Chapter TWENTY-SIX
I DIDN’T CRY WHILE I TRUDGED THE SIX MILES FROM LISTON TO MIDHAM. I didn’t shed a single tear. There was no reason to cry, because I was a shell holding only humiliation. I had nothing now. No friends and no protection. The worst thing I could imagine had happened, and all I could do was put one foot in front of the other and make my way home.
By the time I arrived at the top of our driveway, the weather had become bleaker. A cold wind had risen to make the branches of the trees by our house sweep and thrash. As I traipsed up the driveway, a scrap of pink fabric danced through the air toward me.
“Grab it, Jesse!” my mother yelled, careening down the path. “Grab it—that’s one of the wedding serviettes!”
I halted to watch it flutter like a pink butterfly, sail upward, dip so that it almost brushed my head, then soar up and away again.
“I told you to grab it!” she screamed, crashing into me so that I staggered back. “What the hell is wrong with you?” Her astoundingly orange face leaned into mine. I caught the scent of her breath, warm and yeasty, before she pulled away. Then she continued onward, chasing the serviette as it swooped low, then was pulled high into the air yet again.
For some reason, she was wearing her new yellow wedding outfit, apparently not quite finished, as the hem was frayed and slightly jagged, and one of the sleeves of her bolero jacket hung loose. Since I had seen her earlier that morning, she had dyed her hair, transforming herself into a tufty-headed platinum blonde. She was bare-legged in her slippers and, because she hadn’t put any Tanfastic on her legs they were a ghostly white in contrast to her arms and face.
As I watched her, I felt strangely mesmerized, taking in the stark contrast of all that color—the vivid pink, the blazing yellow, the streaky orange flesh—against the inky sky. I was filled with complete indifference, as if I were watching something on the television, as if this were not my life. I simply no longer had it in me to care about anything—not my mother or this stupid wedding, not even Amanda, and certainly not myself.
My mother ran down the driveway, the serviette just out of her grasp until, as if the wind had finally became bored with teasing her, it tugged the little flag of fabric far upward and swept it away into the black branches of one of the dead elm trees that stood on the other side of the road. There it caught, a beautiful pink pennant, flapping far beyond my mother’s reach.
I SPENT THAT afternoon in bed. All about me I could hear the clatter of my mother’s frantic preparations, and the wind as it shuddered against my window. Sometime in the early afternoon, I heard the familiar growl of the Tuggles delivery van as it entered the driveway and then Mabel’s and Frank’s voices in the hall. Later still, I heard Ted thump about in the bathroom and stomp down the stairs. Then the boom and bellow of male voices until I heard the front door bang, Frank’s and Ted’s laughter as they made their way down the path, the cough of the van’s engine as it started and then chugged off. A little later, I heard my father’s car arrive and then more voices—my mother’s shrill, Mabel’s loud and steady, my father’s a burdened distant drone.
Throughout this, I lay, eyes closed, unmoving. It was nice to be there, I found, weighted down by blankets, swaddled in my body’s warmth. With no one to taunt me, no faces grinning with hungry accusation, I felt safe, half buried, hidden from the dangers of the world. It was comforting, too, to hear the voices, the sounds of life going on without me, knowing that, while I lay there, the world continued on. I wondered now if this was how my mother had felt during all her hibernations in the daytime dusk of her curtained bedroom. If, held in place by the bedclothes, she’d felt protected, soothed by the slow rhythm of her own breathing and the dark walls that kept the passing time at bay. As I listened to her rampaging about the house below me, I realized that her frenzied projects were just another means of giving herself shelter, another barrier to stave off what she feared. I also understood what drove her to it—it was the harshness and unpredictability of everything. While landscaping a garden or planning a wedding were infinitely manageable, life itself was a chaos we could not control.
I had thought it required only willpower. But, in the same way that I knew my father could not will my mother to normality, I knew now that I could not will the same for myself. I had wanted, more than anything, to fit in with Tracey and the Debbies, to shed and leave behind my difference in the same way that a hermit crab might crawl into another shell. But my difference was a thing I held inside me, and I could not simply discard it. I was flawed and terrible and, again, everyone knew it. This time, though, I could not blame my mother. The only person I could blame was me.
“JESSE!” IT WAS EARLY evening and my bedroom door flew open. “Jesse! For God’s sake, what the hell are you doing in bed?” I peered over the top of my blankets to see my mother standing, hands on hips, in the doorway. She was wearing a pair of her paint-spattered overalls, with a headscarf over her hair.
