by Laura Beatty
It was hard not to look pleased, in a way. Of course she would come. Of course she would. She would be honoured, Steve. Then she looked, for the first time, at the empty chair and the porcelain animals on the mantelpiece, at pig, who had survived, and the cold fire, and then she cried too. Steve put his big hand over hers on the table and stroked her wrist with his thumb and they sat in tears and in silence again.
Barry came by, popped his head round the door. He thought he’d come and see if there was anything Steve wanted. I see you’re being well looked after. He nodded at Anne.
Oh yes, Steve said, Anne’s done great. She’s done a good job alright.
Coming out then? Barry wanted to know. Come on, mate, come and have a quick one. It’ll do you good. You haven’t been out of here for three days. You’re starting to smell. You’ll grow mould if you sit here much longer. Won’t he, Anne? You coming and all? – that was to Anne.
But Anne didn’t want to go to the pub. So she looked down. No thanks Barry. You take Steve. I’ll be off home now.
♦
The funeral service was something else. The little coffin – you never saw what was inside it – so shiny and brass-handled, going into the ground. The ordinary ground, with worms and millipedes and little snails and things. How was Mother lying? Anne wondered. And what was she wearing – her nightie, or her day clothes? The lilac bonnet? Her old stick legs and her feet, that were so swollen by the gas fire, sticking out naked at the end and her scratty hair lying on the shiny floor of the coffin no doubt, spread out thin and soft underground. And Anne had a pain in her chest wanting to protect Mother from the cold of it, the grit of it. She couldn’t bear the lonely bed in the dark, the little body. She swept away the leaf mould outside her hut when she got back and looked at the ground. Then she lay with her cheek on the earth and thought about Mother alone under there and Steve alone on his bed in the bungalow and it seemed incomprehensible to her.
Then there were the words that you used for burying a person. Words of a richness, a grandeur that struck Anne with awe. She wished she could remember more. Resurrection and ashes. But she had the taste of all those consonants, the thickness, the mouthful of it, for days afterwards. She moved slowly about the wood as though she were a cupful that risked spilling. She felt a new respect. Would they all get that when they died, the walkers, the joggers, the children down the paths on bicycles? The weight of those words and the demands of the grave, so heavy to Anne – they were worn marvellously light, by the people that she stared at with new eyes, in the woodland rides or sitting, sipping coffee, at the café.
There had been quite a few at the funeral. People she didn’t know, aunts and uncles of Steve’s, family, Barry, Rosie and her mum Sandra. And even so, Steve had excused himself to take her home. Going to run Anne back, Barry. Can you see to everything? He’d said an awkward goodbye to Sandra and then kissed her on the cheek. Thanks for coming, love. And Rosie had started up.
Don’t bother Daddy now, sweetheart. That was what Sandra had said. Daddy’s tired. You can see him another day. You come home with me in Uncle Barry’s car.
They’d driven back towards the wood but when they came abreast of the track Steve said, Come for a cuppa Anne? I don’t fancy being on my own just yet.
So they’d gone back to the bungalow and sat quiet and Steve had put on the fire again and it was really nice.
Thanks for coming Anne. You’re a good girl.
No bother Steve, Anne said. I liked it.
We gave her a good send-off anyway. And Anne nodded and they sat quiet again. Later Steve rubbed his hands over his face until his eyebrows tangled and said, I’ve got to get my life together Anne. I’ve got to get sorted.
And later still, Anne looked out and saw the dark fallen and stirred herself reluctantly to go and Steve looked up at her with pleading eyes and said, Fancy a night in a bed Anne?
♦
So she slept in Steve’s bed, which smelt of Steve, so that she didn’t sleep after all but lay there in the miraculous dark, lying in the dip his body had made and looking at the nothing he must look at every night and listening to him snoring softly in Mother’s chair next door.
♦
The next morning Barry looked in on his way to work. You’re here early, he said to Anne when he saw her and he gave Steve a look like, I told you. Seven o’clock then, he said to Steve. Go on, you’ve got nothing to lose. I’ll be there and all.
