The Museum of You Read online

  ‘I don’t want to be looked after, when the time comes,’ Dad said.

  It was the bother with his prostate – that was all. He wasn’t properly ill, though you wouldn’t know it from the attention he was paying to his bodily functions: examining, measuring, listening, smelling, making a note of every small change and plotting his decline. He bought slippers – he never wore slippers, before – and he started to shuffle. Maybe it was the slippers: he’d chosen the open-backed, flip-flop kind. Even so, he was only in his early sixties back then. There was no excuse for any of it, especially the shuffling. It got on Darren’s nerves; he’d lost Mum and he hadn’t been expecting Dad to disappear, too. He offered repeated assurances. When and if the time came he would be happy to do any looking-after; they could live together indefinitely; no one’s style was being cramped, and that was the truth. The moment he realised that perhaps Dad didn’t want to live with him, Darren shut up and Dad started looking at retirement flats, even though he hadn’t yet retired.

  ‘There’ll be a bit of money in it for you, son,’ he said. ‘Enough to go to university. I’ve read up on going through clearing – it’s a doddle. You won’t need to borrow a penny, long as you’re careful.’

  The semi-detached house in The Grove had been empty for more than eighteen months. The previous owner, an elderly man, had died there. It was beside the railway line and hadn’t been decorated since the 1970s. Becky picked up the details during her lunch hour. Just a thought, she said.

  The estate agent who showed them round was resigned. He sloped through the empty rooms, muttering, ‘Lounge . . . hall . . . dining room . . . kitchen’ – not even attempting a ‘conveniently located’, ‘hidden potential’ or ‘in need of some updating’.

  Dad said the money was Darren’s to invest in The Future. They made a silly offer. It was rejected, but their follow-up, only somewhat silly offer was accepted. With the money from Dad and their combined wages they could afford it. It wasn’t exactly difficult to get a mortgage, they were handing them out like hot dinners back then.

  They wanted the house to seem like theirs when they stepped through the door, so they decorated the hall first. It was a hard place to begin, with the long drop of the paper and so many door frames to cut around. Colin offered to help, but they wanted to do it themselves. The walls were cracked, uneven. Before they hung the lining paper, Darren drew a heart with their names in.

  ‘We’ll redecorate one day and ta-dah,’ he said.

  Once they’d papered and the paint had dried, he knocked nails into the wall for the five clocks Dad hadn’t taken to his new flat. He wound the weights each morning and the cuckoos sang on the hour and the half hour, making it feel like home.

  They took up all the carpets and cut them into pieces for the allotment. Without his greenhouse, Dad’s interest in it waned and it gradually became more theirs than his. Then came Christmas and the cold weather and they wished the carpets back as draughts breathed between the floorboards.

  He wishes he could remember more of the year that followed. But contentment lacks specifics, it’s easily swallowed and effortlessly stomached. He looked forward, welcoming each new morning as a means to an end, losing the detail of the days as he anticipated the moment when the house would be completed.

  They started work on the kitchen. Its pine units and tongue-and-groove ceiling had oranged over the years – it looked like a sauna. They sanded the wood and caked it in white gloss. It took longer than planned. But these things did, didn’t they? Becky worked towards her NVQ 3, they managed the allotment, listened to Colin as he fell in and out of love, drove Maureen back and forth to the station each time she went to Portsmouth, checked on Jim, who was in and out of the hospital by the park, and when the hospital by the park was full, they rattled along the M57 to Liverpool in the Fiesta, singing along to Nelly Furtado and Robbie Williams on the radio, Becky absolutely certain that this time Jim would have returned to himself.

  They didn’t take a holiday that summer; not so much as a long weekend away. They were saving up. When they had enough money they’d get cheap flights to somewhere exciting and a deal on a hotel. They picked vegetables and uprooted weeds. They decorated the dining room and the lounge, and finally the downstairs was finished.

  Autumn drew in and Becky watched cookery programmes during the darkening evenings. She tried things out, determined to make them like they did on the telly. She grew herbs on the kitchen windowsill. He couldn’t see that they made any difference to the food, but if putting green bits in everything made her happy, he was all for it.

