by Carol Birch
Poor girl.
I was dying for a wee, but if I went up to the bathroom he might wake. I could go out in the yard but then the back door would make a noise. I sneaked upstairs and listened carefully behind the first closed door. Mustn’t get the wrong room. He was in there, I heard his deep breathing heading towards being a snore. I crept along the landing. There were three other doors, all closed. The first one I opened slowly and silently onto blackness, and felt for the light switch. Click. Not loud. A spacious room appeared, empty apart from a very old and worn green chaise longue peculiarly placed in the middle as if on display, a ruined chair collapsed in the middle by the curtainless window, and the curtains themselves piled in a heap next to it, a ripped and frayed bundle with the lining stained brown. The floorboards were bare and a lone bulb hung down in the middle of a high, ornate ceiling.
I wonder if there’s a psycho thing going on here, I thought. Perhaps he’ll come downstairs in the middle of the night dressed as his mother.
Suddenly I was very cold and ridiculously tired, and unaccountably close to tears.
I found the stark, unloved bathroom, peed quietly and worried about pulling the chain. But I had to, the water was all yellow. Afterwards I waited a couple of minutes but there was no sound from anywhere in the house, so I hurried back down to the fire, and the fire was so beautiful and the cats so asleep, and the night had entered into a stillness made out of chaos, but out there, all out there, not here with me. ‘Shove up, you,’ I said to the big cat, which spat and sprang to the floor. I pulled the blanket over myself, closed my eyes and listened to the fire burn and the storm rage.
I woke up and the fire had burned down a lot but was still good. The wind moaned, a low worrisome tone. The door into the hall was closed, though I was sure I’d left it open, and someone was standing hesitant on the other side of the door. He’s there. He knows I’m in here alone. He’s very drunk. But then there was silence for so long that I decided I’d imagined it and went back to sleep. When I woke up again the man was over there, sitting in the armchair, drinking whisky straight out of the bottle. I don’t know how long he’d been there.
‘So where’s your family?’ he asked, as if we were continuing a conversation. Perhaps we were.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I don’t really think that’s any of your business. Where’s yours?’
It was unreal. The only light came from the dying fire.
‘What will you do in winter?’ he said, still angry.
I said nothing. I had no idea what I was doing there.
‘That’s no way to live,’ he said.
‘Really?’ I laughed.
‘Have you not got anywhere else to go?’
He put down the bottle, got down on his knees on the hearth and, shoving his hand with a great rattling into an old black coal scuttle, started building up the fire. His big dirty hands arranged the coals neatly and slowly in spite of the small flames that began whispering up around his fingers. I sat up.
‘What’s this rock?’ I asked him.
‘Lava,’ he said. ‘It’s from Iceland.’
I picked it up.
‘It’s very light,’ I said, becoming aware of odd purrings, muffled squeakings from a big green armchair to the right of the fireplace.
‘Feels like the middle of the night,’ I said. ‘What’s the time? What a strange night!’
‘Getting on for four.’ He sat back down, drank, swilled the liquor round his mouth.
‘I thought you’d gone to bed,’ I said.
‘I did.’
‘Can I have some of that?’ I indicated the bottle.
He went out without a word and returned with a glass. Poured.
‘Where’s your family?’ he asked, swiping the outer edge of his watery left eye with his paw. ‘Anyone?’
‘We’re not in touch.’
He handed me the glass. ‘Do they know you’re living rough?’
This was just nosy.
‘I was all right,’ I said. ‘You didn’t have to come looking for me but thank you for worrying about me.’
‘I wasn’t worrying,’ he said. The noises from the green chair increased. The purring became thunderous. A great slurping lick-lick-licking almost drowned out the mewing undertone.
‘Someone’s having kittens,’ I said, and he groaned.
‘Oh Christ,’ he said, ‘not another lot.’
I downed my whisky and fell asleep again, and when I woke up he’d gone. The cat and her new kittens still squirmed and purred and licked, and the fire was just a smouldering pit. The storm was abating, but a cacophonous dripping had taken over. I got up fast, grabbed all my things and wrapped up well, and was home before half past six.
