Dear Nobody

by Berlie Doherty

  But I’m not the same person, and I never will be, ever again.

  They’re shy of me, I suppose, and so is Chris, in a strange way. I couldn’t wait to tell him that I’d felt you moving inside me and he looked at me in a grinning, embarrassed sort of way. ‘Put your hands on my tummy,’ I told him. ‘You might feel it, too.’ But he wouldn’t.

  If he’s shy of you, and of me, how can he ever be a father to you? I know I’m right. We don’t touch now, not in that intimate way. We don’t stroke each other. We hold hands and kiss, and I yearn for him, but I’m scared. Now that it’s too late, I’m scared. What would we be doing, if we lived together and we were afraid to touch each other? He’s got his English Paper Three to take, and then I’ll tell him.

  So, anyway, I went to Grandad’s with Robbie. Robbie is such a pain these days. His teeth keep growing. I’m sure they do. I’m sure his teeth weren’t that big this time last year. All ten-year-old boys seem to have huge front teeth. I can’t understand it. And he’s always giggling about things. He used to be a little boy that I could tell stories to and play rounders with. Not long ago.

  On the way to Grandad’s he said, ‘When are you going to – you know what?’ and he started giggling in this silly high-pitched baby giggle voice of his, and little watery bubbles kept fluffing out between his great big teeth.

  ‘You know what what?’ I asked him, mad at him for being so silly and babyish and toothy, even though I knew exactly what it was that was making him like that. And he stuck out his stomach as full as it would go without him actually falling over, and kept looking up at me and giggling, his face all red and shiny. ‘Stop being stupid,’ I snapped at him. ‘I haven’t a clue what you’re on about.’

  ‘I bet Chris has,’ he giggled.

  Grandad had been swimming. He caught up with us just as we got to his gate, and he jumped over the wall so he could beat us up the path. He bowed us in and his dog catapulted into us and tried to bowl us over.

  ‘Watch it,’ Grandad said, and he put out his hand to steady me. He slid it down my shoulder to my waist, the way he does, and I could feel him tensing. I wear loose clothes, they hide a lot. Now he would surely know.

  ‘Grandad…’ I began, but he lifted his hand away and without looking at me followed Robbie into the kitchen. I couldn’t make myself follow him. I went straight upstairs to see my nan. She likes to sit by her window staring out at the street through a crack in the curtains. I can’t imagine what it is that she thinks about all the time. It’s as if she slipped into old age without even realizing. She’s hard work. I sit and talk to her even though I feel uncomfortable with her. I feel sorry for her. Her eyes are always sad. What frightens me most is that Mum is a bit like that sometimes, a tiny bit, especially these days, as if deep inside her head her own thoughts are much more interesting than what’s going on around her.

  Grandad and Robbie came in with the sandwiches and put them on the little table that Nan uses. Grandad kissed her on her permed hair as he put the tray down, then went downstairs again, whistling something without a tune between his teeth. He came back up with a glass vase and some roses from his garden. ‘Here, Dorrie, smell,’ he told her, and she shifted her sad eyes round to him for a minute and shook her head and then looked away again.

  ‘What d’you think of England’s chances, then?’ Grandad asked Robbie, and they settled down to talk about the World Cup, and I sauntered over, to the window with a wedge of cheese sandwich in my hand and stood looking out at the kids playing in the street. You could just hear their voices, echoing against the bricks. It would rain again soon. The air had that kind of hollowness about it.

  And then Nan said, ‘When’s that baby of yours due?’

  Grandad and Robbie stopped talking immediately. I could feel Grandad’s eyes on me. I made myself look up at him.

  ‘What are you on about Dorrie?’ Grandad said. ‘This is little Helen you’re talking to.’

  Nan just kept her eyes fixed on me, chewing on a sandwich crust.

  ‘I’m not little Helen.’ I could hardly talk, I’d started shaking so much. ‘Nan’s right, Grandad.’

  Robbie started giggling again.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Nan sighed. ‘There must be bad blood in our family. Like mother, like daughter.’

