With Your Crooked Heart

by Helen Dunmore

  ‘Paul’s up in his office all morning. He said he’d got a load of phone calls to make.’

  Don’t get in our way, she means. Don’t come here undoing everything. I’ve done. She knows Paul wants him here, but she’s not having it. Sonia can be realistic about him, where his brother cannot.

  ‘I’ve got to get off anyway. Things to do. I’ll say hello to London for you.’

  ‘Don’t go without seeing him.’

  ‘I’ll have a look round and find Anna first.’

  He wanders out into the garden, across to the railings. He stares at the landscape, but there’s nothing of interest to him. And the sun’s too bright. He can’t work out why Paul’s come here. Johnnie thinks with longing of the drive back into London, the moment when houses and cars thicken and the brick laps round you and things start to happen. Here, anyone can see you coming for miles, because there’s nothing in between.

  He finds Anna in the barn, crouched over a cardboard box.

  ‘Hi.’

  She jumps, moves instinctively to cover the box with her body.

  ‘What you got there?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  Her face is fierce. For once she doesn’t want to please him. He feels it as a small, precise shock, and he doesn’t like it. Immediately, instinctively, he sets out to win her back. There’s a pile of logs in the corner of the barn, and he rolls out one of the thickest logs to a safe distance from Anna, and sits down. He can’t see into the box from here, and she knows he can’t.

  ‘You never asked me about that letter,’ he says.

  ‘You were mucking me about.’

  ‘No, I wasn’t. Would I do a thing like that to you, Anna?’

  Her face stiffens with annoyance as she turns away, back to her box.

  ‘I know you’re not going to give it me. Anyway, I don’t want it. I’m busy.’

  Johnnie reaches into his jeans pocket and pulls out Louise’s letter.

  ‘Here you are. Your mum said there was something inside it for you, so mind how you open it.’

  In one movement she’s up, beside him, snatching the letter from his hand. She looks at it, turning it over, assessing the thick, blank envelope.

  ‘Aren’t you going to open it?’

  ‘In a minute.’

  ‘All right. Show me your kittens first.’

  ‘How do you know they’re kittens?’

  ‘I can hear them, can’t I?’

  ‘You’re not to tell!’

  ‘I won’t tell anyone.’

  Slowly, easily, he gets up from the log and strolls to the box. Just as he thought, they are blind and new, a writhing knot of furless kitten flesh.

  ‘Ugly little bastards, aren’t they?’

  ‘They’re not ugly. This is what they’re meant to look like. Don’t you know anything about kittens?’

  ‘Where’s the cat?’

  Anna hesitates. ‘She’ll come back later.’

  ‘You sure? Anna, you’ve been feeding them, haven’t you?’

  ‘What if I have?’

  ‘You can’t do that. She won’t feed them if you do.’

  ‘She wasn’t feeding them anyway,’ says Anna flatly. ‘David, he’s my friend, he says she was too young to have kittens. It did something wrong to her insides, and she won’t come near them. He’s let me borrow the dropper out of his chemistry set to feed them with.’

  Johnnie puts his bare hand down into the stir of kittens. They sense him and their sealed-up faces squirm against his fingers for milk.

  ‘They look bloody awful, Anna. You’re not doing them any favours, you know.’

  ‘They’d be all right if I could have them in my room, then I could feed them in the night.’

  ‘Yeah, but you know, Anna, they don’t feel anything. That’s why people drown them when they’re like this, before they get any feelings.’

  ‘You’re not to tell my Dad.’

  ‘All right. All right. I said I wouldn’t, didn’t I? Listen, have you got a kiss for me before I go, or can’t you think about anything but those kittens?’

  ‘Are you going, Johnnie?’ And her face is as he wants it to be, empty with disappointment. ‘Are you going now?’

  ‘Yeah. Got to get back on the road.’

  ‘What about your car?’

  ‘I’m leaving it here. I’ve got a hire car ordered down in town.’

  Her black eyes sparkle. ‘Can I have your red car?’

  ‘Yeah, all right.’

  ‘Really, Johnnie?’

  ‘Plenty more where it came from.’

