First Aid

by Janet Davey

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Author

  Also by Janet Davey

  Dedication

  Title Page

  Friday

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Saturday

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Sunday and Monday

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Copyright

  About the Author

  Janet Davey was born in 1953. Her first novel, English Correspondence, was longlisted for the 2002 Orange Prize. She lives in London.

  ALSO BY JANET DAVEY

  English Correspondence

  To Imogen and Rosamund

  First Aid

  Janet Davey

  Friday

  1

  IF YOU WANT to know how things used to be and still are, you can go on a train to the far end of the East Kent line and start paying attention after Ashford International. The train itself is suited to nostalgia: no automatic doors or high-tech hums, just doors that slam and windows that open wide enough to lean out of, and which have to be leant out of, in order to open the doors from the outside. Then there are the stations, neat but run-down, built like houses, with windows and chimneys and iron railings. And nothing is spoiled by getting out. It is worth getting out and looking up and down the straight tracks, blurred by the seed heads on the grasses. Check the times of the return trains, two an hour, in the still, square station hall and set off. You will have to ignore the cars, parked and moving, bright and insignificant against the tall old houses, ludicrously capacious against the low terraced cottages. This is routine obliteration and you’ll soon come to the street with the shops. Everyone likes old shops: yellow cellophane stretched across windows to keep out the sun, items of household linen you haven’t seen for years, roller towels, kettle holders, floor cloths, piles of tea cloths for eternal washing up. And in the junk shop, the remains of the remains of people’s lives. Always more saucers than cups. There’s a sense of loss, but offhand, not profound. Catch the rapid speech and abrupt applause of midday radio comedy, coming from the back.

  The train home, in the late afternoon, is slightly busier, but you still have a compartment to yourself. The front carriage is out in the sun and the rest of the train is shaded by the scalloped edges of the station roof. The other people getting on are mostly local – going a few stops at the end of the working day or travelling up for an evening in London. Already the capital overflows to meet you, seeping down the line. Loose pages from the Evening Standard flutter on the seat. The last of the sea breezes.

  You hear footsteps, voices and a scuffle outside. The whistle blows. The door of the next compartment is opened. There is a thud and something heavy scrapes along the floor.

  ‘Don’t just stand there, Ella. Help, for God’s sake. I can’t get this lot on with you in the way. The train’s about to leave.’

  It is a woman speaking – the open-air sound of someone saying goodbye – though the words aren’t goodbye.

  ‘Let it leave.’

  ‘Well, carry something, or pick up your sister.’

  A boy appears in the gap that runs down the middle of the carriage. He’s wearing a baggy T-shirt and jeans and heavy trainers. He looks tall enough to be twelve or thirteen but his face has a child’s roundness.

  ‘There’s more space here, Mum,’ he says.

  ‘Ella, move some of this stuff. I won’t be able to shut the door. Sorry, was that your foot? Sorry. Ella, pick Annie up so I can get these bags in.’

  The boy turns and tugs at a suitcase that has appeared behind him.

  ‘Ella, push that through. Help, for God’s sake.’ The woman’s voice is inside now.

  The suitcase lurches through the gap that connects the compartments and bangs against the boy’s shins.

  ‘She didn’t say kick it,’ he says.

  The door slams and the train moves off, rattling out of the station. The boy braces one foot against the seat and heaves the case on to the luggage rack. His arms shake with the effort, but he wedges it in place. He goes back to the gap and gathers up a battered holdall and a plastic laundry bag with its handles tied together. He swings them both up and presses them into the remaining space.

  The woman appears, but she doesn’t settle. She pushes strands of hair away from her face. Her attention shifts from object to object, then, distractedly, back down the carriage. A little girl trails behind her. She clasps a piece of her mother’s skirt and with the other hand pulls at one of the straps of her sun-dress, hitching it back on her shoulder.

  ‘Rob, we’ll never get it all down again,’ the woman says.

  ‘It’s out of the way, isn’t it? Stop fussing, Mum. Give me what you’ve got in your hands,’ the boy says.

  He snatches two bulging black bin liners, tied into knots at the top, and tries to fit them on to the opposite rack.

  ‘Where’s the buggy?’ she says.

  ‘I haven’t seen it,’ he says, still occupied with the bags.

  ‘I didn’t leave it on the platform, did I?’

  An older girl pushes past her. She ignores everyone present and walks with exaggerated carefulness round a squashed chip on the floor. Then she examines a spare stretch of seat. She stares at the black disc of flattened chewing gum that is on the upholstery and sits clear of it. It is impossible not to watch her. She wants to be watched while pretending that no one is there to do the watching. She is a year or so older than the boy. Otherwise she looks like her mother. They have the same facial bones and almost identical hair. She pulls a magazine out of her bag, opens it across her knees, and flicks through the pages.

  The woman moves back to the other compartment and the little girl goes after her, trying to catch at her hand.

  ‘No, there it is,’ she says. ‘Sorry, was that your foot? Sorry. Annie, don’t walk that way. We’re sitting here. Careful. Mind that umbrella. No, don’t cry. You didn’t hurt yourself. Get up, Annie. We’re on the train.’

