No Telling

by Adam Thorpe

  ‘I’m sure you can.’

  ‘I can’t!’ she snapped, stamping her foot, as if she’d forgotten about her special metal.

  She covered her face with her hands. Her fingers were swollen, it was true. They were quite pudgy. The rings on her fingers had been taken off. Faces were turning towards us. One patient stood with her legs apart by one of the comfy chairs, nodding and grunting as if she was on the phone to someone, staring at us the whole time. She had a perfect round face with hair like a bathing-cap, all clamped by grips. She was holding a thick book under her arm.

  ‘It’s the things they give me,’ Carole mumbled. ‘I don’t want what they give me.’

  ‘You mean the drugs?’

  ‘Not just the drugs. They put things on my head and give me electric shocks.’

  ‘I’m sure they don’t.’

  ‘They do. And they send me to sleep with an injection and then I wake up and they’re stroking me all over and talking to me like I’m a baby. Insulin. That’s the insulin treatment. It takes a long time to wake up and I don’t like them touching me all over and talking to me like I’m a baby with their faces all soft and – and tender, staring at me with stupid tender smiles like I’m baby Jesus.’

  Her body shivered. She was looking at her fingers.

  ‘I can’t do anything with these,’ she said, softly, in a sort of sing-song. ‘They’re all swollen up. I can’t do anything at all. I can’t do up my hair.’

  ‘You don’t need to do up your hair, Carole, it’s fine.’

  ‘I can’t do up my hair,’ she said again, as if beginning to panic, feeling her wavy curls.

  ‘It’s fine,’ squeaked Christophe.

  Carole stamped her foot, then bent forwards as if about to roll up into a ball again.

  ‘I’ve got to do up my hair,’ she said, muffled by her thighs.

  ‘You don’t have to—’

  She lifted her head up. Her chest was pressed against her knees and her arms were dangling down like a puppet’s. It looked really uncomfortable. Her eyes were closed and her mouth pulled right down.

  ‘I’ve got to do up my hair!’ she wailed. She looked in pain, with her mouth pulled right down like that. ‘I’ve got to do up my hair! I’ve got to – do up – my haaaaaair … !’

  It was horrible, her wailing, like a witch’s chanting in a horror film.

  ‘You don’t have to dance right now, Carole—’

  ‘You’re not dancing right now, Carole,’ echoed the woman with the hair-grips, in a deep posh voice like a man’s.

  Carole slumped back again, as if worn out, keeping her eyes closed.

  ‘Oh dear,’ I said, starting to panic myself.

  ‘I’ve got to do it up,’ she murmured. Then her eyes popped open, very wide. ‘Your head has got to be sleek,’ she said, in a funny teacher’s voice. ‘It’s got to be in harmony. It’s all got to be in harmony, your head’s got to be sleek and beautiful and in harmony. Or it’s stupid. Do we want to look stupid? Do we want everyone to laugh at us? Do we? Shouted at? Punished? Do we know the meaning of harmony?’

  She clapped her hands together, once. It made me jump.

  ‘Completely out of the question,’ she said. ‘It’s got to be tied up. Tightly and neatly and properly—’

  ‘Tightly and neatly and properly,’ echoed the woman, in a very serious voice.

  ‘And then sprayed all over with lacquer. It’s got to be stiff.’

  ‘Stiff,’ echoed the woman. ‘Stiff, of course.’

  ‘It’s got to stay in place. Not one hair out of place.’

  ‘Not one hair out of place.’

  ‘Piss off, Françoise!’

  Carole was trying to tie up her hair, now. It looked even untidier. Her nose was running and she kept giving big sniffs. Then she covered her face in her hands and cried almost silently.

  ‘C’mon, Carole.’

  She was annoying me, in fact – it was almost as if it was deliberate, as if she was play-acting in order to delay us and get us into trouble. We really had to find the main church in Châtillon, asking whoever we met. This was becoming the most important thing in my life.

  ‘I have to go, Carole. Right now. Sorry. Look, forget dancing. You don’t need to dance. There isn’t any ballet class or anything. There isn’t. It’s finished.’

