Dot

by Araminta Hall

  ‘She’s there, Mum. It was after she came with me to register Rose’s birth and she realised she’d never seen her own birth certificate. She was going to look it up at some place called Charles House.’

  ‘Did you hear that?’ Sandra said into the phone. ‘Don’t say that, that’s not true. Alice, do you remember that day in the hospital when you told me I hadn’t killed my baby? … Well, you were right, it’s just taken me all this time to work it out … No, of course that hasn’t happened. I’m sure she’s fine … No, Mavis has tried, it’s switched off … That won’t do any good, you won’t even be able to get there. It’s best that we all stay by our phones and then she’ll call us when she can. She’ll be fine … Call if you hear anything … OK, bye.’

  Rose had fallen asleep on Mavis’s breast and so she lifted her on to her shoulder, her totally trusting body warm and soft. Sandra came and sat heavily down on the sofa.

  ‘I’m going to call Dad and get him to come home to be with you. I think I should go and sit with Alice.’

  ‘What did you mean about the baby and the hospital?’

  ‘It’s a long story.’

  ‘I want to know.’

  Mavis’s mother then told her a story as outlandish as the one enfolding on the screen in front of them. She had met Alice just before Dot’s father had left, they’d become good friends and she’d helped her after Dot’s dad had walked out without a word. To make her feel better she’d organised a trip to the circus for all of them, but on the day she’d come down with a sick bug so she’d stayed at home. She had been five months pregnant at the time. When Gerry got back on the evening of the trip he’d told her that Alice had tried to kiss him. She’d known it was a lie, something which Alice confirmed, and they’d had a terrible row which had culminated in her driving off too fast and crashing into a tree. She’d lost the baby and damaged her womb so badly that she’d destroyed her chances of ever having any more children, which had felt pretty much the same as destroying herself as all she’d ever wanted was a house filled with children and chaos and noise and life. Alice had come to see her in hospital, but she’d told her they couldn’t be friends; she’d pushed away the one person who could have helped her. Over time she’d forgiven Gerry, if you could call it that. They’d slipped into a quiet pattern of strange mutual dependency without any intimacy. Then Rose had come along and it had made her realise that life is for living, that no one was to blame, that to waste the next sixteen years would be to waste a whole life and what was the point of that.

  ‘Oh my God,’ was all Mavis could say when she’d finished. ‘I wish you’d told me before.’

  ‘I should have done,’ her mother replied. ‘God, I didn’t know Dot was so desperate to know who her father was, although it’s completely obvious, of course she would be. I could have told her.’

  The words sounded so pathetic, so out of date and pointless that Mavis wondered how it was that none of them had spoken to each other in sixteen years. Why had they all lived in their own worlds, terrified of letting each other in, terrified of being the first to crack?

  ‘We’ve all been so bloody stupid,’ her mother said as if Mavis had spoken out loud. She stood up again. ‘And now Dot could be lying on a street in London when any of us could have stopped her.’

  ‘Oh Mum, you don’t think that’s true, do you?’

  ‘No, don’t worry, I’m sure it’s not.’ But of course Mavis knew that this chance of life or death was a lottery and not something that your mother could influence in any way. A realisation dropped through Mavis’s mind: that her mother could not save her from dying, any more than she would be able to save Rose. That we do our best, but that ultimately we are all at the mercy of the little decisions that see you alone on a London street for the first time in your life on exactly the same day as others decide to blow it up.

  Sandra left the room after that to get Gerry home and call Alice again and Mavis heard her voice soft and low from the kitchen and felt an amazing surge of pride for her that felt very much like love. The man on the screen was talking about how the police had shut down all the mobile phone networks and it made Mavis feel slightly better, until she saw a woman of Dot’s age being helped down the road, her head gashed, her face black, her eyes staring. It wasn’t just death that could get you on those streets, Mavis realised, there was also all the pain and fear, not to mention the maiming, the people who would no doubt lose limbs, others who would be psychologically scarred for ever. She wondered how anybody ever had the courage to simply leave their house when they had a baby, when the baby became a child, the child an adult. She wanted to lock Rose and herself into a padded cell, as if that would do any good. For the first time ever she started to understand her mother and Dot’s mother, started to see how loving someone so completely can sometimes make you scared, can make it easier not to say the painful things, to hide behind cleaning or silence, to become less of a person yourself to make them more of one. When Dot came back to them Mavis would tell her all of this.

