Dear Nobody

by Berlie Doherty

  So today I went to the Family Planning Clinic.

  I thought I would ask Ruthlyn to go with me but in the end I didn’t. I just can’t bring myself to tell her. You imagine you’ll tell your best friend when something like this happens to you but when it comes to it you can’t. You can’t tell anyone. She guesses, I’m sure she does, but she’s too discreet to ask me outright and I’m too ashamed and nervous to tell her.

  So I went to the Family Planning Clinic on my own and as soon as I went into the reception room and saw all those young women sitting there, most of them smoking, most of them looking fed up and tired and lonely, I knew I couldn’t stay. I felt desperate inside.

  I pretended I was looking for someone who wasn’t there and then I just walked out and caught the bus home.

  I’m so frightened. I feel as if I’m walking through a wilderness. There’s nothing to hold on to.

  Go away. Please go away.

  Dear Joan,

  I’m just having a breather after a session at the climbing wall at the Poly. I haven’t got any of the proper gear yet but when I’m a student (next year, I’m going to Newcastle University to do an English degree, did I tell you?) I think I’ll be able to borrow ropes and a helmet and stuff there. You must tell me about some of your expeditions some time. I could do with some tips. It’s a wonderful hobby, isn’t it? I’ve only just started so I can’t call it a hobby yet (in fact I haven’t quite got to the top of the wall yet but I can see how to do it. I twisted my ankle a bit because I came down a bit fast, but when it’s better I think I’ll get to the top easily). I think climbing must be in my blood. Did you climb in Derbyshire when you lived down here? I expect you climb in the Lake District now, or Scotland. Maybe I’ll come up there to do some when Fm more experienced and you could show me the ropes! Joking apart, I would like to pop in to see you some time.

  Your son,

  Christopher

  I had to wait round for hours at the climbing wall while Tom shinned up and down the thing, bragging at the top of his voice. My ankle was hurting and my fingers were sore, and my knees felt like balloons. I wrote a letter to my mother. I felt it had just the right tone, not pretending I was an expert climber yet, but showing her that we have got something in common and opening things out for her to write back to me. I put it back in my school bag and waited for Tom to come off the wall.

  ‘You all right?’ he shouted at me when he’d finished at last. Of course everybody had to look at me.

  ‘Course,’ I said. ‘It was great, that. Classic.’

  ‘You didn’t stay on long.’

  ‘I remembered I had an important letter to write.’

  He grinned. Old Tom. He thinks he’s the handsomest devil alive but you should see his teeth when he grins.

  ‘Coming for a jar?’ he asked me.

  ‘Just one,’ I said. ‘I’ve got a timed essay to do tonight.’

  ‘Haven’t we all,’ said Tom. ‘ “Hamlet could do with a pint of Heineken. Discuss.” ’

  I hobbled after him to the pub and sat with my head down and my hands clasping the glass on my knees as if I was trying to heat the stuff up. The noise of the place swirled round me. I felt as if I was drowning in it. I wanted to think about Helen. What was she doing now? What was happening to her? Those angry-eyed birds glared down at me, peering from the shadows. I wanted to go home.

  ‘I wish you’d shut up,’ Tom said. ‘I can’t get a word in edgeways.’

  I shrugged. The pub was full of noisy people, laughing, talking too loud, pushing against each other. It reminded me of a cattle stall over at Hope market. If you thought about it too much, it even smelt like it.

  ‘I’m going cycling in France this summer,’ Tom said. ‘Don’t fancy coming, do you?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘We always said we’d do it after the As. You’re fit enough, aren’t you?’

  ‘Haven’t done any long distance since we did the Dales.’

  ‘Plenty of time to work up to it. Do a long run every weekend.’

  I sighed and shook my head. It would mean four weeks away from Helen.

  ‘France, though!’ Tom leaned forward, raising his glass a little like a toast. ‘La belle France! Baguettes at dawn! Say you’ll come! It’ll be miserable on my own. I’ll go anyway, but it won’t be the same.’

