Girl, Balancing & Other Stories

by Helen Dunmore

  Kimberley Hilton flashed into her mind, still smiling and sparkling, with that neat little blonde head, and big eyes. Still waving that envelope after all these years. ‘If it hadn’t been for me, Ros Howden, you’d never have learned to swim properly,’ she said, and then she laughed, and danced away.

  A NIGHT OUT

  THE GREEN BEAST squatted in the sun, grinning at her. Ruth climbed back on the seat with the instruction booklet, and went through it all again. Brake engaged, blades disengaged. Choke halfway out. For the fourth time, she turned the ignition key. For the fourth time the engine caught, vibrated and died.

  Ruth’s heart pounded. She got off the mower, drew back her foot and kicked the green flank as hard as she could. Pulses of pain shot up her leg, but the mower wasn’t even marked. Hot, choking fury filled her throat. Now she was pummelling the metal with her fists, yelling words that the beast would never have heard from Donald in a million years of mowing.

  Her hands hurt. She wasn’t shouting any more. She was crying, leaning against the beast, crying in huge, painful jags that had never come in all the six months since the funeral.

  ‘Mrs Carver? Ruth!’

  A face was peeping over the high fence. How had she got up there?

  ‘If you want, I can help with your lawn tractor,’ said Aruna Patel, as if she hadn’t noticed tears, thuds or swearing.

  ‘It’s a ride-on mower,’ said Ruth mechanically.

  ‘I am very familiar with them. Wait one moment.’

  The face disappeared. The Patels had been living next door for two years: a professional couple, always extremely busy, leaving for work at 7 a.m. in expensive cars, and the young man’s widowed mother, Aruna. Ruth and Donald had tried to be friendly, of course.

  She was at the gate.

  ‘It’s very kind of you, Aruna.’

  ‘Not at all.’ Aruna was as businesslike as her son today.

  Ruth stood aside. ‘I know there’s enough petrol in it,’ she said, trying to sound competent.

  ‘But not enough oil. There is a safety cut-out to protect against damage, if the oil level is low. See, the warning light is on.’

  So it was. ‘You seem to know a lot about these things. My husband – Donald – would never let me near it. He was like a child.’

  ‘My son is the same. Exactly the same. However, he is out all day and I like to know how things work.’ She laughed, and Ruth found that she was smiling too. ‘We have oil in the garage. I will get some for you.’

  ‘Don’t bother now. The grass can stay long for one more day.’

  ‘But you have such a beautiful lawn. I have often admired it.’

  ‘It would make a great campsite,’ said Ruth, surveying it. She had often thought that, but there was no chance that Donald would ever let tents be pitched on his precious lawn. When they had grandchildren, she’d thought, he would change his mind. But Donald would never see his grandchildren.

  ‘He was only fifty-eight,’ she said, very quietly, as she had said it so often to herself.

  ‘My husband also,’ said Aruna. ‘Heart attack. He was fifty-six.’

  The two women were silent. The glossy green of the mower blurred as Ruth said, ‘There were so many things we were going to do. I took early retirement …’

  ‘We had the business. We could never go away together.’

  It took them the rest of the day to mow the lawn. Aruna waved away Ruth’s protests, and once the oil was topped up the mower ran like a dream.

  ‘Now your campsite is ready,’ said Aruna.

  The expanse of grass suddenly looked enormous to Ruth. Ridiculous, for one woman. Why was she doing all this? Keeping on with everything. Everybody said you had to keep going. What for? But then the sweet smell of cut grass caught her so strongly that she felt dizzy. It reminded her of Guide camp. Blaise Fields had just been mowed when they pitched their tents. Ruth had woken at dawn, crawled over the others without waking anybody, and put her head out of the tent. Everything was grey, and wet with dew. It smelled wonderful.

  Aruna was staring at the golden tops of the trees, her eyes half-closed. ‘When I was a little girl,’ she said, ‘we had a most beautiful garden.’

  ‘Did you grow up here, or in India?’

  ‘Oh no, we were in Uganda. Our house was a bungalow, with a big verandah running all around. On hot nights the servants would push my bed out. I would wake up in the night and see the stars. I always preferred to be outside. Running and climbing and getting in the way of the garden boys.’

  ‘I was a tomboy too. My own daughter was just the opposite. Everything had to be Barbie pink.’

