With Your Crooked Heart

by Helen Dunmore

  Paul remembers another place, and another time. After their father died, when Mum sat in the kitchen of the flat in Grays. Her hands flexed and unflexed on the white embroidered cloths she laundered each day, starched, ironed, and placed back on the table. She didn’t seem to notice her own fingers plucking the lace edge on the cloths. The skin on her knuckles was dry and swollen, like the flesh around her eyes. She had wept the colour out of her face, and the clarity of her eyes was dull with a scurf of salt.

  Paul was off making money. He had his flat in Notting Hill, and his car. He had tailors calling him sir. The city was his now, and he was part of it. No more tubes and buses, no more waiting in queues, no more watching other people spend money and get respect. No more going home at night to the flat in Grays. He came on Sunday afternoons, when he could, but he hated it. Most of all he hated his mother’s grief, the noise of which seemed to fill the rooms of the flat, even when she was most silent. Her hair lay flat and dank against her scalp. He gave her the money but she would not go out and get it done. Every time he came she wore the same dark skirt, pale blouse, dark, loose cardigan. Being his mother, she washed them fanatically often, so the wool of the cardigan was pilled and matted. He could not bear the way she would wear tights when she went out of the house, and yet sit indoors, in front of him, with her legs bare and her exposed veins twisting down the inside of her knees. And she would sigh huge unconscious sighs, and then swallow them.

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Mum, have the operation. You’ve only got to ask. You can get it done private without waiting.’

  And the kitchen was dirty. Not so anyone else would notice, but by his mother’s standards it was dirty. There was a layer of dusty grease on the hob, a jam-jar of sodden tea-bags leaked on to the worktop, and the rubbish bin overflowed with take-away packaging. And there was his mother, with her razor eye for bad housekeeping, sitting in the middle of it.

  He took the rubbish out. He brought his mother the cleanest banknotes and she accepted them without question. She was tired, and she didn’t want to know. She rose, and put the notes behind the clock. She still talked about going up west, and he thought, She means, where I live. But he knew she’d never come.

  One night he stayed. He can’t remember why now; perhaps she asked him. More likely he was just tired. He slept in the room he used to share with Johnnie, which was Johnnie’s now. It was the noise that woke him. Johnnie’s soft feet on the carpet, to and fro. Then a rubbing sound that Paul couldn’t identify.

  ‘Johnnie? What you doing?’

  Silence.

  ‘Johnnie?’ Paul sat up and snapped on the bedside lamp. His brother stood, staring, caught, his thin body shielding itself. He was in his underpants. The sheets were pulled off the bed.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Then Paul saw the dark stain on the mattress. ‘Here, you’ll catch cold. Get in my bed,’ he said.

  ‘I’m all right.’ Johnnie defied him, as if it was Paul’s fault, as if it would all have been all right if Paul hadn’t woken.

  ‘Don’t be stupid. Get in.’

  Paul pulled back his own bedcovers. They didn’t have duvets then. His mum had these harsh, thick blankets she’d used since she was married. They pressed you down into sleep like heavy hands. Paul got out of the bed and gave Johnnie a gentle shove towards it. ‘Go on. I’ll get this sorted.’

  It was then that he saw his brother was shaking. Johnnie was skinny, with the kind of skinniness boys have before their hormones pack muscle on to them, and his shoulder-blades stood out like wings.

  ‘Have you had a wash?’

  Johnnie nodded.

  ‘All right. You go on, get in bed, go to sleep. I’ll sort this out with Mum.’

  ‘Don’t tell her.’ It jumped out of his mouth.

  ‘What’s it matter? All she’s got to do is put the sheets in the washing-machine. It won’t kill her.’ He’d bought the washing-machine, and a dryer too, because he couldn’t bear the way his mother still laboriously pinned her underwear on to wire racks, out on the balcony, for the wind to rip at them and belly out her shabby bras and knickers and nightdresses.

  Paul felt anger like a taste in his mouth at the thought of his mother sitting there in front of her snow-white table-cloth, lost, crisping the edges of the lace between her fingers, doing nothing, knowing nothing about Johnnie’s sheets. She looked as if she was waiting for a photographer to come along. Like a refugee whose family had all been killed. As if she hadn’t got anyone left, when there was Johnnie sleeping in the bedroom.

