by Liz Jensen
—Go away, go on, I tell her. —I don’t know who you are and where you’ve come from but you’ve no business coming along and disturbing my life and so you can bugger off back to the bottom of the blinking lake with your silly beads.
—Beads? goes the doctor man, and I think: oh bloody hell, did I say that.
—Yes, the beads! goes the Jill woman, all excited. —I told you about the glass beads I have, didn’t I, Dr Kaplan? The beads she sent me?
Oh so the two of them are one and the bleeding same now, are they. That’s why you never spot them both together.
—I think we’ll leave it there for today, he goes. —We don’t want to overstretch her. It was a pleasure to meet you, Gloria, in spite of . . . well. And he pats my arm.
—She’s paying you, isn’t she. From her own pocket. Cos she’s stinking rich. She’s never had a worry in her life, look at her. All this bollocks about something missing. She don’t know nothing about missing stuff. Not the way I do.
—Goodbye, Mrs Taylor, he goes. Goodbye, Gloria. Miss Winstanley.
No one’s called me Miss Winstanley in years and it brings back the Great Zedorro as easy as if he’s walked in the room. But the Great Zedorro’s dead, isn’t he, murdered in his bed by a madwoman who wanted stuff back that he’d stolen, sucked out of her like blood from a mop stood against the wall in a little bare room.
—Some progress, I hear him tell the Jill woman. —She definitely knew a couple called Bill and Grace. Are you familiar with the name Zedorro?
But she shakes her head.
SHELLSHOCK
Lilac season. From my bed, you can look out on them lovely frothy flowers bobbing their heads in the breeze. Open the window and you get the smell of them, and sometimes a wasp’ll buzz in and out again and sometimes a bee. These is quiet days here on the ward, quiet days which rolls into one. At first I thought my eyes had a problem, but no. The blur’s from inside.
I sleep for hours on end or sometimes just stare at the wall and I’m so weak I need the nurse to help me use the lav. I’m not hungry for once in my life, even though there’s more to eat here than I’ve seen all through the war. They tell me I’ve been ill and I believe them, cos my fanny won’t stop bleeding, must be something wrong with my ladies’ bits. The man who comes to sit by the bed, he don’t wear a white coat but you know he’s Authority, he looks familiar, if you were the trusting type you’d probably trust him. His wife, if I ever meet her, she’d be one of them people too.
—You had fever. You nearly died, he said. —We’ve been taking care of you. The war’s over. Did you know that, Gloria?
Later a woman I might know brings me a cup of tea, she’s all washed-out, she’d be better with a spot of make-up, she would, but not too much because she’s blonde, and us blondes need to watch it, you don’t want to look like a Slut Fairy or nothing.
—You’re in Fyfield Convalescent Home, she says. —Near Bath.
—Are you the Doctor’s wife?
—Yes, she goes. —But he’s not a doctor exactly, he’s a psychologist. Now drink up, then get some more rest.
She don’t want to be here, I can sense it. When she leaves she and her psychologist husband whisper in the corner of the room together. Then she goes, wearing a nice smart coat made of tweed. Apart from her and the nurses, I’m the only female around, the others is men, casualties of war with no memories and mutilations, legs blown off and guts scooped out and what have you. I feel like that. Like I’ve had something blown off or scooped out.
But no. Look at me: I’m whole.
The Slut Fairy’s standing by the bed. Some time’s gone missing.
—Hello, Grace, I says. —Hello, Slut Fairy.
—My name’s Melanie, Gran.
—Don’t call me Gran! No one calls me Gran!
—They do now.
She’s wearing make-up just like when she was on stage, with her sequinned outfit, but not done so well this time. In fact she looks no better than she should be.
—Here, I brought you a cup of tea, she goes, plonking it down on the bedside table and sloshing some into the saucer and the table which is made of wood, got a drawer in it for my specs and a glass of water for my teeth, which is not in, which is out, because they has been giving me too much gyp, they need to take notice of things like that, the responsibility isn’t Hank’s, it’s Mrs M’s, or maybe the doctor’s or the dentist’s or the accountant’s, maybe the insurance man’s, the one who does loss of one arm one leg one shoulder any number of teeth up to four.
