What Milo Saw

by Virginia MacGregor

  He walked back to the middle of the room, put Hamlet down and lay beside him on the carpet under the skylight. Hamlet snuffled back into Milo’s elbow and Great-Gramps’s special bagpipe song played in Milo’s head, the one Great-Gramps had taught Gran before he got sent to Korea. Since she’d turned up five years ago, Gran had been teaching Milo to play, though her breathing had got bad recently so they’d given the lessons a rest. Dad could play too, but he wasn’t here now.

  As he looked up, Milo felt the moon shining somewhere beyond the pinhole of his vision. He stared hard into the black sky and saw a single star winking at him.

  He hoped that maybe Gran was looking at it too.

  11

  TRIPI

  In Syria, old people are not put into homes. They live in houses with their families, they sit and tell stories and eat baklava and drink strong black coffee from glass tumblers.

  Tripi had wanted to tell the old woman that he would not eat them either, those potatoes, pale as the Syrian sand, nor that stringy beef sitting in its brown puddle of gravy. He wanted to tell her that one day he would cook a feast for her like they made for rich people at The Four Seasons in Damascus.

  This was the end of Tripi’s third day and Nurse Thornhill had been too busy to ask about the empty boxes on the blue piece of paper, which meant a little more time to find a home.

  Back in the park, Tripi hid behind the laurel bush, waiting for the keeper to lock up the gates. Then he unfurled his sleeping bag and said his prayers, too late for the sun. As he breathed in, his lungs ached; already the cold had set in. At night, as he slept, he felt icicles creeping in between his ribs.

  Back home in Damascus it was unusual for the temperature to dip much below ten degrees. And when it did get cold, there was snow. And in spring when it rained raindrops fell fat and clear, swelling the rivers and spinning the wooden norias, the waterwheels, so that fresh clean water flowed through Damascus. Here the rain was small, dirty and cold. The only heat came from Tripi’s nightmares, always the same: Ayishah’s face on that hot day in July.

  He took out the photograph of his twelve-year-old sister and placed it in front of him. Half his age and yet at times it had felt like she was the older one. He prayed that she was safe, that one day they’d be here together on this island where the only sound of gunshots came from the televisions in people’s front rooms.

  On their last day in Damascus, Ayishah had given him a postcard of The Queen that she’d bought at one of the stalls in the souk.

  Look! she said, tracing The Queen’s hair with her finger. If she’s in charge, it must be a good place.

  Tripi took the postcard out of his sleeping bag and looked at it again: the pearls in her ears and around her neck and her soft listening eyes and a smile that didn’t give too much away. He wanted to believe it, too, that this was a good place. But he wasn’t so sure. Being old, should The Queen not make sure that there were nice places for people her age to live?

  ‘He’s here!’ The light of a torch flickered across Tripi’s face. The park keeper was back, another man with him.

  Tripi shoved the photograph into his pocket, climbed off his sleeping bag and dashed towards the gates.

  ‘Stop!’

  Two full beams blinded him.

  When Tripi got used to the brightness, he saw the park keeper and with him, a policeman, their eyes narrow and mean.

  ‘Knew we had a tramp,’ said the park keeper.

  ‘Time to move on.’ The policeman stepped forward. ‘Here’s the number of a homeless shelter.’ He pressed a card into Tripi’s hand.

  A London address. Tripi didn’t want to go back there.

  ‘The park belongs to the council,’ added the park keeper. ‘You shouldn’t be here.’

  How could grass belong to anyone? thought Tripi. Grass and trees and sky.

  He went back to the bush and gathered up his sleeping bag and Ayishah’s backpack that he’d carried since they were separated, through the two months he spent walking along the Syrian border, looking for her, through those weeks in London, searching for work. And now here.

  The policeman pushed Tripi out through the gates and the three men stood under the glare of the orange street lamp.

  The park keeper leant in to Tripi’s face, beer on his breath. ‘Not from around here, are you?’

  Tripi had noticed the looks on people’s faces as he walked around Slipton. His worn clothes, his skin too tanned under the English clouds.

  ‘You should ask to see his papers, Stubbs,’ said the park keeper. ‘Bet he’s an illegal.’

  Tripi’s heart jolted.

  The policeman rubbed his eyes; he looked tired.

  ‘Just go to that hostel,’ said the policeman. Then he turned to the park keeper. ‘They’ll check him out there.’

  Tripi gave a small bow and walked away, counting his heartbeats and his footsteps and watching the white swirls coming out of his mouth.

  ‘And stay out of my park,’ the park keeper called after him aggressively.

  12

  LOU

  Lou’s head felt thick with sleep. Like a deep fog.

  Gran… Gran… Can you hear me? Milo’s little voice flitting in and out of her dreams. A policeman came to school. He said I was good at spotting things. She’d tried to wake up, to speak back, but the fog was too thick.

  He moved around her, folding her clothes and putting them in her wardrobe, setting the things in her wash-bag out on the shelf under the mirror.

  And then his kiss, just by her ear.

