First Aid (11 page)

‘That's why it had to shut,' he said to her afterwards. ‘They don't like that kind of behaviour in the Winter Garden.'

They went back home. The children were in the kitchen.

‘I've seen you before, haven't I?' Ella said.

‘Last week,' Felpo said.

Rob said, ‘You're late, Mum.'

‘No later than usual,' she said.

‘Your mum's been putting life back into seaside theatre,' Felpo said. ‘You need to watch her.'

‘What do you mean?' Rob said, disbelieving. ‘She's never done anything like that.'

Felpo looked taken aback and then laughed. Ella said that there wasn't a theatre and asked where Trevor had been. Jo said he was asleep upstairs. Ella said, ‘So he
was
there then.' Jo agreed that he had been and then felt uncomfortable about it for the first time, though there was no reason to be. There always was someone in a room nearby. Ella went to great lengths to make herself a sandwich; slicing the bread as though it were a side of bacon, boiling eggs so fiercely that they knocked against the sides of the pan, plunging tomatoes in hot water before skinning them and chopping them up. They all stood around and watched her assemble this monument, douse it with parsley and pepper, put it on a plate and carry it out of the room. Jo said that they'd all better have something to eat; it was nearly half past two. She made some food but it wasn't as magnificent.

It was a shock for Jo to come out of the alley and be faced with sparkling water that lapped the footpath and stretched across to the Isle of Dogs.

‘It's better than the sea,' Rob said. ‘Isn't it, Mum?'

‘It almost is the sea,' Jo said. ‘Smell it.'

The Thames was wide in this part of London. The pleasure boats and the police launches, even big industrial barges, had the freedom of the water. A few summers ago they'd seen a cruise ship. It had filled the river, but there had still been room for other vessels to pass.

A boy of about Rob's age clattered by on a skateboard. He was competent. Once he'd passed he looked back over his shoulder at them both, while still moving. His head stayed swivelled and the board carried him away. Rob breathed in, but he seemed to have forgotten why he was doing it. He moved away from the rail where he'd been leaning.

‘What are you staring at?' Jo asked.

‘You don't look well,' Rob said.

‘It's because it's so bright. You see all the faults.'

She ran a finger down the curve of her face.

‘Don't keep looking at it,' she said. ‘It's getting better.'

‘How do you know?'

‘It itches, that means it's starting to heal. Mr Chambers probably wouldn't even have noticed.'

‘Mr Chambers. Who are you talking about, Mum?'

‘I don't know. Someone who was supposed to be doing some work for Gran and Grandad, this afternoon. He wasn't allowed to see me. Stupid. He's probably got several daughters with messed-up faces.'

‘Why don't you sit in the sun, Mum, and I'll walk along to those wooden steps that go into the river? I'll take Annie if you like. I won't let her fall in.'

‘I think she's asleep. Yes, she is. You can leave her. Are you wearing a watch? Be back in an hour,' she said.

He set off, half running, glad to get away from her, she thought. How long the day was. The same from hour to hour. Like a ringing in the ears, on and on. Sometimes there was a buzz of interference, which distracted her, but never silence. She sat there on a low wall, facing the water, and nothing got better, though it was the most beautiful day. The far side of the Thames was at a satisfying distance for the eyes. Jo could see every building without straining, clean-edged and calm in the sunshine. The view stretched away between two far-apart bends in the river. She had to turn her head, one way, then the other, to take it all in. If the last six months could be measured along the same stretch it wouldn't extend so far. No more than a few hundred metres – say from the new development with its glassy penthouse to the red brick dome of the Greenwich foot tunnel entrance. No further. It had all been as quick as a story told to Annie and with its core somewhere apart – a heart, inside an egg, inside a bird floating on water. She didn't have a single photograph. Something to carry about with her.

