What are you laughing at, he says. There’s something familiar about his voice but then, don’t all men sound pretty much the same? Not enough shades of difference, that’s men. All wearing the same clothes as if they were a uniform, all doing the same things with their barbecues and their football.
Nothing, I say, I’m laughing at nothing but of course all he hears is a garbled mush.
I’m glad you can find something to laugh at in this place, he says, you’ve got to take your pleasure where you can.
Come in, I say, and I gesture it too so that he can understand. Keep your enemies close.
I don’t mind if I do he says and he sidles round the door. Reminds me of a snake or something else cold blooded, the way he moves, but I guess it’s because he’s been ill.
I’m glad you’re better, I want to say, just to be polite. I try to show him instead by smiling and pointing. It’s not because I’m really glad, I’m not but I still remember the way people are supposed to speak to each other. And he does seem to be better, apart from an odd tic, a way of shaking his head every few minutes like a horse shaking off flies. It reminds me of something again. I feel like my memory has broken, short circuited or something. It keeps spluttering, recognising things I haven’t seen before.
May, he says, reading the sign above my head, merry, merry May. I hold on to my call button with my good hand.
I knew a woman called May, he says, and he laughs. One of his front teeth snags slightly in front of the other in a way that would probably be corrected these days with braces. I knew someone else with that tooth snaggle, I think, and the feeling of dread builds a little higher in my stomach.
Chocolate? he says and he reaches in to his pocket and pulls out a Bart Simpson tree chocolate. I think that’s mine, I want to say, but I can’t so all he sees is a lunge, a grab for the chocolate that makes me look like a demented and greedy old woman.
Let me unwrap it for you, he says, open your mouth.
No, I say, hoping that he’s joking. He couldn’t really expect me to do that.
Go on, he says, go on, open up, there’s a good girl. He’s really serious, I don’t know why, and it triggers something in me and I think, I’ve been here before, and I’m so scared I can’t move. He unwraps it, takes off the foil that turns it into Bart Simpson and it’s just a solid lump of chocolate.
Here we are, he says, pushing it towards my mouth, chocolate time. There’s only one thing you can do when something soft is pushed at you like that, and that’s open your mouth, however much you might not want to. I know that.
So that’s what she sees, when she comes in, my new friend Jackie. I would have liked her to come across me reading one of the classics, or watching a documentary. This is mortifying.
Help, I try to say, this man has attacked me with a stolen Bart Simpson but I know how stupid it would sound. Besides, he’s quicker than I am.
Hello, he says, May was wanting to have some chocolate, so I’m giving her this. He holds up the slightly mangled Bart. My niece brought it in but I reckon May wants it more than I do.
Oh, she says, like I knew she would, oh that’s really nice of you. May, isn’t it nice?
What can I do? I want her to be my friend and I can see the glint in his eye, he knows he’s got me. Such a familiar glint.
I do a kind of nod and try to swallow the lump that’s broken off in my mouth but it’s big and stale and my mouth is too dry. It makes me cough, then that makes me retch, and before you know it there’s chocolate flying everywhere and I know I’m either going to have to have my clothes changed again or go around all day with brown stuff down my front.
Oh dear, says Jackie, oh dear can I help? She starts dabbing at me with a tissue but of course that makes it worse. He goes over to the sink, the man from the room opposite, and he rinses out a handkerchief. Don’t worry, he says, tilting his head to one side, it’s clean. He starts rubbing at the mess I’ve made of myself. I can’t even open my mouth to say, it’s OK, leave it. I want to, I’m embarrassed, but I know that if I do I’ll end up spitting on his damn head.
Oh look at that, May, says Jackie, isn’t he practical? The only thing to do is to smile and nod as he rubs away, breathing right in my face with his peppermint breath.
Oh isn’t this lovely, says Jackie, just the three of us, it’s not like being in a, in a, a place like this, is it? I am surprised that she can’t even say the word nursing home. I didn’t know she had a thing about it. To my mind she’s sounding a tad shrill. I want him to go now, stop the rubbing and get his scary self as far away from me as he can. I want Jackie to be talking about how nice it is to be here with me, the two of us, not with him. I make a kind of shrugging movement so that he knows I want him to leave me alone.
