The Museum of You Page 17

  ‘I might have died if the door had been shut.’

  ‘That’d have been nice for Clover, wouldn’t it? “Jim Brookfield Found Dead in Bedsit.” ’

  ‘Studio flat.’

  ‘Whatever.’

  ‘He’d been sick, hadn’t you, Jim?’ the nurse prompts. ‘He’d been bleeding from his tummy and he was very poorly when he came in. I don’t think he realises how lucky he is. We’re giving his kidneys a rest. He’s going to have to make some lifestyle changes, aren’t you, Jim?’

  Jim is so far past pretending, he doesn’t even nod.

  ‘I brought you some stuff.’ Darren puts a carrier bag on the bed. ‘Just from Primarni and the pound shop.’

  He went straight to town, as soon as the shops opened. Didn’t bother going to the bedsit to look for Jim’s things. At the very least they’d have needed washing, if not binning. He dashed around for the usual: pyjamas, pants, socks, shampoo, deodorant, a toothbrush, toothpaste and a couple of jigsaws. They only do 100-piece puzzles at the pound shop; he chose a Labrador puppy with a red ribbon around its neck and a Dora the Explorer. Wait till Jim sees them, he’ll do his nut.

  ‘Ta.’ He doesn’t even look in the bag.

  ‘You’re lucky to have such a nice brother,’ the nurse says.

  ‘He’s not my brother.’

  Jim works his way through various iterations of ‘we’re not related’ and ‘he’s got nothing to do with me’ every time he’s in hospital. He thinks he’s making some big point by saying it.

  ‘We’ll get him seen by the hospital dentist while he’s in. His mouth’s a mess. And he really shouldn’t be drinking while he’s taking methotrexate. That’s the name of his psoriasis medication.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘We’ve done some liver function tests. Livers are surprisingly resilient. Yours needs some time off, doesn’t it, Jim? We’ve had a chat about this, haven’t we?’

  Jim pulls faces as she talks. Like a teenager.

  ‘You’re going to listen to the nurse, aren’t you?’

  They stare at each other and all the years and all the things between them crowd the room. Darren breaks off first. ‘You are listening, aren’t you?’ But Jim looks right through him and Darren knows that none of it matters. Jim won’t stop drinking. He won’t promise to take his medication. He won’t stop smoking. And he won’t eat properly – he can’t even remember to clean his teeth. He wouldn’t do it for Becky. He won’t do it for anyone.

  ‘What about his mental health?’

  ‘Someone’s coming to talk to him this afternoon.’

  ‘I am in the room, you know.’

  ‘Sorry. Do you want to watch the telly while you’re in?’

  ‘Yeah. Ta.’

  Darren manoeuvres the bedside screen with one hand and fishes in his jeans pocket for his debit card with the other.

  ‘It must have been hard for you . . .’ Jim begins.

  Darren stands there, debit card pinched between his fingers. It has been hard. He’s had years of it. Jim’s words are a concession of sorts. An acknowledgement of all the shit that’s happened. That’s all it takes, just a smidgen of recognition settles the roving of the old anger, and he is glad to help, happy to pay for the telly, even though it costs a bloody fortune.

  ‘. . . really hard, knowing Becky preferred me.’

  He stuffs the card back in his pocket. One of his shoes squeaks as he turns. The door to the room swings shut behind him and he strides past the nurses at the desk and down the long corridor, past the hand sanitisers and the signs for the X-ray department, past the café and the hospital shop, and through the double doors. Outside, he pays £3 to retrieve his car. He reverses out of his space carefully and drives home, windows down, radio off, hands wrapped tight around the wheel.

  Kelly is hurrying down the path and back to her car as he pulls up. She has parked in his way, blocking the drive. He leaves his engine running and climbs out.

  ‘Clover says you’re going to Blackpool tomorrow. It’s my weekend off, too. Why don’t me and the boys come with you?’ Her hair is brown today, shiny, like a conker; and she’s done something to her eyebrows, they look like she’s drawn them on with a black felt tip. She looks nice; she always looks nice.

  A day with Kelly and the boys will be full, bursting at the seams with chat and laughter. And Clover will enjoy herself, he knows she will. So he says yes, even as he wonders whether he is becoming a project; if Kelly is so kind because she feels sorry for him. He doesn’t want anyone to feel sorry for him, least of all Kelly – but that’s not something he wants to examine right now.

