by Carol Morley
‘Mrs Westbourne, if I had your debts it would be like a nail in my coffin. I could never forget!’
Mum began to cry and I glared at the man in the suit, with his precisely-cut, fine, grey hair, who looked like I imagined an undertaker would look. I’d opened the door to leave the house one afternoon and found him standing outside. In a flash he was through the door and in the lounge with Mum, provoking misery. He stuttered at her in anger, demanding an explanation for her moonlight flit and the whereabouts of the money she owed to the Co-op. I thought of all the things Mum had got on the ‘never-never’ from the Co-op for the boarding house, including all the bedding, and wondered exactly how much she owed.
She pushed him away and he resisted, his hands flapping, so she kept pushing.
‘Hands off, Mrs Westbourne, hands off.’
‘Get out, you awful little man.’
‘This will not be the last you hear from us,’ he said before Mum slammed the door on him.
A tight, invisible band strangled my brain. I fled to my bedroom and lay down and fretted. I had begun to paint the wall red and the dark, wooden wardrobe white but had never finished and they stared accusingly at me, so I closed my eyes.
‘What’ll happen now?’ I asked Mum later.
‘Oh, it’ll sort itself out, these things do. It’ll go to county court and they’ll order me to pay off a pound a month of what I owe. It’ll take them years to get their money!’ she said, triumphantly. She sipped on her tea and gasped, a sound of enjoyment which annoyed me, but then I felt mean that it did. Why did I have to get so worked up over a simple sound?
The days that Mum and I had no market research to do we stayed in bed till late. One day we didn’t get up till four o’clock in the afternoon. A day wiped out was a good thing in my eyes. Our gas was cut off as our bills went unpaid, so when we did get up we sat on the settee wrapped in quilts and watched telly and drank tea for as long as we had coins for the electric meter.
*
On my seventeenth birthday I got out of bed and went and crouched in the airing cupboard between the slatted, pale pine shelves. I shut the door and wallowed in the darkness.
According to the girl in the playground at primary school all those years ago, seventeen was the age you apparently discovered if you had schizophrenia. I had a feeling of foreboding. It was creeping up on me. I was going to get it. I had told Mum about a dream where I’d floated out of my body and had twirled around in the air and looked down at myself in bed. She had told me it was the kind of dream schizophrenics got.
I needed to get away before the voices began.
*
Nolly was someone I tried to kiss the first time that I met her at the Manchester Musicians Collective. She wasn’t interested in kissing me, but we saw each other around at gigs and became friendly. After she left to begin her degree at Oxford, I was impressed with myself that I knew someone studying at such a place. Nolly would return to Manchester in her holidays and she would seek me out at the Haçienda. One summer night we were in the toilets daubing our names in red lipstick on the mirror when the subject of India came up.
‘I want to go next Christmas but no one’ll come with me,’ Nolly said.
‘I’ll come,’ I said. I could tell she didn’t believe me.
I had thought that Paris might be the first place I ever visited abroad, but India was good enough. I sent Nolly a letter to let her know I meant it. She wrote back to me and it became real. India was on the horizon. I had six months to get the cash together, so I began to save up. There was nothing like living with a plan, I realised.
‘I don’t know why you’re bothering,’ Mum said. ‘It’s practically like living in India round here anyway.’
‘Travel broadens the mind,’ I said, immediately regretting my choice of cliché as she gave a disparaging smile.
As well as getting her shopping ‘on tick’ from the corner shop, Mum frequently used a moneylender, who came directly to the house. She called him the ‘Carpet Man’ for some reason and was quite fond of his charming smile. His interest rates were high, and soon she began to have to borrow money from him just to pay him off what she owed him in interest. She came to me for a loan instead. I agreed to lend her some of my savings for India because she said it wouldn’t be for long. But on the day I needed to give money to Nolly, who had bought our plane tickets with her own money, Mum began to act evasive.
‘I need the money for Nolly!’ I yelled. ‘She’ll think I’m messing her around.’