*
The storms were past, and a period of fine dry weather followed.
Well, that’s OK, he thought. But if she was still there in winter he was going to have to tell someone. He’d got a bead on her now. While she was asleep he’d gone through her coat. It was a long thick tweedy thing with deep pockets. He found a purse, a really old worn-out leather one with a bit of colour just filtering through here and there. She had a Visa card and some store loyalty cards and loads of bits of paper all crammed in everywhere. She had a bit of silver and some coppers and a five pound note very neatly and meticulously folded like a work of art. And a couple of cheaply developed colour photographs, finely creased all over like ancient faces. Two girls. Big grins in a garden. A pretty girl, looked like Caribbean blood, maybe even Polynesian. A merry-looking girl, any age from twelve to twenty, he could never tell. He felt bad looking at them so he shoved them back in and closed the purse guiltily. A bus pass. Picture. Her but different. So she’s Lorna Gilder. Lorna Gilder. Seemed funny her actually having a name. And there was a little book with numbers and addresses in it. He scanned it eagerly. A dozen or so names. One of them was Harriet Gilder. Aha! Could be a daughter or something, a niece. Even a sister. Someone might want to know. Not fair on them. So he wrote down Harriet Gilder’s address and email and phone, it was all there, written in elegant longhand in black ink. Quink. He really ought to let this daughter know.
Anyway, if she was fool enough to try and go through the winter in there, he had a number to call. Or give it to Madeleine, someone who knows what to do in these cases. Not his responsibility anyway. He wished he’d never gone out that night, she was all right, she wasn’t dying or anything, she was doing OK. Just couldn’t get his head round it, the horrible dark of the wood, the wetness, the simple inaccessibility. Might as well be on top of a rock somewhere in the sea far west of the Outer Hebrides.
18
I dreamed I was disposing of your body.
Night, a little drizzly, damp on the air, settling on me. I was driving very slowly down a narrow track in the countryside between high hedges. You were in the back, on the floor. The feeling was solemn but I had hardened myself and was outwardly calm. The path ended where a wide gate blocked the way into a field. I stopped the car, got out, undid the rope holding the gate and pushed it open. The field was muddy, the sky blotched and thick with cloud.
And then I realised how crazy this was. Look at me, my stick arms. I could never dig a hole big enough to bury you deep, not if I dug all night. Even though the ground was soft. I hadn’t thought this through.
The sky was heavy. My heart too. The world was heavy.
When I woke up it was in my head, a country tune. I turned it into a country song and went about singing it all day.
*
Great trees had been uprooted. Walking in the aftermath was strangely painful, the sight of ripped-out roots provoking thoughts of toothache. I stood looking round and the drizzle turned to soft rain. Poor wood. Seen it before, said the wood, with a little nervous blasé shrug. The smell of it all, green and rank; if you were painting it you’d want the blackest green you could get. Talk about aromatherapy. Just stand here and breathe in. It’s like being under the sea. Lily didn’t like these woods. If you stood still, she
said, they closed in on you. She’d think I was mad. Quite the claustrophobe, Lily. She had to talk or whistle all the time she was in here, keep the real feeling of the place away. Never liked lifts, and even small rooms unnerved her. Hated going to the toilet, got in and out as quick as she could, then she’d have to go again ten minutes later. Funny little thing she was, always bouncing around and laughing and standing on her head against the wall. Then when she was eleven she started dressing like a Times Square prostitute going out to meet her pimp. We didn’t let her, of course, but she sneaked out like that anyway sometimes. And there’s Eve downstairs saying, ‘It’s only like dressing up, there’s no harm in it, she’s being creative,’ and me: ‘Yeah but what about all the predators?’ and Eve banging on that when she was a kid they could roam for hours unsupervised and nothing ever happened to anyone in those days. Well, you can pull the heavy parent act when they’re only eleven, but it gets harder. By the time she was fourteen, me and Johnny had turned into repressive elders. The scenes, the tears, the grindings of teeth, that night, the night of the big melt-down, everyone there watching, and Eve came in with nothing on but her knickers and Lily in those fishnet tights. There was a big demo in town and everyone was going but me. I couldn’t stand crowds. You could call it crowdphobia, there’s a word for it, no doubt. I couldn’t even go to the Notting Hill Carnival or Glastonbury. She was in her room. Harriet was eating cold pasta with her fingers in front of Play School. Maurice stood in the kitchen doorway holding a carton of yogurt and a spoon, and they were all there, some in our room, some in the kitchen, people gathering, talking, Pedro carrying the coffee pot, Barry the ferret with his noose and skull t-shirt, a couple of his Class War mates, Keyvan, small and handsome, jiggling about as if he had worms, big Els whose hair dominated rooms, little Shiv I knew from a terrible weekend at Greenham Common. And what’s her name Polly, with her big face and lank fair hair, and the dandruff in her parting. The little press had been running nobly all day. Piles of skimpy flyers littered the table. I was thinking how nice it would be when they’d all gone and I could flop out in front of the telly. The bedrooms in that flat opened straight into the main room. Lily came out of the girls’ room wearing ripped black fishnet tights, a leather miniskirt and a pair of shiny pull-on black boots with ridiculously high heels. She’d been obsessing over her face at the mirror, loading on makeup till she looked like a badly painted doll.
‘Christ’s sake,’ Johnny groaned. He was good with kids. But with teenagers? Lily’s one aim in life at this time was to make herself common as muck, as my mum would have said, and drive him mad. She was perfecting her flounce.
‘Y’all right, Lily?’ said Shiv.
‘OK,’ she said.
‘Where you off?’ I asked. ‘Round Jude’s?’
‘Meeting them in town,’ she said, trying to seem casual but steeling for the fight.
‘You mean town town?’
‘Where else?’
‘Why didn’t you tell us if you were planning on going out? You never tell us anything. It’s not a good night, Lil.’
She hated being called Lil.
‘Why not?’
‘It’s the demo tonight,’ said Johnny. ‘Where you going anyway?’
‘Leicester Square.’
‘No.’
‘What?’
‘No, Lily, it’s a bad night.’
Wouldn’t have been so bad if there hadn’t been everyone sitting there as if they were watching a play.
‘I’m only going to see a film,’ she said. ‘I’m meeting Jude and Sage down there.’
‘Sage?’ said Johnny, ‘Sage! What’s her brother called? Onion?’
‘What’s the film, Lily?’ asked Pedro.
Her face was tight. ‘Romancing the Stone,’ she said faintly.
Johnny turned upon me a familiar look. Back me up, it said. Aren’t you going to say anything? Am I the only responsible adult in this family?
‘It’s a school night anyway,’ I said, ‘you should have told us.’
‘We only decided this afternoon.’ That look on her face, bravado, insulting disdain, not meeting our eyes.
‘It’s not a good idea to be around where the demo is,’ I said. ‘These things can turn.’
‘Bit too close to the action for comfort,’ said Johnny.
‘We-ell,’ said Maurice, ripping the top off the yogurt, ‘not that close.’
‘Close enough.’
‘Definitely.’ I looked at him: there see, backing you up.
‘You’re being completely unreasonable,’ Lily said loftily, her voice shaking a little. She cried easily.
‘Not tonight,’ Johnny said. ‘This isn’t a discussion.’
She glowered upon us all.
‘Anyway, look at you,’ he said.
‘Rebel rebel,’ said Barry the ferret.
‘Give them a call,’ I said. ‘Say you’ll go tomorrow instead.’
I caught a look at Polly, who was raising her eyebrows and making a face at Els. When she saw me, she winked and smiled sympathetically.
‘He said it was OK.’ Lily nodded at Maurice, who was wiping out the yogurt pot with his index finger.
‘I’m saying nothing,’ he said with a faint smile.
‘Well, he’s not your dad,’ said Johnny, and though she didn’t say neither are you, she gave him that look.
‘People should be allowed to go and see a film in peace if they want to,’ she said, tears forming.
