Whispers Through a Megaphone (25 page)

I
t was a humid day in July and Frances Delaney was out shopping for milk, onions and liver.

In the supermarket, she was served by a girl who looked too young to be working on a weekday.

“Shouldn’t you be at school?” she said.

“I left school three years ago,” the girl said, eyeing Frances’s tweed jacket and black bowler hat. “Did you find everything you need today?”

“I beg your pardon?”

The girl’s face reddened. “Did you find everything you need?”

“What kind of question is that?”

“It’s what we’re told to say.”

“Well don’t. You have no
idea
what I need.”

“Screw you.”

“Excuse me?” said Frances, but she liked the girl better now. She let her pack the shopping into a bag without saying anything more.

Outside, she walked along the high street, sat on a bench opposite the church and pulled a can of Coke from Miriam’s
old rucksack. It hissed and she drank and it tasted the same as everything else she put in her mouth these days. Hearing footsteps behind her, she turned her head and saw a skinny man. He had grey slicked-back hair and was wearing a black suit, white shirt and black tie. She squinted as he came closer.

“My God.”

He sat down beside her. “My wife will be here in a minute,” he said.

What kind of greeting is that after twenty-two years?

“What are you doing here?”

“We’re back for a funeral.”

“Who died?”

“You won’t know him.”

“I might.”

“You don’t know anyone, Frances.”

“I knew you didn’t I? Before you
left
me.”

“Your daughter gave us no choice. Stupid girl.”

His mouth was full of
we
and
us
. Revolting.

“Don’t talk about Miriam like that,” said Frances.

A pompous laugh, full of spit. “Did you just
defend
Miriam?”

“What’s it to you?”

A woman walked past. It was Mrs Thomas from the chemist, a dainty woman with a thuggish face. (Heaven help those who asked why their prescription was taking so long.)

“Blimey, she hasn’t got any prettier,” the headmaster said.

“Who was she?”

“See, you don’t know anyone,” he said, rolling his bloodshot eyes. “Anyway, since when did
you
care about Miriam?”

“What?”

“You never loved that girl.” He took the can of Coke from Frances’s hands, wiped it with his sleeve and drank for a long time. “She would’ve been better off with me.”

“You?”

“Yes,
me
.”

“She hated you.”

“I don’t think so,” he said, staring ahead at the church.

“You wound her up.”

“Oh I did much more than that.”

She looked him in the eye, but was distracted by the amount of hair coming out of his nose. That’s what the years had brought him: less hair where he wanted it, more where he didn’t. “What?” she said.

He put his hand on her thigh. “Don’t pretend you didn’t know.”

“You wound her up, that’s all. You
taunted
her.”

He moved closer, whispered something into her ear: “I went into her room while you were sleeping.”

His mouth just there, his breath inside her, she would have been lying if she said it was unpleasant. He was putting something into her, it didn’t matter what.

Until it did.

Words
. Evil. Despicable.

“What?” she said, wanting him to stop and go on but mainly to stop.

“Night after night,” he whispered.

“No you didn’t. I would’ve heard.”

He pulled his face away and spoke in his usual voice. “You slept like an old pig, snorting in the dark. You wouldn’t have known if the house was on fire.”

Where was this hatred coming from? After all these years, surely he could manage some pleasantries? Like: Hello, Frances, how lovely to find you here on this park bench. Like: I can’t believe how fast time goes, has it really been twenty-two years? How are you keeping? How has life treated you? Like: It really is lovely to see you.

But no. Not even a hello. He had appeared from nowhere and
accosted
her. That was the word, and there was another word too:
ambushed
. He wasn’t the only one with words to push inside someone else.

“What’s happened to you?” she said. “You’re not the same man. You never would’ve ambushed me like this before.”

He lit a cigarette. “Miriam loved my little visits,” he said, sucking smoke into his mouth.

Frances could hear traffic, spiders creeping across the ground, twigs falling from trees, fish swimming in the sea. She could hear the grunts of arm-wrestling boys, clouds drifting through the sky. Noise, coming from everywhere. Nothing but noise, inside and out. The amplified echoes of the world, turned up to full volume.

“But—” she said.

“But
what
?”

She felt a pain in her stomach. I know this pain, she thought. I will
never
forget this pain. I’m having contractions. Here and now on this damp wooden bench.
Contractions
.

