Needlemouse

by Jane O'Connor

  ‘Having sex with you ruined my entire life!’ I said, screaming this last bit, the awful truth of it finally verbalised. Then I saw the petrified look on his face, which I didn’t comprehend at first – until I followed his gaze over my shoulder and into the sitting room where two little old ladies in saris were sitting on the sofa, teacups in hand, staring at me open-mouthed and the only sound was the grandfather clock gently ticking in the hall behind me. I recognised Kamal’s aunties straight away and remembered, too late, that Millie had told me they were coming to stay.

  Millie and Crystal chose that terrible moment to walk in the front door, Millie chuckling about a cat they had seen, madly chasing its tail in the front garden.

  ‘Hello, darling,’ she said to me. ‘Why are you all standing in the hall?’

  She put down her bags, hung up her coat and kissed Kamal on the cheek. Then she sensed it, the tension in the air, the ugliness of a situation she couldn’t grasp. She looked rapidly from me to Kamal with her eyes narrowed.

  ‘What’s happened?’ she asked, sharply.

  I tried to get in first with my explanation, tried so hard to steer Millie away from those blasted, interfering old women who were all over her in a flash, telling her what they had heard, bits of it, disjointed; they clearly hadn’t understood it all, but the essence of it was there: that Kamal and I had betrayed her, that we had had sex and we had been deceiving her all these years.

  ‘Is it true? Is it true?’ They kept repeating the question to me, to Kamal, to Millie. Crystal had retreated to the stairs and was sitting there, clinging to the banisters like a frightened child, her round brown eyes trying to take in what was happening to her family.

  ‘You see? You see what you have done, you stupid woman?’ I remember Kamal snarling at me in the middle of it all. Then he began to cry, he put his head in his hands and sat next to Crystal on the stairs and wept theatrically. She pulled away from him and ran up to her room and the aunties rushed up after her, calling to her and offering comfort. Then it was just me and Millie facing each other in the hall with that damn clock still ticking away behind me, interspersed with Kamal’s wretched sobs. She stared at me as if she had never seen me before in her life. Then she turned and threw open the front door.

  ‘Get out of my house,’ she said, with her voice trembling.

  ‘Millie, please let me talk to you,’ I begged her, but she shook her head and looked at the floor until I finally made my way past her onto the step and then she closed the door in my face as I tried to say sorry. I stood there for a while trying to hear what was going on inside. I could hear muffled voices and crying and shouting and I felt very alone. I don’t know what to do any more, I don’t know what I have left to live for.

  Winter

  * * *

  ‘Hibernation’ is a Latin term which literally means ‘to pass the winter’. Hedgehogs are not really asleep during this period, but enter a state of inert torpor in a hidden nest of leaves and grass. If the hedgehog has not had enough sustenance over the preceding months, or if it is woken too early, it may die. The vast majority of hedgehogs hibernate alone, although occasionally a male and female may share a hibernating spot.

  There are many things that can harm a hedgehog: slug pellets, garden netting, falling into ponds, cars, dogs and lawnmowers, to name but a few. Even when they are hibernating they are not always safe – we should always check bonfires before we light them and compost heaps before we fork them in case a prickly friend is holed up in there and needs rescuing.

  Jonas Entwistle, The Hedgehog Year

  Friday 11 December

  I somehow managed to get back to my flat after the showdown at Millie and Kamal’s, although I have no memory of that journey. I must have walked up to Church Road and waited for the bus and got on and swiped my Oyster card, and I must have sat down and looked out of the window so I would know when to ring the bell. I must have alighted and made my way up Princes Avenue and into Tennison Road, but cannot recall any of it. I must have opened the main door with the key, climbed the stairs to the first floor, opened the door of my flat and come in. I must have taken off my coat and put down my bag, walked into my room and written in my journal before lying down in bed and pulling the covers over me. But all I know is being here, in my flat, safe and alone, away from the shouting and the shame and the sickening mess that is my life.

  I stand at my window and watch people coming and going from work, or school or the shops, their lives punctuated by normal activities and rhythms, working their way through their days as if an invisible hand were guiding and constraining them. I watch and I wonder like a stranger in a strange land. What stops that man from number 75 from packing a bag, throwing it into his car and driving off into the unknown, rather than rushing up the road to the station every day, toast in hand? Why does that frail old lady pull her trolley down to the minimart at 3.30 every afternoon when she knows the pavement will be blocked by hordes of belligerent teenagers who frighten her and get in her way? Why does the brassy woman who runs the hairdresser’s opposite come out every hour, on the hour, for a cigarette that she clearly doesn’t enjoy? I can’t make sense of any of it any more. I’ve lost the knack of life, that’s the problem. It must be like falling off a horse. They say if you don’t get on again straight away you lose your nerve and you’ll never be able to pluck up the courage to ride again. But you can live without riding. How can you live without actually living?