Anne thought this time she’d go too. Because Steve needed her and she was looking after him now. She smiled at Barry, waiting for him to say, Coming along and all then, Anne? But Barry looked away and said, Righto, in a shifty sort of voice and pulled the door to behind him.
She worked all day, not sure whether to say anything to Steve about the pub. She went up, when Carl and Sid went off, and made Steve something to eat and tidied up. No sign of Barry yet and there wasn’t anything else to do.
Pulling the door to behind her, undecided, Anne stood for a moment on the path outside the bungalow. In the scrubby lilacs along the chain-link fence a thrush flooded the road with its song and now, and again now, a car hissed past too quick to listen. Softening sky, the pylon and the crane, distant relations, angular and hard-edged against the summer evening. A single, crossing crow, going home. Something was uneasy-making. Anne didn’t know what. But the air was sweet after the fustiness of the bungalow and gulping at it as if it was water, she thought maybe Steve didn’t want to go to the pub again. Maybe he’d rather take a walk, check the snares, he enjoyed that. They could walk the fields this side of the wood, with the birds making their settling noises and the light sinking and the air freshening with night and that would be better than a pub. Walking raises the spirits, Steve had told her that himself, and she hesitated, half turned to go inside again.
But she was shy. It was different when Steve asked her. She’d never suggested anything to him before. And what if he said no?
Down the path, instead, past the containers, their mouths open to the evening. Heading for the line of sheds. Feeling muddled. Work. Work took your mind off things and then she’d be near if Steve needed her, if he wanted her to go to the pub after all, for instance. And that must be Barry’s car pulling up now. Anne’s heart beat fast and she busied herself with her tools. She heard Barry go up the path and knock for Steve. She heard them both come out of the bungalow, talking, watched them, out of the corner of her eye, down the path towards Steve’s truck, with Buster rolling anxious and uneven behind them. She saw Barry hold his keys up and wave Steve towards his car. He had his head turned over his shoulder. He was saying, Come on, mate, we’ll take mine. That way you can have a few without worrying. Do you good, Anne heard, and then, I’m picking Suzie up at hers first. Reckon I’m in with a chance there. Anne shocked at Suzie’s name. So that was it. Barry was fine. She didn’t care about Barry. She let out a quiet breath. She didn’t have a problem with Suzie and Barry, not at all.
Slam, slam, and the engine starting up and the car headed out of the gates. Buster came limping and whining into the shed. Anne didn’t mind. No way was she going to the pub with Suzie. That was a near miss.
She got a custard cream for Buster and one for herself and she went back to work on the chest of drawers. Buster lay down on her coat and watched her out of his only eye and Anne sang a couple of songs and when she’d run out of songs she kept up a commentary on what she was doing. Give this a bit of a sand-down, she told Buster, in Steve’s language. Give the old legs a couple of screws for stability. So he would feel comforted at being left behind. You and me Buster. You and me.
Then, when she’d about done, she wiped her tools and put them all in their proper places and swept the shed of shavings. No hurry. Not that she was waiting for Steve to come back, just that she liked being there, that’s all, and if a job’s worth doing…as Steve would say. She watched the early dark settle over the dump, the swallows going on feeding, scooping low across the yard, long into the bats’ first shift. Anne sat
on her haunches in the workshop, one hand on old Buster’s head, and smelt the smells of dust and grease and metal, that were special to the shed, as they sharpened with the cool of the coming night.
She’d borrow a mug and milk one of the cows on the way home. Bring it back tomorrow. And as she readied herself to go, Barry’s car swept back into the yard and Steve got out. Buster heaved himself to his feet, tail wagging, and left Anne in the dark workshop. She could see Steve’s sadness in the way he stood, his shoulders forward and down, his tummy out. He bent to shut the passenger door. Anne could see Barry, inside the car, lean over and give Steve a wave. Cheers then. Cheers, Barry. Lights on, engine firing and a burst of music with it and Anne watched the tail lights out of the dump and turn left for town.
Steve walked back up the path to the bungalow. Anne stood at the door of the shed and watched him, her mind fizzing like the pylon.
The dark space between them seemed to her something stretched to its limit. A piece of elastic ready to snap back, its tension impossible.
