Dot (12 page)

I stayed in the forest for as long as I could, but in the end I realised that I was going to have to go home. I was almost enjoying the smell coming from between my legs by then, it seemed disgustingly fitting.

By the time I got home I was hot and angry and went straight upstairs to run myself a bath. I like hot baths, but this one was scalding. I lay in it for ages, watching my skin turn pink and wondering if I might pass out and save everyone the bother of explaining anything to me.

In the end I had to get out because, really, what else is there ever to do but carry on like you did before? There was no way I was going to tell anyone about what had happened and anyway, I know hardly anyone, which was another thing I realised as I lay simmering in that bath. I wrapped a towel round my body, picked up my clothes filled with my misdemeanour and opened the door. Grandma was sitting in the wicker chair that we have on the landing, looking strangely at me.

‘Do you know what time it is?’ she asked pointedly.

I didn’t but realised it must be past nine-thirty, which is when she takes her bath, at the same time every night, and woe betide anyone who gets in her way. There are two more bathrooms in our house, I’d just like to point out, but for some reason the landing bathroom is Grandma’s. ‘No.’

‘It’s my bath time.’

‘I’m sorry, I forgot.’

‘I don’t ask for much in this house, Dot. I don’t make many demands, when by God I could. But I do take my bath at the same time every night and have done for so long I’m quite surprised you’ve never noticed.’

‘Of course I’ve noticed. It was a mistake.’

‘A mistake? Oh, so that’s OK then, as you might say.’

I felt like something was falling through my body, like a lift plummeting through floors. ‘Gran, I’m not feeling great, I’m really not in the mood for this.’

She stood up at this and for a second I thought she was going to say something important. ‘What are you in the mood for then, Dot, because you don’t seem very well at the moment?’ I tried to detect something caring in her voice but couldn’t. Wasn’t it obvious anyway?

At that moment Mum came silently up the stairs, surprising both of us. ‘What’s going on?’ she asked.

‘Dot decided to have a bath when it’s my bath time and now she’s not in the mood to talk about it.’

‘My God,’ I said, ‘why is it such a big deal?’

‘It’s not a big deal in itself,’ said Gran. ‘It’s the principle.’

‘What principle?’ I shouted.

‘Dot, please,’ said Mum and we both looked at her but she didn’t seem inclined to elucidate.

‘God,’ I shouted, ‘look at us. What’s wrong with us? There’s a whole world out there you know, getting on with life, having fun.’ Then I stamped upstairs to bed where I cried myself to sleep and woke up this morning in my towel with my hair like a scarecrow’s round my head.

I got that feeling when you wake up where you feel OK for a minute and then you remember and you want to put your head under the pillow and go back to sleep. I had never been rude to my grandmother before and I couldn’t imagine what was waiting for me downstairs. I lay in bed for a while but then decided that I either had to face them now or later and so I might as well get it over with.

Mum was in the kitchen washing up when I got down and she looked jittery and nervous when I came in.

‘Sorry, for last night,’ I said.

She turned round at this, letting her soapy hands drip all down her skirt and on to the floor. ‘I do get it you know, Dot,’ she said. ‘I mean, Druith is very small. There was a time I wanted to leave, you know.’

This was news to me and I wanted to know more. ‘There was? When?’

She turned back to the sink. ‘It doesn’t matter. I just mean I know it can be frustrating. But you’ll be leaving soon, going off to university. You don’t have to put up with it for much longer.’

There were, I realised, many unsaid words circling in the air, but I didn’t know how to access them. ‘Is Grandma really angry?’

‘She’s under the apple tree.’

I knew Mum wasn’t going to help any more than that so I went out, walking across the lawn as if I was going to the gallows. Gran was in her chair, sipping tea. She watched me approach.

‘I’m sorry, Gran. I didn’t mean those things I said last night.’

She replaced her cup in its saucer and looked up at me. ‘It’s all right, Dot, you don’t have to apologise,’ she said and I was more shocked by this than if she’d shouted. ‘I know it’s hard for you. It’s probably always been hard and I’m sorry.’