WALKING AWAY FROM
the supermarket, Ella thought that her gran might be right about Saturday shoppers. Everyone in there – even the ones who weren't talking to themselves or communing with the pet food – seemed to her to have some major personality defect. The human equivalent of wonky trolley wheels. Dilys would only shop on weekday mornings in the company of like-minded people. That was her phrase. She wasn't snobbish, her gran. She believed she was at one with the decent people of Great Britain – who were probably more than half the population – and that they were recognisable by wearing macs in wet weather and not eating anything in the street other than a boiled sweet or an extra-strong mint. Some of them could be black. That wasn't a problem.

Ella was in a no-man's land of shrubby plants and cobbled paths that linked the trading estate with the main road. Purple and lime-green foliage alternated with pink cobbles. The Council had hoped to make a park of the area but it hadn't worked out. She walked along, pausing to bite into the triangular see-through container with her front teeth to get at her sandwich. Smoked salmon and lettuce, it was, since her dad had been paying. The path kept making right angles and she wondered if she'd end up back at the supermarket. There wasn't even a bin. She didn't want the inside of her bag to smell so she jammed the plastic packaging deep into a purple hedge and carried on eating.

She had left Peter and Tara to get on with their day. They hoovered up the hours. She found it tiring to be with them. She found everything tiring, having got up so early. It was well known that people her age needed more sleep. They needed to lose consciousness for hours on end to recover from stopping being funny and sweet like Annie and turning into the beings that made the world what it was. They had this weird energy, the adults she knew. It seemed to come from changing partners. Her gran was quick on the draw, but, together, Dilys and Geoff were nice and slow. The longer people stayed with each other, the slower they got. Old married couples went to sleep when there was nothing to do.

She had come home one day and found Felpo dancing, swaying round the kitchen to some swooshing ballad. It was the sort of thing that got played in the reception area at the swimming baths, only the attendant lady had the sense to turn the volume down. Jo was out of breath so Ella knew that she had been joining in, though luckily she didn't get to see her arms flailing and her knees at funny angles. Jo said she'd found the record in Trevor's box of old singles. Felpo stopped dancing and hugged Jo. He said she had no need to make excuses. It was a classic. They had both laughed then as if it was the funniest remark in the world.

The flat always looked and smelled quite different with him in it, even when he wasn't dancing. He left those wiry jerseys he wore hanging over the backs of chairs and his shoes by the door just where she tripped over them. He only wore shoes outside. She could never forget he was there. Sometimes he would just sit, very still, for an hour at a time, just dropping the odd word to Jo – stroking Jo's knee if she were nearby – pretending to meditate. Ella asked him what he was doing and that's what he said – meditating. She wished she hadn't bothered. She could tell that he was thinking – the same as everybody else.

The path came to a sudden end with a pedestrian safety barrier at waist height and cars passing at speed on a main road with no pavement. Ella pulled herself up short. She hadn't meant to let Felpo come into her mind. It was Tara's fault. She always seemed to bring Felpo into the conversation. She was fascinated by him.

No planning had gone into this path. If she had been a dog she would have been run over. She launched herself alongside the traffic, holding her arms away from her body in order to cool off – giving any driver, who slightly misjudged, the opportunity to shave a slice off her.

‘You look better,' said Vince.

‘Thanks,' said Ella.

She moved from mood to mood, but the changes didn't depend on where she was or whom she was with. She had so few places to go and, in spite of the long walks and bus rides between, it took too little time to get from one to the next. Now she was back in Vince's house and it was only twenty-four hours since she had last been there. She was damp from the shower. She had wet hair and was wearing borrowed clothes, Vince's. His mother was shorter than she was, he said. Her clothes wouldn't fit. Ella thought she and Lauren were much the same height and guessed that Vince hadn't wanted her to look in his mother's wardrobe. She wasn't going to argue – she didn't want to wear anything of Lauren's.

‘I was going to have a bath round at Dad's, but it didn't work out,' Ella said. ‘They're on some sort of automatic timer; if you miss your slot, that's it. I went round the supermarket with them instead.'

‘Nice one,' said Vince. ‘I haven't done that for years. I should try it. Isn't there a nudist evening?'

‘That's Hastings. They wouldn't let you on the bus.'

