“If you get promoted,” Al said, “nobody will be happier than I will. The only bit of peace and quiet I had was when you were on your course.”
“Peace and quiet?” Morris yelped. “How could you have peace and quiet? Wiv a past like yours? Not ten years old, and a man’s testicles on your conscience.”
“What testicles?” Alison yelled.
Across the landing, Colette’s door opened. She stood in her bedtime T-shirt, very white and severe. “That’s it,” she said. “I don’t intend to spend another night under this roof. How can I live with a woman who has rows with people I can’t see, and who stands outside my bedroom door shouting ‘What testicles?’ It’s more than flesh and blood can stand.”
Alison rubbed her forehead. She felt dazed. “You’re right,” she said. “But don’t be hasty.”
“It’s simply not acceptable conduct. Not even by your standards.”
Alison moved her foot, so Morris could slide from under it. “At least wait until the morning.”
“I don’t believe it’s safe to wait until morning. I shall pack a small bag and I shall send someone for the rest of my things in due course.”
“Who?” Al said, in simple wonderment. “Who will you send?” She said, “You can’t just rush off into the night. That’s silly. You owe it to me to talk it over.”
“I owe you nothing. I built your business up from scratch. It was a blundering amateur mess when I came on board.”
“That’s what I mean. Come on, Colette! We’ve been through such a lot.”
“Well, from now on you’re on your own. You’ve got plenty of company, I would have thought. Your special sort of company.”
“I’ve got my memories.” Al said. “Yes. That’s fine.”
She turned away. I won’t entreat you anymore, she thought. She heard low voices from downstairs. It sounded as if Aitkenside and the rest had come in and were making themselves a snack. Colette closed her door. Al heard her talking. For a moment she stood still, in astonishment. Who has she got in there with her? Then she realized that Colette was using her cell phone, and was making arrangements to depart.
“Wha?” Gavin said. “Who’s this?” He spluttered, coughed, blew his nose twice; he sounded like a bear that has been hibernating at the bottom of a pit.
“It’s not that late,” she snapped. “Wake up, Gavin. Are you awake? Are you listening to me? This is an emergency. I want you to get me out of here.”
“Oh,” said Gavin, “it’s you, Colette. How’ve you been?”
“I’ve been better. I wouldn’t ask, except I need to get out right now, and I need somewhere to stay, just for tonight. I’m packing a bag as we speak.”
There was a silence. “So let me get this straight. You want me to come over there?”
“Yes. At once.”
“You want me to drive over there and get you?”
“We used to be married. Is it too much to ask?”
“Yes—no—it’s not that—” He broke off. To consult Zoë, perhaps? Now he was back on the line. “The problem’s my car, you see, it’s—well, it’s in the garage.”
“What a time to pick!” she snapped. “You should have a little Japanese one like ours, never lets us down.”
“So why don’t you, you know, get in it?”
“Because it’s hers! Because she’s the owner and I don’t want a dispute. Because I don’t want her near me, or anything that belonged to her.”
“You mean Fat Girl? Are you running away from her?”
“Look, I’ll call a cab. Only be ready to let me in when I get there. It may take a while.”
“Oh, I’ve got wheels,” Gavin said. “I can come. No problem. As long as you don’t mind it. I mean, it’s not my usual standard.”
“Gavin, come now, in whatever you happen to be driving.”
