The Museum of You Page 27

  If he isn’t careful, the momentum of this moment will be lost, and he will close the door on a new, slightly tidier jumble. He can feel the impulse forming, the urge to put walls around everything. He stops himself and instead thinks about Colin, who has an annual permit for household waste and a temporary permit which allows twelve tip visits with bulky items. He also has a small trailer that he attaches to his car, which, along with a baseball cap and sunglasses, he uses to disguise himself as a domestic patron.

  Darren pulls his phone out of his pocket.

  ‘Hello,’ he says. ‘Is that the Handyman?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’d like to arrange a partial house clearance.’ He paces along the space between the bed and the window, glancing out at the lawn. ‘And some garden stuff, too,’ he adds quickly, before he can talk himself out of it.

  He is greeted by silence at the other end of the line which he waits out, until finally Colin replies. ‘When would be convenient for you, sir?’

  ‘How about this weekend?’

  ‘I believe it can be arranged for Saturday. That would be tomorrow, in fact, sir.’

  ‘Thank you very much.’

  Another gap opens. Darren waits.

  ‘But aren’t you working at the weekend?’

  ‘I’m off sick.’

  ‘You okay?’

  ‘Whiplash.’

  ‘Crash?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Shit. Your fault?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Phew.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  He can picture Colin, one hand holding his phone, the other rubbing the stubble on the back of his head, lips pursed, biting back a series of questions he wants to fire like arrows, but daren’t in case they are startling, counterproductive.

  ‘Saturday then, sir?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Eleven o’clock?’

  ‘Thank you.’

  He sits on the end of the bed and thinks of all the things Becky has missed, things that would have made her love Clover. When Clover called the hail ‘rattlestones’ and her toes were ‘foot-fingers’. The time she had ‘a tummy ache in my head’. The way she praised him when he got something right: ‘good girl, Daddy!’ Their compulsory ‘cuggles’ at bedtime. The occasions when she ‘misunderheard’ him. The hamburgers from ‘Old MacDonald’s’. The ‘Dalek bread’. Her requests for a ‘pony head’ when she first started school. The day she looped a buttered bagel around her finger and announced that she had decided to marry a giant.

  There have been times when it felt like he was absolutely nailing parenthood. Once, he bought a bag of mini-eggs and laid them out along the top of the radiator, in a row. The heat melted their insides and when he and Clover put them in their mouths they burst, all warm and chocolatey. He still does it every so often. In the lead-up to Easter, when it’s cold enough to have the heating on, he buys a bag or a tube and lines the chocolate eggs along a radiator before calling her. ‘Oh, Da-ad,’ she says, but he knows she likes it.

  Once, she got nits. He bought the lotion, read the instructions and followed them exactly. What a relief to discover an aspect of parenthood with step-by-step instructions. He slid the comb past every one of the little bastards and wiped it clean with scrunch after scrunch of loo roll before flushing it away. Afterwards he watched a YouTube video and learned how to do a tight plait so that little wisps of hair couldn’t escape. He checked for nits every Friday. He kicked arse when it came to nits.

  And he remembers the shit moments. Collecting Clover from Edna’s one day, catching the end of the children’s history programme she was watching. Death appeared, scythe and all, and started singing a song: ‘Stupid deaths, stupid deaths, hope next time it’s not you.’ A Georgian barmaid poked a tiger, a king got blown up by his own cannon, and it was fucking hilarious. It’s side-splitting when someone dies a really stupid, pointless death, isn’t it?

  He remembers picking her up from school. The way she’d lean over and turn off the radio. She never asked. Just assumed. That, or she’d talk over it. ‘Someone trumped in carpet time, and Mrs Regan said she wouldn’t read the story until the culprit owned up, but everyone was completely quiet, and we sat in silence for ten minutes . . .’ There were times when she bored him, her mouth motoring on about nothing, nothing at all, just spewing words. I’m not asking for much, he’d think. Just a bit of peace and quiet, a few moments to enjoy something. But later, when he checked on her last thing, before he went to bed, and saw her lying there, flushed, arms raised in the fling of sleep, eyelashes resting on her cheek-tops, he’d wonder how he could have been angry; he’d wonder what kind of a man would wish his own daughter away for a few moments’ peace, and he’d tell himself it was good that she presumed, good that she positioned herself front and centre of everything, that she felt no restraint, that she was happy to talk, and talk, and talk. There was no hesitancy in her, she was certain of his affection and interest, and that had to be a good thing, didn’t it?