  The woman returns, drops the folded buggy on the floor and sits down. She leans her head back, exhausted. The little girl picks herself up, examines her knees, then licks a finger and tries to rub the dirty marks off.

  ‘Leave it where it is, Rob, there’s enough up there,’ the woman says through closed eyes.

  The boy gets hold of the buggy and grapples with it above his head until it is clamped in place. The woman glances up and shuts her eyes again.

  The train runs close to the cliff edge, in and out of tunnels stamped into the chalk. You can see a ferry in the Channel, people walking their dogs. It’s not much of a sea view, but it is the sea. No one else looks out of the window.

  ‘Mum, that’s disgusting. Annie’s eating stuff off the floor,’ says the boy.

  The woman reaches forward and pulls the little girl to her. She half pinches her cheeks and fishes out the chip. The child’s eyes light up in astonishment before scrunching up. She begins to cry.

  ‘Shut up, Annie,’ says the boy. ‘Do you want a drink?’

  ‘What did you say that for?’ says the woman. ‘There isn’t a drink.’

  ‘There is,’ says the boy. ‘It’s in one of those bags.’

  ‘Oh my God,’ says the girl.

  ‘I’ll get i
t,’ says the boy. ‘Shut up, Annie.’

  He climbs on to the seat and pulls down the laundry bag.

  ‘It’s not in there,’ says the woman. ‘Please don’t do this, Rob.’

  ‘I know where it is, Mum. I can get at it when I’ve moved some of the stuff down.’

  He stretches up and roots about, destabilising the pile and nearly toppling it to the floor. Eventually he hands down a small carton. The woman takes it and gives it to the child.

  ‘Get down now, Rob.’

  ‘I’ve just got to put it all back properly.’

  A ticket collector comes through the door, which connects with the driver’s cabin.

  ‘Get off of them seats.’

  The boy tries to push the bags back into place.

  ‘I said off. People got to sit on them.’

  The man stands and waits while the boy gives one last shove and clambers down. He looks at the woman. Down her right cheek, from the corner of her eye to the edge of her jaw, is a stripe of purple skin broken by a series of pale horizontal strips of sticking plaster that interlock like a large zip fastener. The child is sitting at her feet, trying to fit a straw into a carton. Orange liquid wells up and drips down her leg.

  ‘Don’t let me catch you doing that again,’ the ticket collector says to the boy. He turns to go.

  ‘This is sick,’ says the girl, without raising her eyes.

  ‘Sorry?’ The ticket collector looks back over his shoulder.

  ‘This magazine. It’s sick. I found it on the train. You should clear up. Not leave this kind of stuff lying around,’ she says.

  ‘Shut up, El,’ says the boy.

  ‘You shut up. And don’t call me El.’

  ‘Nothing to do with me,’ says the ticket collector. He disappears.

  ‘What did you say that for?’ the boy says.

  ‘What do you mean?’ the girl says.

  ‘About picking it up on the train. You didn’t.’

  ‘I know. It’s yours. I found it at home. It’s sick. Games about total annihilation and hamster firing squads. You give them marks out of ten. You’ll be into cake decoration next. Death Row in different-coloured icing. Haven’t you got anything better to do?’

  ‘Leave him alone, Ella. He’s not hurting you,’ the woman says.

  ‘Not hurting me. Is that all you care about? Just because you’ve been hurt you don’t have to take it out on the rest of us. Look at him. Ticking things in catalogues and fitting the fucking bags on the rack like Lego. I’ve got to share a room with him at Gran’s.’

  The girl starts to pluck at the bead bracelet round her wrist, twanging the elastic.

  ‘Annie’ll whinge all the time. And you’ll hang about like a ghost, not telling us what’s going on. And Gran and Grandad’ll be fussing round and making hot drinks and locking up at ten o’clock. Locking up. That’ll be about it, won’t it? All banged up together. What are we going away for, anyway?’ she says.

  The train jolts and stops. The engine chatters for a minute. Then cuts out. There is silence. Outside are fields and hedges and, in the distance, orderly rows of houses. The sea has gone.

  The girl looks away from her mother and down the length of the carriage. Suddenly she grabs her bag, reaches the door, pulls the window down and leans out. She opens the door and jumps.

  ‘Mum,’ says the boy. He is kneeling up on the seat, staring out.

  The engine starts into life.

  ‘Mum. What are you going to do?’

  ‘Shut the door, Rob, before Annie falls out.’

  The boy looks at her, agonised. The train begins to move. He gets up, rests one hand on the door-jamb and slams it shut with the other. The train picks up speed.

  ‘What you up to now?’ The ticket collector is standing there again. ‘What you doing with the window wide open?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  The boy turns round, keeping his back to the door and hiding the view. The man looks sharply at him.

  ‘Were you smoking? It’s the same, you know, out the window or in. Counts the same. Hundred pound fine.’

  He approaches the boy and sniffs.

  ‘Shut the window, then. You can’t leave it like that.’

  The boy turns back and slowly shuts the window all the way. The temperature rises as soon as it is fully closed. The ticket collector looks round the compartment.

