by Sarah May
The excitement had gone. Jerome and the others were curled over their bikes, riding with intentuntil they saw Robert standing in the middle of the track.
As soon as he saw them, he knew.
Jeromewearing Manchester United coloursdropped his bike suddenly, nearly falling off it, the back wheel spinning wildly.
His right hand, in a fingerless leather glove, clutched the handlebar still, preventing the whole bike from lying on the ground.
‘Up there, sir,’ he said to Robert, his eyes wide, breathless as the other boys skidded to a halt in the leaves behind him. The ‘sir’ was absurd, but no longer a taunt.
‘Show me,’ Robert said.
Jerome shook his head and picked up his bike.
‘I need you to show me where. You twoyou know the allotments?’
The other boys nodded.
‘I want you to go and find someonetell them what you saw. Tell them,’ he said, before breaking into a run up the track, not even checking to see whether Jessica was following him.
He ran as hard as he could, slipping over the stones in the path. Jerome, who’d ridden ahead, was parked on the brow of the hill.
Robert stopped to get his breath back then stood up and started to run again. The tree in the dell just over the brow of the hill was an oak.
A black and white converse trainer hung from a brokenoff stump and Ellie Palmer was hanging from the first branchon an orange scarf, her hands grasped round it, her legs thrashing as if she was treading water, the tree creaking in the way it did during a storm.
Robert was aware of shouting something but he didn’t know what as he ran into the dell and got hold of Ellie’s legs, yelling at her to stop kicking.
Her knees were on a level with his shoulders and he had to press her lower legs against his chest to get her to stop kicking, but he wasn’t holding enough of her for her to balancenot that she knew or her body knew that she needed to balanceso she fell forward over his head then flipped backwards.
Robert reached up as high as he could, trying to reach her thighs so that he could support as much of her body as possible.
‘A bladeI need a blade,’ he yelled into Ellie’s jeans, unable to turn round and not even knowing whether Jerome was still there or not.
What felt like ages passed before he heard the sound of footsteps slipping towards him.
‘Penknife,’ Jerome said, throwing it to him, before vomiting over the trunk of the tree and Ellie’s converse trainer.
‘I need you to climb up and cut the scarf on the branch. Just cut the scarf…’
The smell of Jerome’s vomit, rising immediately, was making him gag. And Ellie was kicking repetitively against his groin.
A deep-throated scream rang out from the brow of the hill.
Jerome, who was wiping his mouth, jumped.
‘Ignore itjust ignore it,’ Robert commanded. ‘Climb the tree and cut the rope.’
Jerome burst into tears.
‘Just climb the fucking tree,’ Robert yelled, kicking the penknife back through the dead leaves towards him.
Ellie wasn’t jerking now so much as thrashing; he needed to hold her higher, but was terrified of her falling onto the rope again.
Jerome, sobbing, slipped twice in his own vomit then got a footholdand the next minute was hauling himself up onto the branch.
Robert couldn’t see him any more.
Jessica was there and was trying to hold Ellie as well, yelling incoherently at her as though she didn’t recognise her any more; only the pain she was causing her.
The next minute Ellie, Robert and Jessica collapsed into the undergrowth, Robert rolling away onto his back so that he saw Jerome crouched along the tree branch, staring down at him, the sun bright behind him.
A couple of his tears fell onto Robert’s face.
From the brow of the hill the other two boys watched from astride their bicycles. They didn’t come down.
They turned their heads at the sound of others in the wood, and watched as a golden retriever ran past them and down into the dell.
Chapter 51
It was late afternoon. Joel was standing in the kitchen at No. 112, staring out through the window at Aggie crouched on the lawn with a magnifying glass.
He opened the back door calling out, ‘Aggie?’
‘I’m finding worms,’ she shouted back.
‘Where’s mum?’
Aggie stared at him, then put the magnifying glass to her face again, catching the sun and temporarily blinding him. ‘I’m finding worms,’ she said again, the worms gaining a definite ascendancy over the idea of a lost parent.