  This room, these things, the other day’s outburst excepted – he’s done all right, over all. Hasn’t he?

  Exhibit: ‘Becky Brookfield – the Untold Story’

  Catalogue

  Object: Dust.

  Description: Dust from between the slats of the old-fashioned wardrobe doors in the second bedroom.

  Item Number: 38.

  Provenance: This dust has been in the room for years. There are probably bits of human skin and hair cells in it.

  Display: Display in a sandwich bag, so the dust is visible but contained.

  Curator: Clover Quinn.

  Keeper: Darren Quinn.

  17

  Uncle Jim sits on the end of the bed, a pile of collapsed boxes behind him. When he first sat down he pretended he was testing it for comfiness, but he only kept that up for a moment. The truth is, walking up the stairs has made him knackered, but he’d rather die than admit it. He only left hospital yesterday evening. She and Dad picked him up, stopping at South Garden on the way. They ate chips in Uncle Jim’s bedsit, squeezed up on his sofa, greasy papers warming their laps. Then they had a bit of a tidy-up – Dad’s on a roll! As they left, Dad asked Uncle Jim if he’d mind helping out with something. And Uncle Jim, pleased to be home and full of ‘the best food he’d had for weeks’, accidentally said yes straightaway, without pretending to think about it first. Which is why he’s sitting here, today, in the second bedroom, still a bit wobbly, his skin bruised in the daylight, like an old apple core.

  Dad has been busy. There are more bin bags. He has them organised into two separate piles, one pile for charity shops, the other for the tip. The dressmaker’s dummy remains intact, but the walls are bare; the MDF boards and the various pieces of her artwork rest on the floor under the window, alongside a few other things that remain unpacked.

  So, here they are: family, whether they like it or not. She likes it; Dad and Uncle Jim don’t look at all sure.

  ‘Shall we get started?’ Dad asks.

  Uncle Jim presses his lips tight, which means he has thought of something rude and is trying not to say it.

  ‘Right, there are probably some things here that you both want to keep.’

  Uncle Jim looks like he might burst.

  ‘So I thought we could go through –’

  ‘Shit, Dazza – this is like finding out you’ve got bodies in the cellar or something.’

  There. He’s said it, and now it’s Dad’s turn to bite back words, which he does, before beginning again.

  ‘Right, let’s get started. We’re here today to –’

  Uncle Jim laughs. ‘We are gathered here today,’ he says in a posh voice, like a vicar in a film. ‘We are gathered here today to witness the –’

  ‘Shut up.’

  He looks sorry. And then he bursts out with: ‘I can’t believe you kept her hair. It’s creepy.’

  ‘It’s just hair.’

  ‘I know what it is.’

  ‘It’s your sister’s hair
. Not creepy at all.’

  ‘To you.’

  ‘What should I have done with it? Buried it in the garden?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Chucked it in the bin?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you want it?’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well.’

  ‘Well.’

  ‘I’ll have it,’ Clover says, and they look relieved, glad that someone is keeping it. ‘But,’ she adds, ‘I’d like to know the story of it.’

  ‘She cut it herself.’ Dad’s mouth makes the words carefully, deliberately. ‘Are you sure you want to talk about this?’

  ‘Yes,’ she says, glad that their confinement and Uncle Jim’s presence prevent the kind deflection he would usually employ.

  ‘But you’re pulling that face.’

  ‘What face?’

  ‘The face you do when I talk about her.’

  ‘I don’t do a face.’

  Uncle Jim stares at her, too. Like she’s got an extra head, literally.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Like this.’ Dad closes his mouth tight and lowers his forehead until it hammocks his eyebrows.

  Uncle Jim makes the face, too.

  ‘I do not look like that.’

  ‘You do, actually,’ Uncle Jim says, unexpectedly agreeing with Dad. ‘You look dead worried.’

