The Museum of You Page 21

  Now that the boxes aren’t blocking the way, she can have another try at opening the window. She pushes hard. Nothing. Never mind. She sprays some of the perfume instead – it’s almost as good as fresh air. She attaches the CD player to the waistband of her shorts and puts the headphones on, arranging them so they serve a dual purpose, music conduit and hairband. ‘Beautiful Day’ plays as she sticks the completed colouring pages to the wall with Blu-Tack. In each illustration a surprised woman is being visited by a heavenly figure. She has coloured and cut out the word SURPRISE and now she sticks it to the wall next to the window, beside the colouring pages and the two photographs of her with her mother. She adds the cautionary, bubble-written NIL ADMIRARI. Remembering the baby clothes Dad bought on the day she was born, she pops to her own room. There are two baby-grows, one white, the other pink, and there is a tiny red dress. In the bottom of her own wardrobe are several carrier bags stuffed with hangers, which Dad is keeping, just in case. Whenever people say, ‘Would you like the hanger with that?’ in a shop, he says yes. She returns to the second bedroom and hangs the tiny clothes from the picture rail. When she has finished this arrangement she props the MDF holiday collage and LOVE boards against the skirting board. She dashes downstairs to fetch her LOVE heading and sticks it in the middle of the board. The filled bin bags make the room look untidy, so she piles them into the space behind the door before arranging the dummy at the foot of the bed and repositioning the plait so it hangs from one shoulder. The black patent heels sit beside the dummy’s base, like feet.

  A pile of small things, many of them her favourites, awaits her attention: the Little Golden Book, the notes from Uncle Jim, the teeth, the school report and school photograph. But she decides to finish the exhibit card first.

  On the back of the Titanic cards it tells you the fate of the characters that accompanied you on your journey around the exhibition. She turns her mother’s partially completed card over and writes:

  The Fate of Becky Brookfield

  Becky Brookfield died when her baby, Clover Quinn, was six weeks old.

  When she has done this she places the completed card on the bed. The wardrobe on the right-hand side of the bed is still blocked by boxes. She has had a glimpse in one or two of these and they appear to be full of Dad’s belongings from years ago: old clothes, school books, bits of paper, letters – possibly from her mother, but these things feel forbidden because Dad is alive and could sort them himself, if he chose. Still . . . she flicks the flaps on a small box into which she hasn’t yet peeped. It’s just old textbooks: Study Advice for Geography A Level, Advanced Geography through Diagrams, Changing Environments – boring. But, in between Geography Direct and Britain’s Changing Environment, she discovers a sheet of newspaper, folded in half. She opens it and sees a picture of Dad wearing a suit, head turned slightly as he tries to avoid being photographed.

  MISADVENTURE RULING FOR YOUNG MOTHER

  The death of a 21-year-old mother who was hit by a car involved no wrongdoing by the driver.

  Rebecca Brookfield suffered serious chest injuries when she was struck by a Land Rover Defender driven by Michael Norberry and died at the scene, an inquest heard. Mr Norberry was not exceeding the speed limit for the road. He told the hearing that he didn’t see Miss Brookfield until it was too late.

  Coroner Julia Davy ruled that Miss Brookfield died as a result of misadventure.

  Rebecca’s partner Darren, pictured, wept as he said, ‘We will miss her so much.’

  Clover knows all these facts. But she has never seen them laid out like this. So bare. Lacking Dad’s gentle explanations and elaborations. Misadventure – it sounds like an unlucky holiday. She retrieves the other newspaper sheet, the one about Mrs Mackerel – she needs to put it on the wall with the ‘SURPRISE’ display. And she grabs the passport photos. She lines the objects up on the floor in order, one, two, three: Dad and her mother, laughing and kissing; her surprise arrival; the misadventure. Everything was fine and then she was born. It has occurred to her before, of course. Not everyone likes surprises. It might be a coincidence, like the way Uncle Jim finds he isn’t feeling himself when something important is coming up – Christmas or Dad’s birthday, for instance. But the one, two, three of it suggests otherwise. She places the latest newspaper sheet on the freshly made bed, beside the card, uncertain where to display it.

  Once, last summer, she asked Dad where her mother had been going.

