Precious Thing

by Mcbeth, Colette

  There are pins and needles in my head, they’re rushing up and down my arms. I’m shaking because no matter how much you don’t like your mother it’s a bit of a shock to see her cold and dead first thing in the morning. And then amongst the fear and the shock it hits me like a cool breeze in the stifling heat. She will never hurt me again. She will never speak to me again or look at me as if I am a piece of shit on her shoes. I don’t have to be her daughter any more. I am free of her, forever. That’s when the eerie calm descends on me and I feel more in control than I have ever been. A delicious relief washes over me and extinguishes the embers of last night’s fire.

  The ambulance is on its way, and you are still sobbing, but I’m trying to think practically. Niamh is (was) always so slovenly and it shows in her bedroom. The air is rank, hot and heavy with sick and stale alcohol. I open a window to let a breeze flow through. Her clothes are crumpled up, strewn on the carpet – though I’m grateful she’s still wearing yesterday’s underwear and I don’t have to pick it up. There are half-empty cups of coffee on the bedside table, films of milk floating on top, and the empty blister pack of sleeping tablets too. I take them away and throw them in the bin.

  They carry out a postmortem on her body ‘It’s just procedure,’ the policewoman who has been assigned to me explained, nothing to worry about. And I don’t worry about it. I am convinced Niamh pickled herself in alcohol; it was simply a matter of her body giving up on her. That was the real cause of her death. Sure enough when the results come through they reveal cirrhosis of the liver and high levels of sleeping pills in her blood. The perfect storm.

  We share everything, don’t we, Clara? No secret is too great, no truth too heavy. We don’t judge. We listen, we understand. That’s why I tell you, the week after she dies.

  The day starts well – a call from your dad: Could I help? he says breathlessly. I can tell he’s in a hurry. In my mind’s eye I see him running around your house, his dark hair still shower-wet, spraying that aftershave of his, the one we tease him about but really I secretly love, all citrussy and fresh, (It’s Issey Miyake, I know because I found it in his en suite one day). Anyway, he said you weren’t coping very well. ‘I have surgery all day, Rachel, can you come round and make sure she’s OK?’ I can’t imagine anyone ever refuses your dad. I love it when he takes me into his confidence and makes me feel so special, like I alone have the power to solve his problems. At work I imagine him all scrubbed up in theatre, directing an army of nurses and junior doctors, his cool, steady hands, knowing exactly what to do.

  I tell him yes, of course, I’ll be there and he says, ‘You’re a gem, Rach,’ which makes me smile, the way he sounds so grateful.

  By ten thirty I’m at your house and we’re in the kitchen hiding from the white heat outside. The sunshine isn’t a novelty any more. People cross the road to find shade, dart in and out of shops to be blasted by air conditioning. Yesterday I stuck my head in amongst the frozen peas at Sainsbury’s. I had no intention of buying them, I hate peas. I just needed to cool my head.

  But you don’t look like you’ve seen the sun in a long time. In fact your appearance shocks me: your hair is lank, you look smaller, like you’ve shrunk two sizes in a week. I want to cheer you up and I don’t think talking about Niamh will help so I keep coming up with suggestions: let’s play some music, watch MTV, why don’t we go to town? Even when I share the ripest bit of gossip around, Shelly Peters shagged Simon Dunstan at the weekend, you give me nothing back.

  Niamh’s gone and she’s still coming between us.

  ‘I think it’s my fault,’ you say eventually. We’ve moved to the living room and are sprawled on the sofa next to each other. I have to hand it to your dad, he has very good taste. The walls are painted in one of those white colours that’s not quite white, tasteful paintings add splashes of colour around the room. There are lots of photographs of you alone, and you and him together. There is even one of the two of us sitting under the tree in your back garden. He took the shot with my camera and I had it framed for his birthday last year, suggesting the perfect spot for it in his living-room gallery.

  I take a sip of my Lipton’s iced tea, which I brought for us because it’s your favourite. ‘Why would you say that?’ I ask.

