War Crimes for the Home

by Liz Jensen

  —You can come back now, Gloria. You can come back.

  And so I shut my eyes and look up through the silver water at the sun and I swim up, up, up through the green forgiving water until I am back in myself.

  I MUST’VE SLEPT

  I must’ve slept.

  When I open my eyes, Zedorro has gone and Dr Kaplan is sitting there with his notes, and the Jill Farraday woman is rocking like she is her own baby and Melanie is hugging her too so it’s a muddle to look at.

  —Have I missed something? I go. Because I’d like to’ve known what got her in that state, I have never seen her show no emotion before to speak of except when she called me a liar and ran out that time with her scarf flying like a flag.

  She pushes Melanie off and collects herself, she is good at that. Red red eyes, she’s got, and she’s fiddling in her handbag for something. Fiddle faddle she goes, till suddenly she finds what she’s looking for and fishes out these little glass beads look right familiar.

  —My beads, she says. —My glass beads. My mother sent them to me. I mean you did.

  —Am I dead yet? I ask them. —Am I in hell?

  —No, says Hank. —You’re not in hell, Mum. You’re here with us.

  —Then take me to that place we caught a fish. Take me to Gadderton. Gadderton Lake. Doris is waiting for me.

  They look at each other.

  —When you’re feeling more yourself.

  Myself? What is that? I have stopped knowing.

  —Did it hurt? asks Dr Kaplan.

  —Did what hurt? I was asleep. I had this dream.

  He looks anxious.

  —What did you dream?

  —I remembered what Zedorro did. In the war.

  They’re shooting looks at each other, worried that perhaps I am nuts.

  —The hospital they put me in with shellshock, that’s where he worked. For the MOD. He worked with the ones who’d got amnesia, helping them remember stuff. But he did other memory things too. There were these soldiers who saw things that was so bad they went mad with it. There was one called Ned.

  —Ned? goes Jill, with her crying-wobble voice. —Ned Sullivan? I knew him! Uncle Ned, he was one of Dad’s patients, he’d lost an arm and part of one leg –

  —That’s the one.

  —He used to come to the house, he used to talk with Dad for hours. Dad always called him his ‘guinea-pig’. But I never knew why.

  —Cos he treated him. And he must’ve been the first. For the new treatment.

  —What did he do? asks Dr Kaplan, all excited. —What was this treatment?

  —It was supposed to be secret, but Ned talked about it and so did some of the others. They all wanted to have the treatment. Ned was the first.

  —What did it involve? goes Dr K. —What happened to you if you were part of it?

  —I remember them going in mad and coming out happy, I go. They’re all listening to me now, and Dr K is even getting out his pen and paper. —That’s what I remember about them days in the hospital. Didn’t always work though. Some of them went in mad and came out just as mad. Or they went in mad and came out happy, then a week or two later they were screaming again. Cos the treatment didn’t always work, see. Ned, he was the first and he was a big success.

  Jill makes a noise.

  —No he wasn’t.

  Dr K is scribbling like mad.

  —What? I thought he was.

  —He was for quite a few years. Through most of my childhood. Then when I was a teenager – he went strange. It started slowly, then it got worse and worse. Dad couldn’t do anything to help him. He tried but it only made it worse. Ned was furious with Dad. Said he’d made his life hell. He died a few years after Dad. In an institution.

  —So what was the treatment? goes Dr K. —Can you remember what it was, Gloria? What he did?

  —He wiped people’s memories. So they’d forget what they’d seen and sometimes –

  —What they’d done?

  —Yes. Bad stuff. They had to really want to forget it, whatever it was. They had to be nearly going mad with it. They had to sign something, accepting the risk. Cos other things might get wiped with it. They’d talk about how much they wanted it, they was queuing up to have it done on them.

  The Jill woman, she’s got her hands clasped together and she’s back to rocking back and forth, back and forth.

  —You look like you’ve seen a ghost, I tell her. —Has someone died?

  More photographs of their bloody wedding arrive, forwarded from Bristol. There they are, smiling at me, rubbing the salt right in. The worst thing is what Marje rubs in. Because in every single one of them pictures, she looks just like me.