  At night she curled into him, breasts and thighs pillowing his back and bum. She wrapped her arm around his waist and he grabbed her hand. Sometimes he held it, other times he stuffed it down the front of his boxers; sometimes she laughed quietly, other times her soft fingers wrapped and wrung him. They were sleeping in a second-hand bed in the second bedroom. There were old-fashioned fitted wardrobes on either side of the bed; Colin had given them some boxes for the rest of their things. Becky’s shoes and books were arranged in neat piles on the floor alongside the things she was collecting, in anticipation of the conclusion of the work: cushions, towels, bedding. It felt like camping, a sort of adventure while they painted and cleaned and arranged the backdrop to the rest of their lives.

  Christmas crept up on them, the house still unfinished. Maureen moved to Portsmouth and Jim’s CPN found him a room in a B&B in town when he came out of hospital. One night Darren walked back from the garage after a late. As he reached the brow of the bridge he saw Becky through one of the first-floor windows, roller in hand. She was painting the biggest of the three bedrooms. It ran along the front of the house and would be theirs. He’d seen a king-sized bed with a brass-look headboard which he reckoned Becky would love because it looked old-fashioned and romantic, even though the ‘brass’ was made of some sort of coated plastic. It would be months before they could afford it, but he knew exactly where it would go and he’d imagined the way the light would stream through the two windows during the lazy mornings of weekends off. The way he’d sneak down the stairs in his boxers and wake her up with a cup of tea, after which they’d entertain themselves until lunchtime. Perfect.

  He opened the front door carefully and tiptoed up the stairs to surprise her, only realising she wasn’t alone when he heard her gentle, cajoling voice.

  ‘. . . promise not to say anything until I’ve had a chance to talk to him.’

  He waited.

  ‘I want one of them beds with drawers in. And a telly. There, by the window. And a new Derek.’

  ‘Derek stank.’

  ‘He couldn’t help it.’

  ‘I’m not having a rat in the kitchen.’

  ‘I’d keep him up here, with me.’

  ‘You’d have to keep the windows open during the day.’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘We’d get some of that spray for smelly pets.’

  ‘And I’d like one of them chinchillas.’

  ‘One thing at a time. And no smoking – of anything – in the house. Darren doesn’t like it. His mum died of lung cancer. You have to behave. Promise?’

  He heard the wet wipe of the roller against the wall and the creak of the floorboards as she adjusted her stance. And he heard Jim’s silence.

  Becky was happy, he thinks. He doesn’t know, though. The rehearsing of old memories can only uncover so much. He lacked imagination, he knows that much. If he had understood then what happens when someone you love steps out of the front door one day and never comes back, the way it marks a person, he likes to think he’d have been more careful. More observant. More . . . just more. If he’d understood the weight of caring for Jim. If, despite the easy supplanting of his own plans, he’d found room to imagine the way frustrated hopes might catch like hangnails. If he had known, if he had thought, he might have done better.

  Love. It fills you up. It’s not that you can’t eat or sleep, just that you don’t need to because you�
�re running on feelings – buzzing, elated; surging with it. Where does it go after its object is gone? His mum had an illustrated edition of Pilgrim’s Progress when he was a little boy. She’d won it at school, a prize for something or other. Christian, the man in the story, had a bundle tied to his back. It looked uncomfortable, heavy, but he got on with it, did all his climbing and running and fighting with it fastened to him. It’s the same with love, he thinks. It doesn’t go anywhere. You can decrease its volume and increase its density, you can bundle it up, tight, but you still have to lug it around with you.

  *

  He rises from the sofa and the room tilts ever so slightly. Not a spin, thankfully, just a momentary slip in the axis of things. He stands, hands in pockets, and waits for stillness. He is sorry for himself – twat. He’ll be on YouTube listening to The Smiths, if he’s not careful. There. The room is righted and, slightly pissed and trawling for better thoughts, it is suddenly easy to consider the entirety of a notion that has been half formed for some time. And it is this: rivers must follow a particular course, and it may seem that feelings, like water, have no option but to wash a certain way. But, downstream from obstructions, an eddy can form, flowing in the opposite direction from the rest of the water: a place where you might go to experience a rest from currents and waves.

