The New Woman (22 page)

‘Hayfever?’

‘Yep. It’s that time of year.’

She cast him a shrewd glance. She must have seen plenty of men like him, weeping into their beer. ‘Nice to have the sunshine,’ she said.

‘Can’t grumble.’

Dad getting out of bed at three in the morning to collect Simon from an eighteenth-birthday party; rubbing his shoulder as he threw up in a bush beside the road.
Not to worry, son, don’t be embarrassed, it happens to the best of us.

‘People don’t like me,’ Simon had gasped, between retches.

‘I like you.’

‘I’m an outsider. They all dance and yell and talk shit. I sat in a corner all night.’

Dad handed him a bottle of water. ‘You didn’t join in?’

‘What’s the point? There
is
no point. It’s all just . . . shit. Isn’t it? Life.’

Instead of going home and back to bed, Dad had driven to a service station on the motorway and bought them breakfast. They sat at a formica table as the short summer night merged into daybreak. It was all a bit of a blur, but Simon remembered rambling on and on about the senselessness of life, of love, of God. Dad didn’t talk shit. He listened patiently to his smashed and maudlin son, complete with existential crisis
.

Another pint went down, but the alcohol really wasn’t helping.

No more pints. The landlady said he’d had enough and it was time he went home. Simon found himself out on the street, though he was struggling to remember which street it was. Heat radiated from the bitumen. The ground didn’t seem as flat as usual. He kept tripping.

He was nineteen, in a rain-soaked car park, hiding in the shadows. She’d be here soon. He held a broken bottle in his hand, and hatred in his heart.

Lucia

It was after one o’clock in the morning, but a robin sang from the branches of a sycamore tree in Thurso Lane. A woman let herself out of a basement flat and began to walk towards the post box on the corner. She was neither young nor pretty, but she’d made the most of what she had. Six white envelopes lay in one hand.

A cat called to her from the top of a wall. She stopped to tickle his ears, and he immediately purred. He knew her very well, and arched his back and rubbed his cheek into the palm of her hand. He’d met her every day on her way home from work. She wore
different clothes then, but to him she hadn’t changed. She was the same person.

She reached the post box but she didn’t post her letters. Instead she walked around and around it, whispering to herself,
Go on, go on
.

It wasn’t a long letter but it had taken hours to write. She’d typed, deleted, typed—deleted the lot and started again—a glass of whisky at her elbow, the crepe dress folded on her lap. At about eleven, Simon had phoned, only to hang up without a word. All the same, she felt encouraged. Better than nothing.

Midnight had long passed when she printed out six copies of her letter and carefully added a handwritten message at the top of each one. They were ready. They must be posted now, tonight, because already she felt her resolve slipping away. One envelope was going all the way to Melbourne. She allowed herself a vicious smile as she imagined her eldest sister reading the letter. This was going to ruin Gail’s day.

A car came cruising down the high street. Its chassis had been lowered to within inches of the road. All the windows were open so that the thumping of its stereo could deafen passers-by. The woman shrank into a shadow, but it was no good. They’d seen her—worse, they’d seen her trying to hide. The driver leaned on his horn while his passengers exploded into catcalls.

‘Oi! You got a dick? Tranny! Tra-nee!’

They seemed about to climb out of the windows. Under the shifting city lights, their faces appeared to be daubed with ghostly warpaint. She watched the car roar away. It screeched left at the next corner—handbrake turn—but its music still pulsated in the breathless heat. Then suddenly it slewed back into the high street. They were coming for her.

Throwing her letters into the dark mouth of the post box, she darted down Thurso Lane. She took off her shoes, her breath ragged now, and held them as she sprinted. The pavement bruised her soles. The friendly cat shot away to hide. The night was torn by the howls of those men who hated her so, calling for her as
though they were looking for a lost dog.
Tran-nee! Where are you, Tranny?

She tripped and fell down the area steps. The impact knocked the breath out of her but she forced herself to her feet, fumbling with her keys.
Wrong one, wrong one, bloody hell, where is it?
The security light was a beacon, marking her out to a hostile world. Her tights had ripped; her leg smarted where she’d grazed it.

At last, she had the door open.
Thank God
. As she fell inside, the robin stopped singing and flew away.