  Exhibit: ‘Becky Brookfield – the Untold Story’

  Catalogue

  Object: Framed school photograph.

  Description: A school photograph of Becky Brookfield (my mother) and Jim Brookfield (my uncle) in a black frame, with plasticky sort of glass. They are wearing a uniform, white shirts with navy and yellow striped ties. They both have blonde curly hair. Becky Brookfield’s hair is tied back in a ponytail. Jim Brookfield’s hair is tight and woolly like a sheep’s. The skin under Jim’s eyes is purple. There are red and white crusty patches on his cheeks and forehead. Cracks in the skin around his lips have been bleeding, they are running into his face like tiny streams. He is smiling. Becky Brookfield is not smiling. She has got her arm around Jim Brookfield. Their heads are touching. If you look carefully you can see that her fingers are curled around his shoulder, tight.

  Item Number: 19.

  Provenance: This photograph was taken in primary school. Jim Brookfield has one of his bottom middle teeth missing, so he is probably in reception or Year 1, which means that Becky Brookfield is in Year 1 or 2 – the oldest she can be is seven.

  Display: On the wall (find some nails and hammer one into the wall. Hang the picture with the other chosen pictures in an arrangement).

  Curator: Clover Quinn.

  Keeper: Darren Quinn.

  11

  For the first time this summer there’s cloud, the thick, pillowy kind that buries the whole sky. The inside-outside feeling has vanished and it’s a day to dress for the weather. A blustery wind races along the promenade, teasing hair, wafting jackets and whipping the sea into stiff-peaked waves. They wear jeans, T-shirts and coats, except for Kelly, who is sporting tiny shorts and a pair of grey tweed platform shoes. Clover remembers the wobble of her own walk when she experimented with her mother’s black patent heels. She studies the way Kelly trots, feet clopping like hooves, and admires her legs, which are the same shade of bronze as the rest of her. There is a walk-in spray-tanning booth at her salon; she must hop inside it when she hasn’t got any customers.

  It’s only a five-minute walk from the car park. Blackpool is nowhere near as pretty as the locations on her holiday board. Everything is grey: seal and smoke, slate and shadow, iron and pebble – beautiful in its own way, she decides in a burst of happiness. Wires and cables from the trams and the illuminations criss-cross above the road. Light-up models of SpongeBob, Squidward, Mr Krabs and Patrick hang from lamp posts ready for the switch-on at the end of the month. Pleasure Beach looms, the scaffold-like structure of The Big One rising up from behind brightly coloured shopfronts: a chippy, an ice cream and souvenir shop, Pizza Hut and the Beach Amusements arcade.

  ‘Whoa, The Big One is massive!’ Tyler says.

  They all stop briefly to admire the twist of red and blue metal.

  ‘You’re going to tell me exactly what it’s like, aren’t you?’ Dylan asks.

  ‘Exactly,’ Tyler promises.

  There’s a queue to buy tickets. Clover watches Kelly while they wait. Kelly touches Dad’s arm as she talks, her hand doubles as a full stop, comma and exclamation mark. And sometimes she gives him a look like butter, a look that melts all over him. She thinks he is the dog’s bollocks, literally, and he doesn’t seem to notice.

  Clover finds she doesn’t mind Kelly coming as much as she did yesterday. Dad had a bad afternoon, pulling
his everything face when he thought she wasn’t looking, and not listening when she spoke.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Were there any jigsaws in the pound shop?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you get some?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How was Uncle Jim?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Are you pretending to listen to me?’

  He said he had some sorting out to do and went into the garden, but he couldn’t decide what to keep and what to throw away and ended up rearranging things. Mrs Mackerel watched from an upstairs window, initially nodding encouragement and then shaking her head in annoyance. Afterwards, it looked like the bikes, the milk crates, the boat engine, the paddling pool, the slide and the water pistols and balls had been enjoying a game of musical chairs.

