by Louise Beech
‘Enjoy your girlfriend.’ I slammed the phone down.
Oh, the times I’d wanted to do that at Crisis Care. The times I’d listened to a teenage girl crying because she was on a bridge, staring at the water and thinking of jumping. The times I’d wondered why my face was wet when a middle-aged guy confessed to fantasising about his fourteen-year-old nephew. The times I could have walked out. And yet I’d lasted.
Until the nightmares began.
After shifts, when I finally fell asleep, I used to dream of a room at the end of a long, shadowy corridor. Reaching its door, I’d want to turn and run. Sometimes I’d touch the tarnished handle, my mouth as dry as splintered wood. Sometimes I’d sink to the floor, cover my ears and cry like a nine-year-old. But I’d never open the door.
Sometimes when I awoke there was a man. Just for a split second. At the end of my bed. Bushy-haired. Gone the moment I registered him.
I could never go back to sleep then.
The dreams and the strange man had both disappeared when I left Crisis Care.
Everything can be replaced, my mother had said after the flood. But even though the water had receded, leaving murky stains on walls, I knew the rain could return any time. Dreams could too.
4
Another seventy candles
When nightmares rolled in, Nanny Eve’s image always anchored me to a familiar shore. I’d wake, sticky and hot, and hear that sing-song voice as though she were calling me to breakfast from downstairs. There was no downstairs now. It had been washed away by the rain. My bed was a sofa she’d never sit on to talk about fairies in the garden or to ask if I wanted rice pudding with cream.
But I could close my eyes any time and see her.
Nanny Eve’s birthday was one week after mine. We often saved the candles from my cake to put on hers. She turned seventy-seven after I was seven, seventy-eight after I was eight. We’d stick my seven or eight candles in her sponge and say we’d just imagine the other seventy years.
‘Pretend it’s only twenty,’ she’d whisper in my ear, her skin as papery as tissue wrapping.
I remember the time I forgot her birthday. So strange to remember forgetting. But that moment is as clear to me now as our garden pond was on a still day. When my nightmares about the room grew worse after the Crisis Care shifts, memories of that day dawned brighter in my recollection.
Nanny Eve was celebrating eighty-one so I’d have just turned eleven. It would be her last birthday. I hadn’t meant to forget; I woke that morning with all kinds of plans in my head to make her day special: ideas for handmade cards and made-up birthday songs and chocolate-cornflake cakes. Nothing would get in my way. Not homework, not the TV, not helping Mother with the flowerpots.
But then Rebecca Houghton rang. She was the most popular girl in our class and had never called my house. Mother called me, covering the mouthpiece and saying, ‘It’s that lovely girl, Rebecca. I know her mum. She’s big with the church ladies. Invite her over. She’d make a lovely friend.’
Mother didn’t like my current best friend, Barry Hudson. He was in the special-needs class and his trousers were always just too short. I used to think it was his smell my mother disliked; a mixture of cabbage and unwashed hair was how she described it. But really it was that he was different. I loved that I could just be me when I was with him. I didn’t have to brush my unruly hair or pretend to swoon over some pop star. We’d collect stones and rubbish along the river’s edge, and climb the chalky cliffs in the country park to look for birds’ nests, and fight using tree branches as swords. I favoured Barry’s wild play over gossipy, already-lip-gloss-wearing girls. Or rather those girls favoured each other over me. My hair and moods and eczema didn’t make me very appealing.
Rebecca Houghton was calling that day to see if I wanted to go ice-skating and then for a burger. All the kids in our class were going. Her dad had got the tickets free because he worked for the council. Of course I wanted to go. My Saturdays usually involved hanging around at home and getting into trouble for being in the way, or calling for Barry and going to the country park on the foreshore. Suddenly I wanted to be a girl instead of hanging from some tree.
I spent a good while selecting something pretty to wear. Mostly I wore jeans or shorts. But now I picked the lace dress Nanny Eve had bought for my birthday, and put on my birthstone necklace.
On my way out of the door Mother gave me a pound and said to buy Nanny Eve a nice card afterwards. ‘Don’t forget,’ she said. Don’t forget.
Of course, I forgot.