  He trudges up the stairs, chucks his duvet on the floor and lies on the bare bed, head full of the river diagrams in his old textbooks. He thinks of mouths and plunge pools and V-shaped valleys, and it is only a small step to tiny shorts, burnished legs and a pair of platform shoes.

  Exhibit: ‘Becky Brookfield – the Untold Story’

  Catalogue

  Object: Gold necklace with a heart pendant.

  Description: It looks like a pendant you might be able to open, but it isn’t. It is probably very valuable. There is a green bit on the underneath side – it probably needs to be cleaned specially by someone who cleans gold for a job.

  Item Number: 24.

  Provenance: Darren Quinn (my dad) probably gave this to Becky Brookfield (my mother) as a present.

  Display: Perhaps I can wear it. (Now? After the exhibit has closed?)

  Curator: Clover Quinn.

  Keeper: Darren Quinn.

  13

  Dad says he’d better visit Uncle Jim by himself because he may have seen the dentist, and if he has, there’s a chance he’ll be upset, and Uncle Jim wouldn’t want her to see him upset. She agrees, not because she’s worried about seeing Uncle Jim upset – that’s happened before and he is always himself again, eventually – but so she can spend some time in the bedroom, which is shaping up nicely, even though it still needs more work.

  She removes the folded duvet that lines the bottom of the wardrobe. There’s something else underneath, one last thing that she’ll get to in a moment. First, she unfolds the duvet and shakes it. Then she unfurls the soft sheet and duvet cover that she kept back and makes the bed. It does something to the room; she can see its shape now, the form it will take once she has removed the bin bags and the flattened boxes and arranged all the things exactly as she wants them.

  The last thing in the wardrobe, if you don’t count stray hairs and chunks of dust, is a skirt. It was rolled up in a ball. Initially, she thought it was a scarf. It’s beautiful. There are two layers. The outer one is filmy, black with dark red flowers. The underskirt is also black, but it’s made of a thicker, opaque material. She removes her gloves and strokes the fabric. She holds it up against herself. It’s floor length; you could swirl in it. She lays the dummy on the bed and slips the skirt over the wooden stand and up to the nip of its waist. The drawstring can be tied tight. There.

  When she tilts the dummy back to standing, its one legged-look has vanished and it seems as if there might be a pair of real legs hiding under the twirl of fabric.

  She pops to the toilet. On re-entering the room, the dummy catches her unawares and tricks her into conjuring a person.

  ‘Hello,’ she says, her voice filling the new contours of the room. ‘Do you like it here? It’s my museum.’ She pauses to smooth a crease in the duvet cover. ‘There are so many kinds of museums, I’ve looked online: bus museums, tea museums, puppet museums, magic museums and quilt museums. There are even sex museums,’ she says the S.E.X. word quietly – she doesn’t think her mother will mind. ‘This is a special museum. It’s the only one. It’s the museum of you.’

  The dummy holds its position, indifferent and immobile, and she starts to feel like a wally. She doesn’t have time for pretending – she still hasn’t made a card like the ones she carried through the Titanic exhibition.

  The cards are tucked into the back of her notebook. She reads them. They were written as if the passengers were talking to you: ‘My name is Violet Jessop’ and ‘My name is Mildred Brown’.

  ‘My name is Becky Brookfield,’ she writes. ‘I was born on 21st June 1980.’ She isn’t sure what to put next.

  ‘My name is Becky Brookfield. I was born on 21st June 1980. I had a brother called Jim and a boyfriend called Darren.’

  No, that’s not right, those things don’t really say anything about her mother.

  ‘My name is Becky Brookfield. I was born on 21st June 1980. I worked in an old people’s home. I liked . . .’

  What to write here? She could put travel, because of the brochures. Or she could put books, because of the romance novels and the library card. Or Westlife, because of the T-shirt. When Dad talks about her mother he says what she was like, rather than what she liked. He says she was kind. And very patient with Uncle Jim.