She clicked the phone off. She put her hand on her solar plexus, and tried to breathe deeply, calmly. She sat on the side of the bed. Vignettes from her life with Al ran through her mind. Alison at the Harte and Garter, the day they got together, arranging the sugar straws and pouring the milk. Alison in a hotel in Hemel Hempstead, trying on earrings at the dressing table, between each pair dabbing at her earlobes with cotton wool balls soaked in vodka from the minibar. Alison wrapped in a duvet, on the night the princess died, her teeth chattering on the sofa of the flat in Wexham. As she hauled down a bag from the top of the wardrobe and pushed into it a wash bag and some underwear, she began to rehearse her explanation to Gavin, to the world. A vagrant hanged himself in the shed. The air grew thick and my head ached. She stamped outside my room and shouted, “What testicles!” She snapped her bag shut, and lugged it downstairs. At once she thought, I can’t turn up like this, what about Zoë, she’ll probably be wearing designer lingerie, maybe a one-off a friend has made for her, something chiffon, something silk, I wouldn’t like her to see these sweatpants, she’ll laugh in my face. She ran upstairs, took off her clothes, and stood before her open wardrobe, wondering what she could find to impress a model. She glanced at her watch: how long would it take Gavin to get over from Whitton? The roads will be empty, she thought. She dressed; she was not pleased by the result; maybe if I do my makeup, she thought. She went into the bathroom; painstakingly she drew two eyes and a mouth. She went downstairs again. She found she was shivering, and thought she would like a hot drink. Her hand reached for the kitchen light switch, and drew back. We’re not supposed to be here; the neighbours think we left. She crossed the room and began to inch up the kitchen blind.
It was three-thirty, and already the short midsummer darkness was becoming a smoggy haze. Aluminium barriers had been erected around the Balmoral, and on them a line of magpies was bouncing, as if they were sharing a joke. Behind her, she heard a footstep on the vinyl floor. She almost screamed. Al crossed the kitchen, bulky in her voluminous cotton night-gown. She moved slowly, as if drugged, hypnotized. She slid open the cutlery drawer, and stood looking down into it, fingering the knives and forks.
This is the last of it, Colette thought. A phase of my life ends here; the hidden clink, clink of the metal from inside the drawer, the conversational sound of the birds, Alison’s absorbed face. Colette crossed the room and passed her without speaking. She had to push past; she felt as if Al’s white gown had swelled out to fill the room, and the substance of Al’s flesh had swollen with it. In the distance she heard the sound of a car. My chariot, she thought. Gavin may not be much of a man, but he’s there for me in a crisis. At least he’s alive. And there’s only one of him.
From the kitchen, Al heard the front door close behind Colette. The letter box opened, keys dropped to the carpet, the letter box flipped shut. That was a bit dramatic, Al thought, there was no need for her to do that.
She limped to a kitchen chair, and sat down. With some difficulty, she raised one calf and crossed her ankle over the opposite knee. She felt the drag and pull on the muscle beneath her thigh, and she had to hang on to her shin bone to stop her foot from sliding off and back to the floor. She bent her back, hunched forward. It was uncomfortable; her abdomen was compressed, her breath was squeezed. It’s a pity Cara’s not here, she thought, to do it for me, or at least to instruct me in the proper technique; she must have got her diploma by now. I’ll just have to rub away and hope for the best; I’ll have to go back by myself, back to Aldershot, back to the dog runs and the scrubby ground, back to the swampish waters of the womb, and maybe back before that: back to where there is no Alison, only a space where Alison will be.
She felt for the underside of her toes, and delicately, tentatively, began to massage the sole of her foot.
thirteen
At some point on your road you have to turn and start walking back towards yourself. Or the past will pursue you, and bite the nape of your neck, leave you bleeding in the ditch. Better to turn and face it with such weapons as you possess.
Her feet feel more swollen than usual. Perhaps she’s kneaded them too hard. Or perhaps she�
�s just reluctant to walk down this road, back through her teenage years, fireside chats with Emmie, happy schooldays, kindergarten fun. She hears Colette drop her keys through the door. Back, back. She hears the engine of a small car, struggling uphill on Admiral Drive; it’s Gavin.
Back, back, back to yesterday. The police are searching the house. Colette says, what are you looking for, Constable Delingbole, surely you don’t think we’ve got another corpse? Delingbole says, rather self-conscious, would you not call me that anymore? I’m Sergeant Delingbole now.
Lovely house, the policewoman says, looking around. Alison says, can I make you a cup of tea? and the policewoman says, oh no, you’ve had a fright, I’ll do the tea.
