Authors: Jackie Kay
Torr is not the same Torr any more. Since the letters came. It is a new place, with a new Chubb and Yale. It is familiar the way a memory is familiar, and changed each time like a memory too. Utterly changed. The size of the rooms are different today. Much smaller. The kitchen shelves are higher. The kettle’s whistle is much shriller. The flush in the bathroom is so loud it makes me jump every time I flush it. The mirrors in the cottage make me look different too. I barely recognize myself. I am thinner. Most people either take off weight or put it on after a death. I am definitely a lot thinner. All that dieting and now here I am, suddenly gaunt on grief. The tall lamp in the living room looks fragile with its long fringes. Joss’s armchair still imitates the shape of Joss’s body, waiting for him to return, like Greyfriars Bobby. There’s an empty vase on the table by the window. We’d usually fill it with scabious, cornflowers, campions. I should have brought some flowers.
This morning before I opened that second letter, I found an old note in Joss’s handwriting. Lots of little jobs. Ring Harry. Chase accountant. Ring Big Red. Car. Each job done had one of Joss’s daft little left-handed ticks by it. The little ticks moved me. One instruction puzzled me. Write EM. I can’t think who EM is. All day, I’ve been trying to think who EM can be. It has an asterisk
beside it but no tick. I fold the little list away and put it in my purse. It could be a lock of hair. I would like to have a lock of Joss’s black curly hair. Joss had beautiful thick black hair. I wonder if it was always that thick, his hair.
I realize there is so much I don’t know about Joss. She asks me to tell her all about his childhood. I don’t know anything about his childhood. I know that his name was Josephine Moore. It took him a long time to tell me even that. It came out one day quite casually when we were watching a programme on Josephine Baker adopting a ‘rainbow tribe’ of children. ‘That was my name,’ Joss said quietly. What was? I said. I didn’t have a clue what he was talking about. ‘Josephine. My mother called me Josephine after her sister.’ I was so surprised that time, I couldn’t say much. I remember finding it slightly distasteful, the idea of Joss having another name. If I am honest, perhaps I found it frightening too. It unsettled me, the idea that Joss had not always been Joss, that Joss Moody had once been Josephine Moore. Sometimes, later on, I’d ask him what it was like. But whenever the name Josephine Moore came up, he’d say, ‘Leave her alone,’ as if she was somebody else. He always spoke about her in the third person. She was his third person. But I don’t really know anything about Josephine Moore. I don’t really know anything at all. I can’t properly imagine even what she looked like. I can’t imagine her hair, how she would have worn her hair. I don’t want to.
It is getting dark now outside. Solemn and deep and secretive. When I come here the quality of the dark takes
a bit of getting used to. The weight and the depth of the country dark. It is so absolute, so uncompromising. When I go outside to stare into the dark, it feels almost final. Even the stars don’t change the deep dark of the hedges, the small lanes, the sudden corners. I close the curtains. The sea is out there getting up to no good. I light a fire, then put a newspaper over the front of it, holding on tightly to each side of the wall till I see the newspaper dip.
Death even for the dead is slow. I can feel Joss around this room with the fire going strong. He pulls and then lets go, pulls and lets go. Slack one minute, tight the next. I see his whole stomach suck in all the air then let it out again. When his stomach dips in like that, when he goes hollow, I rub the back of his hand until he lets his breath out again. I can see the dead Joss quite clearly now. He is quite different to the living one. He looked unlike himself when he was dying. Unlike the man I married. I don’t know who he looked like. Maybe he looked more like her in the end. More like Josephine Moore.
What was she like, Josephine? Did she play hopscotch, marbles? Did she have friends? Was she close to her mother? Did she buy a 78 and rush home to play it? Did she climb trees? Did she play with dolls? Did she stand outside pubs playing jazz in the rain, tilting her head to listen? Did a stray dog pass by her and howl in the strange light of a paper moon? Was that the night she decided to change her whole life? I don’t want to think about her. Why am I thinking about her?
If he comes with her I will say one thing and that will
be all. I didn’t think about it at all. Her letter says, with hindsight would you have done anything different? You don’t live in hindsight though, do you? Hindsight is a different light. It makes everything change shape. When Colman goes through our house, pointing hindsight’s big torch everywhere, he will find things in our garden that we never planted … One of the newspaper articles had the headline
Living a lie
. They found people who claimed to be Joss’s friends who said things like, ‘He fooled us completely.’ But it didn’t feel like that. I didn’t feel like I was living a lie. I felt like I was living a life. Hindsight is a lie.
