Dear Nobody (3 page)

I carried the letter round in my pocket for a few days and in the end Helen posted it for me. After a couple of weeks I stopped looking out for a reply. I was nothing to my mother, after all. I was a speck of dust, and I had blown away. But when her letter came after nearly a month all I could think about was showing it to Helen. We were going out together that evening, out to the moors in the dark, and then for a drink. My letter was a warm secret in my pocket, waiting to be shared.

It was the night of the total eclipse of the moon, which had been promised for 6.52. It was all a great disappointment, the whole thing. The sky was completely covered in cloud that night, it was drizzling, and Helen was in a rotten mood.

We had taken a bus out to Fox House so we could see the eclipse away from the orange glare of the city lights. We walked up the track towards the moors, below Stanage Edge. In the darkness sheep rustled through the sodden ferns.

‘I can't tell which direction we're supposed to be looking in, even,' moaned Helen.

‘Try up.' I put my arm round her. ‘A quarter of a million miles up.' She tensed away from me. It's not like her to be moody.

‘I'm cold and I'm fed up and I've missed my tea for this.'

‘It's supposed to look like a ball of blood,' I told her. ‘That would be something to see, wouldn't it?'

‘Yuk,' she said, and started to walk down the track, which was so rough and stony that she kept losing her footing. I could hear her grumbling away to herself. ‘Are you staying out here all night?' she called.

I caught up with her and held her hand in my pocket, snug as a glove. ‘Imagine seeing the dawn from up here! Why don't we do that one night?' I felt warm at the thought of it. She was scuttling along with her head down and I stepped right in front of her so she had to stop close up to me. ‘We could bring a tent, Helen, and we could watch the sun go down, and see the moon and stars coming out. And the next day we'd watch the dawn… Imagine watching it spreading pink and golden across the sky…'

‘And then we'd stagger into school for registration and tell my mum that we'd missed die last bus home.'

‘We could come in June. We could just sleep out in the heather – we wouldn't need a tent, then. There'd just be us…'

‘And a few sheep nibbling at us.'

‘We could come on the longest day. There's a cave along the edge – we could sleep in there.'

‘Meanwhile, let's go home and have some beans.' Helen pushed past me. ‘I'm famished, Chris. Actually, I feel sick, I'm so hungry.'

When we were on the bus I showed her the letter. I'd been waiting for the right moment to share it with her, but I gave up on that. I kept looking at her, waiting for her to show some of the excitement I'd felt when I found the letter on the hall floor that morning. I'd known who it was from even before I looked at the post mark. I think I even recognized her writing, which is the sort that looks really artistic from a distance and is just a scrawl of shapes when you get close to. It had arrived just as I was setting off for school, and I'd pushed it into my pocket quickly before my dad saw it. I didn't want him to be hurt, whatever happened. I had read it at school during form period and, predictably, my mate Tom had seen me reading it and had snatched it off me. He's so infantile at times.

‘Chris's got a love-letter,' Tom had said, waving it in the air.

‘Get lost,' I told him. He was trying to taunt me into having a scrap with him for it, but then I think he must have recognized something' in the way I looked at him. I really hated him at that moment. I wasn't laughing.

‘Hand it over, Wilson.'

‘Can't read it, anyway.' He just dropped it on the floor for me to pick up. It was a bit screwed up by then. So was I, to tell the truth. During the day I kept stealing furtive glances at it. She really does have terrible handwriting. I'd had to guess at most of the words. I tried to put a picture of my mother in my head, and couldn't. I remembered a blue coat with little velvet buttons, and how it smelt of cold air when she came in at night.

‘Want to see this?' I asked Helen on the bus. I handed it
casually to her as if it didn't matter really whether she did or not, and waited for her expression to change. She peered at the letter and handed it back to me.

‘Is she a doctor or something? I can't read a word of it.'

‘It says, “
Dear Christopher
,” '

‘Christopher! That's a bit formal.'

