Talking to the Dead

by Helen Dunmore

  ‘And you’d watch.’

  ‘Oh no, I’d do more than that.’

  ‘Food’s important. You don’t want to go mixing it up with other tilings.’

  ‘You would, though, wouldn’t you? You would, wouldn’t you?’

  Isabel’s tray is cheap and buckled. The teapot slips, but I balance it and push her door open with my knee.

  ‘Oh Neen, tea, lovely. Let me shove all this stuff off the table.’ She’s been writing another letter. I pull up the other chair, and sit down opposite her.

  ‘You don’t still take sugar in tea, do you, Neen? It’s bad for your skin.’

  ‘I need it after all that running.’

  ‘I saw you. What on earth was the matter? You tearing up the field and Richard chasing you. It looked as if he’d been trying it on down by the river.’ She laughs.

  ‘You know, Isabel, how you said we weren’t going to talk about last night – about what we talked about last night?’

  We’re not,’ she answers quickly. ‘I said I wouldn’t talk about it again and I won’t.’ This time it sounds like a declaration, not a reassurance.

  ‘I want to. I’ve been thinking about it all night.’ I lean forward and begin to divide the two doughnuts into eight quarters with a sharp knife. I cut them very carefully so that the dough isn’t squashed down on the cream. Isabel feels on her table for the cigarette pack, taps one out without looking and lights it. I know how Isabel smokes when there’s food around, so that the cigarette makes a barrier between her and the plate. She can’t put food in her mouth if there’s a cigarette in it. I pour tea for us both.

  ‘Why do you want to?’ says Isabel.

  ‘I went in to look at Ant just now. He was asleep. He looked so –’

  ‘Peaceful.’

  ‘No. That’s not the right word. I don’t know how to describe it. He looked there. Solid. A hundred per cent alive. And I thought, Colin must have looked like that. He’s been dead such a long time I’ve been thinking of him as if he was never really alive. But he was. He was solid too.’

  Isabel draws sharply on her cigarette. ‘So?’

  ‘And when I started to think about it, I couldn’t believe that even when I was only four years old, I wouldn’t have felt the difference. Between what you can do to a doll and what you can do to a baby.’

  ‘But Colin died.’ I watch the tidemark of milk on her dress, moving with her quick breath.

  ‘Yes. But maybe it wasn’t that way’

  ‘I saw it. I know it was. I was seven, remember.’

  ‘It could have been an accident.’

  A breath goes out of Isabel, and her shoulders sink. She looks down, at the end of her cigarette, and then up. ‘I suppose… I suppose it could have been.’ She frowns, thinking back. There’s a little more colour in her face now.

  ‘I would have remembered killing him,’ I say. The words erupt in the room like vomit, and Isabel flinches. ‘Don’t say that.’

  ‘But that’s what it means, doesn’t it, if it wasn’t an accident? It means I killed him. What else could have happened?’

  ‘That’s why you ran back,’ says Isabel. ‘You thought, if it could happen to Colin for no reason then it could happen to Antony. Isn’t that what it was? You were frightened. You were out of breath when you came in.’

  I look at her. Again Isabel’s taken what’s happened and made it a different truth that I can’t argue with. ‘Yes, I suppose it was.’

  ‘But I’m sure I saw what I saw,’ Isabel goes on, frowning more deeply.

  ‘It’s not just what you see, though, is it? It’s what you make of what you see. You have to interpret things.’

  And then it comes to me. I don’t just see it, I see and I know. Colin’s legs were moving. Bare, purple, weak legs beating up and down on the mattress as Isabel bent over the cot. I saw that. Could I have made it up? Made myself see movement where there was only stillness? Could I have been so terrified of what I’d done that I not only hid it from myself for ever, but made up another scene, one where Isabel stood over the baby and the baby was alive, half-hidden by her body, struggling? Have I made those pictures in my mind, frame by frame? Isabel stood by the cot while I watched from the door. And she leaned down, pressed down.

  I could have invented it all. I might be capable of that. How am I going to find out what I’m capable of? I stare at my golden sister.

  ‘Don’t worry, Neen. Everything’s all right.’

  Isabel looks at me as if we’ve said all we need to say. I feel trapped, overwhelmed. I know nothing and I can’t trust my own memory. Isabel is so sure.