  ‘To the other side of the road,’ he said, which sounded like the punchline to a joke.

  ‘But where, exactly?’

  He pulled a face: made a sort of shrug with his mouth.

  ‘And where was I?’ she asked.

  ‘Next door.’

  ‘Why?

  ‘I took you round, before work.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘To give your mother a rest.’

  ‘From me?’

  ‘From everything.’

  ‘And she went out, instead?’

  There it was again, the mouth-shrug, a gesture that was part ‘I don’t know’ and part ‘I don’t want to talk about this.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘A change is as good as a rest. That’s what they say.’ He sounded like Mrs Mackerel.

  She is sorting through the pile of small objects, lining them on the floor, when the air moves beside her, and she jumps. A gust of breath escapes her with an umph, and she scrambles to her feet, one hand held over her chest.

  ‘Dad! You scared me! What are you doing?’

  She pushes the headphones back so she can hear his reply. When he says nothing, she tries to explain.

  ‘This is my – I’ve been making this – but, I’m not finished – it’s nearly – you can’t . . .’

  She stops because of his face. It is more than everything. Piled with expressions, a combination that is completely wrong, like pudding and cereal and gravy all on the same plate. His mouth moves, but no words climb out. He looks at the coloured-in pictures on the wall; nudges her mother’s black patent shoes with the tip of his toe; makes a small noise in his throat when he sees the hair; reaches out a finger to touch it and changes his mind.

  She hears the winding in his chest and throat. It begins with one knot of breath and is followed by another and another. He’s going to cry, properly. And because she doesn’t know what to do, she leaves him there and hurries down the stairs.

  She waits in the kitchen, supposing he’ll join her once he’s soaked up the surprise of it. But he doesn’t come. She boils the kettle and works on the as-yet-unfinished speech that should have accompanied the big reveal. What had she hoped to say? Something about looking after culture and history. Something about taking care of people’s stories. Her lips practise the words while her hands lift the mugs out of the cupboard and her head marks the time it’s taking him to come and find her. She shouldn’t have left the newspaper sheet on the bed. Rebecca’s partner Darren, pictured, wept.

  She steps back into the hall and treads carefully up the first stairs. He just needs a few moments, she decides. And then it will be fine. She will explain it all. They’ll go through each element of the display together and he’ll realise that it’s a much better way to remember her mother than keeping her stuff in a great big jumble.

  But when she rounds the corner, the bedroom door is closed.

  Colin will be at work. So will Kelly. Mrs Mackerel will be dusting her cottage ornaments in preparation for Mrs Knight’s visit – she’s not the right person to ask anyway; she’d probably march upstairs and say, ‘PULL YOURSELF TOGETHER!’ That leaves Uncle Jim and Grandad. Uncle Jim is still in hospital – they say he’ll be home by the weekend, if he behaves. He’s probably the last person in the world Dad would want to see, literally.

  She fetches the phone and dials Grandad’s number.

  ‘It’s me,’ she says. ‘Can you come?’

  Grandad arrives in a taxi wearing a pair of shorts, his new high-tops, a shirt and tie and a baseball cap. He pays th
e driver and shuffles down the path, squinting in the sunshine.

  ‘I’m here,’ he says. ‘Is everyone all right?’

  She doesn’t know what to tell him. How to explain what she has done. She points up the stairs. ‘I did it.’

  ‘Did what, love?’

  ‘And I don’t think he likes it.’

  Grandad looks at all the things in his way and tuts. ‘Break my neck,’ he says as he steps over and around the newspapers, the tins of paint, the books, clothes and motorbike helmets.

  She follows.

  When he reaches the landing he points at the closed door, eyebrows raised. She nods.

  ‘A cup of warm water, please,’ he says, as he fishes in his pocket and pulls out his notebook. ‘You can leave it just here, on the floor, love.’ Then he steps into the second bedroom and closes the door behind him.

  Exhibit: ‘Becky Brookfield – the Untold Story’

  Catalogue

  Object: Small wooden clown with pull-string.

  Description: A wooden clown. He has a white face with a red nose and blue hair. He is wearing yellow dungarees and purple shoes. There is a loop of cotton behind his head so he can be hung up. He has a pull-string between his legs and his arms and legs shoot up when you pull the string, making him do star-jumps. He is a very happy toy.