‘I don’t know about that,’ said Mum. ‘I don’t have it.’
‘You owe it me!’
‘In fact,’ said Mum, stirring my anger, ‘you’re not having it back. It’s rent.’
‘But yer weren’t charging me any,’ I said. ‘Yer never asked for any.’
‘You should have thought to pay some.’
‘Yer should have said!’
Mum stood up. She crossed her arms against the bulging darts of her dress.
‘Come on, Mum, please!’
‘I’m putting my foot down with a firm hand, that’s what I’m doing, and it’s about time.’
‘But yer promised you’d give it me back.’
‘Well, I haven’t got it, so there.’
‘I just want the fuckin’ money!’
‘Don’t you go using language like that with me, madam.’
‘Give me my fuckin’ money!’
‘And if you think I’m going to sign your passport you’ve got another thing coming. You’re under eighteen and you won’t be getting a passport if I don’t sign that form.’
‘Then I’ll fake yer signature.’
‘Oh no you won’t. I’ll report you to the Government and you’ll never be able to go anywhere ever again.’
‘Don’t think I’m going looking after you when you’re old, yer bitch!’
Mum grabbed her shoe from her foot, and launched herself at me.
‘I wish you’d never been born!’ she screamed.
There was a ferocious, animal energy to her as she slapped the leather sole of her shoe against my face, one side and then the other, over and over until I sank into a huddle, my arms shielding my face. She was officially mad. This proved it. Mum hit my arms but the fight in her had gone. She stopped and began to laugh.
I had blood in my mouth, yet all Mum could do was laugh like a maniac. I got out of the house. I ran and passed houses that flickered with televisions and life. I licked the thick, metallic taste from my lips. I wished I had never been born. If only I had never set foot in this stupid world. What was the point of going on? It was only going to get worse. I wanted to run into the path of a juggernaut so I could wake up in intensive care and find my body in the same state as my mind. Then everybody would realise just how fucked up I was. Or maybe it would be best never to wake up at all.
Dad had not stayed around to watch me grow up because he knew what I’d grow up to become. A slag, a good-for-nothing, everything he would have despised, and I was always having a go at Mum in my head because she had no friends, but did I really have any friends? There was Tranny Andy, who was saving up for a face lift even though he was only nineteen, and there was Harry, with his long, painted fingernails and his guitars who thought I was a virgin, and there was Nolly, oh and there were others that I saw, but were they proper friends? Were they friends like other people had friends? How would I know? I never talked to anyone about anything real. Was I even real? Had Dad ever been really real?
All the years I’d thought of Dad, all the years he’d run through my life like a fault line, my brain, my heart (if it existed), my soul (if it existed), colonised by him, ready to split me open at any time, yet how many memories of him did I have?
Here was one. The colour TV being delivered and I’m on my own with Dad and excited and it feels like the start of something good, and he turns the television on and it comes to life, and later he lets me stay up late and we’re sitting down watching Within These Walls.
Two. Going to see
Bugsy Malone with Dad and asking if I could lie down in the aisle of the cinema to watch the film and being surprised when he said that I could.
Three. Spilling Vimto on the carpet and being glad that Dad didn’t notice and sitting on the wet patch all night hoping it would disappear. It did.
Four. Dad taking the stabilisers off my bike and watching me as I pedalled along the pavement without falling off.
Five. Seeing Dad spray-painting my second-hand bike blue. Manchester City blue.
Six. Shouting for Dad when the bogeyman was looking at me through the toilet window and being relieved when he rescued me.
Seven. Going with Dad to Comet to buy a hairdryer and a steel watch for Mum’s birthday.
Eight. Being in a toy shop with Dad as he bought me a Meccano set for Christmas, and him asking me if I was sure it was what I really wanted, as there would be no surprises on Christmas day.
Nine. The time he picked me up from school in his old, bronze car, the car that he owned before the salesman car.
Ten. Being at home with him on my own and slipping off his shoes and tickling his feet and Dad tickling mine and feeling happy as I ran off with his shoe to hide it behind the landing curtain and him finally getting annoyed and wanting his shoe back: his slip-on, black shoe.
