Mo said she was quirky (2 page)

How could it be Brian? He wasnt even in London. But he was in England, the last she heard, he was working in Liverpool. Mum must have told her.

They hadnt seen each other for twelve years. Gran’s funeral. He had come home for that. Not for Dad’s, he didnt come home for Dad’s. He came home for his grandmother but not for his father.

Sad. It was another world. She shifted on the seat to see through the rear window. The taxi had left the riverside several streets ago, passed down a slope and beneath a railway bridge, turning and passing the place where the old mortuary building stood, near where they held the car-boot sale on Sundays. Her and Mo came regularly. Mo was her boyfriend. She and her six-year-old daughter lived with him. Her street was the first drop-off point, thank God. She would be there in ten minutes, in thirty lying beside him. The very thought! But it was true, Mo was like normality. If only she could close her eyes and count to ten, then open them again and there she was beside him. She sat back on the seat. Jill was looking at her. Helen smiled.

An hour later and she was home but still sitting in the kitchen, still wearing her coat and shoes. She held a photograph in her hand. Others lay on her lap, and a few on the floor. She brought them out as soon as she got home. It didnt depress her seeing them but neither did it cheer her up. Family was family. No matter what. People said that and it was true. Blood is thicker than water. If it was Brian it was Brian. It was so unlikely. But if it was. She smiled for some reason, a weary smile, ironic also. Families dont finish. You run away but they catch you up. Families are ghosts. Presences. What if he had recognised her?

She drew the coat about her shoulders, feeling a bit shivery. She should have gone to bed. Of course she should have, she had been working all night, she was tired and cold. A gas-boiler system gave the heating and hot water but made such a noisy
clanking sound she never switched it on first thing in the morning in case it wakened the entire household. Mo said it needed an overhaul. Probably it did but he was wondering if he and a mate could do it themselves, and they couldnt. People had to be qualified for that job. Gas can be dangerous.

Anyway, tenants shouldnt have to overhaul the heating system, even if they know how, it was the landlord’s job. Mo took matters on that he should have left alone. It wasnt his business.

She glanced at the photograph in her hand: one of her mother seated with a baby in her lap. The baby was Sophie. You couldnt tell the important thing which was Mum’s lack of interest. That was something for a child to know about her own grandmother. Eventually she would. Children come to know these things. It was sad. Who was the loser? Not Sophie. If Mum wanted to be foolish that was her.

Imagine a child and she didnt go to you. A mother to daughter was something but a grandmother? What could a little child have done to deserve that? Nothing at all. It was not possible. It could only come from the grandmother. The truth revealed was the relationship between the grandmother and her own daughter. That was so glaring. How Mum was with Sophie was how she had been with Helen. She never had been close to Helen, never.

It was sad and didnt have to be. That made it sadder. It would have been so easy for it not to be the case. Sophie could be standing next to Mum and taken her hand the way children do, just reached up and taken her grandmother’s hand, and Mum would – what? what would Mum do? She would look at the hand: a tiny hand in her own; her granddaughter’s hand. She would wonder at that, why children are so trusting. She would think to let go the hand because that would be her inclination but wouldnt be able to because that tiny hand, the child’s hand

Children take things for granted, and why shouldnt they? In the nursery back in Glasgow parents had been encouraged to stay with the children for periods of the day. Helen stayed occasionally and saw how a child looks at you to see if you are friendly. They look at you. If you arent friendly they see it in you, even the smaller ones like if you try to lift them and they arent yours. People do that, they lift up a child and the child doesnt want to be lifted. She does but she doesnt. Not by somebody strange. If it was Sophie: Leave me leave me leave me! Mum Mum Mum, and kicking and kicking and the person would have to put her down and just smile, pretending it was okay. It happened once when Mo was with her, in that same nursery and Sophie started screaming at a man who lifted her. He was one of the fathers. Sophie fell and he picked her up. He didnt see Mo or if he did he didnt think he was the parent. Mo was Asian so how could he be? That would have been the man’s thinking. It was accidental. The man had acted instinctively, and Sophie too. The teacher said she was ‘over-reacting’ which made it sound like Sophie’s fault and that was total nonsense. Sophie screamed and thank God she screamed. It was right that she screamed, she was defending herself. Girls have to; just dont lay a finger on me, dont dare lay a finger on me, and if anybody did, God help them. Screaming was so important. Men could laugh but it was. It was men had to learn. Some did and some didnt.

