Talking to the Dead

by Helen Dunmore

  I’ve put them off, even though I could hear seeds of doubt about me lodge as I talked. Maybe they hadn’t made such a good choice after all. I told them how ill my sister is, how young the baby is and that a nanny’s coming in from next week. Even while I was lying it was still nice to hear voices from that other world, with other phones ringing in the background and the tap of our conversation being noted into a word processor while it was going on. I heard the impatience of people who aren’t much interested in personal things. I didn’t much like it but I knew it, I felt at home with it. That’s what I’ll go back to, when this is over.

  Isabel is the same to me as ever today, as she said she would be. She’s said nothing. I made a green salad with the pizza for lunch, and put the cream doughnuts in the fridge for later. Isabel smoked cigarette after cigarette all morning, wandering around the house with a mug of coffee in her other hand. She didn’t seem to know what to do without Edward.

  ‘You shouldn’t drink so much of that stuff,’ I said. She buys cheap powdered coffee from the village shop, in white tins without a name on them.

  ‘It’s OK. I’ve stopped feeding the baby,’ she said, as if the only thing that mattered was what went into the baby’s milk. It’s a sharp, sudden change. Isabel’s cast him off. She doesn’t want to give him his bottle, and Susan’s spent most of the morning feeding him, winding him, feeding him again. The new milk hurts his stomach. He cries and belches, then cries while yellow streams of sick flow down his Babygros. The air is full of tobacco smoke and screaming. Richard watches Isabel as she taps out her ash, frowning, listens for the baby, walks on. Her breasts are big and full and hurting. She keeps saying she wants the doctor to give her something to stop the milk. Richard’s face is so heavy with trouble that I want to shout at him, ‘For God’s sake, don’t let her see you looking like that.’

  It’s good to shut the door on it and be out. The meadows are cracked with drought, and there are bald patches where the cattle have trampled away the grass. There are hundreds of tiny pale blue butterflies, more than there’ve ever been, Susan says, a plague of butterflies. They don’t fly, they vibrate in the heat. It’s hotter now than it was at noon. You can’t imagine anything else but this, day after day going on and on without cloud or breeze. The heat builds its own silence. It cuts us off as surely as a flood. Walking through the field I feel like a dot in so much summer. The trees look as if they’ve been suspended, let down through the air on invisible strings. Crickets chirr as I walk down the field, so fiercely that it becomes another landscape, not England. The fields are white and cracked, the sky a sharp, demanding blue. From here you can’t see the river, but when I’ve crossed two more fields I’ll be there. Which way will Richard come? He can’t cross the fields, because anyone could see him from the house. They can see me now, if they want to. Isabel can, or Susan. I’ve bought a larger sketchbook, and it’s wedged under my arm where anyone can see it. A big, portable excuse for everything. They can see me now. Nina, full of pizza, plodding over the water-meadows. It takes her for ever. My back braces itself and a trickle of sweat gathers between my shoulders and runs slowly down my back. The cattle are bunched up by the hedge, in what shade there is.

  I reach the water. It’s not what I wanted. It isn’t cool, or brown, or alive with fish and shadows. It is a strange porcelain green with a thick current down the middle, and a few clumps of willow and alder gripping tight to its banks. There is hardly any shade here either. Heat bounces off the water into my eyes. The towpath is narrow and because the river is slightly above the level of the meadows there is an uneasy feeling that everything has got into the wrong place. I stand and watch the water bulging round the reeds on its way downstream. It hasn’t got far to go now, only five miles to the sea. It’s packed with chemicals, effluent, the run-off from miles of farmland. The quality of, the water is better than it was, Richard says, but no one paddles or swims here now. No one comes here, much. What is there but a high, exposed path along the snakes of the river? It bends like a river in a child’s storybook, not a real river. I can’t see the bottom. I remember Richard saying once, ‘It’s deep. Be careful, those banks are chalk and they crumble. The current’s stronger than it looks.’ I stare into the water. I would not want to choke in that soup of chemicals. The water doesn’t smell, exactly, but it gives off a strange, metallic tang. I look up and down the banks but for miles there’s nowhere hidden, nowhere we can tuck ourselves away out of sight and fuck ourselves insensible.

