First Fruits (34 page)

'Nothing to worry about Hilary, my love.
You get that sleepy head of yours back onto the pillow where it belongs. Lydia
too.'

There's a silence. I can't see her, but
I'll bet you Hilary is biting her lip. Because it's not enough, is it? It
doesn't explain a thing. And here she comes again.

'But the screaming Mr. Carr, it was so
awful. We didn't know what to think.'

Dad closes his eyes, and when he opens
them again, it's there. The twinkle is back, right where it belongs. The room
feels warmer suddenly. He rubs his hands together, then walks briskly to the
door. On the other side I hear him begin the long process of explaining. He's
telling Hilary and Lydia what happens when a person, an unstable person,
sleepwalks and wakes unexpectedly. He -
she
- becomes terrified, even violent.
They listen as he tells them it was my screaming they heard, waking up to the
unknown.

Another silence as Hilary digests this.
Then a final question, sounding embarrassed. 'Where is she now then, Mr. Carr.
Where
is
poor Kate?'

Patiently, infinitely kind, he explains
that all is well. How I was comfortable as could be, in the study, with his
best rug over me to keep me snug. Best not to disturb me any more. And best not
to mention it to me in the morning either. In fact, better not to mention it to
anyone. People might think there had been something wrong with me, something
not quite right.

Listen, he's beginning to talk about me
in the past tense. As if already he doesn't have a daughter any more.

I can hear his voice on the stairs. He's
taking them back to bed himself. He sounds so gentle, so soothing, they'll be
half asleep by the time they reach the top. Meanwhile, downstairs, on the other
side of the door, someone is turning the key in its lock, making sure I stay
where I am. Gran makes so little noise as she pads off to bed you would think
there was nothing bigger than a rat scuttling along the corridor.

That's the drawback, isn't it, of all
girls together. Dad and Gran are going to have to wait. As he says, if a
thing's worth doing, it's worth doing well.

UPSTAIRS
the talking dies away. Doors close. Presently there is no sound at all.
Everyone has gone to bed. Including Moira, I imagine. Will she even dream about
what happened? In fact, does Moira dream? Somehow I can't believe she does, not
exactly. Something understood now - or something imagined: Moira's entire life
is nothing but a waking dream belonging to somebody else. I believe this
because I saw her face just now. Wherever Moira was tonight, it wasn't here.

Socks though. Gran mentioned socks.
Whose socks if not my socks? Whose bag, if not
her
bag?
She
had
it packed and everything, that's what Gran said. But she would never have been
leaving by herself, not with a suitcase full of children's clothes. Socks could
only mean one thing.

She never was going to leave me. She was
never going to leave me behind. She had been going to take me with her. My
mother.

My socks, though. My socks, and
something that Gran did with them, that stopped my mother's mouth. Stopped the
screams for ever. Something my father got down on his knees and thanked her
for.

What did Gran....?

Don't ask a question if you can't bear
to think of the answer. But it's too late, the answer is there. I know what
they did to my mother.

I don't think my legs are willing to
hold me any more. I have to sit down, in his chair, where I've never sat. And
this I can't believe - as I sit here, my eyes are beginning to close, as if
nothing could stop them. This is a tiredness I've never known before. It must
be the reason that despite everything, despite the words and the sights, I have
the feeling that sleep is going to steal over me and carry me away.

It's as if nothing else can happen, not
while I'm awake. A waking Kate would just be in the way. I have to be asleep,
go to a place where none of the usual rules apply.

BUT
this time I don't have any sort of dream. This is nothing but simple sleep,
empty and without thought, like Moira's stare. A sleep that comes from elsewhere,
as inexplicable as Moira herself.

The dream doesn't come until later, when
I am awake.

I
open my eyes and here I am again, still sitting in his chair. Yet the sleep
must have done me good because suddenly I feel wide awake, more awake than I
can remember. Wide awake and waiting.

And straightaway I know. In the time
that I have been asleep, something has happened. Something...invisible.

You can tell just by breathing, by listening
to the sound of your own breath. Then by stopping breathing altogether, to
listen to what's left.

The house is quiet but, at the same
time, not quiet. Behind the stillness, you might almost imagine you hear
something like the sound of whispering. A sort of rustling, as if the air had
turned to paper. As if the entire house had been given a stealthy life of its
own, had life running through its walls. Not here though, not in this room.
This is his place, the heart of the house. Everything in it belongs to him and
has no life of its own. It couldn't possibly make a sound without him.

The rest of the house though, that's
different. Outside his study, I would swear the house is trembling. Not so
violently that it could wake anyone, but delicately, so you would hardly know
it. Like a violin perhaps, still vibrating minutes after it has been put down.
A silent humming of the tune just played.

And it makes it all so difficult. How am
I supposed to tell the difference, between what's real and what can only be a
dream? In front of me is the picture of the dancing girls, but that doesn't
tell me anything. Except that I can't see her now, the girl who signalled to me
before.

It can't be real. Houses do not tremble.
Houses don't hum, not even silently, to themselves. Houses don't make you feel
as if you are encased in the dead heart of a living thing. Not real then. But
still I can't believe it, not until I get out of his chair, walk across the
floor and touch the wall.

And that's when I feel it. The wall is
alive. The wall feels warm.

It's then, that something stirs, not in
the house, but inside me. A kind of answering hum. Something is beginning to
wake up. Something about to be remembered. It tells me where next to look,
although not what I should expect to see.

