Oh Dear Silvia

by Dawn French

  Cat strides to the bottom of the bed where Silvia’s feet are exposed. The feet she was mesmerized by all that time ago. The same feet that skipped across the rocks. The elegant, strong, pearly feet Cat loved. They appear entirely different now. Cat catches her breath as she realizes that the feet are no longer thrilling or exquisite, they are the leaden, lifeless feet of a dead person. They aren’t fascinatingly alabaster, they are deathly drained.

  Faded feet. Of a pallid person. A sickly weak person.

  Cat is, for the first time, repulsed by them. By her. By chronically ill Silvia. Surely, the point of Silvia is to feed Cat, in every way, to nourish and support her? A useless human fossil like this cannot do that.

  Cat’s voice is low and hissing when she speaks. She doesn’t usually display this part of herself in public. This is the hidden Cat that few have witnessed. But now Cat feels private enough in this room to open her personal curtain a tiny smidge, revealing a glimpse of the darker Cat she hosts, but rarely acknowledges. This Cat is altogether more serious and chillingly selfish and was born all those years ago in Connemara.

  She learned there that she could absent her empathetic, feeling self, so that what remained was cold and numb, impervious to pain. Perhaps not entirely impervious though, since some droplets of pain have leaked through the cracks in Cat’s façade, and diluted her resolve, to form a deep pool of shame and anger. A toxic mixture.

  ‘For feck’s sake, Silly. It will all fall apart if you … stay like this. Everyone is askin’ questions all the time. Suddenly now, questions about Philip again. After all this bloody time. I thought we were out of that. The story was so good. It fitted so well. Fitted exactly. He always said he’d go one day. His own mother had heard him say it many times, so she totally believed it. She was even suggestin’ places he might be. Calling her son “a medical hero, the answer to the needs of the many unseen and unheard”. Blah Blah. Hero?!! The man was a feckin’ monster. Brutish bastard … good thing he never did get as far as the feckin’ jungles of Peru or wherever. It wouldn’t be disease the bloody Mascho-Piro tribe would be havin’ to fend off. He’d’ve had a ball with some as-yet-uncontacted-by-civilization people. Cos he was the bloody same. Savage.

  ‘She was comfortin’ me, for Christ’s sake. “How could he? He’s so single-minded, I’m sorry it’s turned out like this Cat, he always was a selfish boy.” I hardly had to say a word. There was only her to convince, and she was doing a good job of convincing me! Once they searched the house, that was it. No further questions. Missing person. GP. Presumed abroad, or abducted, or both. Interpol alerted. Pity the abandoned missus.

  ‘Thank God there are plenty of misguided do-gooders out there wandering into dense foliage, intent on good-doing. Keeps the figures vague. Suits me. Suits us, eh, darlin’?’

  Or did, Cat thinks.

  Since Silvia came off that balcony, there have been some uncomfortable questions. Two unexplained incidents surrounding one woman. It doesn’t help that bloody Jo and Ed are pushing to know exactly what happened. She has avoided both of them thankfully. She hates them, they hate her. It was a deliciously equal stand-off until this happened. The great thing about long-held grievances is that they petrify nicely, until no move is required on either side. That’s the stage Cat was at with Silvia’s family. No contact whatsoever.

  Occasionally there might be a pinprick of communication to puncture the bubble. Like the very irritating letter from Ed early on, where he’d bleated about Silvia cutting herself off from everyone that loved her, and how none of them could understand it. He had said that no one in the family begrudged Silvia’s ‘friendship’ with Cat.

  Friendship! Ha! How quaint.

  Then again, other than to Philip on that awful day, neither Silvia nor Cat have ever defined their relationship outwardly, openly, to anyone. They have both thought it best not to, for different reasons. Silvia has always found it hard to commit to it out loud, and also neither of them have wanted the gossip which might promote further interest by the police. They have chosen instead to maintain separate flats, at Silvia’s behest, but of course, Cat doesn’t spend much time apart from Silvia. She refuses to.

  Ed wrote in his letter about how, from an enforced distance, it appeared that ‘Cat seems to be the ivy growing around you, Silv. Looks like healthy foliage from a distance, but on closer inspection, might well be choking you to death? Please talk to us.’

