Wildest of All

by P. K . Lynch

  Buoyed by the music, Jude laughed at her overblown religious comparison, especially as Anne, the most religious person she knew, the woman who said God could be found in the most unexpected of places, stood resolutely unimpressed, preferring to look anywhere other than at this man who Jude believed was proof positive of a higher power.

  Peter had sung the same song to her in a pub one night, but it hadn’t been like this. The strength of this man’s vibrato caused his head to nod in approval of the sounds he made, whereas Peter always sat back from a song, performing with a gentleness that belied his size. The busker grabbed the notes, almost seeming to attack and wrestle them into submission, beating them to the ground before raising them up again and presenting them to the audience as a new thing, familiar but strange and utterly captivating. His voice swooped and rose again with ease, and as he approached the song’s highest point, Jude held her breath. There was no way he could possibly reach it. She wanted to look away, couldn’t bear the car crash of noise that would inevitably be, but at the same time she was transfixed, sure there was a discovery to be made on the other side of that absurdly high top note, if only he could get there.

  Somewhere off to her left, there was a commotion. Someone grabbed at her jacket, grasping fingers. Annoyed at the interruption, she pulled back, only to find Anne’s wide eyes on hers, and then Anne falling backwards, headed straight for the ground. Jude threw her hand out to catch her, but it was too late. Anne’s tiny form was prostrate on the pavement, her skirt flung up around her stick-like thighs. A stunned moment of silence and then an awful, throaty moan, frightened and fluttery.

  Jude knelt down and gently, futilely patted Anne’s shoulder, unwilling to touch anywhere else for fear of hurting her further. The singer’s immaculate ascension went for nothing as his audience changed its focus. A medley of voices: he went that way, I saw him, he had that look about him, someone call an ambulance, I’ll be a witness, is she all right, she’ll be all right, that’s out of order, broad daylight as well, changed days so it is, changed days.

  Danny arrived at the hospital in blazes – what was she doing out, why was she in town, who was supposed to be looking after her?

  ‘Goodness,’ said Anne. ‘To hear you talk, anyone would think I was some sort of recluse. Stop fussing.’

  Jude was apologetic. She’d been distracted by a particularly good busker.

  Not that good, Anne told Danny. He was scruffy to look at. He’d made no effort. Plain rude.

  It was true, Jude thought. It was hard to imagine a person with talent like that could be so poor, but maybe that was part of his act. Maybe he got more money if he elicited sympathy. Perhaps he wasn’t as good as she remembered. Maybe it was just the idea of a jaw-dropping voice like that coming from such an unexpected place that she’d been attracted to. The contrast between his talent and his poverty elevated him. Like Peter, she realised now. She shook her head and tried to concentrate on Danny, still bleating on about his fragile bloody mother, who Jude often thought would outlive the lot of them.

  ‘What’s she going to do with a fractured wrist?’ Danny asked no one in particular. ‘We’ll need to get nurses in.’

  ‘No, you will not,’ said Anne, apoplectic with rage. ‘I’m perfectly fit. Nurses! I ask you.’

  Danny insisted she wouldn’t be able to even make a cup of tea, and what about bathing and showers and all of that? What if she slipped and couldn’t put her hand out to save herself? What if some unsavoury type saw her with her arm in a sling and followed her home? Was he the only one seeing the big picture here?

  ‘She can stay with us,’ Jude said, quietly. ‘If you’d like to, that is.’

  Danny stopped his speech mid-flow. ‘What was that?’

  Push on, just push on, thought Jude. Don’t think about it, just do the right thing.

  ‘I was saying your mum can stay with us if she’d like to.’

  ‘I thought that’s what you said,’ replied Danny, with the look of someone who can’t quite believe their luck. ‘Well, what do you think of that, Mammy? Wouldn’t it solve a lot of problems?’

  Anne and Jude held each other’s gaze for a long moment, Danny oblivious to the rich seam running between them now.

  ‘I daresay it might solve a problem or two,’ Anne said. Jude blinked and looked away. ‘Just until things get a little better,’ Anne continued, as Danny, who had no inkling they were talking about anything other than his mother’s wrist, helped her into a wheelchair.

