Relatively Strange

by Marilyn Messik

  “No, but …”

  “There are no buts, we’re different, all of us here,” she inclined her head to include the others in the room, “No families, no ties, different circumstances altogether. You’re certainly one of us, but that’s only part of what you are and you can’t live comfortably with a foot in both worlds. When you’re older you can make your own choices. My guess? You’ll opt for as normal as possible.” She took another genteel sip.

  Ruth made to move towards me, I turned my back. I was aware of behaving like a sulky child and knew what had been said made sense, Miss Peacock had read me like a book. If they’d said stay, I’d have been horrified, there was never any question in my mind about that. But in the time I’d been with them I wondered if I hadn’t been more truly myself than ever before.

  “Oh please!” Glory, silent till now, “You’re your own person. Wherever you are, whoever you’re with, whatever you’re doing and that’s all there is to it.” No-one quite like Glory to puncture your balloon. I gathered around me what shreds of dignity I had left.

  “I’ll phone home then, shall I?”

  “We’re staying down here for a bit, but we’ll put you on the 5.00 o’clock into London.” Miss Peacock had it all sorted, she must have hit the phone early. “There’s a taxi coming at 4.30, get you to the station in plenty of time.” It was as if having utilised my services, they couldn’t wait to get rid of me and if I heard Ruth’s quick protest, I ignored it. When you’re feeling hard done by, you really don’t want anybody interfering. I called home under the unsmiling eye of Queen Victoria but the phone at the other end rang on, unanswered. I’d try again later. If I couldn’t get hold of them I’d simply take the tube back from the station. I knew, whenever and however I arrived, they’d be delighted.

  *

  The rest of the day was really rather quiet – nobody tried to kill anybody else in the basement, no one pushed anyone else out the window. There were things I wanted to ask, to find out before I left but somehow, nothing had the same quality of urgency as before. I can’t even, after that one intense conversation in the morning, recall anything memorable anybody said all day.

  Sam seemed to have settled in without a ripple. I hoped, when they took him to wherever they had planned, it wouldn’t be too hard for him and wondered vaguely whether the learning to cope would be amongst normal people or with other Stranges? When the taxi driver rang the bell at precisely 4.30, I’d been ready with my bag packed for an hour and it was almost a relief.

  I knew it wouldn’t be a demonstrative farewell, you only need demonstrate feelings to people who wouldn’t otherwise know. Sam was sitting next to Glory on the sofa. He’d found a medical textbook on one of the over-packed shelves. He couldn’t read it but he was nodding sagely over some of the detailed anatomical drawings, delighted to find people drawn the way he’d always seen them. He still wasn’t really talking, but Glory was quietly answering those unspoken questions she could and together they were looking up and finding answers to those she couldn’t. I bent and gave her a quick, awkward, from-the-side hug, inhaling the familiar sherbet-lemonness of her. She wasn’t a natural hugger, appreciated the gesture, just didn’t know how to soften into it, but she allowed me a very swift glimpse of what she thought of me. I was surprised and pleased,

  “Don’t let it go to your head,” she warned crisply.

  I knelt on the floor in front of Sam.

  “I’m going now, Sam my man. You’ll be all right?” it was meant to be a statement, it came out a question. He didn’t want to drag his eyes away from the book which was filling his whole mind with excitement and possibilities. Perhaps, wherever it was he was going, I didn’t need to worry – with the discovery of that book, he’d already come home. I rose to my feet and he looked up. Someone, Ruth I supposed, had given him a good scrub, which was a huge improvement, but it was still an expressionless little face. And then he slowly closed one eye in complicity and thanks and that was more than enough.

  I could feel Ed, cringing with embarrassment before I even got near him so I altered my course to pat Hamlet enthusiastically on the head, good old Hamlet I couldn’t have done without him. I contented myself with a brisk little thumbs-up to Ed. I could feel his profound relief, a thumbs-up was about as up close and personal as Ed wanted.

