‘Maybe I’ll come up hospital with you next time,’ he said.
‘You could.’ I stared at the ghost of my face in the window. ‘But it’s only one visitor at a time, the ward he’s on.’ The kettle steamed my face away and I took him his tea.
‘Ta,’ he said. He looked up at me for a moment and his grey eyes scrunched my heart. ‘What’s up?’ he said.
‘Nothing.’
‘And?’ he said.
‘And what?’
‘How was my mum?’
‘She said you saw her once, in the park.’
‘Oh yeah.’
‘What were you doing at her house that day?’
‘Fuck knows,’ he said. ‘I wanted to see her, that’s all. When I was inside I kept … she were on my mind … I … I don’t fucking know.’
‘You’re swearing a lot,’ I said. ‘And hey, thanks for taking her bag back without telling me.’
‘That’s OK,’ he said.
‘When did you?’
‘Other night when I was out with dogs.’
I opened my mouth to quiz him more but something about the set of his shoulders made me shut it again. It didn’t matter anyway, what did it matter?
Thirty-one
The next night Doggo got a Christmas tree. He went out after dark and came back with a tree which he’d dug up from somewhere. Don’t ask. I couldn’t believe it, there were trees for sale everywhere but he’d nicked one and it wasn’t even the right sort of tree. It was evergreen but its branches were soft and floppy, drooping down instead of sticking out sideways. I don’t know how he thought we were going to fix the baubles on.
He looked so proud of himself though, carrying the tree in with a big grin stretched right across his face and trudging mud everywhere, that I only said, ‘Great,’ and found it a bucket. There was a big holly bush in the garden and he went berserk bringing in more and more till you couldn’t move without scratching yourself. He even found some mistletoe from somewhere. He held it up and stood there and I went right over and kissed him on the lips. I don’t know who was most surprised. Then we both felt stupid and pulled away. ‘Fuck off,’ he said. It was a nice kiss though, I must admit.
He told me off for opening the cards. He said I should have taken them into hospital for Mr Dickens to open himself. I said that Mr Dickens had asked me to open them and tell him who they were from because there wasn’t room on his locker for hundreds of Christmas cards. Which would have been true.
Doggo did most of the cooking and he wasn’t bad at it. I was getting used to eating every night and my hip-bones were looking less sharp. Mr Dickens had a stockpile of tinned stuff like he’d been expecting a nuclear war or something. Fray Bentos pies, carrots, meatballs. One night Doggo made corned-beef hash which he ate with about half a bottle of HP sauce. I washed up like I usually did. We were getting into a routine like normal people. Sometimes, if Doggo insisted, we went for a pint at night but usually we just stayed home drinking wine and watching telly.
After the corned-beef hash, Doggo said he wanted to make a phone call. He wanted to phone his dad just to say he was OK. But phone calls can be traced, can’t they? What if his dad rang the police. When I said that Doggo shook his head. ‘He wouldn’t grass on me. Christ, the stuff I’d have on him if I got going.’
It was days since I’d unplugged the phone and the peace had been wonderful. I didn’t have the knot of fear in my gut that it would ring when he was there and smash everything. He hadn’t even noticed. But when he saw the phone was unplugged he was put out.
‘Because it was getting on my wick ringing and ringing,’ I said when he asked why. He rolled his eyes and plugged it back in. I listened to him talking to his dad and it was all monosyllables, like yeah, nah, right, nah, yeah, yeah, yeah, nah, right. Not exactly riveting. Mind you lots of talking isn’t, is it? If you listen, most of it is like dogs wagging their tails or rolling over on their backs or something, it’s just saying Hey I exist. I reckon if you cut all the crap and only let people say things that mattered or actually told you something the world would be practically silent. After Doggo had finished I casually flipped the plug out again.
Millions more cards came for Mr Dickens. I put them all round the shelves and on the sideboard. The house started to look quite Christmasy apart from the stupid floppy tree which the baubles kept sliding off. ‘Where’d you get these from?’ Doggo said, picking one up and holding it up to the light. ‘Found them in a cupboard,’ I said. He narrowed his eyes at me like he had when I’d first worn the new Levi’s. Sometimes it’s like living in the middle of the Spanish Inquisition living with Doggo. It’s all, ‘Where did you nick that from?’ or ‘How much was that?’ Sometimes I wish I hadn’t bothered.
