There but for The (21 page)

Don’t just say
nobody there
all the time when you phone, Mum, Eleanor said one day. Say, hello, it’s me, then leave your message. It’s distressing for us, it’s distressing for the kids, it’s distressing pressing the answerphone message button and hearing you on there, I mean seven times yesterday, and each time saying nothing but
the thing’s not working
or
nobody there.
It’s creepy, Mum. And the thing
is
working. Leave a message, like a normal person.

I say
nobody there
because when I phone up there’s nobody there, May had said.

We
are
here, Eleanor said. We’re just choosing not to answer the phone.

This beggared belief. What were phones for?

Why would anybody have a phone and then choose not to answer it? May had said.

Touché. That got her. Touché Turtle away! That was a turtle that used to be on TV, a cartoon with a French hat on like a musketeer that they used to watch, and Jennifer used to wear her old Wrens cap and play at being the turtle in the garden.

It’s always Jennifer, was what Eleanor said once. She was angry. She was crying. This was years ago, ten years ago. May had made Eleanor cry by remembering something incorrectly. Eleanor was forty-five. She should have known better by then, a mother herself, with grown children herself, dear God and all the angels, than to have been standing crying at the sideboard about what got remembered and what got forgotten.

I know it was awful, Mum. I know how awful it was. But that time it was me. It wasn’t her, it was me. It was me you painted with the paintbrush and the calamine. Nothing ever bit her. It was me who was always bitten. You said it was because I tasted so sweet. That’s what you said at the time. Nothing ever bit her. It was always me who got bitten. I still get bitten. I still do. I’m still the one who gets bitten.

It was possible May had misremembered on purpose to annoy Eleanor. It was possible she knew exactly which child it had been, bare-backed, folded into herself like a paperclip on the little bed in the girls’ room with the bites coming up red all over her shoulderblades and the tops of her arms, flinching away from the cold of the lotion on the bristles of the painting-by-numbers paintbrush.

That girl there on the chair looked to be about the age of Jennifer. She looked about the age.

Jennifer’s dates: 4.4.63, 29.1.79.

They’d been watching an Alf Garnett film the night before on the TV. It had been quite a sad film for something supposed to be funny. Till Death Us Do Part. It was the film-length version of the TV programme. It was one of life’s cruel ironies, is what Philip had said after, that that’s what they’d been watching that night. January, taker of children into the ground. When she was two months shy of sixteen Jennifer’s heart had had a problem in it that nobody knew about.

Such elegant narrow feet, she’d had. Like her father’s feet. His feet, too, were narrow, that’s where she’d got it from. Philip had had unexpectedly girlish feet, pretty feet.

Well, feet in the end all went the same way, six feet down, ha, and that was life.

You had to count your blessings, Philip always said. He always said it when he was disappointed. It was how you knew he was disappointed.

Well, it was all right for him. At least he had the words for it. May had spent the years considering the sharpness and smallness and perfection of the fingernails on the hands, the toenails on the feet of every grandchild born, with a sadness she did not have words for.

(Jennifer comes into the kitchen. She is eight years old and very angry. She is holding a book she’s found in the pile of books on the table in the upstairs toilet. On the front it has a picture of a man on fire, his arms and legs stretched out inside what looks like a wheel of flames.

It is the most unfair thing I have ever heard of in not just the whole world, but the whole world and all the surrounding planets, Jennifer says.

She has been reading about people who burst into flames. The whole book is about people who suddenly burn to death there and then in their living rooms or wherever for no reason. Sometimes their legs and arms survive them and someone comes home and finds them in a pile on the carpet, nothing left of the main parts of their bodies but little heaps of ash.

Jennifer is near tears.

What if Rick was just playing football and kicking the ball and just as he was about to kick in a goal, just, out of nowhere—? Or Nor was doing modern dance like normal at the class on a Wednesday and then right in front of the big mirror, she—? What if Dad was fishing and he just, you know,—?

