothing but black. The torch dims, then flickers, then goes out. It’s so dark that I can’t tell how far away the wall is, and I try to imagine I’m in a big room, but that makes me more scared so instead I put my hand flat on the wall in front of me and keep it there, holding myself up.
This must be like the prisons Peter talks about, where people who are liars, the ones who get other people into trouble, go to rot and die. No one ever knows what’s happened to them. They disappear. Peter says the police can fix it so that whatever they say goes.
Everything is my fault anyway. If I concentrate hard enough I can make it like nothing ever happened.
21
A STRING OF STARS
Downstairs in the nursing home the trolley woman is talking to me, or at least her mouth is moving, but I can’t decipher her words. On her third attempt she’s tetchy and almost shouts, ‘Do you want me to order a taxi?’
‘No thanks,’ I reply. ‘I need to walk.’
Rush-hour traffic zooms past on the busy road as people return to homes and families and Christmas cheer. A damp dusk crowds the sky. I bend my head forward as if carving a route through the sea-steeped air. The smell reminds me of the last time I saw Will at the beach, and the same predictable ache twists in my gut. I’ve become strangely at home with this sole connection to Will, only now it’s coupled with a hopelessness which gnaws even deeper, as if I’m being hollowed out from the inside.
Heading in the direction of the town and my B & B, I leave Peter behind, locked inside the walls of his decrepitude. My fingertips hold the slide of his loose skin, and I hug my dad’s coat round me as I force my feet to move, one in front of the other, to draw me into the meditation of walking, but my thoughts won’t blank; a lid has opened on the past. A tumble of images flicker through my brain: Alex’s calves pinched by the band of sock elastic, my colleagues’ heads at the office bobbing above their workstations, the brush of the old man’s fingers in the car park as he put the coat on my shoulders. The dead dog. Seamus lying under wet leaves. Mum’s sweaty face as she stood over the washing-up. The taste of pipe tobacco in my mouth.
My roll call of shame.
Echoes of memory bounce back and forth, but so many at once it’s impossible to lock on to any one. A car beeps its horn and several others join in as a jam builds up at a junction. The buzz of noise crowds the snapshots in my head. The lid shuts.
A man in a ragged overcoat and oversized trainers walks the crossing as the lights flash amber. The man’s pace is solid and relaxed, as if he has all the time in the world. Even as the lights change to green for the traffic to go, he ambles at his leisure before reaching the other side and stepping on to the pavement. Waiting vehicles spin their wheels to get away. One driver shouts from his window, something I can’t make out above the noise of the traffic, but the man on the pavement takes no notice and continues to walk at the same speed into the distance. I run to catch him up, jamming my finger repeatedly into the crossing button, but the signal phase takes too long before I can cross, by which time he has disappeared.
It will take over an hour to walk back to the B & B, and I cut through the suburban outreaches of the city. Most houses have Christmas trees in their windows, and I picture a young Claire, like me, waiting for a Disney version of her father to walk through the door, full of apology and arms laden with presents. Claire’s letter to her dad is hidden with the rest of Seamus’s papers at Will’s house, and if Will ever finds the correspondence he won’t have a clue what any of it means. The police can’t identify Seamus or trace his family without this information, and his daughter will for ever wonder what happened to her dad. I could turn myself in but then Will would be drawn into a mess he has nothing to do with, so it’s better I remove the middle man and deal with this last piece of shame head-on.
There’s a wall next to a big park. I sit. Detached houses circle the green, many with closed wrought-iron entrance gates leading on to a driveway where at least two cars are parked. The lights from all the entrance buzzers form a string of stars along the road. I take out my mobile and scroll through the numbers until I find ‘Sister Williams’ – I thought it would look as if I’d discovered the Lord if David found the number, and I hoped that in my current state of hysteria, David would believe I was capable of that.
A month ago, before I cut all ties with the office, I rang my contact at our debt-collection agency and asked Toby to put a trace on Claire. ‘She was pretty easy to find,’ he said when he phoned back. ‘County Court judgement back in ’92. Lives in Belfast, divorced and married a second time, three kids. Pay cheques go into her account from Tesco.’ He sounded guarded, less friendly than the conversations I was used to – normally he’d have been breathless with the chase, so David must have got to him – but I’m glad he did me one last favour, and perhaps David is wrong; I do have some friends.
I dial 141 first so my number can’t be traced, then put the call in to Claire. I get her answering machine. The message says: ‘Hello
, this is Claire, please leave your name and number after the beep.’ It’s the voice of a woman and it takes me a moment to connect her grown-up intonation with the image of the little girl in the photo. In the background of the recording is clattering and a baby crying. I don’t leave a message but hang up and redial. On my third attempt she answers. I say nothing, but listen to her voice and the noises in the background: laughter, a TV up loud, children shouting. So different to my own life, so full. I want to sit with her on her sofa; we’d smoke cigarettes and laugh at the happy chaos around us. ‘Who is this?’ she says now. ‘Tell me what you want or leave me alone.’ My phone beeps with a low-battery warning – I’m so used to charging it in the car, I didn’t think to pack my plug – and before the last bar of power disappears I hang up and copy the number on to the back of Claire’s photo in my bag.
A few paces inside the park is a modern-style glass and metal phone box covered in graffiti. Its yellow glow is a beacon in the darkness. I walk towards it and open the door, avoiding the old spit on the handle. It’s so long since I’ve used a public phone and the system has changed completely; I don’t know where to start. From my purse I scoop a fistful of the coins that Alex scattered. Pounds and ten-pence pieces warm in my grip. I pick out and discard the coppers. A receiver hangs down vertically, not slung over the top like in the old days, and I lift it to my ear to hear the dialling tone; it’s a relief the phone’s still working and not been vandalized. Five pounds slide into the slot. I pause before dialling. This time I need to say something, but I’ve nothing prepared. Is it enough to listen to Claire again, the daughter of Seamus and living proof that he existed and he carries on? There’s comfort in that alone.
The Liar’s Chair Page 20