THE LESS THAN PERFECT LEGEND OF DONNA CREOSOTE

by Dan Micklethwaite

  Which would have cut out the middle man, but perhaps wasn’t advisable.

  She used the bookcase, the shelves, to help pull her to her feet. Closing her eyes, shaking the dizziness out of her head, it almost felt as though they were helping. Actively reaching out to lend a hand. Many hands.

  She gave them a long hard look.

  They’d always been useful to her, even essential, that was for certain.

  If it wasn’t for them, she would have no idea how, among other things, she started out on this earth.

  Well, not just for them.

  For Donna, that was the one image, the one point of crossover, that those old Disney movies got absolutely spot on. The opening tableau of the King and Queen standing over the Princess, looking beatific, looking utterly blessed.

  The perfect calm, immediately prior to the point of upheaval.

  Before the curse, the spindle, the garden of thorns.

  In memories of her birthing, Donna always saw her mother’s bed in the Maternity Ward like that. After the mess and wailing of the delivery itself was over with, she liked to think of her mother sitting in bed, holding tiny Donna tightly in the flawless shield of her embrace, while her father stood there beside them, kissing the cheek of first one then the other.

  The happiest possible moment on the happiest possible day.

  Twenty-two years and forty-six weeks back from this one.

  Donna thought that if, at such an early age, she’d had any hopes about her future, they would not have involved the way she is now. Careening down twelve flights of stairs because the bloody lift wasn’t working.

  The hope on her infant mind, she thought, would have been for anything but that.

  For anything but any future, even.

  Would have been for that tableau to stay unchanged forever.

  But babies do not hope. Not right at the start.

  They don’t need to.

  They are hope, in and of themselves.

  They are the front cover, clean and smooth, marked only with a name. Everything else – the character flaws, the scrappy plots, the inevitable falling back on cliché – is way out beyond them.

  At the start, before that front cover is turned, any book can be a masterpiece.

  By the end, most are little but a well-intentioned mess.

  She coughed and wheezed, had to stop on what she thought was the fifth floor landing. Lean against the wall. Aside from the other day, she never really did much running. And definitely didn’t do any with a hangover, or on a couple hours’ sleep. She felt like being sick.

  When that messiness begins to show itself, and critics launch in with their unfavourable reviews, who has the book to lash out at, to bemoan, but those ultimately responsible for its failure: the authors.

  The ones who first opened its pages to the possibility of ink, pushed it forwards, set it out on its passage from the first capital letter to the final full-stop.

  Donna reached the ground floor, and nearly collapsed. Could barely keep going.

  But then that bloody woman, the one with the wrist tattoo, the one with the pram, walked in through the front door. And Donna had to stay upright. Had to try and look normal. Hope the woman didn’t remember the hoody or pants.

  As they passed each other, the woman was actually looking down at her kid.

  Though whether this was to avoid making eye-contact with her, Donna couldn’t be sure.

  She hated that she couldn’t remember her mum doing anything like that.

  She hated that the happiest times she’d had with her parents were ones she couldn’t remember.

  Hated even more so that she thought of it in such a way.

  There must have been other good points, she knew. She couldn’t have been that miserable as a nipper. Indeed, she didn’t think she was.

  Perhaps she’d just lived so extensively, and so well, through the minds of others that any fun she had of her own accord had paled in comparison. Not as properly plotted. Not as many good endings.

  Perhaps as well, however, it had been easier to deal with all the disappointments in her life when she looked for and found them in the disappointments of others.

  She had, after all, read hundreds of books in which a tyrannical maternal figure featured, and yet, these past few years, had never quite been able to face up to her own.

  45

  In the back of the taxi, Donna tried to see the journey as something other than it was.

  She tried to see this cab as a horse-drawn carriage, all mahogany-dark and mysterious within. Gold leaf décor picked out by the light from two small glass lanterns. A faint scent of varnish and rose potpourri.

  Not lingering hints of last night’s sweat and beer and takeaway grease.

  Not red light to indicate that the doors were secured.

  She tried to think of the hospital they were heading towards as some other old castle. Or a fortress, perhaps. Not built by mad Bavarian hands, but not far off.

  She tried to hear, to see the fanfare that a princess might receive upon arrival.

  But each time she got close to forming and holding such a vision, the taxi would lurch to a halt, and her eyes would spring open to see traffic-light red.

  About halfway there, the windows began to cloud and swim with heavy rain.

  The cab driver turned around in his seat while they waited at one set of lights, wanting to make small-talk about it, but Donna wasn’t listening.

  She was watching it stream down and beat at the glass.

  She was thinking: Thank fuck I’ve got a hood.

  She pulled the hood up before climbing out of the horseless carriage, and stared up at the grey-purple brick of the building that was really more a prison than a fort.

  She made her way across the car park towards it, half-waiting for coats to be laid down over puddles that, otherwise, there was no way to avoid.

