11
A dry evening, with some clear spells and cloud increasing through the night
SHE FOUND WEBSITES based in America, Mexico, Australia. She sat at her screen day and night. No fat, no animal protein, no milk. She ate only fruit, berries, vegetables, like someone visiting from the Stone Age. This was the true path, she said. It’s up to me. I can cure myself if I choose. It comes from within, she said.
We found ourselves wading in information. Pamphlets, cuttings, leaflets, keeping us in the picture. Many foods feed cancer cells! Other foods virtually destroy the energy of almost all cells! Starve the cancer cells!
Giant containers of distilled water stood stacked in the kitchen for cooking, rinsing, washing. Ned carried them in one at a time. No plastic wrap or tinfoil allowed because they were the enemy. Old fillings and cavitations were also a cause of breast cancer. Who knew? Who would’ve guessed? You start to see cancer lurking in everything. Up and down the motorway she went with her fireman, Les, at the wheel. Dental appointments, oxygen treatment, ozone treatment, hydrogen peroxide. She knew to stay away from qualified doctors at all cost. The evil white coats of the NHS. Everyone knows their game. A plotting tribe of neo-fascist bullies, she called them; she got that off a herbalist. Not just that. The pharmaceutical companies want profits not cures, she said. And there was evidence. The aromatherapist at the clinic who had discovered how to successfully shrink tumours using her own patented breathing techniques, had been threatened, burgled, bombed. By who? Mercenaries hired by the major pharmaceuticals. It was a disgrace, a scandal, a conspiracy; a famous naturopath said so. The cat was out of the bag. Remember: Your doctor has NOT been trained in using natural substances in the treatment of disease.
I lay with her on the settee. Her eyes are closed. I hold her hand. It’s the expense of the treatments, she says, that’s the worry. This makes me laugh.
Arseholes, I say. Skanks. Knobs to that. This makes her laugh.
On this me and Les agree. Never mind the cost if it works, he says.
Course it works. This is the miracle path. Stay positive! Be cured! She was a survivor, she would fight. She would cure herself by working with nature, not against it. There were a billion vitamins available on the internet, she just had to find the right ones. If you live long enough to take full doses of our potent cancer treatment for TWO MONTHS there is a very good chance you WILL beat your cancer!
A good chance, good enough. Belief was everything. She believed. We believed. We became a family of believers overnight.
A few years before her cancer was diagnosed, Les performed the duties of our local Cancer Research charity shop’s Christmas Santa. As a member of the Laughing Mask Players he offered his services each year. He stood with his charity bucket on the High Street shouting, ’Tis the season to be jolly. Fa la la la la la la la la! The life and soul, our mother called him. This is not what me and Ned called him, but we didn’t want to spoil it with our niggling doubts.
He slipped an arm around her waist. Everything to play for, Les always used to say, like he had a dice in his hand. He assumed his position as head of the family. His optimism was embarrassing.
Whoever’s with me, say Aye! he used to call. Ned and me were left with no alternative.
Aye, I replied.
He was nervous of Ned. He spoke through me as if Ned was an alien: Tell him it’s on the table. Ask him is that a tattoo on his neck or dirt? If I speak like this, s-l-o-w-l-y, will he know what I’m saying?
No, Les. He’s deaf not stupid.
He began to get shirty with me.
Lee. That’s a girl’s name, isn’t it?
He had a decent singing voice, granted. He admired Bruce Springsteen, Tom Jones. He had a lust for life. He had bonhomie when the mood took him. He liked to throw his arms wide, What’s New p-ssycat! and take you by surprise.
Don’t get me wrong, Lester was decent to her, she allowed him to sweep her off her feet, albeit to a Harvester Inn. It’s just that she could’ve done better. In my humble opinion.
You don’t sign as well as him, do you, Lee? Don’t worry. I wasn’t my mum’s favourite either, he said.
A sharp tongue he had. Bodysnatcher, he called me when I got the trainee position.
Look out. Bodysnatcher’s about.
This was before.
Then her diagnosis, then her prognosis. Lester announced we would fight it as a family, he stood up to say it. He sold his caravan, a Buccaneer Elan, and bought a Coachman Pastiche, a five-berth tourer with carpet, oak fitted cupboards, ample seating, double glazing and a sun awning. He stuck his head through the little window and shouted, The whole of the UK is ours for the taking! like he was Dick Turpin. We went to Cornwall in the June and then he sold it before Christmas to fund her treatments. There’s always another caravan, he said. Respect for that. Some of us only earn respect after death. Better late than never.