  The Peacock sisters escorted me out to the taxi.

  “Will we stay in touch?” It was important for me to know and I meant the question to sound brisk and businesslike, certainly not as whiney as it came out. Ruth didn’t seem to mind, she put a hand on each of my shoulders – she wasn’t much taller than me – then wrapped her arms tight round me for a moment, pulling me into the rich, purple-deep lavender Ruthness of her. I put my arms round her too and squeezed back hard. When we drew apart, she nodded,

  “You did well my dear. Thank you for your help.” My eyes filled in response to her’s, she was already fumbling for and not finding a tissue.

  “Oh for goodness sake Ruth.” Miss Peacock produced a paper hanky from one grey sleeve and thrust it at her sister. She bent and picked up my case and placed it in the open boot of the car, decisively slamming it shut. I saw the driver waiting patiently in the front seat, flinch at how decisively.

  “In you get,” she opened the passenger door for me. I climbed in and wound down the window.

  “I almost forgot,” Ruth was thrusting a brown carrier bag at me, “From Ed – to keep you going on the train. Now, have you got cash on you? If you need to get a taxi the other end?” Neither of them had answered my question, the driver switched on the engine.

  “I don’t want to lose touch with you all. It’s important.” Miss P was as briskly oblique as usual.

  “You’ll always have to make choices.” We looked at each other, peppermint crisp and – I paused, what was I, I’d never thought,

  “Milky,” she supplied, “Here.” She handed me another, smaller package and very briefly she smiled at me as she straightened, that astonishing smile of warmth and charm, lighting her face momentarily with depths of humour and affection. She tapped sharply, twice on the roof of the cab with the flat of her hand and stepped back next to her sister. I waved until we turned out of the drive. Ruth waved back, Miss Peacock nodded once.

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Ed had supplied enough food to get me across Europe, let alone back to London, even including a small thermos of hot sweet tea. I appreciated the warmth of the drink as much as the warmth of the gesture. Inside Miss Peacock’s neat package, when I unwrapped it, was a small, brown leather strap. I’d last seen it braceleting Sam’s sore wrist. Dark brown leather on the outside, there were blood stains turned paler brown on the inside. It was still fastened at the buckle but cut jaggedly through the middle of the leather. The sheet of paper round the strap held three words in Miss Peacock’s distinctively strong hand – Job well done!

  I looked at the broken strap in my lap for a long time. Then I re-wrapped it carefully in the note and put it at the bottom of my bag. I’d arrived at a crossroads and as Miss Peacock had pointed out, had choices to make. She was right when she said it wasn’t easy to live comfortably with a foot in two camps. I’d had a taste of both and despite the deep-rooted conviction that getting Sam out was the best thing I’d ever done, I was pretty certain how I felt. I wasn’t cut out for heroics. I didn’t want an involvement in the sort of life or death, seat-of-the-pants situation from which I’d just emerged. I certainly didn’t want to be doing battle with people who, in furtherance of ambition and obsession, could justify what they’d done to Megan and the others. Through some quirk of nature, I’d been born the way I was. I hadn’t chosen to be different and although there were some undoubted benefits I thought, on the whole, the time had come for me to give Normal my best shot.

  *

  I arrived home to bustle and sadness. There’d been nobody there when I phoned earlier because they’d all been at the hospital. Grandma had died that morning, whilst I was sound asleep in Oxford and a
ll the busy rites of a death in the family had moved into full and unstoppable swing. Whilst memories of the next couple of days are not as clear in my mind as those of the preceding adrenaline-fuelled ones, mixed with the solemn ritual of service, burial, tears and remembering, were images of more violent, unexpected and untimely ends. As I mourned the death of a feisty old lady who’d been so much a part of my life for all of my life, I also took the opportunity to mourn other briefer, infinitely more tragic existences.