  How dare he? Ed was Silvia’s history. Cat is her present. Cat is all Silvia needs. They share important, private secrets that bond them inextricably. They both know what happened to Philip. Cat told Silvia all about it.

  That’s the glue that binds them.

  Cat was furious at Silvia’s response to Ed’s ‘ivy’ jibe. Instead of springing to Cat’s defence as she should surely have done, Silvia sat on the floor with her head in her hands, sobbing like a baby. Like a bloody useless vulnerable pathetic baby. After everything Cat had sacrificed for her. Cat had committed an act of such heinous magnitude for the sake of this relationship with Silvia. She had sunk lower than she ever imagined and gone to such a black, bleak place. It still haunts her in the form of jagged, fractured slices of gruesome memory in the many sleepless moments of the night. She often wakes to it. To the persistent thudding truth of it banging away in the pit of her stomach. A red mist descends around the appalling imagery that’s branded on her mind, and she packs it away somewhere very deep indeed. Usually. But when Silvia collapsed into a blubbering heap like that, Cat found it offensive. Found it spineless. Found it to be a betrayal. Cat couldn’t cope with Silvia being such a snivelling boohoo.

  So, she hit her. HARD. A thudding blow to her skull. To shock her out of it, and to show her the price of her betrayal, and to teach her a lesson, and to assert some power. All of these, but mainly the power thing. That was the first of many such times.

  Thump. Thump.

  And now, in this room, alone with her, and looking at her colourless huge ugly feet, Cat feels an overwhelming urge to hurt her again. To break her toe or punch her hard in the stomach. That would be satisfying. But she can’t. The nurses would see.

  She stands still.

  Low, under her breath, but loud enough for Silvia to hear if she is listening, Cat says, ‘Get back here to me, now. Do you hear me, you bitch? NOW! I want to love you. I need to love you. Please. Come on. Come back.’

  Twenty-Three

  Cassie

  Tuesday noon

  Brave, tenacious, ever-hopeful Cassie is giving it another try. Round three.

  When she got home last night and fed Willow, who immediately fell asleep on her lap mid-story, she realized that, however difficult it might be to come into this dreadful room, and sit looking at her mother, Silvia is truly out for the count and won’t suddenly sit up and snap at her. It seems that was what she feared the most – a swift, sharp shock with devastating recriminations. Cassie just isn’t strong enough to withstand that presently, and any remaining courage she does have needs to be channelled into Willow. After yesterday’s visit though, Cassie is reassured that there is no immediate danger around her mother.

  How ironic. Silvia is in mortal peril, clinging on to the edge of her life by her fingernails, but Cassie senses no immediate danger.

  Cassie stands up and moves closer to the bed so as to look at Silvia’s face. Everyone’s face looks a bit unfamiliar when they are lying down, she knows that, but Silvia seems to have changed a lot. She is thinner, yes, a little bit. Her skin has the sallowness of sickness about it, as if it has absorbed the shock and is still reeling. The colour of her is all wrong, just as the stillness is. Whatever else Silvia has been in her life, Cassie always remembers her mother as colourful and active. She is a force to be reckoned with. Loud and vital. Not lifeless like this pallid wodge of a person.

  Is she even a person any more? Are you a person if you have no visible signs of a personality or a spirit? Perhaps, thinks Cassie. Perhaps you are simply only that, a ‘sick person’. Defined by
illness. That would be a shame. Her mother has hardly ever been sick, in Cassie’s memory. In fact she has spurned sickness at every opportunity. She has always been rigorous about health, barely surrendering a day to feeling ill.

  Silvia was as tough with herself as she was with the kids. Told them not to be ‘sickly’. Told them it was no good to give in to a ‘poorly tummy’ or ‘poorly head’. Perhaps she will emerge from this a changed person, Cassie thinks. Perhaps that is the purpose of this awful situation. Or maybe Silvia was supposed to be rendered motionless, completely still, so that, for once, she might listen. How ironic then that Cassie cannot bring herself to speak. This is her perfect opportunity, and she doesn’t feel able to take it. Not yet anyway.

  Cassie looks at her mother’s features, reminded that she has often been told they look very alike. In the past, when she was much younger, she took it as a compliment. Firstly, her mother is quite a striking woman, albeit in a big, lumbering way. Secondly, and much more importantly for Cassie since she’s had Willow, she loves the fact that she belongs genetically to someone. Undeniably connected. That’s the part she marvels at. The actual, physical stuff.