For example, I knew a kid at school, Daniel Atkinson. A nobody. A zero. Dies unexpectedly and hey presto! Instant fame. Fact was he was nothing special, no one rated him. Then, soon as he was gone he became an overnight sensation. Belter of a funeral. Everyone had a story, everyone knew his name. If only I could have remembered something, anything about Daniel. I remembered his shoes, the same black Barratts as mine except his rolled in. And his name came after Paul Aldiss on the class register. I wished we’d had a conversation or a fight. I can’t remember anything he said or did or even his voice. Or even his face. When his name comes up I always mention that I was at school with him. People are surprised, sympathetic. I knew him, I say, same class, same age, same time. Terrible, I say. The exact same shoes. Tragic. He came second on the class register. His grave is in the churchyard by the yew hedge. His name is carved. Daniel Atkinson became a local superstar. It’s living that makes you invisible.
I compose a poem to Lorelle. I have not addressed Artistic Guy vis-à-vis Five Things Girls Can’t Resist. It’s now or never, as Derek would say Elvis would sing. Harder than it looks. In the end I go for short and sweet. I send it as an SMS.
You and me. Just the way we talk, stand around. It keeps my feet on the ground and my head in gear. In the summer sun at this time of year. You and me.
I’m not saying it’s Shakespeare, but. Reckon it might touch a nerve, slant things in the right direction. Girls like things to rhyme.
*
SPEAKING OF GIRLS, Ned has met one online. On Chatroulette, the site where, play your cards right, you’ll likely meet a mass murderer or two. Lovely. Her name is Debra-Ann, according to Ned. His hands fly, two birds in a net. Of course this will not be her real name. I sign this to him. Her real name will be Graham, she’ll have three bodies under the floorboards, two more in the Ford Transit. Talk about gullible. He finds this funny.
Jealous! Jealous! he signs.
Ned believes anything anyone tells him. Without me he’d be eaten alive. I’d love to see a picture of Debra-Ann. I could admire her piercings, her display of dentistry, her Adam’s apple. I wouldn’t mind but someone’s got to look after him. Ned says he can talk to people online without them having to know he’s deaf.
Wear clothes, I tell him, when you chat. Reckon he’s more chance of meeting someone sane if he’s dressed. Life would be better in general if Ned wore more clothes. He goes shirtless because he’s big on sensation, he likes the feel on his skin: wind, water, psychopaths. He goes shirtless in the field, he thinks I don’t know.
He falls asleep like a cat. He curls up anywhere. Ned can bend himself any which way, God’s gift to yoga, a waste really. He is spark out on the settee, mouth open. Silence is golden. Sausage casserole we had, my own recipe. Plates are drying on the drainer. I am concerned lately that he has maybe joined an online cult. He has begun to smirk and grin at inappropriate times, as if he’s some kind of enlightened soul. Arsehole, more like. Let’s face it, he is easy prey for wackos.
As well as communicating with nefarious psychotics online and staring at naked girls, Ned also spends time on air disaster sites: emergency landings, near misses, crashes, you name it. What would poleaxe you and me lights him up like Christmas. He can’t see the horror, don’t ask me why. He can watch those planes skid, spin and break up no problem at all. Like when we scattered her ashes in the field, it’s not that he doesn’t feel it, he just sees another side. To him normal everyday things are madness and vice versa. Like he’s looking down the wrong end of a telescope.
I let myself out. Quiet. Birds beginning to roost. No wind. Decent moon up. The field is full of rabbits, as I walk they flow away, puts me in mind of locusts. I have never seen a locust except on TV. I climb the stile, walk the set-aside. Pigeons in a corner of the field. They rise up, clatter clatter, and swerve towards the woods. I turn my attention to the mast instead.
Greetings, mast. Buongiorno.
Me and the mast have a lot in common. We stand tall in all weathers, no funny business, no shirking, no day off. No one notices. No one thinks what if the mast/Lee didn’t exist. Then what?
I stroll towards the lane. I have a gander. I don’t think it’s right, some Nordic knob chasing an A-level student on a public highway, ditto GCSE, it makes no difference. It’s not on, that’s all I’m saying. If I see anyone suspicious I’ll have a word.
The lane is empty. Just Crow laughing his head off. Private joke, I assume. I leave him to it.
I can’t put my finger on what’s gone wrong in my life. Mainly it’s Ned. Not his fault per se, he’s just a pain in the arse. He wasn’t born deaf. At four months old he caught measles off me. She set up his crib beside her bed and watched him through the bars. I remember his cry, like one of the farm strays.
I used to spy on them through the door crack, wishing she would come back to me, watch me sleep instead, wishing I was iller than him.
