How It Was

by Janet Ellis

  I was so thoroughly marked, I might as well have been tarred and feathered.

  ‘It was probably because she’d been drinking.’ Sarah waited for both of us to turn to her. She didn’t have to wait long.

  ‘Drinking?’ Michael said, just as I said, ‘Hardly!’

  ‘When?’ Michael said. He sounded disbelieving.

  ‘I bumped into a friend,’ I said. ‘By chance. She suggested we just have the one.’

  ‘Who?’ said Michael, which was a reasonable question. They were all staring at me.

  ‘Ginny.’ I named an old nursing friend. ‘She always liked a drink.’ Poor, blameless Ginny. We were on Christmas card terms at least. Another year gone! we’d both write. We must meet up! We hadn’t actually seen each other for years.

  ‘What was she doing round here?’ But just as I was searching for an answer – perhaps Ginny could have been visiting a relative? – Eddie clattered his plate to the floor where it broke. The pieces spun away from each other over the lino.

  Thank God, I thought, kneeling at once and busying myself with collecting fragments of china.

  After supper, I made a mug of tea and took it to Michael. I put a couple of the biscuits I’d bought for Bridget on a little saucer. Of course, I could have told him that I’d bumped into Adrian. I could have made the whole episode sound foolish – You know how much I hate undercooked omelette. And his awful friend kept doing terrible impressions. Then I was really worried about being home on time so I had to get a lift in his silly car – but instead I hugged what had happened to myself, breathless with excitement. I felt as if I were only superimposed on my life and could be peeled away. I could be lifted from everything that suffocated me. I could be placed somewhere else, somewhere more exciting. The carriage clock wheezed eight o’clock with a trill of little bells. I’d hoped it was later. Time had slowed to a crawl. Adrian still wouldn’t be here in twelve hours’ time.

  ‘Not like you, drinking at lunchtime,’ Michael said. His tone was mild. He kept his eyes on the television. ‘Where did you bump into Ginny, then?’

  ‘Near the station. I was on my way home.’ Was my voice trembling? I didn’t seem to have quite enough breath for normal speech. He pulled at the sleeves of his jumper. It was as if we didn’t know each other very well.

  ‘Going for a drink on a weekday is a bit odd,’ Michael said. ‘But I suppose it’s because it makes me think of your father.’

  By the time Michael and I had met, the story of my father’s drinking was in the past tense. Michael hadn’t had to put up with his weeping self-pity, his staggering steps as I attempted, once again, to walk him home, after every cab had refused us. I had hidden empty bottles in various bins and skips round London and tried to conceal plenty more full ones from him, too. He’d resented my interference and mocked my sympathy. I’d told Michael something of what had happened, of course, but I’d edited my account. No one else needed to know about rinsing vomit-soaked sheets in hotel basins or hearing my father wailing my name outside my boarding school gates when he’d turned up, angry and dishevelled, insisting that I let him in.

  Coming home late after one glass of wine was hardly in the same category. ‘Shorry, Michael,’ I said, slurring like a stage drunk, ‘it was only one lickle drink, I shwear.’

  ‘Which one is Ginny?’ Michael said, unsmiling. ‘I don’t remember her. I didn’t know you’d kept up.’

  ‘We haven’t, really. Christmas cards and the occasional letter.’ I felt as if I were shrunken, scuttling round in the corridors of my own head, trying to find a safe door to open.

  ‘How is she, then?’

  ‘Oh, fine. I don’t think I’ll see her again, though. We don’t have that much in common. She’s – a bit lost. Actually, I think she’s having an affair.’ Why on earth had I said that?

  Michael frowned. ‘Did she tell you she was?’

  ‘Not in so many words. She hinted at something. I wasn’t really listening, to tell you the truth. I wanted to get home.’

  ‘Sounds grim. Poor you.’ Michael was back on solid ground, reassuring me. Behind him, the doors of my secrets rattled, but stayed shut.

  ‘Lesson learned,’ I said brightly.