  ‘Ah, what a day,’ she sighed, feeling her spirits rise as she sank down into it. ‘Fancy my purse being stolen with barely a penny in it, and now here I am, gifted the loan of a wheelchair – for a sore arm, mind you! – on the very day my back’s playing up. The Lord really does work in mysterious ways.’

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Wildness Coming on Hard

  It started off well enough. Anne’s presence breathed life into the house again. Sissy was sympathetic and fussed over her injured grandmother, while seeming more able to tolerate being in the same room as her mother. Conversation resumed, though wine bottles continued to empty almost as fast as the ashtrays filled up, but at least most of the smoking was done in Jude’s bedroom now rather than elsewhere in the house. They began eating properly again, or at least reduced their reliance on takeaways to a couple of nights a week.

  Anne used her fragility to persuade Jude to drive her to the cathedral. You may as well get out of the house while you’re not working, she said. If there was an argument to that, Jude didn’t know it. The car journeys were spent discussing Sissy’s progress. Anne was critical of Jude’s hands-off approach.

  ‘You don’t understand,’ Jude said. ‘I don’t want to isolate her. I want her to be comfortable with me. There’s been too much friction already.’

  ‘She’s a child crying out to be saved. You should be bringing her to church for starters.’

  But one thing Sissy would not tolerate was mention of church, and she resented Jude opening the door to that conversation.

  ‘You only go because you take her,’ Sissy pointed out when Jude broached the subject. ‘And anyway, have you seen what they’ve been up to? Paedophile priests and all that? You’ll not get me in with a load of repressed sex offenders, no way.’

  ‘How dare you, madam?’ Anne could barely get her words out. ‘Talking filthy like that. Have you no idea of the good work the church does every day throughout the world? How dare you!’

  ‘You do what you like,’ Sissy replied. ‘But I’m not a hypocrite. I don’t believe it. I won’t go and you can’t make me.’

  ‘Under your mother’s roof you’ll follow your mother’s rules, young lady!’ raged Anne, but as the battle ground between Anne and Sissy expanded, Jude began to retreat.

  Cam and Rik found themselves invited round with increasing frequency: Do you remember Rik, Grammy? He’s my gay friend. Your church wouldn’t like him though, would they? Are you allowed to talk to him? And here’s Cam. He’s not going to uni or working or doing anything at all really, are you, Cam?

  Sissy, you remember Father Lyons from your father’s funeral. Come and say hello.

  No one escaped and everyone was embarrassed by their antics. Anne had Danny attach a holy water font onto the wall by the front door, apparently because she missed her own so much, but privately because she was sure Sissy wouldn’t be able to resist dipping her fingers in every time she passed. I assumed she’d okayed it with you, he said later, when it became clear Jude had known nothing about it.

  ‘Mum, when is she moving out?’

  ‘She’s your grandma, Sissy.’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with her though.’

  ‘She’s broken her arm!’

  ‘No, she’s fractured her wrist.’

  ‘She’s an old lady, Sissy,’ and then the killer line: ‘It’s what your dad would have wanted,’ which both of them understood to be a truth as well as a colossal cop-out.

  The Virgin Mary statue appeared fro
m the bungalow, along with the Jesus portrait that always seemed to be watching, no matter where in the room you stood.

  ‘Don’t be upset now,’ Anne said, as she removed the sympathy cards to make way for her additions. ‘We’re not forgetting him. We’re remembering him in a different way. It’s maudlin to have these up all this time. No wonder your mother barely leaves her room. Maybe if you prayed with me. And your exams, are you sure you’re studying enough? This is the rest of your life we’re talking about.’

  The effect of which caused Sissy to pile her books up in the woods one night and set them alight.

  ‘That’s mental,’ said Cam, who, having left school a year earlier, was finding his initial enchantment with adulthood somewhat on the wane, although his friends’ overt jealousy over his perceived freedom made it difficult for him to admit it was the case.

  Sissy stood over the fire, her face wax-like by the light of the burgeoning blaze, her eyes burning hotter.

