Dear Nobody

by Berlie Doherty

  Oh, Nell. I wanted you so much.

  August

  * * *

  August 8th

  Dear Nobody,

  It’s too hot. I’ve turned into a tottering boat, a huge swaying galleon with round sails. Can I possibly get bigger than this and not burst? I saw a film once of a man stuffing himself with food till he exploded over all the people in the restaurant. I laughed at the time.

  And you don’t help. You’re nudging me and elbowing me all the time. I expect it’s getting a bit cramped for you in there. Sometimes I think you’re as big as a whale, lumbering up out of the sea, arching your great long back. I’ve heard a record of whales singing. They can hear each other forty miles apart in the ocean. I wonder if you’re singing in there.

  I used to think oceans would be silent places. They must sound like motorways with all that whale-singing going on.

  I’m being besieged by doctors and midwives and health visitors, monitoring my weight and your size and your heart beat and my blood pressure, till I’m beginning to feel like a campaign rather than a person. They’re taking me over. I’m scared that they’re going to take you over, too. I dream that I’m lying in a bed in a hospital and that someone walks past me with a pram. I know that you’re in it and that they’re taking you away from me and I try to sit up but my arms and legs are weighted down, try to scream out but my mouth is bandaged up, and my mother sits at the side of the bed and smiles down at me.

  I’ve been given breathing and relaxtion exercises to do but as soon as I start to do them I start shaking. Nobody, what’s it going to be like, giving birth to you? However many people are with me on that day, I’ll still be on my own with the pain. In my head I scream out loud, no one can hear me, they think I’m calm, that I’m not worrying. I sit in front of the television at home with Robbie and my face is quiet but in my head I’m screaming out loud.

  Ruthlyn came to the relaxation class with me today. I hate going. I feel really out of it, without a partner, years younger than anyone. At least Ruthlyn sees the funny side of things. We giggled all the way to the clinic on the bus. People kept looking at us, as if we were invading their privacy just by laughing, then they sort of smiled at each other knowingly when they noticed me. You, I mean. I felt about twelve years old, Nobody. One woman actually patted my stomach as I got off the bus! What a cheek! How would she feel if I went and patted hers? ‘You look bonny, love,’ she said to me and patted my lump, you, as if she was a good witch charming me. I didn’t feel bonny. My back aches and aches all the time, you’re so heavy; my head is screaming inside.

  At the ante-natal clinic I had to lie on my back on the floor and breathe in and out, slowly and regularly, and curl round and move my legs up and down, very gently. I was really aware of you then. Some of the women had their husbands with them. There were all these bloated women on the floor having their ankles squeezed by partners and friends, trying to simulate labour pains. Ruthlyn did her best, trying to look solemn and practised, but every time she caught my eyes she cracked out laughing. It’s all right for her. Laughing hurts. None of us took it seriously. It wasn’t real. We were all as shy as each other and smiling at each other like kids at a new school. I felt embarrassed, yet I felt supported, too, by all of them. Embarrassed and embraced. That sounds nice, doesn’t it? Afterwards we chatted about when our babies were due and suddenly, after all, it seemed terribly real. A few weeks away! It’s really, really going to happen.

  I can’t wait to meet you.

  I felt relaxed when I came out. I could have gone straight to sleep. You were dozing, for a change. Ruthlyn and I sat behind a young mother on the bus. Her baby kept peeping over the top of the seat at us, and we were both laughing at it and ducking our heads, trying to get it to smile at us. It looked so solemn, like a little old professor, just staring at us. I wonder what on earth it was thinking. Do babies have thoughts? Do you, in there? Or are thoughts only related to experience?

  Then all of a sudden the baby had had enough of us, or of the journey, or of life, or something; anyway, it started howling. Its eyes puckered up and its cheeks bulged out like red balloons and its mouth turned into a black square and it screeched and yelled and howled, great ear-splitting volleys of sound like fireworks whooshing off. The poor mother tried everything – kissing it and shushing it and standing it up and rocking it and shoving the crook of her finger into its mouth, and in the end she was redder than the baby was and everyone on the bus was squirming about feeling hot and cross. I’m sure she got off before her stop. She just suddenly stood up, lugging her screaming bundle and her two bags of shopping with her. Her fold-up pram just wouldn’t separate itself from all the other stuff in the luggage rack. I stood up to help her and she gave me a real sharing, hopeless, pitying sort of look. She didn’t have a ring on either. Does that mean she lives on her own with her baby? And does it scream like that all night? I can still hear it now. Could you hear it, little Nobody? Did you respond to it, in your sub-sonic ocean voice?