  ‘You have to cook them,’ she said, suddenly. She was looking at me through her tears, her voice all phlegmy.

  ‘Cook what?’

  ‘The slippers. In the oven, at sixty, for fourteen hours.’

  ‘Cook them? I don’t think that’s a good idea.’

  ‘You have to cook them,’ repeated the woman.

  ‘It’s the only way,’ Carole said. ‘You don’t know anything. You’re a boy.’

  She really is cracked, I thought. She would cook them and maybe eat them.

  ‘Oh, right. OK.’

  I started to feel headachy.

  ‘Look, Carole, I’ll see you, then, probably at the weekend, only two or three days from now.’ I looked at Christophe and he pulled a face. ‘Only two or three days. It was good seeing you. It was nice. Thanks a lot.’ Because we’d been so far out, out into the countryside, seeing new things on our own, even my own voice sounded weird. ‘It was nice. You’re looking well. Remember, there’s no ballet class or anything. You don’t need to worry about any ballet class or exams or anything. It’s finished. See you soon, Carole.’

  Carole’s hair was everywhere, as if she’d just rubbed it with a towel. I pictured the red Simca edging out into the road in front of our house, my uncle leaning forward to gain a better view, my mother doing the same in a nervous imitation. My sister’s fingers were framing her face. They started to squash her cheeks.

  ‘You’ll feel better when we’ve gone,’ I said.

  ‘I used to be slim,’ she whispered. ‘I used to do gymnastics and dancing. I could do the splits.’

  ‘I could do the splits,’ repeated the woman, nodding seriously, her hairgrips like something electronic controlling her brain. She made me want to giggle, suddenly. Carole was staring at me.

  ‘I’ll see you again very soon,’ I said, kissing her on the cheeks.

  I made to move off, but she grabbed my arm.

  ‘It was only how I put things, Gilles. I was only joking when I said things. It was how I put things. But they believed me. You never believed me, did you?’

  ‘Not all the time.’

  She squeezed my arm quite hard. It hurt.

  ‘You’re looking at me funnily,’ she said.

  I felt sick in the stomach, as if something in it was folding inside out.

  ‘I’m not, Carole—’

  I tried to pull away, but she held me fast, her lower lip trembling. I thought she might scream, which would get me into a lot of trouble later on. As it was, the nurses might give me away to my parents anyway, when they next visited. Christophe was standing with very round shoulders and his hands in his pockets, watching us. His mouth was dropped open all the time like a long-haired hippy, except that his hair was almost as short as Twiggy’s. I looked desperately at him, but all he did was shrug.

  ‘Please let me go, Carole,’ I said. ‘Look, it’s my communion class in about five minutes.’

  ‘Five minutes?’

  ‘About.’

  She looked confused, now. It was my fault. She let go of my arm and stared all around her, as if she expected to see the priest in the ward.

  ‘Not in here,’ I said.

  ‘This window looks out on the garden,’ said the woman with the hairgrips, suddenly. ‘You can’t tell at night. It’s not terribly expedient.’

  She gave a great sigh, ending in a cough that sprayed phlegm everywhere. Tiny white spots of it landed on my sleeve and quivered. Carole was looking at the tall window, now: no one had drawn the curtains and the glass reflected the room out of blackness. I suddenly thought of our bicycles in the brambly ditch, like dead bodies.

  ‘We’ve got to go,’ I said
, not moving.

  The ward was hot and stuffy, my jersey itching under my chin. Carole started to ruffle and scratch her hair, as if she had nits. It looked even untidier, now, falling down in front of her eyes.

  ‘There,’ Carole said. ‘That means I can’t dance.’ She showed me her hair. ‘No one can make me dance, now. Clever, aren’t I?’

  ‘Yeah, although it doesn’t really matter about the hair.’

  My reflection looked stupid in the window.

  ‘I won’t dance for anyone,’ she continued, softly. ‘Even though I can, because I’ve got the build. The whole of me is turned into metal, by the way. Not any old metal, mind you. A very special metal. A very rare alloy off a meteorite. That stupid woman there, she says I mean mineral, you can’t have an alloy on a meteorite, just because she used to be a fucking headmistress she thinks she knows everything. I know it’s an alloy. I can feel it, it’s my body, I should know. No one else has your body. The stupid cow reads a book a day but it just worries her more and more. She probably pretends to read them, in fact.’

