How Not to Disappear

by Clare Furniss

  ‘And did he?’ I say. She ignores me.

  ‘He told me that his Auntie Esther in Jamaica always listened to the Carols from King’s on the World Service at Christmas. He wanted to send her a postcard. Not that I know why I can remember that Sam’s Auntie was called Esther, when this morning I couldn’t remember what my toothbrush was for. Anyway. Esther. That was her name. So we went for a day trip. Breakfast on the Cambridge Buffet Express. I can’t remember much about the day itself, but maybe going back there will bring it back. Perhaps not. All I really remember about that day is that it was the day I knew for sure I was in love with Sam.’

  Was that true? Was it really when I fell in love with him? Or was it just the day I admitted it to myself? I’d liked him right from the start. He wasn’t like other boys I’d gone out with. I never gave them a second thought. Sam was different. I couldn’t get him out of my mind. I look at the girl next to me as she drives. I’m just old to her. It’s unimaginable to her that I should ever have felt love or desire as she does. But I did. Oh yes, I did.

  I’m lying down on the grass, and the warmth makes me pleasantly lethargic, and I lie completely still on the grass, pinned down by the heavy heat, hoping no one will spot me. The bell has rung and everyone else has filed slowly in for afternoon lessons, but I can’t resist lying here a while longer. The thought of Latin in a dark, poky classroom is hardly enticing. Miss Lytton is a good sort but so very thin and she reeks of mothballs and melancholy, it comes off her in waves, filling the classroom with a kind of grey fog and the thought of it on a day like this, golden and green and full of life, is unbearable. It is not a day for dead languages. It is a day of life and being alive. All around things are growing and unfurling and bursting forth and all that sort of thing. The smell of the warm grass hangs in the air around me, sweet and fresh, and the breeze touches my skin gently, lifting the tiny hairs on my arms, caressing my face and the skin where I’ve undone the top buttons of my school dress. I think of Sam, of his fingers on my skin, of where they have touched and where I would like them to touch and my body shivers with the thrill of it. Most of the boys I’ve been out with I’ve grown bored with after a few weeks. But it’s different with Sam. It’s months since we met and the more I know about him, the more I want to know. I imagine him lying next to me on the grass, reaching out to touch me, pulling me to him. I imagine his hands under my blouse, our bodies intertwining and hot. I imagine the feel of his skin against mine, the taste of him, his finger tracing the shape of my breast. My breath comes a little faster.

  ‘Gloria Harper!’ A shadow falls across me. ‘What are you doing here?’ I squint up and see that what’s blocking out the sunlight is the sizable form of Sister Mary Francis. I can only see her silhouette, black and ominous to my unfocused eyes, but I can imagine the look on her face. I have always been a source of annoyance to Sister Mary Francis, just by existing. I ask too many questions. I’m untidy. I don’t listen. The sun is directly behind her head so it looks like she’s got a halo, and I want to tell her because I think in her own mind that’s what she looks like all the time. I sit up quickly and smile.

  ‘Oh,’ I say. ‘Sorry, Sister, I lost track of time.’

  She draws herself up and folds her arms, so that what Louise always refers to as ‘her ample bosom’ juts further out under her habit. I remember Louise speculating on the feat of engineering that Sister Mary Francis’ undergarments must be and I find myself wondering if ever a finger has traced the shape of either of Sister Mary Francis’ impressive breasts. I don’t mean to think it. The thought just pops into my head. The owner of the hand would have to have been a very daring sort, that’s for sure. Her face is set in an expression that makes me think perhaps she can read my thoughts. ‘God can see into our hearts and our minds. He knows our true intentions,’ she is fond of saying, rather threateningly, in assembly, when considering the nature of sin and repentance. I can’t help wondering whether years of devoting herself to God mean that some of that omniscience has rubbed off. I blush a little, thinking of what I’d been imagining Sam doing. But only a little. Why would God have given us bodies that enjoy the touch of another person or minds that fall in love if He hadn’t wanted us to use them? Aren’t we saying He got it wrong by imagining that these things are sinful? I don’t imagine this line of argument would cut much ice with Sister Mary Francis, though.