“Leave me alone, I don’t feel very well,” I said, heaving the bedclothes over my head and flopping onto my side.
“Rubbish!” I heard her walk across the room. “Don’t think I’m falling for that, young lady. What, you think you can get out of being a bridesmaid by pretending to be poorly? I wasn’t born yesterday, you know.”
“I don’t feel very well,” I repeated, my words dull and hot and muffled against the blankets.
“Don’t be so bloody daft. Me and Mabel and your father are working ourselves to the bone for this wedding. It’s bad enough that Ted and Frank have cleared off, never mind you lolling around in bed. We could use your help, young lady. Now come on, get yourself up.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Hah! We’ll see about that,” she said, yanking the bedclothes off me. “Leave me alone,” I said, cradling my head and drawing my knees to my chest.
“Oh, I don’t think so,” she said, grabbing my arm.
“Leave me alone.” My voice was distant, defeated, as I tried to pull away from her grasp.
My mother tightened her grip so that her nails pressed into my flesh. “Look!” she yelled. “If you don’t get yourself out of bed bloody sharpish, I’ll get your father up here to tan your backside.”
“I don’t care,” I said, still trying to twist away. But my mother had grown stronger from all her home repairs and gardening; it was impossible for me to shake free.
“Oh, you will bloody care,” she said, tugging me upward. “Or I’ll slap you myself.” She shook my arm so that I flopped about like something without substance.
“All right, all right,” I said. She loosened her grip, and I was finally able to pull away.
She folded her arms across her chest. “Come on, then.”
“I’m not going to get dressed in front of you,” I declared. “I’m not a child anymore, you know.”
“Well, you’re not too old to get a damn good hiding. So don’t you forget that!” She stalked to the door, but turned around before she left.
“Ten minutes and I want you downstairs,” she said, stabbing a finger in my direction. “Otherwise, I’ll be back.”
I HAD HEARD THE wind while I was in my bedroom, and I knew it was loud, but when I entered the kitchen I realized that it was far stronger than I’d thought. Through the window, I could see the big marquee tent moving like something breathing, its sides billowing out, drawing inward, then bulging out again. The ropes that attached it to the stakes were pulled taut, as if in a tug-of-war with the wind. The plants my mother had put out in the garden lurched, like frenzied dancers, the colorful heads of all the pansies dipping toward the ground and then, hurled upward by a sudden gust, flapping down again. The bare branches of the elms slashed the air like whips.
“There’s going to be a storm,” I said, plunking myself down at the kitchen table across from my mother. She was sitting, pen in hand, frowning over the seating plan for the wedding reception. She’d drawn it out on the back of a length of wallpaper. There were teacups on either side holding the paper down.
“No, there isn’t.” She looked up at me, irate.
“Yes, there is.” I leaned across the table and scowled at her. I hated her for bullying me out of bed and forcing me into the blaze of daylight. If she was going to pull me from my little envelope of safety, I wanted to tear her out of the one she’d constructed for herself.
“I don’t know, Ev,” Mabel said. She stood over a couple of pans on the cooker, one of them sizzling and spitting. The smell of frying sausages filled the room. “Maybe Jesse’s right.” She waved a spatula toward the window. “Them’s real dark clouds out there. I wouldn’t be surprised if we’re in for some rain. I watched the weather forecast on the telly a couple of days ago, and it said it was going to be quite nice, but … Well, maybe we should listen to the forecast now.”
“There’s no use in listening to them,” my mother snapped. “What do they know? They’re always getting it wrong. Trust me, Mabel,” she said, vehemently scribbling across her seating map, “it’s only a bit of unsettled weather. By tomorrow the sun will come out and everything will be fine.”
I laughed, but my mother ignored me and continued her writing. I felt an itching urge to snatch the pen from her grasp.
“I just wish Frank and Ted were back,” Mabel said. “Frank said they were only going to run a couple of errands. I hope nothing’s happened. There’s too many bleeming accidents on all these little country roads.” She pressed her lips into a firm, thin line and turned back to the cooker, where she began to prod agitatedly at the contents of the pans.
Just then I caught some movement in the window and I looked over to see my father staggering across the garden, a wavering stack of plates in his arms. The strands of hair he usually combed over his bald patch were being blown into his eyes, and the oversized parka he wore flapped about him like something feral. The way he leaned and battled the gusts seemed almost comical; it made me think of a chalky-faced mime artist pretending to walk into the wind.
“It is really windy out there,” I said, enunciating each of my words.