  ‘Wow.’ The intensity of her pleasure is no less for vanishing almost as soon as it came. ‘You’re lying.’

  ‘No. You can have it till your dad sells it for me.’

  ‘I knew you didn’t mean it.’ She stoops, picks up one of the kittens and the dropper. Carefully, kneeling over a saucer on the floor, she squeezes the dropper until the tube is full of milk, then applies the glass tip to the kitten’s mouth. ‘See, he’s drinking.’

  But the milk trickles down the sides of the kitten’s mouth as it squirms in Anna’s hand. Frowning, she rubs its mouth with the glass tip. More milk spills out.

  ‘You’re drowning the poor little bastard, Anna.’

  ‘No, I’m not. He’s just not hungry. I got mixed up - he’s the same one I fed last time.’

  ‘Anna,’ he says. ‘Anna. They’re better off dead. You know that, don’t you?’

  He wants to help her. He wants to cut short the hours she’ll spend in the barn, dropping milk all over them, kidding herself it’s going in, then watching them the one by one. That’s if a rat doesn’t get at them first. He’d drown them for her himself, if he thought she’d let him. But the way she’s kneeling there, bowed like a little old woman over her cardboard box, Johnnie knows it’s no use to argue. Time to go.

  ‘For Chrissake, Anna, will you stop mucking about with those kittens and come and say goodbye to me?’

  ‘I don’t want you to go,’ she says, looking down, speaking as if to one of the kittens.

  ‘Come here.’

  The kitten’s back in its box, the dropper on the saucer. Anna’s thin arms are tight around his neck, wrapping him close, and her breath is warm and light under his ear. He smells the rodent smell of the new kittens on her, and milk, and her own clean hair. He lifts her to him and she wraps her legs around his hips and clings there. She’s getting tits. Anna. Think of that. It doesn’t seem five minutes since she was in her pushchair. And he shoves the thought away, because it makes him feel old. Thin, spidery Anna with her eyes shut and her mouth whispering fiercely, ‘You never stay. You always go away.’

  ‘Here, what’s this? I want a proper goodbye.’

  The arms tighten. ‘Goodbye.’ He feels her breath. Then ‘Johnnie —’ But she doesn’t say it. Yesterday he said he’d give her a driving lesson, but today she knows better than to ask.

  ‘Back soon, eh?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘You read your letter when I’m gone. It’s nice to have a letter from your mum.’

  ‘All right.’

  He peels her off him. ‘You look after those kittens for me now.’

  She drops to her knees, bends over the box again as if it’s the only thing that interests her in the world. She won’t look at him again. He doesn’t push it. With Anna you don’t want to go too far, or you might reach an edge you can’t see until you’re right on top of it, with the ground wheeling away miles beneath your feet. He takes one more look at her, at the black, soft, straight hair sliding forward and concealing her face. He thinks of saying something, then thinks better of it. Johnnie leaves her then, going out through the dusty bars of light that fall from the barn’s high windows.

  Fifteen

  You take the letter into the wood. You sit on the knotted grey root of a beech, and open it. You open the envelope, shake it, and fifty twenty-pound notes fall out. They are oily and stuck together, and at first you aren’t sure if they are r
eal money or play. Maybe Mum has forgotten how old you are, and thinks you still play shops with plastic oranges and play money. But you peel one off and hold it up to the light, and there’s the metal strip. You count the notes aloud. Mum has sent you a thousand pounds.

  A thousand pounds. You could buy your own second-hand caravan and haul it down in the woods, by the river. You’d have a set of camping pans which fit into one another, and a Calor gas stove. The caravan would have a step and you’d sit on it, eating sausages. There’d be nobody else there, except maybe David. You’d cook him a sausage, put it in a burger bun and ask if he wanted ketchup with it, or mustard. And when it was dark, you wouldn’t care. You’d shut the door tight, and you’d listen to the river until you fell asleep. Anyway you’d have a dog that would bark if anyone came near, as well as the cats to sleep on your bed.