Surely he would turn round?
Steve fumbled his key at the door, dipping his shoulders to go in. He was so sad.
You don’t have to be alone Steve.
For a long time Anne stood on the path. Several times she raised her hand at the door to knock. Then she didn’t.
There was always tomorrow.
♦
The walk home was long for some reason. When she got to the cows’ field she sat with her forehead against Dusky Plum’s flank. Smooth and warm and smelling of pats. It should have been a comfort.
And later, in the hut she sat in front of the stove and held her left hand in her right and stroked her wrist with her thumb and remembered, while something horrible was rising up in her mind and would not be squashed back down.
♦
How to describe the fluttery feeling that Anne had all the time now. The mixture of dawdling and rushing that went on in her mind and her body, of daze and panic. Sitting by the pond smelling herself. Did she smell bad? Washing a lot and then looking at herself in the stillness of her pool. What did she look like? It was as if she’d never thought about it before. Was a round flat face good or bad? And sometimes it would seem to her that her strings of hair were a mockery and even the animals looked better than that and she’d slap her palm down through the surface of the water to break its mirror and watch her face wobble back to flat again.
What did she want – did she even know?
Worst at night of course. In the fusty dark of the hut, with the door open now and the night glimmering at her, through the doorway, with its dark shining and its promises and all its mysteries wheedling at her outside. What if? Anne let it say to her. What if?
Steve, in his own dark, elsewhere, breathing upwards into that little room. Anne held her left hand in her right and stroked her wrist with her thumb and added one to one and made infinity. Once or twice she turned over on her side and tried to force herself to sleep. Then she sat up and said out loud, For goodness’ sake, and, What are you thinking of?
Night after night like this. Lying on her back, listening to the owls about the wood. Nightingale season too. That didn’t help. Such a dullish bird, invisible brown, hiding in the blackthorn thickets, waiting till nighttime mostly, not me – I’m nothing. Take no notice.
But what a pouring out when no one’s listening. Like taking a stopper out of a tipped bottle and all that sweetness and variety, singing out the unspeakable into the thorn’s long spurs, in the double dark, in the thicket, in the night.
♦
I’m a good girl, Anne said to herself, after a session by the pool, swinging at last, late, down the track to the dump. Steve likes me, doesn’t he? Cow parsley high in the hedges and the elder slopping its white saucers at her. All the birds were run off their feet raising families. Ski jump ski jump ski jump, a great tit was saying over and over. Anne picked a grass stalk, unthinking, as she passed. I know he likes me. He came to find me in the winter, didn’t he? He gave me his coat. He took me back after the funeral. He wanted me to stay the night, didn’t he? And then Anne gave her hands a squeeze and caught her breath. She looked upwards at a swept sky. She could stay the night again, one night.
Rosie likes me. I’m company, aren’t I?
Then with half an eye open, squinting out sideways as though she didn’t dare, Anne peeped at a future. Shut it again quick. No. That was ridiculous, that was. So why, as she reached the gate to the road, did she make an odd little unnecessary jump?
Barry was there when she got to the dump. Was she imagining it, or was Barry less friendly than he used to be? He was taking Steve out again, he rolled down the window to tell her, as he left. Anne nodded, Good. But he’d said it almost like it was a warning. Then, as if he regretted his unkindness, he said, We’ve got to get him set up again, you and I, haven’t we? He needs a wife, that’s what. Then he gave her a sort of look and a cheery wave as though he hadn’t meant anything after all, and drove away.
That was the trouble with things these days. Most of the time you were swinging around like something on the end of the crane. Up, down, side to side. You didn’t know where you were most of the time. Carl, the skinhead, came in, fag in the side of his mouth like a nest-building bird. He gave her one of his creased-up smiles. Don’t break your heart over it. Life’s too short, whoever he is. Anne stared. His trousers were right down over the bum he didn’t have, so you could see his underpants. He hitched at them with one hand, scaled-up kettle in the other, waving it to and fro at Anne. Cuppa?
Steve came in, looking distracted, gave Anne a big smile. Hey up, sleepyhead. Thought you’d never get here.
See.
He really smiles when he sees me. He must like me.