  ‘I won’t be told what to do,’ she bellowed, throwing another book onto the pile, not knowing if she was shouting at Cam, or the fire, or at the grey smoke as it unfurled through the trees.

  ‘What will you do though?’ asked Rik, who was simultaneously thrilled and appalled by Sissy’s behaviour. ‘Don’t look at me like that. It’s just a question.’

  ‘Who cares?’

  It was the most obvious thing in the world that what she might or might not do in the future had no bearing on anything. ‘It doesn’t fucking matter. I’ll… I don’t know… I’ll do fuck all. I’ll become a zoo keeper. I’ll go somewhere. Edinburgh… or London, why not? I’ll move to fucking London.’

  Rik and Cam exchanged a look and burst out laughing.

  ‘You think I won’t?’ Sissy snarled, circling round to shout in their faces. ‘Do you think I won’t do whatever I want?’

  The boys backed down so quickly, Sissy saw her wildness reflected in their fear. She took it as a warning and reigned herself in, but everyone understood she was tightly coiled, ready to spring. Cam and Rik packed themselves around her like protective padding in the hope that their presence might do something to contain her when she did finally explode.

  In a way, her grief branded itself onto their friendship. Cam and Rik had never been easy bed-fellows. Expelled from one of the city’s private schools for smoking pot in the toilets, Rik had moved to St Martin’s just as Cam left. He’d slotted into Cam’s vacated space with ease. They each secretly harboured a jealousy over the other. Cam envied the easy way Sissy danced her fingers through Rik’s hair, the way she let him cuddle her, knowing there was no danger of his misinterpreting their friendship. Meanwhile Rik felt he was the stranger in the group because Sissy and Cam’s friendship went back years. Now Sissy was weak and had become the outsider, but she was the group’s linchpin. They had to keep her on track.

  One afternoon, when Sissy and Rik should have been in a double biology class, Cam produced a small bag of weed.

  ‘Proper skunk. Gets you high as fuck.’

  A swirly graphic looped along to music on the TV screen as he built the joint under close scrutiny from Sissy and Rik.

  ‘It just looks like any other grass,’ sniffed Sissy.

  ‘Aye well, try that, then tell me it’s like any other shit.’

  The high came like a rocket. She was floating above herself, distantly aware of her hands holding the spliff a hundred miles away, clumsy and heavy. There was the sensation of thick fingers interlacing with her own, and the joint went to its next home. Then there came a cascade of giggles, even though she didn’t know what was funny, but perhaps that’s what was funny because then she was lying on her side, tears running down her face, stomach aching with laughter.

  When the laughing stopped, a hush fell over them; real, tangible, solid. They looked at each other in amazement, eyes wide like children, mouths puckered into little expressions of wonder. Then mirth began to tug at the corner of their lips and their faces stretched into laughter once more.

  Later, one of them was missing, but Sissy couldn’t figure out who. Then Rik walked into the room and she realised she was holding Cam’s hand and everything was perfect.

  ‘You’re doing it again,’ Rik said, leaning against the door frame. He looked pale. Sissy knew she should respond, but she couldn’t climb back up through the soft fug she found herself in.

  ‘Doing what?’ said Cam.

  ‘Cutting me out. Look at the pair of you. Why don’t you just get a room and be done with it?’

  A snickering from Cam triggered an awakening in Sissy. She struggled to swing her thoughts into focus.

  ‘It doesn’t mean anything, Rik. We’re just sitting here.’

  Rik began to pace the short length of room behind the sofa.

  ‘C’mon, man,’ said Cam, in between giggles. ‘Be chill, man.’

  But Rik was in a different place to them, edgy and paranoid. He batted off Cam’s words and stumbled back out the room. A moment later, the sound of vomiting carried through the small flat.

  ‘Ah, shit,’ said Cam, pulling himself to his feet. Sissy followed him to the bathroom, where they found Rik hugging the toilet bowl. They cleaned him up, made him rinse his mouth out with toothpaste and water.

  ‘I think I took a whitey,’ Rik mumbled.

  Cam snorted with laugher. ‘You think so, Sherlock?’

