Notes from an Exhibition

by Patrick Gale

  Garfield was shy of hugging her so, while Morwenna ran to jump on her lap, he jumped a few times instead to see what she was seeing, and caught a few glimpses of a lawn and trees and rosebuds. He was glad to see she looked fairly normal. She was wearing daytime clothes – a dark-blue dress covered in white spots – but she looked pale and somehow uncooked without her lipstick and there was something different about her eyes and she needed to wash her hair.

  ‘What’s wrong with your eyes?’ he asked her.

  ‘My eyes?’ she asked slowly then understood. ‘Oh. No mascara. Do they look terrible?’

  He stopped jumping and dared to look at her full on. The directories made her so high she and Morwenna might have been on a throne. ‘Not really,’ he admitted. ‘Just sort of pale. And weak.’

  ‘Hello, darling,’ Antony said and kissed her on the lips then sat on the end of her bed.

  She had slowed down completely. Garfield was used to her being sharp and crackly and rather frightening because you had to think quite carefully what you said because she never missed anything and might pull you up short at any moment. But now she was so slow and placid she was frightening in a different way, as though her mechanism was winding down and no one else had noticed or thought to turn the key. For a whole minute they just sat in silence, Antony sad and watchful on the bed, she on the chair and Morwenna blissful and unquestioning on her lap. Like a ravenous cat given milk, Morwenna always became entirely focused on a pleasurable moment.

  The room had no other furniture but a little chest of drawers with a vase on it and a heap of drawings Rachel had been doing with wax crayon.

  ‘Can I see?’ Garfield asked. You never looked at her pictures without asking, in case you had sticky fingers.

  She stared at him and he could almost hear the glutinous plop as her mind closed over his question and drew it in. She nodded at last with a smile and he went to look.

  Instead of doing the obvious view out of the window she had done the window itself, the panes of old, uneven glass, the flaking paint creamy with age, the damp stained roller blind for blocking out the sun, and the arrangement of gutter, brickwork and drainpipes a little to one side. Then she had done her bed, over and over, with the rumples in different places and the sunlight in different places but the brutal black bedstead exactly the same each time, like a cage about something shifty and fluid. It was so unfair, he thought, that when he did pictures with wax crayon they looked like every other boy’s wax crayon pictures but when she did them it didn’t look like wax crayon any more. There were no pictures of the baby.

  ‘I asked for pastels,’ she said.

  He was proud to know better than to think she meant sweets.

  ‘But they said they were too messy,’ she went on.

  ‘Maybe I could bring you an old tablecloth and sheet to protect the floor,’ Antony said but then the door opened and the nurse with the curvy bits came in with a pram.

  ‘Who wants to meet their baby brother?’ she asked and Morwenna slid off Rachel’s lap to see.

  Garfield was less obviously eager because men didn’t show the same interest in babies as ladies did but actually he was quite excited.

  ‘He’s off in the Land of Nod,’ the nurse said, ‘but you can wake him at three if he’s still asleep and give him his bottle. I’ve tucked it in there, behind his pillow. I thought you might all like a stroll in the sunshine,’ she told Antony. ‘You can take the service lift just outside here and get out to the garden that way. How are you feeling, my lovely?’ she asked Rachel. ‘Up to a walk?’

  Rachel only did a sort of wincing smile by way of an answer but the nurse didn’t seem that interested in a response and bustled off to see someone shouting nurse nurse from the room next door.

  ‘Careful or you’ll wake him,’ Antony told Morwenna, crouching down beside her. Garfield drew near to look too. It was a big navy-blue pram almost like a boat with a fringed blue hood and a white inside. Hedley seemed tiny in it. Only his face and hands showed. He had dark hair that grew in a whorl and he had the smallest ears and fingernails Garfield had ever seen. He felt he had never looked properly at a baby until now. He turned round to look at Rachel but she was staring out of the window again.

  ‘Can I touch him?’ he asked Antony.

  ‘Of course. Don’t wake him, though. He looks so comfortable.’

  Garfield reached out a forefinger and just grazed Hedley’s cheek with his knuckle. The skin was warm and softer even than Morwenna’s. Maybe because it was so new. He touched the back of his tiny fingers.

