The Museum of You Page 24

  He turned back, hurried down the pavement and the driveway and tiptoed up the stairs. They were flat out. Clover, arms up, surrendered to sleep at last. Becky, completely under the covers, starfishing the bed in his absence. This memory is well worn; lift the covers and kiss her goodbye, he sometimes tells the self that stands in the bedroom on that particular morning. Wake her and say you love her, he instructs. Better still, stay home, don’t let her out of your sight. But the self in the room scribbles a note, instead: Clover next door for a couple of hours. Get some rest xx. He lifts Clover out of her Moses basket, grabs a couple of nappies and the packet of wipes and tiptoes downstairs for the tin of formula and a pair of sterilised bottles.

  Mrs Mackerel’s bell played Brahms’ ‘Lullaby’. It was early, and her workmen were nowhere to be seen. The door whipped open and there she stood, feet planted, body braced, ready to be affronted.

  ‘OH, it’s YOU,’ she said, apparently disappointed not to be accosted by an early morning, bell-ringing burglar. ‘And the baby.’ Her voice softened as he proffered Clover and the bag of baby things.

  ‘Please,’ he said.

  *

  He sits on the floor beside the shut door, head resting against the wall. How to tell Clover about what happened next? He can take the pieces of the story and arrange them this way, that way, but the fact is, he doesn’t really know. He doesn’t know whether he inadvertently cleared the way for Becky to do something stupid by leaving her on her own. He doesn’t know whether he saved Clover by removing her after that worst of worst nights. He doesn’t know whether it was an accident; a mistake caused by exhaustion. He doesn’t know whether it was planned; an idea he could have cut off, uprooted, if he’d tried harder. And he’ll never know. Right in the middle of him there’s a not-knowing hole that he has filled with every kind of just-in-case and maybe-one-day thing he can find. And shame. A horrible, vacillating shame. Shame that she may have preferred death to a life with him. Shame at the comfort that comes from imagining her loss as an accident. It has been such a long time since he ploughed this ground. By the time Clover started school he was convinced that there weren’t any new ways of getting at the pain, yet here he is, sitting in a room full of it – assailed by another instance of not-knowing.

  There are tears on his cheeks. Idiot. He swipes them away with the back of his hand.

  And then the bedroom door is opening and closing, and it isn’t Clover but Dad entering the room, making a low whistle as he perches on the end of the bed.

  Darren stares at Dad’s high-topped feet and bare legs, at the tessellating veins and the slack skin that collects under his knees in a series of smiles.

  ‘Well,’ Dad says, and then he pauses to inhale.

  Darren hears the steady, reeling sound of breath and awaits the cast.

  ‘At least she didn’t pour water over everything, eh?’

  Darren laughs. It’s a bark, involuntary, almost a half-cough – it certainly hurts like a cough, scuffs the back of his throat, bangs against the dread skinning his stomach.

  ‘You kept all this, then?’

  He nods and his neck burns.

  ‘For Clover?’

  He doesn’t know.

  ‘Is this what she’s been doing all summer? Not a boyfriend after all?’ Dad picks some papers off the bed. ‘And you – you’re all right with this . . . arrangement she’s made? You don’t mind?’ He pauses to allow Darren to respond.

  He can’t.

  ‘But of course you mind,’ he says. ‘She’s made a thing. A sort of guide to this.’ He settles himself on the bed and examines the papers and a notebook.

  ‘You remember Paul?’ he asks, when he has finished reading.

  ‘Mum’s . . .’

  ‘That’s right, your mum’s Paul.’

  ‘Yeah, she had that picture.’

  ‘She did. She kept some other things, too. Just a few. To remember. Her old ring, a necklace he’d bought her, a couple of cards from their wedding, the photograph. Different situation, hers, not like yours . . . This – this is . . . I’m not criticising, I’m just saying, son – this, what you’ve kept, is a lot.’

  ‘It wasn’t deliberate.’

  ‘Well. That’s time. Catches up with you.’

  Dad gets up and opens the door. He comes back in almost immediately with a mug that Clover must have left for him. He makes a note in his B&B book before taking a sip.