Al says, there’s lemon and ginger, camomile, Earl Grey, or proper tea, there’s a lemon in the fridge and semi-skimmed, there’s sugar on the top shelf there if you want it. Sergeant Delingbole plunges a long stick down the waste disposal, fetches it up again and sniffs it. Just routine, he says to Al. By the way, that’s quite a set of knives you’ve got there. I love those Japanese ones, don’t you? So chic.
The policewoman says, what do these houses come in at, then?
Back, back. Her fingers are pressed to the door of the shed, feeling for Mart’s pulse. She is coming down the garden towards the Balmoral. Colette is gesturing that the door is stuck. She is standing at the sink swabbing the spilled water. The kettle is boiling. Michelle’s face appears. Back, back. They are closing the door on Mrs. Etchells’s house. As you sow so shall you reap. She is holding a piece of paper with a scorch mark. Her head is in the wardrobe and she is breathing in camphor, violets, a faint body smell persisting down the years. They always said to me, if anyone asks you’re sixteen, right? I can never remember my age when things were done to me or when things happened. I’m not sure how old I am.
With each step backwards she is pushing at something light, tensile, clinging. It is a curtain of skin. With each step the body speaks its mind. Her ears pick up the trickle and swish of blood and lymph. Her eyes turn back and stare into the black jelly of her own thoughts. Inside her throat a door opens and closes; no one steps in. She does not look into the triangle of shadow behind the door. She knows a dead person might be there.
She hears a tap-tap, a knuckle on glass. “Are you there, Mr. Fox?” she says. She always says mister: when she remembers. The men say, here, you bloody tell her, Emmie; tell her politeness costs nothing.
There is a noise that might be crockery smashing, and a chair being knocked over. A door in her mind opens, and at first, once again, no one enters. She waits, holding her breath. It might be Keef, or it might be Morris Warren, or it might be their mate MacArthur, who always winks at her when he sees her.
But it’s her mum who staggers in, rights herself with some difficulty. “Whoops!” she says. “Must be my new pills. Blue, they is. That’s unusual, ain’t it. Blue? I says to him at the chemist, are you sure these are right? He says, lovely shade, he says, not blue, you’d not call that blue. It’s more heliotrope.”
She says, “Mum, did Donnie Aitkenside leave you any wages when he went off this morning? Because you know that magic shilling, that we have to put in the gas meter? He took it with him.”
Her mum says, “Donnie? Gone?”
“Yes,” she says, “he was creeping downstairs with his shoes in his hand, and he took our shilling for the gas. I thought maybe it was his change.”
“What in the Lord’s name is the girl talking about now, Gloria?”
“If we don’t have that shilling we need real money for the meter. It’s cold out and I haven’t had my breakfast.”
Her mother repeats, “Donnie? Gone?”
“And if he’s not paid you, we’ve no money for my school dinner.”
“And who gave you permission to call him Donnie, you stuck-up little madam? If a child such as you talked back in my day there’d be bloody blue murder.”
She says, there is anyway, innit? It’s bloody blue murder every day here. Her mum says, there you go again, if he takes his belt off to you I’ll not be surprised, I’ll not be the one holding him back, I’ll tell you: and there, thumping her fist on the wooden draining board, her mum is saying what they’ll do, what they’ll do and what they won’t, how they’re going to thrash her till she’s the texture of a jellyfish and she has to crawl to school on her belly, till she begins to wail and cry and say, but what can I eat for my breakfast? and her mum says, cornflakes if there’s no gas, and she says, but there’s no milk, and her mum says, so am I black and white, am I stood in the fucking meadow, and if not, what leads you to believe I am a fucking cow?