  ‘Stop fucking laughing at me,’ Rik said, which only made them laugh harder, even though they knew it was wrong. Maybe it was the wrongness that made it so funny. They put him to bed in Cam’s room and closed the door.

  ‘You’ll feel better soon,’ crooned Sissy, who might have lain down with him had Cam not taken her hand and led her back to the living room.

  Something was different when they returned, like someone had come in and subtly changed the colour scheme. They both felt it and each wondered if the other had too. Cam changed the music and pulled the sofa cushions onto the floor. They leaned against the couch, sleeves touching. Something other than childhood friendship crackled between them for the first time, and without knowing who made the first move, their lips touched, soft and right and feather-light. When they broke apart they were grinning.

  ‘Are you alright, beauty?’

  ‘Am alright. Are you alright?’

  They kissed again, their breath coming on hard. Hands slipped beneath clothes, fingers insinuated themselves down waistbands, pushed through zips and buttons to caress warm, silky skin. They were amazed by themselves and each other, how everything just flowed; how real it all felt even as they spun in increasingly dizzy circles away from that room with the venetian blind and the living flame fire; the detritus on the table: fags, ashtrays, cardboard roaches, a scattering of shiny chocolate wrappers, even the sofa cushions beneath them were elevated into the most magical of magic carpets.

  Afterwards, Cam was concerned about the slim dash of blood lying across Sissy’s lower abdomen. Did it hurt, was it okay, did she feel all right? And she said yes, I’m fine, it was okay. I’m glad it was with you.

  They couldn’t tell Rik what had passed between them, which, in the clarifying light of day, they agreed was nothing more than friends being a bit extra friendly. It made sense at the time, no need to question it too deeply.

  The following days passed in a fuggy comedown haze, both of them each in their own way quietly desperate for the next opportunity to drink and smoke and be rid of Rik as quickly as possible.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Ya Boo Sucks

  Anne’s wrist was slow to heal, though somehow she managed to hoover, cook and clean with more enthusiasm than if the house were her own. She’d never been particularly houseproud but it had occurred to her that perhaps one reason Sissy stayed away all the time was because her home wasn’t welcoming enough. When it became clear that wasn’t the case, she set rules that she had to stay in four nights a week in order to study. Sissy, unwilling to share that she no longer possessed such a thing as a school book, spent the evenings in h
er room, swapping messages with Cam and Rik, or poring over the few handwritten notes she had saved from her father. His small, forward slant pressed hard into wrinkled scraps of paper that had somehow avoided the wastepaper basket.

  Dear daughters, at supermarket buying food to feed you. Be good!

  Dear daughters, saved you cheesecake. It’s in fridge. Aren’t you the lucky one?

  Dear daughters, sorry for you that it’s exam time. Not for me though. Ya boo sucks!

  They’d had no idea such throwaway comments would one day be so valuable as to be treasured more than anything else Sissy possessed, while her own final letter to him sat in a drawer alongside socks and knickers, forever redundant, impossible now to part with.

  Nicknamed ‘Hagrid’ by Sissy’s friends, Peter had been a vital, hairy, giant force of nature. As time passed, there came brief moments of forgetting he was gone, then she remembered and it hit her – the impossible, unfair nature of it. She longed to reach out to her mother or grandmother, but the devastation was too heavy and impermeable. It was alien as a sand storm. It had whipped across and lacerated them with its sharpness; it had covered and suffocated them; it had slipped down into all the spaces between them, and worked its way into all the wounds, so that when the time came that Anne accidentally erased Peter’s voice from the answering machine, there was nothing for them to do but accept it. There was no shouting, no crying, just a solidifying of the grief that anchored them, yet sent them careening away from each other. It was as though they all felt they deserved nothing more. Nothing remained that was worth fighting for, and so when the postman, with an optimistic smile, rang the doorbell one day to hand-deliver the brown envelope containing Sissy’s exam results, no one expressed surprise that they were far worse than anticipated. Rik’s results were marginally better, but it was clear no one was going to university any time soon.

  ‘So London it is then,’ said Cam.