  Awake next to Michael that night, I felt him shift on to his side. He leaned over and pulled my shoulder, turning me to face him. He muttered something. I didn’t want him to speak. I slid my hand down on to him, my eyes still closed. I loosened the cord at his waist then, as I always did, I let go at once. He moved away, and I waited for the soft click of the bedside cabinet as he fetched what he needed. He rose on one elbow and I heard the packet tear. He breathed out hard as he rolled above me. His cotton pyjamas were at half mast. He finished what he had started and afterwards he lay on his back, one arm draped across me like a sash. The awful thing wasn’t that I’d lied to him, I thought. It was that I’d wanted to.

  Chapter 47

  4 October

  Bobbie was late to school today. I was looking for her when we all lined up at first bell and when I didn’t see her, it made me shake with nerves in case she was away. Miss Mertaugh shouted at me for being dozy and when I turned round my form queue was miles in front of me and I hadn’t noticed them move. When I’d told Bobbie yesterday about her father coming to my house, she was okay with it. She might decide that she isn’t, after she’s had a chance to think about it. I’m not going to tell her about sitting in her father’s car. I need it to be a secret from everyone. The way he looks at me is different from anyone else. It makes me feel funny, like something squirming inside me. Last night, when the phone rang, I nearly broke my neck to get to it because I thought it might be Bobbie, even though I haven’t given her my number. She might have got it from someone else. It wasn’t, of course, it was Debbie, trying to find a party to go to on Saturday. She kept saying do you know Greg and can you get us into his?

  Bobbie was there at lunchtime. I bumped into her accidentally on purpose and acted all surprised to see her, as if I hadn’t been wishing the day away because she wasn’t there. She was with her crowd. They roll up their skirts at the waistband and wear knee-length white socks over their tights. Bobbie has these shoes that are dark blue and shiny, with white piping all the way round. She said that I should come to a party with her and her boyfriend Jeff. I could see her lot all thinking why does she want to hang around with a Lower Fifther? She said that our parents are friends which was so much bigger than the truth. They separated a bit to let me in then. There were five of us, sitting round one of the tables in the dining room.

  One of the girls looks as if she’d run into a hedge of red hair and her face had got stuck in the middle of it. She said she’d seen me in Orion’s and was that my Saturday job. When I went in about the Assistant Required card in his window, Mr Jobson asked me if I was sure I wanted to work there. He said surely I’d rather be somewhere more glamorous like Chelsea Girl. Nothing cheers him up. He greets everything from deliveries of seed to people buying dog food with equal sadness. Mrs M says the Brontë parsonage was full of dolour. Mr Jobson is dolorous. You could weigh dolour out like grain at Orion’s, there’s so much of it around. I like the brown and grey of the shop. My overall and the walls and most of the stuff on sale are all the colours of mud. There’s no need for me to do anything except weigh things accurately and count out the right change. I don’t have to chat to Mr Jobson. We always work together in silence. He never asks me any questions. He gives me my wages in little dun envelopes.

  I said I just did it for the money and it’s really boring. I felt very disloyal. The hedge-haired girl said she understood and she felt sorry for me, maybe I’d get to work somewhere more funky soon. I took up my space among Bobbie’s friends as if I really belonged there. I joined in the conversation as if I always did and pretended I knew all the boys they were talking about.

  I think Tom Spencer might actually be waiting for me these days. He was at the parade of shops again, his big hands in the tiny pockets of his check jacket. I ignored
him, of course, but he came up and hissed that he’d seen them in the man’s car. I said I didn’t know what he was talking about. I called him a cretin and I gave him a look that made him run away like a mouse disturbed in a larder.

  Not only did Mum go to Temple’s without me, although I’d specifically said I needed to go, but she’d bought herself a dress, too. It’s really tarty, covered in flowers and smocked tightly all over the chest and it’s midi length, which she’s way too old for. I felt like asking why she hadn’t gone to the charity shop to get herself something, which is what she’d thought was good enough for me. The idea of someone else wearing something before you wore it is gross. Another person could be eating and farting and having arguments and worse while they had it on. If you put the cloth under the microscope afterwards and examined the fibres, you’d probably see their whole life there, still clinging to the fabric, wriggling around.