So I turn from the wall to the door. And
what should be a shock is no shock at all. Folds of smoke, paper thin, are
slowly curling through the crack between the floor and the door, hovering, then
billowing upwards like grey, delicately shaken scarves.

But even then, I don't understand. Not
straight away, not even as I stand and watch more smoke enter the room and
climb the walls, run along the angle between the ceiling and the walls in
pretty spirals. More and more of them, beginning to weave a pattern of smoke
overhead.

I'm wide awake but, oh, I'm slow. Try
the handle of the door. And of course, it's locked. Yet still I don't remember
what there is to be frightened of. It's not until the first tickle in my
throat, the same feeling you have when you swallow a hair, that it all comes
back to me.

This has happened before. In this very
room, or a room almost exactly like it, all but identical, right down to the
dancing girls on the wall. Smoke about to blot out any differences. Such a long
time ago that I'd forgotten. All I ever remembered was the room and ten rosy
little toes, and even then, only in my dreams.

Try the door again. Call out a name. But
the tickle turns into a cough, swallows up the sound. Just like it did all
those years ago.

Try to think, watch the smoke, see what
it does. And see, it's exactly as I've just begun to remember. There's more of
it finding its way in now, creeping not just underneath, but through the sides
of the door; and not in tendrils any more, but in sinuous waving limbs like the
long searching arms of a ghost. I remember them, arms stretching through space
to reach me. Meanwhile, above me, the spirals have come together to make a
fragile, floating ceiling. Presently it will begin to sink under its own
weight. I remember that, too. Got to get out before that happens.

Beat on the door. Cough. Beat and cough.
All the good air escaping from that small space that's left inside. Three deep
breaths, the space fills up and the room begins to disappear.

Last time this happened, I was a little
girl.

Tired, tired again suddenly.

I have to lie down, the way I did the
first time, underneath his desk, on the floor, with his carpet pressed against
my face. This is where I'll have to wait, there's nothing else I can do. Too
tired to think, suddenly, too tired to remember why it is I'm waiting. The
simplest thing is simply to sleep. Simplest of all, to dream.

Then. Then on the very edge of sleep, it
comes to me, the reason I am waiting. Of course.
She
brought me here.
She
told me to wait. She said, wait and she would come for me.
Just wait, Poppet
.
That's what she said.

So I've been waiting all this time, for
years, it seems. Ever since the first time when I waited, and listened, and
wondered about the noise that broke out after she left me here to wait.  The
sound of screaming. It came from far away in another part of the house, yet
still deafening, as if, for the first time, someone didn't care how much noise
she made. I'll have to ask her about that when she comes.
We
have always
tried to be quiet, she and I. She says
he
wouldn't like it otherwise.
Not with all the work he has to do. So we are like mice, little mice, trying to
do the right thing, doing our best never to disturb. To make him pleased with
us.

But after this, we are leaving and
everything will be different. After this I'll be able to make as much noise as
I like. That's what she told me. But until then, I have to wait. Never move a
muscle, never make a sound.

Which makes you wonder why, if 
I
 
had to be quiet,
she
was making so much noise. I never heard my mother
talk in anything but a whisper before. I was almost glad when it stopped as
suddenly as it did. If she'd finished screaming, it must all be over. Soon she
would be coming back. All I had to do was wait.

But I waited so long I fell asleep. I
was only little.

And when I woke up, she still wasn't
here, and the room had disappeared in a grey fog that somehow meant I couldn't
breathe. Like now. And there was nothing I could do about it. Except to wait.
Don't
move a muscle
, she had said. 
Wait until I come
.

So that's what I do. I wait. Besides,
I've become so tired now, I don't believe I could move. There's only that small
part of me that remains awake. Wide awake and waiting.

But then, at long last, I hear it, the
sound I've been waiting for all this time,  all these long years. Footsteps in
the corridor, getting closer, brisk but unhurried. You see? There was never any
doubt. She made a promise. All I had to do was wait.

And now it must be time to go. The
footsteps stop, they are right outside the door. I'd like to be readier than I
am, but somehow I can't stand up, I've forgotten why. I can't move a muscle.

But it doesn't matter. A disturbance in
the smoke shows the door is opening. Light pours in, framing her shape against
the solid air, all shot with more light. And there she is, waiting, her arms
held out to me. It's the sight of her that lifts me to my feet and carries me
across the room to her. And as I arrive at the door, her hand takes hold of
mine, and keeps it fast.

She has come for me, my mother. At long
last. It's time for us to go. Together.

But before we leave, she opens the desk,
takes something precious from inside, and tucks it safely in my hand.   

Afterwards everybody said how terrible
it was, history
repeating itself like that. How unnecessary.

'Midnight Feast goes tragically wrong
,' was the
headline in one newspaper. They re-printed Moira's school photograph, where it
seems as though the photographer has done his level best to make her seem as
fat and pasty as anyone could possibly be. Just the sort of person who would be
frying chips in the middle of the night.

STILL,
she redeemed herself, didn't she, almost made up for having been no oil
painting to look at, for never being exactly popular. That's the part the
papers tend not to dwell upon, the part that might put off the readers. Who
wants to read about fat girls who can't get through the night without a plate
of chips?

Instead the newspapers are calling her a
heroine. First she came and led one young friend through the flames of a
burning house. And then, after leaving her confused but safe outside, went back
to rouse her two other pals, led them to safety too. Yet even that wasn't the
end of it. As the newspaper put it, heroic teenager, Moira MacMurray, 14, then
went back into the house one last time. Because upstairs, still asleep, had
been popular Man of God, Keith Carr, and his elderly mother.