  They weren’t, and she spent the first few minutes of her time in the hospital attempting to dry herself off in the foyer. Rainwater dripped from her clothes and her hands, not onto marble tiling but onto the rough mats designed for catching the dirt from visitors’ soles.

  It was only as she stood there, shaking off the rain, that she noticed her boots were still tatty with tin foil and tape.

  Donna went to speak to Imelda at reception but was told she’d gone on break. Instead, it was a heavyset woman named Zoe who asked what she wanted.

  It’s about my mum, she said. I was told to come and get her.

  Zoe had eyes like Transpennine train tunnels, lids painted the dark green of hills after rain.

  Donna Crick, is it?

  Creo – Crick-Oakley. Yes.

  Hmm. She blinked, like a landslide. You’d best try Cardiology.

  Sure enough, Donna found her in that department’s waiting room, laid out across a couple of seats and a small coffee table, sleeping. She’d stacked up a few magazines to use as a pillow, and the dog-eared corner of the one on top trembled just a little as she snored.

  46

  Donna Crick-Oakley hadn’t seen or spoken to Sammy since the start of the week.

  That was three days ago.

  She’d been staying with her mum. She’d gone back once to get some extra clothes, and a toothbrush, and a few books, but that was it. She’d forgotten her phone charger, and forgotten the signal was crap over there.

  She couldn’t really get any except for a few places in the dining room, and it was too cold at night to sit up and text.

  She could sit there in the day, but she’d been busy with her mum.

  They hadn’t talked so much in years, Donna thought. Maybe ever.

  The wine might have helped.

  Her mother had started by asking her to come to the funeral, and then everything else had just kept spilling out.

  Bob�
�s family, his son, had wanted to get the funeral over and done with as soon as they could, so as he could go travelling. Could take his father’s ashes to all the places that he’d never been in life, but always planned to visit.

  At first, Donna’s mother had asked for half of those ashes, but when Bob’s son had declined, refused her point blank, she didn’t have the will to fight.

  They’d been going to get married, Donna’s mother had said. Bob had wanted to meet Donna so that he could explain himself to her, get to know her, promise that he wouldn’t do her mother any harm.

  Donna’s mother even thought that he’d been planning to pop the question to her over Sunday lunch.

  She’d been singing ‘Shout’ the first time she saw him.

  She’d been down at the local, making use of the monthly ‘Curry and Karaoke Night’ as part of a hen do for one of her colleagues. The room had been low-lit, besides the disco lights flashing red and yellow and blue and green behind the stage and above the bar. She’d been pretty pissed, she said, and so she’d really been letting rip with her singing.

  She thought she’d nailed the opening We-ee-ee-eell, she said, smiling.

  She said that was what had made Bob take notice.

  It must have been, she said, because she had her eyes closed for most of the time she was singing, not needing to check the screen to know the words, and when she’d opened them at the end, he’d been standing at the foot of the small stage, reaching out to help her down.

  As the disco lighting had moved across his face, she remembered, she’d thought that he looked handsome.

  And rich, she’d thought.

  Though it wouldn’t have mattered, and it’s not like I’m going to see any of that now.

  They’d enjoyed a few drinks together, and when the hen party moved elsewhere, Donna’s mother stuck around.

  I don’t need to tell you what happened next.

  She didn’t need to, but, drunk as she was, she had.

  She told Donna that it was the best sex she’d had since before Donna was born, and, furthermore, that Bob was not a little man.

  She told Donna that she’d known she needed to see him again, and often.

  She told Donna: In a lot of ways, I wish I’d met him before I ever came across your father. He wouldn’t have walked out on her, she could tell Donna that. He had been married before, but his first wife, the mother of his son, had passed away from cancer. Devoted, he’d stayed by her side until the end.

  That’s why she had stayed in the hospital so long herself, she said.

  She’d known what was going on when he stopped half-way up the stairs because he was having trouble breathing and had a funny tingle in his left arm. She’d known that, healthy as he was – he’d been an amateur athlete once, and still went jogging two mornings a week – men of his age didn’t fare well with heart attacks.

  Her own father had died in the same way, and he’d been four years younger than Bob when it happened to him.

  On both occasions she had stayed in the hospital a long time.

  For her father because he was family, and because she loved him as a daughter should love her Dad, and because she didn’t know what she’d do without him in her life.

  For Bob because he’d been good to her, and good enough to his first wife not to leave her as she died, and because she, Donna’s mother, had wanted to be good enough in turn.

  Because, rather than running out on her and Donna, he had wanted to welcome them into his life and share with them all that was his.

  If her own father hadn’t died so young, she said, she might never have thrown herself at Donna’s dad.

  It was one of the stories that Donna had never been told, and, after the fighting had started, was one she’d never asked about. She hadn’t wanted to know that things could begin well and then end up like this. The longer the fighting went on, Donna had wanted to believe that they’d always hated each other, and that having her had been an accident. Because that way she wasn’t to blame for wrecking their love.