  He is better today. Maybe because of Kelly. It’s a shame Colin couldn’t come too; they’ve known each other for so long, they can fill Dad’s gaps and smooth his edges. Dad probably thinks Kelly coming is a happy coincidence, and perhaps it is. But Clover can’t help wondering whether he mentioned having this weekend off at some point and that’s why Kelly also arranged to be free. The boys are all over him like a rash – ‘Watch me, Darren!’ ‘Will you race me on the Steeplechase, Darren?’ ‘Mum says we can have lunch at Pizza Hut. Are you coming too, Darren?’ Whatever was bothering him yesterday is fading. At this rate he’ll be fine by teatime.

  While Dad was shopping for Uncle Jim’s things and visiting him in hospital yesterday, she was opening boxes in her mother’s room. Clothes mostly. And shoes. She emptied and collapsed the boxes and piled the clothes she didn’t want into bin bags. Her mother mostly wore casual things: jeans and T-shirts, tracksuit bottoms and leggings, trainers and flip-flops. She discovered a couple of blouses and a few pairs of smart-ish trousers. It was all big. Nothing she could wear and nothing she would wear, even if it was smaller. She piled up the collapsed boxes ready to sneak into Mrs Mackerel’s bin next week.

  Once the boxes on the window side of the bed were all emptied, she could finally open the wardrobe. It was an exciting, Christmassy sort of moment. What did she expect to find? A succession of accessorised outfits, lined up like shed skins? Two rows of fur coats and a lamp post in the distance? Nothing so grand. She just expected something. Anything. But when she pulled back the door, the rail was deserted and the wardrobe, which had felt like a destination, was more of a dead end. She was silly to be surprised – where did she think all the boxed clothes had come from? Dad must have started the packing and not quite finished. It was just like him, wasn’t it, to start something and then give up. She immediately felt mean for thinking it. Starting things is a sort of talent in itself. Some people never try anything new; some people never even talk about it.

  All that was left in the wardrobe was a jumble of stuff covering its bottom. On the top of the mound was a red handbag. It was old. You could tell because there were places where the leather was really scuffed and the stitching was unravelling on one side. The bag had a handle and a long strap. Inside, she discovered some tissues and a rectangular, red leather purse. The purse contained some change, a National Insurance card, a book of first-class stamps, some receipts and a library card.

  In a zipped compartment at the back of the purse she discovered a strip of four photographs, folded in half between photos two and three. They were like the one she has on her bus pass, but each photograph was different. In the first photo Dad and her mother were facing the camera, which had caught them, mouths wide, laughing. In the second photograph Dad’s head was turned slightly; he was at the tail end of the earlier laugh, smiling at her mother, his face all gooey. In the third photograph they were looking at each other, and what Clover saw there was love. Both faces were soft, and not just from being young; their expressions were the kind people do when they are mad about each other. In fact, there was so much love that looking at the picture felt a bit like spying. In the last photograph they were kissing, of course. It was as if the kissing had to follow because it was the next bit of the story. The photos were amazing. Firstly, because her mother was smiling, and secondly, because Dad didn’t look worried or preoccupied or as if he was trying very hard to have a good time. He just looked happy.

  She hung the bag’s long strap around the dummy’s chest and shoulder, and put the photo strip with the love-related objects. It was proof. Evidence that, once upon a time, her mother and her dad had lived happily, even though they didn’t manage an ever after.

  In the bottom of the wardrobe, underneath a navy duffle coat and on top of a folded duvet, she found the strangest thing. A plaited piece of hair as long as her arm, one bobble at the top and another at the bottom, where the hair tapered. She held it with the tips of her fingers. It dangled like something dead, reminding her of the wild animal collection she and Dad used to visit at the Botanic Gardens Museum, before it closed. One day, when they were visiting, the fire alarm sounded and Dad wasn’t sure if it was a drill or for real; he didn’t know whether to evacuate or stay put. While he was deciding, the fire door closed by itself, shutting them in the big, high-ceilinged room with all the stuffed animals doing unconvincing impressions of their former selves. It felt as if the room had captured them and it seemed possible that by the time the door reopened, she and Dad might find themselves imprisoned behind a sheet of glass, with fixed grins and buttoned eyes. It was a delicious fright, one they remembered and reconstructed on numerous occasions, tiptoeing into the animal room, half hoping the alarm would sound again and trap them for a second time.

