The Whiskerly Sisters (33 page)

After the funeral, Sly’s memory seemed to desert him altogether; everything had dropped into a black hole. He knew he had been given indefinite leave from the hospital. He knew that he had spent hours of that leave lying on his bed staring at nothing. When he could be bothered to get up, he remembered sitting in the lounge staring out of the window, but he had no clue what he’d been looking at. He had no clue what he had eaten and he couldn’t remember whether or not he had showered or got dressed. It simply ceased to matter.

It was only when there was a knock on the door that he rallied slightly. He chose to ignore the knock at the time and only opened the door when a neighbour shouted through the letterbox that there was a large crate causing a blockage in the shared passageway and could he please deal with it. Reluctantly, he crept down the hallway and cautiously opened the front door to find the damned thing on his doorstep. A note on the top simply read, “No wish to disturb”. Half intrigued, despite himself, he dragged the crate inside and left it undisturbed in the hall for a few days more. When Sly finally found some energy and decided to open it, he found, to his dismay, that it was full of Ali’s stuff so he quickly sealed it back down again. Feeling like all kinds of coward, and wanting only to feel nothing, he fled to his bedroom and barricaded himself in for the rest of the day. He just wasn’t ready. He didn’t believe he would ever be ready.

His parents dropped round several times to try to chivvy him up or to bring him some shopping or a cooked meal in the hope of convincing him to eat. He found he could barely look at either of them, let alone talk to them and so, eventually, they left him in peace, trying instead to get through to him on the phone. He responded by turning off his mobile. In the end, having run out of patience and fearing for her only son’s welfare, his mother turned up unexpectedly and hammered on the door until he was forced to open it. Unlike the normally serene person he was used to, this time, she stormed through the door, yelling at him. He couldn’t remember much about the tirade, but he did remember the bit, after she had calmed down, when she icily informed him that he wasn’t the only one who was grieving; that she had in fact lost one of her two boys and so had his dad. That one piece of information at least permeated through the mush of his brain and hit home. After she had gone, he stared for a while at the back of the front door. All he could think was that he still wasn’t ready and he knew he was never going to be ready so, in a strange way, he was in fact as ready as he was ever going to be so he might as well get on with it.

With living. With the business of living. If only he could find the energy.

For three more days, he stared at the box on the floor, now dragged into the lounge where it sat sulking, accusing him silently of neglect. Every time he went to open it, he found himself exhausted and had to walk away, choosing to retreat to the other end of the flat behind his bedroom door.

And then Charley turned up.

It was unusual for Charley to worry overly about anyone. She believed every adult had the right to make their own way and their own choices through life. It had nothing to do with the fact that Sly had not shown up in class for quite a while and she missed the money. It was normal for people to drift in and out of the gym; something she saw all the time. It had nothing to do with the fact that she fancied the man either. She was astute enough to know when she was being given the knock back even when it was liberally laced with roguish charm. She knew Sly wasn’t interested in her in that way and shrugged it off. It didn’t happen often. She would cope. It was just that there was an indefinable something about the guy that pricked at her conscious like a nettle sting and nibbled away at her infallible instincts until she felt she had no choice but to go and find out for herself why Sly had dropped out of her life.

When Sly opened the door to her, she was shocked. He looked as though he hadn’t slept for days, nor eaten for that matter. He was pale with dark circles under his eyes and quite a growth of what might eventually prove to be an awesome beard. He had aged and seemed way to thin for his baggy, grubby sweats. Worst of all, he quite clearly needed a shower. Morning breath – nightmare!

If Charley was shocked, Sly was more so. He thought it was his mother on the rampage again. The last person he had expected to see on his doorstep was Charley or any of the rest of the gang. He couldn’t imagine why they would be interested in him and he had no idea of the impact his sudden disappearance had had on the little group of friends. He knew a lot about what was happening in their worlds and about their secret stings, but he had always been able to make friends with the girls that crossed his path and they regularly offloaded their hopes and dreams onto him, swearing him to secrecy in the process. He had supported them in some of their operations. It had been great fun and he felt glad to have been able to help. Even so, he felt this unwelcome intrusion into his private life was way over the top.