The cherry blossom tree we planted for Colman’s first birthday waves behind the curtains. I noticed the roots of it today, clawing their way towards the house. The roots like long arthritic fingers, crooked and damaged. I might have to get it dug up before it topples the house. I check my brand new locks. Who would have ever thought that I’d be changing the locks to keep out my son?
When I go into our bedroom, the bed is just lying there. As if to say, it’s only me again. I keep expecting that some miracle could happen, that I could just come up the stairs and find Joss in bed waiting for me. Each time I come into this room the emptiness of it punches me in the stomach. There is something so repetitive about grief. First the stupid hope, then the violence of remembering. The hope, then the carpet from under your feet. If Joss had lived and I had died. If Joss had seen a doctor. If I had made Joss see a doctor. The same things spinning every day and night. Each night I’m afraid to sleep. I
know Joss will find me. I know I will wake up and forget and then remember.
Joss is wearing a pinstriped suit. His shirt has little buttons that hold his collar down. He wears the cuffs I bought him. He carries his trumpet. He motions for me to follow him, holding his long beautiful fingers to his lips. We are at Victoria coach station. Joss has got tickets which just say
Scotland
on them. He gives me a large plastic bag with
Selfridges
written on it. He shoves me into the Ladies and says, ‘Quick! Get changed!’ There’s a pale green dress in the bag, a bit like the dress I wore on my wedding day. I put it on. I go out and Joss looks horrified. ‘What do you think you’re playing at?’ he shouts at me, grabbing my wrist. I look down at myself and see that I am wearing a pinstriped suit. Not the dress at all. I look at Joss and giggle. He is wearing the green dress. But on his feet are men’s shoes and on my feet are women’s shoes. We both look ludicrous. I point at his feet, laughing hysterically. Now we are at the back of the bus frantically swopping shoes. I put my arm around Joss’s shoulder to comfort her. She cries and dabs at her eyes. Then she starts to shrink. I am terrified. I want to tell somebody, but there is nobody to tell. Everybody on the bus is a dummy from a shop. There are no real people. She shrinks and shrinks till she becomes a little girl in a green dress. We are out on the street and I am holding her hand. A big yellow and orange bus comes towards us. I look at the driver and the driver is Joss. He is heading straight for us. I shout to him, ‘Joss, you’re killing yourself!’ at the top of my voice.
I get up. I can’t stay in bed any longer. The sun is no up yet. But I want to get dressed. I put on an old pair of camel-coloured trousers. An apple-green cashmere sweater. I stare at myself in the mirror as if I am somebody else, as if I am just saying to myself, ‘Don’t I know you? Didn’t you go to Saint Catherine’s School for Girls?’
I sit down opposite Joss’s armchair. The last few days of his life keep replaying in front of my eyes, like a film. Like a special bit in a film that you watch over and over again. I can’t stop it playing. Joss stares at me. He isn’t trying to speak. He can’t bear the weight of his own eyelids. He closes his eyes and opens them. I mop his brow. I plump his pillows with the expertise of a trained nurse. I tell him I am at his side. I am not going anywhere. I tell him I love him. He doesn’t want the hospital. I know he doesn’t want the hospital. I plump his pillows and make sure the bottom one fits into the small of his back. Then I make the pillows rise up in steps till they reach the back of his head. I have to do this regularly, every time they slide down. If the pillows are right, he is more comfortable. If the pillows are comfortable, he might manage a weak smile.
He struggles for three days. I don’t sleep at all. I nod in and out of my own existence with him. Time is strange for us both. We have our own time now. The light glows and fades and glows again. Time is like a heron in the sky flying, gliding but not seeming to be moving anywhere, flying on the spot. Joss doesn’t eat now. He takes slow sips of water. His eyes are closed now most of the time. He knows I am here with him. He can feel me and I can
feel him. We don’t use words any more. He can’t speak and I can’t either. We have gone beyond words. Out there – stranded, beyond time and language. He’s propped up by his pillows and I am sitting by his side. I feel his brow constantly. I stroke his hair. It is sweaty and sticks to his scalp. I can feel his death inside me. We are as close as sex, as birth. I feel drained by his illness. I feel as if I am giving him my blood.