  She held the plait up to her own hair; it was a shade or two lighter. She wrapped it around the hook of the dummy’s head and placed the black patent shoes beside the stand. There. It looked as if she was building something.

  The tables in Pizza Hut are sticky with tomato sauce and spilled pop. A biting wind licks around the restaurant every time someone opens the heavy door. Clover sits beside Kelly, whose legs are dimpled by goosebumps. They watch Dad standing at the buffet counter with Tyler and Dylan, laying slices of pizza on their waiting plates.

  ‘I married someone like my dad,’ Kelly says. ‘People do that sometimes. It probably won’t turn out as badly if you do it.’

  No one likes Pete. Except the woman he replaced Kelly with – she must like him.

  ‘So do men marry women who are like their mothers?’

  ‘Hmm, maybe. I’m not sure.’ Kelly tries to spear a crouton with her fork. ‘I used to babysit you, when you were little.’ She gives up and uses her fingers.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Do you remember?’ Kelly’s face has gone all mushy – the croutons must be really nice.

  ‘Not really. You know . . . you know my mother?’ she asks, not wondering whether it’s okay until after the words are out and it’s too late to take them back.

  ‘Ye-ess.’ Kelly’s lips worry the word.

  ‘What was she like?’

  Kelly licks her fingers and thinks. ‘Your dad really loved her.’ She pulls a face, a sort of apology for not answering the question. ‘When a friend who’s a boy falls in love, you don’t see them as much. Things change and you only bump into them sometimes. You see each other at parties, but you don’t . . .’ Her face twists again. ‘Becky was . . . she seemed nice.’

  Nice – it’s not much, but she’ll add it to her notebook. ‘Did you cut her hair?’

  ‘I wasn’t her hairdresser.’

  Clover steals straight into the gap between her question and Kelly’s answer. ‘But did you ever cut her hair?’

  ‘Once.’

  She doesn’t know what to say next. She’d like to try, ‘Did you love my dad back then, before you married Pete?’ But she daren’t, and moments later Dad and the boys are back, their plates stacked with pizza, arguing about whether the wind will drop enough for The Big One to open. Dad reckons it’s unlikely, but the boys are desperate.

  ‘The Big One goes at eighty-seven
miles per hour,’ Tyler says. ‘It’s more than two hundred feet tall and there are warning beacons for aeroplanes on the two highest bits.’

  ‘Is that right?’

  ‘Yes, Darren.’ Dylan tuts and waves a slice of pizza for emphasis. It’s hard for him to believe that anyone doesn’t know these important facts. ‘The Big One is an experience of a lifetime,’ he claims in a stilted, word-for-word voice, clearly repeating something that’s been either read or said to him.

  ‘You’re not big enough for it, mate. And growing takes a while. I hate to break it to you, but you’re not going to reach a hundred and thirty centimetres this afternoon.’

  ‘Darren! I know that! I want it to be open so Tyler can go on it.’

  ‘Aww, you’re a good lad.’

  Dad noogies Dylan, and Kelly looks like she might dissolve all over the sticky table. Once you’ve spotted love with a capital ‘L’ you can’t stop seeing it. It’s plain as a pikestaff, literally.

  The Big One doesn’t open, but they go on everything else: Avalanche, Infusion, Revolution and The Big Dipper. They leave Valhalla to last because it’s an absolute soaker. Afterwards, they stick pound coins in the human-sized dryers and stand in front of the blasting warm air until their clothes have gone from sodden to slightly steaming.

  Dad buys two large bags of chips, which they eat in the car on the way home. Clover shares with the boys, who dig in, all fists. Dad uses his fingers to feed himself, but he spears chips with a tiny wooden fork for Kelly and slips them between her lips as she drives.

  By the time they reach Preston, the boys are fast asleep, heads flung back, mouths open, hands glistening with chip fat, and Kelly is talking about people she and Dad used to know at school. Clover wipes her hands on her jeans and digs in her coat pocket for the Latin booklet. There are so many Latin phrases that she already knows, like ex libris, which you sometimes see in books, and hosanna in excelsis, which is a line from ‘Ding Dong Merrily on High’ and means ‘hosanna in the highest’. And then there are words and phrases she has never heard of but wants to learn because they sound epic when she whispers them to herself. Like this one: nil admirari, which means ‘to be surprised by nothing’.