  I sit down carefully, folding my legs under me. I watch a twig sail down the current, surprisingly fast. I open my sketchbook and take out my pencil, though there’s nothing here I want to draw. Except perhaps those willow roots, the hunch and clench of them, like hands digging into soil. I move a little, turn the book round, squeeze my eyes to filter out glare.

  I draw for a long time. In the middle of the drawing I realize without needing to think about it that I’ve stopped expecting Richard to come. Good. I’m fighting the temptation to make these roots more than roots, to turn them into the hands they aren’t. Roots work differently. I rip off a sheet of spoiled paper, and I’m about to crumple it into a ball and shove it in my pocket when I have a better idea. I smooth out the paper and fold it. One fold, a turn, another fold. A triangle. A cocked hat. A little boat.

  I daren’t go down the white, crumbling bank. I throw the boat out. Too heavy to flutter, it turns, in the air and then, amazingly, it rights itself, falls on the water and begins to sail. A current whips it from underneath and it spins, then straightens, and sails on fast down the centre of the river. I watch it until it disappears round the next bend, out of sight before it can become waterlogged and sink.

  I’m still staring after it when there’s a huge disturbance behind me. I think of great sheets of paper being ripped in the sky. I turn. Something big and baggy-winged stretches itself up from the river behind the next clump of willows. It hauls itself up into the air, hardly gaining any height. Like a dream of flying when you will yourself over hedges, it goes over me low, so low I duck and find myself on hands and knees on the path. And then it picks up speed with great flaps of its wings. Slowly, more slowly than I’d ever thought a bird could rise, it climbs the sky. It shows with its broad ragged wings what hard work flying is. All this time I’m holding my breath because it nearly doesn’t work.

  ‘A heron! Did you see it?’ shouts Richard from across the meadow. He’s coming straight down, the way I came, so anyone can see him coming. He strides up, wiping sweat from his face. ‘Did you see that! There must be fish in the river after all.’

  ‘I can’t believe that,’ I say, looking into its poisonous green depths.

  ‘Jesus, it’s hot.’ He looks around, as I’ve done, registers the lack of shade and shelter, as I’ve done. The walk’s been too much for him. I see suddenly and coolly how much the weight and age he carries slow him down. He sits heavily beside me, and though I want to go on drawing I put down my pencil. It is much too hot for me to want to touch him. I think he must feel the same.

  ‘Sometimes I think this place is the arse end of nowhere,’ says Richard.

  ‘I know what you mean.’

  ‘But Isabel loves it.’

  We stare out past the polluted water to the baking meadows opposite.

  ‘This is hell,’ says Richard. ‘Let’s walk. It can’t be worse than sitting here.’

  We walk one behind the other to the bend in the river. Ahead of us there are more bends, winding away to the sea between flat meadows. On the far right there’s a concrete building that looks like an electricity substation. In the distance the Downs bake, almost hidden by heat haze.

  ‘Do you want to walk on?’

  ‘Not really.’

  He laughs. ‘This is awful, isn’t it? What are we doing here?’

  ‘I was drawing.’

  ‘But it’s better than being in the house,’ says Richard. I look at him. This sounds like the most intimate thing he’s ever said to me.


  ‘How are things back there?’

  ‘Isabel’s missing Edward.’

  ‘He’s only been gone four hours.’

  ‘I know. But she needs someone to talk to. She isn’t feeling too good at the moment.’

  We let pass, silently, the fact that she talks to neither of us.

  ‘And Susan’s buggered off to help her mother with this Young Farmers’ do.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I said Susan’s gone over to the farm. Why, what’s the matter?’

  ‘You mean now? She’s there now? She’s not with Isabel?’

  I’ve swung round to face Richard. My hands are on his elbows, gripping them. ‘You mean Isabel’s on her own?’

  ‘Susan’s only over at the farm. She’ll be back by five. And Isabel’s got the baby, so she’s not really on her own.’

  ‘The baby’s with Isabel?’

  ‘Nina, for God’s sake, of course the baby’s with Isabel. What’s the matter with you?’