And while I am stringing this thought together which is like beads, whitey-pink beads which goes one after another and you can make a circle of them and wear it as a necklace, she has got up and buggered off, but she leaves a ghostiness hovering there, which is where she ends and the Slut Fairy begins, cos to my mind they are beginning to be one and the same person, just like the Jill woman and Marje and that little girl, still lurking behind the curtain somewhere near the fish-tank which has fish from the Philippines in, that the Conchita girl looks at till she cries and –
In times of war you drop your knickers down the back of a sofa.
In times of war you do things is best forgotten.
In times of war one Yank –
The men scream in the night, and do filthy swearing. In the day the wireless is tuned to the Home Service in case it brings one of them poor bastards to his senses. But fat chance of that, cos not wanting to be rude or anything, most of them is loonies. There is one here called Ned, he is like Iris, young and missing one arm but also half a leg. He was a Prisoner of War and his hair is white, sticking up from his head, and his eyes are red from staring right ahead not blinking. His mum comes to visit him and cries. He don’t know who she is. They have made him a phoney arm he can strap on with a harness round his chest but he don’t want to wear it. Same with the leg, he prefers to hop.
—It’s only my left arm, he says. —Didn’t use it much anyway.
He laughs then, like he’s said something funny, and his mum turns away.
The loonies take it in turns to go off with the psychologist man and lie on the couch in his room. Sometimes you’ll hear a shout or some screaming, but mostly it’s quiet murmurs or just silence. Once when Ned was in there you heard this big scream, it went right through you, made you shudder like chalk on a blackboard. He came out looking more shellshocked than before he went in, but you could tell he was happier, like something was off his chest, and the next day when his mum came he smiled and said hello to her, and she burst into tears. He put his hand to her face and kissed her forehead, and I thought: what a good boy, I would like a son like him one day, I would, if I ever have a baby.
Outside wasn’t the same place I remembered neither. I could tell from looking out the window, beyond the lilac and into the street. You’d get swirls of people spilling around on the pavement and from pubs, whistling and yelling at each other, some of them, their faces stretched from the smiling and the grinning because the war was over. Even I smiled, though I felt away from it all, because I was in another place, wasn’t I, and some time had gone missing somewhere. And some memories too, but I knew better than to start digging. I had an instinct, and you don’t fight those instincts, they’re there to protect you. When I get out there will be lots of jokes and lots of food, I thought. And if there ain’t no chance of that, I’m staying put.
When I could walk and the bleeding had calmed I wandered slow round the grounds in my nightie and admired the Victory Garden, they had good veg there, used to be a tennis court, the gardener told me. He handed me a fresh carrot he’d just washed with the hose and gave a wink while I crunched it. Which got me wondering how Ron was doing, but in a more woozy don’t-matter way than before, cos I must’ve realised he was back in America, or on his way there.
Beyond the Victory Garden there was a bed with foxgloves and marigolds and roses, and beyond that, the fence that kept the world out and a cluster of willows. Sometimes behind the willows you could se
e the shine and flash of some water, a huge stretch of lake with mud and weed. But take a proper look and it weren’t there. Nothing but a meadow with buttercups. The lake, it was imaginary. It was just your head talking.
Things was still blurry but one thing I did know. There was not going to be a knock at the door, there was not going to suddenly be Ron standing there with his cap off, saying, Hiya, cutie, boy, you look a million dollars. I could say bye-bye to ideas like that.
So I sat back from it all, and some of the others in the convalescent place, they did the same – well, most of them in fact, because shellshock does that to you, you’re neither here nor there. I didn’t spend no time wondering why I hadn’t heard from Marje in so long, or why her letters the last year were so short and not very sweet. She’d lost Bobby. She was all cranked up, wasn’t she, lost the run of herself. We’d never been what I’d call close. Or why I was bleeding like I had a monthly that went on and on.