I didn’t know what to say to that and so I smiled and walked away. I walked across the grass and wondered how long we would all go on not saying his name. I wondered if I would reach my mother’s age and my mother my grandmother’s and whether we still wouldn’t have talked about him. I wondered if I’ll make it to university without that knowledge. If I’ll be able to hold down a relationship or a job without the knowledge of half of myself. If you can function in this world without knowing where you come from.

But, sorry, you’re not interested in any of that. I only mentioned my grandmother because it was such an unusual interlude in our lives, which means she’ll remember it and vouch for the fact that I was behaving very strangely that day. And I was behaving strangely because … well, you know the rest.

9 … Nothing

What do you actually do with a day? Physically, that is? There are enough thoughts in any mind to keep it spinning for the whole twenty-four hours, but the body needs something as well. It needs to feel useful or it starts to tell the mind that there’s no point, that it might as well scramble and trip and turn and flip and bounce.

Dot and Mavis were good at inertia. It is after all the natural preserve of the teenager to lie immobile on a bed thinking deep thoughts they are yet to understand. Besides, they had just finished school, which still seemed like the hardest point of their lives: they knew that they were waiting, that something new was around the corner, whether they wanted it or not.

Tony had learnt to fill his days by taking the short walk to Ron’s shop after the school drop-off every morning. He knew that bringing up children is lonely and solitary and that we live in a cold, damp country where there is often a cloud overhead and that the washing up can take all morning if you let it. So, his nothing was to sit in the back of a small shop with an old man whom he’d grown to love, one either side of a thick wooden table, pockmarked with years of good honest work. A bright bulb without a shade hung over the table illuminating all they did, discouraging shadow. Pieces of clocks, toasters, vacuum cleaners, beloved toys and sentimental radios rested in neat piles. Each man had his tools and magnifying glass. Radio 4 droned on comfortingly in the corner and if someone came into the shop one of them would stand up to see what they needed. People thanked them when a much-loved item was restored, small amounts of money changed hands and tea was always being offered between them. Sometimes they barely spoke and at other times they didn’t stop all day. On more than one occasion Ron had stopped what he was doing to put a friendly arm round Tony’s shoulders as they heaved with his tears. This was his nothing, and yet it was so much more than something.

Alice was now bound to the house. For a while after Tony had left and Dot was still small she’d flirted with the idea of moving away, to London or even further. But that was long gone now. She had even got used to Dot getting up and fixing her own breakfast and leaving for school on her own. She didn’t ask her daughter any more what time she might be home or what she’d like for supper. Dot was nearly an adult and she was developing adult sensibilities. Once a week Alice drove to the big supermarket in Cartertown to stock up on tins and loo roll and pasta and packets. Otherwise she’d walk into the village when they needed things and patronise the butcher or the greengrocer, and sometimes the newsagent. She knew that other people had interests; her mother for example loved the garden as if it was a person and spent hours planning the planting. But since the village play all those years ago, which had come to nothing, nothing more had ever come to Alice. She quite liked reading although sometimes weeks could elapse between her finishing one book and starting another; she was an adequate seamstress; she fed them all; but nothing grabbed her and made her want to investigate it until she’d mastered it. Ideas turned to dust in her head, or at least that’s what it felt like. She would think about making a cushion or looking up a recipe or going to see the bluebells and be immediately struck by how pointless it all was. Everything would be over in less time than it took to do. One day they would all be dead anyway and then who would care that the roses had a colour theme or that chocolate tasted good or that the curtains matched the duvet cover? She had become good at sitting still, at resting her hands peacefully in her lap while she sat at the kitchen table. At lying in bed when she had no intention of sleeping. At walking through the village as if she had somewhere to go. At watching a film as if she was interested in the ending. She waited for Dot to be around and tell her things in the way she used to wait for the phone to ring. In another life she liked to think that she’d have made a good Buddhist.