She wanted to push. Push this baby out. Get it out of me, I can’t do this, I’m not made for this, why can’t people see? I’m not good enough. I’ll put it in a blanket and leave it outside the hospital.
It it it
. Get it out out out.

“Oh for God’s sake,” the headmaster said. Typical Frances. Squirming around. Hamming it up. Look at her, bent double, having some kind of
fit
, making a show of herself.

She moaned, leant forward. The pain was unbearable. She tightened her muscles, closed her eyes. Contractions on top of noise on top of contractions on top of noise.

“I promised to keep her safe,” she said.

“Safe?” he said, standing up. He kicked her rucksack, knocked it onto its side. “You’re joking aren’t you? You wouldn’t know how to make
anyone
feel safe.”

She opened her eyes and watched him walk towards the churchyard. He looked like a matchstick man in a Lowry painting, monochrome and creaky.

“Miriam,” she said. It was the last word to come from her mouth.

She staggered to her feet, picked up her bag, made her way to the bus stop. Her stomach still hurt, there were spasms inside her, she wanted to
push
. The bus stopped and its doors opened. She dropped change into a tray without saying where she was going. The driver looked at all the coins. You want an all day ticket? he said. Her body landed fast and heavy on the first empty seat she could find.

She had seen it on the news, what happened to a person who jumped from that spot. Or what
didn’t
happen. They didn’t come back.

Smell that? Almost makes you want to live, doesn’t it?

Frances breathed deep until her lungs were full of the ocean.

She stood there for a while, just watching, breathing in and out, listening to the waves.

This is a nice way to spend your last half an hour, she thought. Then the contractions started again.

She took five steps backwards. Stopped. Waited.

Then she ran and she jumped and it was over.

On the surface of the sea, a black bowler hat.

On the floor, at the cliff’s edge, Miriam’s old rucksack. Inside it they found a purse, two onions, a pint of milk, a pig’s liver.

He thought it would feel good, dangling a lie in front of Frances Delaney, like twisting the tail of a live rat through her hair and watching what it did.

But it didn’t feel good.

It felt like betraying the one person he didn’t want to betray: Miriam Delaney. “I loved that girl like she was my own daughter,” he once said to his wife. “That freaky whispering girl?” she said. “You
disgust
me.”

As he entered the church, he thought about turning around. Frances couldn’t have gone far. He would take it back, say I’m sorry, I was lying, I
did
go into her room but only to talk. I’ve been so angry, Frances. You’d never believe how angry I have been.

But he didn’t turn around. His wife was here now. They were sitting at their friend’s funeral, dusted with death. Streaming eyes, sore throats, nothing in the air but death. He listened to the vicar, reducing a stranger’s life to a litany of headlines. Dear friend, he thought. You are diminished in death and I am diminished in life.

As he watched the coffin being lowered into the ground, he glanced at the empty bench. The desire to find Frances had gone. She didn’t seem important any more.

I
t is autumn. Summer has passed, that Russian-doll summer when every encounter opened to reveal a smaller version of itself, connected but separate, and if you put the moments together all you were left with was a wooden doll.

“I carved this for you,” Eric said, handing Miriam a parcel.

“Really?”

“Open it.”

Wrapped in brown paper, a small wooden Miriam.

“Is this me?” she said, holding it up.

“I hope you don’t think it’s silly.”

Miriam looked at herself in miniature.

“I was thinking about how you don’t always see yourself,” he said. “You don’t see yourself as a real person. So if you put this somewhere in your house, you can’t forget that you exist and we can see you.”

This morning, the real Miriam pats the wooden Miriam on the head as she passes by. She feeds the cat, takes a shower, dresses in baggy jeans and a sweatshirt. It’s time for work.

Imagine a woman, digging in the dirt. Imagine a man, digging beside her. They are Swoon & Delaney Garden Services, with an old Land Rover and a frenetic black spaniel.

While she is looking for her boots, Miriam hears the letterbox rattle. Something has landed on the mat. Another postcard. On the front, a koala wearing an orange Aran jumper. On the back, in big blue writing:

She pins it to the noticeboard, next to the postcard of a woman holding a megaphone and the drawing of a spaceship.

Working side by side in the misty rain, they trim dead leaves and branches, pull roots from the soil. Harvey joins in with the digging, sending dirt into the air, then rushes off to bark at a pigeon.

“Harvey, come here,” Ralph says. He rubs the dog’s head.