  ‘Don’t.’

  ‘OK. Listen. I’ll go and put these in the machine now. I’ll tell her I spilled a cup of coffee over the bed if that makes you happy.’

  Johnnie nodded. Slowly, he sank on to Paul’s bed, let himself fall back against the pillows. Paul drew the blankets up under his brother’s chin. ‘There.’ He touched Johnnie’s cheek, and Johnnie turned, as if by instinct, towards the touch.

  ‘All right?’ said Paul.

  ‘Yeah.’

  Johnnie’s face was tired and hollow in the sideways light flung by the lamp. There were stains under his eyes. Must have been getting up like this night after night. And she hadn’t noticed. Or she’d pretended not to notice, so she wouldn’t have to do anything about it. Her at the table, her friends coming in with their patter and their headscarves. The priest taking his tea and stirring it till the sugar gritted on the bottom of the cup, while he said that it was all for the best, after so much suffering. The mass cards his mother kept on the sideboard and would not take down. She would read them aloud to herself at night, her voice low, but not low enough. As if Johnnie wasn’t there too, in the bedroom, just through the wall. She ought to know you could hear everything through those walls.

  ‘Fuck it,’ Paul said.

  ‘What?’ Johnnie’s eyes snapped open.

  ‘Nothing. Go to sleep.’ Paul sat down on the side of the bed. In a minute he’d sort those sheets out.

  ‘Listen, Johnnie. Tomorrow we’re going to go out and I’ll get you a load of new sheets. Brand new. We’ll put them in here, in the cupboard. Mum doesn’t have to know. Any problems, you just put a new pair of sheets on. And when you want a new mattress, you give me a bell, all right?’

  ‘All right.’ Johnnie’s eyes were shut, sealed tight. A smile fleeted across his face, and he looked like a child. Christ, thought Paul, that’s what he is, he’s a child.

  ‘Wha’ bout the sheets?’ Johnnie muttered out of his cave of sleep. ‘Wha’ll I do with —’

  ‘Put them out for the bin-men. It’s your business, no one else’s. You run out of sheets, I’ll buy you more. All you got to do is tell me.’

  The smile again, stronger, firmer. Then it vanished, like water poured on hungry soil. Johnnie slept.

  Paul sat still. He could hear the traffic growling far away, on the flyover. It was late, but he no longer felt like sleeping. In a minute he’d get up, turn Johnnie’s mattress, re-make his brother’s bed, and take the sheets to the kitchen. He could turn the washing-machine on, then the dryer, and have the sheets done by morning. These machines were almost soundless.

  Mum hadn’t believed the clothes would come out clean. She thought if a washing-machine didn’t slosh and rumble for forty minutes, then spin like a jet engine taking off, it wasn’t doing a proper wash. Paul didn’t tell her that it cost twice what she’d have paid for the machines she peered at in Floyds on the High Street. That’s what money does. It buys you easiness. It doesn’t sound much, being able to carry on talking when your washing-machine’s on spin. Just a little thing, like having a car that doesn’t break down, like having the heating on with a window open because it’s nice to be warm and still have fresh air. What they don’t tell you is how all those little things add up, and what they add up to are the smooth, easy faces of people who’ve always had money.

  When Paul bought a cashmere sweater, the salesman said, wrapping it in tissue-paper, ‘There you are, Sir. The first of many.’ He knew it w
as the first, because of the questions Paul asked about taking care of cashmere. Then he went on, ‘In our experience, once a customer has got used to cashmere, he doesn’t go back to wool.’ Paul’d looked at the man sharply, quick for the covert mockery that might be there. But there was nothing: the man was serious.

  Paul could buy sheets for Johnnie, throw them away and never notice it. He had a gift. He could make people do things. He could think ahead, he could organize. He could work like a snake-charmer on the greed of others. Money could not help finding him. He knew that: he was at his high-water mark. More importantly than that, he knew something none of the others knew: that the tide which was flowing with him would suck him back down if he let it. Not many people seemed to understand that. They got grandiose. They believed life had let them into a secret. No one else seemed to hear the hard, clear voices Paul heard, that told him he’d got to hold on to his money, plough it back, look for the next thing which no one else had thought of yet. Money makes money. You don’t have to be stupid, you don’t have to be greedy, you just have to want things and not be distracted. All you have to do is to let money go to its work, flowing as fast as it can away from the filthy hole in the ground from which it came, flowing fast and cleaning itself as it goes. The money-for-nothing miracles of crime were nothing compared to the miracles of capital, which Paul came to understand before he was twenty-five. He was walking on water.

