Dear Nobody (6 page)

One afternoon Tom told me he was going to the climbing wall at the Poly and asked me if I fancied going with him. I think even he could tell I was screwed up about something. So I said I'd go, mostly because all of a sudden it seemed like a lead-in to getting in touch with my mother again after all. It would be something to tell her, I supposed, that I'd started climbing. Maybe she'd write back to me with some tips. ‘Hold tight, Christopher!' I'd never even heard of the climbing wall before, but I reckoned it would be a bit easier than dangling off Stanage Edge in front of all the hard climbers of Derbyshire and Yorkshire. It would be a way of finding out a little bit more about Mum.

It was hot and sweaty in there. Students stood, or squatted on their haunches, in small groups, flexing out their fingers as though they were practising on invisible musical instruments. The wall rose steeply up away from us, with lots of jutting ledges lower down, though they seemed to get fewer and smaller the higher up it went. Still, it looked easy enough. I was surprised at how cautious some of the climbers were.

‘How d'you fancy it, Chris?' Tom asked me. ‘Reckon we'll get to the top?'

‘After you, Tom-boy,' I said.

He swung up the thing like a spider while I clung with sickening swirls of my stomach to the plastic rock, my fists clenched into holes, my knees dithering. Thank goodness Helen wasn't there to see me, that's all I can say.

When I next saw Helen she was on her own, walking down Ecclesall Road with her hands in her pockets, day-dreaming. She didn't even see me at first. It always gives me a kick, seeing her unexpectedly like that.

‘Helen!' I shouted. I dodged between the traffic to get to her side of the road and walked along with her.

‘I'm going to Grandad's,' she told me.

‘I'll come with you,' I said. I like her grandfather. He talks to you dead straight, and I respect that in people. Her grandmother's strange, though. I don't think I've ever managed to get a word out of her, but she's got that way of staring at you, like Helen's mother has sometimes, staring at you without saying anything, making you feel raw.

‘I think I'll go on my own,' she said.

I shrugged. ‘Okay. I don't mind.' But I did mind. I didn't want to share her with anyone just then, not even with her grandad.

‘Are you all right, though?' I asked her.

She dug her hands deep in her pockets again, and I put my arm round her, as if by keeping her warm I could do something about the dread that was spreading like a cold fog inside me.

‘I'm all right,' she said. ‘Nothing's changed, Chris.'

Dear Nobody,

Nothing has changed.

The tap still drips, night after sleepless night.

What if I'm what if what what if I'm

I had one glorious day with Chris, when we seemed to be able to make the ticking stop.

But nothing had changed. Nothing.

There's a little frightened pulse beating inside me, deep deep down.

Go away go away go away.

There's nobody there

Please don't be there.

Today when I got up I looked at myself in the mirror. My face was grey. I've got dark rings under my eyes from not sleeping. I don't know myself. Where've I gone?

I put on my favourite dress. I took it off and threw it on the floor, then I sat on my bed, gripping my hands and listening to the ticking inside me and looking across at this grey-faced creature with huge black eyes. My room's a tip. I haven't tidied it for days. My clothes are dumped round the floor like little molehills coming through the carpet. There's a mug of tea with green slime on it. I don't know myself. I feel desperately alone.

I decided to go and see Grandad. Sometimes I think he's my best friend. When I was little I used to save up all my sadnesses to tell him. He would sit me on a stool in the kitchen and crouch down in front of me and listen solemnly, all the way through. When I'd finished telling them I felt better. It was just the fact that he spared the time to listen, I think; took me seriously, even when I was only a few years old. So I felt that perhaps I could tell Grandad, and he would understand. I met Chris on the way there. He wanted to come with me, but I told him I needed to be on my own. There was no way I could have told Grandad if Chris had been there. I don't think Chris understood, but that's not my fault.

Grandad was cooking tea when I arrived – fried eggs and chips. The smell of it made me feel a bit sick. I asked him for a drink of water.

‘Are you all right, Helen?' he asked me.

I perched myself on the kitchen stool and watched him. He scooped hot oil over the eggs. He counted under his breath – three scoops for each egg. The oil sizzled round the yolks, the white thickened. He glanced up at me.

‘You look a bit off colour.'

It was my cue, and I couldn't take it. I smiled back at him over my glass, and though he kept on looking at me in that questioning way he has, that usually would make me put my arms round him and blurt everything out, he said nothing more, and neither did I. He turned back to his cooking, whistling something without a tune, and when the meal was cooked I followed him upstairs to see Nan. She stays in her room most of the time, and it's always dark and stuffy in there. I long to open the windows wide and pull back the curtains, let them flap and drift. Everything is so still, as if the clocks have all stopped a long time ago. I chatted away to her about Robbie and school, and she tucked into her food and nodded occasionally. She doesn't listen, though. I think she's locked in some kind of day-dream world that she'd rather be in. I wonder what she thinks about. I had a wild urge to say to her, ‘Nan, I think I might be pregnant,' and I think she'd have carried on nodding and sucking vinegar off her chips and not heard a word of it. Perhaps I should have said it. At least I would have given a voice to my nightmare. But I didn't. Grandad had gone out to see a film by the time. I left, and I caught a bus home, feeling wretched, feeling sick with worry. There was no one I could talk to.