  ‘Well, I’m not. I’m just concentrating.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘You hardly ever say anything about her, and when you do, I have to remember it.’

  Dad leans against the closed door. ‘God, Clover.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘You were talking about the hair,’ she prompts, keeping her face as still as possible.

  He lifts his chin and rolls his shoulders before stepping away from the door. ‘Becky was upset. Really tired. I think she wished she hadn’t cut it, later.’

  ‘Was she upset with me?’

  He looks uncomfortable. ‘She was upset with everything, everyone.’

  ‘So yes.’

  ‘Here.’ He reaches for her notebook, which is resting on the floor with the other things. ‘I hope you don’t mind.’

  She takes it from him and flicks through it, starting at the back, searching for anything she might mind, worried that he might have crossed out details or removed pages. But he hasn’t taken anything away. He has written on the blank page opposite her QUESTIONS heading; made a new column titled ANSWERS. She can see that some of the answers are brief – YES or NO – but they are there. She flicks further. He has made an addition to the THOUGHTS ABOUT BECKY BROOKFIELD section, which previously had pages headed UNCLE JIM, COLIN, KELLY, GRANDAD, NANNA MAUREEN. It now has a new section, headed DAD, followed by several pages of tiny writing. She squeezes the notebook closed, so his words can’t escape.

  ‘I think these might be yours.’ Dad passes the envelope of teeth to Jim.

  He opens it and laughs. ‘I could do with them!’ He tongues the space at the back of his gums where the dentist removed two rotten molars. ‘Becky always did the tooth fairy for me. I think she nicked the money from Mum’s purse. I wasn’t supposed to know it was her.’

  ‘There’s some notes, too,’ Dad says. ‘From you to Becky. I’m not sure whether you . . . they might make you feel . . .’

  ‘Just hand them over, you arse-waffle.’

  Dad does as he’s told. Uncle Jim looks pleased, but makes no effort to examine them. He’s probably saving them for later, too.

  ‘What about this?’ Dad asks, holding up the old school photograph.

  ‘Bloody hell. I’d completely forgotten about that. Maybe Clover would like it?’

  She would. But she can see that Uncle Jim also wants it, so she shakes her head.

  ‘Would you like the school reports?’ Dad asks her.

  ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘What about the skirt?’

  ‘Would you like to keep it?’

  ‘Did she like it?’

  ‘She never wore it.’

  ‘Oh. Well, no then. Can I have the necklace?’

  ‘If you like.’

  ‘Did she wear it?’

  ‘Sometimes. It’s going green, though.’

  ‘We can clean it.’

  ‘I don’t think so. The plating’s coming off. It’s not real gold.’

  ‘Can I have it anyway?’

  ‘If you like. Would you like the T-shirt?’

  ‘Did she like it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did she wear it?’

  ‘Yes,’ Jim and Dad answer together.

  ‘I’ll keep it then,’ she says.

  ‘Westlife were shite, though, weren’t they? What? Oh, come on – they were! I bet you don’t do any of their songs on your tiny guitar.’

  ‘It’s a ukulele,’ Dad says, for the millionth time. He points to the few things left on the floor. ‘What about these things? Do you want to keep them?’

  She picks up the Little Golden Book. ‘I want to keep this.’ Dad opens his mouth, as if to disagree. In response she flips open the cover and holds out the inscription: Love from Mummy xxxx. ‘See?’ she says. ‘It’s mine.’

  ‘Yes,’ he agrees eventually. ‘It’s yours.’

  ‘And her magnets,’ she says.

  ‘They’re junk, you don’t want them.’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘They’re not your mother’s. They’re mine.’

  ‘Yours?’

  ‘I used to . . . collect them.’

  She looks at all the lovely words. ‘And the mugs?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he says.

  ‘And the tea towel and the egg cup?’

  He nods.

  ‘When I count my blessings I always count you twice.’ Uncle Jim makes a puking noise.

  ‘Let’s put them in the kitchen!’ she says, ignoring him.

  ‘Ah . . . all right,’ Dad says.

  ‘Her art book.’

  ‘It was mine.’