  I could hear her bashing saucepans and crashing china while she was making supper. She’d met a friend in town and gone drinking with them, which is tragically pathetic. She had dots of flour all over her too. She only uses a cake mix, if she ever bakes at all. She sang: ‘You Are My Sunshine’. It sounded naked without any harmony. I thought of Eddie in the bath with a white wig of bubble bath, holding his notes against mine with all his might. You couldn’t see yourself in the little mirror on bath nights, it was always completely steamed up by the time we were dry.

  I’m going to try on her dress. I’ll whirl around in it as if I’m the little ballerina in my jewellery case. Or I’ll clomp about with my hands on my hips, like a farmer’s wife in a field. Whatever I do, it’ll look better on me. Fact.

  Chapter 48

  At playtime, Eddie went and sat on the bench that had the girl’s name on it. Stella Lincoln. She loved this school, it said. Neil Piper said she’d died in an accident, but Eddie couldn’t think how you’d be killed falling off a bench. Neil said it was haunted. It would take a really noisy ghost to be heard above the noise of everyone skipping and running, being as free as possible before the bell rang. His class teacher Miss Cargill was on duty. She was holding a mug of tea, her fingers folded round it as though she was cold. Her actual name was Esme. He’d heard his mother say it. He worried he might call her Esme one day, by accident, instead of Miss Cargill. It was a huge responsibility that sometimes stopped him saying anything at all, just in case.

  He thought of the horses. His horses. He could hear the beat of their plastic hearts and the clop of their hooves. He’d only been on a real pony once, at the fête. He’d sat there obediently as the pony was guided round a small circle by a bored girl in a green all-in-one suit, but he was willing her away, wishing he was alone. His father had lifted him off at the end, after only three short circuits, and he’d grabbed at the dense, grassy mane in an effort to stay put. The girl had shouted a lacklustre instruction to let go. The pony had turned its beautiful head towards him and snorted. He closed his eyes so that he could remember the animal moving underneath him and between his legs, swaying him from side to side in a great, rhythmic roll. His fingers ached now to grip leather reins. Sarah had only wanted to jump neatly over red and white striped poles and stick another rosette on her wardrobe door. But Eddie was a cowboy. He thought, with some certainty, that he already knew how to ride.

  He examined a scab on one knee. He traced an outer ring of new, pink skin around the stubborn brown centre with his forefinger then hooked his fingernail where the crust loosened. Although he could feel pain as he lifted and pulled at it, the edifying spectacle of the gummy crater he was revealing was enough reward. A single dot of blood emerged where the scab had stuck most firmly, like a small, red protest, but it congealed at once in the open air. Sitting back on Stella’s memorial, Eddie chewed on his trophy. When the bell rang, he slid it into his cheek for later.

  Chapter 49

  Michael’s room is warm with a dry heat. The skin on my face prickles. He is asleep again. I sit beside him, examining his expression. He is beyond dreams, lost in a dense fog of oblivion. It’s as if he were practising for his death. I select another photograph at random. Sarah. She wears one of those curious poncho blanket things. The front hangs low in a fringed point and her hands are hidden. The picture is in black and white, but I know that it was striped orange and brown. She will have posed under sufferance. When she was this sort of age – sixteen perhaps? Not much older, certainly – she was only really animated in other people’s company. Michael could make her smile, but even he had failed this time. There are no pictures of her beyond this point, at least not in the pages of the albums. I don’t doubt she stood in front of other cameras, sometimes held in Michael’s hands, but not for me. ‘It’s better if it’s just us from now on,’ she’d said. ‘Dad and me.’ Chilly as an automaton. You’re supposed to be able to let your children go, aren’t you? You’re constantly told it’s an important part of child-rearing. But what if they’re wrenched from you? Or supposing they just drift away? The current doesn’t seem that strong at first, but when you try to reach them you quickly realise its power. Better to lie back and stare upwards than swim, helplessly and fruitlessly, against the tide. After a while, you’ll find you relish the easy sway of the water beneath you and the unquestioning sky above. And should you glance at the riverbank from time to time, you’ll see her. Your daughter. Safe and dry. You’ll realise that she didn’t need rescuing, after all.

  ‘Shall I read another letter, Michael?’ I say. ‘This’ll make you laugh. Dear Mrs Deacon, I am delighted to confirm your place on our course. Everything will be supplied, so no need to bring anything – except your appetite!’