  ‘We’ve never been all that happy, you know,’ she says.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Me and Richard. It’s been difficult for a long time.’

  I wrench my mind round to this. ‘You and Richard?’

  She nods, and I believe her. The mystery of Isabel and Richard used to be one of my touchstones. That was the way you could be, if you found the right person. I thought they possessed a happiness they hid to keep it safe from outsiders. They were the adults, the ones who knew how life worked.

  ‘No, it was never much good.’ She stares straight at me, shrugging off everything. ‘And now I can’t bear it. I can’t have him near me.’

  She stubs out her cigarette. ‘Are those doughnuts nice, Neen?’

  ‘They’re fantastic. Really light, not greasy at all.’

  Isabel hesitates. I feel her wanting, but I don’t know what she wants. Was there a time once, before she’d coached herself out of hunger, that we could stand in front of the baker’s shop together and point at cream slices and Eccles cakes and éclairs? Was there a time when we’d both watch jealously as the tinned pineapple was divided, piece by piece, until our bowls were exactly equal? ‘Go on,’ I say. ‘You know you’re hungry.’

  Isabel stretches out her long, delicate hand. She picks up a quarter of iced doughnut, holding it as if it’s a grasshopper. Her hand shakes slightly as she turns her wrist, lifts the doughnut to her mouth, takes a small bite, and chews. After a little while, effortfully, she swallows.

  ‘Quite nice,’ she says, her eyes watering.

  I pick another piece for myself off the plate. ‘Just as well this is the last one, I could pig out on these.’

  ‘You’re lucky,’ says Isabel, ‘you can eat what you’ want.’

  We drink our tea, and in spite of everything we’re more relaxed together than we’ve been for a long time. Isabel doesn’t light any more cigarettes. Her piece of doughnut lies on the plate, the cream melting into a yellow puddle. The cuffs of her soft red shirt lie loosely on her slender wrists. She turns a ring on the little finger of her right hand, a turquoise and silver ring she bought in Kashmir, long before she met Richard. She brought me back a bracelet, made of the same turquoise, with silver links that turned black when I wore it.

  ‘But there’s the baby,’ says Isabel abruptly, out of some long, private train of thought.

  ‘That might make things better.’

  ‘The trouble is, men need sex.’

  It’s such an odd thing to say, so unlike Isabel, but at the same time so truly Isabelline that I smile. Isabel flushes slightly.

  ‘They do,’ I say.

  ‘I don’t though, do you? Not really. You soon get used to not having it. I remember thinking the same about food. All those people thinking they had to have food all the time or they’d die, always thinking about it and talking about it and going out to the shops for it and then sitting chomping it down, and yet it wasn’t really necessary at all. All the world turned on something you could do without. I wanted to shout out and tell everyone the truth.’

  ‘But you didn’t’

  ‘Oh no,’ says Isabel, ‘that sort of thing you keep to yourself, don’t you?’

  She smiles, a real, curling smile, as if we’re conspirators. I remember her telling me Sunday school was shit and freeing me for ever from wanting to bow down to anything.

  ‘You
don’t need to worry about Richard,’ I say. ‘There are plenty of other people in the world who like sex.’

  ‘That’s what I keep hoping.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it. He’ll be fine.’

  One word more would be too many. We hover on the edge of what can’t be said, caught up, as we used to be caught in the histories we made up for Rosina and Mandy. They were always changing. That was the best thing about the dolls. If the storyline didn’t work out, we could wipe out their pasts. Suddenly I remember how Isabel decided one summer that Rosina had long raven hair.

  What’s raven?’

  ‘Black.’

  ‘But Rosina’s got yellow hair.’

  ‘That doesn’t matter. It’s raven now,’ said Isabel, picking up the dolls’ hairbrush.

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘Of course it is. It’s part of the game. Now you say Are you going to brush Rosina’s raven hair?’

  ‘Are you going to brush Rosina’s raven hair, Isabel?’ I asked.

  I squinted at the doll. On her coarse, vigorous yellow hair I thought I detected a faint sheen of black.

  ‘As long as Richard’s happy, I don’t mind,’ says Isabel.