  Ruthlyn grinned at me when I sat down again. ‘Little brat!’ she whispered. ‘Yours won’t be like that, Helen.’

  But Ruthlyn and I were miles apart by then. Miles and miles.

  By the time the A-level results came out France seemed a life-time away. I cycled round to Tom’s and we went down to school together. We could have had them sent through the post but quite honestly I don’t think I’d have been able to open the envelope. We shook hands outside the door of the secretary’s office just as we had done on the morning of the first exam. Mrs Price smiled at me and nodded towards the table where the results were spread out in little folded-up strips of paper. I couldn’t find my name at first, then I couldn’t find the marks on it, there was so much wording. I found English. A! I whooped out loud and Mrs Price chuckled. My heart started pumping again. I hadn’t realized it had stopped. C for French. It stopped again. F for General. F! F! They must have made a mistake. My head was rapidly doing sums to count up the points and I realized there was one missing. I couldn’t find it. I couldn’t even remember what subject it was. I had to sit down for a bit. I needed three Bs for the course, and I hadn’t got them. It was then that I knew for sure how much my English degree meant to me. I hadn’t allowed myself to think about it up till now, not really. It hadn’t been possible for me to focus properly on anything. Maybe being away had helped. Maybe Bryn had helped, in a strange, perverse, upside-down sort of way. And now it looked as if I’d lost my chance, after all. Old Fate again. It has a way of taking over your life, all right.

  Mrs Price looked up from her typing.

  ‘All right?’ she asked.

  ‘Dunno,’ I said. ‘I think I’ve cocked it up.’

  She came over to me and looked through the papers.

  ‘I need three Bs but I’ve got an A and a C and an F and I can’t find one,’ I cleared my throat. ‘Sociology. That’s it.’

  ‘You’ve got a B,’ she told me.

  She has a sort of moustache growing over her top lip, but she’s nice. Sometimes I think it must be good to have a mum like Mrs Price. I could smell her talcum powder.

  ‘Go and have a word with Mr Harrington,’ she told me. ‘He’ll sort you out.’

  Tom could tell by my face that something was wrong but he just lowered his head and walked past me as if he didn’t really know me. I hesitated outside Hippy Harrington’s door. He can be such a pain, such a loud extrovert pain. I tried to put my face into a smile but my lips stuck together. He was whistling. When he saw me he jumped up, all energy and fuss. His arm swung across the top of his desk like the tail of a friendly dog, scattering his pile of papers.

  ‘Good man, Chris!’ he shouted. ‘A for English! I knew you’d get there!’

  He was so pleased that my lips peeled away from each other and I found myself grinning back at him. I actually began to think that I’d done it just for him, as a reward for all his enthusiasm and the kind of love he has for literature. None of the other teachers seemed to feel like
that about their subjects. ‘Language is power,’ he used to say. ‘Literature is love. And poetry is the food of the soul.’ I’ll always remember that, though I don’t really know what he means. I remember once when we were doing a poetry appreciation class he read us a poem by Yeats and his hands were trembling when he opened the book. He read it out to us with such a reverence that it was as if he was giving us something very special, part of himself. Well, maybe I had got that A for him. It all seemed very remote now, all that reading, all that underlining in pencil and pacing round the house learning quotes. Just to please old Hippy.

  ‘So, you’re all set for Newcastle, eh, Chris?’

  I told him about my results and he said he reckoned it would be fine, he’d ring up and see what he could do. ‘You’ll be fine, you’ll be fine,’ nodding at me like Father Christmas in a grotto.

