by Carol Birch
Just fuck off. Whoever – whatever – you are. Leave me alone. I’ll live till I die.
He drank. He’d just sit out here at the back rather than going back into that haunted house. But maybe she’d come out behind him and take him by surprise. What would he do? Really, what would he do if here he was sitting on the step and suddenly there was just this touch, this cold touch, just there on his shoulder? What would he actually do?
‘What more do you want?’ he said out loud. ‘I’m sorry. I really am.’
Was it really all his fault? What didn’t he understand?
No life of her own but no need to take mine. So he’d got out in spite of all her wiles, taken the high road by Tring and Lily-hoo, gone to sea and sailed away, and one day the news had come that she’d got the tow rope out of the shed and strung herself up from the top of the garden gate, the one round the side by the beehives. She’d been there three days before the postman found her. After all, she hardly ever went into the village and no one ever called round. He’d had to come back and sort everything out, then he’d gone back to sea for another year or so and the house had been rented out to holiday people.
The dark quivered. Time for ghosts to walk, handless Jenny by the Dogwood Beck, her husband cut off her hands for being lazy. The woods, one great black mass, shifted and swelled.
Christ! Stop! Send yourself insane.
Go to bed. OK, you can leave the light on on the landing.
22
Then suddenly, days of heat that filtered their somnolence down to me under veil upon veil of brightening leaves. And I caught a cold, which I hate, particularly in glorious weather. The best thing to do was stay in my nest and sleep and drink hot water. If it gets worse, I thought, flu-ish, I’ll go to the old cat man and get some pills. He’ll have some. Or he’ll get me some from the village. He will. He likes to look after things. He doesn’t think he does, but he does. Lying here with all of my blankets wrapped round me, protected from the heat under the cool green, my sore eyes couldn’t read, so I just closed them and drifted away.
There’s a sound and the mind runs and strangeness is imminent. I can feel it and there’s nothing to be done but let it run its course like weather till it gives way to normality again somewhere down the line. Listen to those cats. Like wailing babies. Such fierce misery. Hear them sing along to these memories.
*
I was walking up from town, me and Eve and her baby in the pram, and Harriet skipping and dancing alongside and the sky piling up clouds.
‘Ooh, look at that,’ said Eve, ‘well, he’s a sweet little thing, isn’t he?’
Mark Gaunt his name was. Gaunt of name, gaunt of face, with a bony jaw and milky, freckled complexion. They were at the door, he’d walked her home from Drama. Trust Lily to go from one extreme to the other. The boy blushed like a maiden when we walked up.
‘Coming up?’ I said, holding the door open for Eve to get the pram in. ‘I got some little Indian sweet things. Come on up.’
They dithered. ‘Johnny in?’ she asked.
‘Not that I know of.’
So up we all went, and Eve and her baby came in too, and I made tea and coffee.
He was a funny little thing, fragile, fairish, very quiet. He came into the kitchen and drank his tea and said hardly a word. Lily ignored him completely once he was in and played about with Harriet, rough old stuff like they used to do when they were much younger, rolling around on the floor, handstands, headstands, showing off for him, look how spontaneous and wonderful and playful I am. She didn’t bother to introduce him so we introduced ourselves and asked his name and tried to make conversation, working our way through the Indian sweets while the baby slept in her pram.
‘Here,’ I said, ‘these are lovely. Quick before they all go.’
Smiling, he dragged his eyes off Lily and shook his head.
‘So,’ I said, ‘are you in the play?’
‘I play Alan.’
‘Oh. That’s a big part, isn’t it?’
‘Well… quite big.’
His voice was clear and low and extremely posh. It sounded weird in our house.
‘Can we come and see it?’ asked Eve.
‘No!’ said Lily.
‘Huh,’ I said, ‘hark at her. All we have to do is buy tickets, Lily.’
‘I can’t do it if you lot are sitting there looking at me.’
‘Bloody hell, you’ll have to get over that.’
The front door downstairs banged closed; Johnny’s familiar tread was on the stairs, the way he rushed up the last flight.
