by Julie Cohen
Jo made both Iris and Oscar wash their hands twice, and use the hand sanitizer too. She used toilet paper to clean their faces – Oscar had some suspicious smudges. She’d hoped for paper towels to wrap Oscar’s clothes in, but there were only hand-driers so she rolled the clothes more tightly into an inconspicuous-looking package. It still smelled, though.
‘I’m hungry,’ announced Oscar. Jo looked at him, swamped in her purple cardigan, and at Iris, who, she just noticed, had green icing in her hair. She put her hand in her pocket and was relieved to find a ten-pound note.
‘Let’s go to the café, shall we?’ she said cheerfully, and steered them down the corridor towards the enticing aroma of coffee.
She stowed the dirty clothes under the table and settled them all with chocolate muffins and drinks, including a double-shot mocha with whipped cream on top for herself. She refused to think about her soft middle when she ordered it; there were only so many ways to cope with such intimate contact with dog poo, and it was too early in the day for gin. Jo was about to raise her drink to her mouth when she saw the telltale expression of intense concentration on Iris’s face.
‘Oh no, Iris, not now,’ she said. But the little girl’s face had gone red and her lips puffed out.
‘Iris done a poo in her nappy,’ announced Oscar, tucking into his muffin.
Jo felt the attention of the people around them, who were only trying to enjoy a coffee during what was probably a stressful time in hospital. ‘Sorry,’ she murmured to the café as a whole.
‘It’s stinky, Mummy, you have to change her,’ said Oscar.
‘I know, and I’m sorry, Iris honey, but I have no nappies with me.’ She looked around; they had shops in hospitals these days. But she had only a few coins left, after buying the muffins and coffee. Maybe another mother nearby, one who was better prepared than she was …?
Her phone rang whilst she was searching pensioners’ faces desperately for a fellow young parent. ‘Where are you?’ Honor asked her.
‘We’re in the café,’ Jo said as Iris grunted with effort, and the woman sitting at the next table tsked. ‘Are you finished with your appointment?’
‘I’ve been at the front door for the past ten minutes.’
‘Right. Fine, we’ll come and get you in the car.’ She stood up. Somehow her mocha, sprinkled with brown chocolate, looked infinitely less appealing. ‘Come on, darlings, we’ve got to pick up Granny. You can bring your muffins with you.’
She tried not to think about the trail of brown crumbs they left on the polished hospital floors. And she really tried not to think of the whiff trailing behind them, either. She didn’t dare use the lift, for fear of someone else getting in with them, and for pity of the people who came after them, so she carried Iris up four flights of stairs, holding her breath for as much of that as possible. Oscar whined at climbing the stairs, so she carried him for the last flight too. Iris squirmed in her car seat, and Jo tried to say brightly, ‘I’m sorry, Iris, I know it’s uncomfortable, sweetie, but we’ll change you as soon as we get home and put you in a nice bath, all right?’
She hoped it wasn’t one of those poos that would leak out of the sides and onto the car seat.
Honor was waiting outside the door, as she’d said. She was looking paler than she had before, and more drawn. Jo hopped out to help her up into the car, but she pulled her arm away. ‘I can manage.’
‘How did it go?’
‘It’s humiliating, what do you think?’ Honor snapped. ‘The doctors treat you like a half-wit. It’s not like relaxing in a café.’
Jo didn’t say anything back. She did not trust herself.
‘What on earth is that smell?’ said Honor.
Jo pressed the ‘window down’ buttons for the front and back and drove off. Iris was snivelling, clearly overtired. Oscar was smearing his chocolate-caked fingers on the inside of the car door. Honor glanced into the back seat, shuddered ostentatiously, and positioned herself so that her nose was pointing out of the window.
Honor was an old woman who was in pain (though Jo’s own mother had been in constant pain for years, and even when she was dying, she had never taken it out on others). Honor was not used to dealing with poo of various sorts (though who ever got used to it, even after three children?).
