The Testament of Jessie Lamb (28 page)

Somehow the evening was got through, and at the end of it Dad was in the spare room again, and Mum was sitting at the table staring at her hands. I unloaded the dishwasher. Between the crushing ache of Baz, and Mum and Dad's misery, I felt squeezed almost flat. It was only when I concentrated on what I was going to do that I could draw a deep breath and fill myself up again. I wasn't trapped. I could escape. ‘Mum, there's no point in him leaving work, it's not going to make any difference–'

‘Maybe it makes a difference to him.'

The only difference I could see would be he'd have to get another job that didn't suit him so well. I sat opposite her and took hold of her hand.

‘What do you want?' she said.

‘I want you and Dad to accept what I'm doing, and not be horrible to each other.'

‘You can't legislate for how horrible we are.'

‘No, but–'

‘And you can't honestly imagine that we'll ever accept what you want to do.'

‘You gave me life. So you have to allow me to choose what to do with it.'

‘Not to throw it away–'

‘I'm not throwing it away. I'm using it for the future.'

‘The future is an abstract concept, Jess.'

‘No, it's my child and my child's child.'

‘I'm not listening to this.'

‘You have to. It makes me happy, you know?'

‘No,' she said, ‘I don't. I don't know how that feels.'

‘Mum. Something must make you happy? Your friends, work–'

‘Nothing.'

‘Going on holiday.'

She gave a little laugh and shook her head.

‘I can make you happy.'

‘This is nonsense Jess.'

‘Mum, I've found the one thing I want to do with my life. And you'll be able to look after my baby and love her.'

‘I don't want
your
daughter. I want
my
daughter.'

‘I don't belong to you anymore than you belonged to Nanna.'

She pushed her chair back abruptly and went to the kitchen door. There she stopped, and came round to where I was sitting at the table. She put her hands on my shoulders and kissed me on the cheek, and told me she loved me. Then she went upstairs.

After a bit I went and listened at the spare room door. I could hear Dad moving things about. He was probably going to sleep down there, he usually did when they were fighting. I was their captive. Like in
Gulliver's Travels
when the little people tie him down while he's sleeping, with thousands of tiny ropes which are no thicker than hairs, but which taken all together hold him prisoner. Something had to snap.

I went to bed and lay with my curtains open staring up at the beech tree and the sky. I had to keep slamming the door on thoughts of Baz, just slamming and slamming and closing it away because there was no word from him and there never would be and there was nothing for me to do but shut it out. I had to find a way of getting through to Mum and Dad. One thing. One step at a time.

The cloud was clearing, I could see a couple of the brightest stars, twinkling away through the branches. Those stars had witnessed all this a thousand times; a girl whose boyfriend likes someone else; parents upset because their child is going away. When I closed my eyes the tracery of the dark branches against the sky stayed on the inside of my eyelids like the mesh I was going to escape through. The open skies were waiting for me. When I slept my dreams were as big and wide as space, and in amongst them floated an idea, a solution, about how to talk to Mum.

I love the way your brain can do that–solve things while you sleep. I remember talking to Dad about it, years ago. He said it's true and it goes to show how much of your brain you don't consciously use, like the elves and the shoemaker. The shoemaker went to bed every night leaving unfinished shoes, he was always too tired to finish them off. And every night while he slept, the elves came and hammered and trimmed and sewed, and every morning he woke up to find a perfectly completed pair of shoes.

That's what my elves did that night. I woke up understanding that Mum was shifting. She was coming round. What I needed to do was get her away from Dad for long enough for her to acknowledge it. I needed to take her somewhere where she could look up into the distance and see light and space. Where she could see what I saw. I'd thought of the perfect place; the seaside!

I would take her back to Scarborough. Nanna Bessie's caravan there was one of my most favourite places in the world. I remember kneeling up on my narrow bed, pushing the stiff little curtain to one side so I could see out. I remember the morning sun shining in, making a huge dazzle in the sea behind the other caravans that stood silhouetted like cardboard cutouts, parked up to the field edge. On the other side of the hedge runs the coast path, along the top of the crumbling cliffs. Frilly waves rush at the pebbles and fill the air with their jostling sounds. And you can look out over the sea and see the path of sheer light the sun makes across it, leading directly to where you stand, up on the windy cliff.

We used to go in the car with two suitcases and a cardboard box of groceries and Mum's beach bag with bucket and spade and Frisbee in it, singing daft songs and playing I
spy
. But she and I could go on the train, without telling Dad. I'd tell her I wanted to go there and it was absolutely true. I only had a short time, I didn't want to waste a minute. I crept into Mum's room and snuggled up to her in bed like I used to when I was little. I told her I wanted to go to the seaside. I persuaded her to take the day off work.

There was hardly anyone on the train, only three other people in the whole carriage. We sat opposite each other with fields and moors rushing by our window. You could feel the wind buffeting the train. Some of the trees we passed were bent almost sideways with it. ‘It's always windy at Scarborough,' Mum said, ‘I used to think the caravan would take off, at night.'

‘I remember it in the day,' I said. ‘Not at night.'

‘Oh at night it was like being inside a plane,' she said. ‘The roaring noise it made, and that scratched plastic window. I used to imagine we'd wake up somewhere altogether different, miles inland.'

