Cold Bath Lane

by Lorna Dounaeva

  My words were lost in the wind, as Alicia went down and peered at the flames.

  “Just a little one,” she called back.

  “Good, now let’s go.”

  We heard the fire engines from our hotel.

  Another day, another train. Our journey took us up into the Midlands, where accommodation was a little cheaper. Still, I struggled to pay for the hotel.

  “Why don’t you ask Uncle Richard to send us more money?” asked Alicia.

  “Because it’s embarrassing. That money was supposed to last us.”

  “Then why don’t you get a job?”

  “Maybe I could, if you would stop starting fires everywhere we go. I don’t want to get locked up for arson, do you?”

  “Of course not!”

  But she wouldn’t stop. I tried to contain her to small things: allotments, cars, bins, but she wouldn’t let up. We were living hand to mouth now. I was out of money and out of drugs.

  “Ring Richard,” she pleaded, as I curled up in bed, drinking the last of my cider.

  “If you won’t, then I will. It doesn’t hurt to ask.”

  Finally, I gave in. We found a payphone, and I posted a few precious coins through the slot. It rang and rang before Richard finally picked up.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I was having a shave.”

  Stumbling over my words, I explained how we had run out of money, and were struggling to make ends meet.

  “Is that so? Well, I ain’t awfully flush myself at the moment, but I’ll see what I can do.”

  I rattled off the address of the hotel where we were staying. If Richard did not come through for us, I would not be able to pay the bill.

  “Thanks,” I said. I didn’t like asking for help, it made me feel small and helpless.

  I was about to hang up, when he stopped me.

  “Your Sam called last night. He reckons your Dad’s in hospital.”

  “Hospital?”

  Dad had never been ill in his life.

  “It could be a trick, but he said he was down at St Bart’s.”

  “It’s a trick,” I agreed. “He thinks he can lure us back.”

  Still, it bothered me.

  “What if Dad really is sick?” I asked Alicia, as I set the phone down.

  “So, what if he is? It’s not like we owe him nothing.”

  “No, I know we don’t. All the same, I want to know.”

  “Why don’t you call the hospital? See if he’s been admitted.”

  There was a Yellow Pages next to the phone. I flipped through it until I found the number for St Bart’s. I put another coin into the slot. It was worth it for my piece of mind.

  “I’m not at liberty to discuss his condition,” the receptionist said.

  But there was something in the way she said it that made me worry.

  “He’s definitely there,” I told Alicia.

  “We should leave him there. We don’t need him in our lives no more.”

  “No, we don’t,” I agreed. “But what if it’s serious? What if he’s dying?”

  “There’s no way we’re going back to him.”

  “Not to live, no. But if he’s dying, I would at least like to say goodbye. In fact, I’d like to say a hell of a lot more than that.”

  I saw a light go on in her eyes. The chance to tell Dad what we thought of him was appealing. He’d be sick and laid up in bed. Vulnerable.

  36

  We had to wait two days before a letter arrived from Richard, containing the money. I ripped it open and counted it. It was only a fraction of the amount he’d given me before, but it would have to do. The first thing I did was to go and buy drugs. I was shaking badly all the way back to the hotel, and I had to lie down while I waited for my heart to stop beating so violently. I rolled a joint and sprinkled some Angel Dust in it. We weren’t allowed to smoke in the B&B, but I didn’t give a shite. I laid back and enjoyed the tranquillity.

  We left the following morning. I felt sick all the way to the hospital, and had to keep taking sips from my bottle of cider. I got a few looks from other passengers on the bus, but I didn’t care. I did what I had to do to get by. Sam wasn’t at the hospital when we arrived, but a nurse fetched Dad’s doctor.

  “I’m afraid your father has cancer of the prostate,” he told me. “He’s had it for some time, by the look of him.”

  “How serious is it?”

  “It’s serious. He’s a very sick man.”

