Dear Nobody (20 page)

Then all of a sudden the baby had had enough of us, or of the journey, or of life, or something; anyway, it started howling. Its eyes puckered up and its cheeks bulged out like red balloons and its mouth turned into a black square and it screeched and yelled and howled, great ear-splitting volleys of sound like fireworks whooshing off. The poor mother tried everything – kissing it and shushing it and standing it up and rocking it and shoving the crook of her finger into its mouth, and in the end she was redder than the baby was and everyone on the bus was squirming about feeling hot and cross. I'm sure she got off before her stop. She just suddenly stood up, lugging her screaming bundle and her two bags of shopping with her. Her fold-up pram just wouldn't separate itself from all the other stuff in the luggage rack. I stood up to help her and she gave me a real sharing, hopeless, pitying sort of look. She didn't have a ring on either. Does that mean she lives on her own with her baby? And does it scream like that all night? I can still hear it now. Could you hear it, little Nobody? Did you respond to it, in your sub-sonic ocean voice?

Ruthlyn grinned at me when I sat down again. ‘Little brat!' she whispered. ‘Yours won't be like that, Helen.'

But Ruthlyn and I were miles apart by then. Miles and miles.

By the time the A-level results came out France seemed a life-time away. I cycled round to Tom's and we went down to school together. We could have had them sent through the post but quite honestly I don't think I'd have been able to open the envelope. We shook hands outside the door of the secretary's office just as we had done on the morning of the first exam. Mrs Price smiled at me and nodded towards the table where the results were spread out in little folded-up strips of paper. I couldn't find my name at first, then I couldn't find the marks on it, there was so much wording. I found English. A! I whooped out loud and Mrs Price chuckled. My heart started pumping again. I hadn't realized it had stopped. C for French. It stopped again. F for General. F! F! They must have made a mistake. My head was rapidly doing sums to count up the points and I realized there was one missing. I couldn't find it. I couldn't even remember what subject it was. I had to sit down for a bit. I needed three Bs for the course, and I hadn't got them. It was then that I knew for sure how much my English degree meant to me. I hadn't allowed myself to think about it up till now, not really. It hadn't been possible for me to focus properly on anything. Maybe being away had helped. Maybe Bryn had helped, in a strange, perverse, upside-down sort of way. And now it looked as if I'd lost my chance, after all. Old Fate again. It has a way of taking over your life, all right.

Mrs Price looked up from her typing.

‘All right?' she asked.

‘Dunno,' I said. ‘I think I've cocked it up.'

She came over to me and looked through the papers.

‘I need three Bs but I've got an A and a C and an F and I can't find one,' I cleared my throat. ‘Sociology. That's it.'

‘You've got a B,' she told me.

She has a sort of moustache growing over her top lip, but she's nice. Sometimes I think it must be good to have a mum like Mrs Price. I could smell her talcum powder.

‘Go and have a word with Mr Harrington,' she told me. ‘He'll sort you out.'

Tom could tell by my face that something was wrong but he just lowered his head and walked past me as if he didn't really know me. I hesitated outside Hippy Harrington's door. He can be such a pain, such a loud extrovert pain. I tried to put my face into a smile but my lips stuck together. He was whistling. When he saw me he jumped up, all energy and fuss. His arm swung across the top of his desk like the tail of a friendly dog, scattering his pile of papers.

‘Good man, Chris!' he shouted. ‘A for English! I knew you'd get there!'

He was so pleased that my lips peeled away from each other and I found myself grinning back at him. I actually began to think that I'd done it just for him, as a reward for all his enthusiasm and the kind of love he has for literature. None of the other teachers seemed to feel like that about their subjects. ‘Language is power,' he used to say. ‘Literature is love. And poetry is the food of the soul.' I'll always remember that, though I don't really know what he means. I remember once when we were doing a poetry appreciation class he read us a poem by Yeats and his hands were trembling when he opened the book. He read it out to us with such a reverence that it was as if he was giving us something very special, part of himself. Well, maybe I had got that A for him. It all seemed very remote now, all that reading, all that underlining in pencil and pacing round the house learning quotes. Just to please old Hippy.

‘So, you're all set for Newcastle, eh, Chris?'

I told him about my results and he said he reckoned it would be fine, he'd ring up and see what he could do. ‘You'll be fine, you'll be fine,' nodding at me like Father Christmas in a grotto.

I still stood there, feeling awkward. I didn't know what to say to him. Goodbye, or something like that. Thanks for everything. For Yeats, you know. I bent down to pick up his scattered papers and he bent down at the same time. From underneath his table he asked me, ‘Where's your girl-friend off to, Chris? She's doing Music, isn't she? Manchester?' and I said, ‘She's having a baby, Sir. We split.' He sank back on to
his haunches, looking at me over the top of his desk, and I stood up slowly. I think I felt more awkward and wretched then than I've ever felt in my life.

‘Poor kid,' he said. He must have meant Helen, or the baby. But the way he looked at me made my stomach turn over. It was as if he knew exactly how I felt.

There was nothing to say. I tipped the papers onto his desk and went home.

I rang Ruthlyn that evening. Her mother told me she was too upset to come to the phone. ‘She got Bs all the way,' she told me. ‘Bright as a diamond, that one, but it's not good enough, she says.'

‘Poor old Ruthlyn,' I said. ‘Does that mean she can't do Medicine?'

Coral blew down the receiver. I could imagine her big friendly face, worried and upset. ‘She cryin' too much to tell me. It don't matter, I told her, you can help me with the kids. Cry cry cry!'

‘You don't happen to know what Helen got, do you?'

‘She's up with Ruthlyn now. She got all As.'

I stood there grinning down the receiver.