Had we ever been close?
D’you know, there’s things have completely slipped my mind since the war.
The psychologist came to me one day when I was in my nightie.
—Grace and I are taking you home, Gloria. I think you’re ready for it. Mrs O’Malley has moved out, you’ll have the place to yourself.
We went by car, a grey Morris Minor with red leather seats. The man drove and his wife sat in the back with her baby. They’d bought me supplies and we carried them out of the boot and put them on the kitchen table.
—We saved your coupons for you, said the man. —Grace and I will stay here for the first night, to settle you in.
—I’ll make us high tea, said the woman. —How about that?
They might’ve been cousins or something, from my mum’s side, the ones I’d never met before. The baby they had, it must’ve been a girl cos it was in frills. The woman looked nervous with it, maybe she couldn’t cope. She kept trying to feed it syrup of figs from a spoon, then giving up and ramming a bottle in its mouth.
Unless bowels move regularly your child will be weakly, peevish, dull and stunted.
I took against this baby cos every time it cried my tits tingled and I felt sick.
—Here’s your letter, says the man, handing me an envelope that’s been opened already, sent from America. Inside is a sheet of paper, all crumpled-looking. Writing on it in capital letters.
I don’t read it. I just put it in a box.
I howled all night, they told me later. Which was funny, because in the day I didn’t feel a flicker. I was dead, wasn’t I. Pretty much dead.
The letter that was in the box, Dr Kaplan’s left it lying on the table, and my wedding photo next to it. I hate those capital letters he used when he wrote. It looked so –
Well. Call me a snob, but it shamed me, it did, bad handwriting like that. Don’t they have proper schools in America?
—Are you going to read it then? goes Doris.
—Can’t find my glasses. Hey, Conchita! Where’s Conchita?
The pregnant Welsh one comes up instead.
—I want Conchita.
—Your glasses here, Gloria. I tell Conchita to come when she finish making beds.
—When’s it due?
—No baby, says the Welsh one who’s a foreigner. —Just put on weight.
—Well, that sounds familiar, I tell her. —You’d best see a doctor, declare it and get the extra rations. You don’t want to end up with regrets, walking the streets. I know your game.
But she’s slapping cushions, doing her deaf act again.
This letter I pen.
Even fifty years on it’s a rubbish letter. Wrote it in a hurry, you can tell. Didn’t put the time in. Maybe it was her who dictated it, I wouldn’t put it past her, she was always the clever one. He was sorry to tell me in this way, sorry they didn’t come and tell me in person, but he was invalided out and sent back home, and Marje –
Fuck Marje.
They both felt real bad. Marje wanted me to know she’d always be my sister. Hoped I would forgive them.
But when love comes along –
I remember that line from somewhere, don’t I. Don’t tell me. You’ve got to grab it with both hands and not let go, haven’t you.
It’s the photo does the talking.
There they are in London just before D-Day, him in his uniform, her in the parachute dress, looking like a couple of bloody film stars. She looks like me. Is that why he’s married her? Cos she looks like me? We could be twins, he said.
Look at them. Lipstick on our mother’s mouth.
Pish pish. Red lips scarlet woman, one Yank and they’re off.
It’s not crying that I do. No, I don’t cry but there’s a howl that comes up from my belly then. A wolf’d make a noise like that if someone stole its cub. Even though it’s coming from me, it scares me cos I have never heard such a noise before, this wolf cry, this cry of someone mad.
Doris is watching me read it, and the little girl from Gadderton.
They don’t say nothing.
Bloody hell, I’m thinking. I should never’ve gone fishing, I blame the fish, a trout it was I think, a whopper with Hallelujah eyes, that lived at the bottom of Gadderton Lake. All the other fish, they were impersonators, this was the real McCoy but he was lurking deep because he had a secret.
And now I am hungry.
—When’s tea?
—Five o’clock, same as always, says Doris.