  I must’ve been in a trance, because Hank and Hank’s Wife and Jill is suddenly here, and Jill’s trying to open my hand that’s got the letter scrunched in it, and the toddler has got a plastic trike.

  But I’m remembering.

  —Please, Mum, goes Hank.

  —Please . . . Gloria, goes Jill, prising at my fingers.

  I’m remembering how I put that first photo on the mantelpiece in Tooting, and started to wear our mum’s old wedding ring. When my men asked me where my husband was – it used to worry them, in case he showed up halfway through a session with a shotgun, I suppose – I said he was dead. That could bring me some warmth. One client of mine, a bloke from Balham with a face like a pimply old lobster, Mr Loomis, he’d get tears in his eyes when he looked at that picture of me in my wedding dress, looking so beautiful.

  When actually it was me that was dead, wasn’t it, after what they’d done?

  A rubbish letter full of crap. Written by a bastard, dictated by a –

  There’s no word for my sister.

  He didn’t mean it, of course, about wanting me to visit them in Chicago one day. But he wrote it, didn’t he.

  —Well, we know who Jill’s dad was, says Hank. He and Karen are holding hands and the toddler is whizzing about on his trike. —But who was mine?

  FISH AND CHIPS

  In my dream I saw the Slut Fairy in the street wheeling a pram. It was springtime, April or in the month of May. We nodded at each other like people in a queue. Funny; I didn’t trust myself no more. As in, I didn’t know how well I knew her. I still had a spot of shellshock. I remember her in her sequins and her false tits, and now here she was, a flat-chested mother pushing a pram. She could have been me, except I didn’t have a baby, did I.

  Then I pop awake and for a minute, everything’s clear.

  —Was she a good mother?

  Jill’s eyes is still all red from crying. The others have gone. Dr Kaplan’s gone back to London on the train for his Christmas holidays, most likely, buying himself a sandwich from the trolley in the carriage, they do a nice tuna-and-mayonnaise one.

  —Yes. She was a good mum. But she died when I was a teenager.

  —Oh. That’s a shame.

  —And then my father – had problems.

  When she blows her nose she looks like a little girl, but with Mum’s mouth.

  —Like what?

  —He drank. I never knew he started out as a stage hypnotist. I never knew about the name Zedorro. Our name was Farraday. I thought he was properly trained – but that came later, I suppose. I had no idea till I saw the newspaper cutting of him and my mother doing a show in Bristol.

  She pulls it out.

  —This one.

  —Show it me, I go, and grab. Because immediately it looks familiar.

  —I’ve got that same picture, I go. —In my box.

  —Hank gave it to me, she says. —It’s my father and mother.

  —And me.

  —You?

  —Her, see? I’m that one, stretched out with the oranges on her tummy. That’s me. It’s how we met. (You have to squint to see my face, it’s just a blur.)

  And there I am, with the flash going off that I can feel through my shut eyes, and later I am standing up and they is cheering, cheering, and Ron is out there in the audien
ce and he is just waiting for me to come back and he will say, You sure looked good up there, hon.

  I must’ve slept again. When I wake she is still there, Jill. But crying less.

  —Ask her a question, says Doris. —Show some interest in the poor woman. Look at what she’s gone through to find you and come here. Takes guts, that does, tracking down your real mum.

  All right then.

  —And what about your husband? Where’s Melanie’s dad?

  She looks up, shocked I have spoken to her, I s’pose.

  —Collins? She spits his surname like it’s poison and twists her paper hankie into a little scrunch. —We’re divorced. We don’t see him. He’s a gambler. And a drunk. He lost everything. I don’t even know where he is. The Far East somewhere. Propping up a bar. She sniffs and dabs at her lady’s nose. —Then I married again but my second husband died.

  —Rich, was he?

  —Of leukaemia. A few years ago.

  So that’s why she looks so miserable, in spite of the chequebook. Then I remember the song.

  —‘Don’t Fall in Love with a Gambler’, I tell her. Kenny Rogers. You know the song? It is Kenny Rogers, isn’t it? Or is it that Willie Nelson one? I get them muddled up.

  But she’s concentrating hard on her patch of wall.

