by Louise Beech
‘I wonder what she does for kicks,’ I said.
‘Something arty?’
‘I was thinking something more outdoorsy.’
‘What do you do for kicks?’ he asked me.
‘I try and figure out what other people do for kicks.’
‘What about me, then?’ he asked.
I pretended to study him. Jangly Jane asked a caller why they felt it necessary to buy so many tins of beans, her tone better suited for talking to a four-year-old. Outside the trees bent in the rising wind and traffic was starting to clog the road.
‘No idea,’ I admitted.
‘Where would you be right now if you didn’t have to be here?’ he asked.
‘We don’t have to be here,’ I said.
I watched the queue of cars waiting for the lights to change. It was easy to be flippant, but something drew us all here; something made us come and answer the phones without being paid to, without having to.
‘But what would you be doing if you weren’t?’
I admitted that I’d probably just be watching CSI; he asked which one. I couldn’t recall which it was, only that it had Horatio in it, the sexy-but-arrogant detective.
‘I’m more of a Grissom man,’ joked Christopher. ‘I like a full beard, especially with that hint of grey.’
‘Don’t you find that the culprit is usually the second person you write off as the killer?’ I shifted in my seat, wanting to get as comfortable in it as he made me feel.
Jane came back into the lounge. She dropped into a chair and asked what we were talking about.
‘Beards,’ we said at the same time.
The phone rang. I didn’t want to go but it was my turn. Standing, I tried to free my mind of beards and mockery, but mainly of Jane. I said the greeting, already without thinking, and drew invisible circles on the pad until the ink came down and the pen worked.
‘Is that Katrina?’
I sat up. ‘Yes, it is,’ I said.
‘It’s Helen. Do you remember me?’
‘I do.’ Some things I never forgot. It was the woman who’d talked of acting lessons and then gone. ‘How are you today?’
‘Sad,’ she said, and after a long pause, ‘I’m sorry I hung up on you last time.’
‘It’s fine,’ I said. ‘It’s hard talking to a stranger about topics that are so difficult.’
‘I’m still nervous,” she admitted.
‘Take all the time you need.’ I tried to write, but the pen had dried up again, so I scribbled until the ink returned. I wrote ‘Helen’.
‘I’m still with Marcus. You remember Marcus?’
‘Yes, I do.’
I remembered all the calls. While my memory discarded my own history, it had no trouble with people who needed me to remember. But, like Arthur earlier, the more I reached for my own memories, the faster they flew away.
‘Did I tell you he’s my tutor? I’m trying to stop my affair with him. It’s going to be harder than I thought to leave him. I woke up yesterday thinking I’d end it, that I’d tell him he isn’t good for me, but I slept with him instead. Do you think I’m weak?’
‘It doesn’t matter what I think.’ I knew how clinical it sounded. ‘It only matters what you think.’
‘I think I’m pathetic.’
I didn’t write the word. No one who calls a crisis line could be described that way; only the bravest dare to pick up a phone.
‘Why do you think it’s so difficult to leave him?’ I asked.
‘At first I thought it had something to do with meeting him after the floods. Like he’d been sent to rescue me. Is that terribly silly?’
‘I don’t think so.’
It was a mistake to answer her, but I’m human and sometimes forgot how I was supposed to be. I wrote down ‘rescue’ because the word helped me detach and stay focused on the object of this call.
‘Tell me more about what made you think of him as rescue?’ I asked Helen.
‘He was like something wonderful that happened after that rain. I deserved to be rescued from my pain. And maybe he is wonderful. Maybe the problem is me and I’m analysing too much. Do you do that?’
I didn’t answer. Our opinions and emotions only counted when determining the next question and how we could bring the subject back around to their feelings, to them. ‘What do you think makes you overanalyse?’
‘When I had acting lessons it was drummed into me.’ Her voice was suddenly childlike again. ‘When assuming a role one must consider why the character acts a certain way, how they might respond to a particular situation, what compels them.’ She seemed to be quoting someone, imitating their haughty tone. ‘Even trees,’ she said.