  The heat pours on my head.

  ‘When did Susan go?’

  ‘I don’t know, the same time as me. Yes, I saw her leave. Nina, what is all this? Isabel’s fine. I wouldn’t have left her if she wasn’t. Nina! Where’re you going?’

  I scramble down the bank and into the meadow.

  ‘Nina!’

  ‘She shouldn’t be left on her own! It’s too soon!’ I shout back. There are three fields and the garden between me and Isabel. I begin to run.

  I am faster than Richard. I glance back and see him coming after me, thumping the dry ground, but I run faster. I’ve got to get there first, before anyone else sees. My feet slide on their own sweat inside my sandals. I am gasping, but I know I can run much farther than this. I climb the first stile, and drop back on to the path. The quickest way is straight across the fields. If she looks through the window, if she sees me coming, running over the fields like this, then she’ll wait. She’ll stand there watching, distracted, wondering what’s going on. I shoot up one arm and wave madly to an invisible Isabel. I’m coming. Stay there, don’t move. Don’t do anything.

  I bang the little door open. The garden’s silent, stewing in heat and scent. Up the paths, hedges whipping my legs and round the side and into the stale, dark kitchen. No one there. The back door open, the clock ticking. Down the passage, across the hall, up the stairs in silent, hungry bounds. She’s there. She must be. I stand and listen, but I can’t hear anything. The house is as quiet as if everyone’s stopped breathing. Then I hear her singing. Her nice voice, thin but sweet:

  ‘My daddy was a preacher

  my daddy was a thief

  eevy ivy overhead

  how many hours does the baby sleep

  eevy ivy overhead…’

  I know it well. That song’s lodged in my bones, like all the songs Isabel once sang me. She begins again

  ‘My daddy was a preacher…’

  and all those summer evenings of Isabel’s singing tumble back over me. I take in a breath. I am hot, shivering with heat. I hear Isabel stir inside the room, the chair creak, her footsteps light on the bare boards –

  I open the door. The cot’s empty.

  ‘Where’s the baby?’

  ‘The baby?’ Isabel opens her eyes wide. I see the fringe of her lashes spray wide. Her eyes are clear as storybook rivers. ‘He’s in Susan’s room of course. Fast asleep. For heaven’s sake don’t go in and wake him up. It took me forever to get him off.’

  ‘Oh. I thought you were singing to him.’

  ‘I wasn’t singing.’

  ‘You were. I heard you.’

  ‘What then? What was I singing?’

  I purse my lips. I hate singing, even when I’m alone. Isabel could sing, I couldn’t. ‘You were singing

  ‘How many hours does the baby sleep.’

  Isabel laughs. ‘I haven’t thought of that for years, Neen.’ Her tense face is relaxing, slowly. ‘But where’ve you been?’

  ‘Down by the river,’ I say quickly. ‘I was drawing.’

  ‘I know. I saw you go.’

  ‘Did you see Richard too? He came down thinking it would be cooler, but it was even hotter by the river.’

  ‘Yes, I saw him.’ She turns aside, pulling at her dress. ‘Christ, look at this. I’m soaked in milk again.’

  ‘It’ll stop soon, won’t it?’

  ‘Susan says so. She’d know, of course.’

  ‘Of course.’ Our eyes meet in shared amusement.

  ‘Why doesn’t she have one,’ demands Isabel, ‘why doesn’t she just bloody well have one?’

  ‘The same reason I don’t,’ I say; ‘she doesn’t want one.’

  ‘You do, Neen, of course you do,’ croons Isabel, dabbing milk off herself.

  ‘I’m going to make some tea. There are those cream doughnuts in the fridge. Do you want any?’

  Isabel glances up, her eyes sliding past mine. ‘Look in on the baby for me, Neen, on your way down. Just to check he’s all right’

  The sweat from my run chills all over me. I’m tangled up as I was in her singing, tangled up in words I’ve heard before, in things that have happened once and should never happen again. Surely she knows what she’s saying. Careless and intimate, that’s how we look. Two sisters in a bedroom. On your way down… just to check he’s all right… go and look at the baby, Neen. Go and look at the baby.