  Item Number: 27.

  Provenance: It would be a bit fiddly for a baby to operate this toy. I expect Becky Brookfield (my mother) bought it for later, when I could use my fingers properly. She probably thought it would make me laugh.

  Display: Hanging from a nail on the wall so its string can be pulled.

  Curator: Clover Quinn.

  Keeper: Darren Quinn.

  14

  He was coming off the Formby bypass in the 47 when a Fiesta slid over the intersection like shit off a shovel. The driver was only young; she must have thought she had time to nip out in front of him. He braked, but he couldn’t avoid her. Smacked straight into the driver’s side of her car. Wrecked every panel. And then, bang! – a white van went up the back of him. Jolted everyone. People yelped. It sounded like he was carrying a bus full of animals.

  It wasn’t his fault, a fact he supposes he will eventually find consoling. He pulled out of the way of the traffic, got out of the cab and moved down the aisle. ‘Everyone okay? Everyone all right?’ he asked. Back at the cab, he retrieved his phone from his sandwich bag and stepped off the bus. Someone was already leaning into the passenger window of the Fiesta, talking to the girl. He walked over. Didn’t get too close. Didn’t say anything. Just looked at her. She was bleeding from a long cut on the side of her head where she’d hit the window. But she was conscious, talking.

  The van driver approached, uninjured and pissed off. ‘I called an ambulance. They’re sending the police, too.’

  ‘Sorry you couldn’t stop in time.’

  ‘Yeah. Well. You’ll be all right, won’t you? Just say “My neck hurts” and it’s an instant thousand pounds if you’re in the union. That’s what I’ve heard. You in the union?’

  ‘My neck’s fine,’ Darren said.

  He needed to take photos of the damage. Needed to call his supervisor to arrange a replacement bus. Needed to take the names and addresses of the people who’d seen what had happened. But it felt like his feet were stuck to the road.

  The ambulance arrived. Someone put a hand on his arm and said, ‘Maybe you should sit down for a moment.’ So he did. He sat on the grass verge and watched as an elderly passenger holding his wrist joined the girl in the ambulance.

  By the time he’d spoken to Brian, his supervisor, and the police had finished with him it felt as if his head was bolted to his shoulders. If he wanted to look to one side or the other he had to pivot on his feet.

  They sent an engineer and a relief driver with the replacement bus. The engineer drove Darren and the damaged vehicle back to the garage and then Darren caught a bus to town so he could go to the office and fill out the incident report. He had to go through everything again: his direction of travel, the speed he’d been doing, the weather, the details of the damage to the vehicles. When he reached the part where he had to draw a picture of the accident, he took a break; his head felt like it was trapped in a mangle.

  Brian sent him home. The important thing was to keep moving, he said. In the old days people wore collars and kept still. Now the advice was to move as normally as possible. So Darren walked, trying to move in his usual way, even though his hands were trembling and he felt like Eagle Eyes Action Man.

  He called out as he unlocked the front door and stepped into the house. He wasn’t surprised at Clover’s absence – she’d be at the allotment. He fancied a cup of tea and some anti-inflammatories and was about to boil the kettle when he heard something above. Went to check. Reached the halfway point on the stairs and noticed the door to the second bedroom was open. Carried on climbing. Arrived. Stepped into the room. Felt something in his stomach stretch and tauten like a skin on a drum. Stood there for a moment while every breath beat against it.

  He couldn’t make sense of what he saw. The bed made with their bedding, his and Becky’s. Exactly as it used to be. The boxes on her side of it, gone. The dressmaker’s dummy retrieved from the shed, wearing Becky’s clothes, the bag across its chest, exactly as she used to wear it. Becky’s hair. Oh God. Each breath smacked the drum of his stomach: harder, faster, harder, faster. Photographs, baby clothes, pictures of beaches? And there was Clover, bending over a small pile of things, Becky’s portable CD player clipped to the back of her shorts.

  When she noticed him, he was already past adjustment. The old helpless rage was back and it was bigger than him. He could feel it filling his chest, blocking his legs, cementing his shoulders, making it seem as if he’d been pretending for years – how dare he forget the details of this particular pain? How dare he?