We remembered how Dad used to build these huge fortifications on the beach. Not just a castle and a moat, but earthworks like the Great Wall of China. And wide channels to divert the tide and hold it back. We used to spend the whole day digging and other kids and their dads would come and help us, and Mum found me shells to use for windows and doors. ‘Remember the jewellery boxes?' she said. That was what we did when it rained. We sat either side of the red fold-down Formica table in the caravan, with the rain drumming on the roof, and we glued baby pink clam shells and yellow snail-shells onto Maltesers boxes, which I took home as souvenirs for my friends.

‘And the crabs,' I said, and we laughed. I used to see how many I could catch in a day. All the ones we found when we were digging, or along the tide-line as we looked for shells, I scooped up on my spade and plopped into a bucket. At the end of the day I'd tip them out on the sand and count them to see if I'd beaten my record, and it would be a crab race, as they scuttled back down to the sea. But one day, I don't know why, I took the bucketful back to the caravan and left them by the steps. And Dad got up in the night to pee and knocked the bucket over. I remember hearing him swearing and Mum calling ‘What is it Joe?' and both of us got up and went out onto the step. Dad was hopping about trying to catch crabs in the dark, swooshing them onto the spade with a furled up newspaper. We flashed the torch around and they were under the caravan and everywhere, crawling up and down the spiky tufts of grass.

‘He could have let them be,' said Mum. ‘They would've headed for the sea eventually.'

‘But what about the road?' I reminded her. ‘Imagine if someone's driving along and suddenly their headlamps light up a crowd of crabs scuttling across–and then you hear this awful crackle as the car runs over them!'

‘A crustacean catastrophe,' she said and smiled, leaning back against her seat. It was alright to be happy.

When we got to Scarborough we zipped up our coats and pulled our hats down over our ears and headed straight from the station to the beach. Massive pale clouds came charging across the sky, with spokes of white sunlight wheeling out between them. At the end of the beach we walked past the empty shops and arcades and closed cafes, and climbed up over the bridge to the castle. The ruins made pockets of stillness in the streaming air. We plunged out again across the bleached meadow to the edge of the castle-island and stood there gulping at the air as it blasted into our faces. Mum pointed to a big rock jutting up further along the path and started to battle her way towards it. There was a log rolled against its base, facing inland. Other people must have used it as a shelter, and we sat there huddled out of the rushing wind. Now we could hear each other speak again.

‘You wouldn't want to be out in a boat in this!' she said.

I imagined the icy spray splashing up at you as each wave slammed into the side, and the fantastic lurch and slide of the boat and the excitement of the danger. ‘I'd love it!'

‘I used to feel like that,' Mum said.

‘How d'you mean?'

‘As if nothing could hurt me.'

‘I don't think that.'

‘You think you'll come out of this unscathed. That you're different than all the other girls.'

‘No Mum, I don't.'

‘You don't think about losing consciousness and never coming back again to places like this.'

‘If we don't take MDS seriously–'

‘Jessie they'll fix it. They'll figure something out. They always do.' The twiggy branch of a bush came blowing across the flattened grass, bowling over and over itself.

‘This is the way of fixing it.'

‘There'll be another way.'

‘You mean, let someone else volunteer.'

‘The world isn't like that, Jess. One person can't just–'

‘One person
can
, Mum. That's the point. That's why it's so fantastic. I
can
make a difference.'

Mum looked at me, then she lumbered to her feet and out into the wind again. I got up and followed her. She was leaning into the wind, going towards the cliff edge ‘Mum!' I shouted, but she didn't hear me. I ran after her but she stopped a couple of metres short of the edge. She stood staring across at the rocky inlet to our right. The foam from the boiling waves had been scooped off by the wind, and slathered against the cliffs like meringue. She turned to me, her hair streaming across her face. She was gesturing to the cliff edge but the wind blew her words away. She came and leant right in close to me. Her breath was warm against my ear.

‘Why don't you fly?'

I tilted back my head and tried to see her face. But she pulled me close again.

‘If you are a superhero? Why don't you just fly?' Her voice cracked.

I put my arms around her. ‘Mum, Mum, it's OK.' She let me hold her for a moment then she stumbled back to the shelter. She sat on the log and crouched over, burying her head in her arms. I sat beside her and waited. After a bit she raised her head and wiped her wet face on her gloves.

‘I didn't sign up for this,' she said in a flat little voice. ‘I didn't ask to be mother of Joan of fucking Arc.'

‘Look,' I said, ‘this is why I was put on earth.'

‘Not knowing
why you're on earth is the human condition.'

‘It's not!' I shouted happily. ‘It's not!'

‘Jessie, you'll die.'

‘This isn't about one individual. The mass of people, the human race–that's more important than any individual.'

‘That's a frightening way to think. Once you say individuals can be sacrificed–'

‘Mum. Think of the women who've already died. Think of all the women who have died.' We were sitting there with the wind howling past the shadow of our rock. I knew we were both thinking about Mandy. But there were all the women. And their babies. All of them. Mum was staring straight ahead at nothing. Tears rolled down her face. She was like a candle burning brightly. Like wax, melting. I thought, at last, she can see. I knelt down in front of her and clasped her gloved hands. ‘You see?' I said. ‘You see? It's really really simple.' I put my arms around her. I could feel her gulping for air like a person drowning.

‘Now you see, you see, you see,' I murmured into her hair. ‘Everything will be alright.' At last she stopped and lifted her head, and I wiped her cheeks with my silky scarf.

‘You make me afraid,' she whispered, and I laughed at her. ‘No,' she said. ‘It's true. You've turned into something else.'

‘I don't want you to be sad.'

‘What can I do? I love you, Jessie.'

When I went to bed I lay awake for a long time thinking about Mum, hoping she did understand. And wondering how to tackle Dad.