  I leaned back in my bench. France! We’d always said we’d do it, he was right, before we went off to university.

  ‘You were dead keen before the mocks, Chris.’

  ‘I’ve gone off it, that’s all.’

  Maybe Helen would come out with Ruthlyn and camp in Brittany and we could travel there and back with them. What’s it like, camping when you’re six months’ pregnant? What’s it like, being pregnant?

  ‘Wake up,’ said Tom.

  ‘I was just thinking,’ I said. ‘What if Hamlet had got Ophelia pregnant?’

  ‘Bloody hell!’ said Tom. He drained back his glass of beer and stared at me, froth clinging like a moustache to his top lip. ‘Bloody hell, Chris!’

  March 22nd

  Dear Nobody,

  I bought a home pregnancy test today. I was sick again this morning. You are an alien growth in me. You are a disease. I want you not to exist.

  I have to know.

  I stayed off school till mid-morning. Mum and Dad were both out at work. I wish I could have asked Ruthlyn to buy the kit for me but I just didn’t have the courage. I went to Boots in town where I wouldn’t be recognized, and stood dithering by the counter and looking away and wondering about buying throat pastilles instead, and then, of all things, I was served by a male assistant. He didn’t even look at me. Maybe he was embarrassed too, or maybe he’s bored stiff of selling these things to scared school girls. I wore make-up, which I never do because it makes my face itch. I pinched it out of Mum’s room. I wanted to look grown-up, but when I saw myself in the mirror in Boots I looked ghastly, deathly white under orange daubs. I went home on the bus clutching my little parcel as if I was scared that someone was going to mug me and run off with it.

  The house was so quiet. I took the parcel up to my room and drew the curtain. The kit consisted of a tray and a plastic stopper with some liquid in and a little test tube and a dipper thing that looked like a swizzle stick for a cocktail. It should have had one of those paper umbrellas on the top. Everything was in miniature, like a child’s toy chemistry set. I had to pour the liquid from the plastic bag thing into the test tube and immediately it went bright purple. Something like giggles kept popping out of me, only I don’t think I was laughing. Actually, I think I was crying. Aloud, you know, in little loud hiccupping bursts. My hands were dithering so much that it’s a wonder I didn’t spill everything over the carpet. But I did it, somehow I managed to read the instructions and hold things the right way up and do it. Then I had to wait five minutes.

  Have you any idea how long five minutes last? The silence in the house while I sat looking at my watch was like that deathly quiet you get in a three-hour exam, I swear it. Three hours when you read and read the questions and you don’t know any of the answers. I tried to think of all the things people would be doing during that time. Mum would be typing away on her computer keyboard at the bank. Dad would be filing books away, humming a jazz tune to himself in his quiet library. Grandad would be making himself a cup of tea, stirring and stirring the leaves in his teapot the way he does, peering down into its steam. Ruthlyn would be in Maths, where I should be. And Chris. What were you doing then, Chris, while my test tube was concocting its brew? Were you thinking about me?

  And when I took the cocktail swizzle stick out it wasn’t pink at the end. It was white. I read the instructions again. If the end is pink, you are pregnant. If it is white, you are not pregnant. I’m not pregnant. You don’t exist.

  You are nobody.

  Dear Nobody,

  Later.

  After I’d done that pregnancy test I went to the music centre to work, just as if it was an ordinary day. W
ell, it was, after all. I had to do some work on a Bach mass. I love that music. I love all kinds of way-out music and I suppose Bach is way-out for people of my age to like, too. It just bursts in my head, all the time, when I’ve been working on it. I looked through some of the music scores and found myself reading composers’ names out loud. I’d never realized before how beautiful they sound. Stravinsky. Vivaldi. Delius. No wonder they write glorious music when they’ve got names like that. How can I ever hope to be a composer with a name like Garton? I looked in the Gs in the index to see if there was a Garton there and I found Gluck. Fancy having a name like Gluck. It sounds more like something going down the plughole. Gluck Gluck Gluck, I said aloud, and all the music students looked up at me and frowned.

