How It Was

by Janet Ellis

  Neither of us touched our tea. And all the time I kept thinking about where Mum was and who she was with. At last, Daddy said he’d better telephone Bridget. I said I thought he’d have already done that. He swung his arms behind his head, leaning back into the cradle of his linked hands and said no, he hadn’t. He was looking up at the ceiling. There was a poster on the wall opposite us. It was a picture of a crying child, screwing up its face and clutching its jaw. It looked about twelve. It was probably a boy, but I wasn’t sure. The words Is this what we want for our children? ran along the top and then, along the bottom, it read Support Water Fluoridation. I was going to see how many words I could make out of Fluoridation when I caught sight of Daddy. Tears streaked from each eye, running backwards towards his ears as if someone had drawn glasses on him with water.

  I felt as though I was playing that game on Crackerjack, where they load people up with puzzles and prizes till their arms are full, then hand them a cabbage. If they drop anything they’re holding, they can’t keep it. I was already weighed down with my secrets. Daddy’s tears were the cabbage that was going to topple everything.

  I said she wasn’t at Bridget’s, was she? He said no, she wasn’t, he knew that. I didn’t say anything about Adrian

  Mr Cavanagh because I didn’t know the right words and I didn’t want even the idea of him in the room. I couldn’t believe I was the same person sitting there while my father cried as the one who leaned against a wall smoking a cigarette. I wanted to be a little girl again. I wanted my mother. Why hadn’t she found the note and come home?

  I found Lift. Rid. Din. Nil. Loaf. I asked him how he could have let her go, if he knew. He said she’d needed to know where home is. He said you can see things more clearly if you stand a little way away. I thought you never really grow up, you just get better at disguising all the bad or wrong things in yourself. In my mind’s eye, I tried to imagine her when she was a child. She had my face.

  I started to cry. Another nurse, a different one, came into the room. She seemed awkward and didn’t look at us properly. It was like when Joy Findlay came on stage two scenes early in the school play. The nurse whispered for Daddy to go with her. He stood up and wiped his face briskly. He told me to wait.

  I saw Daft. Then Rat. Float. Dirt. Eddie had blood, dried brown, in his ears. In the scapha, between the helix and the antihelix. The one on the poster in the biology classroom had each different part labelled and brightly coloured. The picture didn’t look anything like Eddie’s actual little ear. There was a black stain on my left hand from the ink on the owl pad. I’d have to wait ages until it was completely gone.

  I found Ration. Somewhere, in this same slice of time, Bobbie Cavanagh definitely wasn’t thinking about me. They’d put a wire across one of the fields last year, with a big sign next to it, saying ELECTRIFIED. We’d all dared each other to touch it. One of the boys had flung himself several feet away after he’d put just one finger on it, writhing on the ground in convulsions. I’d known he was pretending, they couldn’t risk cows twitching about like that. I’d placed my hand carefully on the wire and waited. Nothing happened. I’d curled my fingers around it, holding it tightly in my fist, but I couldn’t feel anything. I concentrated hard now, summoning Bobbie’s face and her quick smile, but there was no current. I couldn’t even feel my own heartbeat.

  Chapter 78

  Michael had expected to feel shocked by Eddie’s appearance, but the sight of him was bewildering in its awfulness. They’d moved him into a ward with three other boys by the time Michael arrived. The place smelled like a canteen, cloaked in the dense, heavy aroma of food prepared long ago. The other boys watched him from their beds as he crossed the ward to sit by Eddie. It was long past visiting hours and they must have wondered at his presence, especially as the patient only slumbered and did not respond. Eddie was both shrivelled and swollen under the bandages. His narrow arms were bound in wooden splints and his face was puffy and pale. Michael tried to concentrate as the doctors described his injuries in their determinedly unemotional way. He wouldn’t have been able to recognise any of them again, even moments after they’d spoken to him. Anguish blurred his vision and silted up his ears. He wanted to hurt Marion. He wanted to punish her. He wanted to see her struggle to explain herself and he wanted to tear up her lies, one by one, until there was nothing left to say. Despite that, even though he was almost immobilised by her selfishness and her betrayal, he was amazed to discover that he craved her presence. He dreaded it, too. He knew how easily she’d be able to trace the scars of his sadness with her cruel, sharp fingers and open them up again.

  He’d wanted to be a train driver. It was an ambition based on only one train journey, because otherwise they went everywhere by car. His father was inordinately proud of their enormous Humber. He was fond of saying that there was room for the entire carry-cot on its cavernous back seat when they’d brought Michael home from the hospital. He washed it every Saturday morning and manoeuvred it with great care into the garage on Sunday evenings. It was, he said, the car of kings. Sometimes he’d let Michael stand on the running board as he drove it slowly, for just a few feet, down the road. He’d catch his father’s eye as they embarked on this risky venture and they’d smile in collusion.