I think that will do now, he says. He winks at me and then turns to look at Jackie and I bet he’s winking at her too. I try to wink back at him, in a sarcastic way, but sarcasm is a high branch to reach for when you’re on the ground with an eye that doesn’t necessarily obey any commands.
Are you OK, he says, have you got something in your eye?
You bastard, I think, you knew that was a sarcastic wink. I flutter my hands at him in a no gesture and then I look over at Jackie. She’s practically swooning at the sight of him. I need to work out how to take him down a peg or two. People like him shouldn’t be allowed to swashbuckle around making everyone look at them. It’s not right. I’ve been longing for a proper heart to heart with Jackie and now here she is in my room and it’s no good, he’s here too, larger than life and twice as ugly.
My friends and I used to have code words to use when we were out together, so that no one else would know what we were talking about. I wish I had a code I could use now, with Jackie, to tell her that I’d like to spend some time with her on her own. She probably wouldn’t want to anyway.
Hey May, she says, as if she has read my poor old mangled brain, what about you and I have a game of cards? A bit of girl time.
I’m pleased, even though she says girl time instead of women’s time. I smile a yes smile at Jackie. Who’s to say it isn’t a tiny bit good to think of myself as a girl? I don’t feel any different in some ways.
I’ll go then, he says, the lizard man from across the way. He’s shaking his head again like there’s a fly in his eye. It stirs something in my memory but then, what doesn’t these days? The jingle of an advert, the taste of a good fruit, everything has extra meaning when you’re old.
I’ll leave you girls to it, he says, as if we might not have heard him the first time. I look at Jackie and I am expecting her to cave in, ask him to stay too. It’s certainly what he wants. You can see that in his face as plain as plain can be. I almost do it myself, to save face for her, only I realise that he wouldn’t understand what I was saying. I remember the Christmas chocolate then, and how nasty it was to have it pushed into my mouth. I’m glad she’s standing firm. Go Jackie, go Jackie I think, silently willing her on to stand firm but trying to look nonchalant.
I’ll be lonely, he says.
She’s a kind hearted one, Jackie, and I think, oh no, he’s going to persuade her but she makes a move towards me and it’s like that part at the end of a concert when you realise there aren’t going to be any more encores, no matter how much you clap. I want to hug her but the best I can do is keep my hands strictly to myself so that I don’t hit her or cause any damage.
Goodbye Bill, she says, see you at dinner. I’m not particularly happy that they’re making arrangements for later. See you at dinner could mean all sorts of things. I probably won’t eat dinner, I think, I’m not hungry.
He comes over to me then and it strikes me that if Jackie wasn’t there I would find him quite frightening.
Here you are, he says, you can have these and he puts the Mickey Mouse tree chocolate and the fat Santa with a creamy belly on my tray. None for you, he says, winking at Jackie. I know there’s no point at all saying that the chocolates were mine anyway. She wouldn’t understand me
and she wouldn’t believe me if she did.
Oh that’s not very nice she says, no chocolate for me then? Say thank you, May, you’re honoured.
She’s using the same silly voice she probably used when she was fifteen. All squeaky and girly. He looks at me over her head and I swear it’s a victory look. Nothing as simple as a cat who got the cream. More like a predator who killed some poor unsuspecting animal on a wildlife documentary.
I change my mind about the card game.
CHAPTER TEN
January 1978
Hull and Pimlico
After weeks of searching, Alain decided his chances of getting a job would be higher if they moved to London, where the work was. May managed to get a flat in Pimlico from the housing organisation that had housed her mother, and the move happened so fast that she hardly had time to pack.
‘A new start,’ said Alain. ‘We’ll leave this godforsaken place behind and go quietly in the night, leaving them all wondering where we are. Just us, a family, no more shared housing. Everything will be peachy from now on.’