  On the afternoon of our last exam Tom and I went out on our bikes. I’ve never cycled so far and so fast all in one go, ever. We scorched through the Hope Valley to Castleton, and slogged our way up Winnats Pass. My heart felt like a red, swelling balloon, blown up to burst. Brilliant, Winnats Pass. You feel as if you’ll never climb out of it, and suddenly you’re up and into air and light and you’re coasting free as water all the way to Buxton. We were yelling our heads off going downhill.

  ‘Let’s hit Wildboarclough!’ Tom shouted, and we bombed off head-down out to the moors, never seeing a car or a bike or a hiker. Plenty of sheep up there. Plenty of curlews, rippling away like rivers. We flung ourselves off our bikes when we got to the top and emptied our water bottles down our throats.

  ‘Hell,’ said Tom, flat on his back with his shirt off and his tracksuit trows rolled up to his knees. ‘You’ve got to come to France next month, Dope-head.’

  ‘Can’t.’

  ‘Why the hell not? I’ll lend you the dosh if you’re short.’

  ‘It’s not that.’

  ‘What then? Helen? She’ll not stop you.’

  I wanted to tell him then about Helen. I didn’t know how to say it. I’ve got Helen pregnant. Helen’s having a kid. We’re having a baby. I hadn’t got the vocabulary for it, and that was the truth. I’d spent the last two weeks scribbling thousands of useless words on to exam papers and I couldn’t bring out the most significant sentence in my life.

  ‘She’s okay is Helen,’ Tom said. ‘What d’you reckon? Will you two stay the course?’

  I pretended to laugh. ‘Newcastle’s a long way from Sheffield,’ I said. And then I said, ‘We might have to, though,’ really quiet, changing my voice because it was thickened in my throat like treacle. That should have been enough for anyone; but not for old Tom-boy. He didn’t say a word. How can someone who’s been predicted to get three As be so dense?

  Tom cycled on ahead and I slowed down to look over the valley. I knew that before the month was up Helen and I must have our talk, must decide what we should do. I felt a tingling of nerves as I started coasting down Wildboarclough, picking up speed as I went, just holding myself back with the lightest touch on the brakes, just leaning into the bends. There it was, spread before me, the huge vast green landscape, and no way of seeing over the edge, or beyond the blue hills. If I eased off the brakes I’d hurtle down into space, into nothing, into amazing calm.

  A couple of days later we had the sixth-form farewell do. Actually it was an alternative do arranged by Tom, because half of them wanted to go to a disco in town which is usually full of forty-year-old blokes trying to get off with sixteen-year-old girls. It’s pathetic. It makes me ill. So Tom suggested that we burn off to hear a Zambian band playing at the Leadmill. About ten of us went, including Helen and Ruthlyn. We would have to make some plan soon, I knew that. I had no idea what we would decide to do.

  Helen was in a weird state, right from the moment we set off. She was as brittle as glass. I couldn’t fathom her mood that night. One minute she was holding my hand and letting me kiss her and the next minute she was cold and quiet, a million miles away. She tortures me when she’s like this. I didn’t know what the hell was going on. I didn’t know till the end of the evening, till I was walking her home.

  She looked fantastic. She was wearing something loose and blue and floating, and her hair was soft and gleaming, always catching the light, wherever she moved. When the band started playing they all got up to dance but I just watched Helen. You should see her dancing. Everyone watches her. She pretends she doesn’t know, and she dances with her eyes half closed, and every so often she’d glance at me and give me that amazing smile of hers. There was
no one else in the room as far as I was concerned.

  While I was watching her I had an idea. It was such a perfect idea, and it just floated into the air, so thrilling and obvious that I wanted to shout it out to her over the music. I held it in my head, though. I went over to her and started dancing, full of it. I decided to tell her on the way home. It was this: I would ask to have my university place transferred to Sheffield. It was so simple.

  June 23rd

  Dear Nobody,

  I knew it had to be tonight.

  I tried to make it the best night we’d ever had together. I tried to let Chris know that he was the most special person in the world. Every now and again I remembered what it was I was going to have to say to him at the end of the evening. It kept rising up in me, as if it was going to drown me. I kept smiling at him to tell him everything was all right. He was watching me all the time. I knew he was anxious. He knew something was up.