He never tried anything on with me again but one night when I couldn’t sleep he said, ‘Let me stroke your back.’
‘K,’ I said. I lay there and he stroked me and if I could have purred I would have. I lay listening to water dripping through the ceiling into the potty and feeling like I was in heaven. I nearly turned round and kissed him but I thought he would get excited again and call me a tease and I hate that because the last thing I ever am is a tease.
Next time I went to Mrs Banks’ she wasn’t there. I’d been ready for another morning at the table, drinking coffee, finding things out. How much she knew about Doggo and David and all that. I was so frustrated I found I was grinding my teeth as I hoovered. When I’d finished I snooped around for some evidence of something but she wasn’t the type to keep a diary or save old letters or newspaper clippings. Not like Mr Dickens and his albums. There was hardly any past in the house at all. Everything was new. The earliest photo was of her wedding to Neville, and then lots of Roy as a baby. Nothing from before at all as if she’d wiped the surface of her life clean with a sponge. Yes. But you can only wipe the surface.
She left me a Christmas card with a robin on a letterbox and inside it ten pounds and a note:
Dear Lamb, A little bonus for you! Could you hoover up the tree needles – at this rate it’ll be bald by the 25th! And there’s a bit of ironing. Could you mop the kitchen floor if there’s time. Help yourself to coffee etc, mince pies in tin. Lovely to talk to you the other day. See you in the New Year. Happy Christmas.
Love Marion.
Love Marion. I couldn’t believe that. Love. Well it’s just what some people put, isn’t it? It doesn’t really mean love. Anyway the ten extra quid was a nice thought. The tree had winking lights, a fairy on top and some wonky paper snowflakes that Roy must have made. And chocolate snowmen dangling from silver strings.
I did the ironing properly. I’m getting good at it. You could nearly say I like it. Getting a pile of crumpled things and straightening them out, nosing the iron into the corners and creases and that lovely hot-cloth smell rising. I ironed a little pair of Roy’s pyjamas for ages, over and over again like some sort of loony. They are blue with a space ship on the front that glows in the dark which you mustn’t iron so I edged the iron very carefully round it. I folded them up and they are minute. I ironed everything, even Mr Banks’ wacky boxer shorts and the teensy triangles of Marion’s knickers. I put my face in a hot-ironed sheet and sniffed and sniffed till it got cold again.
I left everything very nice and even though I didn’t have a card to leave I drew a Christmas tree on a bit of paper using Roy’s felt-tips and put Happy Christmas love Lamb. I took a mince pie with me for Doggo and walked off with a bouncy elastic feeling in my feet. But when I got back, Sarah was there.
Thirty-two
I should have seen her car outside but no, I just barged right in, calling Doggo Doggo like an idiot. They were in the back room. The mistletoe was hanging by the door and I looked straight at it and then at them. The holly scratched my cheek when I went in. They had mugs of coffee and were more or less sitting on top of each other. I’m sure the chairs weren’t that close together before.
‘Hi, Lamb,’ Sarah said in an odd voice. Doggo didn’t look at
me.
‘Hi,’ I said.
‘You’re bleeding,’ Sarah said and I put my finger up and smeared the blood away.
‘How’s Mr Dickens then?’ Doggo turned his eyes on me and they were the bleakest eyes I’ve ever seen.
The room seemed to sway. ‘How should I know?’ I said.
‘Because you’ve seen him.’
‘He’s OK.’
‘Sure?’ Doggo said.
‘Lamb.’ Sarah’s voice was gently bewildered. ‘He is dead.’
There was a long pause.
‘Is he?’ I said.
All their eyes, even Doughnut’s blind eyes, were hot on me as searchlights.
‘So?’ I said.
‘So?’ Doggo repeated. ‘So?’
There really wasn’t much else I could say. It was so hot in there that the berries were dropping off the holly. It was suffocating. I stepped over Doughnut and squeezed between their knees and switched off the fire. It was the first time it had been off for about a week. The metal cracked and sighed.