  Dad was sleeping when we peered in. His nose was redder than ever, his face unshaven. He snored loudly and frankly, didn’t look so different to all the times he had fallen asleep on the sofa. I wanted so badly to hate him. But my childhood memories kept inching their way in.

  I went in and stood by the side of his bed. There were other patients on the ward, surrounded by their loved ones. I wondered how many of them deserved their visitors.

  “Dad?” I said gently. He didn’t stir. “Dad?” I nudged his arm but still no response. He looked far too peaceful for someone so ill. I checked his chart, to make sure the doctor hadn’t been telling porkies. It was filled with big words I couldn’t read, but his diagnosis was right at the top. There was no denying Dad had cancer.

  “Can we go now?” Alicia asked.

  “In a bit.”

  We hung about for another hour, but Dad refused to wake up. Eventually, Alicia grabbed his arm and shook him.

  “Stop it!” I hissed, afraid someone would see.

  But Dad was so out of it, it didn’t make any difference. He must be on some fearsome drugs. I glanced around to see if I could find any, but there weren’t any lying about. Probably, the hospital was used to people like me, always looking to get their buzz.

  The whole thing was incredibly anticlimactic. My mind was filled with all the things I wanted to say to him and they threatened to pour out of me like an unbridled river. I could have said it all anyway, but I wanted him wide awake.

  “You ruined our lives,” I whispered, pinching his arm.

  I wanted to scream at him about the way he had treated us. About the way he had treated Mum.

  A nurse came in, and I pretended to hold his hand. It felt grim to touch him, like stroking a corpse.

  “I think Tony’s had enough for today,” the nurse said gently. “He needs his rest. You can come back and see him in the morning.”

  Alicia sprang to her feet. She couldn’t wait to get out of there.

  “Are you sure you want to come back tomorrow?” she asked as we left the hospital.

  I wasn’t sure of anything.

  There was a group of smokers outside. I watched enviously as they puffed on their fags.

  “You look like you could use a cigarette,” one of them said to me.

  I recognised her. She had been visiting the old dear in the next bed.

  “Thanks.”

  I inhaled the fag, but it wasn’t enough to calm me. I craved something stronger, something that would numb my feelings. I needed my Angel Dust. I still had some in my bag, but I needed to get somewhere safe first.

  I found us a cheap hotel for the night, and I laid down on the bed to roll a joint. The Angel Dust brought me to a heavenly place, where Dad was already dead. He looked exactly as he had before, except he now wore a white dress and had large, cumbersome angel wings. His mouth was sown together, so he couldn’t talk or drink. All he could do was dance about in the clouds, with the other angels, forever and ever.

  Sam was waiting outside the ward when we arrived the next day. I was gobsmacked at how old he looked. His eyes were all creased around the edges, and his hair was receding at the front.

  “You came!” he said, his face lighting up. He hugged us both tightly.

  “Course we did.”

  I tried to block out my anger at how he had helped Dad lock me in my room. My beef was with Dad, not Sam.

  I peered through the window into the ward and saw that Dad’s bed was empty.

  “Has something happened?” I asked.

/>   Sam’s eyes swam with tears.

  “He took a turn for the worse last night.”

  He could barely get the words out.

  I steered him over to some soft chairs and we waited for news.

  “I’m bored,” Alicia whined.

  Sam gave her a fiver and sent her off to the shop.

  “That’s the last you’ll see of that,” I said, but he didn’t crack a smile.

  “How did you find out he was ill?” I asked.

  “It was a bloody nightmare. He collapsed in the middle of a job.”

  “Bloody hell!”

  “We had just set light to this huge factory, when he came over funny. I had to carry him out over my shoulder. It was awful. I thought we were going to die.”

  I tasted my darkest memories.

  “You must have been terrified.”

  “What if he dies?” he wailed. “What am I going to do?”

  I tried to envision a future without him. Where Alicia, Sam and I could live free of his overwhelming presence. It didn’t frighten me, as it did Sam. It was exactly what I was hoping for.

  “Perhaps it’s all for the best,” I started to say, but then I stopped myself. Sam wasn’t ready to hear it.