  The wall is hard against the back of Darren’s head. His neck is knotted and when he swallows there are repercussions in his shoulders.

  ‘I’m just going to wait here with you, son.’ Dad takes another sip and Darren hears the water move down his throat. ‘Warm water,’ he says. ‘It’s good for you.’

  The sun streams through the window: summer’s last hurrah. Soon it will be autumn again, another year drawing to a close.

  ‘You and me, we were your mum’s second chance. And she was happy. Wasn’t she? People get them sometimes – second chances. Course, they have to be open to them. Receptive.’

  Darren closes his eyes. He hears the sticky sound Dad’s old mouth makes as it opens and he waits for the words, but they don’t come. He hears the sound again and wonders what it is about these particular words that makes them hard to articulate.

  ‘There are ways to love someone who no longer has a body.’

  Darren opens his eyes.

  ‘But you need to keep your best love for a person who breathes, someone who can love you back.’

  ‘Just like you do?’

  ‘I’m old enough to give advice that I’ve got no intentions of taking, it’s a privilege of age, and if you’ve got any sense you’ll listen instead of trying to smart-mouth me.’

  Darren listens, wondering where all these words are coming from.

  ‘Your mum used to visit Paul’s mum every so often. Nice lady, kept his bedroom exactly as it was when he died. Dusted all his things, guarded them for years, as if she was expecting him back. It was a sort of pretending. People do strange things.’

  ‘I’m not . . . it’s not pretending. I just never got round to this.’

  ‘You never got round to lots of things.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘It’s a shame.’

  ‘You’ve not done much in recent times, either.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I suppose you’re going to say that’s a privilege of age, too.’

  ‘ “Sir, I am too old to learn” – that’s King Lear, that is.’

  ‘And you learned that when, last week?’

  Dad chuckles. ‘Touché,’ he says, and raises his mug in a toast.

  There is a relaxing of something between them, allowing Darren to ask, ‘What shall I do with all this then?’

  ‘It’s up to you, son.’

  He looks at the bin bags and the displays, the little pile of objects on the floor beside the bed, some of which aren’t even his, and he feels lost.

  ‘You’ve done really well. I wondered how you’d get on. No one to help you.’

  ‘People helped.’

  ‘No wife to help you.’

  ‘No.’

  Dad taps the side of the mug with his index finger. Tap, tap, tap. ‘Would you like some help now?’

  He shifts as he thinks about it, trying to find a more comfortable position for his aching neck. Today it’s not so hard to believe that, once, his dad talked a man off a bridge.

  Exhibit: ‘Becky Brookfield – the Untold Story’

  Catalogue

  Object: Black T-shirt with ‘I’m flying without wings’ written across the chest in white letters. This was the name of a pop song from 1999 by the boyband Westlife.

  Description: The very T-shirt Becky Brookfield (my mother) was wearing when Darren Quinn (my dad) photographed her in the hospital.

  Item Number: 28.

  Provenance: Becky Brookfield wore this T-shirt when she had to go to hospital after she’d had an unexpected baby (me, Clover Quinn) in the kitchen.

&n
bsp; Display: Placed on a dressmaker’s dummy.

  Curator: Clover Quinn.

  Keeper: Darren Quinn.

  15

  The next day Dad seems older, sadder. It’s the combination of his stiff-necked stance and his everything face, the way he is wearing the hurts of the crash and the hurts of the past.

  ‘I’ve asked Mrs Mackerel if you can go round to hers for the day.’ His mug of tea settles on the worktop like a full stop.

  ‘What? Why?’

  ‘I know you were trying to do something nice. The display and the sorting, all the things you organised. I need to think about what to do with them.’

  ‘I’ll stay downstairs,’ she says, not wanting to go anywhere while he messes with her exhibit; she hasn’t even finished yet. And it’s hers: the objects she has been looking after, the story she has been telling, the woman she has been building – all hers. He can’t just mess it up. ‘I won’t come up. I’ll keep quiet. You won’t even know I’m here.’