  The Zambian band was playing such buoyant, happy music. They were all laughing and cheerful. You can’t resist dancing to music like that. The rhythm seems to go right into your blood and bones. Everyone was dancing – old men and kids. Our group loved it. I was wearing a very loose dress and I was dancing just for Chris. I knew people were watching me, and I knew for sure that it was obvious now that I was pregnant. I knew the exact moment when Tom realized. He went absolutely white. He looked at Chris, and then at me, and I smiled at him. ‘It’s all right, Tom,’ I wanted to tell him. ‘It’s all right.’

  Chris sat for ages just watching me. I think he was miles away. I don’t think he even saw the ripples of knowing that were passing through Tom and the others. He suddenly jumped up and came over to me and let himself go. His feet go wild when he dances. You’d think he’d tied them on to the ends of his fingers with elastic bands. He has no co-ordination at all. How he stays on his bike I don’t know. And all the time he was dancing and throwing his feet round I was thinking how much I like him, little Nobody. I can’t say that other word. It’s too dangerous. It hurts and hurts and hurts.

  It was nearly as light as day when we came out. We were all together at first and then everyone seemed to melt away in twos and groups and it was just me and Chris, arms round each other, walking as slow as smoke to make the miles stretch out. I wanted it to last forever. I didn’t want to say what I knew I would have to say.

  And Chris said to me, at the corner of our road, ‘Nell, we shouldn’t have to say good night to each other. We should be together all the time now.’

  And that was when I told him.

  Helen

  You have no right to do this to me. You can’t shut me out of your life, now. You can’t keep me away. I won’t stay away.

  I threw that one in the bin.

  Darling Nell

  I love you.

  And that.

  Helen

  You can’t mean it. Please don’t mean it. Please see me again. Please let’s talk.

  And that.

  I wrote them all again, and posted them in one envelope. I wrote every day. She didn’t answer. She hadn’t got the decency to answer. Suddenly I didn’t exist. Suddenly fifty per cent of that baby was deleted for ever. She didn’t even ask me what I wanted. She just told me what she wanted and walked away, out of my life, into a room with a locked door. Ruthlyn told me Helen was upset. Too damned right she should be upset. She’d locked me out from the start. That was what I realized then. She’d made every decision on her own, as if it had nothing to do with me.

  And when I wasn’t feeling anger, I was feeling despair. I was helpless to do anything. I was adrift in space, and looking at Earth, looking at Helen; I was a million miles away and I was in exile.

  My dad heard me crying one night. He didn’t give me the old cliches about plenty more fish in the sea, or I’d get over it, and I was better off without her, or even big boys don’t cry. Nothing like that. He came in and sat on the chair by my bed and touched my shoulder, just to let me know he was there, and he said I might fancy watching Ireland playing Romania later, and he’d save a pint for me. I just watched the play-off penalties. For five whole minutes I forgot about Helen. Almost.

  Tom asked me to come and watch England and Belgium in the semi-final on the big screen at the Poly. We went to the climbing wall first. I just sat and watched him. All those voices round me, echoing like sleep. All those students moving about and laughing and acting as if nothing had happened. I couldn’t believe they didn’t know, that they didn’t care. I felt as if I was drowning in some grey, gluey paste. I followed Tom out like an old man.

  ‘You’re as miserable as sin,’ Tom said.

  ‘Get lost, Tom,’ I said.

  ‘She’s a cow to do this to you,’ he said.

  I nearly hit him. If he hadn’t been bigger than me, and strong enough to hold my arm back, I’d have punched his nose in. He put his arm across my shoulder and steered me into the Mandela Building. It was crowded with students, about a thousand of them at least, all sitting round watching the match on a big screen. I sat like a gawping fish all through the game, Helen’s face floating in front of the screen, Helen laughing, Helen tilting back her head, Helen dancing with her eyes closed and her hair drifting across her face. Suddenly, in the last minute of extra time, England scored. It was like a shot from a gun – bang! straight into goal. Clean as ice. I was up on my feet and yelling with the rest of them. I didn’t even know I was doing it. The whole room was up, screaming their heads off, waving their arms about. We never heard the commentary after that. We barged out of the Mandela Building with our arms in the air yelling and cheering our heads off, about a thousand of us storming down the Moor, waving our arms in the air. It was like being swept along in a tide. We were delirious. England, England! I was shouting.