  “What am I going to do?”

  He looked more like a little boy than a grown man; a fireman, capable of saving people and putting out fires.

  “You’re going to be fine, you’ll see.”

  I did not see Dad again till later that day. He was awake this time, and his eyes bulged at the sight of me.

  “My Mary Jane. You’ve come home to me.”

  “Not Mary Jane,” I said, through gritted teeth. “Jody. Remember?”

  He looked at me with suspicion. “What’s happened to you? Why are you talking like that?”

  After a while, he was well enough to sit up and feed himself and his eyes lost the glassy quality that had freaked us all out.

  “Could you get me some water, Jody Bear?”

  I was surprised that he’d remembered who I was. I poured him a small cup of water and handed it to him. I should have spat in it first, but it was hard to be cruel to such a pathetic-looking man, no matter how much he deserved it.

  “You should come back home,” Sam said to me, as we were leaving. “There’s no reason for you and Alicia to stay at a hotel. Not when you have a perfectly good room at home.”

  I looked at Alicia. I couldn’t help thinking this was all some elaborate trick.

  “He’ll be here, in hospital,” Sam said. “Really, there’s no reason to stay away. Besides…” he looked down at the ground. “I could use the company.”

  I looked at Alicia.

  “We don’t exactly have a lot of dough,” she said, jumping down from the radiator where she’d been sitting.

  “I know, but wouldn’t it feel weird, going back there?”

  “I don’t mind if you don’t.”

  I minded very much, but I forced myself to be strong. After all, I still had money hidden in our room. At the very least, we should go back for that.

  Sam drove us back to the hotel and waited while we packed up our things and checked out, using the last of Richard’s money to pay the bill. Then he drove us back home. It was unnerving, returning to our old neighbourhood. It felt like we’d been away ages, even though it had only been a few months. He pulled up outside our house and we waited while he unlocked the front door. The first thing that hit me was the smell.

  “God, haven’t you cleaned at all?”

  I covered my mouth with my hand and looked around at all the debris. Plates and cups were piled everywhere, cans littered the floor. There was soot from the chimney all over everything. The kitchen was even worse. You couldn’t see the sink for all the dishes, and there were empty cereal packets strewn all over the place.

  “Right, we’re going to clear up,” I said, opening the drawer where I’d kept the bin bags. They were still there.

  “I can’t face it,” said Sam, backing away.

  “You’ll have to,” I told him. “If we don’t sort out this mess, the whole place will be infested with rats.”

  I walked around, grabbing empty packets and bottles, filling the bin bags. The kitchen waste took three bags alone, then I moved into the living room and filled up another two.

  “Here, you clean the bathroom,” I said, handing Sam a cloth and a bottle of bleach.

  “I don’t know how.”

  “Then it’s a good time to learn,” I said, giving him a shove. “I ain’t tackling all this by myself.”

  Alicia, meanwhile had skipped outside to play. I wondered if she had gone off to find some old mates. Or else she just didn’t fancy joining in the cleaning effort. Either way, I didn’t see hide nor hare of her for the rest of the afternoon.

  I scrubbed the kitchen till it was spotless, and Sam did a decent job of the bathroom, after which I made him clank the Hoover from room to room, sucking up the worst of the soot. After that, we both slumped down on the sofa, in the same positions we’d always sat in.

  “You wanna watch Doctor Who?” he asked.

  “Go on then.”

  “So, will you stay?”

  I looked at him intently. He’d never apologised for helping Dad lock me in my room.

  “We’ll see.”

  The Doctor Who theme music started, and I settled down to watch. There had been a new doctor since I had last watched, and I wanted to see if he was any good.

  All at once, we heard the cries from outside. I ran to the window and saw that our neighbour’s garage was on fire.

  “Oh god, Alicia!”

  “Call the fire brigade,” Sam said as he ran outside.