‘And they can,’ I said, ‘every other night. It’s this one…’
Johnny did about the worst possible thing he could possibly have done then.
Since the Melvin Morgan thing, he’d been disconsolate. For a while after the pamphlet appeared, people had occasionally stood outside Phoebe Twist’s house to shout Murderer, murderer, come out murderer. Her neighbours chased them away. She herself never appeared. The outrage simmered on for a few weeks then evaporated, but Johnny never let it go. He wouldn’t talk about it, and he sat up late night after night after I’d gone to bed, stiff jaw, sweet lips, stern brow, the look of a man struggling with some profound emotion eating at the pit of his gut, staring into the fire and brooding over the waters like God almighty. To be honest, he was driving us all up the wall, but Lily in particular, who had no patience with it all. So when he became stern and stood in front of her and said seriously into her burning face, ‘People are suffering, the government is rotten at the core, everything decent is threatened and are you really only bothered about going to see some crappy Hollywood film?’
It was tough for her, in front of them all. Tough for me, seeing so clearly how much he was doing this to impress Maurice with his high concerns. Trivial. He’d said the word so many times before it didn’t need repeating. She liked boy bands and Grange Hill and Smash Hits, poured scorn on Shakespeare and Mahler and Marx.
‘So?’ she said.
He let out a massive sigh through his teeth. ‘Love,’ he said, ‘I don’t mean to be horrible, I really don’t, but you’re only fourteen. There’s this big demo taking place right near where you’re going, and I don’t want to have to worry about you. Look at your shoes.’
Everyone looked at her shoes.
‘You definitely can’t run in those.’
‘I don’t want to run in them.’
‘It’s too last minute, Lily,’ I said. ‘It’s not fair to just spring it on us like that.’
‘It’s ridiculous!’ she suddenly yelled.
‘Oh, can we just not have this tonight please, Lily.’ I closed my eyes. ‘Just for once can you not please—’
‘Fucking stupid,’ she said, kicking the side of the sofa, ‘fucking pointless.’
The talk had stopped and she was the focus of the room. The TV quacked on, and little Harry, oblivious to everything, bounced her loosely socked foot on and off the coffee table, and it was then that the door opened and in walked our neighbour Eve from downstairs with a soggy roll-up between her lips, nine months pregnant and na
ked except for a pair of sagging grey schoolgirl knickers. Eve was four foot ten. Her belly was enormous, one of the biggest I’d ever seen, too big for her, much too big; you felt you ought to offer to hold it for her for a while. She didn’t say anything or take any notice of anyone, just walked in and sat down at the table next to Polly, took a drag on her roll-up and closed her eyes, sighing as if she was snuggling down in bed for a nice sleep.
Lily started sneezing, something she did when she got upset.
‘You’re really nasty, you know that,’ she said, backing away from Johnny with the tears swelling in her eyes, ‘a really, really nasty person.’
‘Yes, Lily,’ he said, ‘I’m absolutely horrible.’
‘Yes, you are.’
‘Oh, Lily.’ He looked pained. ‘For once in your life could you not please just go along with what I say? Could you not perhaps credit the idea that I’m older than you and might actually know more?’
‘No,’ she said, and flounced away into the room she shared with Harriet, slamming the door. She really needed her own room but it was impossible.
‘Should I be worried?’ I said to Maurice. ‘Really?’
‘Oh God knows, Lorna.’ He ambled over, sat down at the table and started drinking the yogurt sloppily straight out of the carton. ‘We should all be worried all the time, I suppose.’
Which was no help at all.
One by one they came in from the kitchen and sat down at our enormous table. Keyvan walked round and round the room purposefully as if he was getting somewhere, stopping every now and then to rub his mouth. Some kind of witty banter ping-ponged back and forth across the table between Pedro and Barry. Everyone acted as if Eve wasn’t there apart from Pedro, whose eyes were drawn constantly. I sat down next to Shiv at the table. Shiv was short and square and jaunty and could have passed for the Artful Dodger in a tweed jacket much too big for her. ‘You still got your Tarot cards, Lor?’ she said.