Joel was about to go out into the garden when he heard a sound in the house behind him. He made his way into the hallway and there was Martin Granger standing at the bottom of the stairs, his hand on the banister, looking helpless and exhausted.
‘What the fuck are you doing in my house?’
‘I’m sorry. I was upstairsMartina’s room. Where is she?’
‘She’s gone,’ Joel said.
‘Gone? Gone where?’
‘To the airport.’
‘She’s gone home?’
‘We thought it was best.’
‘Did she want to go?’
‘Martinshe’s gone.’ Joel paused. ‘So, what now?’ He was genuinely curious.
‘I don’t know,’ Martin said blankly, walking towards the front door as somebody started ringing on the bell. He automatically opened itand there was Ros.
Martin stood poised awkwardly on the doorstep, staring at his wife, his body so full of its intention to leave No. 112 that it felt as if he might lose his balance altogether and fall onto Ros.
‘Martin?’ she said. ‘I’ve been looking for you.’ She stood staring at him. Then, her voice breaking at last. ‘Evie?’
‘Evie?’ he said, wondering what on earth she was talking about.
‘Tell me it wasn’t Evie.’
‘No…’ He shook his head. ‘Noof course not.’
‘Of course not?’ She stared at him.
‘Martina. She’s gone,’ he added, aware that he was crying.
Joel turned away from Martin and Ros, framed in the doorway, and went into the garden. He made his way past Aggie, still crouched in what was left of their lawn, towards the garden officeand went inside.
There was Evie.
Sitting at her desk, doing something he hadn’t seen her do in a long time, and that was sitting up straight, shoulders still slightly hunched forward, after finishing a line of cocaine. The face looking at him was bright, shining, the breath a little quicker than usual. There was a pile of dresses on the floor behind her, cut to shreds.
‘Look at her,’ she said excited, full of joy.
Joel followed her gaze, unsure what it was that Evie was looking at. It could have been one of two thingstheir daughter, visible beyond the office window through the bamboo, or the Evie doll on the desk in front of her. Joel didn’t know.
‘OhEvie,’ he said, and started to cry.
‘No, Joel,’ she said, jumping to her feet, her voice full of a genuine concern. ‘Oh, noyou mustn’t cry. It’s fine; everything’s fine.’
He collapsed against her as she started to frantically rub at his back, staring happily out of the window at Aggie on her knees in the grass, one hand holding her hair back so it didn’t get in the way, the other holding the magnifying glass.
Inside No. 22, Margery was being slowly helped to her feet by Mr Hamilton from next door.
She stood up as straight as she could, hurting everywhere, and her first thought was that she’d been raped. She quickly checked her clothing, which was intact, and Mr Hamilton’s face, which was creased with concern, nothing more. He must have somehow managed to restrain himself and not given into his urges, whichaccording to the leaflet that local BNP canvasser Nick Land had given herwas uncontrollable in Jamaican men.
‘I called an ambulance,’ he said.
‘Why did you do that?’ Margery felt sud
denly vulnerable, helpless and close to tears.
‘Margery,’ Mr Hamilton said gently, ‘you were out cold for like ten minutes. That’s not good.’
Through the open front door she could see the ambulance parked outsidethe second ambulance on Prendergast Road that day. The gate was creaking on its hinges and a girl with bright ginger hair pulled back in a bunch was standing in the doorway. The hallway was suddenly full of people.
Gripping tightly onto Mr Hamilton’s arms, she shut her eyes and tried to wish everybody away, but then Mr Hamilton was trying to calm her down, telling her he’d come with her. Edith went in an ambulance and she was still in hospital. They took Doreen away and she never came back. And look at what happened to Tom. The point was, not to let them take you.
Margery started to struggle then suddenly felt herself flop. Somebody was talking, incoherently, and she wished they’d shut upuntil she realised, surprised, that the incoherent babble was coming from her own mouth.
