The Museum of You Page 28

  She realises.

  Clover – that’s what he thought. Clover, Clover, Clover – that’s why it’s so hard to get rid of these things.

  She leans over the banister and looks at the cluttered stairs, worried that Colin might fall and hurt himself as he carries everything down, and since Dad shouldn’t be lifting things with his bad neck, she opens the front door and starts removing the stuff from the stairs and placing it in a little stack on the driveway: the pile of her old clothes Dad has never managed to give away, the books that were twenty pence each last year when the library closed, and the Dulux Black Satin paint – it probably won’t come in handy. She puts the free newspapers and the motorbike helmets in the dining room. Maybe Dad will get a motorbike one day and they will ride it somewhere for a holiday – that would be epic!

  ‘We’ll start here,’ Colin says, standing in the middle of the lawn, hands on hips, biceps like balloons. ‘I’ll point to an item and you’ve got five seconds to say whether you want it or not.’

  ‘Is this what you usually do?’ Clover asks.

  ‘No,’ he says. ‘You’re getting special treatment.’

  Dad snorts.

  The garden chairs and the table have been carried out of the shed and arranged on the grass. It might be the first time they’ve ever been used. Nicely played, Dad, she thinks – it’s not as if Colin can take the seats from under people’s bums.

  Grandad has arrived, and Kelly has come too. Colin must have told her. Jim lights a cigarette and Kelly moves away from the smoke and takes her e-cig out of her purse.

  ‘Anything that’s too small for the current residents of the house will automatically be removed.’

  ‘Hang on,’ Dad says, but Clover agrees.

  ‘That’s a good idea. I don’t need any of my old bikes for starters.’

  ‘Maybe we’ll just keep the first one you ever had,’ Dad says. ‘Remember practising? With the stabilisers, and then with me holding the back of your seat, running with you? Up and down The Grove, until you just took off all by yourself.’

  Colin gets his phone out of his pocket and takes a picture of the stack of bikes. ‘Anyone who wants to remember any of the bikes can look at the photo,’ he says. ‘Next: one paddling pool. Clo, when did you last use this?’

  She can’t remember.

  ‘Any plans to come out here in the near future and stand in a couple of inches of water?’

  She shakes her head.

  ‘Maybe Kelly would like it, for the boys,’ Dad suggests.

  ‘They’ve got their own,’ she says kindly.

  ‘Bikes and pool – out to the trailer then.’

  ‘Perhaps we could sell them.’

  Next door, an upstairs window widens. ‘OH NO YOU DON’T. You said you’d TIDY UP. You PROMISED.’

  ‘I will. I am.’

  ‘FINE WORDS BATTER NO PARSNIPS.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Colin calls up to Mrs Mackerel. ‘It’ll all be done today. Why don’t you come down and help?’

  ‘You git,’ Dad hisses.

  ‘Aw, come on. Who doesn’t want their parsnip battered?’

  ‘I’LL BE DOWN IN A JIFFY.’ She disappears for a moment before returning to momentarily dangle an enormous woolly mustard halo out of the window. ‘I’VE KNITTED YOU A SNOOD, DARREN. For your NECK.’

  The window clicks shut.

  Jim laughs, and Kelly rolls her eyes at Clover, which feels nice, like they’re on the women’s team, against the boys.

  Colin drives the first load of stuff to the tip and comes back for the charity-shop bags. Grandad goes with him because he thinks they should go to Cancer Research, but it’s on Lord Street where it’s difficult to park.

  While they’re gone Kelly starts cooking. She does sausages on one BBQ and chicken on the other. When Dad and Colin get back she smothers the chicken in Jack Daniel’s sauce and tears it up before rolling it in wraps with salad. Mrs Mackerel isn’t sure what to do with her wrap. She fetches plates and cutlery from the kitchen and puts them on the table.

  ‘I MIGHT be going to AUSTRAILIA,’ she says as she attacks her wrap with a knife and fork.

  Grandad sticks his hanky down the front of his shirt and holds it out with one hand to make a bib. ‘I’ll look it up for you on the internet,’ he offers.