‘Trees?’ I asked.
‘I had to pretend I was a tree,’ she said. ‘I didn’t want to be a fucking tree. I didn’t want to stretch my torso into a gnarled trunk or my arms into willowy branches. I didn’t care if the snow froze my limbs or the sun warmed my bark. Trees don’t have feelings. Who gives a fuck about trees?’
I tried to piece the fragments together. So many callers talked about a whining mother or a neighbour who stole sunlight from a garden with an overgrown tree, but we had to listen for what they were really saying.
It was never about the trees.
‘Was this when you had acting lessons as a child?’ I asked.
A sigh heavy with torment filled my ear. ‘Yes. I don’t know why it matters now.’
‘How do you feel when you think about those lessons?’
‘Anxious,’ she said. ‘My mother made me go. I wanted to please her so much, make her smile – she so rarely did. She loved that I was the best tree in the group, but it hurt to reach my branches in her direction.’
I knew how it felt to try to please a mother.
‘I wasn’t very good at acting,’ she said. ‘And I didn’t like Marcus. I didn’t like him teaching me how to be a tree.’
‘Marcus?’ I was confused. ‘Was he your acting tutor too?’
‘No,’ she cried. ‘Why would I say that? Marcus is who I’m with now!’
Her panic was contagious; the hairs on my back bristled. I wanted to take her back to the trees.
‘I’m sorry if I misunderstood. Who was your acting tutor?’ I said.
‘I don’t want to talk about him.’
‘Shall we talk about something else for now?’
‘I’m sorry; goodbye.’
‘Don’t go.’ It was the wrong response; I wasn’t respecting her right to withdraw. The phone went silent – she had gone.
I pressed the warm receiver against my cheek and remained in the booth for a minute or so because Christopher was on a call in the next one and I couldn’t face Jane and her dingly-dangly accessories. He finished his conversation, stood up and peered into my booth. When he raised his arm, his T-shirt pulled out of his belt.
‘Tough one?’ he asked.
‘Helen – I spoke to her last week. I was making progress but she hung up.’
‘It’s difficult not to feel some sort of expectation with the ones who call back,’ he said.
I stood and the chair bounced into an upright position. In the lounge area Jane offered us her variety pack of biscuits and Christopher grabbed a handful of custard creams. We sat without talking. I listened to the clock and his munching and the distant traffic. It was dark outside. Wind knocked a branch against the window: six taps, pause; two taps, long pause. When the phone rang we all jumped up, but Jane got it.
‘Do you ever hear phones in your sleep?’ he asked.
I confessed that I heard the shriek of a phone in many sounds.
‘Our actual phone rings all the time, too,’ I said. ‘My flatmate Fern won’t give out her mobile number because that’s just for text sex.’
‘Text sex?’ Christopher asked.
‘Apparently it’s the new phone sex.’
‘Ah.’ He smiled.
‘Have you done it before?’ I asked him.
‘Text sex?’ The tre
e knocked on the window.
‘No, this, here,’ I said.
‘I was at Crisis Care for six years.’ One of his trainer laces was undone.
‘Really, when?’
‘I left two years ago,’ he said.
I didn’t ask why; outside of crisis lines I rarely asked questions I couldn’t answer myself. Instead, so he didn’t feel obliged to explain, I picked up a book and read the blurb on the back.
‘My wife left me,’ Christopher said. ‘I couldn’t face doing it for a while.’
I put the book down. Jangly Jane asked a caller how it made them feel.
‘Why did you volunteer?’ Christopher looked at the Flood Crisis banner. It had to be the most asked question between volunteers.
‘Why do you?’ I fell back on the crisis-line technique to avoid answering.
Christopher awkwardly scratched his neck. I felt bad for passing it back to him and tried to think of a fake answer to save him. He said softly that his father had killed himself. The branch outside continued tapping its rhythm against the glass.
‘I was twelve. No one was there for him. I like being there for people.’