Eleven. Saying to him, ‘Excuse me, please may I leave the table?’ I must have said it a lot of times, but it was as though it had become one single memory.
Twelve. Dad smacking me because I wouldn’t go to bed.
Thirteen. Doing my homework, where I had to make a list of different kinds of measuring devices and Dad suggesting Intelligence Quota.
Fourteen. Dad taking me to his office Christmas party, where I met Father Christmas, who I was still young enough to believe in.
Fifteen. Seeing Dad kissing Mum in the hallway and Mum looking happy.
Sixteen. Showing Dad my broken front tooth when he turned up after one of his disappearing trips. He didn’t say anything, he just smiled.
Seventeen. After the last disappearing trip Dad took before he died, seeing him sitting very still on a dining-room chair in the kitchen and looking sad.
Eighteen. Dad driving just me to Lyme Park, but it was raining when we got there, so we never got out of the car and he drove us back home straight away.
Nineteen. Dad falling into the river and getting his trousers soaked and looking embarrassed.
Twenty. Dad teaching me to hold a ping-pong bat.
Twenty-one. Dad teaching me cards and the card trick.
Twenty-two. Dad showing me how to make an origami bird.
Twenty-three. Dad hitting my sister because he caught her eating a bowl of cornflakes after school.
Twenty-four. Dad on Margate beach building a car out of sand.
Twenty-five. Dad hanging his jacket on the side of the armchair, the pockets rattling with change.
Twenty-six. Dad spreading a Weetabix with Stork margarine.
Twenty-seven. Dad shouting at me when he found me opening my birthday present, a box of Milk Tray, in the middle of the night, before he realised I must have been sleepwalking.
Twenty-eight. The time Dad was doing the crossword puzzle and he said I got a clue right.
Twenty-nine. The day after I had my tonsils out, Dad visiting the hospital and giving me a colouring book.
Thirty. Dad looking happy after a shopping trip with Mum.
Thirty-one. Dad letting me read to him from an Enid Blyton book when I was sick and off school.
Thirty-two. Dad telling me he liked my bedroom after I’d made it really tidy, even though Mum was worried it was too neat for a child.
Thirty-three. Dad letting me eat pie and chips out of the newspaper in his bronze car.
Thirty-four. Dad saying that if I was quiet for half an hour he’d give me a pound. I didn’t talk or make a noise and when the time was up he put an ornament from the mantelpiece into my hands and said, ‘There you go, that weighs about a pound.’
Thirty-five. Dad taking me to see Manchester City play.
Thirty-six. The very last time I saw Dad in his new car.
Had I left any out? Maybe. But I couldn’t think of any more. Thirty-six memories: the results of eleven years of knowing him. Averaging out at about three memories a year; there must be more. Where did things go? Where did life go? Where did my dad’s life go? Why didn’t I give Dad a reason to live? Wasn’t that the point of why people had children?
I gave up running. I had no idea where I was any more. It was late. The streets were deserted. The pubs were shut and the roads were empty. Everything seemed useless, even running away, so I turned around and began to head home. Even though it was the last place I wanted to be, I didn’t know what else to do. I would work out a way to kill myself later.
Footsteps were approaching from behind and I saw him out of the corner of my eye, the man, but I didn’t look directly at him. My first reaction was to run but I didn’t want to seem scared. I began to find it harder to breathe and my throat was getting smaller and I kept gulping, painful gulps of air, but I did my best to hide it from him.
‘Why aren’t you frightened of me?’ he asked, eventually.
‘Because I’ve got a black belt in karate,’ I said.
‘Yer joking?’
‘No.’
I tried to walk like a karate expert would, though I was at a loss as to what that would be like.
‘Yer tits are massive,’ he said. ‘They are, aren’t they? They’re dead big.’
I managed a sly sideways glance and saw that his cock was out of his jeans and in his hand. He’s going to rape me, I thought. He may even murder me. I was going to wind up as another column inch in the newspaper. He stepped in front of me and leered. Was this the beginning of the end?