  ‘You want to stay together.’

  ‘Yes, why not?’

  ‘There’s no reason why not.’

  I go downstairs with the empty mugs and pot rattling on the tray. It’s half-past five. The zone of safety is nearly over: the earliest train Edward could catch comes in at five-fifteen. But even if he gets that train, he’ll have to ring for a taxi at the station, and that’ll take a while to come. And then there’s Susan, walking back over the fields from the farm. She shouldn’t be back for a while yet.

  Richard is slicing tomatoes into a bowl.

  ‘You haven’t skinned them.’

  ‘It’s not worth it.’

  ‘It’s those little touches that make all the difference.’

  ‘I’m sure.’ He puts down the knife. ‘You were a long time.’

  ‘We were just talking.’

  ‘Do you want to go in the garden?’

  ‘No.’ Isabel’s hand is on me. Her permission freezes me. ‘No, I’m not –’

  ‘I see.’ He goes on slicing tomatoes, expertly, his face closed.

  ‘You don’t. You don’t see anything.’ I take the knife out of his hand.

  Not the garden, because the garden is Isabel’s place. But the kitchen, here with juice dripping off the knife and cream souring, that’s my place. The door to the passage is half-open, and the back-door too. But there’s nothing anywhere but the dead quiet of late afternoon. I pull my T-shirt over my head.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘You can see what I’m doing.’

  ‘Jesus, Nina. Isabel might come down any minute.’

  ‘She won’t’

  ‘And we can’t lie on this floor. Look at the muck down there.’

  ‘We’ll do it standing up against the cooker.’

  ‘Is it off?’

  ‘Of course it’s off.’

  We lean together. There’s no time to spare but I’m weak with slowness. I want to do everything as if it’s for the first time. Unbutton each button, slide it out of its little sewn nest. Pull back his shirt. Lie against his chest, sinking into the thickness of his flesh with my heart thudding as if I’m still running over the fields. I shut my eyes.

  He shoves me upright. ‘Nina, get your clothes on. There’s a car.’

  I stoop, grab my T-shirt off the floor, pull it over my head, stand up again, dizzy. The car engine’s stopped, and there are voices.

  ‘Edward.’

  We move apart. Richard sits down at the table and picks up the knife. I turn the cold tap full on in a noisy gush and put a saucepan underneath it. Water bounces up from the bare metal and spatters me. The car engine starts again and footsteps crunch, stop, crunch on again, past the kitchen door.

  ‘He’s going in through the garden.’

  We look at each other, and I push back my hair with a wet hand.

  ‘He’s going to stay here till I go back to London. He won’t leave us alone,’ I say.

  ‘Do you think he’s guessed?’

  ‘He knows.’

  ‘Does he?’ Richard’s face is tense, focused. This is what he must look like at work, an economist working out the odds on growth in a small, unstable economy.

  ‘But he won’t say anything,’ I say. This suits him really. He’s got Isabel to himself. Hours of talk in the bedroom while we’re out of the way’

  ‘You can’t be sure of that. He’ll do anything for her.’

  The levels of what I’m capable of buzz and shift in my head. I’m going to go back to London tomorrow,’ I say, as if it’s long planned. I watch for the tiny shrinkage of his pupils in his still face, the sign of disappointment he can’t hide.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  ‘I want us to have a celebration,’ says Isabel. We all turn: Richard from the paper, Edward from the floor where he’s assembling the mobile he’s bought for the baby in London. I look up from spreading toast with black cherry jam. It’s too hot already, and riding towards the thirty-four degrees forecast for today, although it’s only half-past eight. All the windows are open. It was too hot to sleep, and the baby howled from two until four. I kept listening for rain, the way I used to listen for the sea. The ground’s as hard and tight as a drum. All night I slid in and out of sleep and I woke up aching. It’s oppressively close this morning. ‘A celebration?’

  ‘Yes. I couldn’t sleep because it was so hot, and I’ve been thinking about it all night. We ought to do something, before you all go. We’re never going to get a summer like this again, with all of you staying here. And Susan’s leaving soon, so I thought we’d ask her and Margery as well. But not anyone else, no one from London. Just us.’