‘The nurse I spoke to was rather confused,’ Sarah said. ‘Look for goodness sakes have a tissue and wipe that blood off.’ She got one of those handy little packets of tissues out of her bag and shoved it at me. ‘I was informed the morning he died, nearly a week ago. She spoke to me herself apparently.’
There was a pause. I stuck my tongue out sideways and caught a drop of blood. ‘They’ve been trying to get in contact ever since. When someone dies you have to do something, you know, Lamb. There are procedures. You can’t just ignore it.’ Her voice filled up with tears and Doggo put his hand on her knee. ‘I came back thinking everything was fine – but he’s dead. And he’s been dead a week.’
I couldn’t say So? again and nothing else sprang to mind. They looked like outraged geese or something the way they were staring at me. It was hot as hell in that room anyway with the stink of dogs and all. I just banged right out of there.
I walked round the Botanical Gardens. It was nearly closing time. They lock the gates early in the winter as if they think no one would like to go there in the dark. Oh yes they would. I would. It was windy and everywhere branches were creaking and swaying, dropping their last few leaves. The light was weird and greenish and the trees were big graffiti scribbles happening on the sky. I sat on a bench and dabbed at my cheek with the tissue till the blood had dried.
What is up with them? I mean what is their problem? I mean if someone’s dead, they’re dead, aren’t they? What difference does it make when you know about it? Or if you ever know about it at all? In a war you sometimes don’t know for ages or for ever. A person goes missing and just never comes back. People disappear all the time and they might be dead and they might not be dead. So what?
I would have told Doggo in the end. And Sarah. After Christmas. Of course I would. I just didn’t want to spoil Christmas for anyone. Anyway, Sarah could have rung the hospital herself, why didn’t she? Why did she just go swanning off and leave it all to me? Mr Dickens was her relation not mine. I wished I’d thought to say that. I nearly went back to shout it through the letterbox.
A squirrel came and sat by my feet with its tail curled up behind it and I fed it Doggo’s mince pie. Doggo said they were only rats with fluffy tails but it was still cute the way it held the pastry in its tiny hands. It was freezing on the bench and my ears were aching with the wind in them but I didn’t know where else to go.
I watched the people going past. Me alone on a bench again. A couple arm in arm with breath-feathers all round them and matching anoraks; a woman rushing along with a flowering cactus. The magpies were cawing away like football rattles. It was starting to get dark. The bell went. The bell means get out or you’re locked in. I thought about letting myself get locked in but it was so cold and anyway the man with the keys had seen me. I knew he’d be waiting by the gate. I waited till I was the last person and you could hardly see the trees any more then I dawdled down to the gate. The man had a giant key like something from a pantomime. When he smiled I saw he had a missing front tooth. The gate clanged shut behind me with a sound like being locked in jail. Only I was being locked out.
I went into a shop that is full of crap. The sort of thing you’d only buy for someone else and never for yourself. I wouldn’t even buy it for someone else. Bleating key-rings; crossword toilet rolls; money boxes shaped like toilets that flush when you put pennies in; willy-warmers and chocolate nipples. But it was warm in there and light. I read all the so-called funny cards but none of them even made me smile.
‘Can I help you?’ a person said in the end.
‘How anyone that works here can ask that!’ I said and stalked out feeling pleased with myself for about a nanosecond.
I walked around watching shoppers with their bulging bags and their greedy bulging eyes. I went back to Mr Dickens’ house but Sarah’s car was still there so I went away again. I couldn’t get their stupid outraged faces out of my head. So what if Mr Dickens was dead? So what?
I walked for hours. It was too cold to stop. I walked and walked and got so tired from walking. Watching the shops shut, watching the people going home, the curtains shutting, the lights coming on. I walked round to Mrs Banks’ house and saw that they’d strung Christmas lights up round their porch. They rattled in the wind. The rest of the world was shut out by their curtains drawn tight.
I went back on the main road and was reading the ads in the post office for rooms and skate-boards and lost cats. Maybe I would have gone back to Mr Dickens’ house. I think I would have. Where else would I go? But then a voice said, ‘Jo?’ I didn’t even stop at first because that’s not my name any more but then someone got hold of my arm and I turned. It was Simon.