And in that moment, I realised that no matter how much I hated myself, I wanted to survive. All I thought about was being worthless and dying, and yet I wanted to carry on. It seemed so ridiculous. I almost laughed, but thought better of it when I felt his breath and the smell of danger.
How was I going to get away from him?
And then it came to me. I would ask him out. So I did.
‘What did yer say?’ he said.
I stopped and looked directly into his wild eyes.
‘So do yer want to meet up or what?’ I said. I pointed to a nearby pub. ‘Let’s meet there at seven-thirty tomorrow.’
‘Honest?’ he said.
‘Yeah. But on one condition – yer not to go following me home. I want to get to know yer first.’
‘Yer not having me on?’
‘Why would I go and do that?’
His face cracked into a warped smile. I heard the coarse grate of his zip closing.
‘See yer tomorrow,’ I said, waving my shaking hand with fake enthusiasm.
He shuffled away, still looking over his shoulder and watching me. I thought of him in that pub the next day, waiting. I headed home, the safest place for me.
I didn’t have keys so I had to knock my mum out of bed. Behind the bubbled glass of the front door I could see her descending the stairs, like a growing candyfloss in her pink dressing gown. I was dreading what would erupt when she opened the door.
But when she did, her face was softer and I knew she’d been crying.
‘You’ll get your money. I’ll get it from the Carpet Man,’ she said. ‘And I’m sorry I snapped at you earlier.’
‘That’s okay, Mum,’ I told her. ‘Everything’ll be all right.’
where the sun beats
I clutched my arms around Nolly’s waist as her moped veered and bumped over the roads leading us out of Manchester. We arrived in the village and Nolly turned off the engine with a final stutter and we walked the scooter to a free space and kicked the stand down.
Stiffening ourselves against the wind that had suddenly whipped into place, we trudged arm in arm past the cottages that quaintly lined the streets and along the paved path. We walked by the ancient church and then we were th
ere, in the graveyard I had for so long wanted to visit.
I had thought that the cemetery would be peaceful, a place of rest, but the flat land was full of bony, naked trees and tall, yellow grasses that bent with aching violent protest against the wind, as though they were waving at me. The winter sun struck the white crosses and made them glow; they dotted the cemetery like punctuation marks.
I left Nolly so I could search on my own for the grave. I leant over, deciphering names, dates, inscriptions, occasionally touching the surface of the stone. We are all going to die, I thought. I realised just how little death is talked about, seeing as it comes to us all. Then I thought of how in the course of history I was inconsequential. I was nothing at all. All these feelings, what did they really matter? They were nothing. In a hundred years I would be gone from the earth. Dad and I would be even.
It was then that I found her grave. Sylvia Plath Hughes. Placed on it were a few smeary jam jars of wilting flowers in murky water and a cellophane-wrapped, rotting bouquet. I wondered if the flowers were from the son and daughter she had left behind. How often did they come here? I wished that Dad had been put somewhere that I knew about so I could visit him and lay flowers on his grave.
Dad and Sylvia were both killed by gas. Dad in his car and Sylvia with her head in her oven. What was gassing yourself like? Was it like drifting into a velvet sleep? I hoped so. I wished that Dad was buried here in Heptonstall in windy Yorkshire, close to Sylvia, who would surely understand him.
What had Dad left behind? A widow, three children, a mother and a sister who were now both dead. If Dad had any friends then I didn’t know about them. They had never come forward to tell me anything about him. He had left so little for me to figure him out by. At least Sylvia’s children had her poetry. All I had were a few fading photographs. I wanted a flick book, a movie. I wanted to discover a mountain of evidence that he had existed. Even the ashes would do.
Leaving Sylvia, I made my way to the far edge of the graveyard. Beyond it was a flat field. Or was it a moor? I was frustrated that I was unable to name the land, the trees and all the details that were around me. If only I had the names I could be more precise. If only I could find all the words that applied to Dad, he would come back to me, if only in my mind.