My voice was shaking a little as I read on. I cleared my throat and took a breath. ‘ “
Thank you for your letter. It was a great surprise
,” I think it says. “
I'm sorry I didn't reply straight away but I've only just returned from the Alps. I don't know if you know but I'm a professional photographer. I've been working on a commission to illustrate a mountaineering book. I climb too, of course, with Don
.” ' I put the letter down for a moment. My breath seemed to have left me. I blew out my lips and carried on. ‘ “
This has been a wonderful job for me, and is going to take up several more months, I should think. Yes, do come and see me. It would be lovely. With best wishes, Joan
.” '

‘Joan!'

‘What else could she have put? With love from Mummy?'

I gazed down at the letter again. I'd been looking forward to sharing it with Helen. All day I'd imagined showing it to her.

‘What d'you think?' I asked her.

‘I don't like her.' Helen took the letter from me again. She really was in a mood.

‘You've never even met her.'

‘I don't like the way she calls you Christopher, for a start. What's wrong with Chris? Christopher's so formal, as if she's never met you in her life. And then she goes and calls herself “Joan” at the end.'

‘I thought that was brilliant. It's a way of saying, our relationship is different now, let's be friends.'

‘Great!' said Helen. ‘I'll just disappear for eight years while you're an annoying brat and let's be friends now you've grown up.'

I stared out of the window. I could feel my neck burning red. ‘Anything else you don't like about her, while you're at it?'

‘I don't like the way she goes on and on about being a
photographer and a climber and having commissions and all that.'

‘She doesn't go on and on.'

‘She sounds like a show-off. She hasn't said a thing about you. How're your A–levels? How's your dad? How's Guy? Have you still got the cat? All she's interested in is herself.'

I took the letter back and folded it up slowly. I sat with it still in my hands, staring out at my own reflection and, beyond that, into the darkness.

‘ “My dear Lady Disdain”,' I muttered.

‘She makes a point of saying she hasn't got time to see you.'

‘All right. All right.'

‘You asked me. I'm only telling you because you asked me.'

‘I wish I hadn't shown it to you now.'

Helen touched my hand. ‘I don't think you should try to see her, Chris. You'll get hurt. I've thought that all along.'

‘That's my business, isn't it?' The bus swung suddenly into the glare of house lights. I stood up. ‘I'll come back with you.'

‘You don't have to.'

‘I'll come back with you.'

We walked along in silence, holding hands. I felt angry and upset, as if we were on the verge of a row. I wish I knew what was going on in her head. I can't fathom her sometimes. That's what's exciting about her, but she's never like this usually. It was as if all the warmth had gone out of her. We'd had our first row last month, and even that hadn't been like this. The first row had been my fault, I admit it. It had started when we had bumped into her best friend, Ruthlyn, and as she passed us she had said in a loud whisper, ‘Behave yourselves this time!'

‘What's she on about?' I had asked. Ruthlyn's the sort of girl who loves to embarrass people.

‘What d'you think?' Helen had teased.

‘You never told her!'

‘Of course I did.'

I couldn't believe that, you see. I felt betrayed. ‘Not everything?'

‘She's my best friend,' Helen had said, as if that explained everything.

‘What's that got to do with us?'

‘I bet you told your mates. All boys brag about what they do with their girl-friends.'

I'd bragged often enough about nearly doing it. As a matter of fact I'd often casually given the impression that I'd done far more than I actually had done. But I couldn't have told anyone about that special night. I imagined Tom bawling it round the classroom at school. I imagined the words he'd have used about us, reducing us both, cheapening it. There's no way I could have told him. It was too important to share.

‘Well. You're wrong. You should know me better,' I said. ‘But I never thought you'd go around telling everyone.'

‘I didn't say I'd told everyone. I said I'd told my best friend.'

I'd chewed away at all this like a dog picking at the scraps of meat on a bone, shaking it and gnawing it till it was dry and tasteless.

‘I suppose you've told your mother as well,' I'd said. We were walking apart, our hands thrust in our pockets, not looking at each other. All I wanted to do was to hold her, and I didn't know how.