  The television is great company to me. I can structure my waking hours around its cheerful daytime schedule. Property programmes are my favourite. I get swept up in whether this retired couple will buy the thatched cottage or the barn conversion or if that man and his son really will move to Spain to run a hotel, and sometimes I even forget myself for minutes at a time. Then I remember where I am and that I have no stunning sea view, no partner to plan the future with, no children or grandchildren to come and stay, and no exciting times ahead. But it can help, seeing other people enjoy themselves. I can’t be bothered to feel jealous any more, there’s no energy left behind it. In fact, I think that if someone knocked on the door and presented me with everything I had ever wanted – husband, children, family, home – I would simply shake my head and close the door, saying, ‘Thank you, but it’s all too late now. It doesn’t matter any more. I can’t accept that now. It was never for me.’

  I wish I had known that years ago – it would have saved so much wasted effort and heartache. I could have spent the time looking for something else, or building a different life.

  ‘Find a target before you run out of ammunition,’ Father used to say to us when we were teenagers. How right he was, but how hard it is to understand that when you are young and full of energy and you believe that the world is a generous place that will give you whatever you want.

  I saw Imogen Scott’s daughters Iona and Skye on a TV show this morning. They were introduced by one of the gushing hosts as ‘earth mothers’ (is there any other kind? I have never met a mother from another planet), although their exquisite boho clothes and intricately plaited hair suggest rather more effort and money is put into their appearance than they would like viewers to think. They did a little cooking demonstration of one of the organic baby food recipes from their new book, Earth Babies. It seemed to consist of steaming courgettes and peas and mulching them up with a hand blender, but the hosts reacted as if they had just split the atom on live television. The twins kept emphasising how it was ‘so easy’.

  ‘It’s so easy to buy fresh vegetables from your local farmers’ market,’ Iona explained.

  Skye, nodding enthusiastically, picked up the baton here. ‘And so easy to steam and blend the veggies,’ she said, beaming as she poked the courgettes with a fork.

  Camera on Iona again, head tilted to one side, listening carefully like this was the first time she had ever considered the benefits of cooking a vegetable. She paused for effect and then added smugly, ‘I actually grow my own veggies to cook for my children’, a
s if the mothers watching had not already been made to feel guilty enough for failing to buy organic produce from a farmers’ market and using it to make their own baby food.

  ‘Me too,’ trilled Skye. ‘It’s so easy and such a fun activity to do with the children. There is a chapter in our book about how to get started. It’s really so easy.’

  They had a baby with them, whose it was I don’t know, but he was sitting docilely in a high chair and obediently ate whatever splodge was being spooned into his mouth. I turned the television off with the remote and sat watching the blank screen for several minutes, listening to myself breathe. When I turned it on again it was competition time and Iona and Skye had gone. Back to their perfect lives with their earth babies and their vegetables and their long floral dresses and their million-pound publishing deal. So easy.

  Monday 21 December

  I have got into the habit of rising very early. I wake around 4 a.m. and by six I can’t lie there any longer. When I hear the first cars going past outside I am up in the kitchen, going through the comforting ritual of making tea. In those moments, I can almost convince myself that my life is as any other, that I have a day ahead, that I have people and plans and a routine and a reason and small pleasures to enjoy. I have none of these things. I just have the tea and the noise of the traffic and that has to be enough.

  I try to shower and dress before the sinking feeling really takes hold. Mostly it is a dull ache, a nothingy sort of feeling that lets me drift through time and space unnoticed by anyone else, unnoticed by me, even. I try hard not to pay myself too much attention. I am utterly sick of myself and what I have become. In the mornings, I read through some of Prof’s articles or perhaps a chapter or two of one of his books, taking comfort in hearing his voice coming clear and true through the words. I make myself eat some soup and perhaps a sandwich, and then usually find I am able to fall asleep on the sofa until teatime. The evenings stretch out endlessly. I walk a lot, round the streets. It feels a bit odd without a dog to legitimise it, but I like to look in people’s windows and catch glimpses of their normality, their cosy living rooms bedecked with Christmas decorations, and their busy kitchens. I like to see what they are watching on television and sometimes I rush home and find the same programme so I can sit and watch it too and feel connected to someone, somewhere else, who I know is sharing the same experience. On Thursday evening, I walked all the way to Dulwich and stood outside Prof’s house for an hour. All the lights were out and there was clearly no one in. In retrospect, I am thankful for that. I don’t know what I, or he, would have done if he had seen me, and I’m not sure I could have stopped myself ringing the bell if there had been signs of occupation.

  Walking back, I started to feel scared. I was sure I was being followed by a man in a hooded sweatshirt. Every time I crossed the road he crossed too and when I stopped to pretend to do up my shoelace he also stopped not ten feet behind me. After a while I could bear the tension no more and I turned to face him, twisting my face into a snarl that I hoped would frighten him off. He didn’t even acknowledge me, just walked straight past, head down, texting as he went. I don’t know what possessed me but I ran after him tugging at his sweatshirt, asking him, imploring him, ‘Hey, were you following me?’ He shook me off his arm with a face full of revulsion, shouting, ‘Get off me, crazy lady’ and carried on walking and texting as if nothing had happened.