  You lean back and shut your eyes. Inside the wood it’s so still that it feels warm. You put your arms round your knees and squeeze tight. Your mum has sent you a thousand pounds, but it’s ages since you’ve seen her and you are not sure you can get a picture of her face in your mind any more, not even just before you go to sleep at night. You don’t try, in case it doesn’t work. You can look at a photograph any time, but that’s another thing. In the photographs Mum is young and smiling, and you are in her arms. Both of you smiling, and knowing nothing about what was going to happen, like two strangers.

  You’ll read the letter in a minute, then you’ll get up and go back to the barn and feed the kittens again. This time they’ll suck properly. They’re getting fatter, anyone can see that. You hug your arms around your knees, then roll up the leg of your jeans and explore a ripening scab with your finger. That’s where you fell and gashed it in the lane. When you lift the scab the skin under it is shiny pink, but you know it hasn’t healed in the middle yet. You think of pulling it off anyway, and of Johnnie going down through England, back to London. He never stays. He says he will, and then he goes away. You roll down the leg of your jeans.

  The letter’s in your lap. Your mum has written it in big, clear writing, the kind that helped you two years ago, before you could read grown-up handwriting. But you don’t need it now. If Sonia leaves one of her lists lying around, you can read it at a glance. You wonder if it would be OK to tell Mum this, so she could write in her normal writing from now on.

  Dear Anna

  Everybody ought to have some money of their own and then if they want to go anywhere or do anything they can. Put this away in a safe place.

  I had a dream about you last night. You had a Dalmatian puppy and you were playing with it. Maybe one day when you’re older and you can take it for walks and look after it yourself, you and I can have a puppy. But you’ll have to buy a book, because I don’t know anything about dogs.

  I might be going away on holiday soon for some sun and fun. If you want to come with me, why not ask Paul? We could get an apartment.

  Well, not much to add as everything is the same as usual with me. Thinking of you lots, love you loads, with fondest love,

  Mum XXXX

  You fold the letter carefully, just as Mum folded it, and put it back in the envelope. You put the money in your lap and look at it for a while. It wouldn’t be OK to tell Mum about her writing. You think of what Mum has written about sun and fun, as if you are five years old.

  You weigh the banknotes down with a stone for safety while you search for the smallest, driest twigs, and add to them a handful of beech-nut cases from last year. You heap them in the centre of a little ring of stones, then you balance more twigs in a wigwam. It is a perfect shape for a fire, but you haven’t got any matches. You don’t want to go back to the house and get caught by Sonia and asked to do something.

  ‘Anna, are you there?’

  You’re not frightened. You know it’s David, coming down the wood on the path from the village. You’d half-planned to meet, but with Johnnie and then the kittens, you forgot. You glance behind you, where the notes poke out from the stone, but you don’t move to cover them.

  ‘I thought you’d be here. What’re you doing? You can’t light a fire in the woods.’

  ‘It’s not lit. I haven’t got any matches.’

  David bends down and examines the fire. ‘It’s too small. It won’t burn, even if you get it lit.’

  ‘I’ve got some stuff to put on it once it starts burning. Have you got any matches?’

  ‘I’ve got my lighter.’

  David smokes sometimes, but you don’t. He takes out his Camel lighter, and snaps the flame. It jumps up, and he snaps again and again, absorbed. ‘You light the fire,’ you say. You keep your back to him as you remove the stone, and pick up the money.

  ‘What’s that, Anna? What’re you doing?’

  You take a note, hold it in finger and thumb above the unlit fire. ‘Go on. Go on. Light it.’

  ‘You can’t burn that. It’s money.’

  ‘I can do what I want with it, it’s mine.’

  ‘Look at it, you’ve got loads of the buggers, how much’ve you got?’

  ‘A thousand pounds,’ you say.

  ‘Give it here.’

  You hand it to David. He riffles the edges of the notes, then counts it carefully. ‘Where’d you get it?’

  ‘My mum sent it.’

  ‘From London?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘She must be rich.’

  ‘She isn’t. My dad gives her money. She said she wanted me to have it, in case I wanted to go anywhere.’

  ‘You mean leave home?’

  You shrug. ‘Maybe.’