  ‘I gave her the sleeping pills.’ Your lip is quivering and your eyes fill with tears. It’s painful to watch, it’s like you’ve disappeared along with Niamh. ‘I keep on thinking if I hadn’t given them to her she might still be here.’

  I want to tell you she’s not worth it, all this guilt and grief. Instead I say, ‘Don’t ever blame yourself, it’s her fault, not yours.’ I move closer to you so I can comfort you.

  ‘But I gave her the packet. I keep going over and over the moment I did it. I wish I could rewind,’ and you press yourself into me so I feel your sobs beating a rhythm against my chest. I want them to stop. I want my old sunshine Clara back. I would do anything to make you feel better. And that’s when I think of it.

  We share everything. No secrets.

  I hold you sobbing in my arms for long enough to convince me it is the right thing to do. I only wanted to protect you from her, make her go away for a little while, so you could see what she was really like. It wasn’t supposed to be like this, with you crippled by guilt. That’s why I tell you, to absolve you from the pain.

  ‘It’s not your fault, she had taken sleeping pills earlier.’ You pull away from my embrace; the sobbing stops, just as I had wanted, and you raise your head to look at me.

  ‘How do you know that?’ you ask, hungry for reassurance.

  I smile. ‘This is just between me and you, OK,’ and I watch you nod your consent before I continue. ‘I crushed some into the drink I gave her, the Pimm’s. And she drank it all.’

  I am expecting to see my smile reflected in your face, I want to see the shadow of guilt lift from you. Instead I recognise something and it is chilling. It is a look other people have given me in the past, in certain situations I vividly recall. But you have never looked at me like this, Clara. You are my friend, you’ve never doubted or questioned. You are loyal. But now you’re looking at me like someone has just ripped a mask from my face and you are seeing me properly for the first time. And whatever is there is filling you with horror.

  Stop it, Clara, stop it.

  But the look doesn’t go away. You’re scaring me.

  ‘It’s OK, Clara,’ I say, reaching out to take your hands. ‘She used to crush them up in her bedtime drink herself, that’s what she did.’ It’s a lie of course but I think it might calm you down. Instead you push my hands away.

  ‘How many did you give her?’ Your eyes are flashing at me.

  ‘I don’t know … a few, just a few, it doesn’t matter does it? They didn’t kill her. We didn’t kill her.’

  Please don’t look at me like you’re frightened, Clara. You have nothing to fear from me.

  ‘What did you do, Rachel?’ you spit. ‘What the fuck did you do?’ You keep saying it, and I tell you I did nothing. Nothing that she didn’t do herself.

  ‘Jesus, Clara, listen to me, I didn’t want to hurt her. Don’t twist things. It’s not your fault. It’s not my fault. OK? She died because she was an alcoholic. It’s written in her postmortem results, black and white.’ But my words don’t connect, they can’t reach above the screams which are cutting through me.

  ‘Get away from me,’ you shout, pushing me, ‘GET AWAY FROM ME.’ And you keep looking away from me then turning back as if you need to check your eyes aren’t deceiving you.

  I trusted you.

  And now you are turning your back on me. I can see it happening. I can read your thoughts. I know what’s turning over in your mind. You have always believed me, Clara. Even when no one else did at school, it was you, and you only who stuck by me. Your loyalty was so unquestioning. But it is ebbing away.

  Marching across the room, you get halfway to the door and then, as if struck by a thought, you swivel round and come back to me.


  ‘We need to tell the police. You have to tell them.’ You go to the phone hanging on the wall and take it from its cradle and thrust it in my hand.

  ‘You ring them, tell them, Rachel, tell them what happened.’

  I always did everything you said, Clara, unquestioning. And in return you gave me your friendship. Our unspoken pact. But it doesn’t work if one person reneges on the deal.

  ‘There is nothing to tell,’ I say.

  ‘Tell them what you just told me, what you just said. Tell them. You gave her the pills.’

  You are pulling at your hair with one hand and chewing the nails on the other. The funny, calm, confident Clara is being sucked out of you right before my eyes. You keep screaming at me to call the police, but I won’t. I can’t. I have only just found my freedom from Niamh. I am looking ahead to the future where I can be anyone I want to be. I won’t let you do anything to jeopardise it.