  Just once, though, they’d visited a relative by train. Michael couldn’t remember why, or anything much about the visit, but as they stood on the station platform his mother had said, ‘Wave to the driver,’ and he saw an actual person framed in the window of the cab. Behind the man, the carriages lined up at his command. He slowed the train to stop at exactly the right point. He did this without a change of expression. He’d waved back, but several other children had joined them by that point and Michael didn’t think the gesture was just for him. He’d watched the man climb out of the cab and stand on the platform for a moment, exchanging pleasantries with the station guard. He’d seemed a giant, his uniform sharp beside his father’s soft suit and trilby. Michael knew he’d dwarf them all, even if he wasn’t wearing his hat.

  Everything about that train had struck Michael as beguilingly loud and rough: the doors shut with a mighty thunk, the engine and the brakes screeched. The steam thundered recklessly and even the smell was impolite and clung to his clothes for days afterwards. It was all the exact opposite of his solitary play and their tidy household. It was a chaos he hadn’t known he desired. And riding along the uncurling tracks at the front of that unpredictable machine, the driver was in god-like control. To be him, Michael decided, was to reach unimpeachable adulthood. Even now, when his daily commute had gone beyond being routine to some hypnotic state, after which he would seldom remember the journey at all, Michael would sometimes feel a jolt of joy at the sound of the guard’s whistle or a sudden stop.

  There was nothing remotely exciting about this journey, of course. They also seemed to be travelling too slowly. Michael wanted to wrench open the driver’s door, haul him from his seat and take his place. He wanted to hurl the train along at top speed, ignoring stations and disregarding signals and level crossings. Ever since the telephone call, the slow speed of the world was at odds with his need to travel quickly. Rosalind had put the call through to him with her usual politeness. She kept everything as ordered as possible for him and this untidy intervention must have caused her almost physical discomfort. ‘Excuse me, I have a call for you, Mr Deacon,’ she said, as she always did.

  When the woman from the hospital had spoken to him, in his alarm Michael didn’t recognise the Edward Deacon who’d had an accident as his small, robust son. ‘Eddie,’ he’d said to her, ‘we call him Eddie.’ If he only heard them saying his full name, he’d think he was in trouble.

  As he sat in the taxi on his way to the station, he admitted to himself that he’d gathered his belongings and tidied his desk and left the building without contacting Marion. He acknowledged this fact without apology. What he had to do to find her, the tortuous web of untruths and difficulty he’d have to cut through, wouldn’t cha
nge for the sake of a few hours. Time in which he could come to some accommodation of the situation, prepare himself for seeing her. There was even a grace in letting her hear the news on her own. She wouldn’t need to share her discovery with him, he was already on the way to dealing with information, rather than reacting to it.

  When Rosalind had handed him his coat she didn’t say, ‘I’ll see you tomorrow,’ because she’d probably imagined that something involving hospitals might take him away for more than a day. She didn’t ask what it was. He had contributed to a congratulatory present when she’d got married, but he’d never enquired about the wedding or her home life. He remembered that she’d once been late to work. She’d spent the rest of day tense and irritable, a state he’d never seen her in before or since.

  The evening he’d kissed her had been unusual from the start. Employees had travelled from the St Neots office to mark yet another decade in business but, after only a couple of hours and a few drinks, they’d made it clear they weren’t going to spend an entire evening in London with colleagues. He’d suggested to Rosalind that they take the table he’d booked. In the taxi to the station afterwards, he’d kissed her and then slid his hands under her coat to touch her breasts when she kissed him back. It wasn’t that he found her any more attractive or suddenly saw her in a different light. It was, somehow, a physical expression of how fond they were of each other. It was an acknowledgement of their comfort in each other’s company every day. He was grateful to see no new appetite in her eyes the next morning. Neither was there embarrassment. He relegated her to her previous role without any effort and had chosen to think that, underneath her clothes, she was as smooth and solid as his cousin’s dolls. But the memory of her round and satisfying breasts sometimes caught him unawares. Her lavender scent haunted him, too.

  The thought of telephoning Bridget and going through the charade of asking her to tell Marion what had happened was exhausting. He felt like that chap in The Pilgrim’s Progress, wading through the Slough of Despond, every step an effort. He leaned back against the leather seat. He hardly ever travelled in a cab. He and Marion had taken one on the night they’d got engaged, allowing themselves that thrilling extravagance to celebrate. He hadn’t planned on proposing to her quite so soon. He was happy with the way things were. He knew he liked her a great deal. She was good company, they laughed at the same sort of things and she didn’t seem to mind that he hadn’t leapt on her whenever they were alone together. Their relationship seemed a lot more pleasant than the volatile tantrums and complicated sex lives of his peers. He had no particular timetable in mind and might well have kept going in that state, making easy plans and sticking to them. He hadn’t been with many women. The first time had been a disaster. He’d torn a tiny flap of skin on his most sensitive part and bled profusely. The girl had said she’d seen it happen before (there was, she’d said, laughing, no question that the blood was hers) and was annoyed rather than horrified, but he was mortified. It made him understandably nervous about subsequent encounters. He became adept at translating this anxiety into an approach that could be interpreted as respect. If he went further, he was as quick as a teenage boy.

  The train seemed to pause for longer than usual at the station stops. There was an endless shutting of doors and a babble of goodbyes at each one. His fears for Eddie crystallised into a single, terrible image of him, lying inert on a gurney, looking more dead than unconscious. Where was Sarah? He couldn’t remember much of his conversation with the hospital; once he’d noted where Eddie was, the rest of what the woman said crackled like radio interference. He thought she’d said Sarah was there with him, but he couldn’t be sure.

