‘I don’t really like New Year’s Eve,’ says James, watching as an athlete breaks the ten-minute mile again or something (I don’t do sport). He really is handsome, I think, in just that matinee-idol way I know is dangerous. Good-looking men hold too much power; they think they have it all and want to crush anyone who dares think otherwise. I wonder if he’s kind to his wife or girlfriend. Or whether he puts all her money in a joint account and only lets her have £75 of it a month. ‘It’s always such a massive disappointment.’
‘Me too,’ I say. ‘I’m happy to be spending some of mine here. I’ve got a son I could impose myself on – he’s nineteen – but I don’t want to cramp his style.’
James nods. He’s not forthcoming about why he is here on New Year’s Eve. ‘I guess you know all about the car accident and Mac’s injuries,’ says James. ‘I’ve been talking to – Fran, is it? She says he can’t talk?’
‘No, apparently he might have some form of aphasia. The non-fluent one, or something. He can only say the occasional phrase. He spoke last night – just a few words – but nothing since.’
‘Oh, what did he say? Was it something important?’
‘Only to me,’ I say. I don’t want to tell him about ‘bunny soup’. It will sound utterly ridiculous. ‘It was just something silly.’
‘OK.’ James nods. I imagine he might say something next like, ‘I’m not one to pry.’ ‘Ah, you’re awake.’
Mac has opened his eyes. He looks surprised to see me, at first – perhaps he thought I wouldn’t come again – then he smiles at both his visitors, reserving the tiniest of tiny, imperceptible winks for me, as a little extra. Well, I like to think so, anyway; it banishes the remainder of my nerves. I’m glad he’s with us. Talking to James is a little … awkward. He talks slowly as though measuring up each word before it comes out. I realize he has the formal language of a very polite, elderly man. At least he’s not rattling off his day to me, though, I think – whatever it is he does – or banging on about the weather.
‘Sorry I couldn’t make it in before now, I’ve been away. So, how’re you doing?’ James asks Mac. ‘I know you can’t answer, probably, but you look well,’ he says. ‘Oh God, I’m dreadful at this sort of thing,’ he adds, turning to me. ‘Mac knows what I’m like, though. Or doesn’t, rather. I keep myself to myself, really. I’m not a good neighbour.’ He must be, I think, as he’s here, but someone so good-looking being introverted as he describes is unusual. Someone who looks like him would normally be braying against shiny bars every night, breaking people’s hearts. I notice his mouth turns up slightly at the corners even when he’s not smiling and wonder if his hair would be inclined to curl if left to grow.
‘I’m sure Mac is just glad you’re here,’ I say, not that I can speak for him. Perhaps he can’t stand the sight of this James. It doesn’t look that way, though; Mac looks pleased to see both of us. He lets James squeeze his hand briefly. To me, he again gives what could almost be a wink, which having remembered what I do of us, makes my heart give a little hitch. I enjoy the sensation, my heart having been unbothered for so long.
Fran, faintly smelling of cigarettes and, if I’m not mistaken, Anaïs Anaïs (ah, old school), bustles over with a lidless tin of Quality Street.
‘Want one?’
There are only the duff ones left so I decline. James takes a toffee penny.
‘I can’t bear New Year’s Eve,’ she says, taking the wrapper from James and stuffing it in the pocket of her tunic. It’s pretty universal, then, I note. ‘But you have to make the effort. It’s not so bad being here at work, though. It’s warm, it’s dry, I don’t have to stagger anywhere and the punters are not too much trouble.’ She grins at Mac.
‘No bouncers required,’ I offer.
‘No, though I suspect if he got the chance young Mac here could get a little rowdy.’ She winks at Mac and he smiles slowly back, his eyes crinkling at the corners like a closing fan. She bustles away again.
‘I have to leave at eight,’ says James, to no one in particular. He is very unrelaxed, I think. Other male visitors have legs plonked confidently across knees, hands laced behind heads – elbows out – assuredly taking up Man Space. James is sitting up straight, looking slightly anxious and apologetic for being here, a bit ‘out of sorts’, as Marilyn used to say about people, when she was being generous. When she wasn’t, she just used to say they were arseholes. ‘I’ve got to show a couple round a house. No rest for the wicked, not even on New Year’s Eve.’