  ‘I know! It is like a disease. Mine was the same. But now she is living in Tasmania, so she has to be practical.’

  ‘Lucy’s in New York.’

  The two women were silent, thinking of faraway, beloved daughters, and the endless Skyping and emails that never quite filled the gaps.

  ‘I must be going home,’ said Aruna briskly.

  ‘I’ve still got the tent,’ said Ruth, as if to herself.

  Aruna’s expression sharpened. ‘Have you? How big is it?’

  ‘It’s a two-man tent. Donald and I – but that was years ago. I expect it’s fallen to pieces.’

  ‘You could look, perhaps?’

  Next morning, Ruth looked. Dear, careful Donald had rolled it away immaculately, as if it was never to be used again. It was a very low-tech tent. Ruth remembered how she used to wrestle with its poles and guy-ropes.

  I’ll put it up, just to see how it looks, she decided.

  The sun was hot on Ruth’s back as she hammered in the last tent-peg. The cream canvas was spotted with age and damp, but the fabric remained strong. She crawled inside. It was very warm. A blackbird ran across the angle of her vision, a few feet away. She’d forgotten how close birds came, when you were camping. She would make a cup of tea, bring it out, and watch.

  As Ruth emerged from the tent, she heard the clip of secateurs. Instantly, she knew that Aruna was in her garden, too. Aruna would have heard the hammering. But she would not come, unless Ruth asked.

  I could sit in the sun with my tea, Ruth thought. She was getting used to being on her own. Make the tea, perhaps a couple of biscuits, wash it up, think about cooking, decide a boiled egg will do, email Lucy, save it as a draft because emailing every day is too needy, think about joining a book group, decide to leave it until the autumn, see what’s on TV …

  ‘Aruna?’ called Ruth. ‘Aruna, are you there?’

  Seconds later, Aruna’s head popped over the fence.

  ‘How do you get up so high?’ asked Ruth.

  ‘I have steps for trimming the hedges.’ Aruna’s eyes brightened and widened. ‘My goodness. I see that you know what you are doing when it comes to tents.’

  ‘It’s old-fashioned, but quite roomy inside. Come and have a look.’

  Aruna’s sari did not seem to get in her way as she crawled into the tent and then twisted herself into a sitting position. Her gold bangles chinked as she waved her hand admiringly. ‘There is so much space! You would not believe it from the outside.’

  ‘I’m going to sleep out in it,’ said Ruth suddenly.

  ‘Alone?’

  ‘I’ll be perfectly all right in my own garden,’ said Ruth.

  ‘Of course,’ said Aruna, looking away, her voice suddenly distant, and Ruth realised once again that Aruna would never – not without being asked …

  ‘Although I would feel much more secure if I camped with someone else.’

  ‘That is very natural,’ said Aruna.

  ‘And I wondered if perhaps … You did say you liked sleeping out?’

  ‘You mean that I should camp here?’ asked Aruna, and her voice sounded so surprised that Ruth wondered if, in some way she didn’t understand, she had offended her neighbour.

  ‘Well – yes. But it was only an idea. Probably not a very good one—’

  ‘And see the stars …’ said Aruna dreamily.

&
nbsp; ‘Well, maybe not through the canvas. It’s quite thick.’

  ‘I will peep out of the tent-flaps in the dead of night.’

  ‘I’ll buy those blow-up camping mattresses. Alex says they’re wonderful.’

  ‘No, please! Allow me!’

  They wrangled gently over mattresses, camping stove and sleeping bags. They made lists and discussed timings. Aruna learned the route to Ruth’s downstairs cloakroom. It became clear that Aruna’s son and daughter-in-law were to know nothing.

  ‘I will simply slip back into the house when morning comes.’

  And here they were, side by side in sleeping bags, with the tent-flaps open to the warm night. Aruna wrote her diary in the fading light – ‘Just two sentences. I began it years ago to practise my English.’ How strongly the garden smelled of earth and falling dew, of cut grass, flowers and the distant compost heap. Ruth lay on her back and watched an ant on its slow journey across the pale curve of the tent. The light was nearly gone …

  She woke, because Aruna fell on top of her. ‘I am so sorry! So sorry! I lost my way to your cloakroom and there was a fox or some night animal running across the grass so I hurried into the tent rather quickly—’

  Ruth could not help it: the vision of Aruna scrambling into the tent pursued by a night animal was too much for her. She laughed until she had to roll on her side to ease the pain in her stomach. Thank heavens, Aruna was laughing too.