  ‘Me,’ Morwenna said. ‘I do.’ But she was too small to reach in unassisted so Antony lifted her almost inside the pram so she could touch too.

  ‘What does he eat?’ Garfield asked, smiling because he knew really.

  ‘Milk,’ Rachel said, focusing back on them.

  ‘From you,’ he asked, amazed at his boldness.

  ‘It should be,’ she slurred. ‘But it’s not safe. Too many pills in me now so he’d be drinking them too.’

  ‘He has special baby milk,’ Antony said. ‘In a bottle. Shall we all go outside for a bit? Push him around the garden? Do you feel up to it, darling?’

  Rachel said of course she did.

  They went down in the service lift, which was fun as it left your tummy behind and had big metal doors that let you see the floors slipping by. Garfield would quite happily have gone up and down in it a few more times but didn’t like to ask, although as it was his birthday Antony might have said yes.

  The garden had gravel paths and very neat rose beds with very neat roses in them.

  ‘I asked the gardener how he avoids black spot,’ Rachel managed, ‘and he said Jeyes Fluid. In solution. All over the soil in January.’ She pushed the pram with Antony on one side of her and Morwenna on the other. ‘You lead the way,’ she told Garfield, though in fact there was little choice about where to walk and small chance of getting lost.

  He followed the path, tuning in and out of his parents’ horrible conversation. In fact it was all one-sided. Antony kept saying things like, ‘Sarah and Bill asked after you on Sunday. They send their love,’ which Rachel would answer with a sigh or a barely perceptible murmur. She wasn’t fierce or rude, just sad and discouraging, as though each offering of news or good wishes merely caused her physical pain she was unable to describe. He wished Antony would give up. It was bad enough hearing Rachel sound so listless and miserable without him sounding all pathetic. She had not wished him a happy birthday, something so shocking he had to try not to think about it or he would cry.

  Escape presented itself in the shape of a small playground area with a swing and a slide. Encouraging Morwenna to follow him, he ran ahead and used both in quick succession. The slide was babyishly low and short but the swing, tied to the bough of a big tree, had such long chains that he was soon able to make it fly so high that the chains went momentarily slack at the top of each arc and frightened him into swinging not quite so fiercely.

  The others had caught up and sat on a bench nearby with the big pram beside them. He couldn’t look at them too closely or he’d be car sick. Swing sick. But he snatched glances as he flew up towards the tree canopy and down again. He saw the baby had woken up. Antony lifted it from the pram with a knitted blanket all round it so that you couldn’t see its legs. It shook its arms though and cried a bit so Antony gave it a drink from the bottle to shut it up.

  Garfield quite wanted to feed it too but he felt being happy on the swing had become his job for the moment so he kept swinging.

  Morwenna didn’t join him, although normally she liked going down slides if the steps up weren’t too high and there weren’t bigger children hurrying her from behind or kicking her on the bottom. She seemed transfixed by Hedley and was throwing him looks that mixed curiosity with black resentment. As Garfield swung on she climbed on to Rachel’s lap, although Rachel was paying hardly any attention to the baby. She wriggled and fidgeted until Rachel held her as firmly as Anton
y was holding Hedley, then she lay back in a kind of triumph, though still throwing penetrating glances at her little brother.

  Looking at the four of them it struck Garfield that he somehow existed apart from them. They were a family, a tidy family – woman, girl, man and baby boy – and he was something else, something outside their tidy unit. By pushing himself into their notice, by running ahead to show off on the swing, he had accidentally excluded himself. Where he ought to be was on the bench, snugly in the midst of them, too old as oldest son to need a lap but still belonging at the centre as of right. He tried not to think about it in case he cried. He tried looking around the garden instead as he swung.