  I’ll let you sleep then, Gran. But I’ll come back tomorrow. I’ll visit every day.

  He pressed a blanket over her knees, tucking her in like a child.

  You’ll be back home soon. The fire was an accident, Gran, it could have happened to anyone.

  When at last she opened her eyes, there was no one there.

  And now here, sitting in the lounge with all those old ladies.

  Soft chairs, better than handcuffs, the hot whisper of Mrs Moseley, the Jamaican woman who sat beside Lou all afternoon listening to her tape recorder. Island music, a place where coconuts grew on trees, where the water was so clear that you could see your toes.

  Lou blinked.

  A stain on the back of the woman’s dress when she stood up.

  And the other women.

  Mrs Foxton, who spoke to an invisible policeman about a broken pane of glass in her conservatory. Thugs, she kept saying.

  Mrs Wong, who called out for rice. I trained the Olympic gymnastics team, she said, getting stuck as she lowered her old body into a squat.

  Mrs Turner, who hid her potatoes and her mushy peas in the pockets of her smock.

  Mrs Swift, who wore make-up that looked like it had been applied with a child’s crayon. I could do yours, she’d offered Lou. No, Lou had never worn make-up. The sun and the sea and the air, that’s all her skin needed.

  Mrs Sharp, who played a game called Angry Birds on the iPad her grandson had given her. Got ’em, the little buggers! she yelled.

  And Mrs Zimmer, who sat in front of the television and slept all day.

  Sleeping was a good option in a place like this, thought Lou. And she was tired, so, so tired, more tired than she’d ever been.

  From their names, Lou supposed that they were all married, or had been. And so, besides Nurse Thornhill and that young trainee Nurse Heidi, Lou was the only unmarried woman in the building.

  Counting herself, that added up to eight old ladies. But hadn’t Nurse Thornhill mentioned that they were nine? Nine clients, she’d said to Sandy, one big happy family.

  Names and numbers, Lou had thought they’d be the first to go.

  Sunk in her armchair, she no longer felt her limbs. She craned her neck to see a strip of dark sky above the trees, the window too low for stargazing.

  At least she could still hear the planes.

  Make an effort with your food, Nurse Thornhill said. We can’t have you wasting away.

&nb
sp; And then that nice boy with the brown eyes and the delicate hands who smelt of earth and flowers and sky. Shh! He put a finger to his lips, which made Lou think of prayer. I won’t tell Nurse Thornhill, he whispered.

  He tripped over his feet as he carried away her plate.

  Having decided that there was no life left in the room, the sensors had switched off the lights. The buzzing continued though, like a fly beating itself against a hot bulb.

  You sure we can’t take you back to your room? Nurse Heidi had asked.

  No. Lou liked the dark, the stillness of standing on the beach looking at the waves.

  Well, just pull on the red cord if you need anything.

  Cords dangling everywhere like puppet strings.

  Lou’s eyes felt heavy. Her mind slipped like water over rocks.

  When Lou woke, the room was cold and still. The shadow of a man stood over her. She strained her eyes in the grainy darkness. A male nurse? No, he didn’t have a uniform and this man was old, like her. As he leant over, she noticed a bald patch the size of a Jewish skullcap. His neck smelt of lemons.

  ‘If you want me to help you up you’ll need to give me some oomph,’ he said, pulling at her fingers.

  Oomph? She liked that word.

  She nodded. Yes, she wanted to get back to her room now, her small room under the roof, to gaze out at Slipton, Milo asleep below.

  ‘Good,’ he said. ‘On the count of three, then…’ A Mediterranean roll in his consonants.

  ‘One…’

  He pulled at her dead weight, her limbs asleep.

  ‘Two…’

  She took a breath and straightened her spine.

  ‘Three…’

  He pulled.

  She pushed her weight into her legs, felt the forward swing of her torso and fell into his arms. His soft belly pressed into hers. To feel a man’s body. She blushed in the dark.

  ‘Back to your room, Petros.’ It was Nurse Heidi. ‘Nurse Thornhill has told you often enough, this isn’t your job.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ he said to Nurse Heidi. But then he leant in and whispered into Lou’s ear. ‘Except it is.’ He guided her by the arm to the door. ‘This is my job.’

  13

  MILO

  After school on Tuesday Milo went to see Gran again. You can’t go and see her every day, Mum had said. You need to spend some time with your friends. But Mum didn’t get it – Gran was Milo’s friend and he didn’t want to spend time with anyone else. Anyway, yesterday she’d been asleep so that didn’t count.

  He popped the fourth of December chocolate into his mouth. Behind the chocolate there was a picture of three men on camels heading through the desert.

  Christmas in twenty-one days – he had just under a month to get Gran home.

  On the way, Milo stopped to sit on a bench by the canal to do some thinking. He loved looking into water in the same way that he loved looking at the sky, because it meant he didn’t need to shift his head – the picture changed on its own. A new colour, a twig, a red packet of Hula Hoops, a duck floating by, the reflection of a plane nosing through the clouds. Dad and The Tart and the baby in The Tart’s tummy had left in one of those planes. He’d looked up the departure times on the computer and worked out the flight path and stared up at the sky wondering whether Dad could see him standing there like a dot in front of the house.