  As Donna’s mother had told it, though, it didn’t sound like there’d ever been too much love there, even at the start.

  They’d met while she was grieving the death of her father, and Donna’s mother had said that, at the time, almost any man would have done. It helped that Donna’s father had been kind to her, supportive. That he’d seemed intelligent – but not overly so – and told jokes that she mostly found funny. But all she had wanted him for, really, was to fill a hole in her life that, until recently, hadn’t been there. To help meet her need to be part of a family again, and to have a man in her life who’d look out for her, when she wanted him to.

  They’d married young, Donna already knew that. They hadn’t really known what they were getting into, Donna’s mother had said. She’d thought that he would be dependable, and she’d thought that he genuinely loved her. She’d even dared to think that she would love him more as time moved on, and that there was a chance that things could all work out.

  But she hadn’t known what love was – not that kind of love, anyway – not until she’d met Bob, in that bar, beneath those flashing disco lights.

  She hadn’t known what it was to need another person in such a way.

  To feel absent in herself when that person wasn’t around.

  The day her husband, Donna’s father, had finally left her, the last day of the series of hearings they’d been to in court, her face had been a mask of relief more than it was of pain.

  Donna had been distraught, but not so much that she didn’t notice that.

  Not so much that she didn’t notice how her mother was almost smiling when the judge awarded her all that money.

  That almost-smile was one of the reasons Donna had seen so little of her mother, these past few years. Why she’d never been interested in meeting any of her mother’s new men.

  She hadn’t even known what Robert Edward Cornish looked like, much less his full name, until she saw his picture at the front of Huddersfield Crematorium. A smaller version on the orders of service they handed out at the door. They were printed on fine white card, with gold trim round the portrait, and her mum took Donna’s off her as soon as she sat down, slipped it into her handbag. As a keepsake, she said.

  Donna hadn’t wanted to sit up at the front, hadn’t wanted to walk past all those people, but Bob’s son had offered and her mum had insisted. I need you, she’d said.

  She cried into a handkerchief, as quietly as she could, all through the service. Donna put an arm around her, tried not to look at the coffin at the front of the room, tried to pay attention to the readings. The eulogy that Bob’s son gave, his voice cracking intermittently, made it sound as though Bob had been an absolute saint. A perfect gentlemen, at the very least.

  In the car park outside, Donna told her mother it had been a lovely service, and that she was sorry she hadn’t taken the opportunity to get to know him while she could.

  Her mother threw her arms around Donna, held her for minutes, weeping mascara-black into the white of her blouse.

  A while later, after he’d come across to make an awkward goodbye, they watched Bob’s son drive away with the ashes.

  There goes my Bob, her mother said.

  I know he’s bound for better places.

  He told me all about them.

  He was going to take me with him when he went.

  47

  A starfish, an angel, she stretches out on her bed.

  Has to, after the cramp of the single in her mother’s spare room.

  There’s no impression on the sheets from the last time he was here. Very little scent.

  Four days ago now.

  Five nights.

  She’d put her phone on charge upon her return, and it buzzed for a minute as the backlog came through. Eight unread messages. A couple of missed calls. />
  Even now, the occasional rattle upon her bedside table, the chirp of a cricket, the call of a bullfrog deep in the swamp.

  She doesn’t move.

  Her head spins if she moves.

  Her world doubles over.

  Her world isn’t a swamp.

  It isn’t a greenhouse, it’s an entrance hall.

  But it is fucking hot.

  She’s on top of the covers tonight, in her thinnest pyjamas, and it feels like the sweat’s steaming off her and rising as mist. If she looks really hard, does her best to hold focus, she can see it start to dance around the crystal chandelier.

  As soon as she’d put her phone on charge and read all the messages, she opened a bottle and filled up a glass.

  She’d had a good cry.

  She didn’t even know him.

  She thought of his son.

  She thought about aeroplanes.

  Leeds Bradford Airport.

  Doncaster Robin Hood.

  Arms spanning out across bedsheets like wings.

  Where is she tonight?

  Where the bloody hell did he go?

  She’s far too hot. And too thirsty.

  She needs a cold drink.

  War-ter.

  War-ter.

  How did they get in here? The birds. She was sure she’d left the windows closed. She can’t even get to the window in here. It’s blocked. Sealed like a covenant.

  It takes her a moment to sit. A few more to stand. Then fall back.

  And repeat.

  And repeat.

  And then at last break the cycle.

  It’s so bloody hot in here and yet the marble is cold.

  Kirk was perhaps right, though. It is a bit sticky.

  Each step that she takes comes with its own goodbye kiss.

  She stumbles, gropes out to grab something firm to survive. She finds only the wash basket, which collapses down into itself and doesn’t spring back.

  She crawls over to the bedside table, to where she thinks it is, and after a couple of bad guesses grabs hold of her phone. Uses it as a torch, blue-white like a wisp.