Jane told the caller to take their time, her tone light and patronising. I wrapped my arms around my body even though the room was still ninety degrees. The phone rang; it was probably Christopher’s turn.
‘I’ll go,’ I offered.
‘It’s OK, I’ll do it.’
I stood and insisted I would.
‘I think you like being there for them too,’ he said as I walked away.
I picked up the phone before sitting down. The Flood Crisis greeting came easily already and I clicked the pen and started a new page.
A male voice said, ‘I wonder if I could speak to Katrina.’
I recognised the heavy, plodding effort behind the formation of the words. It was Sid, my first Flood Crisis caller.
‘This is Katrina,’ I said, as quietly as I could, aware that no one else knew this was a follow-up call.
When he asked if I remembered him I enjoyed saying that I did.
‘I rang yesterday but the poor girl couldn’t understand me like you did that time. Wasn’t her fault. Maybe she was young and thought I was mad or something, which is understandable. I asked for you.’
I had to concentrate intensely; I heard eighty percent of his words and had to imagine the rest.
‘Is it OK for me to ring again? Do I get a designated time allowance? Last week Crisis Care told me that I could only have one hour a week.’
I remembered that policy, implemented because they felt an hour was enough to explore feelings – and to make room for the many calls. I’d hated watching the clock, but I’d understood why such policies were in place: no time limit might result in a five-hour call that helped no one, and stopped others getting through. Such limitations hadn’t been mentioned here though.
‘You can ring again,’ I said. ‘Is something particular troubling you?’
‘It is,’ he said with a heavy sigh. ‘But at least I found my glasses.’
I smiled.
‘They were down the sofa.’
‘Can you tell me what’s bothering you?’ I picked at the pencil end, hoping to reveal the lead tip.
‘I don’t feel quite right.’
‘Quite right about discussing it?’ I asked.
‘No, not quite right in myself.’
‘You mean to do with your stroke?’
Sid said it was something else, and coughed, then rasped that he needed water. I heard liquid running and him slurping, and waited for his return. When he did he apologised, and said it was a cold that wouldn’t shift. Said he’d had a bad one last year, but the doctor struck him off and now he couldn’t get another.
The word ‘why?’ nearly jumped out of my mouth, but I knew the important thing was today, now. Jane hung up in the next booth and returned to the lounge area.
‘I know the stroke affected my coordination, and my memory will always be bad – I’ve got used to that. But I didn’t have a cough until recently. The lift is broken at the flats so I’ve to use the stairs. Takes me ten minutes and I pant like an asthmatic afterwards.’
‘Can you talk to anyone about the lift?’ I felt frustrated that I could only ask about these things.
‘The maintenance people are wrapped up in flood repairs. They forget the rain affected those who weren’t flooded. I only moved back to this area from Spain seven years ago. It didn’t flood there. But something drew me back.’
‘What was it?’
He didn’t answer.
‘How does all this make you feel?’ I asked.
The phone rang again in booth one; Christopher picked it up after three rings.
‘Sad,’ said Sid.
Sad – such an evocative word. I moved the blunt pencil in the shape of the letters an inch above the paper, writing the word in the air. ‘Would you say you’re depressed?’
‘A little. My appetite is non-existent.’
‘Try and eat small amounts.’ I knew how lame I sounded.
‘I do,’ he said.
I’d felt a gush of affection that first time we spoke, thinking he was around the age my dad would have been. Now I thought of Christopher’s long-gone father. Christopher’s call must have been brief because he returned to the sofas.
‘Talking tires me,’ Sid said. ‘Such effort for so little.’
‘Take your time,’ I said.
‘I need to go,’ he said. ‘Need sleep. Goodbye, Katrina.’
I told him to take care and replaced the receiver.