—I could eat a horse! Talking of that, here is a joke for you, Doris, you’ll like this one. A horse walks into a bar, and sits down. And the barman says to him, Why the long face?
While Doris is laughing I explain to her that it doesn’t have to be a horse. It can be an anteater if you want. Any animal with a long face will do.
—We have some papers for you to sign, Mr Authority says the next day. —It’s all quite official.
The woman held them out for me and showed me where to put my name. I signed where she said. Didn’t bother reading it. Then she left and the baby left with her and I was glad to see the back of them because that baby did bad things to my tits.
—D’you think you’ll hear more from Ron? goes the man, whose name is Bill.
—Why would I?
—And your sister?
—Dead. Pretty much dead.
He shook his head and sighed. But he seemed to like the idea.
I didn’t mind so much either. It’s funny the way I didn’t care about neither of them no more. They felt like a couple of foreigners I never really knew.
As soon as I was well enough the man and the woman – they were called Bill and Grace, I think they were my mum’s cousins – they gave me some money and I went to live in lodgings in London they’d arranged. It didn’t cross my mind to say no, because I’d always wanted to go back and live in the Big Smoke, and I was ready to be somewhere that weren’t Bristol.
I was still feeling shellshocked. But it weren’t such a bad feeling. In fact it was like a soft cushion, I knew I could come to no harm. I wasn’t the only one in a strange mood after the war. You never know how a war’s going to hit you, but you know what? Lots of people said afterwards it was the best time of their life, the only time they really felt alive and I know about that because I felt it too.
I stayed in a house in Tooting, right next to one that had been hit in a raid, where the whole family was killed. They hadn’t got to their bomb shelter in time. The others, they told me they spent three days trying to dig out any survivors. But there weren’t none, just someone’s foot and a bit of leg.
There was rubble everywhere, and when the rubble was cleared away there were big empty spaces with puddles in, and pregnant women sprouting up like mushrooms in a field.
Then a few months later, babies and prams. Everywhere you looked there was a baby in a pram. I didn’t have no baby in a pram. Never wanted one, did I. Some of them babies didn’t have dads, cos the dad was dead or missing or gone back to America. At least I’d been spared that, eh.
Bill and Grace Farraday sent me money once a week, and Grace sent me a picture of herself with her baby girl, wearing its frills. It looked weakly, peevish, dull and stunted. I never asked its name, but I sent it some glass beads on a string, what I found on an old bomb-site on Southey Road, where the school had stood that was bombed to bits. They were too good to chuck away. They must’ve belonged to one of the children. Funny the things that survive in the rubble. Just some old glass beads on a frayed old string, in among the twisted metal and the flapping bits of paper.
I sent the string of beads for Grace’s baby, but we lost touch after that. I stopped writing, and the letters stopped coming, and so did the money. But by then I was making my own, wasn’t I. Living in Tooting, leading the independent life. Doing all sorts.
—What do you remember? goes Dr Kaplan.
—Nothing. Just . . . nothing. Like I ate a black hole or something.
—Ate a black hole?
—All up. Or it ate me.
—And why do you think you feel like that?
—You’re the doctor.
—I’m asking you.
—Listen, sonny Jim. I don’t even remember why I don’t remember, there’s stuff I don’t remember forgetting either. If that’s any help. I know the Jill woman doesn’t believe me and I know Hank doesn’t, but it’s true. You don’t neither, I expect, cos you’re on their side.
—But I do believe you, Gloria. I do.
—Crap!
But when I look up to see if he’s lying, I find out he isn’t. Look at his eyes, his Jew eyes: he ain’t kidding me here. You can tell he actually-factually means it. Blinking hell. So I soften a bit, don’t I.
—So if you do, why don’t they?
—Don’t worry about them for now, Gloria. Just settle down for me, for now, OK? Look, it’s locked away in your head. The whole story. You just can’t reach it, that’s all.
—Why not?
—Because you’ve suppressed it.
—So what do I do?
—We. What we do, Gloria, is that with your permission, we try to bring it back.
Don’t like the sound of that, do I.