  ‘I thought there were two of you kids.’

  ‘There are,’ says the woman.

  ‘No. Two big ’uns, I mean. I see the little ’un.’

  ‘No,’ says the woman.

  He looks at her, but her eyes register nothing. He shrugs. The little girl tugs at her mother’s hand.

  ‘Doesn’t she talk?’ he asks.

  ‘She’s tired,’ says the woman. ‘Once she starts, she doesn’t stop.’

  ‘Where’s your sister?’ he says, bending over. ‘Has she left you?’

  The child climbs on her mother’s lap, puts in her thumb and stares at him over her curled-up hand. The man straightens up.

  ‘Let’s see your tickets, then.’

  The boy fumbles in his back pocket and hands over the tickets to be clipped. He watches as the ticket collector clips yours. A piece of thistledown that has blown in through an open window further down the train floats past. The little girl follows it with her eyes and just as it comes within reach she takes out her thumb and grasps it. She holds it in her cupped hands and looks at it. Then she puts it in her pocket and snuggles back into her mother’s lap. The ticket collector moves off down the carriage.

  ‘Mum, I asked you,’ the boy says.

  The woman strokes the child’s hair with slow, regular movements.

  ‘Mum, what are you going to do?’ the boy says.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘You can’t just do nothing.’

  ‘She wasn’t hurt, was she? You saw her pick herself up?’

  He nods.

  ‘Leave it. She’ll be all right,’ the woman says.

  ‘But, Mum. You should tell someone.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘I don’t know. The police. Someone at the next station.’

  ‘It wouldn’t do any good.’

  ‘You can’t say that.’

  ‘Let’s get where we’re going. Leave it.’

  ‘Mu-um.’ The word collapses into two parts like the trite ending to a song.

  The child looks at you. You don’t react. Smiling at her wouldn’t be right, sentimental complicity. She wouldn’t have smiled back.

  2

  JO CLOSED HER eyes again. She knew who was there. Annie and Rob. No other members of the family now. And a stranger, sitting in the corner seat, with her back to the engine. Most people prefer to face the way the train is going, though in a crash they are better off the other way round and she might have taken that into account. It wasn’t an entirely stupid decision. There were more accidents on the railway than there used to be. Jo could feel the woman looking at her. She had looked several times already, and now she could do it thoroughly. The view under Jo’s eyelids was restless and blotchy, not peaceful. She wished it would settle down. With the movement of the train her vision wavered – near, then receding – an indeterminate red. She could have done with her being human, the stranger. She tried to remember what she looked like. There was only redness now where she used to see – redness with wisps and filaments hatching and dispersing. She wanted to think of safe, material things. It would calm her. For a moment her mind’s focus shifted. She imagined Ella scrabbling up an embankment, running over fields, growing smaller and smaller as the distance claimed her – then just redness.

  Annie stretched up to her and pulled at the flesh of her arm, as if it were cloth in a sleeve. The action seemed experimental, not demanding. Jo went back to stroking the child’s head. This seemed to soothe her and was less trouble than lifting her back on the seat. She thought, it’s no good bothering about what other people think. They can think what they like. But she couldn’t sto
p whatever came before bothering; the consciousness of the other person seeing and judging. The train was slowing down. Signals again. It was quiet outside. The instinct to open her eyes and check where they were had gone, but her thoughts steadied with the stopping of the train. She knew approximately where Ella had jumped off and, with less certainty, where they were now. She had never been to either place.

  No one goes to the strips of land bordering the line between stations, unless their house and garden back onto them, and there were no houses. People don’t clamber over a field to watch the trains as they used to, taking their children to wave. Jo had a picture in her mind of her mother waving. A girl with dark bobbed hair leaning over a fence. It was like a photograph, though no such photograph existed. Even after the steam trains had finished, the waving carried on. Habits endure for a while and then stop. Now kids chuck stones, or worse, at the railway lines; mess up the system and everyone’s mornings or evenings. We apologise for the late running of such and such a train, they say, due to an incident. By then, the kids who did it are in school, or having their tea. We are sorry for the inconvenience caused.

  Jo knew what she would have seen through the windows. She had often done the journey. On her own, or with her children – to visit the grandparents. Never with Peter. Journeys with her ex-husband involved a car. She and the children changed trains at London Bridge – up the stairs and over the footbridge to the other platform. Someone always wanted a drink. Someone always wanted the toilet. It seemed to her hopeless that she was still occupied with these wants. Other things came to an end. But children’s demands continued.

  She felt, as she always felt, that, having left the seaside towns behind, she was already at her destination. The territory behind the sea margin was hardly different from the edges of London. Brick terraced housing and in-filling from the first seven decades of the twentieth century – not the best samples. Streets that became their own likenesses when you turned the corner. No vistas. The pub isolated on a roundabout, the newsagent, the bookies and the take-away squashed up snugly together. The scene was similar to what greeted them when they left the station at the London end and walked to her grandparents’ house in East Greenwich – an unmodemised district tucked in between old Thames wharves and the Blackwall Tunnel Southern Approach Road.