Grave Misgivings

by Caroline Wood

  I hope you will find your way around the village, my dear. I expect things will seem quite different to you here. I am afraid it can sometimes be difficult to get what one wants in a place like this. Some of the residents can be rather over protective of their way of life. Keep close to Neville and you should have a peaceful time. Thank you once again for coming to look after my cottage and my beloved cat.

  It was signed Violet Wisp.

  I didn’t leave the cottage again for the rest of the week. There were no cycle rides or picnics. I tended the garden, ate the food left for me, went to bed early and waited for my last day to arrive. I caught fleeting glimpses of Neville now and then in my sleep but we did not speak again. He had told me all I needed to know, and since reading Miss Wisp’s note, I wished I had stayed with him all the time. I put daisies on the kitchen table to welcome Miss Wisp, and left on the morning of her return. My car windows were opaque with streaked bird droppings but squinting through the haze, I saw Neville sitting on the gatepost. He winked as I drove away

  * Shaggy Dog Story *

  Every now and then, there’s a story in the papers about a woman like me. Everyone takes it with a pinch of salt. The sudden stomach pains, the shocked reaction of some poor shop assistant, and there it is – the unknown pregnancy announcing itself to the surprise of the mother and all those around her. She’ll give plausible explanations for the weight gain and the stopped periods, of course – might even say they never stopped; say the bigger belly was all down to a bit of bingeing and lack of exercise.

  And I used to be like you – disbelief and cynicism. Actually, I still don’t have much time for such stories, but after my own experience I do at least have to give them the benefit of the doubt.

  In my case, it was all down to denial. I admit that now. At the time though, I had my head so far in the sand that the whole thing seemed like some old-fashioned miracle. One minute I was sitting at the back of the church for my best friend’s wedding. The next thing, there I was lying in the aisle with bridesmaids and morning-suits closing in on me. I thought I’d fainted, even though it’s not something I’m prone to – I’m not that sort. But the emotion of the day might have had an unexpected effect.

  Frances was marrying my ex-lover after all, even if she didn’t know it. Brady and me had been having a love affair for years. I turned a blind eye to his womanising and we kept our relationship under wraps. That turned out to suit him down to the ground, of course. When he fell in love with Frances and decided to get married, what could I possibly do? My best friend would have been devastated if she’d known how long we’d both been cheating on her. Brady said we could carry on as if nothing had happened once they got back from their honeymoon. As if.

  The faces gawping down at me soon made me realise that something wasn’t right. I started to get these pains, like cramp. Then it was all over. The chief bridesmaid was holding a wet, crinkled baby in her arms. She stared, her mouth open, at the little head pressed against her ivory satin dress, now smeared down the front with blood. I was in a daze. I felt sort of detached from everything, like I was watching a film. I remember feeling a bit dizzy but apart from that I was comfortable and even quite sleepy.

  I called my surprise delivery Hamish, although I’ve never really used his full name since then. Perhaps it’s because he came out of the blue – we just don’t do things the way other people do, me and Hames. At first I couldn’t get used to the idea of him being there all the time. My life had no room for a baby. He was like a free gift, or a prize from a competition I’d forgotten I’d entered. All very nice but what was I supposed to do with him? For most of his first year, Hamey slept in boxes from the supermarket. I would get a bigger one each time he outgrew his warm and dented little nest, and put all the blankets and pillow nicely in the bottom.

  He always had a thing about the smell of cardboard as he grew up and would put strips of it on his cupboard floor to sit on. He used to carry soft, frayed pieces with him and I’d find them in his pockets, soggy and mashed up, after I’d done the washing. One of my favourite photographs of him is the black and white one next to my bed. He was eight years old, tall and skinny and with sticky-out ears. And I know his pockets are stuffed with cardboard, can almost smell it when I look at his little face. That picture melts my heart.

  We always had two cupboards so we could get out of each other’s way now and then. I got the need to be alone from Hames. He’s always been like it, spends hours on his own. I’m not sure what he does but he seems to keep himself occupied. I’ve gradually learned to do the same. I don’t go out like I used to, or see many people these days. I don’t need to with all the pictures Hamey does for me. He’s very artistic. Heaven knows where he gets it. Brady used to do a bit of painting when he was younger, so it could be from him. It’s definitely not me – I’m hopeless with anything like that. Hames is brilliant though. He’s been doing it since he was tiny.

  You see, what he does is send me things. It’s hard to describe them. They’re not really pictures but that’s what we call them. They’re more like ideas. I don’t know – they just come into my head. A bit like daydreams. I know they’re from him though, and not just my thoughts wandering. I can tell the difference because of the colours. His are always vivid and a bit unnatural. If he wants something particular for his tea, for instance, the food will be all bright and garish. Lots of bright orange and dazzling green for the peas he’s so mad about. He has them with everything. It feels like I’m letting him down by putting a muted plateful of ordinary food in front of him, after the rainbow pictures he sends, but he never complains. Not directly anyway.