‘Oh fuck fuck fuck,’ said Lily.
‘Lily!’
The boy giggled soundlessly. He had the face and demeanour of a twelve year old.
The key turned in the lock. Johnny came in smiling with his hair in a mess as if he’d just shoved his fingers through it and left it sticking up. His eyes went straight to the newcomer.
‘This is Mark,’ I said, ‘he’s a friend of Lily’s. From Drama.’
‘Daddy,’ said Harriet.
Mark stood up. ‘Very pleased to meet you,’ he said, holding out his hand. Johnny glanced down, surprised, then took and shook it too vigorously, a big smile on his face. The boy looked subtly unnerved.
‘Grab one of these before they’re all gone,’ I said, pushing the round milky sweets in Johnny’s direction. He stuffed his face, one, two three, one after the other. Something about Mark seemed to amuse him tremendously and not in a good way.
‘Acting, eh?’ he said.
‘Yes,’ said Mark, and Johnny stifled a splutter.
The two of them sat down, Johnny still grinning manically. Harriet leaned against Johnny’s knee. Lily stood behind his chair. There were two sweets left. ‘Want one?’ He slid the plate towards Mark.
‘No, thank you.’
‘Sure?’
‘Yes, thank you, I’m sure.’ Both of them blushers, Terry and him.
‘Tea?’
‘I’ve still got some. Thank you.’
‘So sorry,’ Johnny said with that awful smile, speaking like an old Pathé newsreader or a member of the aristocracy, ‘I’m afraid we’ve completely run out of cucumber sandwiches.’
There was one horrible moment.
‘My God,’ the poor boy said, looking over Johnny’s head at Lily, ‘is my accent that bad?’
She grabbed Johnny’s head by the curls on either side and shook it backwards and forwards as if she wanted to pull it off. It made him laugh more. ‘You bastard!’
‘Ow!’
She stood back then whacked the back of his skull with the flat of her palm.
‘Fuck’s sake, Lily,’ he said.
She ran round the table, grabbed Mark by the arm and hauled him up as if he was a child. ‘We’re going,’ she said, dragging him after her to the door.
‘See you later, Lily!’ called Johnny with laughter in his voice.
Slam.
‘Oh God, that was awful,’ I said, ‘that was really embarrassing.’
‘Oh come on.’ He laughed. ‘I was only mucking about.’
‘That was really rude,’ said Eve.
‘So is she two-timing them?’ he asked.
‘I have no idea.’
‘That Drama lot,’ he said, ‘load of toffee-nosed twats, from what I can see.’
‘Don’t be such a meanie.’
‘What awful middle-class farce have they got them on now?’
‘Time and the Conways.’
‘It’s just the airs they give themselves,’ he said. ‘It’s not proper acting, is it?’
‘Oh, shut up.’
‘You know what I mean.’
‘Well, I think it’s a good thing for her to do,’ I said.
‘Yeah. What you moaning about?’ The baby was mewling and Eve started getting her things together.
‘Well, here’s a to-do,’ said Johnny, pulling Harriet up to sit on his knee. ‘Our Lily’s got herself a nob.’
*
Next time we saw the Hatchet lot Johnny said, ‘You ought to see this creep Lily’s going round with. Young Lochinvar. You ought to hear him,’ and he went off into his best haw haw haw splutter splutter upper-class-twit-of-the-year voice. He was good at it.
Everyone laughed.
‘He does this,’ I said, ‘it’s not funny. Takes the piss out of the poor boy to his face. It’s embarrassing.’
‘Oh come on,’ he said. ‘No one has to talk like that.’
Everyone was laughing.
I was laughing.
‘He can’t help his posh voice,’ I said, ‘you don’t choose your parents.’
‘Some say you do,’ said Shiv.
I don’t know what got into me that night. Everything started getting on my nerves. I lay on my back on the floor taking no part in any of it but listening to the conversation, which I’d heard several times before.
