Elf crosses the landing to the bedroom. ‘Immy?’
‘Elf?’ Grief-scooped, wrung-out Imogen is propped up in bed. She’s wearing a nightie under a dressing-gown. Her hair is dishevelled. It’s the first time in years Elf has seen Imogen without a dab of makeup. ‘You’re here.’
‘I’m here. Bea made us tea.’
‘Mm.’
Elf brings the tray to the nightstand. She notices an ashtray and a packet of Benson & Hedges. Imogen quit smoking three years ago. ‘I’m taking Valium,’ says Imogen. Her voice is dulled and plodding. ‘Is it like marijuana?’
‘I wouldn’t know, Ims. I’ve never taken Valium.’
‘Did you really fly back from Italy today?’
‘Of course I did.’
‘You must be tired.’ She indicates the upright armchair in the window bay. Their mother had nursed Imogen, Elf and Bea on it and, for eight weeks, Imogen had breastfed Mark.
Sunlight passes through daisies on the curtain.
Elf remembers to breathe. ‘I have no idea what to say.’
‘I’ve had, “I’m so sorry.” I’ve had, “It’s just awful.” I’ve had, “It’s like a bad dream.” Mostly, people just cry. Dad cried. It was so weird that for a few seconds I didn’t think about Mark. People are … are … Oh, sorry. I can’t finish my sentences very well.’
‘Valium and grief will do that, I suppose.’
Imogen lights a cigarette and slumps into her pillow. ‘I’ve started smoking again.’
‘I’m on no high-horse. I’m on twenty a day.’
‘You can cry yourself dry, Elf. Did you know that?’
‘I did not.’ Elf opens the window to let a little air in.
‘It’s like when you vomit and vomit until there’s nothing left, but you still vomit, and it’s only air. Like that, but with my tear glands. Like that song, “Cry Me A River”. Who sings that?’
‘Julie London.’
‘Julie London. I’m learning all sorts of things. Mark was wrapped in his Winnie-the-Pooh blanket, and when it was time for the ambulance man to take him, my arms, my body, wouldn’t let go. My arms just gripped. As if that was any use. At that stage. Where was I when his heart was stopping? Here. Sleeping.’
Elf tries to hide her eyes. ‘Don’t think that way.’
‘How, Elf? Can you control what you think?’
‘Not very well. Distraction helps, a little.’
‘My breasts get sore. They’re still making milk. They haven’t cottoned on. I have to express it by hand, the doctor said, or I’ll get mastitis. If you ever want to write the saddest song in the world, you can use that.’
Elf feels her tears starting. She helps herself to a Benson & Hedges. ‘I’ll never ever write a song like that.’
Imogen looks at Elf across a void. ‘Do I sound mad?’
The blossom outside the window in the late sunshine is heartbreakingly beautiful. ‘I’m not a psychologist,’ says Elf, ‘but I’m pretty sure that people who are mad don’t ask, “Am I going mad?” I think they just … are.’
Imogen’s shallow breaths grow further apart. She murmurs, ‘You always know the right thing to say, Elf.’
Elf watches her sister fall asleep. ‘If only.’
The Cricketer’s Arms Hotel by the Sparkbrook roundabout is adorned with cricketing memorabilia, photographs and signed cricket bats mounted in small glass-fronted boxes. Bea, Elf and their father are staying at the hotel and eating dinner in its restaurant. Elf gives a potted version of the band’s Italian tour, and her dad musters an account of the Richmond Rotary Club’s gala. Bea talks about her upcoming role as Abigail Williams, villainess of The Crucible. Arthur Miller the playwright is due to give a couple of classes at RADA next week. Small talk, thinks Elf, is Polyfilla you fill cracks with so you don’t have to watch them widening. The food arrives. Shepherd’s pie and peas for their dad, salad and an omelette for Bea, and a bowl of minestrone soup for Elf. The soup contains bits of everything else on the menu.
‘It’s awful to see her like that,’ says Bea.
‘It’s awful to be so helpless,’ says Elf.
‘She’s not on her own,’ says their dad. Outside, across the car park, traffic goes round and round the roundabout. ‘It won’t hurt this much for ever. One day your sister will be back again. Our job is to help her get from here to there. What is it, my darlings?’
The sight of Bea crying has set Elf off.
‘So much for my wise words of solace,’ says their dad.