  Paul never felt more sure of himself than he did that night, as he watched his brother’s face relax into deeper and deeper unconsciousness. He felt as if he had hunted down that peace for Johnnie. A passion of protectiveness stirred in him, raw and sweet. He promised himself again, as if Johnnie was newborn, that nothing would ever hurt Johnnie any more, after the long labour of coming to this point, here, now. No one was ever going to harm him while Paul was there to prevent it.

  But there was nothing for Johnnie here. She didn’t even cook for him any more. Johnnie knew where her purse was, and she let him rifle it for money to buy doner, pizza, burgers, fish-and-chips. It was a miracle if she bestirred herself to buy a bag of oranges. ‘Vitamins, Johnnie. They’re good for you.’ But Johnnie wouldn’t eat the oranges, and they shrivelled in the dish.

  The only time she went out was to daily mass. Paul felt a spasm of hatred against the church as he thought of his mother dipping her fingers in the holy water, crossing herself, leaving a spatter on her cardigan. The smell of stone and stale candles made him gag. The women in their cardigans with their hands cupped like holy hamsters to receive communion: how he hated them, too. They clacked round his mother with their sympathy and they frowned at Johnnie when he banged into the flat with the greasy parcel that was his dinner. And Johnnie was taking money from her, too. She’d never let Paul near her purse, she used to have the sense to know that was the first step. If you want money, you wait till I fetch my purse. No going down in my bag. She had standards for everything then.

  Only with Paul could Johnnie be safe. He let his mind play on the thought of all that was to come, and the way he would lift Johnnie out of this room, take him beyond the memory of their father’s breathing that still struggled through these thin walls. Their grandfather had lived to draw his pension for three years; their father had died twenty years off retirement age. The world had never opened its legs for them, but for Johnnie it would be different. From time to time Paul reached out his hand, and stroked his brother’s hair.

  Fourteen

  In the morning the stars are wiped out by the sun. Sonia sits at the long, freshly polished table, her back to the brilliance of the valley, the black trees, the sharp, lemony daffodils. She chooses to sit with her back to the sun, in this room where the crush of spring light is like narcissus petals packed into papery buds. Light searches the table, the flagged floor, the heavy oak settle. Sunshine makes a nebula around Sonia’s pale, smooth head. She is writing a list in her firm handwriting, pausing every so often to summon up in her mind the world she’s pulling into shape.

  Johnnie sits opposite her, a coffee cup propped in his hands, his eyes above it clear and wide. His hair is damp, his face glows after cold water. Sonia takes in the sight of him, and is unimpressed. So few women are unimpressed by Johnnie that he has not yet developed a technique to deal with Sonia. Sonia wears a narrow tunic, the tint of rotting blackberries, over a narrower skirt with a side-split that rises to six inches above her knees. She will not wear anything unless it permits her a cat-like fluidity of movement. Sonia has perfect knees which she shows just often enough to remind you that they’re there.

  ‘Where’s Anna?’

  ‘Outside. Gone to feed the cats.’

  ‘Cats? You got cats? That doesn’t sound like Paul.’

  Sonia shrugs. ‘There’s rats all over the place. You’ve got to keep them down. The cats aren’t pets, they live in the barn.’

  ‘Cats,’ says Johnnie. His eyes pretend amusement, but Sonia can see he doesn’t like the change. ‘How about a cocker spaniel, Sonia?’

  ‘Anna’d like a dog,’ allows Sonia. She takes out the first cigarette of the day, taps it on the table but doesn’t light it.

  ‘But she won’t be getting one,’ says Johnnie.

  He’s gone too far. Sonia’s face smooths over as she removes herself behind the regularity of her features. She glances sideways, over the landscape which flashes with spring light.

  ‘Don’t go putting ideas into Anna’s head, Johnnie,’ she says. ‘She’s all right the way she is.’