Jo breathed through her mouth and when Iris’s snivelling became full-scale crying, and when Oscar joined in, she kept her cool. She kept it right up until they pulled into her driveway at home and she turned to Honor and said, ‘Can I help you getting out of the car?’ and Honor replied, ‘I’m not one of your children, thank God.’
‘Do it yourself then,’ Jo said crossly. ‘I’ve got enough to deal with without you being rude to me as well.’
She opened the back door and scooped Oscar out, and then went to the other side to get Iris. She carried them both inside, leaving the front door open for Honor, for when she finally made it to the house. How she managed that, was evidently not Jo’s problem.
Lydia was in the kitchen with a girl Jo didn’t recognize. They had spread their schoolwork out on the table and had ripped open a packet of biscuits from the centre, spilling crumbs everywhere. Jo carried the children straight through and up the stairs to run them a bath.
Her children were fine. They were normal children. Normal children stank sometimes, they got messy, and they cried. Maybe Honor had never seen it before; maybe Stephen had been perfect, but she didn’t think that he had. Maybe Honor had conveniently forgotten.
And next time, Honor could get a taxi and be late.
‘I don’t want a bath,’ wailed Oscar, and Jo, cleaning Iris’s bottom with a wet-wipe, snapped, ‘Stop it, Oscar. Just stop it. I have had enough!’
His eyes went wide and his lip wobbled. But he swallowed, and was silent. Iris and he got into the bath without any of their usual playing. Jo scrubbed them briskly, efficiently, and lifted them out one at a time to towel them dry.
‘Do you want to put the powder on?’ she asked Oscar, holding out the talcum, but he just shook his head. Jo bit her lip.
I am a terrible mother. And I left Honor in the car alone.
She put fresh clothes on both of them and brought them downstairs to watch television under a blanket. The front door, which she’d left open, was shut, and when she peered through the front window, the car was empty. When she went into the kitchen, Lydia’s friend was gone.
‘Did Granny Honor come in?’ Jo asked her. Lydia shrugged. ‘Didn’t you hear her?’
‘I wasn’t listening.’
‘Could you do me a favour, Lyddie? Could you knock on your grandmother’s door and make sure she’s OK? Bring her a cup of tea?’
‘Why can’t you do it?’
‘Because Granny Honor isn’t all that pleased with me right now, and I’m not all that pleased with myself, either. And also, I think it would come better from you.’ She sank into the chair that Lydia’s friend had vacated, with a sigh. Her head throbbed, her arms hurt from hauling several stones’ weight of children around, her clothes were damp, and she still smelled vaguely of dog shit.
‘I’m trying to do my homework.’
‘Please, Lyddie. And a biscuit, if you haven’t eaten them all. Who was that here, just now? I’ve never met her.’
‘Just someone I’m revising with. Maths.’
‘I thought you were revising with Avril.’
Lydia stood up. ‘Avril isn’t in my Maths set. Keep up.’
‘Lydia, I don’t like being talked to as if I’m stupid.’
‘Well, now you know how I feel.’
From outside the open window, a rumble of thunder. And almost immediately afterwards, a patter of rainfall.
‘I’ve got washing outside,’ Jo moaned. ‘Lydia, could you help me—’
‘I’m making Granny Honor her tea, like you asked,’ said Lydia, crossing to the kettle.
Jo hauled herself to her feet again and went out of the back door. The rain was cold and fell in heavy drops. At the bottom
of the garden, she saw Oscar and Iris’s abandoned animals, mid-tea party. She ran to them and began to pick them up, muttering to herself out here where no one could hear her, about her daughter, her mother-in-law, about how sometimes she wanted another adult around just to share things with, someone who could see the funny side of her close encounters with poo, and how she had left a disabled elderly woman in a car alone.
‘Someone left the cake out in the rain?’
Jo started, her arms filled with damp fur. Marcus was standing on the other side of the hedge, pointing at the plate of green cakes left on the grass. He was wearing a blue shirt this time, the sleeves rolled up, and no tie. The rain spotted his shirt and landed in his hair.
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I’ve always wanted to say that. Can I give you a hand?’