The next thing she knew, she was being lifted through the air and everything was receding. Every now and then Mr Hamilton’s face came into view, replaced by the girl with ginger hair and a man with short grey hair. She tried to grab hold of Mr Hamilton’s armthere was something extremely important they weren’t aware of. It wasn’t her they should be taking: there was a man lying in the bath upstairs bleeding to death. It was him they wanted; he needed urgent medical attention because he’d tried to kill himself. They’d got the wrong person. He was in the house still. Upstairs. They had to go back inside. Why hadn’t anybody told them about Tom? If they didn’t stop and turn round right now, it would be too late…why wouldn’t anybody listen?
Chapter 52
‘Are you her father?’ the consultant said to Robert, his eyes picking out bits of the forest on his clothingthe mud on his shirt, the ripped cuffs, the drying beads of blood across the back of his hand, the buds stuck to his trouser legs; unsure, almost distrustful.
Robert let out a thin, inappropriate laugh before he could stop himself. ‘Her teacher.’
This didn’t really explain anything.
‘You have to stay,’ Jessica said to him, when the consultant had gone.
‘For a bit,’ Robert agreed.
Jessica nodded.
‘I’ll go and get us a drink,’ he said.
‘But you’ll come back?’
He gave her a brief nod, then left the room they’d wheeled Ellie into.
When he’d gone, Jessica leant forward, pulled the hair away from Ellie’s forehead and made herself look at the red, black and indigo swelling round her neck.
She wondered if she’d ever move beyond this moment, if she’d ever be able to look at her daughter and not see her jerking below the treethe orange scarf vivid against the perspective of evergreen leaves and bark. She wondered how much of Ellie and herself had really made it out of the woods. Lying her head on the pillow, she breathed in the hospital laundry and Ellie’s breathwhich smelt of painkillers and deathand thought of all the unanticipated horrors that love could give birth to.
Robert went to the vending machine in the corridor, and waited for the two cans to be dispensed. He hurt all over, particularly around his groin and abdomen where Ellie had been kicking at him. Along from the vending machine, there were two policemen in bulletproof vests posted on the door of a room. A nurse emerged. The eyes of the policeman sitting down on his chair trailed after her as she disappeared down the corridor, stared briefly at Robert as he opened his can of Coke, then sank back to the marbled lino on the floor of the corridor. The other policeman was standing by the window, in a block of sunshine, his head tilted back and his eyes shut.
Robert turned towards the corridor’s open windows, which were emitting the slow, late-afternoon sounds of the outside world. Down below there was a courtyard that had never been intended by the original architects, but that had become a courtyard by defaultthrough decades of extensive expansion. The flagstones seemed a long way down and looked as old as the chapel that lay enclosed and forgotten. The courtyard wasn’t sought out by anyone and the winterflowering cherry behind the chapel flowered for nobody but itself. Now it was in full leaf and, although all the blossom had fallen, some of it was still visible on the flagstones.
He had been here before.
The wards behind him used to be maternity wards. This was where Findlay had been born. He’d spent a lot of time by this window. Flo had been born here as well, but in the new Jubilee wing where they’d moved all the ante- and postnatal wards.
He turned round and checked through the open doors to the ward behind him, to see if he could remember which bed he’d visited Kate in after Findlay was born, but all he saw was an elderly woman, sitting in the chair by her bed, a crocheted blanket held round her shoulders, staring back at him, waiting.
He smiled at her, but she didn’t smile back.
Her world was full of too many people she didn’t recognise and, anyway, she was too busy waiting.
Robert turned away, sad. There was somebody walking down the corridor towards him.
Jessica.
She came and stood next to him, resting the side of her face against the chipped metal window frame.
He passed her the can of Coke he was holding.
‘How is she?’ he said at last.