“It’s just a strong breeze, that’s all,” my mother countered, crossing out a name and writing in another one in its place. As soon as she’d spoken, we heard the sound of something loud and metallic clatter away from the house.
“Ooh, heck,” Mabel said, jumping at the noise and dropping her spatula on the floor.
“It’s not a bloody breeze,” I said, enraged now at my mother’s capacity for self-delusion. “It’s blowing a bloody gale.”
“You watch your language, young lady!” my mother yelled, rising out of her chair and lifting her hand high in the air, as if she were about to strike me.
“Go on,” I said, meeting her eyes and rising with her. “Go on, just hit me.” I pushed my face across the table and lifted my cheek toward her palm. More than anything, I wanted her to do it. I wanted her to hit me hard, again and again and again. I wanted to feel her stinging blows fall upon me, knowing the pain would erase the numbing distance I felt from my body, knowing it was exactly what I deserved.
“Now, now, you two,” Mabel said, sweeping across the kitchen to stand between us. “Come on, I don’t want you to have a fight.” She’d retrieved her spatula from the floor and now thrust it between us. She placed a hand on my mother’s shoulder. My mother continued to glare at me, but she let Mabel push her down into her chair. “I’m feeling nervous enough,” Mabel continued. “All this nasty weather and Frank not back. The last thing I need is you two going at each other. Tomorrow is supposed to be my big day, you know.”
“Oh, don’t you worry, Mabel,” my mother said, standing up suddenly and sending her chair crashing to the floor. “This,” she declared, swinging her arm in a wide arc around the kitchen, “is going to be the wedding to beat them all.” Then, leaving the chair there on the floor, she stomped across the room. “I’m off to see how Mike’s getting on putting out the place settings. He doesn’t know his bloody arse from his elbow, never mind where to put the salad forks.” When she reached the door, she swung around to look at me. “For God’s sake, Jesse, make yourself useful. Finish off the cooking for your poor auntie Mabel and make us all a pot of tea.” Then she flounced into the hallway and slammed the door behind her. Mabel flinched and dropped the spatula again.
The judder of the slamming door had sent a bolt of energy through me. Like the slap that I had longed for my mother to deliver, it jarred me into feeling. Tears rose, like boiling liquid, into my eyes and spilled down my face.
“Are you all right, Jesse?” Mabel asked. She sat down in the chair next to me.
I said nothing. My cheeks were wet, scalded with sudden emotion. “Oh, I’m sorry, love,” she said, putting her arm around my shoulder and pulling me to her. “I know your mother can try the patience of a saint sometimes. She’s just about driving me mad.” She placed her hand on my face and brushed away one of my tears. “I don’t know what on earth I was thinking when I said she could do this bleeming wedding. I suppose I was just trying to humor her, keep her happy. But now …” She looked out the window again.
Mabel’s hand on my cheek was warm, her fingers soft. The heat of her skin made me want to press myself closer to her, into the welcoming give of her body, the familiar comfort of her smells. I remembered all the times I had found solace there, and I yearned for that solace again. But it was too late for that now. There was no sanctuary for me with Mabel now that she was about to marry Frank.
“Those sausages are going to burn,” I said, shaking Mabel’s arm from my shoulder and rising from my chair. I gulped back my tears and ran my sleeve across my eyes. Then I turned off the gas under the sausages, picked up the kettle, and walked over to the tap. After I had filled it and put it on the cooker, I turned on the radio just as the shipping forecast was being read.
“There are warnings of severe gales in all areas except Irish Sea and Shannon,” the announcer said.
Mabel looked nervous as she picked up her cigarettes from the table.
“Viking, North Utsire, South Utsire,” the announcer continued, “Northeast severe gale nine to storm ten. Very rough. Rain. Poor.”
The shipping forecast had always been almost indecipherable to me, but I knew what severe gale warnings were. I wondered how far we were from all those oddly named places.
“Forties, Cromarty, Forth, Tyne, Dogger, Northeast storm ten to violent storm eleven. Very rough. Rain. Poor. Fisher, German Bight, Humber, Northeast ten to violent storm eleven …”
Without thinking, I turned off the radio.
“Humber,” Mabel repeated. “Ooh, heck. We’re right near the bleeming Humber. Violent storm eleven,” she said, staring out the window at the flapping, billowing tent. “I don’t think that sounds very promising.”