  They didn’t go back to sleep. ‘It’s a beautiful night, full of stars,’ said Aruna, and turned her sleeping bag round so she could lie on her back and watch them through the tent-flaps. They talked as the grey of dawn took away the starlight, and while the sun rose, creating unfamiliar shadows across the lawn. They talked about Donald and Manu, about Lucy and Jyoti, about time zones and funerals, about daughters-in-law and tree-climbing. Their voices rose and fell as the birds woke and took over the garden with their song.

  It was Ruth who heard the click of the gate. She sat up, skin prickling. Much too early for the postman or deliveries—

  It was the young man from next door, walking across the grass. He saw Ruth peering out of her tent and asked politely, ‘Excuse me, have you seen my mother?’

  ‘It is my Devan,’ said Aruna, and she wriggled out of her sleeping bag and stood to face her son.

  ‘Mother!’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I woke up and your bed was empty. I thought something had happened to you, and then I heard all this talking and laughing.’

  ‘So you came to investigate,’ said Ruth.

  ‘But, Mother …’ The young man’s arm swept out to indicate the tent, the garden, the sleeping bag and his mother with her long plait over her shoulder. ‘What are you doing here? Why are you not at home in your bed?’

  He looks so bewildered, thought Ruth. Like a little boy. Aruna must have seen it too, for she said soothingly, ‘I will come home, Devan. I will come now. The night is over.’

  Hastily Aruna gathered her things, nodding at Ruth as if to reassure her, too. ‘I will come later and help you to take down the tent,’ she promised.

  ‘I might keep it up,’ said Ruth.

  She watched them walk away, mother and son. It had only been one night, after all. He had nothing to worry about.

  It was when Ruth was shaking the sleeping bags that Aruna’s diary fell out and lay open on the grass. You must never read people’s private diaries, but as Ruth bent over to pick it up she could not help seeing the two lines:

  ‘I am camping in a tent with my friend Ruth. We are hoping to see the stars.’

  PORTRAIT OF AUNTIE BINBAG, WITH RIBBONS

  MAGS, KAFF, DIDI, Stu and Binnie. My mother, her two sisters and her two brothers. My mother was Mags. She’s Margaret now. She stopped answering to Mags when she went to college to study book-keeping. Margaret, Catherine, David, Stuart. And Binnie. My Auntie Binnie, the eldest of the five. She didn’t look the eldest, with her large, soft face and her round-toed babyish shoes. She didn’t look any age at all. Mum and my aunts and uncles talked about her as if she was still a child.

  ‘Binnie’s so stubborn. She gets an idea in her head, and there’s no doing anything with her.’

  ‘She lives in a dream half the time.’

  You could talk about Auntie Binnie in a way you wouldn’t dare talk about any other grown-up. She was just Auntie Binnie. Or Auntie Binbag, sometimes, on account of her clothes.

  ‘She gets dressed with her eyes tight shut.’

  ‘She feels around in the wardrobe until she finds something.’

  We mimicked Auntie Binbag, our arms thrust out stiffly and our eyes screwed shut. We understood that it was all right to do this in front of Mum, even though Auntie Binnie was Mum’s sister. Mum would say, ‘Stop it, Sarah, Jessie. That’s enough,’ but not in a way that meant anything.

  What made us cruel was that we loved Auntie Binnie as much as we were embarrassed by her. When we were little we sat on her knee and patted her large, gentle face. We admired the scarves that trailed from her, and the ornaments she bought us from charity shops. Auntie Binnie didn’t bother about presents being for birthdays or Christmas. In fact she was likely to forget your birthday altogether. Once she gave me a glittering china fairy with pointy toes, sitting on a bunch of china flowers. I had never seen anything so beautiful.

  Auntie Binnie didn’t have a proper job, or a husband, or children. My mother had all three, which was why she never had the time to go looking for treasures such as my fairy with her golden hair and bright cherry lips. It was also why Mum was more important than Auntie Binnie. When Auntie Binnie gave me the fairy, Mum explained that Auntie Binnie didn’t have much money, and that was why we had to say an extra special thank you when she gave us a present, even if we didn’t like it.