  ‘I liked travelling and Westlife,’ she writes. ‘I was kind. I looked after my brother.’

  How to finish? She checks the fronts of the cards from the Titanic exhibition and copies the same last line on to her mother’s card: ‘Discover my fate at the end of this exhibition.’

  In the afternoon they pack the sleds into the boot and go to see Grandad. They take a carrier bag of vegetables: potatoes, onions, peas, runner beans and a lettuce. Dad messes about in the kitchen for a bit, opening cupboards and muttering about the drains before trying to tempt Grandad out of the flat with a walk to Rich’s Ice Cream for a single scoop of whatever they fancy. But Grandad thinks it’s too windy, and he fancies a quiet afternoon, with Shakespeare – he says it as if they’re friends.

  They can’t compete with Shakespeare, so they just stay for a bit. After they’ve watched a video of a cat dressed as a shark riding an automatic hoover they go out to the balcony. Grandad hands out enormous tomatoes and they eat them like apples. He keeps a container of salt on the balcony, in case of slugs. They sprinkle it on the tomatoes and the juice dribbles down their chins, warm and sweet. Dad invites Grandad to the dunes, but he snorts and points at his slippers.

  ‘You could put shoes on, Dad. You know, those things people wear outside?’

  ‘I go out every day.’

  ‘Since when?’

  ‘Since I read that sitting is the new smoking. I got myself some trainers. On the internet.’ He shuffles back into the flat, slippers slapping at his heels, and returns holding a pair of white high-tops. ‘I put these on in the mornings and then I walk round the block. Twice.’

  ‘That’s great, Dad. Good for you.’

  ‘They’re dead posh, Grandad.’

  ‘I know, love. I read the reviews.’

  ‘Good for you,’ she says, just like Dad, and they all stand on the balcony feeling pleased with themselves.

  Dad bought the sleds after the Christmas when she was seven and there was ten inches of snow. There hasn’t been another winter like it, but the sand dunes are here all year long, bumping along the coast like a sleeping beast.

  They climb the biggest dune. It’s crescentic, Dad says, which means it’s shaped like a C with a windward side and a slip-face side. There isn’t a proper path and the marram grass spikes her legs. At the top, Dad holds the back of her sled so she can climb in. She sits, and for a moment it feels like she is waiting at
the top of the world. She can see the bare beach and the distant line of the sea. She can see Blackpool on the other side of the estuary, tiny, like a model of itself – the tower, the swoop of The Big One and rows of houses as small as pencil dots. Then Dad lets go and she is flying down the windward side of the dune, her stomach trampolining to the back of her throat as she cuts through the sand.

  When the sled comes to a stop she gets out and draws a line along its front with the tip of her shoe, marking the distance travelled. Once she is out of the way, Dad descends, hollering and laughing as he thunders down the drop. He passes her line and whoops.

  ‘It’s because you’re heavier,’ she says.

  ‘But you don’t press as hard into the sand as I do,’ he replies, ‘so you’d think that you’d go further.’

  ‘You weigh more, so you slide faster.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s how it works.’ He clambers out and brushes sand from his jeans. ‘But I’m not sure. It’s physics. You can do it when you get older, for GCSE, and then you can tell me. Race you!’

  He grabs his sled and begins the slip-sliding run back to the top. She chases after and gives him a small shove as she passes. He trips and she can hardly run as she overtakes him, gasping with laughter, literally choking with the fun of it.

  Afterwards, they play Monopoly. Dad buys everything he lands on, just in case, which means he rarely gets a whole set and almost never builds houses or hotels. She waits for the good stuff. The wind whipped salt into her hair; she smells like the sea and when she licks the skin around her lips she can taste the beach.

  ‘Has it been a good few days?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Three happy things?’

  ‘Too hard to choose,’ she says, and from his expression she can see that it is exactly the right answer.

  Dad is on an early. It’s warm today. Summer hasn’t quite finished with them; this last burst of heat and light will crisp up the leaves as a parting kindness to autumn.