Dear Nobody (8 page)

Dear Nobody,

Yesterday evening I bought another pregnancy test. This time I read the instructions properly. It had to be done first thing. This morning I shut myself in my room. Mum was in the kitchen downstairs, singing loudly to some jazz on the radio. She was in one of her rare happy moods. I think maybe when I was little she used to sing a lot. I don't really remember. Most of the time she's locked up in her own thoughts, like my nan. They don't seem to like each other much, my mum and her mum. They hardly ever see each other. I hope it doesn't ever get that bad between Mum and me. I'd hate that.

‘I'll tell her,' I promised myself. ‘Whatever it says, I'll tell her.' My hands were shaking as I dipped the plastic stick in the test tube. I sat on my bed and waited. I didn't care if Mum came into the room and saw me. I lifted out the stick, but I knew before I looked at it what colour it would be. Pink. Positive. Thursday negative. Saturday positive.

The phone rang. Mum was still singing. She didn't hear it. I let it ring and ring. It seemed to be a voice from another planet, trying to make contact with Earth. At last Robbie pounded down the stairs and answered it. ‘Helen!' he shouted up the stairs. ‘It's for you.' I didn't move.

Robbie put the phone down and went back to his room. He turned on his music, loud, to drown out Mum's singing. I emptied the test glass down the lavatory and put the plastic tray and spatula and stuff in my drawer. I
washed my face and brushed my hair, and then I went down to Mum. I was going to tell her.

Mum looked round at me when I went into the kitchen. She must have been able to tell that I was upset.

‘There you are. I thought you were still asleep. I'm making a pie for tea. D'you fancy making the pastry? Your pastry's always better than mine.'

I would tell her everything and she would hold me and stroke me like she did when I was a little girl. She would make me better. She would sticking-plaster my hurts and make them go away. She ought to know. Of all the people in the world she ought to know.

I fetched flour and lard and butter from the larder and set them out on the work-surface. I was hollow inside. I felt as if I was doing everything in slow motion. Words were lining themselves up like soldiers in my head. Mum stood back to take a top note, lifting herself up on her toes, making fun of herself.

‘You should join a choir, Mum,' I began. I should have gone straight into it. I was in a trap now. ‘You've got a really good voice.'

‘D'you think so? I don't know how to read music though, that's my trouble.'

‘Get Dad to teach you.'

‘Ted! He couldn't teach a frog to leap, that man.'

Do it! Do it! Get it over with.

I took a deep breath. ‘Mum,' I began. ‘I want to tell you something.'

The music programme on the radio finished and turned into cricket scores. Mum clucked and turned the knob. All the sounds distorted. Robbie burst into the kitchen.

‘Helen, you moron! I was shouting for you for ages. Chris rang up about half an hour ago. He said if you come in he wants to meet you in the park at twelve.'

‘I'm helping Mum,' I said. I felt like crying. The radio sounds howled and stuttered.

Mum took the bag of flour from my hand and tipped some onto the scales. ‘Off you go, young lady,' she said.
‘I thought you and Chris had had a row, the way you've been behaving. Go and make it up with him.'

‘Mum…'

‘Off you go, Helen.'

I turned away and then I went back to my mum. I put my arms round her and put my head on her shoulder. She laughed with surprise and tried to ease me away. I wanted her to rock me. I wanted her to hold me tight. I didn't want to let go.

‘What's all this about?' she asked me.

‘Yuk!' Robbie said.

Then Mum moved away. ‘This'll never get the meal cooked,' she said. ‘Off you go. Don't keep the young man waiting.'

Chris was sitting on a small wooden roundabout in the kiddies' playground, letting his heels drag as it revolved. He had his head bent and didn't see me as I went up to him, so the roundabout had to do another revolution before it came back to me again. It gave me time to think my script out.

‘Chris!' I said.

He jumped off at once. ‘Don't talk,' he said. ‘Let me just hold you. I've missed you. It's been days and days.'

‘I wanted to talk to my mum,' I told him. ‘And I couldn't.'

‘Let's just be together,' he said. ‘Don't talk yet.'

We walked over to the little river that ran through the park. We came to the shadows of the trees. Lovely trees. I stroked their rough trunks. I needed their solidness. Lovely friendly trees. Imagine living in a country without trees.

‘What's the matter?' Chris asked me.

‘I did a test,' I told him. ‘And it was negative. Then I fainted at your dad's. I did another test this morning. And it was positive.'

I felt stronger when I'd told him, though I couldn't let go of the tree, not yet. I was talking with my cheek pressed against it. I was abstracted from myself. Someone
else was doing the talking. ‘How can something be negative and positive? How can it be and not be?'

There is a huge mystery in me that's too deep and frightening to be solved.

‘I don't understand,' I said.

‘Neither do I,' said Chris. ‘I won't leave you, Nell. You know that. I love you.'

It was as if he couldn't think of anything else to say.

After I left Helen I started to run back home. I was numb. A baby is. A baby's not. Something and nothing. Somebody and nobody. Now and forever. Life began three thousand six hundred million years ago. Life began in January. And I was the father. I tried to wake myself up to the sound of that word, and I couldn't. It was meaningless. It meant I was responsible. It meant Newcastle slipping away from me like a vanishing dream. I felt like a mouse crouching into a tiny hole. I felt the mousy air suffocating me.