  ‘Get to class, Gloria. And if I see you down here again when you should be in lessons, it’ll be detention for you. Again. And do your buttons up, for goodness’ sake.’

  ‘Yes, Sister.’ I try to look penitent and demure because I really don’t want a detention; after school is the only time I can see Sam, but it’s not a look I’m very good at. Sister Mary Francis knows what’s in my heart and mind all right.

  ‘You know,’ she says. ‘If you’re serious about wanting to go to university you’d better pull your socks up. You’re clever, Gloria. That should not be a source of pride. It is a gift from God and you have a duty to use it. But you won’t get anywhere by being too clever for your own good.’

  I look up at her.

  ‘And who decides what’s too clever?’ I ask. ‘You or God?’

  ‘Your arrogance will get you into trouble, Gloria,’ she says. ‘You see if it doesn’t. So unlike your sister.’

  I’ve had this all my life. Baby Gwen was such a good sleeper – slept through everything. I slept for an hour at a time and screamed the moment I woke up. It was the Blitz, I pointed out. Wasn’t it quite noisy? Mum just laughed and said she was so exhausted she half wished a bomb would land on our house, just to give her some peace. Gwen’s smooth blonde hair never seemed to be out of place while my curls always fought their way out of pigtails, falling untidily into my eyes. At school it got worse. She was eight years older than me so we were never at school together, but I felt her presence all the time, as perfect and serene and good and impossible to emulate as the Virgin Mary herself. Her writing and her sewing and her uniform had always been neat. She never answered back or asked unnecessary questions. She was never too clever for her own good. She was just the right amount of clever.

  ‘I always felt she probably took after your mother,’ Sister Mary Francis says. ‘Whereas you, I think, are more like your father.’

  I turn on her.

  ‘You don’t know anything about it,’ I shout. ‘I’m nothing like my father.’

  It’s late morning by the time we arrive in Cambridge. Irene, who runs the bed and breakfast, greets us with strong tea, which I gulp down. Gloria picks at hers. She’s pale and tired, and says she’d like to go and sit in the garden for a while.

  ‘Are you sure?’ I say. ‘I fancied a walk around.’

  ‘I’m not stopping you,’ she says. So I go and wander through the streets, watching people wobble along on their bikes and tourists drinking outside pubs, listening to the chime of bells, looking up at the spires and towers and peering through archways into perfectly manicured courtyards, thinking how Dad must have walked along here or got drunk in these pubs in his student days.

  As I’m walking my phone rings. It’s Kat.

  ‘Hey,’ I say, smiling. ‘How’s it going?’

  ‘Hats,’ she says quickly. ‘I can’t talk for long. Look, just tell me, when you said you were six weeks pregnant, how were you working it out?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The thing is, Hats, the book says you don’t work out the date from conception. You work it out from the start of your last period.’

  I’m silent for a moment. ‘What do you mean?’ I say again, feeling panic grow inside me.

  ‘I mean you’re not eight weeks pregnant. You’re probably more like ten.’

  ‘But I can’t be! That doesn’t make any sense.’

  ‘That’s what it says, Hats. Sorry. Look, I’ve got to go, Zoe’s going to be back in a minute. But you need to decide what you’re going to do soon. I’ll text you later.’

  When I get back to the bed and breakfast
, Irene has decided that Gloria and I should go punting and has packed us a picnic to take with us. I’m grateful. Anything to take my mind off Kat’s panic-inducing message. Ten weeks pregnant! That means by the time of my appointment I’ll be eleven weeks.

  ‘You all right, dear?’ Irene says. ‘You look a bit pasty, if you don’t mind me saying. Not sickening for something I hope? Don’t want to be poorly on your holidays.’

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘Just the drive. Bit of a headache.’

  ‘Oh, well,’ she says. ‘Punting’s just what you need. Bit of fresh air. Nice and relaxing.’

  Punting turns out not to be nice and relaxing at all but extremely hard work. For me, that is. For Gloria it turns out to be very nice and relaxing indeed, sitting back in a rather stylish floppy sunhat, waving regally at people leaning over the bridges above us, laughing appreciatively at silly tourists getting stuck on their punting poles and ending up in the Cam for her amusement, and sipping chilled cans of Pimm’s that I’d spotted were on special offer in the off licence and picked up for her on the walk down from the bed and breakfast.