THE RAIN BEGAN a little after eight o’clock. When the first drops streaked the windows, my mother announced that it was just a shower, the sort we often got at this time of year. Even when it started to pour, the rain driven by the raging wind to batter the windows and drum audibly against the walls, she continued to prance about the house, issuing orders to my father, making encouraging comments to Mabel, and occasionally glowering at me. In fact, the harder the rain fell, the higher her energy seemed to rise, so that she ran from room to room, her voice shrill, her eyes huge and wild. While the storm outside was a shrieking, howling monster, we had a hurricane indoors.
“I should have seen this coming,” Mabel said. She was sitting at the kitchen table, smoking. It had been raining for well over an hour. “Should have known it would end in disaster. I mean, let’s face it, anything that our Evelyn’s involved in usually does. I know she can’t control the weather, but a wedding, in a tent, in her bleeming back garden—I must have been bloody mad.” She crushed the butt of her cigarette in the overflowing ashtray and took another one out of the packet. “And I’m ever so worried about Frank and Ted. They were supposed to be back hours ago.”
As Mabel spoke, a huge crack sounded from just beyond the window. We both looked out, but it was almost dark now and all we could see was our own frowning reflections in the glass. We heard something outside thrashing about.
“It’s the tent,” I said. “One of the stakes must have come out.”
We ran into the hallway and found my father sitting, head in hands, on the stairs. “Come on, Mike,” Mabel said, pulling him up by the arm. “No time for moping, we’ve got to get outside.”
“What’s wrong?” It was my mother. She’d changed into her wedding outfit again. This time, though, it was finished and she’d completed the ensemble with a pair of yellow tights and yellow high-heeled shoes. Her brittle bleached hair sat on her head, like little clumps of white moss. “What’s going on?” she demanded.
“It’s that tent, that’s what, Evelyn,” Mabel said as she pulled her coat down from the hanger in the hall. “The bleeming thing is blowing away.” I grabbed my anorak and shoved my arms into the sleeves. Beside me, my father grappled with his parka.
“Everything is going to be fine,” my mother said, as if we were being ridiculous, as if we were the panicking passengers and she was the captain who was steering us competently through a couple of choppy waves.
It was her dismissive tone that infuriated me, sparking an anger that turned, in a single second, into a firestorm. And with it came a realization: Of everyone I had struck out at in the past couple of days—Stan, Greg, Tracey, Malcolm—there was no one that I wanted to hurt more than my mother.
“Nothing is going to be fine!” I yelled. “Nothing! The weather, the tent, the whole bloody wedding—it’s all a disaster. All of it!”
“Now, now, Jesse,” my father said, putting a hand on my shoulder. “No need for that. No need to upset your mum.”
I batted him away. “No need to upset her?” My voice held a howl far stronger than the wind’s. “No need to upset her?” I repeated. “What about me?” I yelled. “Why doesn’t anyone care about upsetting me?” For a moment I stared at my father, my eyes an outraged accusation. He returned my look, blinking, as if a blinding light had been directed into his eyes. I dared him to speak, but he said nothing, and then I spun around to face my mother. “You!” I shouted, fueled by the delicious energy that coursed through me. “You are the biggest disaster of all.”
I took a couple of steps toward her, standing so close now that I could see the pale area of her pores where the Tanfastic hadn’t penetrated, a stripe of dark hair next to her ear where she’d failed to get the bleach all the way to the roots. I stood so close that our bodies were touching. Her breasts, unyielding in the pointy bra she wore under her yellow dress, pressed against my barely curved chest.
“You want to know a secret, Mum?” I asked, lowering my voice so it was just above a whisper, so that, against the backdrop of yowling wind, she’d be the only one to hear. My mother frowned, her eyes vague and distant, as she moved her head up and down in a jerky little nod. I leaned closer to her and spoke into her ear. “When they took you out of the house on that stretcher,” I said, “I wished that you’d really killed yourself.” I pushed out the words with a soft viciousness, enjoying the way they rolled, like the lines of a song, so easily off my tongue. “I still wish it now,” I said.
It was true, it was there inside me. It was complete and utter certainty. I wished they’d taken her off in that ambulance and never brought her back. Or, more accurately, I wished that Mrs. Brockett had never found her, that she’d been left to bleed slowly into the bath, and that I’d discovered her there when I came home from school, drained of life, made soft and wrinkled by the bloody water.
I pulled away slightly to look into her face, exhilarated. And then I let the words out slowly. “It would make me really happy if you were dead.”
For a moment, my mother’s expression flared with indignation. She took a couple of steps back, balled her hands into fists, and lifted them to her chest, like a boxer preparing to deliver a blow. But, in the next moment, she dropped them again, so that her arms flopped loose at her sides and her face fell slack. Then she staggered backward a few steps on her teetering heels before turning away from me to walk slowly down the hall.