  I felt great.

  I ran home with my head all full of music and had a fight with Robbie at teatime because he reckoned he was always going to have my tea. But I’d decided I was hungry again. Mum just sat back in her chair in the kitchen and let us get on with it. She looked really tired. I’ve been so obsessed with myself lately that I haven’t taken any notice of anyone else. I wonder what her private thoughts are, if she has sensed what I’ve been going through. How hard it would have been to tell her. I just wouldn’t have known where to start. I wish I could talk to her. I haven’t been able to since I was a little girl, I don’t know why. I don’t think she loves me as much now that I’m grown-up. Sometimes I think she’d like me to be a little girl again, to make pretty clothes for and cuddle at bedtime. She doesn’t really know me any more.

  As soon as I could I went to Chris’s house. I couldn’t wait to see him. I wanted to tell him it was all right, and that the wheels of the world had started turning again. He wasn’t in, after all, but I’d loved the walk there down all the fresh rainy streets.

  ‘You all right?’ said Chris’s father. ‘You’re looking pasty.’

  ‘I’m fine. Tell Chris I’m fine.’

  ‘Come on in and wait for a bit,’ he said. ‘He mightn’t be long. He’s playing on a climbing frame or something.’

  I really like Chris’s dad. I can never tell whether he’s pulling my leg or not, some of the things he says.

  ‘I was just going to switch off the kiln. Want to have a look down the grotto?’

  I followed him down the narrow cellar steps that led to his pottery room. The shelves were lined with cups and bowls and vases waiting to be glazed, and there were stacks of ice-cream cartons with interesting words on the labels. Grog and Dolomite, Wood-ash. Ochre. I let the names roll in my head. It was hot and stuffy down there. He switched off his kiln, and the low buzzing sound that I’d been aware of stopped.

  ‘Can I see in the kiln?’ I asked.

  ‘Much too hot,’ he told me. ‘I’ll have to leave it a day before I open that door. Have a look at these. I took them out the other day.’ He slid a tray of mugs from a shelf. ‘Look at that,’ he said, pleased. ‘Aren’t they grand! Just right.’

  He handled his cups lovingly, holding them up to the light so I could see the oyster-shell pattern on the base. I’d never thought of cups as works of art. They’re just useful containers.

  ‘It’s lovely stuff, clay,’ he told me. I think he’s a bit obsessed with the stuff. I think you’d have to be, to mess about with it all day. Perhaps that’s where the word “potty” comes from. ‘Have you never worked it? It’s like breadmaking, only faster. It’s slippery as fishes when you get it going, and you’ve got to get it just right or it sinks in your hands into a wet mess. Have a go. Here, while you’re waiting. Have a go.’

  He sat me on a stool in front of some clay, and set a pail of water by me. ‘Just play with it,’ he said. ‘Get used to the texture, that’s the thing.’

  He set his wheel going and dumped a lump of clay on to the centre of it. He hollowed it out with his thumbs and then kept slipping water over it while he bulged the sides up fast with the crooks of his fingers. ‘Got a memory, clay has,’ he told me. ‘Once you’ve got it going one way, it’ll always go that way. Bit like me!’ he laughed. ‘Stubborn.’ The stuff was fluid under his big fingers, solid and liquid at the same time. It was like living water. I couldn’t take my eyes off it.

  ‘Don’t be scared of it, that’s the thing,’ he said. ‘Try it.’

  There was a kind of chanting going on in my head. I tried to close it out. I rolled my piece of clay; I loved the way it slithered in my fingers. I tried to shape it into a ball, then dug in my thumbs to make a hole, and at the same time I was pinching the base to make it bell out. I was totally absorbed in this. It hollowed out like a cave. I put it down on the ledge. The chanting wouldn’t go away. I picked up a small blob of clay and began to shape it. I didn’t know what I was doing. I made a tiny doll, without even thinking about it. It was like the little plasticine models I used to make at infant school. It had a tiny head and a little round fat body. It was so small I could hold it in my palm and curl my hand over it. I dropped the little round body into the hollow cave I’d made, then swiftly, swiftly in case Mr Marshall had seen me, I dipped and wet the top so that the lips of the cave met like a mermaid’s purse. I nursed it in my hands, shaping it and smoothing it.