  ‘Not the same in a can, of course,’ she says, but as I’ve punted what feels like halfway to Grantchester (though in fact isn’t very far at all) and am drenched in sweat and aching all over, I’m not all that sympathetic.

  ‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘Bit tricky manoeuvring a punt and mixing drinks at the same time.’

  She smiles up at me. She likes it when I’m sarcastic.

  ‘So hard to find decent staff these days,’ she says.

  Eventually I get fed up of punting and we stop (which isn’t as easy as you’d think) and clamber out. We eat Irene’s picnic of crusty bread and cheese and ham, and slices of banana loaf and cherries.

  I try to imagine what it would be like to be a student living in one of the colleges along the river.

  ‘It’s weird to think that Dad was at university here.’

  I try to picture Dad as a teenager, on a bicycle wearing one of those college scarves, or maybe striding through a courtyard – quad, isn’t that what they call them? – in one of those black academic gowns that make you look like Batman. But I can barely even remember him as he was when I was a kid. The images I have of him are from photos.

  ‘Clever, was he?’ Gloria says.

  ‘Must have been, I suppose. Although I think he nearly failed his degree. He spent all his time writing for the student newspaper.’

  All of this I know from an obituary that was printed in one of the newspapers he used to write for. I wonder how much Gloria actually knows about Dad.

  ‘Did you know he became a journalist?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Dad.’ She doesn’t respond. ‘Dominic. Gwen’s son,’ I add, not sure if she’s forgotten or just isn’t interested. ‘He was a war correspondent.’ I add. ‘That’s how he died. In Afghanistan. His vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb.’

  ‘Oh,’ she says.

  ‘He’d been warned not to go. But he went anyway.’

  ‘Sounds about right,’ Gloria mutters to herself.

  I look at her.

  ‘What do you mean? I thought you didn’t know him?’

  Gloria looks at me.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘My dad.’

  ‘I didn’t,’ she says.

  ‘But you said—’

  ‘I just meant,’ she says, ‘he reminds me of someone.’

  ‘Who?’

  She hesitates. ‘You,’ she says at last.

  ‘Me?’

  ‘You were warned not to come and visit me, weren’t you? By your mum and that boyfriend of yours.’

  ‘He’s not my boyfriend.’

  ‘I bet everyone was always warning you about him, weren’t they?’ I think of Carl and Kat.

  ‘I suppose,’ I say. I like the idea that I might be a bit like dad, that there’s a real connection between us. He always felt distant, even when he was alive. He spent so much of his life away from us, in a world I couldn’t even imagine. And as time passes he becomes more distant, a dwindling collection of memories that I’ve stuck together to try and create a person.

  ‘What was our dad like?’ Ollie had asked me once.

  I didn’t really know what to tell him. The things I remember about Dad – that he used to bring me a Toblerone and Mum Chanel No. 5 that she never wore, that he was blond and tall, that he used to throw me up in the air even when Mum told him not to, that he let me drive the car once in a car park early on a Sunday morning when no one was around, that he smelt of whisky and aftershave, that I’d cry after he left to go abroad – none of them seemed substantial enough.

  ‘He was brave,’ I said to Ollie. ‘He travelled to all sorts of dangerous places where there were wars going on.’

  ‘I know,’ Ollie said. ‘But what was he actually like?’

  The truth is, I don’t know what sort of person he was, really. I was nine when he died and he was away far more than he was at home even when he was alive. So I found the photo of me and Dad that I kept on my phone and showed it to Ollie. I told him about the holiday it was taken on, and about what a great time we had, and how proud Dad had been of the twins in their double buggy, showing them off to everyone we met. I told him about all the amazing things people said about Dad at his funeral, about how he was a hero, how he’d always put the story before his own safety, how he’d believed it was vital for people to know the truth, about how he’d seen terrible things. I didn’t tell Ollie what, though. Dead children and their dead mothers, busy marketplaces where bombs had gone off . . . What would it have felt like, I wondered, to see all those things and then come back home? Back to suburbia, to mowing the lawn, to weekly supermarket shops and taking the twins to Crazy Dayz soft play on a Sunday morning so Mum could have a break. Maybe that was why Dad had always seemed a bit distant, even when he was at home. I don’t miss him, not really. That makes me sad in a way. I just wish I’d had the chance to know him.