‘Over-reacting’. It was so wrong to say that. And another woman saying it made it worse. The child was
reacting
. So would anybody if a stranger came along and grabbed you. Why did he? Oh because she had fallen. Excuse me? Helen didnt accept that argument. She didnt care if it happened in other cultures, if people went around lifting people up. Or if it was the olden days, oh they do it in the olden days. This was not the olden days. What right does a man have to come along and lift up a
little girl? He doesnt have any right, not for that, that is just like a violation, almost it is.

Helen glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece, lifted the cup to swallow what was left of the tea but it was cold and she replaced the cup. It was nice seeing the photographs of herself and Brian. They
were
close. And there were other photographs. Mum must have had them, and of the older generations.

She yawned again, she should have been in bed. But she wouldnt sleep, not now, thinking about everything, she wouldnt be able to, she knew she wouldnt, just worrying about things all the time over and over, worry worry worry, then when daylight came, oh well. Helen made to rise but forgetting the photographs on her lap and they landed on the floor. It was another cup of tea, she had been going to boil the water. Stupid, but that was her.

She left the photographs on the floor. Her eyes were closed. An image in mind, sort of memory. Whatever, it had gone. These images, what else to call them, you expect to see the person and you dont.

An image isnt a person, it only makes you think of the person. Although if it is yourself, if you are the person, you as a child. The supposed-to-be happy time, when life is supposed to be good. People said that, they didnt mean it. Boredom and lies and just what it was, dishonesty. Childhood was not something to look back on and wish things were the same nowadays. Not for Helen anyway. God knows how Sophie would come out of it all.

Those lives were mostly gone now, the older generation. Helen’s own grandmother would have been eighty-three had she been alive. She was Mum’s mother. Dad’s died when she was young. Helen had never known her.

Life goes on but people dont, individuals.

Helen’s hand went to her forehead; she massaged there, thinking of something, whatever. Oh but it was true enough, divorce, what people say about it. So horrible an experience. Mo said he understood but he didnt. How could he? How could anybody, if they hadnt gone through it themself. Although he had been there for her. That was true, of course he had. And never would she forget it, if she hadnt met Mo, if he hadnt been in Glasgow, and it was only a fluke he had been, helping people at a restaurant, cousins of the ones he worked for in London. Typical Mo. He called it ‘troubleshooting’ and made a joke about being the sheriff in a cowboy movie. But it was true, he was there to sort out the problems. At weekends it was past three in the morning when he finished. He and a couple of workmates used Helen’s casino as a place to wind down. They spent an hour drinking tea and chatting by the bar, talking over things, how the evening had gone and whatever else. Casino staff knew them and occasionally used their restaurant. Helen was one of a group that booked in for their Christmas dinner. During it the guys who came to the casino sat with them, including Mo. She hadnt looked at him. He was smaller than her, and like younger, or seemed to be. Then he was sitting behind her, then talking to her directly. She just liked him. That was the truth. How he spoke, just like an ordinary Londoner. But he was an ordinary Londoner. Helen had lived and worked in London before getting married, it was nice talking about that, she didnt get the opportunity much. And he wasnt younger he was older – by one month! A month is a month; a month is older. That was him talking. God he was a cheery bugger, and the way he was chatting her – and he was!

He was chatting her. It was just so silly, and nice, so so nice and just – normality, after what she had been through, it was like boy meets girl.

He had seen her at the tables, had she not noticed? No. Surely she had noticed? No! She hadnt! Not even one time? She hadnt noticed any of them sitting at the bar and sipping their tea. It was not her job to notice, not when she was dealing cards.