“Aren’t you going to let me in then?” Charley asked after they had both stood there for a while staring at each other in disbelief.

“Uh! Oh! Oh, yes, yes of course,” replied Sly, standing to one side to let her in, adding, “It’s a bit messy.”

It actually wasn’t too bad. The large, square lounge with its big picture window overlooking the canal was reasonably tidy except for the rather messy duvet scrunched up in one corner of the sofa and the sealed storage container in the middle of the room. The kitchen was the worst, but only because there were several plated-up dinners on the counter that looked like they had seen better days, together with an endless amount of stale cups of something or other. Charley was not invited to inspect the rest of the flat.

“We’ve missed you,” admitted Charley, turning back towards him as she entered the lounge.

“Yeah, not been up to it recently,” came the terse reply.

Charley placed her bag carefully on the wooden floor and perched on the very edge of the black leather sofa and peered up at her friend.

“What’s up?” she asked shortly.

“Nothing. Look, I’m okay. It’s just that, well, I’ve been working a bit hard lately,” he told her.

“Rubbish,” countered Charley scornfully. “Sorry to be blunt, but look at the state of you. Something’s happened.”

There was a pause while the pair stared at each other.

“Right,” said Charley firmly. “I’m going into your kitchen now to make us both a cup of coffee. You can sit there and think about telling me the truth. I won’t accept anything less,” and she stalked out, leaving Sly staring after her, feeling awed at her directness and a tiny bit afraid.

It took Charley a little more time to persuade Sly to open up and tell her about his brother’s recent death. She proved to have a very sympathetic ear and, by the time he had finished, she knew more about him than anyone outside his family, but she didn’t know everything. Sly still held his closest secret back.

“So, that’s his stuff,” she said when his story came to its end, and nodded towards the box in the centre of the room.

“Yep,” replied Sly briefly.

“Do you want to open it alone or do you fancy some company?” Charley asked, looking at him. “Whatever you want.”

“Dunno, I keep looking at it. I’m not sure. Can you do it?” replied Sly, a lump beginning to form in his throat at the thought of what might be to come.

With Sly sitting in the far corner of the sofa, with his arms crossed over his belly as if to protect himself, Charley knelt in front of the box and, almost reverently, unsealed and removed its lid. There was a short pause and then the memories, so long trapped in their wooden cage, released themselves and gently began to pervade the room.

On the very top of the pile of bits and pieces, lay the little green comfort blanket Ali had had as a child, still dog-eared and frayed from previous use. “Okay, I can deal with that,” thought Sly as Charley handed it to him and he found his heart was still beating. He even managed to stroke its scruffy pile and the world amazingly kept turning.

There were a few photograph albums, which Charley took out and laid on the parquet floor. She knew instinctively that they might be a step too far for the very vulnerable Sly. Underneath the albums, they found Benson, the stuffed Dalmatian, which had always been Ali’s favourite childhood toy. As a toddler, he had refused to put him down. Sly smiled wanly as he took the little dog from Charley’s proffered hand. He gave it a little squeeze as tears welled into his eyes. He held them in check.

“Seen a few places, haven’t you boy?” he whispered gruffly as he placed Benson on the arm of the sofa. “His favourite,” he explained. “Never went anywhere without him.” Charley merely nodded. Into the box, she dipped again, pulling out several items wrapped in newspaper, which turned out to be bits and bobs of Ali’s homemade pottery.

“Prolific little chap,” said Charley, as she unwrapped each one and carefully placed each item on the floor.

“Loved his pottery,” remarked Sly proudly. “I have loads more in the cupboards.”

There were a couple of swimming certificates, together with a framed picture of a beaming Ali receiving a medal from some far off Sports Day. Sly remembered the photo, which had held pride of place on the cabinet in Ali’s room at the Hostel. In a little black box, they found the little tin medal itself. Sly fingered its cold, metal edges, clearly recalling the day he had cheered his brother home as he won his first sack race.