  ‘With you looking out for her,’ says Johnnie. The offensiveness of his words doesn’t seem to affect Sonia at all. She smiles, as if they know each other too well for her to bother to reply, then she lights her cigarette and draws in the first, tarry mouthful of smoke. At the prickle of it in her throat her eyes close with pleasure. They sit in silence, Sonia smoking, Johnnie staring into his coffee cup.

  ‘Nice coffee, Sonia,’ he says at last. ‘I thought all you’d get up here was Nescaff.’

  ‘It’s not Nova Scotia, Johnnie,’ says Sonia tartly. Johnnie’s face shimmers with amusement as he picks up her annoyance at being parked up here, two hundred miles from London, to look after Anna.

  ‘Bit quiet for you, though, isn’t it?’

  ‘I’m taking riding lessons,’ says Sonia.

  He bets she knows she’ll look good in the clothes. Women like Sonia, with small high breasts that look hard even though they’ve got to be soft, small waists, tough little blonde faces, they look good in those dark tight clothes. Also, up on a horse, Sonia will be looking down on everybody, which is the way she thinks things ought to be. What a cow. All the same, you’ve got to give it to her, Sonia doesn’t moan. She looks around, works things out, gets the best out of them. Johnnie can respect that. She’ll have Paul paying for a horse before you can say knife.

  ‘What about Louise? She been up here yet?’

  ‘She won’t be coming up here.’

  ‘The kid ought to see her own mother.’

  ‘That depends on what kind of mother she is, doesn’t it?’

  Johnnie stares at her, foxed. The words seem to have too much echo. Who the fuck knows what kind of mother anyone is.

  ‘She’s her mother, Sonia.’

  ‘Like your mum was your mum.’

  Johnnie’s silenced. He’d like to tell her to fuck off, she knows nothing, who does she think she is, talking about his mum that way? But he can’t. Sonia’s earned her right to speak. Every month Sonia takes a train to London, and then another train to the residential home outside Horsham. Sonia taxis out into the brilliantly green Sussex countryside, where the best crop now is old dears whose families have got enough money to keep them in comfort. The residential home might as well be on the moon for all his mother knows. When she gets up from her chair in the TV lounge, she still walks the invisible pathways of the flat in Grays. Stove to table, table to cupboard, cupboard to sink. Her hands carry burdens no one else can see. She wipes, she lifts, she takes hot dishes from the ove
n. Then it all vanishes, and she stands bewildered between one chair and the next, her incontinence pads sagging between her thighs.

  Sonia visits. She takes grapes and boxes of Milk Tray which his mother devours. Sonia doesn’t bring flowers any more, because the smell of them upsets Mum. Breathe in the perfume of a narcissus and she’ll be restless for hours, back and forth with the invisible housework. Sometimes she’s not right for days. Paul and Johnnie wonder what Sonia finds to say to their mother, but they don’t ask and Sonia says nothing. Again, you’ve got to give it to Sonia. She goes on their behalf, and she absolves them all. Lots of women wouldn’t bother, especially when all his mum seems to want to know is when Louise is coming. She always liked Louise.

  ‘Anna’s all right,’ says Sonia now, quietly but emphatically.

  ‘She been having riding lessons as well?’ asks Johnnie, to bring some lightness into the conversation. Ignoring him, Sonia starts to gather the cups and plates. She likes everything neat, Sonia does. The debris of last night was whisked away before Johnnie came down. The row of Bosch kitchen equipment starts to purr as soon as Sonia gets up, dealing with dirty washing, dirty dishes, wet clothes. Just because you live in the country, Sonia says, there’s no need to carry on as if you’ve dropped out of civilization.

  She holds the door open with her hip, balancing the pile of china. It’s funny how he doesn’t find Sonia attractive at all, but he can’t help thinking how well every part of her body works. All her movements follow on from one another. She transfers the weight of the door to her elbow, slides the load of china around the door, then passes through the doorway without so much as a clink. It’s all right for Sonia. She never looks caught out, at a loss, lost, trapped, frightened. He swerves his thoughts away. He hasn’t come here to think about stuff like that. He turns towards the window where even the dazzle of morning sun can’t show up a smear on Sonia’s glass. The door opens again, behind him. Sonia, back again.