  I’ve always been a bit uneasy that he might send me pictures unintentionally and I’ll learn things about my son that a mother would rather not know. Every once in a while, I’ve had the odd glimpse of things he might not be aware he’s sent. I saw his hand in the bottom of my handbag once, fumbling among the hair clips, books of matches and stray Polo mints. It was like a blind person feeling their way in the dark, a hand moving through unknown territory. Then it stopped. I wondered if he’d suddenly realised I was getting the same picture he was thinking about. I felt guilty when I checked my bag, like I was the one doing wrong by knowing he’d been in there.

  Mostly, the pictures are his way of communicating. I think nothing of them on a day-to-day basis. It’s only when I look ahead that I worry how all this will work out. He may stop of course, block his Mum out in the same way he’ll want privacy in other areas of his life. He’s certainly never been the most talkative boy. I worry how that might affect his future – making friends and things like that. Still, lots of people are quiet and they get by all right. And he could have been doing this with kids at school, I don’t know. Perhaps he sent the other children pictures, and the teacher as well. They might not have realised. It takes a while to get used to the idea that someone else can put his thoughts into your head. Like projecting a film at the cinema. All I do is sit back and watch. At times it’s quite entertaining. Other times it gets in the way. Like when I’m dreaming and one of his pictures comes in at the same time.

  The big shaggy dog was one of his favourites. He’d wanted us to get a pet dog and kept hinting, pleading and sending pictures. Day and night. I’d be having a dream, like the one about making bread – something I rarely do, but when I do, I really enjoy it – and in comes the shaggy dog. There I was kneading dough and breathing in the yeasty smells when I start to see fur and claws mixed up in the elastic, bubble-studded bread-dough. Before I know it, I’m squashing a dog’s head on my pastry board, and there are bits of ear and tongue and teeth mangled under my sticky, floury hands. It gets as far as me making a marbled slab of dog bread before I manage to jolt myself awake and sit for a while to untangle the dream from Hamey’s picture.

  Then there are times when he’s tired or not really concentrating. Absent-minded pictures, I call them. It’s like talking to himself. They can be really strange, those pictures. Muddled and patched-up
as if he’s stopped thinking one thing halfway through to follow something else, and then gone off at some wild tangent – everything mixed together. It can put me off what I’m trying to do, and make me forget what my own thoughts are.

  Once I was trying to park in a really tight space and needed all my attention to get the proper angle. I was turning the wheel and looking in my mirror and trying not to do that thing with my tongue where it ends up nearly touching the tip of my nose, then suddenly I’m bombarded with a fair-ground and a football game and the shaggy dog and peas all at once, spinning round in my head while I’m still struggling with the reverse gear and looking over my shoulder to see if there’s enough room behind me. It’s a bit like having loud music blaring at you – distracting and irritating and such a relief when it stops. That’s when I wish I could do it as well – send pictures back to him telling him to stop, or at least leave it until I’m not doing something important. That’s the trouble; it’s always been a one-way thing, right from his birth. I don’t get a say, not really.

  I’ve never had to put up with Hamey being naughty or anything like that. He’s a good boy and I can rely on him to stay out of trouble, so I’m lucky in that way. Actually, I used to worry a bit because he was so good. It didn’t seem natural. But that’s just the way he is. As long as things are done in particular ways, he’s happy. And he’s not difficult to please. As long as he can go to his cupboard, gets peas for dinner and can send me his pictures, he’s happy. Oh, and the dog of course, he really wanted a dog. I wasn’t sure about it but thought he’d probably get his own way in the end. I couldn’t be doing with bloody shaggy dog pictures getting tangled up in my head all the time – vacuuming it up off the carpet, chopping it up to put in the stew and ironing it onto tee shirts.

  I would have got him a dog just like that, for his birthday probably. I’m fond of dogs myself and it would be good company for Hames. Its just that I didn’t want all the upset of another dead pet. He never shows his feelings much, but I worry what it must do to him, deep down – all that sudden loss and grief. We’ve had no end of animals since he was small and every one of them has disappeared or met an untimely end. Hamey would go quiet for days afterwards. I’d stop getting pictures from him and he’d stay out of the way, in his cupboard. I just don’t seem able to reach him when he’s like that. He’d come out for his peas and to get ready for bed or go to school, but there’d be a sort of blankness about him. It’s like when the television is on but the sound is turned right down – things still happen but it’s all far away and not so real. When he came back to normal, he’d never mention the dead pet.

  Sometimes I think it upsets me more than him – but I suppose it’s because he keeps things hidden inside. I get all tearful and sit in my own cupboard for a good cry, especially if it’s an animal we’d had for a while. Not that any of them lasted long – we seem to be unlucky with our pets. When I was a child, I had an ancient cat and a succession of long-lived, furry things in the garden, which I grew up with. They seemed to always be there. Barry, my rabbit, got older and fatter as I turned into a teenager. I used to tell him all my secrets. Good listener, Barry was. He used to sit in his wire run on the lawn, his ears pinned back, while I sat, droning on about friends, school, and how many spots I had. He’d concentrate really hard on what I was saying, his little nose going up and down thoughtfully and munched the odd dandelion leaf that I poked through his wire. There’s none of that for Hames though. He might have sent the pets pictures I suppose, but he didn’t sit and talk to them. And he never let me see how upset he was when they died.