She thought of trying to make an excuse, so he wouldn’t feel obliged, but he was already stepping through the gap in the hedge and scooping up animals. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘We were having a tea party, but we had to abandon it.’
‘No problem at all,’ he said. ‘Do you want me to do this, and you can get the sheets in?’
The rain was falling harder now. ‘Thank you,’ she said again, and she ran for the washing line.
She unpegged one sheet, which she flung over her shoulder, and started on another. Marcus ducked under the line, his arms full of animals. ‘Put the sheet on top here,’ he said, gesturing with his chin. ‘I’m guessing the animals are more precious than the sheets.’
‘And harder to dry,’ Jo agreed, pulling a second sheet down and piling it on top of the animals to protect them from the rain. ‘Thanks again. This is really beyond the call of neighbourly duty.’
‘Hey, you let me say my horrible “MacArthur Park” line. That’s made my day a lot better.’
‘I thought you’d be too young to know about disco.’
‘You’re never too young for disco.’
She pulled down another sheet, putting the pegs in her pocket with the others, and he followed her so she could put that one on top of the first. ‘You’ve had a tough day too?’ she asked.
‘One of those days where nothing goes quite right. Overslept, mouldy bread in my sandwich, colleagues in foul moods. I escaped early. You?’
‘No mouldy bread, but mine hasn’t been much better, and has had way too much poo in it.’
‘Want to tell me about it?’
His question should make her feel embarrassed, patronized. It didn’t. It made a lump come up in her throat, and her eyes burn.
‘I just – sometimes I just get tired of dealing with it all myself. You know? Sometimes I wish someone else would do something without my asking, or that someone would say thank you, or that the fairies would come and do the washing and the cooking and the bedtimes and the shopping.’
‘I’d love those fairies too.’
‘I know, it’s ridiculous. I shouldn’t complain. I’ve got this beautiful house, and my wonderful children, and everything. I’m lucky.’
‘Even if you’re lucky, that doesn’t mean you can’t have bad days.’
‘I know. But I get so … tired, Marcus. Stupidly tired. Trying to please everyone, who won’t be pleased.’ She ripped down a pillowcase. They were damp now; the rain was beading on her bare arms, dripping down her neck.
‘Sometimes you just have to please yourself.’
‘You know what I would like? It’s nothing difficult. Once, just once, I’d like someone else to make me a cup of tea, and I could sit down and drink it all the way to the bottom of the cup, without it going cold.’
She’d pulled down another sheet. They were piled up in Marcus’s arms, nearly up to his neck, a heap of snowy white. There were petals in his hair, she noticed, from the tree.
‘The offer’s still open,’ he said. ‘I’ll make you a cup of tea whenever you like.’
Jo had no idea why she did it. It was the simple offer, or it was the petals in his hair, or the raindrop rolling down his cheek. It was his blue eyes, the same colour as the sky before it was covered with clouds, or his arms full of animals and the sheets that she slept in.
She stepped forward, on her tiptoes, put her hands on either side of his face, and kissed him on the mouth.
He was warm. There were drops of water on his lips and his cheeks were slightly rough under her palms. She heard him breathe in a sharp breath of surprise through his nose and for a moment she did nothing but take in the shock and pleasure of it. A kiss on the lips with a man, the sort of touch she hadn’t had in what felt like a very long time. An intimate connection with a stranger. She could feel his pulse in his lips, his clasped hands pressing against her belly, smell the rain and the scent of the washing and the faint citrus of his shaving lotion.
All that in a single moment, no more than a few seconds.
And then Jo realized that he wasn’t kissing her back.
She stumbled backwards, mortification flooding her. ‘I’m so, so sorry.’
He looked stunned. Well, he would, being attacked by his neighbour.
‘It’s OK, Jo.’
‘You were just being nice and I – I don’t know what got into me.’
‘It’s fine. Really, it is.’
Marcus held the pile of toys and laundry. He wouldn’t have been able to fend her off, even if he were the type to be cruel to a desperate older woman.