  Milo had never been to the seaside but he knew he’d love it, staring at the waves for hours and hours. Before she moved in with them, Gran had lived by the sea in Scotland. On her pad, she wrote that she and Great-Gramps had run into the waves, even in the middle of winter. That’s why she loved taking baths. It’s the closest I’ll get to swimming around here, she’d written. And she was right, Slipton was as far away from the sea as you could get.

  Maybe he could find someone to stay with Gran while he was at school and Mum was busy with her clients in the shed, like a babysitter but for old people. That way she wouldn’t try to do things by herself and end up setting fire to the kitchen or flooding the bathroom. He’d have to find the money, though. He could put a card in the window of Poundland advertising his IT Services. People were always asking him to help them with their computers, like Mum when she asked him to do a search on The Tart and then told him to wipe the search history before Dad used the computer, or Mrs Harris at school who never used computers because she said they damaged your brain but wanted to find out what the mums were saying about her on mumsinaction.com which is where mums rant about crap teachers and plot ways to get them sacked.

  As Milo swung his feet under the bench, the sole of his shoe thumped into something soft. He got down on all fours and crawled under the wooden slats. A sleeping bag, rolled up, and two backpacks. Someone must have sat here and put them down and forgotten all about them.

  One backpack was big and blue and the other one small and red with a yellow ribbon tied to the one of the straps.

  He’d drop the things off at the Slipton Lost Property Office on his way back from Forget Me Not. Milo left shoes and socks and lunchboxes and books behind all the time (anything that sat outside the pinhole); Keith at the Lost Property Office knew to keep aside anything with Milo’s name on it. Milo Moon, written in big black Sharpie letters on everything he owned. Sometimes he thought he should write it on his forehead in case the whole of him got lost.

  ‘Milo Moon?’ A lime green Skoda pulled up along the pavement.

  Milo twisted his head round.

  ‘Milo – over here,’ said the voice.

  He looked to his right. Mrs Harris’s head poked out of the car window.

  ‘You okay?’ his form teacher asked. ‘You’re carrying a lot of things.’ She nodded at his schoolbag and the two backpacks and the sleeping bag.

  ‘Going to see my gran,’ he said and started off again.

  ‘She’s not living with you any more?’

  Milo shook his head. He felt his teacher go quiet.

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’ She coughed. ‘I need to speak to your mum about your results.’

  At breaktimes Mrs Harris sat in her car and smoked. She was wrinklier than Gran, and Milo reckoned she should have retired ages ago. He asked her once about when she was planning to leave Slipton Primary, and she told him to mind his own business. Gran reckoned Mrs Harris kept teaching because she needed the money to pay for all those cigarettes.

  ‘Mum knows,’ said Milo, for the first time feeling the weight of all the bags he was carrying. ‘She’ll get in touch.’

  Mrs Harris crept her car alongside Milo. He smelt stale smoke and caught a flash of green at the edge of his vision. Yellowy-green cars always made him think of snot. Bogeys on wheels.

  ‘It’s important,’ she said, her voice louder now, and croakier.

  ‘Mum’s busy with the Christmas rush. She’ll call soon.’

  ‘Maybe I could pop by the house?’

  Milo walked over to the car and looked his teacher in the eye. ‘Mum doesn’t like to be interrupted with her clients, it upsets the energy.’

  ‘The energy?’

  ‘Of their relaxation.’

  Then he walked on.

  ‘We need to discuss some options…’

  Milo switched on Great-Gramps’s bagpipe song in his head and Mrs Harris’s voice faded away.

  He came in to find Gran sitting by the window in her room, staring at the grey sky. She didn’t look like the Gran from home; she looked like one of those cardboard cut-outs they have of actors in HMV.

  Milo put down the backpacks and the sleeping bag, placed his hand on her shoulder and kissed her by the ear. He liked the feel of the cold pearl against his lips. Her skin was cold too though, much colder than at home.

  She turned round to face him, a crease as deep as a ditch between her eyebrows.

  ‘Gran? What is it?’

  Her eyes reflected the pale light outside the window. It was like she’d floated away inside her body.

  Gran pushed herself up but couldn’t quite make it
so he helped her with the last bit, placing his palm under her bony elbow.

  She went over to the table and scribbled on her pad. It was the first time he’d noticed her right hand trembling: usually it was only her left. Her writing was all jaggedy: I’ve got to…

  ‘Gran?’

  She wrote some more. The boat. She drew a picture of a big boat. David… Gran hadn’t spoken since Great-Gramps died, which was donkeys years ago, but Milo didn’t mind. He found it fun writing notes, especially when Mum was in the room and didn’t know what they were saying, like Have you seen Hamlet? (Milo) He’s in the garage, isn’t he? (Gran) and then Gran would draw a smiley face with a wink and they’d try really hard not to give it away by looking at the lump under Gran’s duvet.