Well, then, the river would be the best place for him, May says. And it’s not often you’ll catch me saying that.

She puts down the iron and lifts Jennifer, who is clammy with anger, on to her knee on one of the kitchen stools.

But what if one day I came home from school, Jennifer is saying, and I went to make you a cup of tea, and then when I got through with the cup of tea, there was just a, a pile of ash on the chair, and there on the floor were your legs, and there on the arms of the chair were your arms?

Right. If this actually ever happens, May says, are you listening? These are my instructions. You are to just put the mug of tea in one of my hands there on the side of that chair regardless, have you got that? Because I’ll be wanting that tea.

Jennifer nearly laughs. She is almost persuaded. Then she goes limp again on May’s lap.

The water inside the iron on the ironing board makes a small impatient noise.

Jennifer, there is no way in a million you’re going to burst into flames, May says.

It’s not me I’m worried about, Jennifer says.

You’ve not to think about such things, May says. If you thought about such things you’d go mad. And the worst thing about worries is, they’re contagious.

How are they contagious? Jennifer says.

What I mean is, if
you
worry, May says, then
I
have to worry too.

Jennifer looks desolate. She climbs off May’s knee and goes and stands by the sink.

In the future, she says, I will keep my worries in the confines of my own head.

God and all the angels only know where she got that from. She is quite a child for the saying of things strangely.
It’s my life too, you know,
is what she said in the middle of an argument they were having about breakfast cereal, and that was when she was barely four years old. May had had to turn round, turn away, so her child wouldn’t see her laughing. And another time, last year, she’d just turned seven.
What if, when we’re praying like to St. Anthony about things being lost, what if the being who hears us and sees us and helps us isn’t St. Anthony at all but is Rascal the dog?
Recently too she’s started refusing to take her mother’s hand if they’re crossing a road.

May pats her knee. Jennifer gives in, comes back and climbs back up. But her head is hot under May’s chin, too heavy against her chest. The weight of her is sullen, maybe settling in for the afternoon if May’s not careful.

The iron sighs on the ironing board again.

Could be quite good, mind you. If you burst into flames, May says.

Good?—if—? Jennifer says lifting her head.

Especially if you were on horseback, May says. You on that Shetland pony, what’s its name, going over the jumps. You’ll be all lit up like a bonfire on horseback at the Summer Fête at the Park.

Ha! Jennifer says.

Instead of the Hoop of Fire, May says, the police dogs would be wanting to jump through you.

Actually, Jennifer says, something like that would be pretty groovy.

She sits forward. But then she drops her head again.

What now? May says.

Because what if I was doing the jumping at the Fête and I looked up at the seats in the spectator stand for you to see me doing it, Jennifer says muffled against her cardigan.

Uh huh? May says.

And there was no you there, Jennifer says.

May nods.

Tell you what, she says with her mouth against the parting of her girl’s hair. If I spontaneously combust I’ll send my arms and legs by themselves to the park to watch you do it.

Finally she has made Jennifer laugh.

They’ll need a seat each, mind, so that makes four seats. And you can pay out of your pocket money. That’s only fair, May says.

Jennifer is laughing out loud now.

And I’m only letting you go to that Fête in the first place if you’ll hold my hand when we cross the road, May says. And my other hand. And my arm. And my other arm. And my leg. And my other leg.

When Jennifer is properly helpless with laughter May shifts her legs like you do when you’re playing the horsey game with a very small child, the bit where they think they’re going to fall but know all the same that you’ve got them safe.

She catches her youngest at exactly the moment of letting her go.)

May Young eyed the strange girl there in the chair. The nails of both her hands were purple with varnish and far too long for properness. She was pressing the little buttons in the thing in her hand. It was as if the whole world was in thrall to the things. They all had them, used them as readily, as meekly, as May was supposed to take the stuff off the medicine cabinet. They swallowed it, hook and line. It was all supposed to be about how fast things were; they were always on about how fast you could get a message or how fast you could get to speak to someone or get the news or do this or that or get whatever it was they all got on it. And at the same time it was like they were all on drugs, cumbersome like cattle, heads down, not seeing where they were going.