  A little later Mavis’s dad arrived home, his face grey and his eyes blood-shot. He kissed her mother and then she left; Mavis heard the car driving off. She’d never seen her parents kiss before and it felt odd. Her dad sat on the sofa next to her.

  ‘Any news yet?’

  ‘No, I keep trying her mobile, but it goes straight to voicemail.’

  ‘I heard on the radio they’ve shut down the mobile networks in case the terrorists use them to set off more bombs.’

  ‘I know.’

  The images rolled relentlessly in front of them. Other people’s lives ending or being destroyed. But neither of them could look away.

  ‘I wish I’d said something to her,’ Mavis’s dad finally said.

  ‘You?’

  He reddened. ‘Well, anyone really.’

  ‘Mum told me all about what happened with Alice and the baby and everything.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Anything you want to add?’ They both kept their eyes on the screen, on the ridiculousness of the carnage.

  ‘Not really. Everything she said is true. I was a total fool. I haven’t been a good husband.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Maybe I can make it better?’ He looked round at Mavis and she was struck by how lost he looked, how childlike. Did anyone ever stop guessing?

  ‘You’re lucky you’ve got that chance,’ she said finally, sounding much more grown up than she’d meant.

  Thirty-three people were now confirmed dead, the woman on the screen said, but the number was expected to rise.

  17 … Leaving

  Tony thought he remembered his mother once saying something like: Where there is a beginning there is also an end. He couldn’t remember when or in what context but he wished he could because he felt lost and cast adrift in a world that understood him as little as he understood it. He was twenty-four, living in a topsy-turvy house with a possibly mad wife and her definitely mad mother. He took the bus into Cartertown every day to work at a job which sickened his soul, calling people to sell them something useless. At least ten people a day called him a cunt, twenty told him to fuck off, fifty just put the phone down. Although the worst were the old duffers who probably hadn’t spoken to anyone in weeks and would painfully prolong the conversation even though they were never, ever going to buy. Scott, his manager, was ruthless; he told them to cut those calls as quickly as they could because ‘time is money’, a disgusting epigram which was written in large red letters across a banner at the front of the room. The banner hung next to a bell which you had to get up and ring every time you made a sale over a hundred pounds. It was always the same three people who rang the bell and, after doing it once, Tony had vowed never to ring the bell again. The only, only part of his life which brought him any joy was his daughter, whom he loved with a passion he had never thought possible.

  Recently though it hadn’t felt like enough. All through his youth, listening to his dad’s Rolling Stones records, Tony had never
doubted that he was going to be someone; but now, as he bumped home on the bus staring out of the window, Alphaville and Kirsty MacColl and the Beastie Boys on his Walkman (bands that Alice wouldn’t even know existed), he wondered at what he had lost. People from his office sometimes went for drinks after work and he’d gone a couple of times, standing in wine bars feeling totally excluded from their lives. Girls would often talk to him, as they always had, but he was never really able to get into it and would tell them about Dot and Alice as quickly as he could to make them walk away.

  Then he noticed the pub in the village, which he had to walk past every night, and he’d taken to stopping in for a pint or two before undertaking the long walk through his front door. People were starting to nod at him when he came in and the night before he’d had a semi-conversation with the butcher. You cannot become this person, he found himself thinking as he left. Of course Alice was always waiting for him at home, dinner cooked and Dot in bed, her mother lurking somewhere in the background like a terrible memory which he couldn’t place. Alice never mentioned the fact that he was late or that he smelt of beer and the cigarettes he’d recently reverted to. He would sit sullenly in the kitchen, spooning her often-tasteless food into his mouth, willing her to ask him what he’d been up to, why he was late. But she always talked about Dot and things they’d done in the day, her enthusiasm bubbling out of her so innocently that he sometimes wanted to smash the plate into her face, just to see what she would do. At least Clarice was open in her disdain, which was something after all.