  There were other people out here. He spotted the people from the waiting room, the man with the books, the woman with the grapes, the haunted couple who had looked so ashamed and unhappy. They each had someone with them now. The woman with the grapes had a man even older than she was. He was eating the grapes off the plate while she pushed him very slowly in a wheelchair. The man with the books had left the books inside and was sitting on a bench with another man who was in stripy pyjamas and a tweed jacket. They were smoking and the book man was laughing as he told a story. The miserable couple had a boy with them; a big boy, a teenager, but still a boy. He had jeans and a T-shirt on and you wouldn’t have guessed he was ill in his head at all. But then he looked straight over at Garfield on the swing, or seemed to, and his eyes looked totally blank, like two little chips of coal, and somehow you knew that if you could hear his thoughts they’d just be a sound like the washing machine made on a spin cycle and Garfield knew he mustn’t meet his eye or he’d become the same.

  To escape the boy’s eyes and prove he didn’t belong here, he showed off his new trick which was swinging standing up. It was quite scary but he knew he could do it. The trick was to keep a really firm grasp of the chains. That way you wouldn’t fall even if your feet lost their grip on the seat. Rachel saw what he was doing but it was Antony who said, ‘Garfield,’ in a weary tone. He ignored them both by just smiling like a man on a circus trapeze. His sandals skidded on the plastic a little and the swing faltered slightly but then he was up, gloriously up, standing and swinging and proud. And because he was standing not sitting, it suddenly felt as though the swing was moving much faster and higher. He remembered what the older boys in the playground had taught him, that you had to bend your knees slightly then straighten them over and over to maintain momentum. And soon it felt as though he was almost reaching the horizontal, facing up into the tree one moment then facing down at the balding grass the next.

  The sick took him by surprise. For a few minutes he was fine then suddenly he felt all hot behind the eyes and churny in his stomach and then he knew there was no time to slow down and get off. And then there was sick, arcing out and away from his mouth one moment, splashing all down his front the next.

  Rachel actually cried out and Morwenna laughed. By the time he’d managed to stop the swing, he’d stopped being sick but he still felt as if he was going to be sick some more and it was all hot where it had spilled beyond his shorts and splashed down his leg. His head was filled with the sound of his own helpless gulping and his nose with the bitterness and stink of it.

  Antony was there beside him helping him off the swing and leading him to the grass. ‘Poor chap,’ he said. ‘Poor old soldier. Come on. Sit down. That’s it. You need to keep very very still till it passes. That’s it. Head between your knees and just breathe. That’s it. In and out. Nice and slow. In and out. Look how still the ground is now. Poor chap. You overdid it a bit, didn’t you?’

  He held a big hand across Garfield’s forehead, the way he always did if Garfield was sick on a car journey or in bed, and he wiped him clean with one of his big spotty handkerchiefs that smelled of peppermints and pockets and bunches of keys.

  Gulping less often now, his insides settling, his nose full of the frank reek of himself, Garfield continued to sit with his head obediently resting on his knees, listening to the voices as Morwenna took her turn on the slide, repeatedly demanding first that Antony help her up the steps then that Rachel watch her as she slid down the slide. He made himself focus on the ants moving through the miniature landscape of grass and twigs beneath his legs.

  If a blade of grass was a tree to an ant, what must a tree be or a whole lawn? Perhaps, he thought, they simply blanked out such vastnesses and, having no conception of their own insignificance, could thus cope with life and even be happy? Perhaps the trick was to aspire backwards, to the blessed narrowness of a baby’s pram-bound outlook and the more you saw, the less happy you could hope to be? Perhaps Rachel was an ant who saw trees, who couldn’t help knowing how high it was to the top or how far to the edge?

  ‘Look at me!’ Morwenna shouted again.

  Garfield dared to raised his head and found the world new-made. The midsummer colours of grass and sky and rosebush and his mother’s spotty dress seemed brighter than before and the sounds, like the sights, seemed sharper. He had experienced something like it when he was feverish with first measles and then chickenpox, so hoped the being sick was just from dizziness and not a sign of something more sinister, like tuberculosis.

  ‘Look at me!’ Morwenna was perched yet again at the top of the slide, stout little legs stuck out ahead of her, preparing to push off but Rachel wasn’t looking at her. She was tucking Hedley back into his pram. Morwenna’s voice acquired the shrieky edge she still used occasionally to bring a shocked silence to shops or bank queues. ‘Look at me!’