  Not all of them died. A few of them simply disappeared. Escaped probably. The baby budgie, for instance. It was there one day and gone the next. I’ve always blamed myself for that. I must have left the window open, and the cage door, though I don’t remember doing that. Then there was the hamster. It used to spend half the night running round and round in that wheel and then one night I couldn’t sleep because the noise was missing. I went downstairs to find an empty cage, the wheel silent and still as if it had been clamped. I worried all night about how I was going to tell Hamey. I couldn’t work out how the little thing had got out, and sat there in my dressing gown and slippers willing it to run across the floor so I could scream and get Hames out of bed to catch it. But we’d seen the last of the hamster. She’d obviously gone off to run in different directions instead of round and round in that wheel.

  It was the same with Mohammed, the tortoise. He was a real mystery. Every year I would pack him away in his box of straw, then start checking on him as the weather warmed up. Three years was quite good going for one of our pets, and I was getting attached to Mohammed. He was a nice little thing, good company in the garden on a summer’s day. He used to run everywhere. None of that slow motion plodding for him. I use to wonder if he realised he was a tortoise or if he knew he ought to be sedate. He used to lift himself up on his scaly little legs and rush across the lawn like a stone come to life out of the rock garden. I had to keep an eye on him or he’d be away, burrowing under the fence and out to the lane at the back. Local children used to knock on the door with him from time to time. They used to find him halfway to the local shops, hurtling along with a determined look on his pointed face. He was well known in the neighbourhood, our little Mohammed. That’s why it was so strange when he disappeared. For weeks I expected a little group of kids to turn up with him held out in front of them, his feet scrabbling in mid-air as he tried to build up speed ready to run away again. But there was no sign.

  Hames had checked to see if hibernation was coming to an end. I knew because I got the picture one Saturday afternoon, when I was tidying the kitchen cupboards. I found a box of breakfast cereal right at the back that had gone all damp and stale. God knows how long it had been there but the design on the box looked old-fashioned, and when I opened the lid it was still pretty full with limp brown flakes. I remembered that Hames hadn’t liked this brand but couldn’t recall him telling me not to buy it again. Anyway, as I put it in the black plastic bag, I had a clear picture of Mohammed’s shell. The straw was pulled away, and dirty little fingernails were probing at each side of the sleeping tortoise. I didn’t think much of it at the time. I was too busy with my cupboards. I’d meant to do it for ages, and had started to get annoyed with the jumble of tins, jars and packets all stuffed in any old how. Hamey was neat and tidy. He would try to stack things in groups so they’d be easier to find, but I always managed to mess it up again. This time I was making a real effort to sort it out and keep it all in order. The picture just came and went. It wasn’t until later that I gave it any real thought.

  A couple of weeks later the weather started to feel milder. It always cheers me up when that happens. I went off to the shed with a real spring in my step, quite looking forward to seeing Mohammed. I didn’t say anything the first few times I checked on him, in case he wasn’t ready. Then after a while I’d start to cluck and say his name softly, to try and stir him out of his winter slumber. I lifted the lid carefully and peered inside to get a glimpse of his position. But there was nothing, just a hollow where his shell had flattened the straw. It must have been the shock, but I did stupid things like check to see if the straw was still warm. And I called him – Mohammed, where are you? I even searched the garden, thinking he might have got out of his box on his own and gone for a bit of a run to stretch his legs. There was no sign of him. I tried to think what happened to tortoises when they died. A friend at school had kept a couple and she’d told me they could be used as ashtrays because all the flesh decomposed and left an empty shell. So even if Mohammed had died during hibernation, his shell should still be in the box. All my bouncy feelings disappeared. I sat down and cried in the shed.

  Hames was his usual quiet self when I told him. No reaction really. He just looked at the ground, then went off to his cupboard. He stopped sending pictures for a few days, but I kept seeing the dent in the straw. It took over from the pictures – something I’d actua
lly seen instead of what Hamey decided to send me. I was puzzling over our missing tortoise in bed one night when I remembered the cupboard-cleaning picture, with Hamey’s grubby fingers and the straw moved away so I could see Mohammed. Clear as day, he’d been then. I’d have to ask Hames about it – that might give us a clue about what had happened and when.

  That night, Hamey made up for all the pictures he’d been keeping to himself. I had a full-power shaggy dog dream. It burst its way into my own dream. There I was, doing this really fancy embroidery, something I could never do in real life, when the hands pulling the threads changed from mine into Hamey’s. The same dirty fingernails and a cut on his knuckles I hadn’t seen before. But I knew they were his hands, and they were doing my sewing. Only it wasn’t a pretty cushion cover any more. It was something small and leathery, and Hames was making these big stitches. They were a bit uneven, but not too bad. I thought he was making a purse. The more I looked, the more it was harder to see what my hands, which were now his hands, were sewing. Then all of a sudden we were in dog territory again.