  ‘You need to calm down, Clara,’ I say and I’m surprised by my voice which seems like someone else’s – deep and measured and in control. I think it suits me.

  But you don’t. ‘If you won’t tell them, I will,’ you shout and try to wrestle the phone from me.

  ‘Tell them what?’ I ask you. ‘What exactly will you say?’ Something in my tone makes you stop in your tracks and you fix me with a watery stare. It gives me confidence to carry on. ‘Well?’ I ask, ‘are you going to tell them YOU gave her the sleeping pills?’

  You are shaking your head in disbelief, ‘No, no, don’t you dare, Rachel. Don’t do this. Don’t do this to me. It was you, you just told me.’ You are holding your head in your hands as if you fear it might burst open.

  ‘Did I? I said she used to do it herself, every night, she’d crush them up in her drink. But of course you weren’t to know you shouldn’t give her more.’

  You look at me like you’ve just drunk a bottle of poison and realised there’s nothing you can do to save yourself. And then you begin moaning and wailing like those people in foreign countries do on the TV news when they’ve lost a relative, unlike here where we lay cheap teddies and petrol-station flowers at makeshift shrines.

  I’m sorry Clara, I’m truly sorry. I wanted you to understand. But you don’t. You are not in control of yourself. And if you are not, then someone has to be.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I say, ‘I won’t tell anyone what you did.’

  You run crying from the room and I hear your footsteps travelling upstairs. I guess you expect me to leave but I can’t leave you in this state so I wait until it is dark and your dad returns. He asks me if I’m staying the night and I say; ‘Only if it’s not too much trouble.’

  ‘Of course not,’ he says, ‘it’s good for Clara to have you around. No one else understands.’

  Creeping into your bedroom I hear your sleep breathing so I pull some pyjamas out of your drawer, slip them on and crawl into bed beside you, just like always.

  You see I can’t let you go, Clara, not now. Not ever.

  A week later; the funeral. The rain has been coming in torrents, short sharp downpours, but the water seems to evaporate before it hits the ground and the grass is still parched and brown.

  It’s September now, but when the sun sneaks out from behind the dark clouds the heat is still ferocious. We are sitting in the crematorium, our own bodies baking and crackling.

  ‘She always said she wanted a cremation,’ Aunty Laura says, which is patently untrue; Niamh didn’t organise anything in life, so I’m certain she didn’t plan her own funeral.

  Laura had asked people not to wear black, an edict all but a few oldies adhered to. I’m wearing a bright green cotton sundress with straps that crisscross my back and brown wedge sandals. I bought them last week, sick of hiding myself away under layers of clothing. The new me. And it is strange because I think I already look different; maybe the stress of the last few weeks has helped me shed a few pounds because I can see people looking at me as if they have noticed a change too. They don’t say as much of course, telling the daughter of the dead woman she’s looking well isn’t good form. The same could not be said about you, Clara. Your bones just out from your body. The colour has been stripped from your skin. You are wearing orange again though not the same dress you wore on the day of the barbecue. On any other day I would laugh that we are one colour short of a traffic light but I know today is not the day to make such observations.

  The room is full, although not so full you can say it was standing room only. When the vicar talks about Niamh being ‘a woman of spirit’ I think of vodka and stifle a laugh.

  The windows are floor to ceiling in the crematorium and the sun is shining through, bleaching us, washing out the fuchsias and greens and blues of our dresses. It is so bright I can be excused for wearing sunglasses indoors. Every so often, like when Aunty Laura stands up and says Niamh was a ‘wonderful mother, sister and friend who fought her demons’, I take the tissue that is rolled up, damp with sweat in my palm, and dab my eyes. My eyes are dry but no one notices because I have my sunglasses for cover.