The girl thumbed and fingered away at her own world in her hand like it didn’t matter that she was in May’s hospital room, or in anyone’s hospital room, on earth, in heaven, wherever. It didn’t matter where in or out of the world she was.

Maybe she was on a, what was it, scheme, a school scheme, the things they make them do instead of schoolwork, to visit people in hospital, to go and be visitors for people who got no other visitors.

But May had plenty of visitors. She’d no need for a girl on a school scheme. They were always endlessly coming, May’s visitors, and standing about round the bed. She’d no need for strangers to do it too.

Maybe she was a friend of Patrick’s girls and was doing a good turn for the Girl Guides, visiting an old person and getting a badge.

Maybe it was like when they came round singing to people in the hospital, like with the Christmas carols. Not just Christmas neither, because it was weeks after Christmas now and they’d been round again, they were round not that long ago singing their jolly song, on and on it went, interminable, about I am Jesus and they crucified me, and then they hung me up on a tree, all the details of the blood and the nails. It was January, nowhere near Easter. There was no excuse for it.

She lifted her hand and made to wave the girl away.

I’m not needing visitors, she said with her hand. You’re free to go.

The girl in the chair saw May’s hand move. She looked up from the thing she was holding in her own hand. She reached up to an ear and took the thing in her ear out.

Woke up, then, the girl said.

The girl spoke loudly and clearly.

May glared at her. She leaned forward. She wasn’t some old lady who was always asleep with her mouth open, some old lady who couldn’t hear.

She reached out for the jug and she didn’t miss, she got it, by the handle.

Want me to do that? the girl said.

May looked her a stony look. The girl was clearly some kind of do-gooder, and if not, she was a thief. Well, May had no money in her purse. Her watch, in the locker, was worth next to nothing, £17 it had cost, at the airport once. The girl would soon find out there was nothing here for her to take.

May put down her hand on the wool blanket. It had the Kleenex with their medicine in it on the blanket. She opened the hand. She let the Kleenex go. The old hand lifted. It wavered towards the plastic tumbler. She got it. She brought it back to the jug and put the pouring place against its lip. She poured herself the juice. It went more or less safely into the tumbler. She reached and put the jug down, and not just down but in the right place.

Then she looked the girl in the eye.

That girl looked right back.

It is Mrs. Young, right? the girl said. If you’re not Mrs. Young, tell me. I’m supposed to sit with a Mrs. Young.

She waved a piece of paper at May.

Please make sure someone visits Mrs. Young of twelve Belleville Park, the girl said. If you’re Mrs. Young, you took some finding, but we did it, we found you. That’s if you’re actually her, like.

Now May Young knew who that girl was.

What Philip had seen, when it was his turn, was a man in a suit standing at the back of the room. Hello, who’s the chap? he’d said, and May had turned and seen nobody there. May’s own mother had seen a man too. That man’s back, she’d said. Where? May and Philip had said, what man? May’s mother was on morphine. There, she’d said nodding towards the window, but he’ll not do any harm. May and Philip had looked. Nobody there.

So it was true. This was how it happened. They sent strangers, not people you knew. They’d sent her a girl instead of a man in a suit. They’d not sent Jennifer, because Jennifer wouldn’t be a stranger, but they’d sent her a girl the age of Jennifer.

May Young’s head spun. There was no getting away from it. Her number was up.

Ah well.

She closed her eyes.

Well, I can just go and get lost.

Well, it’ll be nice to be accompanied, it will, to the other side.

Well, it’s not so bad. There’s fates worse than death.

Well, when your number’s up, your number’s up.

Well, call my number, St. Peter, and we’ll see if it’s Bingo we’re playing. House! As long as it’s not Harbour House, dear God and all the angels.

May Young breathed. She felt her breath move in her chest, inside the awful pink below. She felt the long length of the deep last breath she’d take. She breathed the length of it.