‘Oh, you are an estate agent,’ I say, then realize I sound like an utter fool yet again.
‘Why do you say that?’ James looks defensive; he’s gone really northern and deadpan.
‘It’s the suit,’ I say. ‘Sorry.’ Keep digging that hole, Arden. ‘Sorry,’ I repeat – old habits die hard. ‘Why are you doing that now? Showing people round a house, I mean?’ Now I sound not only nosy but bossy; I really don’t know how to be, it seems.
He shrugs and says, ‘It’s when the clients are free. I have to be available at any time. Would you like a coffee?’
‘OK. Yes. Thanks very much.’
There’s a vending machine in the corridor outside the ward. James levers himself off the chair with an apologetic smile and walks towards the door.
‘All right, Mac?’ I ask, squeezing his hand. He applies a very slight pressure back. ‘It’s nice what they’ve done with the place, isn’t it? The decorations. Remember your party? That Christmas tree you had?’
He nods. Does he remember?
‘Remember your Ghostbusters poster? You’d put tinsel round it, I think.’
He nods again, a tired smile. I feel like I’m in a tragic comedy sketch, suddenly. A drunk person in an art gallery trying to make conversation with a statue, or something. It makes me feel foolish. It’s also warm, so I shrug my cardigan off. I believe Mac notices my dress as his left eyebrow twitches up ever so slightly. Not much of a repertoire, is it, I think. A smile, a wink, the faintest squeeze of the hand. I will him to get better. I will him to come back. I want to ask him how the past twenty-eight years have been for him, how it all worked out. If he has forgiven me like I have forgiven him.
But most of all, if he had forgotten me.
James returns with the coffee. He has a hot chocolate; the steam rises into his face as he sips from it. The three of us just sit for a while, an odd triangle. Someone on The Review of the Year has just won an Oscar and the replay of their speech is comically awful. A man opposite breaks – randomly – into song, from his bed. ‘We’ll Meet Again’, and no one tries to shush him. His voice is noble, determined. A couple more low, timorous, wavering voices join in. A nurse – not Fran – lends her off-key chime, as she adjusts someone’s drip feed. It brings tears to my eyes. I now feel like I’m in some kind of wartime epic by David Lean.
At eight fifteen James gets up to go. He looks tired now, I think; he actually looks worse than Mac. He has purplish shadows under his eyes, like the beginnings of a bruise. ‘Right, well, I’m going. I might see you again, Arden. Nice to meet you.’
‘You too, James.’ I’m not sure if it has been, really, but then again, I doubt I’ve made much of an impression on him, either. With a stride of charcoal and a flash of Where’s Wally, he leaves the ward.
‘Is visiting still finishing at half eight tonight?’ I ask Fran, as she passes by with a big tub of Haribos.
‘Half nine tonight,’ she replies, ‘we’re extending it for New Year’s Eve. Call it a lock-in.’ She grins.
‘Ooh, exciting,’ I say, returning the grin.
‘Get it where you can find it,’ says Fran.
At nine o’clock Fran slips a DVD into the bottom of one of the suspended tellies and turns the volume right up so we can hear last year’s Big Ben and watch some pre-recorded fireworks.
‘We’re doing it early!’ she calls out. ‘So you lot don’t have to burn the midnight oil.’
The patients try to look vaguely interested or, some of t
hem, excited. One sweet old boy is attempting to blow on a given-out party horn but it doesn’t make much of a dent. The nurses are huddled in a weird group hug; I spy a bottle of contraband prosecco and think, Good for them. I am holding Mac’s hand and I feel strangely … happy, like I belong here, on this warm, bright ward where life, although interrupted, seems to be ticking along quite merrily in its own suspended vacuum of safety and care. Where faces are – albeit briefly – animated and alive. I feel safe and almost cosseted.
The premature countdown starts – ten, nine, eight … and I am reminded of the screening room and the ticking, rattling countdown to our movies on The List. I wonder if Mac remembers too. I join in the chorus of numbers – some voices hoarse (the patients), some high and raucous (the nurses). As an early Big Ben chimes I take the liberty of kissing Mac briefly on the cheek and then, feeling brave, I place my hand on the other side of his face. We remain like that for a few seconds; my mouth close to his cheek, breathing him in, then I move my hand on to his, at the side of the bed – warm, a tender pressure. Where has he been all this time? Where have I? And why has he come back to me now?