  It feels like a party. A welcome-back Uncle Jim party, a tidy-up party, a goodbye-summer party. Dad makes tea and carries the mugs outside, two at a time, his neck and the top half of his chest hidden by the mustard snood.

  Clover lifts her mug in a toast. ‘Ad multos annos!’

  ‘Did she say anus?’

  Kelly shushes Uncle Jim. ‘What does it mean, Clover?’

  ‘To many years,’ she says.

  ‘God, you’re clever, you.’

  ‘Or we could say ad fundum, which means bottoms up.’

  ‘Cheers,’ Kelly says, and everyone follows suit, preferring her toast to the special Latin ones – ad interim.

  While Colin is driving back to the tip, this time with Uncle Jim, who has been persuaded to go along for the ride, and Mrs Mackerel is washing up in the kitchen, Clover slips away. She heads down the hall, past Grandad, who is trying to reattach the radiator, and up the stairs.

  Emptied of the things she doesn’t use or need, her room is different: bigger, airier. She opens the black envelope Dad gave her and arranges its contents on her bed. Dad says he will buy one of those special frames with lots of holes. She will be in charge of arranging the photos and then they’ll put it on the wall in the lounge. The picture of her mother holding a piece of sandpaper is her favourite. But there are other good ones – her mother lying in the empty bath, fully dressed, grinning; her mother cutting a sheet of wallpaper, forehead creased in concentration; her mother standing in the back garden, arms spread, as if to say, ‘This is mine, all of it.’ Here is her mother. Here and here and here.

  The notebook sits on her desk like a wrapped present. She opens it.

  I met Becky on the 43 bus. It was April, snowing. Her face was pink and her hair sparkled. I thought she looked like an angel. Her bag was sitting in the cab behind me. Someone had handed it in when she forgot it, earlier that day.

  This is not new. The bones of it are known to her, but Dad has attempted to cover them with tissue and skin: the snow, the sparkling hair, her mother like an angel. She closes the notebook. She will not read it all at once. She will ration it. Now the pieces are here, she will examine them one at a time.

  She steps into the second bedroom. It is empty now, apart from the stripped bed. She stands at the window and, cloaked in one of the green curtains that have been here since before her parents moved in, peeps through the open sash into the garden.

  And what she sees is this: Dad and Kelly, sitting on the grass beside the cooling BBQs, both leaning back, Kelly resting on her elbows, Dad propped on straight arms. Not a single part of them is touching, but their hands are a matter of inches away from each other, literally, and she can tell that they are both conscious of the inches and there is something electric there. Dad’s legs are crossed and one of his feet twitches. He is nervous. She feels funny on the inside – slightly wobbly and a little bit disgusted, but interested, too.

  Exhibit: ‘Becky Brookfield – the Untold Story’

  Catalogue

  Object: Photographs.

  Description: An envelope of photographs from before Clover Quinn (me) was born.

  Item Number: 40.

  Provenance: Darren Quinn (my dad) and Becky Brookfield (my mother) took these pictures when they first moved into the house where I was born.

  Display: The exhibit ‘Becky Brookfield – the Untold Story’ has been dismantled, and the important pieces will be placed in the museum store. Keep the photographs in the envelope for the time being. Eventually, arrange in frame and display in a prominent place on the ground floor.

  Curator: Clover Quinn.

  Keeper: Darren Quinn.

  18

  He hadn’t be
en expecting Kelly. She arrived in her work clothes, black leggings and a black vest top, a pair of disposable BBQs in one hand and a carrier bag of meat, buns and salad in the other.

  ‘I’m all yours,’ she said. ‘Pete’s got the boys for the weekend. About time, too – he’s not seen them all summer.’

  He almost missed the bit about Pete. He was too busy noticing that her hair was different, sitting on top of her head like a ring donut, exposing the bare back of a long, soft neck – all yours, she said. God.

  It’s just the two of them, for the moment. The garden looks empty, although he supposes it isn’t really. The yellow thing Edna knitted rests on the grass beside them like a sleeping cat. The garden chairs and table are out. Clover’s current bike leans up against the shed. Colin left a single milk crate: ‘Here, keep one if it makes you feel better,’ he said as he stacked the others before carrying them out to the trailer. He took the buckets and spades and the boat engine. He took the balls and water pistols. He took the slide and the lilos – ‘Planning to go to Blackpool by sea, are you, Clo? No? Right, I’m having these then.’