  The line between Isabel’s eyes has become a deep groove. She glances round at us all, her eyes very bright. If I touched Isabel now she’d spark.

  ‘Don’t you think it’s a good idea?’

  ‘What sort of celebration?’ asks Richard.

  I know what he means, but Isabel answers a different question. ‘A dinner. We’ll eat outside, on the terrace. We’ll take the long table out, and hang those candle lanterns in the apple trees for when it gets dark. There’s that white cloth your mother gave us, Richard, the linen one with the ivy pattern. And the triple candlestick. Candles will burn outside as well as they do indoors in this weather.’

  ‘It’ll be a lot of work for Nina,’ says Richard, looking at me. ‘That salmon took you most of the day, didn’t it?’

  ‘It won’t be left to her,’ says Isabel sharply. We’ll all do it together. We’ll each choose a dish, and cook it.’

  ‘A family feast,’ says Edward. It’s impossible to tell if his tone is pleased or ironic. Against my will, I start to warm to the idea and see what it could be like. The table loaded, the cloth crowded with bottles and flowers, the blue dusk and then the candles. A feast to end everything that’s happened here and set us free from one another. A feast that’ll put a shape round our confusion and give it a name. But I was going to go home today, and it’s so hot. My skin itches at the thought of all that shopping, and the car cooking in its own fumes on roads full of people desperate to get to the sea.

  Richard goes over to the window. ‘It looks like thunder,’ he remarks, as if this has nothing to do with Isabel’s plan.

  ‘It won’t rain. It’s been like this for weeks,’ says Isabel quickly.

  ‘Look at those clouds over there.’

  It looks as if someone has drawn shapes on the sky with a metallic pen. They’re the faintest of outlines, gathering in the distance.

  ‘That’s nothing,’ says Edward. ‘It won’t rain, the forecast said it’d be even hotter this afternoon. It’s going to beat all the records. Do you know this is the hottest summer there’s been for two hundred years?’

  ‘We need rain,’ says Richard.

  ‘How would
you know? You spend half your life up in an aeroplane,’ says Isabel.

  ‘You can see a lot from a plane.’

  ‘So, when’s this celebration going to be?’ asks Edward.

  ‘I thought we’d have it tonight. There’s plenty of time, if we each work out what we’re going to cook now, and then you and Richard and Nina go and do all the shopping. You’ll have to go into Brighton to get everything. If you and Richard carry the table and chairs out first, then Susan can decorate them while you’re out. I want flowers everywhere, and ivy, and vine-leaves. I’ll look after the baby.’

  ‘Are you sure you’re up to this, Isabel? You know how tired you are,’ says Richard. But Isabel is flushed, electric. ‘Of course I’m all right. At least I’ll be doing something instead of sitting around waiting for the baby to cry.’

  ‘It’s a fantastic idea,’ says Edward, getting up. He’s put together the frame of the mobile and now he reaches up to hang it from a hook on the back of the door. ‘You’ll have to put a hook in the ceiling for this, Isabel, over the baby’s cot.’

  There are dozens of blue wooden fish in the box. One by one Edward takes them out and threads them into place. The mobile is going to be a huge cage of fish.

  ‘How many fish are there?’ asks Richard.

  ‘Forty.’

  ‘It’ll take up half the room. He won’t be able to see the sky.’

  ‘It’s beautiful,’ says Isabel.

  ‘He’ll grow up believing that fish can fly,’ I say.

  ‘Does that matter?’

  ‘Of course it matters. What kind of a picture of the world is he going to have?’

  ‘A better one than we had,’ says Isabel. Her fingers play with the light dry fish. The fish we saw flopping in the bottom of fishing boats in our childhood weren’t like that. They had weight, and muscle. They were slippery when you picked them up, their blood was bright, like human blood, and their eyes looked as if they were watching you. On a good day you could get a shopping bag full of herring for a shilling. We ate a lot of herring.

  The mobile is a tangle of wood and thread, but Edward works his way through it confidently. We’re all watching him now, the way people watch anyone who’s doing something with his hands. Isabel picks up another fish. ‘There,’ says Edward, pointing, ‘slip the thread through the little hook.’ The thread is plastic, and invisible from where I am, but Isabel ties nothing to nothing, and there the fish hangs.