  I was acutely aware, back in familiar surroundings, of the privacy of which I was assured. Nobody could stroll in and out of my mind whenever they chose and I didn’t have to work hard at guarding my thoughts. I was pretty certain I viewed this as a bonus and if my feelings were at times ambivalent, and if I thought fleetingly of the ease of communication I’d known with the others, I’d sense enough to realise that to regain any sort of equanimity, I had to accept the choices that had been made for me and by me. I was back in my world, I owed it to myself, my family and indeed my ex co-conspirators to deal with that. I was also wont to remind myself that whilst communication had certainly been a doddle, life with the Peacocks hadn’t exactly been a laugh a minute.

  Because of the timing of my homecoming, questions about my days away had initially been far more cursory than expected and certainly not answered as completely as they could have been. Even the bruising on my face had been only briefly exclaimed over and explained away by collision with a carelessly-open cupboard door. By the time there was a chance to go into things more fully, I had prepared a censored and sanitised version of events that wasn’t going to alarm anybody unduly.

  Also, and rather oddly I didn’t waste any time worrying about official repercussions from my Oxford activities. If Miss Peacock had said they were dealt with, dealt with they were. And if my parents intuited there was more to the story than I was mentioning, perhaps they didn’t really want to know details and were just more than happy I was back. I understood very clearly that they’d thought the temptation of being with others like myself would lure me away long-term. But when my mother asked, seemingly casually one day, whether I was staying in touch with Glory and the others I realised I didn’t have even have their phone number, Peacock wasn’t an uncommon name, I certainly couldn’t have found the Oxford cottage on my own and I didn’t know their exact London address – so the answer, even had I wanted it to be different, was no.

  *

  I returned to school after the Easter holidays; to my new slightly politer friendship with Faith, which only relaxed to a more natural state when we were together with Rochelle and Elaine. Faith had spent two weeks away with her mother and Shirley in Bournemouth where they’d been on earlier holidays. Her mother had said she didn’t think she could cope with a new area right now. They’d stayed in a hotel this time, something they’d never have dreamt of doing before. Her dad had always preferred self-catering, said that way you knew what you were eating and that it’d come out of a clean pan, onto a clean plate.

  And as it so happened, the hotel was all very clean and well-kept and the food was delish. But of course, she said, none of them really enjoyed it, it was terribly hard being three not four. We all hugged her and I read clearly, before I remembered I was going to try not to do that so much, that they’d eaten fish and chips whenever they wanted and Mrs Brackman had bought herself a swanky turquoise swimsuit which they’d all gone to choose, holding on to each other and rocking with laughter, when she mistakenly tried it on back to front. And she’d gone into the sea with them for the first time in their lives, laughing and splashing like a kid. And although they kept telling each other how sad they all were, deep in the depths of Faith’s mind, buried where even she couldn’t see it, was an indisputable fact. Whilst previous holidays had been a minefield, this was altogether a more relaxed affair than any of them could remember. Rochelle had supervised, dried tears, found lost suitcases and comforted two new little step-sisters – who both threw up during the course of the evening – at her mother’s third wedding. Before which, Rochelle reported, a complete wobbly had been thrown. On the point of entering the Register Office, Rochelle’s mother had refused to go a step further until she was assured she was doing the right thing. Rochelle’s mildly pointing out there was still time to change her mind had, unfortunately, launched her mother in an entirely different direction and she’d become hysterical and accused Rochelle of never really liking Ian and of being determined to spoil the big day. It wasn’t really her mother’s fault Rochelle said, she’d had a great deal of stress over the last few years but there was, she confessed, a fleeting temptation to find the nearest blunt object and utilise it to hit repeatedly, the head under the little pink marabou feather trimmed hat with the half-veiling. We couldn’t help but laugh and Rochelle laughed with us, so much so that, still shrieking, we had to play the familiar hunt the inhaler.