  ‘No, I don’t think so.’ His stiff neck is interfering with his facial expressions. His mouth isn’t opening properly, which makes it difficult to decide if his stern face is intentional. ‘Did you throw anything away?’ It seems to have only just occurred to him. She wishes she could say no. ‘Clover?’

  ‘Yes. I did.’

  ‘It wasn’t yours. You can’t throw away things that don’t belong to you.’

  ‘Can I throw things away that are mine?’

  ‘What things?’

  ‘Things I don’t want.’

  ‘What don’t you want?’

  She thinks of all of the things in her room: the record player, the guitar, the books that are too young for her, the skateboard she has never so much as stood on, a bazillion soft toys she didn’t want and doesn’t like. Now’s her chance to tell him. That would wipe the sad, poor-me expression off his face and make him consider how she feels, having spent all summer on her exhibit only for him to act like she’s done something awful and mean. It’s like he thinks her mother is just his. But he doesn’t own her; she is hers, too.

  ‘Nothing,’ she says, in a way that lets him know there are lots of things, tons, in fact, but she won’t stoop to name them right now.

  ‘Let’s not fall out,’ he says, shoulders square, head immobile.

  No, let’s, she thinks. Let’s fall out. Let’s have a big fight like people on the telly. Let’s say things we don’t mean and get so carried away that you accidentally tell me all about my mother. Every. Last. Thing. She is angry. So angry with him. The anger swims around her insides, heating her cheeks, tugging at her face. If there was a mirror in the kitchen, her face would be a picture. Her anger must be ad oculos – obvious to anyone who sees it. And wham! Something else is ad oculos, too: Dad, who is calm, and kind, and frequently resigned, is angry. Really, really angry. When he is upset, his everything face isn’t made of everything at all, it’s made up of what is missing: a great big helping of anger.

  ‘I told Edna you’d be there any minute.’

  ‘I made it. It’s my exhibit.’

  ‘Clover . . .’

  ‘If the things were too important for me to touch, why didn’t you look after them –’

  ‘They aren’t important, that’s not why I –’

  ‘Just because you’re really angry –’

  ‘I’m not angry with you, I’m just –’

  ‘Just because,’ she tries again.

  ‘That’s enough.’

  ‘Just because you’re really –’

  ‘This isn’t helpful, stop it.’

  ‘Just because you’re angry with –’

  ‘I’m not angry with anyone, I’m just –’

  ‘You can’t keep her all to yourself. She’s not your mother, she’s mine.’

  A burst of breath comes out of Dad’s mouth. He tries to gather his words, but she finds some first. Full of her mother’s story – the love, the surprise and the misadventure; the one, two, three of it – she says, ‘Maybe you wish I was dead and not her.’

  His feet stay put, but his top half sways, as if he has been hit.

  What an awful thing to say. And it’s not true. She knows it, right inside herself, in the exact spot where her feelings are made. It’s completely untrue.

  He picks his mug of tea off the worktop and holds it in both hands. ‘Have you finished?’ His face is set, determined, and she can see that the entire exchange has been a total waste of time. She has said some terrible things and she hasn’t even changed his mind.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Off you go next door then.’

  ‘All right,’ she manages. ‘I’ll just get my stuff.’

  The doorbell plays ‘Amazing Grace’. She waits, holding a carrier bag containing the scarf she is knitting for Dad, and tries to rearrange her face into something neutral. The scarf hasn’t got any longer since she was last here; Mrs Mackerel will tell her off.

  The front door opens.

  ‘ENTER at your OWN RISK!’

  As she steps inside she is reminded of last summer when she was much younger, and she feels like a great big baby who can’t be trusted to be left alone.

  They have tea and digestive biscuits and watch people shouting at each other on The Jeremy Kyle Show: a man who won’t look for a job argues with his mother, and a woman who has won some money on the lottery explains why she won’t share it with her sister.

  ‘SILLY GIRL. She should have stayed UNANIMOUS.’

  Jeremy makes his concerned face and poses on the step of the stage as a fight breaks out behind him. Mrs Mackerel tuts and sighs.

  ‘You’re VERY QUIET today.’