The three Holloways have the Residents Lounge to themselves. Bea and Elf forget to pretend they don’t smoke, and their dad forgets to voice his disapproval. The news on TV shows French police storming the Latin Quarter in Paris to take down protesters’ barricades. Tear gas was fired, stones hurled, hundreds of injuries sustained, hundreds of arrests made. ‘Is that how you build a better world?’ asks Elf’s dad. ‘Pelting the police with stones?’
In Bonn, a vast crowd of students marched on the German parliament to protest against new emergency laws. ‘If I had my way,’ says Elf’s dad, ‘I’d give ’em a country of their own. Belgium, for example. I’d tell ’em, “It’s all yours. You sort out food for millions, organise sewage, banking, law and order, schools. You keep them safe in their beds at night. All the boring, nitty-gritty stuff. Hearing aids. Nails. Potatoes.” Then come back in twelve months and see what kind of a dog’s dinner they’ve made of it …’
In Vietnam, an American base called Khâm Duc has been overrun by the North Vietnamese. Nine US military planes were shot down, and hundreds of soldiers and civilians killed. ‘The entire world,’ declares Elf’s dad, ‘has lost its mind.’
Bea and Elf exchange a look. Their father rarely watches the news without uttering the phrase at least once.
‘I’m off to bed,’ says Elf. ‘It’s been a long day.’
Monday is cloudy. Elf telephones Moonwhale from the hotel to ask Levon to cancel the band’s gigs later in the week. She’s never cancelled a ticketed gig in her life. Moonwhale’s line is engaged. Their dad drives Elf and Bea around the cricket ground to Imogen’s house. Elf’s mum lets them in.
‘How was the night?’ whispers their dad.
‘Pretty rotten,’ replies their mum.
‘Can we see her?’ asks Bea. ‘Is she up?’
‘Later, love. She’s asleep now. Lawrence and his father have gone to the hospital to meet the coroner.’
‘Right, then,’ says Elf’s dad. ‘That lawn needs a mow.’ Bea and Elf peg out some washing and walk to the shops for groceries and cigarettes. In the newsagent’s, Shandy Fontayne comes on the radio singing ‘Waltz For My Guy’. Bea’s watching her. Elf says, ‘If I don’t laugh, I’ll cry.’ Elf buys Imogen a packet of Benson & Hedges and the week’s Melody Maker. Back at the house, Imogen is downstairs, staring at a jigsaw of a tulip field and a windmill their mother is working on. Elf wishes she could say, ‘You’re looking better,’ but it would be an obvious lie.
Elf tries calling Moonwhale again, but the line is still engaged. She tries Jasper’s flat, but nobody replies. She wonders if anything’s wrong, then tells herself not to be paranoid.
Elf and Bea are preparing a salad when the Sinclairs arrive back. They enter through the back door. ‘Well,’ reports Lawrence’s dad, ‘the coroner’s put “Accidental Infant Death” on the certificate. Which says everything and nothing.’
There’s a raw sob. Imogen’s hands are covering her mouth.
‘Oh, pet.’ Mr Sinclair is horrifed. ‘I didn’t see you, I …’
Imogen turns to run upstairs but her mum’s blocking the way, so she spins back and lurches through the kitchen into the garden.
‘I thought she’d be upstairs,’ says Lawrence’s dad.
‘It’s the message, Ron,’ Elf’s mum assures him, ‘not the messenger. I’ll go and be with her.’
Elf makes a vinaigrette while Bea chops cucumber. The sound of the lawnmower stops. Elf’s mum comes in, looking shaky. Elf’s dad’s with her. ‘Immy
wants to be alone,’ she explains.
‘I’m so sorry,’ repeats Mr Sinclair. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘Don’t be, Ron,’ says Elf’s dad. ‘She had to hear somehow, and now it’s over and done with, she can … process the news. It’s for the best.’ He goes to call his office from the phone in the hall.
Bea switches on Radio 3 for sonic cover. It’s twiddly Mozart.
Imogen returns from the garden, red-eyed and distraught.
It’s a play, thinks Elf. Exits and entrances, non-stop.
‘There’s salad, pet,’ says Mrs Sinclair.
‘I’m not hungry.’ Imogen goes upstairs. Lawrence follows. Elf remembers the engagement lunch at Chislehurst Road in February last year. If we could read the script of the future, we’d never turn the page. Elf’s mum announces, ‘I think I’ll pop out to the shops. A bit of fresh air will do me good.’
Bea and Elf clear up the dishes. A few minutes later, they hear Imogen, sobbing.
‘It’s a tough time,’ says Mr Sinclair.
‘The toughest,’ agrees Elf’s dad.