Vince nodded, accepting this.

‘He really put pressure on me to stay longer,' Ella said. ‘He wanted me to have some upmarket pub lunch. He always does that.'

‘You look better than me in those shorts. You can keep them if you want,' Vince said.

‘No, it's all right,' Ella said.

She went over to the window of the living room and stared out. The pigeons were still there, hunched up and almost black in colour, lined up in the same formation.

‘Dad hangs on to the trolley with this funny look on his face,' Ella said, ‘as if he's on a fairground ride and supposed to be enjoying it. Tara does all the choosing. Anything he sticks in, she whips out again. We get to the check-out. She finds this cheddar cheese that got away. She picks it up, like this, as if she's found something truly disgusting and balances it on the pile of cooking magazines. Dad sort of smiles and pretends none of it's happening.'

‘They're probably like that in bed,' Vince said.

‘They're supposed to be in love,' Ella said. ‘That's why he left Mum.'

‘It's their age,' Vince said. ‘All that middle bit. How do you get through it?'

‘Don't ask me.'

Ella turned round to face the room, but she didn't sit down.

‘It's like the afternoon,' said Vince. ‘No point to it. Just there to join up the morning and the evening. I mean, the morning's easy, isn't it, you can deal with it, unless you're hung-over or something? But the afternoon. What a waste of time. Think of school. The radiators and the smell really getting going, everyone yawning, teachers with bits of bacon sandwich stuck in their teeth.'

Ella didn't want to think of school. The place had no reality without its counterpart – home. And for the moment she had no home. She remembered the previous September after the holidays. She saw herself leaning against the high wire fence with a group of sun-tanned girls – getting to know them again. The weather had been hot, the same as it was now. The teachers were wearing what they had worn in July and the kids' discarded jerseys and blazers were piled up in heaps.

‘People our parents' age don't have birth or death to gee them up,' Vince said. ‘They need something in the middle of life. I'd give them an ordeal.'

‘Like what?' Ella said.

‘They'd have to go through this tunnel,' he said.

‘They're always going in tunnels,' she said.

Vince ignored her. ‘It would be lined with mirrors. On a particular day they'd be shown the entrance – they'd walk and walk. It would go on for miles.'

‘What good would that do?' Ella said.

‘They'd get sick of the sight of themselves. Reality would kick in.'

‘It wouldn't work,' Ella said. ‘They'd probably just plan their next year's holiday.'

‘It's a cool idea, you have to admit. It would make great TV. Some people would go mad,' Vince said.

‘Would they have to talk?'

‘Yes, of course they'd talk. They'd sort of ramble on.'

‘It wouldn't change anything. Afterwards they'd just carry on being the selves they always pretend to be,' Ella said.

‘Not necessarily,' Vince said.

‘I hope you'll give them a nice packed lunch,' she said.

Vince had his back to the sofa and his legs stretched out in front of him. He leant to one side and, with his two forefingers, dragged two parallel lines across the pile of the carpet.

‘So, where did you spend the night?' he said.

‘At Lois Lucas & Son's. It's this kind of antique shop where Mum works. I work there sometimes at the weekends. I've got a key.'

‘Antique,' said Vince. ‘Was that all right?'

‘Not bad,' said Ella. ‘I did get some sleep.'

‘I couldn't stand that – waking up every fifteen minutes with the chiming clocks.'

He started to intone a version of the Westminster chimes.

‘You've got to be joking. Trevor doesn't have those sorts of clock,' she said, interrupting.

‘Trevor?' he said.

‘He's the owner. He lives over the shop.'

‘He's gay, is he?'

‘Not as far as I know,' Ella said.

‘Oh,' Vince said.

He pushed against the waste-paper basket with his right foot. The basket fell over and the contents tipped on the floor: a clutch of flyers from a pizza delivery company, yesterday's newspaper, a couple of envelopes, a brown apple core.

‘Aren't you going to pick them up?' Ella said.

‘No,' said Vince.

He tore off a corner of newspaper and wrapped the apple core in it.