  If you had asked Tony in the years between him becoming interested in girls and meeting Alice to name the qualities he was looking for in a woman, he’d probably have described Alice. Most men would in fact probably describe Alice: beautiful, passive, submissive, unmoody, caring, intelligent. But now he had all that, he thought he probably wanted something different – he just didn’t know what yet.

  Simon, the pub landlord, was full of the news that he had hired a new barmaid; ‘A right cracker,’ he said to anyone who would listen, ‘and she’s starting next week,’ The air in the pub vibrated as they waited and Tony laughed at the men behind his pint, wondering at the limits of their lives. Maybe we should move, he began to think, try a city? Perhaps if he got Alice away from her mother and out of the house she’d been born in she’d be forced to engage more with life?

  He had forgotten that it was the new barmaid’s legendary first night when he turned into the pub the following Thursday, but as soon as he saw her standing behind the bar he couldn’t help letting a smirk cross his face. She was exactly what he’d expected Simon’s definition of a ‘cracker’ to be: blonde and brassy, slightly plump, too much make-up and a skirt which should have continued for another few inches. Her feet looked uncomfortable squeezed into high heels and her scarlet nails flicked nervously round her throat.

  Tony sat at the bar and ordered a pint from Simon, who was as puffed up as a rooster, luxuriating in the wonder of having provided this specimen for the village. His clients were far from disappointed as well, leaning over the bar as they told jokes and asked questions. Tony thought of his own real cracker at home and felt like a heavy duvet had been wrapped around his head.

  Alice had cooked an indeterminable stew and he ran upstairs to kiss Dot before eating. His daughter was lying on her back, her arms flung above her head, her head turned lazily to the side, her lips a perfect pout and her ginger hair fluffed against her pillow. She stirred when he kissed her fat cheek and for a moment he willed her to wake up so he could hold her in his arms.

  ‘I met a really nice woman today, on the swings on the green,’ Alice said as they started to eat. Clarice was watching TV in the sitting room and the sound of condensed voices drifted through. ‘She’s got a daughter called Mavis who’s the same age as Dot. She runs some playgroup or something at the village hall and she asked me to go.’

  The gravy was pallid and weak and making Tony feel sick. ‘Are you going to?’

  ‘Yes, I think so.’

  He felt annoyed at this. ‘I’ve been telling you to do something like that for ages.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘It’d do you good to get out and meet a few other mothers.’

  ‘Yes.’ Alice was still eating; she never seemed to taste what she cooked. Tony wondered how she would appear to a group of mothers. He stabbed a piece of meat. When you got down to it, she had no real idea what life was about.

  Donna from work tried to persuade him to go to a bar in town with them all, but he couldn’t see the point and got on to the bus like a good husband. The Hare and Hound twinkled welcomingly as he rounded the corner. If you were going to be the sort of man who went to the pub then it seemed crazy not to go on a Friday night. It was warm and noisy inside, busier than usual, which Tony presumed must be the new barmaid. He raised his hand in greeting to a few people and sat at what was becoming his usual stool at the bar, opening up his copy of The Times to see if he could finish the crossword.

  ‘What can I get you?’

  Tony looked up and saw the new barmaid. ‘Pint of Guinness, please.’

  He watched her pull it badly, the white head too big and spilling over the side. Her hand was shaking as she put it down and Simon bumped into her as he reached up for the nuts, making her trip, and the pint flowed over the bar on to Tony’s legs.

  ‘Oh shit, I’m so sorry,’ she said.

