by Louise Beech
Now my mother’s voice chided me again to open my gifts. I looked at Aunty Hairy’s anticipatory smile and picked up a blue flowered present. I feigned delight at the chocolates and Argos voucher.
‘Buy a little something when your house is finished,’ she said.
It would be a very little something with a five-pound voucher. But I thanked her and opened mother’s gift, which was a slight surprise – face cream.
‘Because you’ll never stop frowning,’ she said.
Graham’s gift was the red one. Inside the folds, protected by white tissue paper, sat a topaz brooch with a tiny silver rabbit in the centre.
‘Do you remember?’ Graham asked me. The question was one I often asked myself, one heavy with obligation.
‘I do,’ I said.
I’d seen it at a craft fair in the town hall about four months before, held to raise money for those who’d been flooded but had no insurance and so couldn’t replace their things. I hadn’t so much liked the brooch as been fascinated by the intricate rabbit, the detail in the silver, the whiskers and the winking eye. Now I liked it because Graham had given it to me.
But unwanted words whispered all around it. I wouldn’t listen.
‘Thank you,’ I said.
‘You’re so generous,’ my mother said to him.
I pinned it to my collar and polished the surface.
‘Suits your eyes,’ said Graham.
‘Brings out the red you mean.’
‘Anyone else for crab sticks?’ asked Mother.
She went out to make tea, bringing in the white pot with matching cups and saucers and milk jug. I forced myself to eat an egg-mayonnaise sandwich and some salad. I didn’t want wine. I didn’t want alcohol for a long time.
‘Since we’re all gathered for the occasion,’ said Aunty Hairy with a huge sigh, ‘I have something to tell you.’
She pushed her empty plate away and folded her polyester-sheathed arms in front of her large bosom, the static from the material threatening to set the table alight. Mother stopped pouring tea mid-flow. Graham lit a cigarette and I watched the smoke uncurl. I thought of the one I’d had last night beneath the archway, and my stomach knotted.
‘Is it bad news?’ asked my mother, the teapot still above my cup.
‘Not necessarily,’ said Aunty Hairy.
‘Can’t it wait? We’re celebrating.’
‘I do feel bad for interrupting Catherine’s joyous day, but no, it really can’t.’
‘Nothing can be worse than a birthday,’ I said.
‘I have bowel cancer,’ said Aunty Hairy.
You win, I wanted to say. All birthdays are not equal.
‘What do you mean, you have bowel cancer?’ My mother plonked the pot down and dropped into her seat. ‘Did you get a second opinion? When did you find out? Why didn’t you tell us?’
‘Jean, stop fussing. I’m past the second-opinion part. I’ve had all the tests at the hospital – most uncomfortable and such a sensitive area too. You can’t imagine.’ She looked at me but I didn’t want to think about her being probed with instruments. I dropped my lump of lettuce back in the bowl. ‘The good news is that it hasn’t spread,’ she continued. ‘So I’ll have surgery and a course of chemo-and radiotherapy. If I’m lucky I might lose weight.’ She laughed weakly. ‘Unfortunately I may lose my hair.’
I thought of Aunty Hairy losing her curls and the coarse moustache that had scraped me during many a forced kiss, and it was too much.
I laughed.
I covered my mouth immediately with regret. How cruel had I been?
‘Catherine!’ cried my mother. ‘How can you be so insensitive?’
‘It’s OK,’ said Aunty Hairy, patting my ravaged hand with her swollen one. ‘It’s a nervous reaction.’
‘I’ll never know how you do that crisis-line stuff.’ My mother banged her hand on the table, knocking a teacup over with a clatter. ‘Do you say fuck to everyone there, and Christ on a scooter, and do you laugh when people confide in you that they are dying?’
‘No need to write me off yet,’ said Aunty Hairy.
‘I didn’t mean you.’ My mother got more flustered.
‘It’s Christ on a bike,’ I corrected. I couldn’t help myself. I knew what an idiot I was being, but my mother brought out the worst in me.
Mother put her head in her hands. Graham stubbed out his cigarette and went and rubbed her shoulders, whispering in her ear. I’d always been left out of the shouldery hugs and the secret whispers. I wished I was ten again so I could go and hide under the stairs or behind a curtain somewhere.
