And then her letter came, bubbling with Bryn. I could hear her voice and her laugh in every word I read. I knew it would never work the way she wanted it. There was too much of me that was hurt, tied up in something that I couldn’t work out, never would work out, like the threads of a spider’s web that won’t ever snap.
So I did this: I wrote her a letter to say that I liked her very much but that I didn’t think we should ever meet again. I knew it would hurt her, and I didn’t feel any better for writing it. I felt bad. But I had to do it, so I did.
September 30th
Dear Nobody,
I feel peculiar tonight. Terrible. I can hardly walk in fact. You’ve moved right down. Dropped, the midwife said. Turned, ready for action. I wish I was. I feel more like going to sleep, for a long, long time. You’ll be here in a few days, if you’re punctual.
I’m gross. I’m a tub of butter. I don’t know myself these days. Once upon a time there was a girl called Helen who could dance. She could actually bend in the middle. What middle? Then she turned into a fat caterpillar and then she became a pupa and went into a state of coma. And a fairy godmother called a midwife came to see her and said, ‘Cinderhelen, you WILL go to the hospital. You will emerge out of your chrysalis.’ But the amazing thing is, there won’t just be one butterfly emerging, shaking trembly wings. There’ll be two, you and me. And the sad thing is, there won’t be a handsome prince. There won’t be any prince at all.
I wish it was all over.
God, I’m so fed up.
The day before I was due to set off for Newcastle I bought some new jeans. They felt really peculiar because they hadn’t got holes in the knees. Mum had given me some money to buy a quilt cover, of all things, but I didn’t bother to get that. But I did window shop a bit, looking at some pale blue, floaty material that reminded me of the dress Helen wore at that last dance we were at. There was a bit of poetry that kept coming into my head. ‘He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven’, it’s called. It was one of the ones Hippy Harrington read to us, gave us I suppose, by that Irish poet, Yeats. I know it off by heart. He’s right, Hippy. You should learn poetry by heart; then you own it, in a strange kind of way.
Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
I bought a postcard and wrote it down. No need to sign it. I walked down her road after that, with those words banging away in my head like music. I just thought I might see her and be able to say goodbye to her in a natural way. There’s no way I’m going to phone up again and suffer the humiliation of having the receiver put down on me. They’ve built a protective wall around Helen that’s too high to climb over and too thick to break through, and too deeply founded to tunnel under, and it’s something to do with the fact that they love her. I understand all that now; but it’s a funny kind of love. I walked past the house, looking and not looking at it. It was as neat as ever. They’ve got money, that family. Funny. I hadn’t even thought about that before.
I hate this silence. It’s like a bandage, wrapped round my mouth and my ears. Speak to me.
I found myself in the library where Helen’s father works. He grinned away when he saw me and came tiptoeing over with his hands behind his back.
‘How’s the guitar coming on?’
I knew he’d say that.
‘Fine,’ I said. I looked out of the window and then back at him before he moved away. ‘How’s Helen, Mr Garton?’
He looked a little confused. Nice bloke, Mr Garton. Wouldn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, you can tell that. His brain was working out that this was a taboo subject and that he was standing there with no defences.
‘She’s looking very large,’ he said. ‘Like a potato.’
I swallowed hard.
‘I’m going away the day after tomorrow, Mr Garton. Will you… will you give her this.’ I handed him the card.
You’d think I’d pulled a live snake out of my pocket and put it into his hands, and that he didn’t know what to do with it, whether to stamp on it or shove it in his pockets out of sight or hold it out and admire it for the rare thing that it was. Anyway, I left him with it. I didn’t shake hands with him, as I would have done, as he’d have liked, probably. It would have made him feel better. But he’s old enough to handle snakes, I think.
September 30th
Yesterday I cleaned my room out, ready for you.
I took all my books off the shelves and the glass and porcelain animals I’ve collected since I was little, the pottery masks and fans on my walls, and I washed and dusted them all. I washed all my floating scarves. I even took the curtains down and washed them and put them out on the line to dry. Mum helped me to peg them out, and I stood watching them after she’d gone back into the kitchen. They were like birds’ wings, flapping for freedom. I felt as if I was rising up, rising up with them. I went back into the kitchen and sat with Mum having lunch; we were both sitting by the window, staring out at these huge flapping wings, saying nothing. But we weren’t apart, you know, Mum and I. We weren’t locking each other out.
September 30th
A few minutes ago, I felt a massive kind of cramp rising up from the base of my spine, right up, spreading out and up till it held me in the centre of it. It seemed to take hold of my whole body and when I felt I was going to burst with it it died away again.
I’m not frightened. I know exactly what it is.
It means you’re coming.
I’ve made my bed. I’ve put my case ready by the door.
I’m not going to tell Mum until I have another contraction. It could go on for hours or days even, the midwife told me. I want us both to be ready for this, you and me. I want us to be calm and ready.
Breathe slowly, both of us. I feel as if I can hear your heart beating, deep in my veins.