A news bulletin comes on Radio 3. Riots and arrests in Paris have continued all morning. ‘We didn’t have a university education given to us on a plate,’ says Elf’s dad, ‘did we, Ron?’
‘That’s the problem, Clive. It is given them on a plate, so they don’t value it. They smash it up like spoilt toddlers. It’s all these lefty yobboes. At British Leyland, management can’t show their faces without eggs and abuse. Where’s it all going to end?’
‘The entire world,’ says Elf’s dad, ‘has lost its mind.’
‘Was there any of this in Italy last week, Elf?’ asks Mr Sinclair.
Elf explains that the tour was a week-long treadmill of van-travel, setting up, performing, and grabbing what sleep you could before the next day’s drive. ‘Martians could have invaded and we wouldn’t have noticed.’
After coffee, Bea announces that she’ll return to the hotel. ‘I’m surplus to requirements here. I’ve got to write an essay on Brecht.’ The good-natured exchange between Elf’s and Lawrence’s fathers over who’ll run Bea back to the Cricketer’s Arms is settled by Bea, who puts her coat on and says, ‘I’m walking’.
A little later, Lawrence comes downstairs, whispering, ‘She’s taken a pill, she’s sleeping now.’ He goes out too.
‘You can’t beat a bit of fresh air,’ says Elf’s dad.
‘Quite right,’ agrees Mr Sinclair. ‘Quite right …’
Elf tries calling Moonwhale a third time. The line’s still engaged. She tries the Duke-Stoker Agency. She can’t get through. She tries Jasper’s flat. Nobody replies. She asks her dad if today’s a bank holiday. ‘Definitely not, pet,’ says her dad. ‘Why?’
It feels as if Utopia Avenue has ceased to exist. ‘Nothing.’
Cut grass scents the tepid air. Elf borrows secateurs and gloves from the shed and gets to work on the brambles and weeds at the far end of the garden. Fronds of willow sway. Bluebells uncoil from Midland clay. A song thrush is warbling nearby. Yesterday’s? It’s still invisible. Elf thinks about her flat, empty for a week, and hopes all is well. The door is sturdy and the windows inaccessible, but Soho is Soho. The bottle of milk in the fridge will have curdled by now.
‘You missed a bit,’ says Imogen’s voice.
Elf looks up. Her sister is wearing a duffel coat over her dressing-gown, and wellington boots. The glimmer of humour in her remark is absent from her face. ‘I’m leaving the nettles. They’re good for butterflies. New fashion trend, or what?’
Imogen sits on the low wall dividing the upper lawn from the sunken, boggier end. ‘I was a bit wobbly, earlier.’
‘Be as wobbly as you damn well want.’
Imogen looks at the house. She snaps a twig.
‘Shall I ask everyone to give you space?’ asks Elf.
A noisy motorbike churns up the midday suburban drowse.
‘No. Stay. Please. I’m afraid of the silent house.’
The motorbike drives off. Its racket fades to nothing.
‘Each time I wake,’ says Imogen, ‘just for a moment, I’ve forgotten. The misery’s there, pressing in, but I’ve forgotten why it’s there. So for that moment, he’s back. Alive. In his cot. He was starting to recognise us. He’d just started smiling. You saw. Then …’ Imogen shuts her eyes ‘… I remember, and … it’s Saturday morning, all over again.’
‘Fucking hell, Ims,’ says Elf. ‘It must be torture.’
‘Yes. Yet when the torture ends … when I stop feeling this … he really will be gone. That torture’s all I’ve got of him. Torture and breast milk.’
A bee heavily laden with pollen draws ovals in the air.
I have no idea what to say, thinks Elf. None.
Imogen looks at the pile of weeds Elf has pulled up.
‘Sorry if I uprooted any botanical marvels,’ says Elf.
‘Lawrence and I were thinking of putting in a gazebo down here. Maybe now we’ll just leave it to the bluebells.’
‘Can’t argue with bluebells. They even smell blue.’
‘I brought Mark out here, when they were blooming properly. Three or four times. That was all. Those were the only times he … felt the Great Outdoors on his face.’ Imogen looks away, then at her hands. Her nails are a mess. ‘You assume you have for ever. We had seven weeks. Forty-nine days. Even the bluebells lasted longer.’
A snail is crawling up the brickwork. Gluey life.
‘It was a tricky birth,’ says Elf. ‘You had to recover.’
‘It wasn’t just a torn perineum. There was uterine damage, and … it turns out, I – I … can’t get pregnant again.’