  I still stood there, feeling awkward. I didn’t know what to say to him. Goodbye, or something like that. Thanks for everything. For Yeats, you know. I bent down to pick up his scattered papers and he bent down at the same time. From underneath his table he asked me, ‘Where’s your girl-friend off to, Chris? She’s doing Music, isn’t she? Manchester?’ and I said, ‘She’s having a baby, Sir. We split.’ He sank back on to his haunches, looking at me over the top of his desk, and I stood up slowly. I think I felt more awkward and wretched then than I’ve ever felt in my life.

  ‘Poor kid,’ he said. He must have meant Helen, or the baby. But the way he looked at me made my stomach turn over. It was as if he knew exactly how I felt.

  There was nothing to say. I tipped the papers onto his desk and went home.

  I rang Ruthlyn that evening. Her mother told me she was too upset to come to the phone. ‘She got Bs all the way,’ she told me. ‘Bright as a diamond, that one, but it’s not good enough, she says.’

  ‘Poor old Ruthlyn,’ I said. ‘Does that mean she can’t do Medicine?’

  Coral blew down the receiver. I could imagine her big friendly face, worried and upset. ‘She cryin’ too much to tell me. It don’t matter, I told her, you can help me with the kids. Cry cry cry!’

  ‘You don’t happen to know what Helen got, do you?’

  ‘She’s up with Ruthlyn now. She got all As.’

  I stood there grinning down the receiver.

  ‘Tell her I’m pleased,’ I said. ‘Tell Ruthlyn not to worry, she can re-sit them. And tell Helen I got A,B,C.’

  I could hear Ruthlyn’s mum scribbling away on a piece of paper, breathing through her teeth. ‘A,B,C. You wanna tell her yourself? She’s right here.’

  ‘Yes, please!’ The contents of my stomach suddenly sprinkled into minute droplets, all churning and shivering inside me. ‘Helen,’ I said. I could picture her tilting her head back, sweeping her hair away from her eyes the way she does, to let it swing loose again. I hadn’t been able to picture her face properly for weeks. ‘Helen?’

  For a second I heard her voice again, whispering something to Coral.

  ‘Now she’s too upset to talk!’ Coral’s treacly voice came back on the phone, sticky with sympathy. ‘What can I do with these girls, Chris? You tell me and I’ll do it.’

  But I didn’t answer her. I put the receiver down as slowly and carefully as if it was made of shell, as if any noise at all would shatter forever the brief, tiny, fragile sound I’d heard before Coral had spoken again; Helen’s voice, after all these weeks. ‘I can’t.’ I nursed the sound in my head, went up to my room and sat staring out into the evening, at trees billowing out in the wind and drizzle like fine net looping down. The cat pushed open the door and tiptoed over to me, didn’t make a sound jumping on to my knee, lay there still and silent while Helen’s soft voice formed and melted away again and again in my head, like drops of moisture at the fine point of an icicle.

  A few days later my mother rang up. It was strange to hear her voice like that, bringing her suddenly into my consciousness. I imagined her room, with all those books in it, all those photographs lining the walls.

  ‘I’ve got a few days free,’ she said. I could tell she was smoking. ‘I wonder if you’d like to come over and do a bit of climbing with me?’

  I’d forgotten all about climbing. It felt as if it was somebody else, from years and years ago, who’d made those slippery and hopeless attempts on the climbing wall. I couldn’t even remember what it was I was trying to prove.

  ‘I’m trying to sort out my university place,’ I told her. ‘Could I come next month?’

  My dad was in the kitchen, moving dishes about quietly so as not to disturb me, half-listening, maybe. I wondered what he would say if my mother asked to speak to him.

  ‘You can come whenever you want. Bring Helen, of course. How is she?’

  ‘She’s fine,’ I said. Dad swung his head round at that.

  ‘And what are your plans?’

  My tongue was sticking in my throat. ‘It’s all a bit complicated at the moment.’

  ‘Well. Tell me when you come up. Make it soon. We’re looking forward to seeing you both again.’

  ‘Fine, Mum. Joan. Thanks.’

  Telephones are such alien things. They make fools and liars of us. How can you tell the truth when you’re not looking people in the face? I felt lousy. How come I could tell my English teacher that Helen and I had split and not tell my mother? How come I could stand a few feet away from my dad and talk to my mother at the same time and try to pretend one of them didn’t exist? Something was going on. Something was knitting up together like a cobweb in my head and had to be sorted out.