  Tony caught her eye and saw tears sprinkled at the corners. ‘It’s fine, don’t be silly.’ He dabbed at the beer and his trousers with a bar towel. ‘I don’t think anyone else saw anyway.’

  She smiled. ‘Thanks. I’ll get you another.’

  The second was as bad as the first, but she didn’t spill it this time. ‘We haven’t been introduced yet,’ said Tony, holding out his hand over the bar, ‘you were pretty monopolised last night. Anyway, I’m Tony.’ Her hand was soft.

  ‘Silver.’

  ‘Silver?’

  ‘Yeah, I know, stupid, right?’

  ‘I wouldn’t say stupid, just unusual.’

  ‘Well, if you ever met my mother you’d understand why.’

  ‘You should be on stage with a name like that. What’s your surname?’

  She laughed. ‘Sharpe.’

  ‘Christ.’ He laughed as well. ‘I can definitely see that on a poster: Silver Sharpe.’

  She tucked her hair behind her ears. ‘No posters for me, thanks.’

  Tony watched her work her way round the bar, her nervousness evident with each customer. There was something unlikely about her which didn’t fit the way she looked, as if she was inhabiting the wrong skin or maybe just uneasy in it.

  He spent the weekend at home, playing with Dot, chatting to Alice, being polite to Clarice. It was all fine unless he was on his own, when he would sometimes be overtaken by the sensation that the ground was swaying beneath him and his life was falling down a hole. He found it almost impossible to be present in anything more than body, watching himself interacting with this beautiful woman and child, marvelling over the colour of a leaf or running across the grass. This is amazing, he said to himself over and over, look at the life you have, what’s wrong with you, you stupid bastard. At night he lay awake next to Alice’s heavy breathing, staring into the blackness, trying to make out things he wasn’t even sure existed.

  Tony avoided the pub on Monday and Tuesday and Alice seemed so pleased when he walked through the door on time and sober that he resolved never to go again. But then just before he left work on Wednesday he got a crying woman who railed at him because he wasn’t her daughter and Scott shouted out from the front of the room that he had the lowest bell-ringing tally and eleven people called him a cunt in the two hours before he left, which was a new record. He wasn’t going to go into the pub until he saw it – or maybe he was, maybe that’s where he’d always been heading.

  Silver smiled when she saw him and he felt his shoulders loosen, felt the sickness lift from his chest and the band unwind round his h
ead. He understood why he’d been avoiding the place. He went back on Thursday and Friday nights as well and Alice looked as if she was going to cry each time he came home late, making him hate himself. He stayed at home again over the weekend, but felt angry and restless, picking fights with Alice and failing to listen to Dot properly. On Sunday when he was pushing Dot on the swings on the green he saw Silver going into the Co-op and emerging with two filled plastic bags. He watched her walk down the road in her cheap plastic heels and imagined her in her own space, wondering what she ate, what music she listened to, what TV she watched, whom she spoke to, where she lived. He was struck by the knowledge that life is lived in so many different ways by all of us, that Silver no doubt had worlds of which he was unaware, and the thought knocked him off balance.

  She wasn’t there on Monday night and Tony longed to ask Simon what had happened to her, but knew he couldn’t. He went home early and dreamt about her fucking a faceless man next to him in his bed. Alice told him he looked tired the next morning and he said he wasn’t feeling great.

  He held back until Thursday evening, only to find Silver talking to some bloke he thought was called Gerry when he arrived and Tony had an insane urge to pull the man off his stool and pummel his fists into his smug face. The man’s laugh seemed to boom around the pub, his confidence rippling through the atmosphere. Simon served Tony his pint which he drank much too quickly so he ordered another. Finally Gerry got up and left and Silver saw him.

  ‘Hi, there,’ she said, ‘you OK?’

  ‘Fine.’ Tony couldn’t keep the gruffness out of his voice. It was ridiculous.

  ‘You don’t sound it. What’s up?’

  ‘Shit day. Take no notice of me.’