  Rachel stood abruptly, still not looking, and said, ‘Oh for fuck’s sake,’ and turned away towards the hospital. They all watched her go at first, startled as much by her departure as by her words.

  Then Antony broke away after her, leaving Morwenna unadmired and still on the top of the slide. ‘Bring your sister, will you, Garfield?’ he said and headed after Rachel, pushing the pram, which looked a bit funny because he was a man and the pram went all bouncy because he was moving a bit too fast for it on the gravel.

  Hedley began to cry, bounced awake after his feed. Morwenna started to cry too and slid slowly down the slide to where Garfield was waiting for her. Ahead of them Rachel broke into a run, as if to escape them all.

  Garfield watched her go, watched her pass a white-uniformed nurse who had just come out, and he realized he hated her. It was his birthday, something she had not even noticed, and because of her they were spending it in the worst way imaginable. Even being stuck in school would have been better. At least then he’d have had his friends around him. He didn’t quite know how to describe it to himself but her illness and her running off like that seemed as blatant a bid for attention as the baby’s wailing or Morwenna’s shrill demands from the slide.

  ‘There’s no point,’ he told Morwenna. ‘They can’t hear you and I don’t care.’ But Morwenna only cried the harder, grinding her fists in her eyes so hard it made him feel sore just watching her. ‘Come on,’ he said and pulled her gently upright before steering her before him by the shoulder.

  The nurse was exchanging words with Antony who then hurried into the building after Rachel, still pushing the pram. The nurse rang a handbell briefly. All over the garden visitors started across the lawn towards her. She didn’t bend down and say, ‘Ah, what’s the matter, then?’ or anything like that as they drew close. It was sad but when she cried, Morwenna had the opposite effect on people of the one she wanted. She cried too hard or something. It put people off, even hardened their faces against her. Old ladies, who were quick to admire her pretty hair or pinch her apple cheeks when she was happy, grew shifty and looked about them for assistance, as though Morwenna’s grief were a bad smell that somebody might think was theirs.

  The nurse’s face grew stiff and wary and she avoided looking at Morwenna at all. ‘Your father said he won’t be long,’ she told Garfield. ‘You’re to wait in the car.’

  ‘But I want to see Rachel,’ Morwenna almost shouted because the crying was making her
breath come in little rushes.

  ‘Visiting time just ended,’ the nurse said. ‘You can see Mummy another day.’

  Morwenna stood and stared at the door, as though will power alone might sweep the horrid nurse aside and open it for her.

  Garfield gave a little pull on one of the shoulder straps of her dress. ‘Come on, Wenn,’ he told her. ‘He’ll soon be out.’

  The car was never locked. The locks hadn’t worked for ages and Antony probably didn’t think locked doors were Quakerly. Morwenna ran ahead and climbed in. She liked going in the car and he hoped the prospect of a ride would distract her but he had no sooner climbed on board in front of her than she kicked out at the back of the seat.

  ‘Want Mummy,’ she said, Mummy, not Rachel, and she started crying again only differently, quietly, just for him, so he would know it was real.

  ‘I know,’ he said, doing his best to feel grown up. ‘Me too. I miss her too, Wenn, but she has to be here for a bit as she’s not well. She’s not well in her head.’

  ‘She is well!’

  ‘No. She’s … She’s depressed and it’s not safe for her at home. Not for a bit.’

  But at this she started to cry loudly again, her public cry as he thought of it.

  ‘Shut up,’ he tried saying because she was making him want to cry too. ‘Shut up! It’s all your fault she ran in like that.’

  ‘Nooo!’

  ‘Yes it is, stupid. If you hadn’t gone on and on about look at me she’d have stayed a bit longer. But you made her say fuck.’

  ‘I didn’t.’ There was another thump on his seat-back and then the crying grew almost painful in such a close confinement so, after a few ineffectual and rather angry pleases he got out again and shut the door behind him.

  He leaned on the bonnet, enjoying the heat of it through his shorts but taking care not to scald his bare bits. With any luck the heat in the car would send Morwenna to sleep soon. He watched the other visitors leave.