Really, May thought, are you sure? She wanted to be sure. She wanted to love the idea of a fresh start, of leaving Hull and being in London again, but she was terrified. The previous night May had watched Alain dancing Jenny round the house, our last waltz, he had called it. He was so gentle, so sweet with her. May felt ashamed of herself for being so negative. It was what they needed, she thought, a shake-up, things would change. Alain would change. He would be better. It would get them back on track. The family, that was what was important. Never mind that she would miss Helen. They could write.
May couldn’t leave without saying goodbye to her so she told Alain she had to get some last minute shopping and took Jenny into town in her sling. Helen was already there when she got to the cafe.
‘Sorry I’m late,’ May said as soon as she sat down. ‘I’ve been packing and there’s so much to do. It’s really going to happen, Helen, we’re off to the bright lights. I won’t even be there when you have that baby of yours, I’m so sorry.’
‘Wow,’ said Helen, ‘two apologies in one sentence. I’m going to miss you too, May, who the hell is going to apologise to me when you’re not here?’
May laughed. She leaned forward slightly, holding Jenny’s head with her left hand as she reached for the sugar with her right. May’s sleeve pulled back and the bruises on her wrist were clear to both women. May pulled her sleeve back down and Helen winced.
‘Hey,’ she said, ‘let me see that.’ Helen reached over and gently pulled back May’s sleeve so that the bruises were visible again. She looked at them carefully.
‘Right, I’m going to say what I see, OK? There’s four together here, and one slightly to the side. That looks to me like a grab bruise, like someone grabbed you hard by the wrist, am I right?’
May bit her lip and stared at her tea.
‘Look at me, May, please look, I’m your friend, remember?’
May couldn’t look up. She felt ashamed that her friend had seen, and she also felt that she had let Alain down. He hadn’t meant to hurt her but she knew Helen wouldn’t believe that. May didn’t really believe it herself a lot of the time.
‘He didn’t mean to,’ she said. ‘Things have been really difficult for him lately.’
May expected Helen to scoff, point out the obvious flaws in what she had said. Instead, there was silence and when May looked up she realised that Helen was crying.
‘I’m so sorry this has happened to you,’ Helen said, ‘and I do understand. Look.’ She pulled up her own right sleeve and May saw them there, a line of round scars, some more angry-looking than others, marching up Helen’s arm and disappearing into her jumper.
‘They’re burn scars,’ she said, ‘and that’s the kind of thing they move on to after the bruises. I bet if you took your clothes off right here, right now, in Binns cafe, I’d see loads of other bruises, am I right?’
May didn’t say anything. Helen was right, May had looked in the mirror the night before and counted them, bruises on her legs, her arms, her torso, everywhere.
‘I think it will change, when we move to London,’ she said.
‘Oh May, listen to yourself. They don’t change, believe me, I’m sure of this. A man who is capable of doing that to you when you’ve just had a baby, when you’re so sweet and lovely, he’ll do it again, why wouldn’t he? He likes it, that’s why.’
‘No, he doesn’t, honestly he doesn’t. He gets really upset afterwards, really sorry, he cries, he even pulls out his own hair. It’s just the pressure, the stress of how we’ve been living. He’s a good man, honestly, he is.’
‘They’re all good men when they’re not beating up their wives,’ Helen said.
‘Honestly, he is, he loves poetry, he sings, he knits little toys for Jenny.’
Tell her, May thought to herself, tell her that he cuts them up, sometimes, the little characters he knits for Jenny. Tell her about the rabbit.
May bit her lip, trying not to cry.
‘I’m not having a go at you, I’m just worried, that’s all. I know what you’re going through. Is there nothing I can say to make you see that you’re in danger? Please keep in touch. Can I at least come to see you in London and bring the baby?’
‘First trip away for your little one,’ May said. ‘I’d be honoured.’
The two women spent the rest of their time together talking of babies and other non-contentious things but it was there in the background, the more difficult stuff. May wished she could talk about it more.
Helen rolled May’s sleeve back gently when they said goodbye.