But when they had their tea Steve slipped into distraction again. They’d never said much before, Anne told herself, but then Steve had never been so absent. He’d been quiet but he’d been there. Now he was always somewhere else. She watched him with troubled eyes.
When he’d gone Anne went to swill out the cups and Carl paused in the doorway. You know Barry’s trying to get him and the wife together. For the kid. You know. Just in case you thought – only he said fought, and then nothing more.
Anne turned half round and couldn’t help a tightness in her voice.
Oh yeah. I know.
In her head – What?
When Carl had gone back to the crane, the whole of her shouting inside – What?
♦
She sat in the workshop among the ruins and toyed with her tools while her mind, like Steve’s, was elsewhere. She tried to make it into a happy story. It needn’t change anything, need it? But, then, what if it did? And it would. And why couldn’t it be – no point going on. Why, Steve? You like me, don’t you? And then Mother’s voice would come to her, Anne’s a good girl, not like that piece of work.
Piece of work, she said out loud, without thinking, her eyes out of focus, and Sid, who was passing the open door clicked his tongue and sneered away at the sky. Tramp.
♦
Until Mother died, Anne had never seen Steve look tidy.
Before Carl had said anything she’d told herself that Steve had tidied himself for the funeral, because there were quite a few people, after all, and she could understand wanting to be tidy for that. But then it got to be all the time. Of course there were still normal days, when he wore his checked workshirt and Barry wasn’t around too much, when it was quiet and just like it had always been. Steve pottering about and the deliveries coming and going, tea break in the shed, just the four of them, and eggs and frankfurters in the bungalow, Rosie from time to time. Lovely days, when she thought about them afterwards. But at the time they were spoilt for Anne by the worry. If he looked at his watch in the afternoon, her stomach would lurch. She watched him constantly out of the corner of her eye. She dreaded him going back up the path too early. She couldn’t relax. Was he going inside to change? Was he going out again?
He�
��d come out with his hair brushed down wet and his checked work shirt changed for a polo neck and a jacket. He looked so uncomfortable. There was something in his walk down to the truck that mixed apology with stupid uncertainty. It was stupid, Anne thought. He looked stupid. Like he was trying to please all the time. She couldn’t bear the humiliation of it for him. He even walked differently.
Often he’d give her a game little smile before getting into the truck. Bye Annie, he’d say. Be good. See you tomorrow then. Or sometimes he said, Off on the razzle dazzle, but he didn’t look like it. He looked like he was going for an interview more like. And Anne would watch him go and give him a little wave maybe and once, because everyone else had gone home and the dump was empty, she shouted after him, as the truck turned into the road, You can be yourself, you know. Yourself is fine. And tears ran into the corners of her mouth as he went through the gear changes oblivious. Shouting again, at the vanishing truck, You’ve left Buster behind again, in case you’ve forgotten, Steve.
♦
Then Sandra came. Anne was in the workshop, edgy like every day now, watching. It was the nearest she’d seen Steve to moving quick. He was out of the driver’s door and round to her side, helping her out, hoisting Rosie up into a side-carry, one hand on Sandra’s back all the time. Alright, love? Up the path to the bungalow. Anne couldn’t get any work done, watching for her to come out again.
She did come out, several times over the days and weeks, but always she went back in. Up and down the path, making a swishing noise when she moved. You couldn’t help thinking of things rubbing together when she walked and her clothes were fluffy and stretched over roundness. Sandra was shiny. Shiny and soft and round. Soft bottom and soft boobs like the girls in the newspapers and a soft face with round shiny eyes. Blonde hair like a kind of candyfloss, in a nice cut. She was a nice person, that’s what everyone said. The men liked her anyway. Sid didn’t seem to like anyone but he liked Sandra. Carl the skinhead liked her. Sandra brought them extra biscuits when she’d been shopping, never came past without a joke or a comment. Go blind if you sit there all day looking at them things, she’d say putting the biscuits down on some busting mound or other. Look at the size of them, ought to carry a government health warning, and she’d stick her own boobs forward for them. When she turned round and walked out, Sid’s eyes looked like they might pop out into his tea.