‘Asleep. I feel like I need a sleep myselffor about a hundred years or something. I don’t understand it. At the beginning there’s so much love it’s almost inhuman.’ She picked at a loose flake of paint on the window frame. ‘You know what I’m talking aboutyou’re a parent. Their first words, first steps…the joy’s so…so immense you think it’ll carry themand yourselfthrough everything; but it doesn’t because even thenwhen you’re bent over, walking backwards across a garden lawn and their fat little vibrating legs are blundering and buckling after you, the unimaginable is already casting its shadow, mingling with your shadow and their shadow right there on the grass in high summer…right there, already.’ She turned to him suddenly. ‘She thinks she’s in love with you.’
‘Love,’ Robert said, vaguely.
Jessica nodded, frowning, then took hold of his hand. The pressure of her hand was so natural, so uncalculatedit made him feel as if he was five years old again.
They stood holding hands, staring down into the courtyard.
After a while, he turned away from her towards the ward where the old woman was sitting. ‘She’s gone,’ he said, bewildered. ‘There was a woman sitting there waiting and now she’s gone.’
Further down the corridor, the lift doors chimed open and an orderly pushed a bed out, swinging it left and up the corridor towards them and Robert recognised his mother lying on the bedand Mr Hamilton walking beside her.
Margery was a long way away in a tunnel full of countless pairs of eyes all staring at her, aware of just how strong her desire for life and everything in it was. Along with most of her now-elderly peers, she knew that the real cruelty of old age was that enlightenment comes too late. In the face of mortalitywhen the fact that you only live once becomes inescapableyou’re finally able to see, not right from wrong, but what matters from what doesn’t. This impotent wisdom is what keeps you company throughout your final dayswhen there are more hours in a single day than any sane person would know what to do with.
There was only one pair of eyes left in the tunnel now and they were staring at her, not unkindly.
She recognised those eyes.
They were Robert’s eyes, she thought to herself, unsurprised.
Here was Roberthe’d listen. She had something important to tell him, but couldn’t think what it was.
She remembered walking out with her mother once when she was very small. They’d gone out to buy wool and she had been wearing a new pair of shoes, which were red with a strap acrossand they’d stopped to talk to an old man her mother knew, but she was too busy staring at her new shoes to really follow their conversation. Then she’d looked up, instinctively, to find the old man staring down at
her with large wet eyes and her mother had jerked sharply on her arm to say thank you for the warm sixpence the man was pressing into her tiny hands and even though he was giving her something it felt like he wanted something from her and the next minute he’d shaken his head and said, ‘I’d do it all again, I really would,’ and a strange sigh had escaped her mother’s lungs.
Why was it that she could barely remember her mother’s face when the old man’s was clear as day?
Was this what she’d meant to tell Robert?
No. She remembered now. She’d meant to tell him that it had been a day like todaythe day he was conceived…she’d had the afternoon off from the electronics factory she worked in and had made up a picnic in brown paper bags for Tom and her.
They’d gone down to the river near the old bridge.
She could still remember how the picnic of sandwiches, boiled eggs and oranges looked on the grass; the broken shell from the eggs and the peel from the oranges on the brown paper. They’d sat watching the river in silence, content, holding hands. She was nearly thirty; he was nearly fifty. They’d known each other for over twenty years, and Tom was the reason she’d never left home.
She’d had boyfriends, but nothing serious. She put up with her mother and everybody else in the house treating her like an unmarried drudge, and she put up with it because of Tom. There were things nobody but she knew about Tom and, despite what they said about her afterwards, Tom and her only ever did it oncethat afternoon after their picnic down near the old bridge. Because, as Tom so lucidly put it, it had been far too long coming.
Only he felt so bad about it afterwards, when they got home, that he ran himself a bath, got into it and opened up a couple of his arteries. The waste of it. So much waste…it got you mad thinking about it, and what might have been. Laughter might be for other people, but she’d known love…love had been hers.
That’s what she wanted to tell Robert…because there were things children had a right to know.
SIX MONTHS LATER…