  When I got home, I sat very still on the sofa in the dark, listening to the noises from the other flats, the other lives going on above and below and to the left and right of me. I heard old Mr Goldberg rustling in his wardrobe on the other side of my living room wall, the children upstairs thundering around, defiant of their mother’s shouts, the insistent drum and bass music drifting up from downstairs. I wondered, if I sat there for long enough, perhaps I would simply cease to exist … and that was a comforting thought in some ways. Eventually, I picked up Prof’s book on the educational system in post-war Britain and read myself to sleep.

  Sunday 3 January

  Late December and early January in our family is usually a time filled with celebrations, what with Christmas and New Year and Crystal’s birthday on New Year’s Eve. Millie always goes overboard with presents and dinners and cakes and parties and people and I hide in the background, waiting for it to be over. I suppose that this year my wish has come true, as I have not been included in anything and have spent the festive season completely alone in my flat. I imagined them all eating the turkey dinner cooked by Kamal, pulling crackers, drinking snowballs and I wondered if they cared, or indeed even noticed, that I wasn’t there.

  I received two Christmas cards, both on the day before Christmas Eve. One was from Mother, a flimsy multipack type, sporting an insipid nativity scene with a book token inside. It took me a moment to work out why she had written I hope you enjoy your holiday in it, and then I realised that Millie must have told her that to explain my absence at the usual family gatherings this time of year. The other was from Jonas and family, with a picture of a hedgehog wearing a Santa hat on the front. Hope all is well, Sylvia, and that we see you at the sanctuary again soon, he had put in trembly writing. I stared at the card for a long time thinking odd thoughts about whether the hedgehog was really wearing the hat or if it was photoshopped on and wondering about what might have happened to the hog after the picture was taken and decided it was probably time to go for a walk. As I was putting my coat on I considered going to Hartland Road and seeing Jonas and Igor and the hedgehogs and my heart rose briefly at the thought. But I just couldn’t bring myself to do a happy thing or go somewhere I was needed. I feel as if I have a dark blanket wrapped around my head that makes it impossible for me to connect with anyone or anything outside my flat or my miserable thoughts about Prof and Millie.

  On Boxing Day my feet took me, unbidden, in the direction of Prof’s house again. This time the porch was bedecked with white fairy lights and a huge tree occupied the sitting room window, its red and green lanterns twinkling prettily. I could just make out a figure on the sofa and pictured Prof there, glass of whisky in hand, experiencing the loneliness of the divorced dad at this most child-centred of times. I had to hold myself back from walking up to the front door and ringing the bell. How futile for us both to be so lonely when we are meant to be together, made for each other. I remembered his letter, though, and bit my lip in despair as I turned and made my way back home to face the rest of the festive season alone.

  I snatched up the phone when it rang on New Year’s Day, thinking it might be Millie, but it was only Mother, ringing to complain about the weather and the shops being closed and her aching knees.

  ‘Did you all have a nice Christmas?’ I asked tightly, the ‘without me’ part of the question left unspoken.

  It seemed to take her a while to recall the day, only a week previous, but it eventually lined up in her mind. ‘Oh yes, yes it was the usual,’ she said dismissively. ‘Kamal’s turkey was a bit overdone, but the potatoes were pleasant enough. Millie made the crackers herself and they were a disaster. They didn’t bang and the hats got stuck in the cardboard tubes. Crystal got a new digital thingy and Kamal gave Millie the most beautiful emerald earrings – they must have cost a fortune. She didn’t give him anything, though, not a thing. I didn’t mention it, but I thought it was a bit odd. Auntie Bolly came round in the afternoon for tea as usual, so poor Hamish had to go in the garden. He yipped and cried the whole time she was there and I seethed on the sofa while she ate her way through the mince pies. I can understand she doesn’t like dogs, but Hamish? Really? He’s hardly a Rottweiler.’

  I listened in silence as she recounted the entire day, from her own peculiar perspective, of course, waiting for her to acknowledge that I hadn’t been there and to enquire after my well-being or my holiday but she didn’t.

  ‘Thanks for the book token,’ I said in the end, resigned to being of negligible importance even to my own mother. ‘I’ll give you your present when I see you.’ She didn’t take the
hint and make arrangements to meet, and I was ready to end the conversation. ‘Well, Happy New Year, Mum,’ I said with finality.

  ‘You too, Sylvia. Let’s hope it’s better than the last one.’ She rang off, leaving me mystified as to what it was she had found so personally disagreeable about the previous twelve months.

  Wednesday 6 January

  Tea. Soup. Tea. Television.

  Monday 11 January

  They have been digging up the road outside all day. I don’t know why. It’s so quiet without the sound of the traffic.

  Thursday 14 January

  The workmen have gone now. The road is back to normal.

  I haven’t spoken to anyone since my phone call with Mother two weeks ago. Not a soul. I don’t know how much longer I can go on like this. I miss Millie so much and being apart from Prof is agony. My heart is broken.

  Wednesday 20 January

  A small knock on the door, tentative at first, then more insistent, woke me from one of my extended naps yesterday afternoon. I ignored it at first, thinking it must be for one of the other flats as the intercom hadn’t buzzed and I had let no one up. I lay there, listening, and it came again, a slight tentative knock and then a small voice: ‘Auntie Sylvia, it’s Crystal, are you there?’