  ‘Did you really not have anything to do with my dad when he was growing up?’

  I keep trying to steer the conversation round to talking about Nan and Dad. I know Gloria said she didn’t remember anything about Dad but that was when she didn’t want anything to do with me. Perhaps it was just her way of trying to get rid of me. I hand her another can of Pimm’s.

  She takes a drink from her can but doesn’t say anything. In the end I decide it’s not worth trying to be subtle. After all, she was the one who wanted to come on this trip, share her memories and her secrets.

  ‘Why weren’t you at Nan’s funeral?’ I blurt out.

  I half expect her to snap that it’s none of my business, but she doesn’t.

  ‘It’s a long story.’

  I wait but she doesn’t say any more.

  ‘What was she like?’ I persevere. It’s so strange to think of her ever having been anything other than an old lady.

  Gloria smiles.

  ‘Oh, Gwen was perfect.’

  Is it my imagination or is there an edge to her voice?

  ‘Didn’t you get on?’

  ‘I loved her with all my heart,’ Gloria says. ‘I adored Gwen. And she loved me. But I think she made me rebellious. From as early as I can remember I was failing to live up to my perfect sister. At home, at school. Especially at school. And then once she married Vinnie . . .’

  ‘You didn’t like him?’

  She laughs. ‘I despised him. Vinnie had money and he thought that made him better than us. He liked to make a point of the fact that we didn’t have much. He acted as though Gwen was lucky he’d condescended to marry her. That was rubbish. She was beautiful, Gwen. She could have done much better than Vinnie. He was charming, a smooth talker and that’s why she fell for him. Once they were married I hardly saw her. They moved out to the suburbs, to a modern house with a fitted kitchen and a garage and a big garden and they only came round to us for Sunday lunch occasionally so that Vinnie could show off about his new car or the holiday he and Gwen were about
to go on and make jokes about our outdated furniture. I always felt he was laughing at us.’

  I wonder whether that was true, or whether Gloria just resented him for taking away the big sister who had always looked out for her. Especially given how unhappy things were at home.

  ‘You must have really missed her after she’d gone?’

  ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘I was lonely. I felt that Gwen had abandoned me. I suppose that was selfish really. She had her own life to live. But she’d always made things easier at home. She was the only one Father would listen to when he was drunk. She could persuade him to stop drinking. She could spot the signs that he was heading for a rage and divert it. Me and Mum always made it worse. Mum would annoy him by being too timid and weak, by trying too hard to please him and placate him. I’d stand up to him, get angry. Gwen could stay calm. She seemed to understand his dark days too. When he couldn’t speak to anyone or even get up out of his chair – sometimes he couldn’t even get out of bed – Gwen would sit with him and hold his hand. She’d have made a brilliant nurse. That’s what she wanted to do.’

  ‘And she never did?’

  ‘No. Vinnie wouldn’t let her. His wife going out to work? He wouldn’t have stood for it. Mind you, that wasn’t unusual then. Once you were married you were expected to stay at home and devote yourself to looking after your husband.’

  I shake my head. ‘But that’s so unfair.’

  ‘I was only twelve when they got married. I felt abandoned and angry with her. How could she leave me, knowing what it would be like for me at home? Then I realized it wasn’t really her fault. It was Vinnie’s.’

  So I was right. Gloria blamed Vinnie for taking her sister away. No wonder she didn’t like him. And perhaps that was why she and Nan hadn’t been close, why she wasn’t at Nan’s funeral and why she hadn’t kept in touch with Dad. Maybe she’d never really forgiven her sister for leaving.

  ‘After she married Vinnie, Gwen was distant,’ Gloria says. ‘Cut off. I thought then it was because she thought she was too good for us, now she had her big house and her fancy clothes. I thought she didn’t want to see us any more.’