‘As a matter of fact I haven't. She's not that sort of mother. I wish she was. You know how awkward she is, Chris. Ruthlyn tells her mother everything.'

‘So I suppose she knows now, too.'

‘I shouldn't think so. Of course she wouldn't. There's no need for her mother to know about you and me. Chris…' Helen had stopped and put her hand on my arm. It was like a spark of electricity. ‘Please don't be mad at me.'

‘I can be what I like.' Actually, now the danger was passed, I realized I was beginning to enjoy my anger a little bit. I wasn't quite ready to give in.

‘You don't own me, you know, just because of what we did together,' Helen had said then, so quietly that I could hardly hear her. ‘You have no rights over me at all.' And it was that quietness that had been like the touch of icy hands on me, as if she was so much older than me and knew so much more than me. I felt as if I could slip away from her, as easy as anything, and that she would let me.

And now it looked as if it was all happening again, as if we were walking on cracked ice that threatened to spin us away from each other.

‘What's up with you these days?' I asked her.

‘Nothing.'

‘I seem to be upsetting you for some reason.'

‘Nobody's upsetting me. Just go home or something, Chris. Don't keep on at me.'

I shrugged and kept on walking, holding my head up, whistling slightly as if I didn't care.

‘It's not you, Chris. I started the day wrong. I shouldn't have come out, but we said tonight, so I came.'

I wanted to comfort her, and to be comforted by her. I wish we could have started the evening again. I glanced at her and she looked away. Her face was cast bronze in the light of the street lamps, and her eyes were gleaming. We had come to her road, big houses set in their own gardens, all the windows lit, the curtains closed to. I thought of all the families carrying on their particular lives, all the houses in the world, people loving each other and hurting each other, people closing curtains round themselves.

When we came to her house she left her door open and I followed her in. The house smelt of paint. Helen slipped her shoes off and I remembered to wipe mine on the door mat. I never do that in our house.

Ted Garton, her dad, was singing loudly to himself in the kitchen. He reduced it to a self-conscious hum when we went in, as if he was practising a new tune.

‘How's the guitar coming on, Chris?' He always says that. He never really knows what to say to me. It's a good job I play guitar.

‘Not bad. Wish it was an electric, though.'

‘When are you going to join my band, eh?'

‘Can't do jazz chords. They're too hard.'

I was watching Helen as she stood by the window, lifting her hair and letting it fall again on her shoulders. I could see her reflected in the glass. She's miles away, I thought. Where are you, Nell?

Mr Garton grunted and sat down, smiling at us both, ready
to let us chat to him. We didn't talk. Helen still stood by the window lifting and lifting her hair, and I couldn't take my eyes off her. I thought my staring at her must make her turn round to me again. I felt helpless. Ted Garton cleared his throat a few times and at last seemed to realize that he was in the way. After a bit he hummed loudly again and went into the back room and began to play the piano. Soon he would be so absorbed in his playing that he wouldn't hear his wife Alice if she came in to complain, and the members of his band would have to be let in by whoever else was in the house because he'd never hear the doorbell.

‘Talk to me, Helen,' I said. I went over to her and turned her round, tilting up her chin so I could look at her. She clamped shut her eyes and set her mouth in a firm, hurt line. I wanted to kiss away the hurt, whatever it was, but she just bowed her head down again, and her mother came in. In the brief look that I caught before I let go of her I saw that she was afraid.

Helen's mother had flecks of white paint on her hair and her nose, her glasses and her hands. She was wearing an old shirt of her husband's. She sank down into a kitchen chair and slipped off her shoes. One of her stockings had a toe hole in it, and she curled her big toe under to hide it.

‘I'm tired out,' she said. ‘Put the kettle on, Helen.'

‘I'll do it,' I said. Helen stayed where she was, staring out into the night. I had to squeeze past her to get to the sink.

‘If you think there's a dinner waiting for you in the oven, you're mistaken, my girl,' said Mrs Garton. ‘It was help yourself night tonight. I've been busy.'