  I dialled 999 and then watched from the window as Sam tackled the blaze with a garden hose. It was the first time I’d seen him in action and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t impressed. I looked all around for Alicia. I couldn’t see her, but she’d be out there somewhere, watching, enjoying the fire.

  When she finally deigned to come home, I pulled her close as if to hug her and got a good whiff of her hair.

  “You stink of smoke.”

  Alicia shrugged. “Couldn’t stop myself.”

  “Did you have to do it so close to home? What if the cozzers come knocking?”

  She glared at me like a teenager and crossed her arms. “I didn’t mean to.”

  “What do you mean, you didn’t mean to?”

  “I needed to do it. I hadn’t done one all day.”

  “You’re not making no sense,” I said, but the thing was, she was. I, more than anyone, understood what it was like to have an impulse you couldn’t control.

  37

  I couldn’t sleep in my old room - too many bad memories - so I changed Dad’s sheets and slept in his bed. I remembered the room as it had once been, Mum’s necklaces hanging from the mirror. She had had little glass animals on the windowsill, a deer, a squirrel, and a fox. Funny how I hadn’t thought about those glass animals in years. I wondered what other memories lurked beneath the surface. Who knew what had gone on in the years before my memories began.

  “I found your money,” Alicia yelled.

  She bounced into the bedroom, holding up my stash.

  “Give me that!” I snatched it off her, counting it quickly. I wouldn’t put it past her to skim off a few quid for sweets.

  She didn’t mind at all about sleeping in our old room, but I suppose she’d never been locked in there like I had. I dragged Dad’s toolbox out of the cupboard and pulled out the screws he had hammered into the shutters. Afterwards, I hid the hammer under my bed, along with the saw and the craft knife. It didn’t hurt to be careful.

  We had only been home a few days when the doctor told us they were discharging Dad. Sam was elated but I was less than pleased. I didn’t want him to come home. And I certainly didn’t want to care for him.

  “Please don’t leave,” Sam begged, “I can’t look after him all on my tod. I wouldn’t know how.”

 
“There’s no special magic to it,” I said. “You just have to cook and clean and scrub and wipe. You’re going to have to do that anyway, because I ain’t dealing with none of his personal care.”

  “Why don’t we just bunk off again?” Alicia said. “We didn’t come back for this.”

  I thought about it, but my stash didn’t add up to a lot. A few nights at a cheap B&B, a couple of hits of Angel Dust. Fear gripped my heart as I thought about going without it.

  “You can claim benefits if you look after Dad,” Sam told me. “It’s like a paid job.”

  “Ugh.” Even the thought of it turned my stomach.

  But then Sam handed some leaflets.

  “Look how much you can claim,” he said. “I’ve already got a job, but you could claim more, because it would be your sole income.”

  The numbers didn’t lie. According to the leaflets, I could earn enough to live on. The money would go directly into my bank account. Dad wouldn’t see a penny of it. I would have complete control.

  “Oh, all right,” I agreed. “We’ll see how it goes.”

  I wasn’t going to stay long, I swore I wasn’t. It was just going to be until I saved up enough to rent a place of my own. Or until the old codger died, whichever came first.

  Dad was too weak to climb the stairs by himself, so we made up a bed for him downstairs in the living room and I got to keep his room. He had often slept down there anyway, too trollied to make it to bed. I was willing to do the bare minimum to look after him, but it didn’t mean I had to be nice.

  “Here you go, you useless lump of shite,” I would mutter, as I brought him his soup.

  He was sick enough that I could say anything. He was a captive audience, unable to escape. I watched as his eyes grew large and mournful.

  “What have I ever done to you, Mary Jane?”

  “What haven’t you done to me, you old fart?”

  Every morning, I tiptoed downstairs, hoping to find he’d died in his sleep, and every morning I was incensed to find him snoring contentedly, his rancid farts filling the room. The thick hair that covered his body had gone from black to white. Once, I suppose he had shaved and trimmed it, but now it was thick and straggly, like a hairy cloud around his face. I wanted to vomit, just looking at him.