So today I went to the Family Planning Clinic.

I thought I would ask Ruthlyn to go with me but in the end I didn't. I just can't bring myself to tell her. You imagine you'll tell your best friend when something like this happens to you but when it comes to it you can't.
You can't tell anyone. She guesses, I'm sure she does, but she's too discreet to ask me outright and I'm too ashamed and nervous to tell her.

So I went to the Family Planning Clinic on my own and as soon as I went into the reception room and saw all those young women sitting there, most of them smoking, most of them looking fed up and tired and lonely, I knew I couldn't stay. I felt desperate inside.

I pretended I was looking for someone who wasn't there and then I just walked out and caught the bus home.

I'm so frightened. I feel as if I'm walking through a wilderness. There's nothing to hold on to.

Go away. Please go away.

Dear Joan,

I'm just having a breather after a session at the climbing wall at the Poly. I haven't got any of the proper gear yet but when I'm a student (next year, I'm going to Newcastle University to do an English degree, did I tell you?) I think I'll be able to borrow ropes and a helmet and stuff there. You must tell me about some of your expeditions some time. I could do with some tips. It's a wonderful hobby, isn't it? I've only just started so I can't call it a hobby yet (in fact I haven't quite got to the top of the wall yet but I can see how to do it. I twisted my ankle a bit because I came down a bit fast, but when it's better I think I'll get to the top easily). I think climbing must be in my blood. Did you climb in Derbyshire when you lived down here? I expect you climb in the Lake District now, or Scotland. Maybe I'll come up there to do some when Fm more experienced and you could show me the ropes! Joking apart, I would like to pop in to see you some time.

Your son
,

Christopher

I had to wait round for hours at the climbing wall while Tom shinned up and down the thing, bragging at the top of his voice. My ankle was hurting and my fingers were sore, and
my knees felt like balloons. I wrote a letter to my mother. I felt it had just the right tone, not pretending I was an expert climber yet, but showing her that we have got something in common and opening things out for her to write back to me. I put it back in my school bag and waited for Tom to come off the wall.

‘You all right?' he shouted at me when he'd finished at last. Of course everybody had to look at me.

‘Course,' I said. ‘It was great, that. Classic.'

‘You didn't stay on long.'

‘I remembered I had an important letter to write.'

He grinned. Old Tom. He thinks he's the handsomest devil alive but you should see his teeth when he grins.

‘Coming for a jar?' he asked me.

‘Just one,' I said. ‘I've got a timed essay to do tonight.'

‘Haven't we all,' said Tom. ‘ “Hamlet could do with a pint of Heineken. Discuss.” '

I hobbled after him to the pub and sat with my head down and my hands clasping the glass on my knees as if I was trying to heat the stuff up. The noise of the place swirled round me. I felt as if I was drowning in it. I wanted to think about Helen. What was she doing now? What was happening to her? Those angry-eyed birds glared down at me, peering from the shadows. I wanted to go home.

‘I wish you'd shut up,' Tom said. ‘I can't get a word in edgeways.'

I shrugged. The pub was full of noisy people, laughing, talking too loud, pushing against each other. It reminded me of a cattle stall over at Hope market. If you thought about it too much, it even smelt like it.

‘I'm going cycling in France this summer,' Tom said. ‘Don't fancy coming, do you?'

I shook my head.

‘We always said we'd do it after the As. You're fit enough, aren't you?'

‘Haven't done any long distance since we did the Dales.'

‘Plenty of time to work up to it. Do a long run every weekend.'

I sighed and shook my head. It would mean four weeks away from Helen.

‘France, though!' Tom leaned forward, raising his glass a little like a toast. ‘
La belle France!
Baguettes at dawn! Say you'll come! It'll be miserable on my own. I'll go anyway, but it won't be the same.'

I leaned back in my bench. France! We'd always said we'd do it, he was right, before we went off to university.

‘You were dead keen before the mocks, Chris.'

‘I've gone off it, that's all.'

Maybe Helen would come out with Ruthlyn and camp in Brittany and we could travel there and back with them. What's it like, camping when you're six months' pregnant? What's it like, being pregnant?

‘Wake up,' said Tom.

‘I was just thinking,' I said. ‘What if Hamlet had got Ophelia pregnant?'

‘Bloody hell!' said Tom. He drained back his glass of beer and stared at me, froth clinging like a moustache to his top lip. ‘Bloody hell, Chris!'