  ‘Yeah, I reckon it’s alloy,’ I said. The word itself sounded weird, though.

  ‘It was only my feet, after they cut them off. That was the golden age. Then it spread. You can’t stop it. It spreads like scarlatina. I rubbed my feet too much against the ground and the metal spread up my legs. They should have warned me.’

  ‘I’m sure it’ll go back,’ I suggested, weakly.

  ‘No, it won’t. It never does. But I can live with it. It doesn’t show, does it?’

  I shook my head. She looked at Christophe, who was frowning, his mouth still open like a spectator caught up in something exciting.

  There was a little pause. My heart was beating in my head.

  ‘Do you have a cigarette on you, by any chance?’ she asked.

  ‘No, sorry.’

  Christophe was fumbling in his bag. He pulled out a butt.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Carole, taking it from him. It fell out of her pudgy fingers, though, onto the floor.

  ‘Look – I’ll see you, Carole.’

  I kissed her again and walked away quickly, hardly knowing I was doing it. Christophe followed me. Her cheeks had felt very cool, almost dead. I glanced up with a stupid smile at the patients standing by their beds, watching us as we passed. One of them was as short as me, and almost bald. She had Chinese eyes and a tufty beard that made me think of Lenin and my sisters’ friends who liked Lenin. We reached the door and I heard, with an electric shock down my spine, my sister shouting something after us. A patient standing by the door in a furry red dressing-gown kept tutting loudly as if it was our fault. I turned round. Carole was standing in the middle of the ward, her hands stretched out in front of her.

  ‘Gilles! I can’t do anything! Gilles!’

  We almost knocked over the patient in the furry red dressing-gown as we went out into the corridor. We ran round the corner and two nurses hurried past us, probably on the way to the ward, alerted somehow. I felt sick and my legs were trembling. We kept on running, down the flights of stairs and along the corridors and out of the gate and into the street. We ran until we were surrounded by shops, some of them blazing emptily into the black night. We were both panting, completely winded. It had started drizzling, and the roads were shiny.

  I asked a couple walking past where the main church was. They took ages to say they didn’t know, looking around them as if the church might drop from the sky, discussing it, their macintoshes shining like the pavements. We ran further on, the street running along the crest of a slope. We passed a couple of cafés which were too full of leather-coated, broken-nosed men to stop at and ask. There was a bald man in half-moon glasses sweeping up outside a lit bakery with the metal shutter part way down. Just as we were coming up to ask him, he bent his head and disappeared under the shutter.

  There was a small church next door, too small to be the main one, sandwiched between the buildings and with a noticeboard that said God saved all who repented. Christophe held his side, saying he’d got a stitch. I looked around desperately, trying to recognise these wide central-looking streets. They looked strange, though, despite the fact that you could have put them in Bagneux without anyone noticing the difference. The metal shutter started going down on its own with a noise exactly like a slow train and the man appeared from under it, straightening up with a grunt.

  ‘Here, kids, hop it,’ he said.

  ‘Excuse me, monsieur, could you tell us where the main church is?’

  The shutter hit the ground with a bump, the slats clacking on each other and stopping.

  ‘The church?’

  ‘The main church.’

  ‘Depends what you mean by the main church.’

  ‘Is this the centre of Châtillon?’

  ‘The centre? What does that mean? All my life I’ve been looking for it.’ He gave a laugh. ‘Call me old-fashioned, but I don’t like the world. For me it stinks, but I get by. For you it’s roses, no?’

  He had a slight accent, perhaps Russian. He studied us over his half-moon glasses, the same type as Tante Clothilde wore. The smell of fruit and vegetables wafted over us. I thought of the rat-faced man spraying Abbattez les Epiciers on the shop window a year ago, when Carole was well.