‘The tea’ll be getting cold,’ Aunty Hairy said, poured four cups of tea and passed them around.
I added milk to mine and sipped it, placing the cup in the saucer with a soft, respectful tinkle. I pulled sugary topping off the cake and ate it, remembering when I’d had period pain for the first time and my mother had said I was just exaggerating so I could stay home from school. She’d said I wouldn’t know pain until I’d given birth, like that was supposed to ease my cramps; I’d spat back that she couldn’t possibly know what that was like since she’d got me without childbirth.
‘Lucky me,’ she’d sighed. ‘Your arrival caused me no pain at all.’
Aunty Hairy had pressed me to her pendulous breasts and told my mother it was tough being fourteen. She persuaded Mother to let me stay home and we watched Gone with the Wind under the duvet on the sofa, eating icing off fairy buns. She was scratchy and hairy but she eased my pain that day, and now I’d laughed at hers.
I couldn’t swallow any more cake.
‘When do you have the surgery?’ asked my mother.
‘Haven’t got the date yet; probably in the next few weeks.’
‘You never told us you were ill,’ said my mother.
‘I didn’t really know I was. I thought I was just anaemic, tired.’
I looked again at the picture of me dangling my legs from the boat. I hadn’t noticed before that my hair was uneven. One side fell to my shoulder but the other had a great chunk missing. I picked it up to examine it more closely.
‘Yes, you did that,’ said my mother. She leaned over and tapped the picture. ‘You were forever cutting your hair off or shredding your clothes. I despaired at you, really, I did. What person deserves such a child?’
I couldn’t recall cutting my hair. But there I was, hair all mis-cut. I put the picture back in the box and closed the lid, then held the box out to Aunty Hairy. I tried to say I was sorry about her cancer, but the words stuck in my throat.
‘I know you are.’ She patted my hand, as if I’d actually spoken. ‘But the pictures are for you, Catherine. There are some in there of your dad; I thought you might like them.’
‘I can’t take them.’ I pushed them back at her.
‘Of course you can.’
‘Thank you.’ I really didn’t want them. In pictures I look uncomfortable, strange, out of place, and it didn’t help that I often viewed them with no recollection of when or where they’d been taken.
‘Jean,’ said Aunty Hairy, softly. ‘I wondered if I really should contact Henry about my cancer…’
My mother’s head snapped up. The mood in the room darkened as though the sun had set too early. I studied her face for signs of why; then Aunty Hairy’s to see a clue there.
When my mother spoke it was as though she was addressing small children. ‘There’s no need for that, is there?’ she said. ‘You said you’re not dying.’
‘It was just, you know, a thought. He was m—’
‘Not now,’ hissed my mother.
‘Who’s Henry?’ I asked.
Aunty Hairy didn’t look at me.
‘Nobody important.’ Mother smiled and busied herself with cups. ‘More tea anyone?’
‘Well now I think he must be important,’ I said. ‘You never smile at me.’
‘He’s no one.’ Her tone silenced me.
So I said I couldn’t give a damn who he was
anyway and got up. I had a night shift at the care home later and needed sleep before I went.
‘Want me to drop you off?’ asked Graham.
‘No, I’d rather walk. Thanks for the … thing … everyone.’
‘Take care, sweetie.’ Aunty Hairy kissed my cheek with an affectionate scratch. If she lost her hair, I would miss it. I wanted to tell her but didn’t know how.
‘Don’t forget your things,’ she said.
She put the box of pictures and the gifts and four slithers of cake into a carrier bag. My mother had gone into the kitchen and I heard the clatter of the dishwasher being loaded. She was ignoring me. Graham walked me to the door.
‘How was your first shift at Flood Crisis?’ he asked.
‘Interesting.’ No one else had asked. ‘Thanks again for the brooch.’ I kissed his cheek. ‘Say goodbye to Mother for me.’
I got back to the flat as Victor was dropping two bulging bin bags behind the takeaway. He called out that it was chilly again, but I mounted the stairs two at a time, not in the mood for small talk. The kind of night where you wanted to be wrapped up in bed, he said.