  After Colin and Jim went to the tip, Clover disappeared upstairs. Dad was busy in the hall re-hanging the radiator while Edna collected the plates.

  ‘DARREN, I need YOUR HELP.’

  He followed her through the back door and into the kitchen. ‘Don’t worry about the washing-up,’ he said. ‘I’ll do it later.’

  She ignored him. Put the plates in the sink and turned on the tap before pointing a wet finger in the direction of the window, at Kelly, stretched out on the grass, awaiting his return.

  ‘A BIRD in your HAND is worth TWO in your BUSH.’

  ‘Right. Thanks.’

  God, what a day.

  The ground is warm and dry. There’s a bit of growing left in it yet. He can hear Kelly breathing, beside him. If he turns his head slightly, he can see the rise and fall of her stomach. He remembers when he imagined the world was divided into two groups – people who’d had sex and people who hadn’t. He met Becky and the division shifted to those who’d been in love and those who hadn’t. And then he was ungrouped, a remainder, no longer a part of anything.

  ‘So,’ she says.

  ‘So,’ he replies.

  ‘This is good. Lots more space.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Well done, you.’ She strokes the grass with the palm of her hand. ‘You did the bedroom, too?’

  He sometimes forgets she saw it. ‘Yeah,’ he says.

  A train squeals as it crawls up to the station. They allow the interruption and listen to the wail of its brakes.

  ‘And you’re all right?’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘I wouldn’t presume to . . . I don’t know what she’d want, and I wouldn’t ever try to say . . . but she’d love Clover, wouldn’t she?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  The train moves off again. They wait.

  ‘Things might have been easier if you were alone.’

  He isn’t sure what she means. ‘It’s mad here today. Like Piccadilly Circus.’

  ‘I don’t mean today.’

  ‘Oh. But . . . if I didn’t have Clover, I don’t know what I’d –’

  She shakes her head. ‘What I’m saying is, it’s not as if you’ve really been on your own.’

  ‘I don’t get what you’re . . . There hasn’t been anyone.’

  She looks straight at him, a firm, challenging stare. They’ve never talked about what happened all those years ago. He’s not sorry for it. He is sorry for not knowing how to talk to her, afterwards. And sorry about the time she came round, many months later, with Colin, who said, ‘Pete’s asked Kelly to marry him.’ They all, him included, awaited his response, which, when it came, consisted of an insipid ‘That’s nice’. He didn’t know how to say he wanted her to be happy or how to explain that although a small part of him recognised it was a shame and believed something might happen between them one day, ‘one day’ had yet to feel any closer.

  He opens his mouth but she waves a hand through his soon-to-be words. ‘I was just a kid and you weren’t ready. It was all wrong.’

  She’s right. Yet, said like that, it sounds horribly final, and he finds himself wanting to disagree with her.

  ‘You live,’ she begins, and then she glances up at the window of the second bedroom, and at the almost empty garden, and pauses, before beginning again. ‘You’ve been living in the . . . shadow of something unforgettable. That’s not alone, is it? Not really.’

  He is suddenly knackered. It feels as if his shoulders are fastened to the flap of his jaw. He stops leaning on his arms, draws his knees up and rests his elbows on them.

  ‘Darren?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Do you think . . .’

  She tails off. Although he has an idea of what she might be about to say, he holds fire in case he is wrong.

  ‘Do you . . . Us – do you think we could . . . can we see?’

  The words, though anticipated, scare him momentarily.

  She pushes herself off her elbows and crosses her legs, so she is sitting right beside him. ‘I used to think if I waited . . . And I did wait, for a while . . .’

  He squelches the urge to apologise. He has no right. Despite what Colin says, she and Pete were happy for a while. And there are the boys.

  ‘I just took it upon myself – the waiting. It was stupid.’ She turns her head. Looks right at him. Waits.

  ‘Yeah, I’d like us to . . . see.’