And that concludes it. It has to. Emmie falls over, knocked out by the force of her own sentence. Alison goes to school on an empty stomach. The lesson is scripture and she is thrown out to stand in the corridor. She is just standing there, doing no wrong. The headmaster sees her. “You again!” he bellows. She draws down the secret flaps, the membranes that cover her ears, and watches him gesticulating at her, his forehead creasing with fury. At playtime Tehera buys her a bag of crisps. She hopes they will give her a school dinner on credit but she doesn’t have a token so she is turned away. She says, the dogs have eaten my token, but they laugh. She gets half of a quarter of a marmite sandwich from Lee. On her way home she keeps her eyes down, searching the pavement for a magic shilling: or any money really, or a pin to pick up. She just thinks she sees a pin when wham! she walks straight into MacArthur. Hello, Mr. MacArthur, she says. All the day you’ll have good luck. He stares at her, suspicious. He says to her, your mam says you need a lesson. He puts out his hand, grabs her right nipple and twists it. She cries out. There’s one, he says, do you want me to do the other side? He winks at her.
Daylight has come to Admiral Drive. Dare she pull back a curtain? She is stiff and cold, except for her feet, which are burning. She limps into the kitchen. For a moment she stands paralyzed before the gas rings, thinking, how will I light them, when Aitkenside has taken our shilling? Then she depresses the ignition switch and the blue flame leaps up. She pours milk into a pan and sets it on the flame.
The telephone rings. It will be Colette, she thinks, wanting to come back. The cooker’s digital clock glows green, lighting the kitchen tiles with their frieze of fishes, lighting their slippery scales. Don’t be silly, she says to herself, she’ll barely be arrived in Whitton yet. She had thought a much longer time had elapsed: years. She stands with her cold hands stretched over the pan, and lets the machine take the call. Her message plays: there is a click. She thinks, it is the neighbours, trying to trick me into picking up; they want to know if I’m here.
Tentatively, she pulls up the kitchen blind. The clouds are charcoal and thick and grey, like the smoke from burning buildings. The full moon burrows into them and is immersed, swallowed. There is a tension headache at the back of her neck and, at the auditory rim, a faint high-pitched singing, like nocturnal wildlife in an equatorial forest, or God’s fingernail scraped against glass. The sound is continuous, but not steady; it pulses. There is a feeling that something—a string, a wire—is being stretched to its limit. She lowers the blind again, inch by inch, and with each inch the years fall away, she is in the kitchen at Aldershot, she is twelve, thirteen, but if anyone asks, she is sixteen of course.
“Mum,” she says, “did you run away with a circus?”
“Oh, circus, that was a laugh!” Her mum is merry from three strong lagers. “Your Uncle Morris was in that circus, he did sawing the lady in half. He wanted me to be sawed but I said, Morris, on your bike.”
“What about Gloria?”
“Oh yes, they sawed Gloria. Anybody could saw her. She was that sort of girl.”
“I don’t know what that sort would be. The sort of girl who lets herself be sawed in half.”
“Yes, you do,” her mum says, as if she is prompting her to remember. “They was always practicing on you. Morris, he liked to keep his hand in. Used to say, you never know when the old tricks will
come in useful, you might have to turn your hand to it again. Many’s the time I seen your top half in the scullery and your bottom half in the front room. I seen your left half out the back in the shed and your right half God knows where. I says to Morris, I hope you know what you’re doing, I want her stuck together before you leave here tonight.”
Mum takes a pull on her can. She sits back. “You got any ciggies?” she says, and Al says, “Yes, I got some here somewhere, I nicked ’em for you.” Her mum says, “That’s nice: it’s thoughtful. I mean, some kids, they only go nicking sweeties, just thinking about themselves. You’re a good kid, Ali, we have our ups and downs, but that’s in the nature of mother and daughter. We’re alike, you see. That’s why we don’t always see eye to eye. When I say alike, I mean, not to look at obviously, plus we’re not in the same class when it comes to brains, you see I was always quick when I was at school, and as for weight I was about half the weight of a whippet, whereas you, I mean, you’re not the sharpest knife out of the drawer, you can’t help that, love, and as for your size it’s no secret some men like that type, MacArthur, for instance. When I took his deposit on you, he says, Emmie, it’s a good thing you’re not selling her by the pound.”
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