Like the changeover of reels between the two old movie projectors in the screening room, the old year sputters out, spinning until its end tick-ticks to nothing, and the ‘New Year’ is kick-started into life, it’s motor already running at pace, loud and juddering. And I am with Mac. Again.
He smiles at me and then his lips part a little. I lean in further towards him, although we can’t get much closer. ‘What is it, Mac?’
Only just audible and with lots of false starts and hesitation, Mac says, ‘That’s … lot of … birds.’ And a huge smile dawns slowly on my face.
He remembers. He remembers the next movie. The one where everything truly began.
I brave a wink back at him as though I am the old Arden.
‘A lot of birds,’ I agree, as last year’s fireworks continue to explode over London and the nurses break into ‘Auld Lang Syne’.
THEN
Chapter 5: The Birds
Mac and I watched The Birds at the beginning of the spring term. Despite him saying we’d ‘do this again’ – words I clung to like a child to unwrapped Christmas presents – I didn’t see Mac Bartley-Thomas again after his party; there were only a few more days of term and they limped on infuriatingly, without me so much as catching a tantalizing glimpse of him. But thoughts of him, and my determination to make things happen again in January, kept me going during the Christmas holidays. University holidays, I soon realized, were to be endured.
When I arrived home, after that first term at Warwick, with my enormous bag – more like a backpacker’s rucksack – Marilyn was at the kitchen table fuming over a round robin.
‘Bloody show-offs!’ she raged, like she always did when she received the Christmas card from the Bankses with the photocopied, two-page letter inside. She seemed neither to have noticed nor to have cared that I had come in through the back door. The tap was dripping. The kettle had just boiled and there was steam hanging in the air, with no particular place to go, by the window. ‘Who cares about Timmy’s PhD and his humanitarian mission to sodding Uganda,’ she spat with the disdain of the seasoned, trodden-on proletariat. ‘And Meredith’s fucking handcrafted sodding mittens? And Tarquin’s badminton scholarship?’
None of these were their real names, but Marilyn was prone to embellishment. She was not dressed. She was in one of her ubiquitous grubby slips, her hair up in a tangled topknot, secured with a claw clip; her veiny legs bare and crossed. I felt cross with myself that – clearly delusional – somehow on the train journey home I’d almost started to look forward to seeing her, and, after my ten-week absence, I’d entertained the stupid notion that she might be looking forward to seeing me. Her scowling face, projected down to the offending missive on the table, told me I was a fool. Her refusal to even be dressed laughed at my misguided hope, and she banged and stubbed a red Bic biro on to the table until the end snapped off. She’d been ‘marking’ the round robin, I noticed, had crossed bits off, added angry exclamation marks here and there, scribbled out bits furiously. She did it every year.
She still hadn’t noticed me, in the doorway, despite the door being wide open. She never really noticed me – not now – and I’d given up trying to make her.
‘Hello, Marilyn,’ I said. She wouldn’t let me call her Mum, but I didn’t mind as I didn’t really think of her as one any more. She was certainly nothing like my friends’ mothers. They actually cooked the tea and didn’t behave like constant narcissists.
‘Oh, it’s you.’ She tore up the letter and threw it dramatically into the tiny bin which was suckered to the inside door of the cupboard under the sink. A kitten-heeled patent slingback on the end of one pale, veiny leg kicked the door shut with a bang. I could hear an empty tin of beans, or something, fall with a clatter inside. Marilyn always wore heels, even when she wasn’t wearing much else. Standards, she called it. ‘I hope you haven’t brought a ton of washing home,’ she said and I waited for the classic line about treating ‘the place like a hotel’.
‘No, none,’ I said. ‘I used the launderette at Warwick before I came home.’ I wouldn’t have asked her anyway, but I knew she wouldn’t want to do it. Marilyn was not big on domestic tasks. She was not big on much apart from doing her hair and flirting with anyone with a male set of chromosomes.
