The Lives of Women (2 page)

To listen to her, you'd think she was down here every night of the week with her torch, instead of sitting alone in her flat above the shop, munching unsold cakes and sausage rolls for dinner.

It could be a blow-in's interest, of course – she has, after all, only lived here for ten years – or it could be a simple need to belong, but Carmel seems to have this need to be at the centre of things, even from a distance, and even in retrospect: the who-lives-where-for-how-long-and-who-with of it all. She will find out about the Shillman house and much more besides – of that, I am certain.

 

When I was a kid, I practically lived in Arlows' valley. But since my return at the end of August, it's been an occasional spur-of-the-moment visit. Not because of the obvious dangers – junkies and drinkers at their little campfires don't bother me in the least. People do walk their dogs – you might even see the occasional morning jogger. But the unspoken rule of the neighbourhood is:
come mid-afternoon, leave the park to those who belong in the shadows.

Even my father – a man of few words that grow fewer each day – has been moved to open his cake-hole on the subject.

‘Don't go down there, it's dangerous,' was about the extent of this once-off warning. I didn't like to ask if he meant dangerous in general, or dangerous for me.

For me the only danger down here is memory.

I remember the way blackberry picking left the tips of my fingers flayed, and sitting in the grass trying to work out which was the blackberry's blood, which was my own. I remember pinkeen fishing, the twist and turn of the net in water that was green and luscious with river dirt. And the shock of that cold-rotating slap after slap on my face when rolling down a hill packed with snow. And later, of course, much, much later, the spot where we used to stash the flagons of cider in the afternoon before returning that evening to drink them.

I remember the drunken paddling in the river. The boys daring each other to climb up and dive off the rusty old cattle bridge, and the bruise under Karl Donegan's ribs that was shaped like a map of Australia. I remember the smell of horse shit on the air when I lay in the long grass beside him. Patty's American voice in the dark. The tight glow of a cigarette tip; the loose red bud of a joint and the slight crackle as it took light and began to burn. The trees growing dense with menace at nightfall. And most of all, I remember the night before they sent me away, hunkering behind the wall of Hoxtons' bridge, as I looked up at dozens of flashlights wobbling all over the bowl of the valley, and thinking, I'm drowning now, I'm
at the bottom of the ocean; in a moment I'll be dead, and here is the last thing that I'll ever see: this shoal of electric jellyfish floating over my head.

I come down here to try to cure or maybe kill something, in a hair of a dog sort of a way, but all I ever do is remember. Days of brooding then follow. Brooding on the past, on the horror of being young: on all the stupidity and ignorance and misplaced loyalty that goes with the territory. Then I start with the thinking. I think about what it was like to be living here at that time. I think about Karl and Paul, about Patty and Serena. About Jonathan. I think about all the others. About my mother and the other mothers. About my father and the other fathers and non-fathers alike. About the unimportance of children and the importance of men. I think about the lives of women.

And so that's why I tend to avoid it, not because my father thinks it's dangerous or because Carmel's junkies are going to skin me up and smoke me. I avoid it because I never come away from here feeling any less than sick in heart, stomach and of course mind. And yet, every once in a while, this is exactly where I find myself.

I whistle for the dog, whistle again, then turn on the pathway leading down to the stone bridge. I pass last night's campfires and a few medallions of melted green plastic from the bins the kids have stolen and burned out to get stoned on the fumes. I see the rags of small plastic bags caught on the hedgerows, bearing supermarket logos of what Carmel calls ‘those German
baaaastard
dives, intent on killing our youth with their mind-twisting, liver-corroding, cheap liquor'.

And I see, lying naked on the grass, two large bars of chocolate
bought solely for their heroin-friendly foil which, unless I am very much mistaken, have come from her ‘bargain basket' of out-of-date, or very nearly out-of-date, sweets.

I look back up to see the dog appear on the crest of the hill, blond and black and frisky-looking, and then kick the chocolate away in case he is tempted.

I whistle again. And he comes in a canter down the hill, for that moment or two joyful and so much younger than his years.

He arrives to heel, an old dog again, half-blind and utterly exhausted, then he folds himself down on the ground and looks at me sideways, as if ashamed of his own frailty. And I find myself wondering which I will be left with in the end, the dog or my father, then try not to think which one I'd prefer.

 

When the dog has recovered, we continue downwards, taking our time, him cocking his leg every few seconds along the way, me trying to keep my thoughts vague and away from the reach of the past. On a ditch, a pair of knickers, slight and tangerine coloured, lie like a delicate and wounded bloom. And on the far side of the trees, I can hear the river breathing. A few seconds later there is a sound of rowers returning upriver, back towards the city: the coxman's call, long and short, long and short. Nearer and louder. Come on boys – let's push. Now let's
puuuushhhh
.

I imagine the determined young profiles grimacing with each jagged movement and the muscles of their arms puffing up to the task. Bare legs splayed with first hair, folding and unfolding from
the knee. Skin damp with winter sweat. I feel a vague pity then that I don't quite understand: maybe for the girl who wore the tangerine underwear and whatever disappointment she may have felt after the event. Or maybe for the middle-aged woman who is standing here in my shoes.

A long blade of sound swishes by. I close my eyes to look at it. And there is the boat, honed and completely mastered, as it cuts up river, like a tailor's scissors cuts through a bolt of new cloth

 

We come to the ditch at the tinker's shrine and I decide to cross over and take a proper look at it. Clipping the lead onto the collar, heaving the poor dog over and up, we both stand there and stare in, one of us panting slightly more than the other.