Filling up a large section of the crate were several long storage tubes. “Shall we see what’s in here?” asked Charley, picking up one of them.

“Probably his chalk drawings,” replied Sly. “How he loved playing with chalk.” Again Sly found he could smile at the recollection.

To Sly’s great astonishment, he found that the tube contained several of his own original, hand drawn designs, worked on at the dining room table or on the lounge floor under his parents’ feet throughout his childhood. Clipped neatly around the edges were scraps of fabric, bits of ribbon or shiny buttons, indicating exactly how Sly imagined each design should look as a finished outfit. At the bottom of each one was his own careful signature and the date.

Charley sat back on her heels and examined each drawing carefully and drew in her breath.

“My God, Sly,” she gasped, having spread out the contents of the first tube across the floor. “These are amazing.”

Sly was stunned. He hadn’t seen his designs for years and this batch pre-dated Ali’s birth. His mother must have begun collecting them and then, somehow, his brother must have taken over. He thought they must have been thrown away, but instead they had been carefully collated and stored away safely. A lump began to form at the bottom of his throat as he found himself moving from the sofa to kneel on the floor beside Charley. Tentatively, he stretched out a finger and gently stroked a tiny piece of lace clipped to the corner of the nearest drawing. For a few seconds, he remained completely still, save for the trembling finger held against the scratchy fabric, and then he crumpled over, drew both his hands over his face and began to sob in huge, heaving waves of noise, which threatened to swallow him up. Charley waited. She made no attempt to touch or comfort the man. Instead, she sat quietly on the floor beside him, her hands resting lightly on her knees and watched as he cried it out. Finally, when the sobs began to recede and his breathing slowly returned to normal, she leaned over and gently put an arm around his shoulders, drawing him into her, letting him nestle into her side and draw comfort from her presence.

When Sly finally stirred and drew apart from her, she reached into the box and drew out another of the tubes and then another. Together, they opened them all and examined the contents of each. Charley began to question him about the different images, gently encouraging him to talk about his passion.

Slowly, Sly began to open up to her, eventually beginning to enjoy himself as he told her about his love of design and fabric. He went on to tell Charley about his mother and her work as a seamstress and how, for as long as he could remember, he had sat beside her, playing with little remnants of material and making patterns out of the different buttons. He explained how he had first begun to design for the little doll she had bought him and discussed with her his ideas for each of the designs. He could not get over the wonder of his past, come together again and spread out before him; his artwork from way back when.

As he thought of his little brother secretly squirrelling away his work, his voice quavered and he began to shake. Briskly, Charley turned his attention away from his memories by instructing him to put on the kettle. As he left the room, she carefully began to pack away the drawings into the empty tubes. Charley was staggered by the quality of the artwork and the designs. She felt that what she really needed was a stiff drink, but she reasoned that alcohol, on empty stomachs, would do neither of them any good.

“Come on, spit spot,” she called to Sly from her place on the floor. “I am dying of dehydration here.”

“Coming right up,” he replied cheerfully.

“Get those cups washed while you are at it,” she ordered. “I want that kitchen cleaned up by the time I’m finished here.”

“Bitch,” replied Sly mildly and with more than a trace of his former self in his tone.

“Better believe it, Designer Boy,” she retorted smartly, continuing to pack up the box. When Charley walked into the kitchen to collect her coffee, she found Sly washing up. She grabbed a tea towel and lent a hand. Together, they made short work of the untidy kitchen.

“How long since you had a proper meal?” she asked.

“Dunno,” came the reply.

“Hungry?” she ventured as they finally took their coffee into the lounge. Sly shook his head. He bent down to pick up a photo album, perched on the top of the unopened box and placed it on his knee. Charley gently retrieved it and returned it to its place.

“Tomorrow,” she said. “Enough already for today.” Sly looked at her gratefully. “I don’t know about you, but I could murder a pizza,” she continued and, without waiting for a reply, took out her iPhone and made the call, ordering her favourite vegetarian without asking his opinion. With supper en route, Charley manoeuvred Sly in the general direction of the shower.