I got wrapped up in doing pirouettes on the ice and impressing Rebecca Houghton by being the only one brave enough to try the splits. The girls said they loved the creamy lace of my dress. We all skated in a line, like they do on TV. I could hardly eat my burger for smiling.
On the way home I had a head full of friendly girls’ laughter and giggly secrets. Anna – who’d been my friend through junior school but abandoned me when Barry came on the scene – promised we’d have sleepovers again. It had been the best day. I forgot about Barry and his conkers.
I went straight to my room when I got home and curled up on the bed to cherish my sudden popularity. I didn’t feel lanky and boyish. On the ice my usually clumsy hands had made star shapes and swirls above my head.
But Mother’s voice jolted me out of happiness. ‘Catherine, come down here right now!’
There was never any sing-song in her voice. It ordered and instructed and criticised. In the lounge Nanny Eve sat by the French doors with her knitting. She looked up with soft, questioning eyes as we entered, me behind Mother like a lace shadow.
Mother pushed me in front of Nanny Eve. ‘Catherine,’ she said, ‘the selfish girl that she is, forgot your birthday.’
My hands flew to my face. Suddenly they were clumsy again. In all the excitement of showing off and being praised I had forgotten Nanny Eve’s special day. In all the chaos of imagining new friends at school on Monday and selfishly planning to ignore Barry, I’d hurt my beloved nanny. The pound still sat in my left pocket, and I knew the queen on it was probably smiling.
I went straight to Nanny Eve, sat on the floor at her knees. ‘I didn’t mean to,’ I said. ‘I really didn’t. I had all kinds of—’
Mother interrupted with, ‘How difficult is it to go and buy a card?’
Nanny Eve patted my head and said softly that there was no need to fuss. Things were easily forgotten. Mother said I was a stupid, gormless girl and if I loved Nanny Eve I’d have remembered. Then she went and made shepherd’s pie.
I cried. She was right. I couldn’t have loved Nanny Eve enough. Surely love shouldn’t be eclipsed by a fun day out. Surely love remembered. Perhaps this was when Nanny Eve stopped calling me by my pretty, sing-song name. But still she stroked my hair as I cried. Stroked and said that she knew I loved her.
It might have been around this time that I broke the Virgin Mary, but I’m not sure. I think perhaps she was already smashed and Nanny Eve had the plastic, red-lipped one. And I’m sure Nanny Eve had already stopped singing her mysterious songs. My memories come like playing cards picked from the deck. I never know which ones I’ll get and most aren’t the ones I want.
When they lowered Nanny Eve’s coffin into snowy ground three months later I whispered that I would never forget her birthday again. And I never have. I light a candle every year for her.
Now I remember all the birthdays. Every time someone tells me their date of birth, I file it. Their numbers mount up like piles of revision notes in a student’s bedroom. I can’t forget. I won’t forget.
Love always remembers.
Nanny, I’d think on each of her birthdays. I hope you see the candles. Let’s pretend there are another seventy.
5
Memory with no rhythm
I waited ten minutes before ringing the Flood Crisis doorbell. I wasn’t sure why.
Norman came down to open the door himself. ‘Katrina, welcome back,’ he said, and I knew I was supposed to be there.
The hallway yawned wide behind him, its muggy breath as familiar as if I’d been there twenty times. The days since Saturday’s interview seemed part of another life; days spent with Fern and working nights at the care home. Now I entered the tall building with ivy clinging to brick like gangrene, ready to become Katrina.
Norman said, ‘Let me give you the door code for next week.’
He glanced down at my feet as I stamped snow from them. I’d picked shoes that fit this time: knee-length boots with a zip that always got stuck halfway, but at least they kept my legs warm. I took out my phone and put the door code into my contacts list, under C for Code.
Today, Norman wore a black T-shirt with Che Guevara on the front and had a pink Support Breast Cancer rubber band around his wrist. ‘Thank you for coming at such short notice,’ he said.
I followed him into the lounge. The shutter had been fixed, so wintry light pooled in the centre of the room, where a young girl sat on the velvet armchair reading What Car? magazine, feet tucked beneath her. Her charcoal-shaded eyes viewed me frostily. She wore a shimmery top with a hood and gloves at the end of the sleeves.
‘You’re the last one.’ Norman touched my back.