  But I loved my fairy. I threw myself at Auntie Binnie and thanked her a million zillion times. It was my most beautiful possession in the whole world. It was only months later that I began to see a certain foolishness in the fairy’s bright face. It must have been about the same time that I stopped begging Auntie Binnie to leave me her scarf collection when she died. Mum never wore scarves, or things that trailed. Everything about Mum had a clean, clear edge to it.

  Auntie Binnie lived with an old lady called Mrs Bathgate. She was Mrs Bathgate’s companion. She did the shopping and fetched the prescriptions and answered the phone and did the housework. If Mrs Bathgate rang her bell in the night, Auntie Binnie got up and went to her, and made hot drinks and moved pillows about. If it was a very bad night, Auntie Binnie would have forty winks on the sofa the next afternoon, while Mrs Bathgate was reading aloud. Even though Auntie Binnie was the companion, it was always Mrs Bathgate who did the reading aloud, and Auntie Binnie who did the listening.

  Mum said it was quite ridiculous in this day and age, like something out of a novel by Charlotte Brontë. Mrs Bathgate was a mean old devil and knew when she was on to a good thing. What did she pay Binnie? Peanuts. But Binnie was so obstinate that she wouldn’t even tell Mum how much she got paid.

  Auntie Binnie would trail off in one of her dangly dresses to collect yet another prescription for Mrs Bathgate. And then people would say to Mum, ‘Oh, I saw your sister Binnie today, in Boots.’

  They would sound as if they pitied Auntie Binnie for fetching Mrs Bathgate’s prescriptions, and maybe as if they pitied Mum, too, for having a sister like Binnie, who didn’t know that you don’t wear a magenta satin skirt with the hem hanging down in the middle of winter.

  Magenta was one of Auntie Binnie’s favourite colours. Her bedroom, at the top of the house where Mrs Bathgate lived, was very small and crammed with bright cushions and ornaments and scarves. Crimson was another of Auntie Binnie’s colours. Scarlet, petunia, lilac, mauve, flame. When I learned at school that the phoenix’s nest was made of flames, I thought of Auntie Binnie’s bedroom.

  Next to the little bedroom there was another room which Auntie Binnie used for her painting. Mrs Bathgate didn’t kno
w about the painting, because she couldn’t climb stairs and her stairlift only went up to the first floor. The stairlift whizzed Mrs Bathgate up or down the stairs, whenever she wanted. Auntie Binnie longed to try it out herself, she told Mum, but she’d never dared. Mrs Bathgate had a terrible tongue.

  ‘Why do you let that woman bully you?’ shouted Mum.

  In her painting room Auntie Binnie painted one picture after another, whenever she had an hour free from Mrs Bathgate. There were no fairies in her paintings, no people, flowers or landscape. Just crowds of different colours, sometimes fighting one another, sometimes agreeing. Auntie Binnie spent hours and hours painting. She didn’t bother to keep her paintings when they were finished, and no one ever asked if they could have one. I didn’t like them much, but I admired the way she kept right on filling up the paper with colour until there wasn’t any white left.

  When each painting was done, she put it behind her wardrobe for a while, and when enough were stacked there she carried them downstairs and put them beside the wheelie bin. The binmen always took them. Auntie Binnie did all this with a gentle smile on her face, as if she enjoyed the act of putting her paintings out with the rubbish.

  I was eleven when Mrs Bathgate died.

  ‘Of course she won’t have left Binnie a halfpenny,’ said Mum.

  Auntie Binnie went to the funeral in magenta and apricot, and Mum accompanied her, dressed in black. It was a beautiful sunny day.

  ‘Do you know,’ said Mum, ‘Binnie was smiling all through the service. She was sat in a shaft of light coming through the chapel window and she smiled as if she was on the beach. “Isn’t it a lovely day?” she said to Mrs Bathgate’s son-in-law. He didn’t know what to say. Not that they were a close family. I can count on the fingers of one hand the times they came to see Mrs Bathgate, in all those years.’

  Mum took off her high black shoes and rubbed her feet. ‘I don’t know what we’re going to do about Binnie,’ she added with a sigh, as if I was a grown-up too. ‘Twelve years she’s been with Mrs Bathgate.’