  Elaine and her parents had spent two sedate weeks in the South of France, their first time ever on foreign shores, a trip that had been over a year in the meticulous planning. Although, Elaine said they’d departed in such a flap that they’d got all the way down the road in the taxi before they realised her father wasn’t with them. He’d gone back into the house for the fourth time, checking he hadn’t inadvertently switched anything on during his three earlier checks. And, if we recalled, Elaine recounted wryly, the agonies of indecision her mother went through trying to make a choice in an English restaurant where she understood everything on the menu, picture France, where she didn’t!

  I listened and laughed and empathised and read between the lines of the trials and tribulations of my friends and somehow didn’t think it appropriate, in answer to their questions as to what I’d got up to, to go into mine. So I told them instead about Grandma and they all apologised for not knowing, said they’d go round and see my mother, Rochelle gave me a long sympathetic hug and we moved on to safer ground.

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Friendships; unbreakable, immutable, bound to last forever, don’t. The security of the quartet, Elaine, Rochelle Faith and myself, rock-solid through school years began to shift, realigning almost imperceptibly as we moved in new directions. Faith and Elaine were university bound and preoccupied with choosing ‘A’ level subjects whilst Rochelle, caving under a weight of emotional blackmail, gave up a coveted nursing college place to work in her newest step-father’s handbag business. For lack of any other heartfelt direction, I accepted a place on a secretarial course at a local technical college – shorthand and typing, said my parents, will always see you right.

  Although I reached my late teens at the end of the swinging sixties, what was going on in Carnaby Street, never really bothered to take the tube out to Hendon. True, at college, the halls and rec. rooms were filled with enough suspiciously sweet-scented smoke to make ambling between lectures quite a relaxing experience and our Social Sciences tutor was invariably so stoned, he regularly passed out toward the end of a lesson. But in our house, pot was still something in which you cooked soup, heavy drinking was anything more than two cups of tea and the sexual revolution was as far removed as the Russian one.

  My social life over those next few years certainly wasn’t what you’d describe as comfortable. I don’t think anyone ever disputes the awfulness of self-doubt, dances and dating but if you recall how heart-stoppingly uncertain it was, wondering what someone you fancied thought of you, imagine how uncomfortable it was to actually know! I was desperately short-sighted and far too vain much of the time to wear the glasses I needed. But hopes that myopia lent a romantically dreamy gaze were definitively squashed when I overheard myself thought of as the short, squinty one. Then there was the figure-hugging tweed skirt, purchased with my first ever, Saturday morning job wages. If brevity and tightness produced what I felt to be an enticing wiggle, the thought, loud and clear as I walked past a resting builder,

  “Look at the bum on that!” was not what I’d hoped for. Mind you, having a wheelbarrow full of half-mixed cement, up-end
itself swiftly and inexplicably over his legs and feet wasn’t quite what he expected either, so neither of us had a very good day. And yes, I was ashamed afterwards.

  *

  A course of driving lessons were my 18th birthday present from my parents. Mr Goldie, my driving instructor used to pat the dashboard of his trusty Triumph Herald and declaim it’s never good enough to read the road, you must also read the minds of the other drivers – although he probably never had a pupil who could choose to take him so literally. I generally enjoyed my lessons, although appreciated that possibly the same didn’t apply to the long-suffering Mr G. Despite nerves of steel he was still given to the odd squeak of panic in extenuating circumstances although, quite frankly, I always thought there was a lot that could be done to improve the signage for one way streets.

  At the time I was taking lessons with him, Mr Goldie was a man not untroubled by challenges in his home life. I was often aware, as we drove our accustomed side-roads route round Hendon, chivvied by home-bound commuters, infuriated at being kept from their tea, that he was concerned – and not just with my driving. With his daughter recently married and his son backpacking in Nepal, Mr Goldie had been very worried his wife might be struck with empty nest syndrome. This however had proved not to be the case and Mrs Goldie – hitherto a pillar of the local W.I. with more jam under her belt than Robinsons – had slipped off, rather smoothly, the shackles of hitherto established domesticity.