  An entire day has slipped by without much demarcation. At three o’clock I ate a sandwich but I struggle to remember its contents. I realised I hadn’t eaten anything until then because the physiotherapist made her daily, unnecessary appearance. I can tell the time by the various arrivals to his room. The trolley bearing papers and magazines means it’s mid-morning. The League of Friends offering, random items like hand-made spectacle cases and books of crossword puzzles, arrives at four. They all rattle along regularly, even though we’ve never shown any indication of wanting anything from them. Now that Michael has made his decision, there’s an ambivalence in everyone’s attitude to him. He must be cared for, drugged, investigated by rote, but they know the end is in sight and their attention is elsewhere.

  ‘Mrs Deacon?’ The nurse who bustled out last night bustles in again. I can’t read her name tag unless I go too close to her. It’s odd that nearly all the people who gather at this intimate time are anonymous. Only Mr Kazmi, the executioner, has a name. ‘Mask off, I see,’ she says. She catches my eye. ‘Are you all right, Mrs Deacon? Are you staying tonight?’ she says. ‘I can make up a bed.’

  Should I, this time? The nurse and I are both weary at the idea of the fold-up bed, the ill-fitting sheet and flattened pillow. ‘It’s better if I go home, I think. I ought to get things ready for the family,’ I say.

  She nods. ‘A daughter and two grandsons, that’s right, isn’t it?’ she says. She is choosing her tone and her words with care, sounding neither too involved nor too judgemental.

  ‘That’s right,’ I say. ‘Yes, they’re on their way.’ I let her picture them, negotiating airports or stations, pulling their cases and glancing at clocks and watches, hurrying to be here.

  ‘See you tomorrow,’ she says, gazing into the space above my head and dismissing me.

  Chapter 50

  3.02. It is not a time you can do anything useful with. You cannot steal a march on dawn at this hour, relishing the creeping light. If you haven’t yet slept, it taunts you with how little night is left. Michael stares at the numbers until they fall and reveal 3.03. He is bored. It is an uncomplicated boredom. It reminds him of how he felt as he turned the page of the hymnal in assembly to see yet another page of interminable Victorian verses. Or during the Sunday afternoons of his childhood, saturated with the unpleasant anticipation of the week to
come. The darkness, milky and warm, punctuated by spots of noise and dashes of light, seems ladled around him in heavy dollops. He observes the lengthening intervals between each breath with anticipatory pleasure, as if he were merely waiting for a conductor to tap his music stand and summon the orchestra. He does not need anyone here. He is grateful to them all for their absence. Even Marion, especially Marion, has left him free to go. 3.04. Let other people measure the days from now on, he thinks. He has an appointment to keep. He will never again be as punctual as this. 3.05 arrives without him.

  Chapter 51

  I had lain in bed that morning and let the anticipation of the day ahead seep into my head. It was sweet and rich, like the fug of candyfloss near a fair. I suddenly wondered if it might rain. The possibility hadn’t occurred to me before and I felt a rush of pure terror. Adrian wouldn’t come if it was raining, would he? I flung back the sheet and blankets and got out of bed.

  Michael sat up. ‘What is it?’ he said, seeing me at the window holding the curtain aside.

  ‘It looks like a nice day,’ I said. ‘I thought I might do some gardening.’

  ‘Really?’ Michael said.

  Neither of us were keen. Michael cut the grass, cursing at the blades of the cylinder mower when they encountered something stubborn. Next door Derek had offered us a borrow of his hover, a phrase we repeated to each other in ever more exaggerated tones for a long time afterwards. The flowers from the borders lolled on the grass like heavily set women after too much sherry. In the centre of the lawn was a neglected circular bed of straggling roses.

  ‘I could attempt a bit of weeding,’ I said.

  Michael put on his dressing gown. He made an elaborate show of listening at the door, pantomiming one hand cocked to his ear. Sarah was spending longer and longer in the bathroom these days and Michael liked to pretend he found it wearingly female of her. ‘All done? Finished primping? Tony Blackburn approve?’ he’d say as she emerged. She took her little transistor in with her, you could hear Radio One tinnily over the running water. ‘Coast is clear,’ he said.