  He has surprised her again. If the Rubens book isn’t her mother’s, she doesn’t want it, but perhaps Dagmar would like it. ‘I’ll have it anyway,’ she says. ‘And I’d like the clown.’

  ‘That’s mine, too. It was a present, from her to me.’

  ‘Oh. I thought it was mine.’

  ‘No. She gave it to me the first time we went out. It used to hang from the mirror in my old car.’

  ‘You two should talk about this properly some time.’

  Dad’s jaw tightens and not just because of his stiff neck. ‘That’s what we’re doing, now.’ He passes her the things which she made. ‘You can decide about these. They’re yours.’

  Clover fingers the holiday board.

  ‘Did she like holidays?’

  ‘She liked sending off for holiday brochures and imagining where we could go.’

  ‘Mum was always going on about it,’ Uncle Jim says. ‘Next year we’ll go on holiday. Next year, next year. I used to think we’d know when we’d stopped moving around and everything was settled, because that’s when we’d go on holiday.’

  Dad is listening as intently as she is. Perhaps he and Uncle Jim have never talked about these things, either.

  ‘And because she’d stopped moving around and everything was settled with Dad, she wanted to go on holiday.’

  ‘I suppose,’ Uncle Jim says.

  She fingers the pages from Mrs Mackerel’s colouring books. The heavenly messengers greeting the surprised women. ‘This was a bad surprise, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Well . . . I was a bit shocked.’

  ‘I was a bad surprise, wasn’t I?’

  Dad looks like his heart is in his socks. Uncle Jim glares at him and it is one of those moments when someone needs to say something but everyone is worried that it will be wrong. ‘I thought you were a good surprise,’ he offers.

  That’s it. No one says anything else. It is awkward and awful, and as it is her fault, she moves, pi
cking up everything that is hers: the boards, the colouring pages, her notebook and the things Dad has said she can have. She places them on the bed, beside Uncle Jim, and arranges them into a stack. She’d like to be by herself for a bit, but she doesn’t want it to seem like she’s stomping off or flouncing out.

  ‘Ad perpetuam memoriam of Becky Brookfield.’

  ‘And what does that mean?’ Dad asks, pretending patience.

  ‘To the lasting memory. Ad perpetuam memoriam.’

  ‘Absolutely,’ Uncle Jim says, and he sings ‘A-a-men’ like a vicar and winks at her. ‘I need a cup of tea.’

  ‘You know where the kettle is.’ Dad sounds cross, but he helps Uncle Jim off the bed, opens the bedroom door and calls ‘Careful on the stairs!’ as he makes his way down.

  She steps to the doorway, holding her pile of stuff.

  Dad places a black envelope on the very top of the pile. ‘For you,’ he says. They look at the room. It is already assuming the shape it will take when it is empty. ‘Different, isn’t it?’

  She nods. ‘The window’s stuck shut,’ she tells him.

  He digs his fingers under the sash and pushes. She notices condensation on the inside of the glass. He tries an up-and-down manoeuvre. The glass rattles and finally the window opens and the last warmth of summer seeps in as her mother wisps out.

  She steps on to the landing. ‘Dad?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘There’s some things I don’t want. In my room.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘When Colin comes, can he take them as well?’

  He rolls his shoulders. ‘If you’re sure.’

  Oh, it is horrible to hurt him. She turns to go to her room.

  ‘Clover?’

  She stops, waits.

  ‘The most surprising thing,’ he says, his words piling up and bumping into each other on their way out, ‘was how much I loved you as soon as I saw you.’

  As she stacks the things on the landing, she remembers all the times Dad has asked, ‘Is there anything you need?’ and all the times she has said, ‘No.’ Every time she has ducked his question and every time he has ignored her reply. All the occasions when she should have replied, ‘I’d like to talk about my mother,’ but didn’t.

  The bean bag shaped like lips, the record player, every babyish book she owns, ten different-shaped erasers, sixteen cuddly toys, a Monsters, Inc. pencil set – so many things. If she was to sort and arrange them into some sort of story, where would she be in it? The story would be Dad’s, wouldn’t it? It would be all about what he thought as he bought the things. And what did he think? she wonders.