  She smiles, containing it at first with pressed lips, before allowing it to burst open as she angles her head away. ‘I’m busy at work,’ she warns, still smiling – he can hear the shape of it in her words.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘The boys are a handful.’

  ‘True.’

  ‘Pete’s a dick.’

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘I’m never getting married again.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘I don’t want any more kids.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘My new middle name is takes-no-crap.’

  ‘Nice name.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  He hears the unspoken question in each jokey caveat: ‘Are you sure? Please don’t agree to us seeing, unless you’re sure.’ The more space she affords his retreat, the more comfortable he feels.

  ‘Doesn’t THIS look LOVELY?’ Edna calls as she steps through the back door and into the garden. ‘It’s PROOF that a LEOPARD can CHANGE his STRIPES.’

  Kelly’s nose and forehead crease as she laughs. ‘I think a tiger can change its spots, too.’

  19

  Mrs Mackerel and Grandad sit side by side, faces tilted up towards the hazy sunshine like flowers. Colin appears, holding Uncle Jim’s elbow. He settles him into a garden chair and soon returns with a box of beer, which he places on the floor. He kneels to unfasten the cardboard and Clover watches as he passes beers to everyone, even Mrs Mackerel, who disappears into the kitchen and returns with a mug.

  There have been times this afternoon when Dad looked caught, surrounded. But not now. Maybe he wanted to be caught, she thinks.

  ‘You should get your tiny guitar out, Dazza.’

  ‘It’s not a tiny guitar,’ Colin says.

  Uncle Jim grins. He knows.

  Grandad fetches the ukulele and asks for some proper music, which means The Beatles. Dad chooses ‘I Wanna Hold Your Hand’, an easy song because you can do it with a straight shuffle – down, up, down, up. They all join in and Clover presses a scrunch of curtain to her mouth because Colin really can’t sing and Mrs Mackerel has one of those church choir voices that sound completely wrong when it comes to words like ‘wanna’. Uncle Jim is torn between joining in and making fun. He glances around, hoping someone will take the piss, but they’re enjoying themselves too much. Eventually, he joins in too.

  This is happiness, Clover thinks, smoothing the drop of the old green curtain. The breeze in the bedroom. The singing in the garden
. The periwinkle sky.

  Colin waves up at her. ‘Get down here, Clo. Your dad’s going to do some Oasis next.’

  Discovered, she leans out of the window to better hear them. Grandad mutters something about The Beatles, and Colin tells him that Oasis did a cover of ‘Helter Skelter’. Dad says he doesn’t know the chords and he can’t imagine why anyone would do ‘Helter Skelter’ on the ukulele. Grandad wants ‘With a Little Help from My Friends’. Uncle Jim groans – people are being far too nice to each other. Kelly leans across and whispers something to Dad, who plays the introduction to ‘Do You Want to Know a Secret?’ Uncle Jim carries on groaning and Colin, who was busy staring at Dad and Kelly, puts his beer down and wraps Uncle Jim in a gentle, jokey headlock.

  ‘It’s SIX OF ONE and a DOZEN of ANOTHER,’ Mrs Mackerel says as she takes it upon herself to try to separate them.

  Clover reaches up to close the window and then, fingers pressed against the warm wood of the frame, she changes her mind. Earlier, she let her mother out, but perhaps, given the opportunity, she will decide to come back. Her fingers fall to her sides. She likes it here. Her mother liked it too, once. Next time Dad says, ‘Is there anything you need?’ she’ll ask if she can move into this room. Her mother’s ghost is young, almost the same age as her. They can keep each other company. Perhaps Colin can strip the flowery wallpaper and redecorate. Maybe she will be allowed to help.

  She is filling up with plans. When school starts next week, she will sit with Dagmar, and they will be themselves, together. In the evenings she will read Dad’s notes. Little by little, a mouthful at a time, like spoons of Biscoff. Autumn will snatch the last of summer and brown and toast it, before dragging the sun down to the spot where it will ripen the apples and warm the bees through the last weeks of their work. The pumpkins will expand and the trees will undress. Conkers will pop from their shells and in the afternoons the air will turn hazy with woodsmoke. The harvest moon will glow orange in the sky and the soil will sleep.