WE DID OUR BEST to rescue the tent. Mabel, my father, and I battling the gale to reach the back garden, then struggling across the waterlogged lawn as the rain hit our faces like needles and the gale howled like something alive. But the huge marquee, broken free from several of its stakes now, reared and bucked like a liberated wild animal; it was like trying to pin a roaring elephant down. We could hardly hear one another; our voices were blown from us and drowned.
“It’s no good!” Mabel yelled, a few inches away from me, as the rope she’d been able to grab jerked away from her hand.
“I know!” I yelled back. Then both of us fought our way over to my father, who was clinging to the front flap of the tent and looked as if he might be tugged away and into the air at any moment.
“Come on, Mike!” Mabel shouted, pulling at him so that he loosened his grip and the fabric flew upward. “The bloody wedding’s off!”
We’d been working in the pale yellow light that shone from the windows of the house. As I turned and began making my way back to the house, I saw my mother watching us from the kitchen window. The next moment, all the lights went out and I was plunged into darkness.
I stood there, wavering in the wind, as I tried to get used to the dark. But the seconds went by, and in the stinging rain I could make out nothing but shadow outlines. The entire world seemed to have turned into looming silhouettes. From somewhere, rippling on the wind, I heard Mabel’s and my father’s voices. They were both calling out my name. I realized that I didn’t want to go to them, that I wanted to stay there, shivering and sodden, alone. I imagined the water seeping ever deeper into me, so that it would wash me clean, all the way down to my bones.
“Jesse!” It was my father. He had stumbled into me.
“Is that Jesse?” Mabel yelled. She was holding on to my father.
They both grabbed me and tried to pull me onward. I resisted.
“For God’s sake, Jesse!” Mabel cried. “We need to get inside!”
I let her tug me forward, joining her and my father to struggle toward the house.
It took us a long time to find our way to the door. But finally we got there, and as soon as my father turned the door handle the wind caught the door and flung it wide, into the hall. The three of us stumbled inside, breathing hard, and then turned round to grapple with the door, shoving against it until we were finally able to close it with an enormous, resounding slam. We fell against it, panting and dripping, our backs resting on the wood. It was then that I saw a pale flickering light coming from the kitchen, and a moment later that I heard the heavy thuds, the sound of metal striking something hollow and dull. The noise reverberated through the house half a dozen times, followed by the sound of wood splitting, a bright and aching yawn.
“What the bloody hell …?” my father said, a dark shadow beside me. He pushed himself off and began walking down the hall. Mabel stayed behind, still panting, apparently winded, while I followed, pressing my palm against the cold, flat surface of the wall as I tried to guide myself through the darkness. As the banging continued, I felt it shudder through the wall and into my hand. It was as if the entire house were being beaten in a series of violent, body-crushing blows.
When my father reached the living-room doorway, I heard him knock into something, let out a little bark of pain, then stumble onward again. When I reached the obstacle he had encountered, I realized it was the living-room door, hanging half off its hinges, leaning into the hall. I let out a sharp gasp and continued on after my father. He halted a few seconds later outside the kitchen, and I joined him there to peer into the room.
It was the candle I noticed first, upright in a saucer in the middle of the table. Its flame flickering slightly, it gave out a pale illumination that made the room all soft-edged shadows and blocks of darkness against the shuddering light. Everything else was indistinct except my mother, her jaw clenched and her eyes gleaming buttons of conviction as she swung her sledgehammer up, grunted, and then smashed it against the kitchen wall.
“Jesus Christ almighty!” my father whispered, his words coming out like the slow hiss of a leaking tire. Then the hammer hit the wall with an enormous thump, and there was the sound of plaster tumbling in fragments; it made me think of teeth falling from a cartoon character’s mouth.
As we stood in the kitchen doorway I turned to look at my father, but all I could make out were the hollows of his eyes. Then he took a breath and stepped past me, into the kitchen. “Evelyn,” he said as she swung the hammer over her shoulder. “Evelyn,” he repeated, this time louder as he tripped on something. In the tangle of his feet I thought I made out the outline of a broken chair. “Stop!” he shouted as my mother, a flat silhouette, began to lift the hammer above her. “Don’t you think you’ve done enough damage?” His voice was loud, but pleading, like a child’s.
She turned to him. I saw her arms twitch slightly, as if she were about to swing the hammer at him. Then she let it go so that it dropped behind her and fell to the floor.