‘Oh, Warwick,’ she parroted. She thought I had got ‘above’ myself even applying. ‘You sound a bit la-de-da,’ she added, narrowing her false-lashed eyes, ‘a bit posh. Bet you didn’t want to come home to us commoners.’ She laughed, as though she was sharing an excellent joke with me, then winked at me so I managed a smile back. ‘It’s been terrible here.’ She sighed, fluffing up her hair with a taloned hand. ‘Dull.’
Somehow, my mother was furious she wasn’t a film star. She was christened Marion but she didn’t want to be the mum from Happy Days; she wanted to be Marilyn Monroe – despite having neither the talent nor the drive to become anything resembling a Hollywood star. When she was twenty-two she won a beauty contest at Butlin’s; when she was twenty-four she was in an advert in the free paper for a local car showroom. Apart from that she worked as a cashier in a hardware shop, and at twenty-five, she had me. But she made everyone call her Marilyn, for as long as I could remember, and she looked the part, with a fierce relentlessness.
It was the late eighties, but there was no mullet-y bubble perm or flicky helmet for her. No chenille jumpers, jeans and soft flat loafers, in burgundy. No blue eyeshadow. She had the blondest of toxic short blonde hair, which she rolled into waves and giant curls, like Marilyn’s – except hers were slightly frizzy and calmed with Vitapointe, before mousse was invented. A spit-in-it black eyeliner, in a block, that she winged her eyes with. Capri pants and off-the-shoulder, python-tight black tops and itchy, high-necked mohair sweaters. With heels, and a pointy bra and to-the-waist silk, frilly knickers hidden underneath.
She liked to pretend she was special and either furious with those who couldn’t see it or wheedling and conniving with those who showed a hint of being remotely willing to go along with it. I would have thought she was special enough, just being my mum, but unfortunately being someone’s mum wasn’t enough for her.
I put my giant bag in the hall and went up the stairs. I didn’t want to say anything else to Marilyn. She would only accuse me of putting on university airs and graces. She didn’t want to see me, either. I was the literal embodiment of ‘nothing to see here’, like they always said in crime films. It hadn’t always been like this. I believed she once looked kindly upon me. The photos in our dusty old album with the seventies-print cover seemed to suggest so; there were several of her actually smiling at me, as a baby on her lap. She looked quite happy to have me there. I also believed that from about the age of five I became an irritant to her.
‘I used your room as a dressing room!’ she called upstairs after me. ‘I’ll move my gear later.’
My bedroom had been surprisingly immaculate, for me, when I’d left it. I’d spent hours taking down all my teenage posters, making my bed, dusting and picking up crap from the floor and hoovering. For the first time I had seen the carpet and had clean, clutter-free surfaces; I wanted it nice for when I came back so that something would be. Now her ‘gear’ was strewn all over the place. There were make-up bags and rollers and brushes and combs scattered all over my bed. Dresses and tops hung from window latches and door knobs, and draped over radiators. Shoes toppled against each other like fallen dominoes on my cream carpet. There was a spilt lozenge of bright red nail varnish on the carpet like a faceless beetle.
She hadn’t always been this way – a slut and a slattern. Dad agreed it was sometime after turning thirty that she changed. The distraction of my baby and infant years had passed; the unformed dream of her being the next big thing in Hollywood was now a painful joke. She started to panic about not being young, about not being somebody; she had nothing to cling to except perpetuating a bad Marilyn Monroe pastiche, and cultivating a growing resentment towards everyone in her life. Dad said she needed self-created drama and validation from other men or she was afraid her very own sense of self would slip away. That she became cruel because it gave her a warped kind of control, and credence to the illusion of being someone special. I wasn’t sure what any of that meant; I just knew Marilyn used to love me but now she didn’t.
I gingerly lifted a silky chemise thing – pilled and frayed at the hem – from my dressing-table stool and there was a three-pack of Durex condoms under it. I shook my head, with a grimace, and as I tidied all her stuff into a pile which I dumped out on the landing, I wondered just how many indiscretions Marilyn had chalked up since I’d been away. She was a master seductress – we all knew it – a champion. If seduction was an Olympic sport my mother would win Gold and then try to get off with the bloke putting the medal round her neck.
You, Me and The Movies Page 6