  Hank’s holding my hand. We are on the pier again, the seagulls rippling in and out on the wind-gusts. It’s chilly and the sky is hanging low. Little plops of rain dropping.

  —So you never went to Chicago?

  —I’m looking for the one with the stump. The poor old gull with the stump.

  I’m chucking them old crumbs from this morning’s toast. Bits of the truth, and bits of lies, and all so jumbled up together I don’t know no more.

  —All that time I was working in London, you know – I couldn’t get pregnant, no matter how hard I tried. Didn’t get pregnant for ages, did I.

  —Mum, he says. —Please. Don’t.

  —That was fate telling me something.

  —Fancy some fish and chips? he says in this loud breezy voice. —Because I could do with some.

  And he’s off, striding towards the chippie and leaving me there with the crumbs and the seagulls all around.

  * * *

  —I’ve brought the baby oil, I tell old Ed. Cos I want one last Zedorro Moment before I go.

  —Zedorro Moment? What’s that? And before you go where? You leaving?

  —I’m joining Doris. I’ve had enough. Bags packed and ready.

  —Don’t talk like that, Gloria. Glorious Gloria. Don’t cry, love. Who’s been getting at you this time?

  —Oh the usual. The grown-ups. Question after bloody question. They can’t just let sleeping dogs lie.

  —Come on then, he goes, and he pulls me down on the bed.

  He’s in his dressing gown and jim-jams.

  —You know what I wanted, all the time I was earning my living in London, before Hank was born? Hank don’t want to hear about it, of course, he’d rather stuff his face with chips.

  —What, he goes. While I pour some baby oil on my hands, he’s getting out his whatsit for me to see to. I always did like seeing to them things, don’t ask me why. Some people just have a taste for it, I s’pose.

  —What was you wanting? Ooh, that’s chilly. Warm it up first, missis, or you’ll turn him into an icicle! You’ll turn Grosvenor into a –

  —Grosvenor?

  —That’s his name.

  Lord help him.

  —I wanted a little babby, I said. —Every time I was with a client, I was hoping I’d fall preggers. Just wanted a little babby to hold. I don’t know why. It was like there was this hole in me needed filling.

  —I’ll find your hole, he says. —I’ll fill it.

  —You’re all talk, I tell him.

  But Grosvenor’s hardening up.

  —I never lost the knack, see, says Ed. —Never lost my manhood, I didn’t. Some of ’em do but not me. Pleased as punch, he is, with his stiffy called Grosvenor.

  From my big bed you could see the mantelpiece, with my wedding photo on, and every time I did it with a man I’d think of Ron, saying, Yeah, cutie, yeah that feels good, you sure know how to make a man go crazy, you sexy little cute-assed bitch, driving me wild . . .

  Drove me wild, too. And then the feeling got stronger and stronger. It was Ron’s baby I was going to have. That’s what I wanted. Not just any baby, it had to be Ron’s. It was like there was a space inside me, a space where only his baby belonged. And I knew if I imagined Ron, the babby I had would be his. I know it don’t make sense. But it did to me.

  —I took on more and more clients, I’m telling old Ed. —I was doing it morning, noon and night. I needed untangling by the end of the day, I did!

  —Gruh-huh, he goes. —Umph. Pah.

  —Made plenty of money but I couldn’t get what I wanted.

  I’m stroking and yanking away like an old pro while I’m talking, and his old whatsit that’s called Grosvenor is standing nicely to attention. Not bad for an old codger with a dicky heart, eh.

  —Easy does it, goes Ed. —I’m ninety-one.

  —You’re a dirty little boy, you are. Anyway you was just boasting about your manhood, you want to make a fuss, I’ll stop.

  —Nah, keep going, girl. You’re a natural, you are. How much did you charge then? In them days?

  —Ten shillings. Fifteen, for the American thing. I was good at that.

  —I bet you were. You going to show me then, you little prick-tease? I’ve never had one of them. Heard about them though.

  —If you’re a good boy. Haven’t done it in years, I’ll need to take my teeth out.

  —There’s my girl.

  When I’ve got them out I put them in the jar with his, and they sit there in the Steradent like two pink crabs that’s huddled together and has fallen in underwater love.