  I went into the kitchen and stood watching Dad. He was making omelettes, cracking each egg separately into a bowl, sniffing them for freshness, tipping them out of their shells. The whites strung down in their clear, swaying strands, swinging the yolks down them like absailing climbers. I watched for the moment when he punctured them, when the yellow juices sprawled out. And I don’t know what it was that made me say this to him; I can only think it was something to do with the way he was lifting up the fork, just watching the spread of yolk, not trying to beat the eggs or anything. He was miles away. He wasn’t thinking about omelettes or anything like that.

  ‘Dad, did you mind Mum ringing me up?’

  ‘Not particularly.’ He still had his back to me, was still holding that elastic tension between fork and bowl as if he was being paid not to snap it.

  ‘But you’re all right, aren’t you, the way things are?’

  ‘Nearly,’ he said. The egg strand snapped. ‘Not quite.’

  It was as if someone had opened a door and had slammed it shut again, and I’d just caught a glimpse of a secret room on the other side. Parents are such private people.

  My next phone call came from Hippy, telling me there was no problem about my place at Newcastle.

  ‘Great,’ I said. My throat was as dry as a bone.

  ‘Enjoy it,’ he said. ‘Make the most of it. Make the most of your life, Chris.’

  It seemed as if you never had to make up your mind about things. They just happen, anyway, just tick into place.

  Next morning I was lying in bed with a bit of a hangover when Guy put his head round the door to say there was someone outside for me.

  ‘Tell him I’m dying,’ I groaned.

  ‘It’s not a him.’

  Guy disappeared and I shot out of bed. I crawled to the window on my hands and knees because I wasn’t fit to be seen in public, but there was no sign of her. Guy’s idea of a joke. I was about to collapse back into bed when I heard the sound of my dad’s voice, and the light laugh of a girl. I rummaged round for clean socks, kicked the cat off my jeans and tee-shirt in their last night’s bundle and half-fell downstairs. My dad was standing in the hall and looking up at me with a quizzical expression that I couldn’t fathom for the life of me, and then he stepped back and I saw who it was he was talking to. It was Bryn. She looked fantastic.

  I sank back on to the stairs, pulling my socks on, pulling thoughts into my head.

  �
��Hi, Slug!’ she called up to me. ‘What time d’you call this?’

  ‘What are you doing here?’ I asked.

  ‘Come to see you, it looks like,’ said Dad. He went into the kitchen. I could just tell that someone else was in there.

  ‘I’m on my way to Leeds, looking for accommodation for next year. When the train stopped at Sheffield I couldn’t believe it, so I decided to come and see you.’

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ I said. I tried to stand up and sat down again. I could see Dad in the kitchen, shaking his head at someone, and realized that Jill was in there with a cup of coffee in her hand, staring at Bryn. Guy was messing about with his cagoule zip or something, standing between Bryn and the kitchen. I was sitting half-way up the stairs with one sock on and one sock off, peering through the banisters.

  Bryn lost her smile, somehow. ‘Aren’t you pleased to see me?’

  ‘Course I’m pleased to see you.’

  Jill leaned forward and gently closed the kitchen door, and Guy looked up at me as if he’d been found guilty of eavesdropping and ran up the stairs, climbing over me.

  I went down to Bryn. She looked very small and sunburnt.

  ‘Hi,’ I said. I couldn’t think of anything else to say to her.

  ‘I wouldn’t mind a cup of coffee,’ she said, shy suddenly.

  I couldn’t face going into the kitchen with my dad and Jill watching me, having to introduce her, explain where I’d met her and all that.

  ‘We could have one at Tom’s. I was just going round there, anyway.’

  ‘Okay.’

  He’d better be in, I thought. I couldn’t imagine where else I’d take her. I ran back upstairs for my shoes. My nerves were bubbling up. I couldn’t find my comb. I could have done with a shave. I could have done with a wash, actually, but the sooner we could get out of the house the better. I ran downstairs to her and then had to run upstairs again for my key. I felt as if we had a train to catch. As we went out I saw her little rucksack in the hall and told her to bring it with her. She looked disappointed. I felt lousy, lousy.