Fern was typing something on her laptop, her glistening, rigid bare legs wide open. She warned me not to touch her, clicked ‘save’ and reached for a coffee mug without moving either leg.
‘Fake tan,’ she said. ‘How was today?’
‘I got a pot of anti-wrinkle-pro-something-super-strong face cream, a box of photographs – and my Aunty Hairy has cancer.’
‘What?’ Fern turned, still not moving her legs. ‘Is it bad?’
‘The cancer or the cream?’ I turned the kettle on, opened the drawer for a spoon and was irritated when I couldn’t look in the other one for a tea bag at the same time. I couldn’t believe I had to go to work. ‘Do you think family cancer is a good enough excuse to ring in sick?’
While the tea bag stewed in a cup, I put the box of photographs under her bed with my other belongings. When my house was complete I’d probably transfer them to the top of my wardrobe with all the other stuff I couldn’t quite part from but didn’t want to see.
The telephone rang. Fern answered. ‘I think you’ve got the wrong number, honey,’ she said. ‘There’s no Katrina here. Will I do instead?’
‘It’s for me.’ I held out my hand. ‘Flood Crisis.’
A male voice said, ‘It’s Christopher.’
I couldn’t think of a response apart from ‘oh’. He and Katrina and Flood Crisis were another life – a dream; a place that had nothing to do with this flat and Fern’s legs and unequal birthdays and going to work.
‘The good buddy that I am,’ he said, ‘I’m checking you’re fine about your next shift, that you haven’t hanged yourself with Christmas tinsel over having to work with me again … OK, now the truth: Norman was pissed off that I forgot to get you to call him after last Wednesday’s shift.’
‘Why do I have to call Norman?’ I wondered if he knew I’d taken that call the night I’d gone back to Flood Crisis alone. Would I be in trouble for it?
‘It’s just protocol after a first shift,’ Christopher said. ‘So it’s all good? I can tell Norman I’m the perfect mentor and we’re both ticking all the required boxes?’
As I often did on crisis-line calls, I listened for any background noise that might give Christopher’s world away. It was silent, his life secret.
‘Seriously,’ he said, tone gentle. ‘No problems so far?’
I wondered how he would react if I admitted that it was never a problem for me to listen to calls where people cut themselves or abused others or tried to die, but that I had a major problem remembering things. That I could not soothe my raw hands, that I reacted violently to random words and never slept without waking again and again and again.
‘No problems,’ I said softly.
‘Good. See you Wednesday. Will I need to bring a surgeon?’
‘A surgeon?’
‘Your leg.’
I laughed; the cut was already a fading scar.
I hung up.
Knowing I’d never sleep before work, I ran a bath. A spark of silver demanded attention in the mirror: my new brooch. Its smooth surface cooled my fingertips. I loved Graham for noticing my interest in it, for going back and getting it, but hated how the rabbit looked at me. Like it knew things I wouldn’t like. The clasp proved awkward to unfasten and the pin pierced my thumb.
I tossed it onto the side of the bath. Maybe I would just wear it when Graham was around.
Unexpectedly, I fell asleep in the bubbles. When I woke, it was if the rabbit had been watching me, sleepy, silver, sly. Feeling exposed, I put the flannel over my chest and covered the rest of my body with bubbles. Even with my eyes closed again I knew the rabbit was studying me. I turned it upside down. Still, I imagined its ears pricked up and its nose wrinkled. Still I tried to hide my body from its gaze.
It wasn’t enough. I got out of the bath and went to work.
14
Never about the trees
Under the weight of snow, the tallest tree in the Flood Crisis garden bent like an old man. Trees had me thinking of John Denver on a poorly tuned radio, of being driven through Scotland by Dad, sitting in the back seat and being too small to see all the woods. Perhaps three, I’d pretended the treetops were witches.
Now, as I paused on the third Flood Crisis step, a similar tune drifted down the path. I turned to see Christopher dismount his bike and yank headphones out of his ears. The rhythm of my childhood anthem slowed. Christopher switched it off and said they’d ordered a stair-lift for me.
‘Ha ha,’ I said.
My new boots with extra calf-protecting length made me no less cautious. I stepped carefully over each ice patch on the steps.