Elf is very still. The day carries on. ‘That’s definite?’
‘The gynaecologist says it’s ‘extremely unlikely’. I asked, “How extremely?” He said, “Mrs Sinclair, ‘extremely unlikely’ is the gynaecological term for, ‘will not happen’.”’
‘Does Lawrence know?’
‘No. I was waiting for the right moment. Then … Saturday—’ Imogen tries to reel in the right verb but fails. ‘So I’ve just told you, instead of my husband. I’ll never be a mother again. And Lawrence won’t be a father. Biologically. Unless he thinks, I didn’t sign up for this, and … Oh, I go round and round and round.’
An unseen kid is kicking a ball against a wall.
Thump-pow, goes the ball, thump-pow, thump-pow.
‘It’s your body,’ says Elf. ‘Your news. Your timing.’
Thump-pow, goes the ball, thump-pow, thump-pow.
‘If that’s feminism,’ says Imogen, ‘sign me up.’
Thump-pow, goes the ball, thump-pow …
‘It’s not feminism. It’s just … true.’
Thump-pow, thump-pow …
Elf sits at the piano in the deserted function room at the Cricketer’s Arms and practises arpeggios. She’s been thinking of Imogen all evening. Her mind needs to do something else for a little while. Outside, it’s raining. The TV newsreader in the Residents Lounge is just audible, but his words are not. Elf senses a melody is waiting. Sometimes it finds you, like ‘Waltz For Griff’, but sometimes you track it by the lie of the land, by clues, by scent, almost … Elf draws a stave as a statement of intent. She settles on E flat minor – such a cool scale – with her right hand, and plays harmonies and disharmonies with her left to see what sparks fly off. Art is unbiddable: all you can do is signal your readiness. Wrong turns, eliminated, reveal the right path. Like love. Elf sips her shandy. Her dad appears. ‘I’m off to bed. See you later, Beethoven.’
Elf glances up, ‘Okay dad. Sleep tight …’
‘… don’t let the bedbugs bite. Night love.’
Elf carries on, linking rightness with the next rightness along. Art is sideways. Art is diagonal. She tries flipping it, playing bass arpeggios with a treble overlay. Art is tricks of the light. Elf transcribes notes on her hand-drawn stave, bar by bar, asking and answering musical questions every four bars. She tries 8/8
time but settles on 12/8: twelve quaver beats per bar. She happens upon a middle section – a glade in a forest, full of bluebells – that she half identifies as, and half creates from, ‘The Lord Is My Shepherd’ – played upside down. She reprises the opening theme at the end. It’s changed by the middle, like innocence changed by experience. She plays with rubato, legato and dynamics. She runs through the whole thing. It works. A few rough edges, sure, but … Nothing strained. Nothing naff. Nothing staid. No words. No title. No hurry. Not yet. She murmurs, ‘Bloody hell, you’re good.’
‘’Scuse me,’ says a man.
Elf looks up.
It’s a barman. ‘I’m closing up for the night.’
‘God, sorry. What’s the time?’
‘Quarter past midnight.’
In the morning, when Elf and Bea arrive in the restaurant of the Cricketer’s Arms for breakfast, Elf’s dad’s expression tells her something’s happened. She thinks, Imogen – but she’s wrong. Clive Holloway slides his Telegraph across the table, pointing at an article. Elf and Bea read:
UTOPIA AVENUE IN DIRE STRAITS
* * *
Pop group Utopia Avenue, best-known for Top 20 hits ‘Darkroom’ and ‘Prove It’, were detained on Sunday afternoon by Italian authorities at Rome Airport as they attempted to leave the country. Band manager Levon Frankland is in custody for alleged fiscal evasion and guitarist Dean Moss was arrested after drugs were found on his person. The British Embassy in Rome confirmed that both men have sought consular assistance but declined to comment further. Band lawyer, Ted Silver, issued a statement: ‘Dean Moss and Levon Frankland are innocent of these defamatory, trumped-up charges, and we look forward to clearing their names at the earliest possible opportunity.’
‘Fff –’ Elf turns a Griff-esque profanity into ‘– ffflaming heck.’
‘That’s a turn-up,’ says Bea.
‘That could’ve been you.’ Her dad speaks quietly, so other guests tucking into their breakfast don’t hear.
‘No wonder my calls were unanswered,’ says Elf.
‘You’ll be leaving the band, I trust?’ says her dad.
‘Let’s get the facts first, Dad.’
Utopia Avenue : A Novel Page 38