  ‘Hmm.’

  ‘You’re usually as HAPPY AS A BEE IN A DOG HOUSE. Are you WORRIED about your DAD?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘He’s INJURED. You should be LOOKING AFTER HIM.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Well. Maybe it’s YOUR AGE.’

  Mrs Mackerel slides her feet out of her slippers. A little cloud of talc puffs and settles – the heels of her pop socks are dusty with it.

  ‘I’m THROWING DOWN THE GOBLET. I’m going to BEAT YOU in a KNITTING RACE.’

  She tucks her feet back into her slippers and leans over the arm of the chair, reaching for her knitting bag.

  ‘Here, I’ll do it.’ Clover gets up and lifts the bag.

  Mrs Mackerel digs in it until she finds a ball of thick mustard wool and a chunky pair of needles.

  ‘Oh, not those needles. They’re huge. You’ll be way faster than me. It’s not fair.’

  ‘NOT FAIR? I’m OLDER and SLOWER.’

  Mrs Mackerel waves her hands helplessly and feigns a tremulous, feeble smile. But as Clover puts the bag back on the floor beside her chair, she is already making a slip knot.

  By lunchtime Clover is coming a poor second to the loose-knit mustard thing.

  ‘What is it, anyway?’

  ‘DOESN’T MATTER. You’re being BEATEN by a PENSIONER. Better PULL your socks OFF.’

  They share a plate of crab paste sandwiches and Clover has a packet of Frazzles and a carton of Ribena. When she goes to the toilet afterwards – ‘Best have a WEE before Murder She Wrote’ – there is blood in her knickers.

  I am hurt, she thinks. I am dying.

  Eyes closed, she searches for the pain. In the glittering dark she concentrates on the space behind her lids, where the part that is her lives, and then she thinks herself down, past her throat and into her stomach. And lower, feeling for the source of the leak. ‘Are you all right?’ she asks the meaty, inside parts of herself, the parts she has only seen on diagrams.

  She sits on Mrs Mackerel’s powder-blue toilet and waits. But there’s no reply.

  No pain.

  Nothing.

  She is fine.

  Which means this is it. Her period. And although she knew it would happen one day, she is taken aback and experiences a strange feeling of separation from the body that has been making these arrangements behin
d her back. Surprise, it seems to be saying, gotcha! Surprises like this are part of being a woman, she thinks.

  And she is a woman.

  She is a woman – the thought is too big to think while sitting down, so she stands, shorts and knickers around her ankles, and stares at her reflection in Mrs Mackerel’s mirror-fronted medicine cabinet: hair like her mother’s; face all her own. For the moment at least, she looks exactly the same on the outside.

  She wants to tell someone, but she can’t think who. Kelly, perhaps. It might be nice to have someone make a fuss of her and tell her the things no one thinks to say – there’s bound to be a big list, she’s sure of it because there was when she got her bras: no one said the straps dig into your shoulders and sometimes slip down; no one said the label near the fastener would itch and it might be best to put the bra on back to front and then whizz it around before putting your arms in. She made these discoveries herself. Perhaps she will have to make the period discoveries on her own, too.

  She wipes again. There is a little more blood. It’s not like a nosebleed, it’s less red and snottier, somehow. There’s not much, but it might start to come faster – that’s what happens, isn’t it? What to do? She’s been kicked out of home, banished, until at least four o’clock. If she was to return early for this, Dad would have to be nice to her. She entertains the idea for a moment and then discards it. She takes her stained knickers off, folds them in half and in half again, until they are small enough to squeeze into one of the front pockets of her shorts. And then . . . and then . . . she can do it . . . she reaches for the bag that sits on the floor beside the toilet.

  The Tena pants are white with a picture of a purple dragonfly on one side. They feel exactly like a nappy, except the top part – the tummy and waist bit – which is thinner and softer than she is expecting. She steps into them. She doesn’t remember wearing nappies, perhaps it felt like this. She pulls up her shorts and steps a circle around the bathroom to see if the pants make a noise when she walks. They don’t, but she feels like a sumo wrestler.