He didnt believe her. Then he did. It was an honest smile too. She saw that it was. He was being straight with her, this wee London guy, Asian guy, making her laugh, and watching her, closely. If she was racist? Anyway, she was watching him, and he knew she was. I got two wooden legs. Stupid, but it made her laugh. She covered her mouth but couldnt stop herself giggling, it was a giggle, so silly. She stopped it. Only it
was
funny. ‘Giggling’. When had she last ‘giggled’?

Mo and his smiles, Mo and his laughs. If he hadnt been there for her. If he hadnt. There was nobody else. Not her family. Nobody.

Things make you strong.

The actual divorce experience itself, people wouldnt believe how dreadful it was. Not the stress my God the stress it puts you under. The children too, some dont recover, become damaged emotionally, psychological scars, the whole thing a nightmare. Only they never wake from it. No matter how bad the nightmare is in the ordinary world you wake up from it but they dont.

The photographs on the floor. She didnt want to pick them up. Ones facing up and ones facing down. It wasnt her choice. Things land at random. If her mother’s photograph was face down. She didnt want to see it if it was. As if it was her fault! It wasnt. Silly thinking such a thing.

She made her way through to the bedroom. It was a good-size room and must have been a lounge originally. They used it as a bedroom and a place to store things. There was plenty light coming in through the curtains. Mo’s huddled shape in
the double bed, she listened to his breathing. Sophie slept in the walk-in cupboard. The door was kept ajar when she was in bed otherwise it would have gone from cosy to claustrophobic. There was no window in the cupboard. Cupboards dont have windows, even the walk-in variety, so no fresh air. When Sophie was in bed the door had to be left properly open. So things were awkward; it meant the room was out of bounds. The kitchen was where they lived. They needed a new place, whenever that might happen. Probably never. They didnt do the lottery.

Helen sat by the entrance with the chair angled that she might reach into Sophie without shifting position. An empty glass stood by the wall. Not quite empty; inside was a drop of water. Mo must have left it there. He would have checked how she was when he came home, then last thing before getting into bed; perhaps sat with her if she had been awake, if the movement had disturbed her. She could have been awake; sometimes she was. She still liked to come into bed with Helen, even when Mo was there. She had suffered bad dreams for a while. It still happened though not so much but on Helen’s night off the girl used it as an excuse to wangle her way in beside them, unless it was a form of jealousy. Mo said that. And jealousy could happen; parents and children, it did, jealousy and envy, spite, everything.

Turning the cupboard into a ‘bedroom’ had been Mo’s brilliant idea. But it was good. Really, and made a huge huge difference. He bought an old bed from a so-called furniture store down near the market. It was secondhand junk they sold and the bed wasnt just old it was like prehistoric, with a nailed-down metal frame. It was so so heavy. Two of his mates helped with the lifting and manoeuvring. They managed to squeeze it into the cupboard by taking off the end frames, and the legs too, sawing bits off and nailing bits on as supports, then putting bricks underneath the sides. Obviously the mattress didnt fit.
Obviously. Helen hunted about and found long settee-style cushions made of foam-rubber. These had been designed for a caravan but could be fitted together, and would do meantime. What the landlord didnt know wouldnt hurt him.

Although landlords have a habit of finding things out. Surely he would have had no complaints? If changes werent structural and no damage occurred. What could he say?

Oh but he would find something. They always do. Any excuse to keep the deposit. The cupboard shelves, he would have had something to say about them. They were high above Sophie’s bed and couldnt be reached without stepladders but he definitely would see them. How could he miss them?

Mo built them before the bed went in. You had to twist about to get up because you couldnt set the ladders inside the cupboard, you climbed up then twisted and reached across; and the stepladders were old and shoogly; greasy and oily into the bargain; horrible old things. Everybody in the house used them and they were just horrible.

In this place everything was old. Nothing worked. Especially if she was using it. What worked for Helen? Nothing. It didnt matter what.

It was true.

No it wasnt. It was not true at all, and she was stupid and foolish for thinking such a thing and she had to stop it stop it, stop thinking negative thoughts all the time, things were good. They were.

But what would the landlord do if he saw the shelves? Surely it was structural if you interfered with the walls? And you werent supposed to do anything structural.