  —I can’t talk while I’m doing it, mind, I tell him.

  —That’s all right, Gloria my Glorious, I’ll do the talking.

  He doesn’t though, he just does the moaning and the groaning and the Oh Gloria, and it makes me squirm with pleasure myself, and soon I’m wanting some of the action too, so I hop on top of him and we’re away, just like the old days, it’s like rocking in a creaky old rocking chair, his face below me purple and his eyes googling while my tits wobble against his chest.

  —Oh Gloria, he’s going. —Oh Gloria! You’re going to kill me, you are!

  Puffing and panting and wheezing away like an old warhorse.

  Oh Ron, I’m thinking. Oh Ron.

  —I’m going to marry you, hon. You’re coming to Chicago with me.

  And the next thing I know, out of the bloody blinking blue I’ve had a big wave of it, a big old you know what, a Zedorro Moment or whatever you like to call it, which I haven’t had such a good one of in many a long year.

  And Ed must’ve had a bit of a crisis too, cos he’s heaving about underneath me, black and blue with it, and panting like mad, and his eyeballs has gone right up in his head. That’s my boy.

  —That’s my boy, I go, stroking his darling old face.

  —Don’t knock it, I tell Mrs Manyon when they’ve hauled me off him and covered him up with a sheet. Old people have a right to a sex life just like anyone else. Anyway, he died happy.

  But she just throws me this look like I’m scum.

  THE WINDY CITY

  Conchita la Paz, she likes to look at them fish, because they come from the Philippines, from the rivers and the sea which is bright blue. Happy fish, bright as plastic. Conchita la Paz is sleeping now, because she’s not on night-shift, no one is, but Melanie’s here, and they’re friends, them two, you might not’ve realised that. I saw them chatting in the Day Room, and they must’ve thought all the oldies was asleep or dead, because all of a sudden Melanie pulls down her trousers and shows Conchita this tattoo she’s got, and Conchita giggles like mad and starts shrieking with laughter. It’s a snake, coming out of her bum. Funny wha
t gets some people going, isn’t it. But maybe if tattoos were the thing when I was her age, I’d have had one done. Not a snake from the bum but something else. A crab on one of my tits maybe, pretending to pinch a nipple with its claw, in memory of Ron.

  The light is off. There is this bit of moonlight.

  But mostly we are in the dark, the moonlight is outside, and some light from the street-lamps which is orange. But here is dark, that is a soft dark.

  Me and the girl Melanie that calls me Gran. We are sitting in the soft dark and I am thinking of a thing I saw through the window of the hospital. It was this big orange crane. It had a wrecker ball that it swung to make the walls crash down. It swung and it swung, doing its wrecking thing till everything was gone.

  The girl doesn’t say nothing, she might be asleep, or on drugs, you never know. She had a row with her mum. Her mum has gone off. Her mum don’t want to see me no more after what happened to Ed and maybe other reasons too. Stuff that has been lost down the back of the sofa.

  A thousand squids you can win if you confess enough stuff on that show.

  Just when I was getting used to her, just when she wasn’t narking me so much. She went hysterical, called me a murderer. I heard a good joke, Hank told it me. What do you get when you cross a Jehovah’s Witness with an Atheist?

  Someone who knocks on the door for no reason.

  Anyway, here is Melanie next to me in the dark, with her nose-stud and a reptile hid up her bum, wonder if her mum knows. Sitting with me, and the lights is out everywhere, even the light in the fish-tank is out, and just a bit of tinsel glinting on the tree.

  Me, watching that wrecking ball in my head. Swinging and swinging.

  Along the street she wheels a perambulator,

  She wheels it in the springtime and in the month of May,

  And if you ask her why the hell she wheels it,

  She wheels it for a soldier who is far, far away,

  Far away, far away, far away, far away.

  She wheels it for a soldier who is far, far away.

  My voice sounds like an old lady’s voice, not like I thought it would be, I thought I would sound young again. Can’t sing that song without remembering what happened to Iris, and the sight of her arm and shoulder and the engagement ring on her finger showing she’s a dark horse. Melanie stirs, so I reach out for a knitting needle and stab her arm.