Crazy Paving
Page 28
Helly helped herself to a cigarette. ‘Well it looks like my side of the story is ending well enough. I’m happy.’
Rosylyn-with-two-ys leant forward and lit Helly’s cigarette. ‘This is not the end of the story, Helen, just the beginning.’
‘Actually,’ said Helly, ‘I call myself Helly. Is that alright?’
Rosylyn leant back in her seat and smiled. ‘Perfect.’
Annette knew that not all stories end happily.
It was the Sunday after she had been to Rosewood Cottage, the Sunday after her first trip to Julia the acupuncturist, early summer, midday, the first Sunday she had been for a walk since the bombing.
Mountsfield Park was not a pleasant park. It only came to life once a year for Lewisham People’s Day, when local organisations set up stalls: the Catford Boy Scouts, the South London Mental Health Survivors Group, the Liberal Democrats. Most days it was gloomy and windswept, even at weekends, with no more than a handful of visitors. It was the place to take your dog when it needed to defecate or your child when it needed to scream; the park you went to when you couldn’t be bothered to go to a more interesting one.
It was a light afternoon, flickered with sun, with the merest hint of a chill in the air, to remind everyone that the winter was not far behind them and would one day come again. At the entrance there was a single tennis court occupied by two muscular, middle-aged men in white shorts, taking themselves very seriously. As she approached the rise, there were two Alsatians who were sitting gazing around, enjoying the view and panting at each other. A small group of young teenagers hung around the bandstand, smoking. Three drunks were sitting in a row on a nearby bench and another was standing next to them, berating them loudly. ‘Youse wouldn’t know a good thought if youse fell over it!’ The sitting drunks seemed disinclined to argue. They were gazing at him, nodding sagely.
Annette began a slow circuit around the perimeter. Towards the far side there were a few families, women pushing empty pushchairs while toddlers streaked ahead. Coming towards her along the path was a woman of similar age, wearing a long cotton top like hers and no make-up, like her. Like her, she was staring straight ahead. As she passed, they exchanged glances.
Annette turned and went over to a bench. The view from this angle was uninspiring: the distant bandstand with the teenagers and drunks, a lone dog with the characteristic rolling gait of a pit bull trotting along the path.
God, she thought, to think I used to do this regularly before the bombing; every Sunday almost. This is what I had become, a woman who believed in genteel suffering. I can remember myself, casting brave, sly glances at passing groups or couples, walking with my collar turned up against the wind and gazing into the middle distance, imagining that passers-by thought me lovely and wounded. That woman, so sad. Not beautiful perhaps, but haunting. The eyes. I wonder what it is that makes her seem so wistful? In fact, I was invisible.
She sighed. No more genteel suffering for her. Now she had the real thing.
She smiled to herself, thinking of the newspaper report of her release from St Thomas’. She hadn’t seen it at the time but her mother had shown her when she had come to stay: ‘BOMB HEROINE LEAVES HOSPITAL’. The photograph had been one she had allowed them to take the morning of her discharge, while she sat in a low-slung chair in the ward’s television lounge. Former secretary Annette is determined to smile through her tragedy. Her mother was collecting her cuttings. It was a novel variation on china butterflies.
Former secretary, bomb heroine; what neat phrases, how sharp and distinct these definitions were, and how insignificant they seemed to make her vague, shadowy adolescence. Her friends Sarah and Jason were frightened of her disability but had made a point of asking her to a dinner party as soon as she came out of hospital. Once she had raised the topic round the table, the other guests had given an almost audible sigh. As soon as she had signalled that it was alright to ask her questions, they had been unable to stop. In social terms, a missing hand was almost as good as a baby.
Her physiotherapist Janey had warned her about what she called the honeymoon phase. It happened to some people, apparently. At first, an amputation seemed impossibly horrible. Then there was the slight lift as you came out of hospital and realised all the things you could still do, a kind of wild hope, a fierce, perverse belief in your own persistence and ingenuity. But the hardest bit was yet to come: the day-to-day struggle of incapacity, the fury and resentment. Acceptance would take months, if she was lucky, possibly years. The practical side was easier to deal with. There was the money from the compensation scheme, which would come in handy as the acupuncture did not come on the NHS and she was going to be seeing Julia once a week from now on.
And, she had put her house on the market. She was moving.
A breeze blew around her head, flicking her hair across her face, then back again, mockingly. Not all stories end happily, she thought. But stories end. And now it is ended, a whole phase. I can feel things turning, like the earth creaking round on its axis. Two pigeons strutted past her feet, one after the other. Then the first one stopped, turned and strutted back. The other pursued. As they strode back and forth, their speed increased. Annette smiled. Stupid birds. She placed her feet together neatly and with a small push of her legs, rose from the bench in one swift, efficient movement.
The pigeons took fright and flung themselves upwards, wings beating the warm light air.
Annette paused on the path and looked from left to right, unsure which way to go but enjoying the possibility of choice.