Twenty-four

Kate

She wasn’t a morning person. Never had been, never would be. The fact that recently she’d been at her old school desk by seven o’clock every morning was testament to just how keen she was to make some progress. She’d spent hours sweating over this writeup, cursing herself for not nailing it when she first got home. She never pulled her finger out until she was staring a deadline in the face. Last-minute-dot-com. Well, she was paying for it now.

Mind you, it was tough to concentrate on the long-buried bichrome pottery of a civilisation that died out three thousand years ago when your own family was smashing pottery right here, right now, in your own kitchen. She had the precious shard of red and yellow on the desk in front of her. It was her talisman.

Simon had got her all stirred up again on Saturday. He’d arrived at Smith’s Barn in a state, raving about how he’d seen Dad cross-dressed at the flat the day before. Luckily, Mum was out for lunch with Stella. Kate had never seen her brother in such a mess. He didn’t touch the coffee she made him. Instead, he poured himself a couple of very stiff gins and knocked them back. She warned him he’d be over the limit. He said he’d be fine—but he wasn’t fine. He was marching around, all over the kitchen, talking and talking.

‘The man was wearing tights,’ he kept saying. The wig, the earrings and the dress were bad, but it was the tights that had really got to him. ‘Tights, Kate.
Tights
. Jesus.’

‘What did you do?’

‘I walked out.’

‘I’m seeing him next week,’ said Kate, and explained about her move to the new flat. ‘I’ll be dropping some stuff off at Thurso Lane.’

Simon looked as though she’d dropped a scorpion down his back. ‘Don’t do that, for Christ’s sake! Don’t go near him. Leave your gear with us. We’ve got space in our cellar.’

‘Thanks, but Dad’s place is a lot more convenient.’

‘Don’t be beholden to him. Just don’t. It’s demeaning, it’s . . .’ Simon put his face into his hands. His cage had been rattled, all right. ‘Tights! Christ. I wouldn’t even know how to put on a pair of tights.’

Kate had pretended she didn’t mind Dad wearing tights and a wig and anything else he wanted to wear, but it wasn’t the truth. Not at all. It was too much to take in. Too much to understand. Just . . . too much.

It was Monday now, and she was coming apart at the seams. No matter how hard she tried to concentrate on work, she kept imagining a pantomime dame—sequinned and feathered and stiletto-heeled, with a clown’s painted mouth and false eyelashes. She imagined the dame mincing about, twirling her handbag and talking in a falsetto. It wouldn’t be especially funny on a stage at Christmas; it was seriously unfunny when it was your own father. Maybe Simon had a point. Maybe a shrink could retune him, like a mechanic fixing a car. If only life were that simple.

By nine a.m. she wanted more coffee. She
really
wanted coffee. She mustn’t stop, though. She had to work until ten before she could reward herself.

Lipstick?

If it had been someone else’s father, she’d have been a cheerleader! ‘Be true to yourself,’ she’d have said. ‘You only live once.
Be a man, be a woman, be androgynous—who cares, so long as you’re a good person?’

This was different. This was Dad.

The post van turned into the drive. It was all the excuse she needed. Good old Bryan, she thought as she jumped down the last few stairs. Nice, normal, dependable Bryan the postie. They’d gone to school together; he was one of the gang who used to play British Bulldogs in the hay meadow. He had two kids now, though, and a beer gut, and looked shagged out every time she saw him.

He rolled out of his van holding an electricity bill, a bright yellow envelope announcing that ‘The Householder was
The Lucky Winner of £1,000,000!!!
’, and two identical cream envelopes addressed to her and Eilish. She recognised her father’s regular, tidy handwriting. She’d learned at the age of ten that his writing was easier than her mother’s to forge, and had put this discovery to good use.

Unfortunately, Kate cannot take part in the cross-country run today. She has a sprained ankle.

Kate was off school yesterday with a vomiting bug and a high fever.

She was finally caught after handing in this piece of literary fiction:

Kate was unable to complete her homework last night, despite her best efforts. We had distant cousin’s visiting from Dubai.

It was the apostrophe that led to her downfall. Her primary school teacher smelled a rat and phoned home to ask about the ‘distant cousin’s’, and Kate was rumbled. She spent every lunchtime of the next week in detention, writing lines:
There is no apostrophe in a plural.