Perched on the sofa opposite Charcoal Eyes, a birdlike woman held a bag on her lap with her talons. Her lips chanted some mantra that perhaps prepared her for the calls ahead; her stick legs protruded from a long plaid skirt. Opposite the circle of chairs, a pinstripe-suited woman leaned against the desk where I’d been interviewed. Her buttocks creased our folders. She had bruised knees, as if she’d been gardening in shorts. I wondered why she hadn’t worn trousers.
‘This is Katrina.’ Norman closed the door behind us.
Charcoal Eyes smiled but only with her mouth. Bird Woman looked up, nodded and quickly returned her attention to the bag. Bruised Knees came forward and shook my hand, her cool fingers soothing my raw skin.
She held my palms up. ‘Can you not get cream for that?’
‘I have some.’ I pulled them away. ‘It’s the extremes – cold outside, warm indoors.’
‘I’m Claudia Kent,’ said Bruised Knees. ‘I’ll be doing the session. Have you met Lindsey O’Malley, Kath Grimshaw?’
I shook my head.
‘Lindsey used to volunteer for Youth Voice. And Kath has years of experience with Crisis Care, and with Post-Menopausal & Proud.’
Kath nodded, opened her bag and extracted two knitting needles and a thick ball of magenta wool. ‘Do you mind if I knit?’ It was a soft voice that might require good ears from a would-be-suicidal. ‘It calms me when I’m nervous.’
‘Not at all,’ said Claudia. ‘I can’t live without cigarettes.’ She described how she had been the secretary for Crisis Care in London, a team leader in Manchester and ran a Permanent Pelvic-Floor Postnatal Class here.
She touched my shoulder. ‘Katrina volunteered with Crisis Care for five months. Come and sit down, Katrina.’
I wondered if Lindsey was really Lindsey, Kath really Kath, Claudia really Claudia. There could have been eight names between four of us.
I sat next to Kath and watched her hands working the knitting needles with gusto. The click-click-click as they met was soothing; it reminded me of sitting at Nanny Eve’s feet while she made miniature coats for my Barbie doll, fascinated by the magic those two silvery sticks created, in awe of her patience when I’d tried to do it myself many times and been sent to my room for calling a needle a bastard.
‘It’s a coat for my baby granddaughter,’ Kath said.
‘Lucky her.’ I hoped she suited purple.
Norman made drinks and Claudia sank into the large beanbag. After a few efforts to plump it up, she resigned herself to being lower than us and pulled her skirt down, unable to hide the clover-shaped bruises.
‘Today we’ll brush up on the skills you already have,’ she said. ‘If a subject makes anyone uncomfortable at any point, they’re free to step outside.’
Lindsey looked at me as though trying to ascertain if I’d be a quitter. Kath continued the click-click-clicking.
‘Let’s break the ice, shall we?’ Claudia clapped her hands as though announcing pass-the-parcel. ‘How about a game? Can each of you describe a memory from when you were nine? I’ll start.’
‘Why nine?’ asked Lindsey.
‘It’s old enough for you to recall, young enough to contrast with now.’
‘Wouldn’t it be better to just talk about who we are now?’ I suggested.
Norman kicked the door open and held it ajar while balancing four steaming mugs on a tray commemorating the 1981 marriage of Prince Charles and Lady Diana.
‘Our history makes us.’ Claudia took a metallic mug from the tray and sipped it, leaving a brown lipstick mark on the rim. ‘My favourite memory from that age was getting a rabbit,’ she said. ‘I loved him: Stig. He used to eat chocolate out of my hand. My Aunty Marg gave him to me because I’d been brave when I broke my arm … Kath?’
Kath stopped knitting and picked up her drink. ‘I can’t remember as far back as nine,’ she said. ‘How about fifty-four? I bought my niece a rabbit called Petal; it savaged my niece’s cat.’
Claudia smiled; only her top lip still had lipstick on. ‘Lindsey?’ she asked.
‘Does it have to be a rabbit story?’
‘No. Just what you remember about being nine.’
‘My Aunt Bessie used to irritate me.’ Lindsey fiddled with her left sleeve’s glove. ‘She’d come over to watch TV and then go to the toilet for hours with the newspaper. When she came back she’d ask, “Did I miss anything?” I used to think, “Well, if I tell you what you missed we’ll miss the next half-hour, and who’s gonna tell us what we missed in that part?”’