  Look at Silvia’s hands. Beautiful hands, everyone always says, and also Cassie’s hands. Same-shaped fingers, same nails, same ivory skin, freckled and pale. Now, though, there is bruising on Silvia’s skin, where needles have been for blood tests and so on, but Cassie can still see the traces of the hands she knows so well. She has held those hands in hers. She has put her small hand in her mother’s identical but much bigger hand, to cross a road, or to grasp when getting her BCG injection. Those hands have smoothed her hair when her brother hid her favourite blankie, and she sobbed for three hours.

  Cassie even relishes that those hands have whipped her pants down and slapped her bare bottom on a park bench in front of everyone when she was particularly obnoxious. A resounding, cupped smack which left a red welt for a day. Those hands did that. They were instrumental in Cassie learning right from wrong.

  They are also the hands that waved her away dismissively four years ago, just when she wanted to hold them so badly, but Cassie tries to reject that memory. She looks at those hands lying so still by her side on the bed. They appear to be sculpted, so elegant and shapely are they. Cassie can see the dent where her mother’s wedding ring used to be. A dent that may never disappear. Silvia cannot ever deny her family totally whilst she is marked thus. The groove in her skin is the evidence and the history. Maybe Silvia feels exactly that, dented, by having a family.

  Cassie wonders if that was the problem? Did having a husband and two kids slow her up or cramp her freestyle somehow? Did she feel that she had consigned her youth to an ugly, slow death? Or did she feel that her exuberance was being extinguished? Or something like that?

  Cassie’s head hurts from mulling over the many machinations of her mother’s possible thinking. She is exhausted from years of investigating what might be going on. Just one solid reason, however upsetting or personal, would help to end the tortuous conjecture. She has even, in massively insecure moments, imagined that her mother’s rejection is due to the colour of Cassie’s hair.

  Yes, really.

  Red, like Mum. Maybe Mum doesn’t like the red, despite her endless claims that it makes her ‘individual’ and ‘exotic’. Maybe all that is a sham and Silvia caved in, somewhere along the line, under all the teasing and criticism and shamelessly cruel jibes she must have experienced along the way. Cassie is sure Silvia would have had all that, because she certainly has, and she is much younger and her generation should surely know better. They don’t. They think it’s OK to make hair a reason to dislike someone. How is that acceptable in any way? Cassie has found a way to fake joining in or even to initiate the scourge herself so as to seem at home with all the taunting. She is a modern-day Cyrano de Bergerac when it comes to insults about red hair. She knows them all. She has even made up some herself to add to her painful repertoire, a favourite being ‘I’m as red as a sore fanny’. That seems to shut folk up.

  Willow is red too. She is a small bristling burning bush with bright flamey hair. She is more like Silvia than even Cassie is. All of them are connected but Willow is denied the belonging, just as Cassie is now. Looking at Silvia so lumpen in the bed, Cassie realizes that, unless she can find a way through her hurt quickly, Willow may never meet her grandmother. Cassie knows that this is an acknowledgement to herself of just how critical the situation is.

  Silvia might just die. This could be it.

  Is she, the spurned daughter, strong enough to build a bridge, on her own, at this very moment? It could be a bridge that doesn’t go anywhere. Is it still a bridge if you start building one end but the other end doesn’t join on to anything? How unstable would that be? Cassie isn’t sure she is strong enough to withstand the familiar toppling effect of no reciprocation, but at least this time it would be for a concrete, tangible reason. Silvia is wholly incapable of participating. It’s not, for once, that she won’t. It’s that she can’t.

  Cassie leans in close to her mother’s face. She can see the open pores of the pasty skin on her nose and forehead. Cassie is thinking so loudly, she feels sure her mother can hear.

  She thinks, ‘Are you, in effect, dead? And if you were, would I miss you? Not really, I don’t think. You don’t love me, do you? No. Haven’t for years. I’ve learned how to unlove you back. First of all, you feel the cold then you actually get cold, then you freeze, that’s how it works. So there, you dead … woman.’