‘We live in a terrible world.’ Maurice’s noble, serious face moved slowly from side to side as he idly kicked against the floor and his swivel chair went this way and that way, a wall of books behind him. The music was low and sinuous. ‘What if a terrible act served a deep historical purpose?’
They were talking about bombs. Not to hurt anyone, but property was fair game.
Barry the ferret wasn’t so sure about the property only clause. Depended on the target.
‘Where did love and peace get the hippies?’ said Barry. ‘Look what they did to Wally Hope.’
‘Face it,’ said Els, ‘who wouldn’t have given a secret sly little snigger if they’d got Maggie in Brighton? I’m being honest, I can’t find it in me to shed a tear for some people, I really can’t.’
‘But what about the hotel staff?’ Keyvan was opening another bottle of wine.
‘Aye,’ said Maurice, ‘there’s the rub.’
Johnny said it wasn’t simple.
‘Sure ain’t.’ I laughed.
Maybe my tone was harsh because he shot me a nasty look. ‘All I’m saying is,’ he said, ‘there’s always a bigger picture.’
‘Well, of course there is.’ Maurice stopped swivelling and leaned forward in his chair with his toes turned in. ‘A question, Lorna. Can you imagine one single circumstance in which violence might be justified?’
‘Of course. If a madman was threatening my kids with an axe…’
‘No no, that’s too obvious. Let’s say there was some situation where, say, by taking the life of one innocent person thousands more could be saved. And it was your decision, what would you do?’
‘I have no idea. It’s a stupid question because there are a million million other things to take into account like who is it, why is this, what if it’s a child, a baby, what if a million things, how can you…’
I got all flustered. I couldn’t argue like they could. I’d think of the right answers later. Instead of some reasoned philosophical response, I said, ‘Fuck off and blow something up then.’
I often remember that moment.
Maurice laughed. ‘Not me, Lorna,’ he said.
‘You’re all just wanking,’ I said, sitting up, ‘you realise that, don’t you? You’d piss yourselves if it came to it.’
Polly and Shiv laughed, but Johnny gave me a hurt look. I laughed too. ‘Come off it,’ I said, ‘you know damn well we’re all much too nice for all that. We just like wanking off on it.’
I said ‘we’ but I meant ‘you’.
We didn’t talk much driving home. Johnny was totally sober as always and me a silly stoned fool in the passenger seat. A well yawned between us. Somewhere around Vauxhall he started mumbling in the tone of someone delivering an ancient curse. ‘We talk,’ he said, ‘and we stick up a few flyers and print our little rag and paint a few words on a few walls and stand around chanting and throwing eggs, and no one takes a blind bit of notice. Everything still goes on the same for ever and ever and ever.’ I thought about dear old Wilf and how he didn’t give a fuck about politics. Never voted. They’re all the same. This old fart or that old fart. Who cares? No wonder he and Johnny never really hit it off. Civil, but that’s about it. I put my hand on Johnny’s knee as he drove and said, ‘Ssh.’ I didn’t want to have a row, and there was a lump in my throat because everything felt wrong, not just me and him but the whole world. A thought of the woods at Andwiston passed through my mind. To be out of the city, quiet, away from strife. He looked so forlorn and like his old self when we got home that I tried to give him a cuddle, but he wasn’t in a cuddly mood. That all seemed to have gone by the wayside. I went into the bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror. I wasn’t going to cry. It was never going to go back to how it was. I went to bed and he sat up alone reading and listening to music, some kind of twitchy jazz, doodly-doodly-doodly-doo. More and more these days, his music was Maurice’s music. When I woke up at about half past two he hadn’t come to bed. He’d gone off somewhere with his guitar to some open mic club. He could easily get someone else, I thought. Guitar, nice mouth, deep eyes.
23
A long low moan very very close. Half cat, half dog. Fox?
Not a cat. My goodness, what is that?
Again. Smooth-throated, sustained, rising into a mournful ululation that faded and hung on the silence. The cats don’t come here. Whatever it is it’s right outside. I sat up and listened. Nothing. Unless it still sat, motionless with crossed cloven feet outside my outer doorway. How could I sleep after that? Must be close to morning, I’ll wait it out.