We'll be all right. Whatever happens. I won't leave you. I jogged steadily on, forcing my breathing into a rhythm, letting the words bounce with every step I took, flinging my legs forward, head back, fists tight and clenched up. Whatever happens. I won't leave you. Helen, oh Helen, what have we done? I ran for miles that afternoon.

And then I couldn't sleep. At two in the morning I saw something blazing up in the sky across the oblong of my window. It looked as if it were set on destroying the planet; it seemed to be streaking towards Earth, shimmering and huge among the other stars, a shark among fishes. As I watched it, lying on my back with my arms folded under my head, it rose up and up into the centre of the window, then seemed to veer off to the side and soon streaked out of sight completely. I wished Helen was there with me, making sense of it, making sense of space and making sense of life.

I went into Guy's room and woke him up.

‘I've just seen a massive comet,' I told him.

He sat up for a second. ‘It was a plane,' he said. Then he flopped back on his pillow like a dead man, fast asleep.

March 30th

Dear Nobody,

Last night I decided what I must do. I don't ask your forgiveness for this.

You didn't ask my permission to plant yourself in me, after all. You're like one of those sycamore trees that keep sprouting up from nowhere in our garden. Mum always tugs them out. ‘We don't want you here,' she says.

I know just what she means.

I asked Dad if I could borrow the car, as it's Saturday. I told him I wanted to go riding. Robbie wanted to come too, but when he ran upstairs for his tracksuit I drove off without him. I hadn't been riding since I was about twelve. I used to be in love with a great farting steaming stallion called Henry, I remember. I was crazy about him. I used to ride him in my dreams over the moors night after night. Then they sold him because he was too old for hacking, my lovely Henry, and I gave up riding.

So this morning when I woke up after only shreds of sleep I knew what I had to do. I didn't go back to the stables that I used to haunt as a child but drove out ten miles or so from home. When I arrived a ride was about to start, led by a girl not much older than me. They waited for me while I mounted a spare grey, and then walked in file up the road that led on to the moors.

I found myself at the back of the queue. I needed to be at the front for this. I pressed my horse into a trot so I could overtake the others. A woman rider coming out from the stables to join us shouted to me to keep in, and I fell back into place. I should have recognized her, but I
didn't. She was quite a way behind. I was staring straight ahead. I was tense and sure of myself, but I wasn't afraid.

I had to get in front. When we crossed the road in file to go through the field gate I let my horse nudge past the others and trotted him on. The girl leader told me Nab had no manners and told him to wait his turn. I ignored her. I turned his head up towards the sheep track that went up the hill and I was shouted back again. The girl trotted up to me and reined in. ‘You have to wait for the gate-opener, you know,' she told me. Her face had gone blotchy with embarrassment. I could tell she didn't like to be in charge. ‘It's manners,' she said. ‘And anyway, I'm the leader. I have to go in front of you all.'

‘Sorry,' I said. My eyes were already following the tracks, picking out the shortest route up the hill.

‘Don't you know how to rein him in?'

‘Course I do.'

‘Well, do it then. You'll make the others impatient. Or let him graze for a bit, it won't harm.'

Stubbornly I kept the reins as short as I could, holding myself against Nab's strength as he jerked and tossed his head to try to get his teeth into the juicy young grass. He snorted and stamped, edging his way forward, and I pulled his reins taut till he stood still and calm. As soon as the girl rejoined us he pulled forward. She told me to get to the back. Her face was dark crimson by now.

Anyway, I relaxed. I could already see where I'd be able to break away from the ride. I felt calm.

It was very warm for late March. The heat had brought the midges out already and they danced round the horses, making them snort and toss their heads. The sky was as blue as summers, and there was already a lark up there somewhere. I knew exactly what I had to do. The thoughts in my head were as sharp as ice. I had never felt so sure of anything before.

I was doing it for Chris.

Half-way up the narrow track the leader glanced over her shoulder and sang out, ‘Rising trot! Kick them on!'
and immediately the horses rose and quickened their pace without being urged by their riders. I dug down into my stirrups. I loved the flow of it, rising and sitting, rising and sitting, the flow and roll of it. I wanted to sing. Then I tensed myself, keen as a bird for my chance. There was a large boulder ahead of us on the path. Beyond that the path split, a slow, twisting track that wound quite gently, and a narrow rabbit-run almost going straight up. I swung Nab towards that one.

‘Bring him in!' the girl shouted.

I ignored her.

Come on Nab! Come on Nab! Come on Nab!

Soon I was well in front, and at last had crested the hill. Ahead of me lay a long flat plain studded with young bracken and gorse. The path across it was broad and sandy. I couldn't hear the other riders. I sat straight in my saddle, bracing myself. Now was the time.

I hugged Nab's belly with my knees and my feet. His stride began to lengthen. He held his head high and flung his legs forward, flowing into a canter and then into a full, steady gallop, his hooves thudding a tantivvy on the earth. I crouched low now, well into the saddle. I loosened his reins and let him have his head. I was conscious of the firm line of my spine anchoring myself to him. We were one beast, flowing like water through the sharp air. We were one mind. And my stomach rocked like a boat on the tide.

I could hear voices screaming behind me. I kicked Nab on. A shouting voice closed up on me, hooves thundering close behind. I risked a glance over my shoulder and saw the older woman from the stables bearing up on me, lashing her horse forward, and when I looked back again I saw that the hill was sloping down towards a copse. I reared up, trying to rein Nab in. He wouldn't obey.