Here it comes. Again. Rising and rising. It’s a huge soaring white wave and I’m going under in it. Don’t let me drown. Hold on. Don’t let me drown.
I know you’re coming.
I didn’t know I was doing it but I’ve been screaming out, ‘Mum! Mum!’ She ran into my room and I tried to walk over to her. I felt something pouring out of me. She put her arms round me and held me through the next one. We rose up on it together. I felt as if I was being born. I cried out loud, and she held me tight and took the pain for me.
She’s phoning for the ambulance now, downstairs. I can’t stop shaking.
Dad was playing the piano. That’s his way of coping with it. Did you hear it? It’s a song of welcome. But then I heard Mum shouting at him and he stopped playing. He came up to my room and stood in the doorway. I was propped up on the bed, waiting for the midwife to come, or the ambulance, whichever turns up first. I started trembling again when I saw Dad. He came over to me and took something from his pocket.
‘I think you should have this now,’ he said. ‘It’s from Chris.’
When he went back down, back to his piano, I read it. I took it to the window and stood there looking at it in the light of the streetlamp. I could hear Chris’s voice, that slight hesitation he has, reading the words to me. I turned round, aware of a sound behind me, to see Robbie in the doorway, looking important and shy and a bit scared. He crept in as if I was dying.
‘I’ve come to see if I can do anything to help,’ he said.
If I hadn’t been hurting so much I would have smiled. But then I realized that he could help.
‘Robbie,’ I said. ‘Will you take something to Chris for me?’
So he’s gone down to get his bike out of the shed, my Mercury, while I make up the parcel. Dear Nobody. This is the last letter I’ll write to you.
Oc
tober
* * *
I took the package up to my room and opened it there. It was just a pile of letters. They all began the same way.
Dear Nobody.
Is that what I’d become to her, then?
I sat down on the bed with a growing kind of grief inside me, and began to read them in order. They took me back to January.
When I finished reading them I felt as if I was hung in space. There was no air around me, only blackness, cold and empty and vast. I lumbered downstairs. Dad and Jill were sitting watching a late film on television. There was my rucksack, packed and ready for Newcastle, propped up against the wall. It was almost midnight.
‘The baby’s coming,’ I told them, and left them there with, their faces open and gasping like fishes. I walked out into the yard. The air slapped me back to life.
I hauled my bike out of the shed, clattering over the step-ladder and a sack of potatoes and tins of paint. I didn’t care how much row I made. I set off straight for the hospital, so focused that it was as if a magnet was drawing me there. I don’t think I’ve ever ridden so fast in my life. I threw the bike into a bush and ran into the foyer.
‘Where’s Helen?’ I asked the woman at the reception desk. For the life of me I couldn’t remember her surname. At last it popped up and I was told the ward number. I ran off through a labyrinth of corridors that seemed to be a freeway for trolleys and stretchers. I came to a little side ward, stopped and leaned against the corridor wall, dredging up air from somewhere. Let her be all right. Oh, let her be all right.
I pushed the door open. Helen’s parents were there, standing round the bed. When I burst in they turned round to stare at me. The room started swinging round like the pendulum of a clock. My legs were too heavy to move. My breath was corked up in my throat.
Mr Garton moved back and somehow I got myself to the bed. Helen was smiling. She was pale and tired and smiling.
‘Chris,’ she said. ‘Look.’
I saw something that was tiny and red-faced, crinkled-up, sleeping, breathing, an unbelievable still presence in the room.
So, in my student’s room in Newcastle, I’m writing this for you, Amy. Your name means loved one, or friend, and we both chose it. This is your story, and you should know it. One day a long time from now you will read it and put together all the bits and pieces of people that have gone together to make you.
One day I hope to really know you. I only know the beginning of your story.
When I saw you that day at the hospital I realized that during all those months of separation from Helen I hadn’t thought once about you. You were nobody. It was Helen I was thinking about day and night, night and day. I wanted to be with her and to hold her. I wanted everything to be the same again. But when I saw her at last, you were there. I was shocked by your importance, by your vulnerability. The thought of holding you or even touching you scared me, tiny creature that you were. I tried to look at you and say, she is ours, and I couldn’t. I felt weak. I wanted to hide from you.
Helen is right. I’m not ready for you, or for her. I’m not yet ready for myself.
November
* * *
Dear Chris,
I think I’m exactly where I want to be, at this moment of my life. I think of you often, with love, and I hope you’re happy, too.
Today my nan came to the house. It wasn’t easy for her to come, I know that. We sat in the front room together; Nan on the hard chair, Mum by the window, me in the low nursing-chair with Amy. Nan didn’t say much, but then, you wouldn’t expect her to. She just watched me, in that sad, nodding way of hers. When I finished feeding Amy and was just about to put her down, all milky-sweet and sleepy, Mum came over and took her from me. She just kissed her, the way she does, and then she walked back across the room and put her in Nan’s arms.
It was as though Amy was a fine thread being drawn through a garment, mending tears.
Dear Nobody Page 16