  ‘What’s that you’re making?’ Mr Marshall laughed. ‘An Easter egg, is it?’

  ‘Something like that,’ I said. It was as if he’d woken me up from a deep sleep. I put the egg down and let it roll on the table. I felt myself growing hot all over. Pins of heat like scratches prickled my skin. The air was black around me. Somewhere under a black sea a voice boomed. I was in a hot ocean, and my arms and my legs were lumbering things, sliding out and down, and my head was an enormous cave, and still the voice boomed, and then turned silver-thin and went out.

  When I came round I was sitting by the open door of the cellar, with the night air cold on me and Chris’s dad kneeling by me. He was holding my hand.

  ‘I forget how stuffy it gets down here sometimes,’ he said. ‘You frightened the life out of me, the way you keeled over then. You sit there till you’re better. I’ll bring a rug down to put round you.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. I was cold all over.

  ‘Don’t be soft. Sorry! I’ve seen big strong men faint in my time, soldiers even, in the heat. Passing-out parade they call it, and they’re all passing out, dropping like flies in the heat. You’ll be fine in a jiffy. I’ll ring your dad to come and pick you up in a bit.’

  ‘No. Don’t do that!’ I said. Mr Marshall gave me an odd look then. He must have heard panic in my voice, or something.

  ‘His band’s playing at the Ringinglow tonight,’ I added. I wasn’t sure whether that was true or not. I couldn’t remember what day it was, even. ‘I’ll be fine in a minute. I feel better already.’

  Mr Marshall made me some tea and we waited a little for Chris to come back. I just wanted to go to bed. Mr Marshall walked with me to the corner of our road and then I just ran home and straight to my room. I wanted to howl.

  You don’t exist.

  You’re nobody.

  So why? Why?

  I had another letter to my mother in my pocket. When I read through the last one it sounded as if a seven-year-old had written it. I walked home in the pouring rain, mouthing the words of the new letter, wondering whether I’d have the courage to actually send it, whether it was worth the effort even, when I saw my Aunty Jill arriving at our house and Dad letting her in. I ran into the house just as Dad was closing the door and shook myself like a dog in the hall, wanting to annoy them for some reason.

  ‘Could have done with you half an hour ago,’ Dad told me. ‘Your Helen was here. She fainted down in the cellar. I’m not surprised, stuffy little hole it is.’

  ‘I’ll go round and see her,’ I said.

  ‘Do no such thing,’ Dad told me. ‘She’s as right as rain, but I told her to get an early night. No point waking her up, Chris.’

  ‘She’s a nice girl, Helen,’ Jill said. ‘You’ll miss her when you go away.’

  ‘I know,’ I
said. My insides had gone as fidgety as an anthill. I didn’t want to stand in the hall chatting. I wanted to see Helen.

  Dad shrugged. ‘Who can tell, at their age? They think the world of each other, those two. Too young to get tied down, though, Chris.’

  ‘I know. I know that. I’m not daft,’ I said. I went into the kitchen to put the kettle on. Anything to get away from them both, grinning away at me as if having a girl-friend was like winning a ribbon on sports day. ‘Did she come round for any reason?’ I asked, as casually as possible.

  ‘Aye. She came to tell you she was fine,’ Dad laughed.

  I closed my eyes. I leaned my head against the tiled wall.

  ‘She looked fine as well, white as a ghost down there.’

  ‘She’s had flu,’ I said. ‘Something like that.’

  ‘She told me she’s doing Dance for one of her exams,’ Dad said. ‘Funny subject, that.’