‘I also brought an amputation kit in case.’ He tapped in the entry code and let me through before carrying his cycle into the hall and shoving it into the nook between banister and wall.
‘You should be a comedian,’ I said.
The lounge was oppressively hot; a plant on the windowsill wilted like a fainting woman in the Barbara Cartland novel that still sat on the coffee table. I tore off my scarf and jacket, and opened the shutter.
‘Heating plays up all the time.’ Christopher hit the radiator with the copy of Horse & Hound. ‘It wouldn’t go off on Sunday. Me and Lindsey nearly stripped off and answered the phones naked.’
I signed in on the wall chart. ‘Doesn’t Lindsey have her own buddy?’
‘John was ill. I covered.’
Christopher opened his rucksack and took out two strings of pink tinsel and a silver foil star. He dropped them in the ‘Xmas Decos’ box, where tired trimmings waited to die. It was early yet – twenty minutes until we had to switch on the phones. I curled up on the sofa and read a five-year-old What Caravan? magazine while Christopher made tea. When the door opened again it was Jangly Jane.
‘Oh, it’s you again.’ She dumped two carrier bags on the coffee table and threw her jacket over the back of the sofa, the sleeve barely missing my cheek.
‘Apparently.’ I could think of no other response.
‘You should read the logbook if you’ve nothing else to do – catch up on calls from the last few days.’ She went into the kitchen.
When Christopher returned with our drinks I was reading the logbook.
‘Jane,’ he said, ‘she’s a stickler for rules. Been known to take that thing home and type it up for her own reference. She can quote the Equality Act, missives from the Commission for Racial Equality, your disability rights. I should know, I’ve tested her. They say “shit”, she jumps on the shovel.’
‘Hasn’t she heard of the Offensive Body Attire Commission?’ I asked.
Like two school kids, we tried not to laugh when she returned.
‘It’s two-thirty,’ she said. ‘I’ll turn the phones on.’
She sat in the velvet armchair holding an ‘I Love X-Factor’ mug, fanned herself with a newspaper and studied me. ‘Do you know what’s go
od for eczema?’
I looked at my hands, inflamed from the room’s heat after the chill outside. ‘I know what isn’t: cheap jewellery.’
The phone rang in booth two. I was glad to escape her scrutiny and beaded earrings. The leatherette chair cooled the skin between my boot and skirt as I picked up the receiver on its third ring. Illegible scribbling covered the top page of the notepad. I tore it off and wrote the date.
His name was Arthur, though he said most people called him Art. Only his wife had called him Arthur, and he’d loved her for it. I thought how I’d likely call him something else altogether if I knew him. Tempted to write ‘Arthur’ on the pad, I found I couldn’t.
He said he was living in a caravan and it was so cold he wore gloves in bed. Eighty-five and coughing all night and having to wear scratchy, itchy gloves, which he had to wash in the sink, having no machine. I imagined what his hands were like and looked at mine.
Then I wrote ‘lonely’ at the top of the page and circled it twice.
The only photos he had of his wife, Irene, were ruined in the flood. All he had now were memories and he said they were fading. The harder he tried to catch them, the further they flew away.
I knew all about that.
I wrote ‘remember’ and added a question mark, and then scribbled it out. Arthur hung up suddenly, mid-sentence.
The phone rang in booth one and Christopher got up to take it. He wore faded blue jeans and there was a pen stain on the back pocket. I put the phone down and returned to the sofas. Jangly Jane pointed out that I’d not asked many questions.
I finished my tea and watched snow fall from the fir tree outside the window, like icing sugar onto a cake.
‘Poor guy,’ said Christopher when he returned. ‘That was Malcolm. He rings every week to report the stages of his house rebuild. The builders have pulled out for the third time.’
I thought of my builders, of Robin, seeing his face as he’d watched me get out of the taxi on Saturday night.
‘Did you bring cards this week?’ asked Christopher.
‘I forgot.’
‘Admit it – you’re scared of winning,’ he said. ‘Guess we’ll have to play I spy instead.’
‘Game-playing distracts from calls,’ said Jangly Jane through a calamitous chorus of clanking. I wondered what she’d say if I described some of the games Will and I had played while waiting for the phone to ring. Then the one in cubicle two rang and she disappeared into the booth.