  ‘She wants you to go and visit her, that’s what it is, cause she’s your mum. Why don’t you go? You could buy a ticket.’

  You crouch by the twigs, adjust the wigwam until it’s perfect. ‘I can’t go,’ you say.

  David doesn’t ask why not. He says, ‘This is the most money I’ve ever held in my hands,’ and then he puts it back where you’d laid it before. He snaps his lighter so the flame jumps up, its blue core stretched, then snuffed.

  ‘I’ll light the fire if you want,’ he says. ‘But I’ve got a better idea.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘We’ll burn one note, and we’ll bury the rest. We’ll mark this tree, then we’ll know where it is. No one’ll find it, even if they see the mark.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘I’ve got a packet of crisps. We can wrap the money in the crisp bag.’

  You and David champ the crisps one by one, matching sizes so each of you takes a large crisp, a medium-sized, a small one. When they’re all gone, you wrap the notes in the greasy bag, and fold it over. Scuffing with your heels, then digging with your hands, you make a hole in the earth, and lay the crisp packet down. It begins to unfold, bulging out of the hole you’ve made.

  ‘You’ll have to dig deeper,’ says David, and he gets a stick and pokes out the earth between the grey roots of the beech. You wedge the packet in as deep as you can. You cover it, bury it. The soil brushes off your hands easily, then you scatter leaves and twigs over the burial place. David sears the flesh of the nearest tree with his lighter flame, to mark it. There’s one note left.

  ‘Light the fire now,’ you say.

  The fire is small, quick, hot. The flame makes a rattling sound, like a whistle that won’t blow.

  ‘Go on,’ says David, and you offer a corner of the note to the flame. The fire swipes it, nearly touching your fingers. You drop the burning note among the twigs and watch it writhe.

  ‘We must tread it out,’ says David. ‘It’s dangerous to start fires in the woods.’

  He gets a handful of earth, throws it on and tramps it down until the fire is mashed. The note has completely disappeared.

  ‘There,’ he says. There’s a streak of carbon on his face. ‘It’s gone.’

  ‘I’m glad,’ you say. ‘I wish we’d burned the rest.’

  ‘You know where it is,’ says David, and smiles. It’s like when people say, You know the way to jour mouth.<
br />
  You look at each other. You’ve done something people don’t do. You’ve burned money with the Queen’s head on it.

  ‘Have you got a fag?’ you ask.

  He gives you one. You hold the tip to the flame of the Camel lighter, and then when it’s lit you hold it loosely, burning between your fingers, the way Sonia does. But you don’t want to be like Sonia. You shift the cigarette to your other hand, although you’re not left-handed. You take a puff of smoke, let it out, do it again. You’re smoking.

  David says, ‘You don’t want to start smoking, Anna.’

  You say, ‘Like I’m really going to,’ in Courtney Arkinstall’s voice.

  ‘I’m trying to give up,’ says David. You know he means it. ‘Cause I don’t want to have a cough like my dad’s.’

  You look at him with his pale face and the freckles that splash on to his skin as soon as the sun comes out after winter. His eyes are squeezed narrow against the smoke. They’re the only real grey eyes Anna’s ever seen. Grey eyes and nothing-coloured hair, like rain. He’s narrow and calm to look at, like a cat watching out of the window and seeing things nobody else sees. You want to see those things too. You want him to show them to you.

  Sixteen

  I wrote her a letter. I wanted her to know why I didn’t come and see her. I don’t think Anna would ever believe I didn’t want to, but then she’s been away from me for a long time now. I haven’t kept her thinking I’ll come at any minute and take her away with me.

  I’ve never been north of Birmingham in my life. I would have gone, but not to Sonia’s house. I don’t dislike Sonia and I don’t like her. I never think of her. She thinks she’s married to Paul: well, let her. I know the truth.

  I could write a book about what Sonia doesn’t know. First, she doesn’t know that Paul is still married to me. Second, she doesn’t know that Anna is still my daughter. Third, she doesn’t know that giving birth to Anna was like shitting a pineapple, and Paul was there all the time, much against his original inclination, but he stayed, he sponged my face, he held my knees still when they wouldn’t stop shaking.