  I don’t remember getting home that night.

  I was sick. I remember that.

  July

  * * *

  When I knew that she really meant it the only thing I could think about was getting away. After I’d spent days cycling up and down her road, waiting round our old haunts in town and going to our special places to look out for her, the places all turned sour on me. I couldn’t bear the thought of being there without her. The Leadmill, the record shops, Fox House, the bar at Atkinson’s where we used to drink hot chocolate; I hated them all. I dreaded the thought of bumping into her and her not talking to me. I was afraid I might break down or do something stupid if I saw her. Everywhere I went was haunted by Helen. Every time I got on a bus I expected her to be on it. Every time I went into a room I thought she’d be in it. She inhabited all the spaces of Sheffield, yet she wasn’t there. She was nowhere. She’d been spirited away from my life, and the best part of me had gone with her.

  So when Tom came round one day and sat with me in the yard for a bit and said, ‘The offer’s still on, Chris. If you’d like to come to France, I’ll lend you the dosh,’ I rose up out of my coma and said, ‘Yes, I’ll go.’

  I wish I hadn’t.

  Dear Nobody,

  Today I was sitting on my bed with all these letters to you spread round me, and Chris’s photograph in my hand, and Mum came into the room. She stood in the doorway with some clean sheets for my bed folded over her arms and watched me. I could feel her eyes on me. I kept thinking about what my nan had said, ‘Like mother, like daughter.’ What did she mean, Mum? I wanted to say, and daren’t. And I wanted to say, I’ve finished with Chris. Help me, Mum.

  I was looking at Chris’s photograph for the last time because I had decided to put it away, out of sight, out of mind. She just stood there saying nothing and then she came over to my bed. I couldn’t look at her. I wanted to reach out to her and tell her. If she stops in my room, I thought, I’ll tell her. For a moment she hesitated by my bed, and I knew she was looking at the photograph and wondering, perhaps, at all these letters. For a moment it seemed as if she was going to say something. We were in a web of silence in that room, and something was swaying between us, spinning stran
ds from one to the other. I was afraid to move or to breathe in case the strands broke. She leaned forward, very slightly, and put my clean sheets on my bed, covering the letters, covering his photograph, and as I looked up she walked out of the room, head bowed a little, and closed the door behind her.

  Tom and I left for France very early on the 11 th of July, exactly twenty days after Helen finished with me. It was a terrible journey. I got a puncture cycling to the station, the guard didn’t want us to put our bikes in the goods van even though we’d paid for them, the train broke down so by the time we reached London it was the rush hour and we had to cycle through death traffic to get to Victoria Station, and Tom was sick on the ferry. But at last we were in France. We were training it down to the Loire Valley, then doing a sort of cross-France tour, finishing up in the Alps and cycling home at the end of the month. Hippy Harrington had given us some books at the end of the exams – his bibles, he called them. One of them was called Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. ‘Is it a manual?’ Tom asked me. ‘Not much point having a manual for motor bikes.’ ‘Is it hell,’ I said. ‘It’s a pillow and it’s about the pain of existence.’ I think it kept me sane, that book. Tom was hopeless. He’d happily do all the shopping and cooking and put both tents up rather than get his spanners out and mend his bike, so I did all that. Helps you to think, anyway, about life, I suppose. Brings you down to basics, when you have to cope with staying alive. Sometimes I found that I was really happy. I wouldn’t have believed it possible. We’d be cycling down one of those amazing straight French roads with fields and fields of massive yellow sunflowers on either side of us and only birds to hear, or Tom chanting away on his bike, and the long, hot day stretching in front of us and behind us, and I’d realize that I felt completely happy. When I finished reading Zen at night and put my torch out and lay listening to owls in the dark: that was when the aching started up.