It is obviously an ongoing work of art, this shrine: some trinkets are weather-beaten, others appear to be recent additions. Blue is the colour – all shades of blue. From a high, thick branch, a huge set of wooden rosary beads hangs, and from lesser branches, other more delicate sets dangle like Christmas tree decorations. Along with pieces of threaded glass and wind-chimes, they tinkle and whisper. Blue and white ribbons are spiralled around the bedposts. Inside the rails, in the centre of the plot, there is a small statue of a piebald pony and, behind it, a framed photograph of the dead man. He has a look about him of Burt Reynolds in his heyday. I'm guessing he either died here or was injured here and later died. I guess, too, that this shrine is dedicated to his spirit and that his body lies in another place – a plot in a formal cemetery or in an urn on a shelf in a tinker's caravan. The small carved cross stuck
into the earth gives the year but, for some reason, not the month of his death. Long after I left anyhow. Long before I came back.

Whoever he was, and however he died, great lengths have been taken to ensure that he is never lonely. Plastic see-through Holy Marys filled to the chin with holy water are posted around the tree. Little toy angels guard his picture. In a blue heart-shaped frame, a small girl, a daughter – or by now, more likely, a granddaughter – is frilled to the brim in a white first holy communion dress. A glass jar, etched into the clay, is stuffed with what appear to be small folded notes which I take to be messages for Burt. In another jam jar, a single tight-headed rose reminds me: November has arrived, month of the dead.

I am moved by the love that's expressed at this shrine and continues to be expressed, fourteen years after the tinker has died. And I am moved, too, by the lack of shame in his death. Even a death that may well have been by murder, or as a result of some sort of violence anyhow, deserves to be both cherished and mourned.

Apart from two weddings in upstate New York, I haven't stepped inside a church since I left here and, if I can help it, never will. Nor can I say I believe in, or even approve of, prayer. But I say a prayer here for Karl. I say a prayer for Rachel. I even say one for Paul and Jonathan. And Agatha, of course – I say a special prayer for her.

In my half-sleep, I sometimes see myself walking. A long, narrow path that veers into the distance. The ground is uneven, gnarled by
the reaches of old tree roots and ancient worn-down stones. On one side of me, a high grey wall shawled with ivy. On the other, a stand of oak trees.

I stop and turn to look back along the considerable way I've already come. There's a figure in the distance that has also stopped to turn and look at me. She is young, but not a child.

Or again, just as I'm about to doze off – on a crowded city street at rush hour: hundreds of faces coming towards me, each, in its own way, distinctive. Yet only one stands out. There is something about her, a certain expression – what it is, I couldn't say.

I have this overwhelming need to understand her anyhow; to know who she is or why she is here. To know her story. To forgive it, even, if that's what it should come to.

But how do you tell the story of yourself as you were more than thirty years ago? How do you know what you were like then? The workings of your troubled mind and heart – how do you begin to resolve all that?

I have looked at a photograph – the only photograph I could find in all the rooms of my parents' house. She has the same eyes as mine. The same blood and bones. Her name is my name. I know she's supposed to be me. But no matter how many times I pick up the photograph and no matter how long I stare into that bleak, adolescent face – all I can see is a stranger.

 

2

Summer Past

May

HER NAME IS ELAINE
. She writes it on top of a page in one of the journals she keeps under her bed. My name is Elaine Nichols.

It physically hurts her to write these few words, but seeing them crawl out from under her twisted fingers – that brings her pleasure too.

The doctor has said writing will help her hands come back to full use, and so her father brought up to the hospital a block of unused legal journals, parcelled in smooth brown paper.

Each morning, as soon as she wakes, she reaches for the rubber ball on her bedside locker. Her hands will have clawed overnight and be stubborn as steel; the ball will help coax them back to life.

The first words of the day are always the toughest. As the day moves on and her hands start to loosen, the words will become easier to release, less measured. No matter which journal she
happens to be on, no matter how many pages she uses in one day, she always starts with the same thing. My name is Elaine Nichols.

Whatever else she may forget in her life, she knows it won't be that name.

 

She has been sick for months. At the end of January she went down with a virus and now it is almost summer. One Saturday morning she'd felt a bit off. By afternoon, she'd had to cancel a babysitting job for the Jacksons – something she hated to do, knowing full well that Junie Caudwell would be in like a light, making the Jackson twins love her more with her bag of sweeties, her big blonde curls and crolly-dolly eyes. For a while she had tortured herself with images of Junie up in the bathroom sniffing Mr Jackson's after-shave, or twirling around in his big leather chair, or even kissing the photograph of him on the mantelpiece with his tanned face and rolled up shirtsleeves, taken in some far away place like Saudi Arabia.

By Sunday morning she'd forgotten all about the Jacksons and June Caudwell. By Sunday morning she'd hardly known her own name. She'd woken to find a three-headed version of her mother at the end of the bed, asking if she fancied scrambled eggs for breakfast.

It seemed only a few seconds later when she'd opened her eyes to a different light. Thick grey dust at the window, a globe of red from the silk lightshade above, and her mother, back to the one-headed version, standing by the bed holding a plate, in a voice, slightly hurt, asking why –
why
had she eaten nothing all day?

‘Even the eggs, you haven't touched. And just how?
How
do you expect to get well if you won't even make the smallest of efforts?'

And then her mother, scooping cold eggs onto cold toast, had begun eating them herself.

At some stage an ambulance was called. Later she would remember being wheeled out to it; night sky above and the voices of strangers.