He asks Miriam what she’s doing this evening. She says she’s going to Fenella’s to watch the second series of
The Bridge
. Before the box set, they will be eating what Fenella refers to as her signature dish: Fenella paella.

“Sounds like a nice evening,” he says.

“What about you?”

He grimaces. “Sadie’s coming round to collect more books.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

“It isn’t.”

“No, it isn’t.”

Miriam pushes her hands deep into the soil. Unlike Ralph, she doesn’t wear gloves while she works. She wants proof under her fingernails—proof that she was out here, having a normal kind of day like a normal kind of person. Soon, someone will uncover the truth. “That Miriam’s a fake,” they will say. “She’s not one of us.” But for now there is dirt and fresh air and days that involve getting in a car and going somewhere.

When they stop for lunch, she tells Ralph how she is expecting someone to tap her on the shoulder.

He stops eating his ham sandwich. “Imposter syndrome,” he says.

“Pardon?”

“It’s when people feel like frauds or fakes, waiting to be found out.” Then he says something about the importance of internalizing good experiences and how her brain is plastic. “You can do this,” he says.

He doesn’t mean the design and upkeep of this garden. He means life. The be-all and end-all. The being in it without ending it. At least she
thinks
this is what he means.

“What do you mean?” she says.

“You know what I mean.” He pours her a cup of tea from his Thermos and offers her a Viennese whirl. “So, what about Boo?” he says.

“What about him?”

“Are you going out with him again?”

“Maybe.”

He rolls his eyes. “Miriam,” he says, mock stern.

“Shall I tell you what I’ve learnt about love?” she says.

“Go on then.”

“It’s one part illusion, two parts anxiety—a magic trick and
a personality disorder, rolled into one. You’ve taught me that and I’m grateful.”

“That’s
not
what love is.”

“No?”

“Don’t use me as an example. I made the classic mistake of marrying someone who didn’t love me.”

“What did that feel like?”

“Sorry?”

“I’d like to make sure I never do it,” she says.

He thinks for a moment. “You know when you walk into a room to get something, and by the time you arrive you’ve forgotten what you were looking for?”

“Yes.”

“Well it feels a bit like that.”

They drink tea. They eat Viennese whirls.

Ralph reaches into his bag, pulls out an edible green toothbrush and holds it in front of Harvey’s nose. The spaniel runs off to eat in the sun, and a few minutes later he is rolling on his back, rolling on the damp grass, all four legs in the air. He releases one high-pitched bark, a bark of silliness and joy.

They work quietly for a while, alone with their own thoughts.

Ralph is still losing what he has lost.
What has gone can’t really be gone
.

Miriam is still finding what she has found.
What is here can’t really be here
.

Two sides of the same coin, spinning between them.

“A penny for them,” he says.

She stands up straight, stretches her back. “I was thinking about Fenella,” she says. “One minute she’s jogging, then she’s making a lamp shade from a pair of old knickers. Some people just spring from one thing to the next so easily don’t they?”

Ralph smiles. “Really? Old knickers? You’ll have to introduce me to this Fenella of yours. She sounds dynamic.”

“You don’t like dynamic. It threatens you.”

He laughs in the way you laugh when something is painfully true and deeply surprising.

“And she’s not actually
mine
,” she says.

“Whatever,” he says.

“Did I tell you that she once stopped a man from jumping off a building by singing a Dolly Parton song?”

“Which song?”

“‘Here You Come Again’.”

He nods. “That would do it for me,” he says.

“Seriously?
That
would tell you life was worth living?”

“For a while,” he says, and begins to sing. His Dolly Parton impression excites the dog, which runs in manic circles around their legs. “Never underestimate the mysterious power of country music, Miriam.”

She shakes her head. “I’m so baffled by other people,” she says.

He pushes a spade into the ground with his foot.

She marks out an area that will be a vegetable patch.

The dog falls asleep under a tree, dreaming wild dreams that make his body shake.

In the distance, all the time—even when Miriam whispers a cautious
maybe
; even when Ralph digs deep while humming the tune to ‘Jolene’; even on days full of dirt, fresh air, sunshine and misty rain—something flickers at the edge of things. It dances on the outskirts, a mover and groover, a shapeshifter on the fringes of every life.

Miriam can see it, even when she can’t. She can feel it, even on days like this.

Negative space. The presence of absence. The constant spectacle of what isn’t there.