Hours later I woke up to the sounds of people echoing through the woods, got up and crawled out through the leaves. Nice day, they were all out – shrill-voiced kids, steel-haired women with walking poles, barking dogs, knobbly knees in shorts. Backpacks galore, all seeking shade. Litter louts. People are the strangest beasts. They’re so irritating and ugly. I remember once Johnny looking out of the window in that place we had when we first got together, watching the people going up and down and saying, ‘Sometimes you know, I despise them, each and every one, each of their pathetically accepted little existences, every one of them squandering this single chance to actually live.’ It was horrible but I knew what he meant. In Crawley, that last place, I found myself doing the same thing, looking out of my window, thinking how horrible we really all were. I am. Things just pop into my head, nasty mean things. State of that, I think. I wouldn’t go out with that on if I had an arse like that. Listen to their stupid laughs. Look at their fat chins. God he’s put weight on. Christ she’s aged. Don’t we all just get uglier and uglier. Don’t we stink?
I don’t want them near.
A woman’s voice kept recurring, quite close in the end, calling out, ‘Hello! Hello! Where are you?’
Thought I was going mad. Surely, I thought, I’m imagining it, she’s not after me. Going mad, ha ha, that’s a laugh.
I crept further out, slithered through the leaves and the ferns and saw her on the path, just standing still, cupping her mouth, calling again. For a moment more she stood there before striding suddenly away in her walking shoes, the tops of her socks folded over, eminently sensible with her bottle of water and cardigan tied round her waist. She carried a stick, not one of those professional ones, just some old stick she’d picked up.
Cat man told. He must have told or why is that woman here?
I went back, drank some tea, ate some bread and said, yes, I’m up to it, get away from here, go high up, right up past the stones. High as I could go. I got away from them all, there was no one up here, though I could see them down below occasionally passing along the track. I was breathless. My nose was all stuffed up again and my eyes ran. Shouldn’t have done that, stupid going so fast, it’s much too hot, I’m drenched. Stink.
This place is full of holes. They’re pretty much all fenced off and made safe now, but back then it was all open. All kinds of things got chucked down there. In fact, right underneath me, I know, is a great cavern. I know because I was in there once before the rise of health and safety. I lay down and closed my eyes. A little warm bree
ze ran across my face. I was kind of scraping away at a feeling, not quite knowing what it was. I thought I was still dreaming, that I was really still down there in my nest, then other places flashed through, the places where I go sometimes when I dream, a long high shoreline, the sea far below on the left, an old croft with tall grey houses all round, the bombsite filled with heaps of masonry rubble, some higher than the height of a man, and the alleys and cobbles, and a house like a tower where someone lived, set back from a green country road that went down and then up, a switchback through a beautiful valley by the side of the sea. But I couldn’t stay there too long and when I opened my eyes I wasn’t sure what I’d see when I sat up and looked around. I thought those other places were real because they seemed so.
But I was only on the heights, same as ever, and my head burned so much I thought I must have a fever.
I felt awful when I came back down, so I got back in my sleeping bag and gave up on the day.
*
‘What’s going on with you, Lily?’ I said. ‘Is it fair on them both?’
‘Who?’ She got up and sauntered to the open window, tossing her keys up and down in her hand. Terry was due but she was supposed to be going out with Mark tonight. ‘God’s sake, I’m not marrying them, Mother, they’re just boys…’
Terry still came round and they played music in her room with the door shut and wouldn’t let Harriet in. But Mark was the one whose name she wrote in various elaborate scripts on her school books. After that first time we only ever saw his pale face when he dropped her off at the door or called for her sometimes and waited silently on the settee if she wasn’t ready.
‘Does he still do jobs for the old bag?’ asked Johnny.
‘Oh yes. Now and again. Her toilet’s always getting blocked up. She puts things down it.’
‘Things? What kind of things?’
‘Horrible things. Clumps of hair. Mouldy food.’
‘Do they even know about each other?’