By the time he was seven months old she had to admit Ned was deaf as a result of his bout of measles. We were not inoculated. The GP told her it might be permanent. It was.
A poison cocktail, she called the MMR vaccine. A time bomb. No one knows what’s safe, she said. The doctors are experimenting on our children.
This was all about baby Tom from her childhood. I reckoned it so. I’d put money down. As a kid she’d played with baby Tom’s big sisters, up Copthorne way. After he was born, baby Tom had been given the whooping cough vaccination from a toxic batch and was brain damaged. Everyone in the village knew. All the mothers nattered about it. She still went on about it and baby Tom’s mother, all these years on; a saint, she called her. Over twenty years back but fresh in her mind. Things can haunt you just as well as ghosts. For our own protection we weren’t inoculated; as far as she was concerned the doctor’s verdict that vaccinating me would have protected Ned was rubbish. She liked a good ruckus with a person in charge.
Deafness is not a disease, she told the doctor at the surgery. There’s nothing wrong with my son. Ned is a clever boy, hearing or deaf, she said. And no, she would not consider a cochlear implant or a hearing aid, not now or ever. You can’t force me, she said. I have rights.
So does he, the doctor said.
I stared at the doctor. I took my time. I thought about punching him. Smashing his face into his desk. Breaking his nose, splitting his lip. Talking to her that way. She refused to sit on a chair, she gripped my hand instead, swaying, head high. I am a mother, she told him, I know what’s right.
The doctor rubbed his eye as he spoke. The vaccination works, he said, it protects children. He sounded at his wits’ end.
There is evidence that the vaccine is unsafe she replied. It will probably be proved, she added. I have done the best for my boys. We shall see, won’t we?
She had the last word. She swept out, leaving all the doors open, like royalty. I was proud. She stood up to him. She was a warrior. And the fact that my brother was deaf was not my fault in any shape or form. No way was I to blame. She said so.
She never mentioned baby Tom. I didn’t know why then but I do now, no one likes to admit to ghosts, it’s like admitting you are afraid.
She waited for her day to arrive. Then in 1998 it did. Andrew Wakefield declared the MMR vaccine was responsible for autism. She bought a bottle of red wine and we toasted her in the kitchen while she cooked spaghetti.
Hallelujah! she said.
We gave her three cheers. Hip hip! While Ned looked silently on.
You were saved, she said, holding my face in her hands, by the skin of your teeth.
Thanks, I replied.
She loved us. Let sleeping dogs lie.
*
WHEN THE ALARM goes off I do not get a sinking feeling. Raven says his heart sinks every single day. I would rather go to work than stay here, listening to trampoline twangings. I have borrowed Raven’s hair mousse. RokHard, it’s called. It will do the job re my wavy fringe. I can’t see Lorelle going for curls, frankly. Speaking of which. I have not heard a dicky bird. I am concerned the poem has muddied the waters. I text her again.
Hey u. howdy. having fun? sorry not been in touch. total madness here! c u soon. Lee.
The clouds are low today, everything drips from the morning’s rain. On my way back from the crem in the hearse I have a brainwave.
Just drop me here, I tell Mikey. I can walk back. Just got to check a floral order, I tell him.
Right you are, he says.
I have a gander through the glass before I go in. Not a curl to be seen on my whole head. Ding goes the bell. The room is cool, empty, perfumed with the smell of flowers.
Hello, can I help you?
It’s not Lorelle. It’s Jan, the other one.
Howdy, Jan. No, I was just wondering if Lorelle was about.
You just missed her by two minutes, not even. Can I give her a message?
No, it’s all right. Yes, OK. Just tell her Lee was passing and says, Buenos dias.
Okey dokey. How are you spelling that?
I prefer to walk, given the option. You miss so much in cars. There is a weeping willow by the postbox grown over the fence, a group of starlings circling over the old schoolhouse. I see the milk float parked. I often see the milkman. We had a conversation about asteroids once. I do not know his name, even though we discussed the universe at length. Change is in the air. I can feel it in my bones.
Irene’s got the fan heater on in the office.
Hello, Lee. What have you done with the sunshine?
I find Derek sitting on a Winchester Mid Oak Veneer eating a bacon butty.
Get that kettle on, son.
I find Mikey to ask if he wants a brew. He is still sitting in the hearse in his anorak, reading the Sun.
Young man, you’re a star, he says.
I take Howard his usual coffee, one sugar, two biscuits. He is checking his tie in the mirror. He sees me in the mirror. Teethfest.
Hello there, Lee. All right? Have you cut your hair? You look different.