I walk right up to the border with him, supporting the weight of him on my shoulders. He is light now. I feel him crossing over. I know I have to turn back. I leave him there and at the same time I carry him back. I go to the bathroom. I can’t stop myself. I try to move my heavy feet fast up the stairs. When I come back down, Joss is dead. His eyes are not flickering. His heart is not beating. I listen for ages to make sure.
I stare at myself in the mirror as if I am somebody else. I don’t know what feeling like myself is any more. Who is Millicent Moody? Joss Moody is dead. Joss Moody is not Joss Moody. Joss Moody was really somebody else. Am I somebody else too. But who else was Joss? Who was this somebody else? I don’t understand it. Have I been a good mother, a good wife, or have I not been anything at all? Did I dream up my own life?
I open the bureau in the small dark hall and get out the shoe box. The old holiday photographs are in here. I look at snap after snap of Colman. Colman with his two front teeth missing. Colman holding up a pike by the bottom of its tail, grimacing. Colman in his oversized wellies. Colman and I smiling in our anoraks right into
the future; the look on our faces, self-conscious, awkward, as if we knew this photograph would be still there years later, smiling the same smile of its time. Joss and I, lopsided, taken at an odd angle by Colman, holding hands. Joss adoring me. Me smiling at the camera, my small son. I can still see him the day he took that photograph, battling behind the camera, trying to keep steady. I can see him standing to the side as clearly as if I had taken that photograph. I wish I had. Sometimes you remember your life in photographs that were never taken. A moment after or before the camera’s shutter. I wish we hadn’t posed all the time, holding up a fish and a smile. It makes us look unreal, as if we were acting. Look at this one: Joss and Colman, playing at being chieftains. Colman has a tartan tammy on his head and a stick. Joss has our tartan blanket wrapped round his shoulders. I remember Joss joking that day, telling Colman that they were Black Jacobeans, that they could fight in any battle. This one is of all three of us. Colman is smiling up at Joss admiringly as if Joss has just invented something. Joss is squinting into the light. The sea is behind them. You can smell it.
Joss would never swim in the sea. He’d hardly take any of his clothes off on a baking hot day. He wouldn’t take the risk. So I’d laze around in my variety of swimming costumes, ruffled ones, stripey ones, polka-dot ones, and Joss would be wrapped up in his layers. Colman jumped over the waves like hurdles and whooped like a cowboy. I tell myself I had a life, a family, family holidays. I tell myself to hold on to it. Not to let anybody make me let it go. Not even my son. I find myself staring at
the photographs of Joss in search of something. I find myself looking at these pictures trying to see him differently. But I can’t. Age made the biggest difference – some of these photographs are thirty years old. Joss has the look of the young in photographs, a kind of a permanence, a confidence, as if he didn’t believe in old age, as if it was something that would never happen to him. That’s all I can see. I can’t stare at these pictures and force myself to see
‘this person who is obviously a woman, once you know’ –
according to some reports. I can’t see her. I don’t know if I’ll ever see her. The photographs of Joss on his album covers are the same to me. I can’t change him. I can see his lips. His lips pursed when he played the trumpet. His lips open to talk. Him leaning over me, kissing me softly with his lips. All over my face. His dark full lips.
Albert Holding handles the dead. He is used to making them look as nice as possible. Some people were born ugly, like him. Some people look more beautiful dead than alive. It is true what they say: there is nothing like a face at peace. Those who spent large parts of their lives moaning, blaming, cursing and regretting, look particularly beautiful dead. Sudden peace is an extraordinary sight. The rage, the remorse, smooth in a moment. The whole face opens out as if it has finally been understood.
Those that died before they were ready to go are often difficult corpses. Tetchy and irritable, stiffer than the rest, harder to move and handle. He puts powder on their faces and it slips off. Closes the mouth and it falls open. Has trouble with the eyelids. He is not one to find the dead unsettling. He does not get unnerved. But those who have been taken ‘too soon’ can be unpleasant. There is no doubt about it. Clenched fists. Clamped teeth. Frozen jaw. No matter what Albert Holding does, he can’t loosen them up. Pity the families of those taken too soon; they always look appalled when they come to pay their respects. They never spend very long. In and out, quick as you like. A dart of a look then a rapid exit. The parlour door banging.