Bryan was in a mood to chat. ‘You home for good?’ he asked.

‘’Fraid not. Leaving tomorrow. It’s back to the big smoke for me.’

He looked up at the house. ‘Mr Livingstone still away?’

‘Mm.’

‘Haven’t seen him for a while.’

‘No.’

‘Sophie in the pub says he doesn’t come in anymore, and my wife Jo—she’s parent rep on the school board—she mentioned in passing that he’s missed a couple of meetings. He sent his apologies. But, seeing as he’s chair, they were a bit surprised.’

‘Sorry about that. Flat out at work.’ Well, it was probably true. Dad was always flat out at work.

Bryan didn’t believe her, of course; it must have been painfully obvious that the Livingstone family were in trouble. It was only a matter of time before the true reason came out. That’ll set the lace curtains twitching, thought Kate, as she dropped Eilish’s post on the kitchen table.

Then she went back outside, and sat under Charlotte’s maple tree to open the letter from her father. Branches shivered above her head, stirred by the breath of a breeze. She wished Charlotte were alive. She’d always imagined a girl with russet hair, like the leaves of her tree. Her older sister would have been wise and calm. If she’d been here, she would have known what to think about all this; and perhaps Dad would have been happier if Charlotte hadn’t died. He’d been a lovely father, of course, but for as long as she could remember there had been nights when he didn’t sleep and left for work at four in the morning; days when he seemed to be somewhere else, even though he was present. As she grew up, Kate had assumed that this darkness came when Charlotte died.

There was one terrible memory, one she tried never to revisit and pretended was just a dream. This tree must have been much smaller then, but so was Kate. She was little but wiry, tucked in among the leafy summer boughs, watching millions of thistledown heads float up into the blue. She felt happy. No school for
weeks, and tomorrow they were off to Wales for their summer holiday at the beach.

Dad was coming across the lawn. He’d been in one of those quiet moods when Mum would kiss him and ask, ‘All right, darling?’ and he’d say that he was but then go and shut himself in his study. Mum used to explain that it was all to do with the stresses of his job, and nothing to worry about. Ten-year-old Kate wished he’d choose another job. From up in Charlotte’s tree, she noticed that his head was down; he was bent over, as though he didn’t have quite enough bones in his body to hold him up. He was wearing his nice green jersey that Mum gave him. Kate grinned to herself. She’d wait until he got closer and then give him a fright by leaping down. That would make him laugh for sure, and she wanted him to laugh.

He came up to the tree and stood under it with his forehead leaning against the trunk. Kate was about to jump out when she heard him say something out loud. She caught the words
God
and
hate you.
Who did he hate? God? How could anyone hate God? Then, all of a sudden, he did something awful; something she didn’t understand, even years later. He punched himself—not once but lots of times—all over his body, even in the balls, which, according to Simon, was the worst place a boy can get hit. Kate watched with her mouth hanging open, thinking he’d gone mad.

Even when he stopped hitting himself, the terrible thing wasn’t over. Kate heard the most frightening sound ever: her dad crying. It was all wrong. Adults didn’t cry, children cried. Dad’s crying was in a deep man’s voice, and it made her feel sick. She knew she was watching something really, really secret, something she should never have seen. Was he crying for Charlotte? Then other, worse, possibilities occurred to her. What if he was dying of cancer? What if he and Mum were getting a divorce?

The next moment, he’d stopped crying and pulled his hankie out of his pocket. He was looking towards the house. Kate looked too, and saw Simon standing on the terrace, holding the telephone.

‘Dad!’ he shouted. ‘Da-a-ad? You out here? It’s Grandad!’

Dad pressed the hankie into his eyes and took a deep breath before yelling,
Right you are!
Kate watched as he sprinted across to take the phone. How could he be running, or talking to Grandpa, when he was so sad and probably dying of cancer?

The next day they set off for Wales. The parents shared the driving, while Kate—for once—sat quietly and didn’t wind Simon up. Dad seemed all right today, no signs of dying, so Kate pretended nothing had happened. Gradually the memory had lost its sharp edges, and she’d begun to hope she’d dreamed the whole thing.