  He had no words. And even if he’d been able to locate some, they wouldn’t have made it past the latch of his jaw. Clover said something and waited for him to speak.

  He couldn’t.

  And then he was alone in the room. He closed the door to protect her, and himself. To keep it all from escaping on to the landing and down the stairs.

  The room smells of Becky. He glances at the little pile of things on the floor – the perfume, that’s why. He likes to think he has been a good dad. But he isn’t actually sure. He has tried. That much is certain. A for effort – ha! If Becky was here, and if she was herself, he knows she would adore Clover. She’d love her in the same unequivocal way she loved Jim; she’d speak to her in the way she spoke to the old people, her voice laced with patience and kindness; she’d read to her, bake with her, and there’d be a pet, something Jim could pretend to own when he came to visit.

  He glances at the wall beside the window. At the word SURPRISE and the silly Latin writing beside it. At the photographs of Becky with Clover, and the religious colouring pages. Baby clothes hang from the picture rail – the tiny red dress he picked that first evening as he hurried round the supermarket, feeling not entirely dissimilar from the way he feels now.

  *

  It was terrifying. He skidded through the A&E entrance, knowing nothing, only that Becky was there and she needed him. They directed him to the postnatal ward and he dashed down the corridor, no idea what it meant. She was sleeping in a side room, and okay – she was okay. He was barely able to believe the woman’s – the midwife’s – next words. Minutes later he met the baby and her words became flesh.

  The love. That was surprising. The instantaneousness of it. Standing beside the incubator while inexplicably crying. Laughing at himself for crying. Explaining that he was fine, and no, it wasn’t the incubator that’d set him off, he was just surprised, really, really surprised.

  There was nothing to her. She was wizened and skinny like a little bird, her tiny bones wrapped in papery skin. He could hardly stand to hold her. She felt so breakable. What if he dropped her? What if he pressed the dip in her head where
the bones hadn’t yet joined? He watched the way it moved up and down with her pulse. She wasn’t even finished, and yet there she was, his and Becky’s. A person made entirely of them. There were other ingredients, of course: bottles of Chardonnay and Pinot Grigio, fish and chips from South Garden, Toffee Crisps, Boost bars and experimental pasta dishes speckled by chopped-up herbs. The baby had been grown in a house-decorating, furniture-lifting, sand-dune-walking, old-people-caring, Westlife-listening, romance-reading body. And despite the less than optimal growing conditions, and his and Becky’s lack of preparation, everyone said she was going to be fine.

  Dad arrived with his cheque book and pen and a list he’d copied from the internet, detailing the safest car seats.

  ‘Your mother would have loved this,’ he said, and ‘Everyone’s all right then?’, a question Darren answered with a ‘yes’ that almost sounded as unequivocal as he’d hoped.

  Jim scuffed down the corridor, trainers squeaking. Grabby as ever, he lifted and turned things, touching stuff that didn’t concern him. Becky let him hold the baby and Darren watched, hoping her arrival would annul any plans for him to move in.

  ‘Look at you! Uncle Jim,’ Becky teased.

  ‘You can’t put your finger in her mouth, Uncle Jim – it’s not clean.’

  ‘All right, Daddy.’

  He left a series of messages on Maureen’s mobile. She responded eventually, but gave no indication that she was planning to visit.

  He used the holiday money. What else could he do? If he’s honest, he quite enjoyed spending it. He asked one of the female shop assistants to help, chose her specially because he was thinking about how much his mum would have enjoyed this task, and the woman looked motherly, as if she’d make exactly the right kind of fuss, which she did. She escorted him around the supermarket, advising him on essentials: the Moses basket, the rocking stand, the special, Tiny Baby-sized dresses and baby-grows, the nappies and wipes. She instructed him on the things Becky would need, laying them in the trolley herself: breast pads, disposable knickers and sanitary towels in packs so thick they could conceivably double as pillows. And a card, from him to Becky, thanking her for the baby; that was essential, she said. She gave him a big kiss at the checkout and told him he’d make a brilliant dad. He liked her. He saw her again, after everything happened. She asked how he was getting on. When he told her she had a little cry and kissed him again.