I began to like Lindsey.
‘Katrina, how about you?’
I thought about it. ‘I can’t remember anything about being nine.’ I shrugged, ruining the game.
‘There must be something,’ smiled Claudia, the one glossed lip taut.
‘Nothing.’ I scratched the red in between my fingers.
‘Nothing?’
‘Nothing,’ I repeated.
‘Can’t she just talk about her rabbit?’ asked Kath.
‘How do you know she had one?’ Lindsey laughed.
‘Did you, dear?’ asked Kath.
‘You can’t remember anything from a whole year?’ said Claudia. ‘It’s fascinating. How about your birthday? Christmas?’
I shook my head. I could remember my eighth and tenth birthdays. I could remember forgetting Nanny Eve’s. But nine was blank. Not just the birthday, but Christmas, the whole year. As though it was a chapter that had been torn out of a children’s book.
Claudia stared at me like I’d forgotten to put clothes on.
My memory had never been perfect. Relatives would talk about some uncle throwing up in the punch bowl at a wedding, or a car trip when someone’s grandad got drunk and showed his bottom to the other motorists. I’d laugh because it was funny, but not because I recalled it happening. I wondered now if my knack for remembering birthdays was not only because of Nanny Eve but to compensate for lacking memories elsewhere.
‘I don’t remember,’ I said.
‘How about a holiday? A death? A pet?’
My hands were on fire. ‘If I was a caller and was interrogated like this I’d hang up.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Claudia. ‘Let’s move onto confidentiality. I’m sure you’ve all signed one of these forms before, but I’ll sum up anyway.’
While she rambled on I tried to recall something from when I was nine. The click-click-click of needles hurried me. I remembered clearly listening to that sound at Nanny Eve’s feet. How old was I then? Maybe six. Click-click-click. My memory had no such rhythm. Click-click-no-memory-click-no-memory-click.
‘What we hear in those booths stays inside this building,’ Claudia was saying. ‘Share your feelings with a fellow volunteer but don’t take it home. Each new starter is appointed a buddy for th
e first few shifts: an experienced volunteer they can talk to.’
‘How soon do we go on the phones?’ Lindsey glanced at them. ‘At Youth Voice, I listened to other volunteers for five sessions because I was terrified about picking them up.’
The first call at a crisis centre is like losing your virginity: you never forget it. I’d needed two hours of foreplay at Crisis Care. I’d intended to sit through three sessions, observing others without picking up the phone. But I’d realised that I didn’t want to go home and worry how it would be, so I’d answered on my first shift.
I’d said, ‘Crisis Care, can I help?’ in a voice that wasn’t mine. I’d learned well on the course; I was non-judgemental, patient, gentle. My first caller was a fifty-year-old man who’d been married for thirty years but had always been desperately in love with his friend Jim.
‘What should I do?’ he’d asked.
It wasn’t for me to tell him, only to listen, ask the right questions, and let him figure out his own feelings. I was shaking when the call ended but felt empowered.
I looked over at the phones and wondered what my first call might be this time.
‘We prefer you get straight on the phones,’ said Claudia. ‘Crisis Care and Youth Voice have prompts in the phone booths, so you’ll be familiar with those. We’re less rigid about sticking with emotions here – if a caller needs to whine about a ruined chaise longue then so be it.’
‘What about advice?’ Kath paused mid click.
‘There are website addresses to give out. Some callers need to talk about personal things, though; and there’s a slim chance some could be suicidal.’
‘What are your policies on that?’ I asked.
At Crisis Care the policy was that it is an individual’s right to die. It was a shock at first when I learned that we might have to listen to someone breathe their last breath and not intervene, unless they specifically requested help and gave an address. The leaders warned us it was unlikely to happen. Less than one percent of calls would be that desperate.
In my five months there that should have meant my chances of such a call were slim; I figured I took around seven calls in a three-hour session and covered five sessions a month. So, after five months I’d answered perhaps 175 calls. One percent predicted I should handle two suicide attempts. Unlucky with coins and dice, I was doomed with helplines too; I talked to nine people who had overdosed. Nine; the year I couldn’t remember. Nine; the number of suicide calls I couldn’t forget.