Back in the lounge area, Jane talked about her night out on Saturday, recounting the three vodkas that had made her queasy and describing the guy who’d apparently tried to corner her near the men’s toilets. I wondered what she’d have thought of my night on the town. Christopher laughed and said he could barely handle two beers anymore, let alone vodka. She suggested they share a bottle of wine and see who passed out first; he insisted he’d be the wuss. The phone rang and she got up and went to it, her skirt swishing against the chairs.
‘I’m sorry about your dad,’ I said. It sounded hollow and empty after the laughter, and out of context following my time away on the phone.
‘So why do you volunteer?’ he asked me again.
I wanted us to joke around, for him to look at me with one eyebrow raised, not discuss why we did or didn’t do this. So I said I wanted to save the world.
‘Is that what you said in your Crisis Care interview?’
I remembered the interview well. There were three staff members and me in armchairs around a table. One of them plonked a box of tissues down and said I’d not be judged for any dark secret I confessed. The violet-walled room had probably witnessed all manner of atrocities. I’d felt I should offer something intense but had nothing. Eyeing the tissues I’d merely said I felt compelled to listen to others and then regretted the word ‘compelled’, thinking it sounded like a bad book review.
‘No,’ I said now to Christopher. ‘I told them I wanted to help people.’
‘No one does it for such a simple reason – there’s usually more to it.’
‘And you have the answer, I suppose?’ My hands blazed.
‘Most of us have no idea why we come here. Sometimes we figure it out along the way. Sometimes we don’t.’
‘Does it matter?’ I demanded.
He looked at me. ‘Don’t you think motivation is interesting?’
I thought about Helen and her acting lessons, how she’d been taught to analyse what drove a character to act a certain way.
‘I couldn’t give a crap.’
I picked up a book and opened it at chapter one. I knew how childish my response had been. Christopher picked up a magazine. I pretended to read but the words blurred.
Jangly Jane returned.
‘Ten minutes to go,’ she said. ‘We can turn the phones off.’
She did it. I read a magazine article about a man who’d had h
is hand ripped off by a lion. Mine were tingling; I’d gladly have surrendered them to a hungry predator. I heard Jane get the logbook down and scribble notes into it. I felt Christopher move past me, smelt the washing powder he’d used.
When I heard the door shut and was sure I was alone, I looked up. His cup sat on the coffee table, surrounded by crumbs. I heard him unlock his bike; felt I should go and apologise for being silly but couldn’t. Jane opened the door.
‘You not going home?’ she asked.
I grabbed my coat and scarf. When I got into the hallway, Christopher had gone. All I saw was his red bike light fading away and trees silhouetted against sky.
That night I slept for barely two hours.
I dreamt of the room.
I was alone in a derelict house. Every floorboard I walked on threatened to collapse and send me into a smoky void below. I knew the room was somewhere and wanted to avoid it. But every place I went led to the pulsating corridor and the fat, wet door at the end.
A bike had been chained to the banister and I thought I might use it to escape; but I couldn’t undo the lock. Above the door an orange light flashed. On-off, on-off. Far away, at the end of the corridor, the shadow of a man. Bushy-haired. My heart sped up. Didn’t he usually wait until I woke up? Wasn’t he usually at the end of my bed?
Someone said I had to stop, and I cried, ‘Yes, make it stop!’
When I opened my eyes, Fern was sitting at my feet, wrapped in a large checked shirt. It was dark. She told me I had to stop with the crisis lines. My leg was trapped in the sheet. I said I was fine. Fine – that pathetic word.
‘Catherine,’ she said, ‘you had nightmares last week too, after your shift.’
She lifted hair from my face, but I pushed her hand away and insisted I wanted to do it.
‘Then talk to someone,’ she said. ‘Your leader, someone.’
I told her I was the listener, not the talker. I wanted to be there.
‘I’m here,’ she said.
‘I’m fine,’ I repeated.
15
Not love unless it hurts
Fern got our smoke alarm free with her laptop. She often joked that she kept lipstick by the bed in case it ever went off at night and some gorgeous fireman had to rescue us. But when it woke me early, a few days after my second Flood Crisis shift, I wasn’t laughing.