  Even if she hadn’t unintentionally laid a trail of clues (an insistence on being out of the house and suspiciously detailed excuses for being late), he’d have guessed Marion was being unfaithful to him again. She had a pertness to her, as if she’d suddenly been singled out for an award. She looked down on him and the rest of the world, sure of her winner’s status. In bed, she was unresponsive and didn’t meet his eye. It had happened before, when Sarah was small. They were still living in the cottage then. He’d wondered if perhaps she was pregnant, but he couldn’t ask her. She’d guarded herself against him after she’d lost the baby. He hadn’t known what to say.

  Their lovemaking was sweet when they were first together and he’d loved their habits and endearments. Their inexperience only enhanced their trust in each other. She’d conceived Sarah easily and they’d joked about the storybook perfection of their family. But since her miscarriage, she’d sometimes seemed distant and almost angry with him. It made him feel as if she were only allowing him to make love to her. Logically, they’d both lost the baby, of course, but he knew that his initial hesitation, and his reluctance to celebrate her announcement when the pregnancy began, made her shut him out of her grief when it was over. She never discussed it with him or referred to it in any way. But when she’d told him Eddie was on the way, she put her arms round him and closed the distance between them, undoing any hurt as easily if she were untangling a knot.

  Michael had always imagined they’d carry on side by side. When she fell in love with someone else, he was suddenly in her way. Her glaring irritation with him made her snap at his least transgression. If he hadn’t done anything wrong, that annoyed her, too. When he tried to touch her, she bristled. She couldn’t sit still, she leapt up from furniture as if everything was a bed of thistles and she hardly touched her food. She glowed with purpose. She was as shiny as a fish. Catching sight of her as she left the house, smiling to herself and walking quickly, he wondered if she might not come home at all and that he’d never know who it was that made her quiver so.

  If anybody had asked him, although he couldn’t imagine who might have done so, he would have said he was fond of Marion when they married. He’d felt protective of her, too. The way she took his arm the first time they’d crossed the road made him feel properly masculine and when she praised him for anything, he felt heroic. She was sweetly cheerful in bed. When he’d first heard her singing, he was astonished at how lovely her voice was. He remembered standing next to his mother in church. He could hear her voice clearly above everyone else’s, mainly because the rest of the congregation were hardly making any sound at all. They slurred the words of the hymns and missed out notes. His mother’s deep, rich alto floated easily above the sludge of sound. He’d felt proud to be alongside her and caught her eye and smiled. She’d blushed and stopped singing at once. She’d only mouthed the rest of the verses. He’d felt as guilty as if he’d inadvertently revealed her underwear to the world.

  Marion wasn’t ashamed of singing. She sang along to the radio or the record player. One afternoon he’d been at home, recuperating from flu. He was at the stage of convalescence when feeling better irritated him. He’d paced about downstairs while Marion ran a bath and cajoled the children to get into it. Their protestations gave way to indistinct chatter and some splashing. Then he’d heard them all singing. He’d crept halfway up the stairs to listen. He was still there when they came out of the bathroom, the children trailing towels and Marion red-faced from the heat. He’d fallen in love with her in that moment. It was a great, specific, unmistakable sensation, both as sharp as a knife and as soft as a blanket. Love had stolen up on him and surprised him, wrestling him to the ground. He had no desire to struggle free.

  With bloody irony, the very things he’d encouraged – her singing, the stupid choir – were responsible for his first unhappiness. He’d thought he’d lost her for ever. Over the weeks, he’d watched, helpless, as she slipped away. The ending, when it came, was abrupt, but it was months before he understood why. Their neighbour had stared hard at Marion’s obvious distress. He saw Marion recoil and then recover; he’d watched her lie and dissemble. And all the time, the fierce, insistent pain of his grief seeped like poison through his veins and into all the chambers of his heart.

  He knew it was happening again now. He’d watched h
er crystallise into a sharper, brighter version of herself. He’d seen the way she’d looked across the room at the party at the man whose name she’d uttered too often. He watched her twist herself free of them all as she planned her night away. He’d heard with weary acquiescence the brittle, silly lies she’d told him, about where she’d be and who she was going to be with. When she was hurt again, as he knew she would be, she would come back to him. Perhaps, this time, she’d understand that he chose to stay, too. If there was then an unspoken contract, binding them together less lovingly than he’d imagined at the beginning, she would have to undertake not to mistake his tolerance for complacency.

  He almost felt sorry for Bridget. She was about to be thrown, unprepared, into a terrible improvisation. And once she’d extricated herself from their conversation, she’d have to tell Marion the news. She’d have to hear Marion’s panic, and cope with her fear, all by herself. He thought of Sarah and how young she seemed now, unable to make sense of what she’d done. She was very confused by his reaction to Marion’s absence. He wasn’t surprised, it puzzled him, too. The other thing that unnerved him was how very much he wanted someone else with him now. He was even more disconcerted when he realised who it was.