‘I like you a lot,’ he added.
Jo choked back a sob. Now he was letting her down gently.
‘It was a mistake,’ she said, ‘it was a horrible mistake. I don’t do things like this. I’m really sorry. Here, let me take these.’ She began grabbing the sheets from his arms, bundling them into damp tangles, avoiding his gaze.
‘I’ll do it,’ he said gently.
She couldn’t take his kindness. ‘No, I’ll get it, it’s fine, I’ll just put all the animals into this sheet here like a big bag, see? It’s fine. Everything’s fine.’ She dropped a fitted sheet onto the grass and tugged the animals into it, conscious of his hands near hers, his eyes watching her, the rain in his hair, the dampness of his lips, the scent of him, oh God.
‘Jo …’
‘Thank you for your help, I really appreciate it, and I’m so sorry, again.’ She put Irving on top of the heap and pulled the sheet together into a sack. She would have to wash the sheet again. She would have to start all over on everything.
‘I really don’t—’
‘Bye,’ she choked, and ran into the house, the wet sheets bumping against her legs.
Chapter Eighteen
Lydia
LYDIA RAN.
When she ran, things made more sense. The world slowed down around her. Her body with all of its errant desires and needs concentrated solely on putting one foot in front of the other, arms pumping, breath easy, smooth-gaited and covering the miles.
She used to run with her father, when she was little. They’d go running through the park, round and round the perimeter in a circle. Her father bought her proper running shoes, in blue and red and silver, and they both wore matching Superman T-shirts. Her little legs would get tired but it seemed like her father could run for ever. He used to run marathons. When she got a stitch he would scoop her up onto his shoulders and she would laugh, holding her arms up to try to touch the leaves of the trees.
That was one of the ways she remembered him best.
Lydia ran without looking at her surroundings. The pavements were smooth and wet after the rain and the air was cool on the sweat that filmed her forehead and her neck and legs. One house after another, street after street, Tennyson after Yeats after Coleridge after Browning. Her English teacher in Year Nine had made a map of the estate with little pictures of the actual poets and samples of their poems next to the streets named after them. They were all men.
If she could tell her father about how she felt, he would know what to say. He would know what to do. Her father would understand; he wouldn’t try to pretend that everything was happy or ask for reassurance t
hat she was OK and everyone was normal. He would take her running and he would lift her up to brush the leaves.
And she was not looking at her surroundings, but her legs knew she was thinking of her father. They carried her past the houses into a tunnel of trees. The road inclined upwards slightly, and the air was hushed and cool. And then there was the bridge.
She liked running here sometimes. Her mother avoided it, didn’t even drive over it, would go miles out of her way. But Lydia thought it was peaceful. She stopped, breathing fast, and took her earbuds out.
The bridge went over a railway cutting. The sides were steep and covered with green, sloping down to the gravel bottom, where four sets of tracks pointed in either direction. In the distance was a bridge just like this one: an arch of red brick with black iron railings.
It was quiet here; something about how the cutting was made, or maybe the trees around it, meant that the normal neighbourhood sounds didn’t penetrate. Lydia put her hand on the railing and stretched, holding one leg bent behind her with her hand to ease out tightness in her quadriceps. She read the metal plaque attached to the bridge.
IN MEMORY OF
DR STEPHEN LEVINSON
3.9.1970–10.6.2005
The plaque was going slightly green at the edges. She stretched her other leg and ran her fingers over the words. She’d done it so often, over the years, that she could read it with her eyes closed.
‘I love her, Dad,’ she whispered. ‘I don’t know how to let her go.’
Lydia brushed her palm over the plaque again. Looked out over the open air, the empty space between one bridge and the other, waiting for an answer that didn’t come.
She thought about the book she had borrowed from Granny Honor’s room this afternoon, the familiarity of the writing in it. Was it, as she suspected, a part of her father’s story? Was it something that could help her understand what to do?
Lydia lingered on the bridge, rubbing the words, until a train rushed by below her and disturbed the silence, and then she turned and started running again.