  Back at Laura’s house in Hove there is a buffet and wine and beer in the garden. You look like a ghost, Clara, like you’re not really there, and I am your shadow, following you around, making sure you eat something and drink something to stop you from wasting away. People keep swirling around us, confused by which one of us is the daughter. An older woman with liver spots on her hands and bony fingers gets it wrong and hugs and paws you and says, You poor thing, just let us know if you need anything, before she disappears to grab a prawn vol-au-vent. Your grief is so much more obvious than mine, I guess it’s an easy mistake to make.

  I only leave your side to dash to the loo and on my return, scanning the room, I find you standing next to Aunty Laura, leaning into her as if you are deep in conversation. My heart is racing because I wonder what it is that you have to say to each other, but as I approach there’s a lull in the chatter and she turns to me and says, ‘Rachel, how lucky you are to have a friend like Clara at such an awful time.’ I smile in agreement.

  Finally, mercifully, the garden empties and it is over. Laura insists on driving us home, dropping you first and then me. She’s already offered me a room at her house in case mine is too full of painful memories. But I tell her it’s OK, I want to stay there. ‘I just think the sooner I clear Niamh’s belongings out the better. Not everything,’ I say, ‘but you know … the mess, a lot of the junk.’ She nods because she understands her sister, the way she lived. She understands I don’t want to live like that.

  So I’m only half surprised when we reach my house to see her unload empty boxes from the boot of her car. ‘I’d thought I’d help, and well, there’s no time like the present, is there?’ I am touched, really, because I know it must be hard for her losing a sister, even a drunk, selfish one.

  We start in the living room, clearing the horrible ethnic throws and cigarette-burned cushions. The historical romances that fill the bookshelves are boxed for the charity shop. We open the windows to let what little breeze there is flow through. With every wipe and polish I feel like I am being released from my old life. I am meticulous, every skirting board and corner of the room is sprayed and cleaned, the carpets vacuumed twice over. At intervals I stand back to inspect my work and wipe the sweat from my forehead. Yes, the decor still leaves much to be desired but it is beginning to look like a different house, like it could be my house. And her smell, that sickly sweet aroma, is being drowned out by polish and air fresheners. I breathe in lungfuls of it.

  Upstairs Laura clears the bathroom of half-empty toothpastes and henna hair dye and gloopy nail polishes. I take the towels and throw them out, except for one which is mine and never touched Niamh’s skin. The black bin bags that line the hallways are all that is left of her, and soon they will be gone too.

  In the bedroom we are on the final straight. I haven’t ventured in here since Laura came to clean it after Niamh died. The smell of sick has faded but still it clings and I am remi
nded of the image of her lying motionless on the bed. I blink it away. Laura is humming as she removes Niamh’s clothes from the wardrobe, the outfits that I have seen her in so many times. I don’t want to look at them because if I do I know her body will fill them once more, it will come alive and shout and ridicule me. And she will be wearing that same face that twists with bitterness and disappointment.

  The bed is soon piled high with clothes and shoes and Laura starts to take them downstairs, to load them up in her car. We know we both need to carry on until it’s finished, to purge ourselves of Niamh, or at least that’s what I want. Maybe Laura just wants to finish the job because otherwise it will linger over her like a bad smell.

  The wardrobe is almost empty. Only a few boxes. One of them I recognise as the old shoebox, with the picture of ankle boots (twelve pounds ninety-nine) where Niamh kept her photos. It’s the same one from all those years before when I was doing my family tree. Inside I find the picture of me as a baby, a crop of ginger hair, and green dungarees. Within the box there is another little album with a few photographs slotted inside One shows a man who looks like he’s in his late teens, holding a baby. His hair is long and dark, his face smiling and strikingly handsome. Something within that picture nags me with its familiarity. The next photograph is of Niamh and the man together. She is beautiful, there is no denying it; maybe the beauty comes from the sparkling, smiling eyes. I can’t help wondering who stole the young Niamh and replaced her with the old bitter one. The final photograph is taken outside, on a park bench. It looks like winter. The sky bright blue, a child in a red snowsuit in the background. The baby is in it again, wearing a hat, a green coat and a toothless grin, perched on Niamh’s knee. I turn it over and see February 1979, written in faded handwriting – ten months before I was born.