  ‘Yeah, for you it’s roses. It used to be roses for me, too. Then the Bolsheviks came. You heard of the Bolshies?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Monsieur—’

  ‘The Bolshies shot my mummy and my daddy and my sisters and put me in a camp.’ He started sweeping again. The scrape of his broom made a hissing noise on the pavement. I needed to pee. ‘Kids, I’ve seen a guy have his eyes scooped out with a spoon. That’s life. Then we get the Nazis. Now we have the Arabs. Eh, kids? So what? Why should you be interested? Three thousand Turks built the Olympic stadium in Mexico and then they got turned into ash for the running-track. That’s the rumour. Who cares? Maybe that’s what they’ll do to the Arabs, get them to build the skyscrapers and then put them into the concrete for the parking. And people worry about their little pot of ashes. My wife’s is on top of the fridge. She died ten years ago, of the cancer. Where do you live?’

  ‘Bagneux, but we’re being picked up in Châtillon. At the main church.’

  The man gave us three saints’ names, waving his hand in different directions. As he was talking, I had a sudden horrible flash of sinful interference, the business with girls’ white bottoms and bosoms going on while all the time I was nodding and smiling.

  We thanked the man for his help and he just grunted, as if he’d come to the end of his record. He started sweeping up, the hiss of his broom following us up the street.

  There was no red Simca in front of the nearest church, but the church did look big and important in the wet darkness, despite an old mattress lying up against the little iron fence in front. We were on the crest of the hill, Paris winking its lights through the gap between two buildings opposite. I had a sudden idea.

  ‘We’ll just stick it out here,’ I said. ‘They’ve got the car. They’ll try all the churches in Châtillon, won’t they?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Christophe. ‘Probably.’

  We sheltered from the drizzle as best we could, under the lip of a door next to the church. The stone step was worn and the door old and peeling, with a big iron knocker in the shape of a rose. There were cobwebs like elastic hinges between the door and the wall. Cars passed in a hiss of wet tyres and each time my heart beat quicker. We both agreed we weren’t at all tired.

  ‘That bloke was a nutter,’ said Christophe.

  ‘Dunno.’

  ‘Your sister’s pretty bad.’

  ‘She’s getting better.’

  ‘She must have been very bad before.’

  I couldn’t cope with thinking about Carole. I shouldn’t have mentioned the ballet slippers, obviously. Ballet stirred her up, reminded her of my father’s death. I began to feel creepy about the ballet slippers, as if they could come alive and pad down to
the showroom on their own and dance on the same spot where my father’s dead face stared up. I shivered, staring into the rainy darkness, desperate for the Simca to appear.

  There were a few moments of silence. Then Christophe said, ‘It’s cos of her baby. That’s what me mum says.’

  ‘Crap. It wasn’t her baby. Shuddup.’

  He smirked. He did have big teeth, I thought, unevenly squashed into his mouth. I’d never really noticed. The streetlamp caught them and turned them yellow.

  ‘C’mon, Gilles …’

  I looked at him.

  ‘Bloody shuddup, Christophe. How can it be? She isn’t married.’

  ‘Oh yeah, I forgot. She isn’t married.’

  A dark Simca slowed in front of us on our side of the road. The drizzle became little sparks in its headlamps. I leapt out, running up to it as it continued past. My mother’s face looked just like a suffocating fish through the misted-up side window. The Simca braked and I opened the door.

  ‘This is the main church,’ I said.

  ‘No it isn’t, but it doesn’t matter. We know where you’ve been.’

  ‘What? It’s on the top of the hill.’

  ‘Get in,’ my uncle said, looking straight out through the windscreen.

  We climbed in. The car was deliciously warm, but my cold knees and damp back stayed uncomfortable. I was breathless, but not from running. They said they knew we’d been to the sanatorium because the phone had crackled in the same way it did whenever Carole phoned. Or rather, they’d had their suspicions and had phoned the sanatorium after phoning Christophe’s parents, but we’d already left.

  ‘Why did you lie?’ my mother asked.

  ‘We didn’t mean to visit,’ I said. It was very embarrassing to be told off in front of Christophe. ‘We just found ourselves in front of it.’

  ‘And to think you’re about to be received into the body of the Church.’

  ‘What’s so wrong with visiting her, anyway? It’s not a sin. We needed to find a phone.’