‘Don’t let this become your normal,’ she said. ‘You can always live with me. We’d manage. Bye-bye, Jenny Wren, see you soon.’
May felt confused and shaken but she knew she had to give Alain another chance. She would try harder, help him get things back on track. The trouble was, thought May on her way home, that she knew Helen was right. She knew she was in danger, she knew that it wasn’t likely to improve just by changing the place that they lived in. But she couldn’t stop thinking it was her fault. If she was different, more confident, less pushy, more loving, less needy, if she could only be a good wife, the right wife. If she could love him better, that was the bottom line, if she could love him the way other people loved people then she would be the one who saved him, who made things OK. He was a good man, she knew that, and that meant it must be her who had made him bad. It had to be worth one more push, for Jenny if not for herself, to see if there was anything she could do to make him feel better, to enable him to bring out the kindly, caring side that she knew was there.
‘Look,’ he said when she got home from meeting Helen. ‘Look, I’ve made some curtains for our new front room. I worked on them last night when you were asleep, and this morning. I asked for the measurements and I thought I’d give it a go, I got that old hand sewing machine out of the cupboard.’
‘I got that at a jumble sale,’ said May. ‘I didn’t even think it was still going.’
‘It wasn’t,’ said Alain. ‘It wasn’t but I took it to pieces and I fixed it and now I can make anything, I could make clothes for you and Jenny, I could sell made-to-measure curtains, everything.’
Alain’s enthusiasm was infectious and May started to feel some of her anxiety drain away. Alain held out the curtains and May examined them.
‘Fantastic,’ she said, ‘couldn’t tell them from shop bought.’
‘Are you sure?’ Alain said. ‘You’re not just saying that?’
May thought how wrong Helen was about him. He didn’t have any confidence, that was all. If she could keep remembering this, stop dwelling on the difficult stuff, there might be a chance.
That feeling lasted nearly all the way to London the next day on the train. Their belongings were following in a van.
‘I can feel it, May,’ Alain said as the train jogged through the flat snowy landscape. ‘Things are going to be different, I promise. Give me you
r hand.’
May clutched Jenny to her with her left hand and reached out her right. Alain clasped it like a drowning man.
‘I swear, I do solemnly swear, that from this day forward, our lives will be different. I will bring you nothing but joy, May, happiness and light and all that stuff.’
May squirmed in her seat. She wanted to encourage this new Alain if it was possible, but there was something about such raw openness that made her feel uncomfortable.
‘And Jenny,’ she said, ‘let’s not forget about Jenny. We need to bring her nothing but joy as well.’
Alain took his hand away. May knew that she had said the wrong thing.
‘This is about us,’ he said. ‘I don’t know why you bring Jenny into everything. She’s fine, aren’t you, my darling one?’
Alain reached into the bundle of baby that May was holding and touched Jenny’s face. May stiffened. It had been difficult to get her to sleep, and May wasn’t enough of an expert yet to be confident about the journey if Jenny was awake. She had planned for this moment all morning, keeping Jenny awake, moving her feed times, and it had worked but she would never sleep through this kind of touching and patting.
‘What?’ said Alain.
May felt as though he had heard her thoughts.
‘Can’t I even cuddle my own baby girl?’ Alain said. He tossed his head back like a skittish horse.
May realised that she had been caught in one of those traps that had become all too familiar to her. She had to either resign herself to Jenny waking up and being fretful or push Alain away and precipitate a full-on confrontation.
‘Here you are,’ May said, passing the baby to Alain, ‘you have her. I think she would like a daddy cuddle.’
Alain cooed and clucked over Jenny until she was fully awake and starting her pre-crying noise, and then he gave her back.
‘She doesn’t like me,’ he said, ‘she’s always like that. She only wants you. I think you’ve spoiled her.’
‘You can’t spoil a two-month-old baby,’ May said. She wasn’t sure it was safe to be so vehement, but this was something she felt so strongly about that she couldn’t keep quiet. ‘All the modern research shows that that’s a myth, something our mothers believed, but we know better now.’
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