‘I’m not Jo, I’m Lamb,’ I said speeding up. He walked along as fast as me.
‘Lamb, eh? That’s cool,’ he said. ‘Great to see you.’
‘Yeah, I guess.’ We were practically running by then.
‘Where you rushing off to?’
‘Nowhere.’ I slowed down. ‘Nowhere really.’
We walked along together. I felt so stupid trying not to pant.
‘What are you doing?’ I asked in the end, just for something to say.
‘Nothing,’ he said.
We walked on some more.
‘Want to do something?’ he said.
‘Like what?’
‘Dunno.’
‘OK.’
‘Cool.’
I have had more scintillating conversations.
We went to the pub. There was a quiz going on and we joined in and between us we nearly won. He knows practically everything and I turned out to know some things I didn’t even know I knew like, Which French king was known as the Sun King? Louis the fourteenth. And, What fraction of an iceberg shows above water? One ninth. Where we fell down was sport otherwise we’d have won twenty quid.
Money wasn’t a problem though. Unbelievably The Sticky Labels had got paid for a gig and he was out to blow his share. He was drinking Malibu and Coke which believe me is about the most disgusting drink on this earth. I was on tequila which shrinks your brain till it bounces on the sides of your skull when you move which feels quite funny at the time. He’s cool really, Si, so greasy you’d think he’d crawled out of a chip-pan but with a sense of humour. He made me laugh anyway, quite something the state I was in. Or maybe it was the tequila laughing, I don’t know.
Everything went quite a blur after a few drinks. We played darts with some people but were useless, he was doing pratty throws lifting one leg off the ground and swinging his arm like he was bowling in cricket. In the end we got asked to leave. It was nearly last orders anyway. We went to his flat.
I can hardly remember getting there, just a smear of coloured light whenever I turned my head. I might have been sick on the side of the road. His flat was right up the top of what seemed to be a mountain. He had to drag me up. It was shared with some other people and there were more pizza boxes than bits of furniture in there
. Someone was asleep on the sofa with a cushion over his head and there was something on telly only don’t ask me what. Si rolled a huge spliff but I don’t think I had any in case I was sick again.
After a while we went into his bedroom. He took off his clothes. It felt so weird, I mean at school he was just a prize nerd with thick glasses. Everyone laughed at him but he didn’t care, he didn’t even notice, his head so full of astrophysics or whatever. I would have laughed my head off then if anyone had said, One day you’ll go to bed with Simon.
He didn’t look too bad in the half-dark. He got into bed and politely looked away while I took some things off. It was a single bed and the sheets were full of bits and smelt like they had never been washed in their lives. I felt too sick to kiss. I thought, OK then I’ll have sex with him.
I don’t understand this. Maybe it was the drink. Maybe it was because I didn’t care what he thought of me. I don’t know how or why, all I know is it worked. I lay there waiting to go frigid but I didn’t. Mind you, I hardly felt a thing. I didn’t scream and claw his back or any of that theatrical stuff. He wouldn’t have believed me if I had. In fact I bet he would have run a mile. I tried to think about Doggo but it was too far-fetched. Doggo was like another universe. I breathed through my mouth to try and stop the reek of latex, scuzzy sheets and pizza getting to me. The only sound I made was the sound of someone having the air battered out of them for about two minutes then that was that.
I smiled into the dark. I had done it. Or had it done to me. Simon mumbled something sweet then rolled straight off and snored. I shut my eyes and thought of Doggo. It would be OK. I wanted to get up then and go straight home to him. I lay beside Simon thinking, I should wash I should wash and longing for a glass of water. But next thing I was waking up and it was morning. Just for a second I thought he was Doggo but everything was wrong, the shape of the room, where the light was coming from – and most of all the smell.
Simon’s back was to me and I lay there looking at the most amazing array of spots I have ever seen. If there was a prize for spots he’d be a serious contender. My brain still felt too small for my skull and my mouth was so dry I could hardly move my tongue. I got up and found my clothes. He didn’t even stir.
Now You See Me Page 20