  Cassie’s mobile strikes up the Mission: Impossible ringtone. This means Ben’s phone is calling hers. Which means it is probably Willow, who loves to pretend to be grown-up by using her dad’s phone to call her mum.

  ‘Hello? Oh, hello darling. Yes, of course it’s Mummy. Why? Oh, it’s just because I haven’t been talking much today, so my voice is probably a bit growly, that’s all … what, sorry? Oh, well, I’m … in a room with a silly old lady who’s just being … silly. Yes, I’m coming home now sweetheart. I’ll be there in time for lunch, yes. Cupcakes for lunch? Oh, OK. Yes. We’ll make them as soon as I get there. Banana ones. With noses. In about five hundred and thirty-two counts, OK? Start now. One Mr Octopus, two Mr Octopus, three Mr Octopus …’

  And Cassie, who loves her daughter, and wants to be with her more than being anywhere else, leaves the room without a backward glance.

  Twenty-Four

  Tia

  Tuesday 2pm

  ‘… and then the big fat sisters come on and she says hi, my name is this name, and her name is that name, and we got bad nylon hoodie tops, and now we singin the big Robin Williams song about the angel with all high bits and low bits so wrong, that Simon Cowhead put his hand up beggin for stop. Why not? It his show. He can stop anytime it hurtin his earlobes. Then he says please go home and do another different job for hell’s sake please. Then the big yellow hair one punches the other no teeth one in the face, givin her all blame for it bein soundin bad. Just bang like that, right in her nose face to make all blood come out like a river. My two boys laughin and laughin ’til they nearly do a wee, fall on the carpet, then stand up and one acts like the yellow hair, and one acts like the no teeth, and they do it all again! Then, I am laughing all the time till tiny wee comes out. But husband man, he not laughin now at nothing. Nothin. He just stare at telly, and eat curry.

  ‘Two weeks ago he is laughin sometimes usually at wrong stuff, but least he is laughin a small bit. Now he gone all quiet, no speakin, no lookin in your eyes, just telly watchin and has a face what seen a sad ghost on it. My boys stayin out a lot. They don’t like him to see like that. Not like their dad. Like dad who they knew him before, long days ago, but now gone, like they dreamed him. And they stop the friends comin back home now. They stop that. Don’t like for friends to see the daddy all sad and staring.

  ‘The doctor come over for see husband again last week. His name spell J-E-S-S but my boys says it say “JIZZ”. Dr Jizz. He very kind good man, and he say hus
band need talking medicine where a head doctor talk at him and tell him how to get happy. He say two ways to do it. First is get it at hospital, wait for six months, or get it at private, do it now. I take do it now, cos husband too sad to wait. And Tia too sad to watch him. But, Mrs Shit, listen up this. It costing Tia eighty pound for each go. Tia laughin when head doctor tellin this money. What?! For talking?! Tia can do that, won’t cost even ten pound each time, but this head doctor got an exam at uni so she gets to be a lotta money.’

  Tia shuffles in her seat. She has something to say. It’s not easy.

  ‘That a lotta money. Eighty pound for one hour of talkin. But the talkin gonna maybe fix husband’s head where he sad. Human health is biological and mental, Dr Jizz says. So it worth it. But Mrs Shit, eighty pound. So. OK. Here the deal, OK? Mrs Shit is still owin Tia for this mornin workin at your house. About thirty-six pounds is stolen by you from Tia. So. With that money comin from this week, should make nearly eighty pound. So. Tia look around Mrs Shit house to see what can sell on eBay about eighty pound.

  ‘That a good way to do it because Mrs Shit get rid of “clutter” as well. Clutter evil and get dust on, so good if it goes. So. Tia find a little box under Miss Cat side of bed. Just a little nothin box of wood with metal bits on. I seen some like it in a shop called The Pier in town. Got lots of stuff, all come from near me in Jakarta. One wood box at home, maybe about fifteen pee. Here, seventy pound. Crazy. I can get you better one when I go home. Bigger. The box have all little plastic bags with flour in. Miss Cat forgot it there. Maybe long time. So Tia chuck away the flour and can sell box on eBay, waitin to see who buys. Maybe some nice bitch or good-lookin ballsack might see and like for present? Or for keep rings in? Or pins? Or keys? Would be nice. Very nice. I tell you when it sell good.