‘Tell her I'm pleased,' I said. ‘Tell Ruthlyn not to worry, she can re-sit them. And tell Helen I got A,B,C.'

I could hear Ruthlyn's mum scribbling away on a piece of paper, breathing through her teeth. ‘A,B,C. You wanna tell her yourself? She's right here.'

‘Yes, please!' The contents of my stomach suddenly sprinkled into minute droplets, all churning and shivering inside me. ‘Helen,' I said. I could picture her tilting her head back, sweeping her hair away from her eyes the way she does, to let it swing loose again. I hadn't been able to picture her face properly for weeks. ‘Helen?'

For a second I heard her voice again, whispering something to Coral.

‘Now she's too upset to talk!' Coral's treacly voice came back on the phone, sticky with sympathy. ‘What can I do with these girls, Chris? You tell me and I'll do it.'

But I didn't answer her. I put the receiver down as slowly and carefully as if it was made of shell, as if any noise at all would shatter forever the brief, tiny, fragile sound I'd heard before Coral had spoken again; Helen's voice, after all these weeks. ‘I can't.' I nursed the sound in my head, went up to my room and sat staring out into the evening, at trees billowing out in the wind and drizzle like fine net looping down. The cat pushed open the door and tiptoed over to me, didn't make a sound jumping on to my knee, lay there still and silent while Helen's soft voice formed and melted away again and again in my head, like drops of moisture at the fine point of an icicle.

A few days later my mother rang up. It was strange to hear her voice like that, bringing her suddenly into my consciousness. I imagined her room, with all those books in it, all those photographs lining the walls.

‘I've got a few days free,' she said. I could tell she was smoking. ‘I wonder if you'd like to come over and do a bit of climbing with me?'

I'd forgotten all about climbing. It felt as if it was somebody else, from years and years ago, who'd made those slippery and hopeless attempts on the climbing wall. I couldn't even remember what it was I was trying to prove.

‘I'm trying to sort out my university place,' I told her. ‘Could I come next month?'

My dad was in the kitchen, moving dishes about quietly so as not to disturb me, half-listening, maybe. I wondered what he would say if my mother asked to speak to him.

‘You can come whenever you want. Bring Helen, of course. How is she?'

‘She's fine,' I said. Dad swung his head round at that.

‘And what are your plans?'

My tongue was sticking in my throat. ‘It's all a bit complicated at the moment.'

‘Well. Tell me when you come up. Make it soon. We're looking forward to seeing you both again.'

‘Fine, Mum. Joan. Thanks.'

Telephones are such alien things. They make fools and liars
of us. How can you tell the truth when you're not looking people in the face? I felt lousy. How come I could tell my English teacher that Helen and I had split and not tell my mother? How come I could stand a few feet away from my dad and talk to my mother at the same time and try to pretend one of them didn't exist? Something was going on. Something was knitting up together like a cobweb in my head and had to be sorted out.

I went into the kitchen and stood watching Dad. He was making omelettes, cracking each egg separately into a bowl, sniffing them for freshness, tipping them out of their shells. The whites strung down in their clear, swaying strands, swinging the yolks down them like absailing climbers. I watched for the moment when he punctured them, when the yellow juices sprawled out. And I don't know what it was that made me say this to him; I can only think it was something to do with the way he was lifting up the fork, just watching the spread of yolk, not trying to beat the eggs or anything. He was miles away. He wasn't thinking about omelettes or anything like that.

‘Dad, did you mind Mum ringing me up?'

‘Not particularly.' He still had his back to me, was still holding that elastic tension between fork and bowl as if he was being paid not to snap it.

‘But you're all right, aren't you, the way things are?'

‘Nearly,' he said. The egg strand snapped. ‘Not quite.'

It was as if someone had opened a door and had slammed it shut again, and I'd just caught a glimpse of a secret room on the other side. Parents are such private people.

My next phone call came from Hippy, telling me there was no problem about my place at Newcastle.

‘Great,' I said. My throat was as dry as a bone.

‘Enjoy it,' he said. ‘Make the most of it. Make the most of your life, Chris.'

It seemed as if you never had to make up your mind about things. They just happen, anyway, just tick into place.

Next morning I was lying in bed with a bit of a hangover when Guy put his head round the door to say there was someone outside for me.

‘Tell him I'm dying,' I groaned.

‘It's not a him.'

Guy disappeared and I shot out of bed. I crawled to the window on my hands and knees because I wasn't fit to be seen in public, but there was no sign of her. Guy's idea of a joke. I was about to collapse back into bed when I heard the sound of my dad's voice, and the light laugh of a girl. I rummaged round for clean socks, kicked the cat off my jeans and tee-shirt in their last night's bundle and half-fell downstairs. My dad was standing in the hall and looking up at me with a quizzical expression that I couldn't fathom for the life of me, and then he stepped back and I saw who it was he was talking to. It was Bryn. She looked fantastic.

I sank back on to the stairs, pulling my socks on, pulling thoughts into my head.

‘Hi, Slug!' she called up to me. ‘What time d'you call this?'

‘What are you doing here?' I asked.

‘Come to see you, it looks like,' said Dad. He went into the kitchen. I could just tell that someone else was in there.

‘I'm on my way to Leeds, looking for accommodation for next year. When the train stopped at Sheffield I couldn't believe it, so I decided to come and see you.'

‘I don't believe it,' I said. I tried to stand up and sat down again. I could see Dad in the kitchen, shaking his head at someone, and realized that Jill was in there with a cup of coffee in her hand, staring at Bryn. Guy was messing about with his cagoule zip or something, standing between Bryn and the kitchen. I was sitting half-way up the stairs with one sock on and one sock off, peering through the banisters.

Bryn lost her smile, somehow. ‘Aren't you pleased to see me?'