  Chapter Twenty

  Slowly, slowly, I push open the door of Susan’s room. I make no sound. The pale curtains are drawn, and the room smells of the new pine furniture and baby sleep. He is rosy with the heat, his hair damp, his fist up to his face. He is sleeping on his side and Isabel has put a rolled-up towel beside him so that he can’t turn on to his face. I creep right up to the cot. His weight dents the mattress. He looks more solid than I’ve ever seen him. Already he’s changing, filling out, and that fist by his face looks strangely mature. He is sleeping peacefully in the thick yellow light which filters through Susan’s curtains. All my fears sink down. He’s well, perfectly well. I’ve been imagining things.

  Richard is at the bottom of the stairs, looking up.

  What was all that about? I couldn’t keep up with you.’

  But he hasn’t tried. He must have been waiting down there for a while, because he’s not out of breath any more. I wonder why he didn’t come up after me. Perhaps he didn’t want to break in on me and Isabel, but I doubt it. ‘She’s a lot tougher than you think, you know,’ he says.

  ‘I got worried about her being alone in the house. It was stupid.’

  I stand on the bottom stair, and our eyes are almost on a level.

  ‘You think of her more than she thinks of you,’ said Richard.

  ‘I don’t know how you can think that’

  ‘Because I see things from the outside.’

  ‘You’re wrong. Isabel’s always been –’ But it’s hard to find words for what Isabel’s always been.

  ‘I think you need to get away from Isabel.’ He’s entirely serious.

  ‘How can you say that? She’s my sister, she’s always looked after me.’

  ‘Has she?’

  ‘Richard, how can you talk like this about Isabel? You’re married to her. She’s my sister.’

  ‘It’s got nothing to do with how I feel about Isabel. I know her very, very well. I know her much better than you do. I don’t think you two do each other any good. Isabel knows what she wants, Nina.’

  ‘And I don’t?’

  ‘No. You don’t let yourself. You’re in a dream half the time.’

  It’s the economist talking, the fulfilment man. The lens is on me and it’s going to come zooming in. I start to gabble out a diversion. ‘I’m going to make some tea to take up to Isabel. The baby’s asleep so she’s going to rest till he wakes up.’

  In the kitchen I make myself quick and busy, filling a tray with milk and mugs and plates. I take three doughnuts out of the fridge.

  ‘Do you want one?’

  Why are you gi
ving that to Isabel? She won’t want it’

  I lay Isabel’s doughnut on a plate on the tray. It is puffy and light, covered with white and brown scribbles of icing.

  ‘I’ll eat it,’ says Richard, stretching out his hand.

  ‘I bought enough for one each. That one in the bag’s yours.’

  ‘But you know she doesn’t –’

  ‘She might.’

  The kettle boils and I pour water into the pot. Richard puts his hand on the back of my knee. ‘Shit, Richard, this is boiling water.’

  ‘I know. But you’ve got steady hands, I’ve watched you.’ He slides his hand up, over my thigh, inside the cuff of my shorts. I put down the kettle with my steady hands but I don’t turn. ‘I’ll come down,’ I say. ‘I won’t be long. I’ll just take this up to Isabel.’

  ‘She doesn’t sleep with me any more, you know,’ says Richard.

  ‘Of course she does. She got pregnant with Antony.’

  ‘That didn’t take long. She’d got it worked it out so it only took one go.’

  ‘You don’t need to tell me any of that. I don’t care.’

  ‘Because it’s separate? That’s the way you see it?’

  ‘I don’t see it any way.’

  ‘No, you don’t, do you? We don’t have to think and we don’t have to talk. Everything goes on in the dark. Well, that may be fine for you, but it isn’t for me.’

  ‘Take your hand away if you don’t like it’

  His hand tightens on my thigh. ‘I’d love you to stand there naked, cooking,’ he says.

  ‘With maybe a little apron?’

  ‘I’m not that perverse.’.

  ‘What would I cook?’

  ‘I don’t know. Anything. You’d be there chopping and stirring. Tasting things. You always taste when you cook, don’t you?’

  ‘I can’t cook any other way.’

  ‘You’d have a wooden spoon in your mouth.’