Clarice employed order. There was a relentless routine to her life which she followed every day. Same time to rise, same time to bed, with everything she needed to know in between. She rarely left the house and garden any more, finding nothing more fascinating than what occurred within her small realm. Not that she wasn’t interested in the world. She watched Channel 4 news every night and read the
Daily Mail
every day. She did the crossword and Sudoku to keep her mind active and loved it when Dot came home with a film or stayed in on a Saturday night to watch terrible game shows. She had breakfast and lunch at the kitchen table and dinner in the dining room. She had a cup of tea by the fire in winter and under the apple tree in summer at four o’clock precisely. She walked the garden in the mornings and spoke to Peter about the planting or the weeds or the vegetables. On Tuesdays and Thursdays she told Mary what needed to be done and had a cup of coffee with her at eleven, listening to Mary’s children and now grandchildren grow up. On Wednesday afternoons she put on her wellies and walked on Conniton Hill with Lillian and her dreadful dogs and on Sundays she went to church, not because she believed but because it was expected of her. And once a month on a Thursday evening she drove to Stella Baycliff’s house just outside Druith where a group of them played bridge and drank one or two sherries and exchanged news. She slept well each night, her mind untroubled by too many dreams, her body tired out enough not to let her stay awake.

Sandra spent most of her time looking down. You had to keep your eyes down if you were going to spot all the dirt. There was no point in doing the washing up and staring out of the window or polishing a table and looking at the wall. And there was always more dirt; it was as if the others didn’t notice that everything they did disturbed something which caught a piece of dust or brought in a speck of mud. Sandra could remember Gerry saying to her a few years before, ‘What do you want us to do? Move out and seal you into the house so that it’s always perfect?’ She hadn’t answered but she had kept the thought neatly in a part of her mind so that she could always get it out and admire it like the china cats on the mantelpiece. She only had to shut her eyes to see her house wrapped in a giant roll of cling film, its insides gleaming and sparkling. She started upstairs every day, believing that the dirt would flow downwards. She made their bed and cleaned the bathroom. She put away any washing and tidied up clothes that Gerry might have left lying around. Mavis had put a lock on her door and so she couldn’t go in there, but as the door was always shut she could also pretend that the room didn’t exist. Next she did the sitting room, plumping cushions and dusting all the objects. She followed this with the dining room, polishing the table and chairs and again dusting anything on any surface. The kitchen always seemed to take the longest as there were so many chrome surfaces which needed washing and then rubbing down with oil and even when you’d finished there was always another streak. The dishwasher had to be emptied the second it was finished, as did the washing machine, and the ironing had to be tackled every day. The windows also needed washing every third day and the bed sheets had to be changed twice a week, on Mondays and Thursdays. The last thing she did was to hoover the house from top to bottom, changing heads to get into every corner. This alone could take up to an hour every day and often made her shake and sweat with the exertion. Finally she would wash the kitchen floor, emptying the dirty water down the loo so she could immediately replace the mop and bucket in the cupboard under the stairs. Sandra didn’t listen to the radio but worked in silence, often forgetting to eat and making do with a mug of instant coffee, which had to be washed as it was finished. Her hands were red and raw and her hair hung loosely round her face. And then Gerry or Mavis would come home and the mess started all over again.

Over the years Gerry had found a nothingness in sex. Not with his wife, of course, whom he had last made love to sixteen years before, but with a succession of faceless women whom he barely registered as human. Since the Alice debacle and right up until Dot he’d kept these encounters professional. He was a regular at lap-dancing clubs and massage parlours in towns like Paddockbridge and Woolley, a good hour and a half’s drive from his home. Occasionally he would simply go to a pub in one of those industrial towns where he could still pull a woman who expected as little as him, although he’d noticed that these encounters were becoming steadily seedier and more depressing with each passing year. He always wore a condom and he never kissed any of them because he still held out hope that one day Sandra would let him kiss her again, even if only on the cheek. Bodies were good at giving absolution; they were warm and giving, tender and fragile and a good reminder that you were alive. And then there was the rush of the orgasm, which flowed through his body like a drug, washing over his frayed nerves and calming his whirling brain. It was one of the few times when Gerry stopped seeing the destruction he’d caused in his life. He would lie still for a few minutes afterwards, anaesthetised to the world, a great silence inside him. A cigarette could prolong the sensation, so that on the drive home he might even smile. But then he would walk through his spotless front door and neither his wife nor his daughter would acknowledge him and he knew that everything he did disturbed Sandra’s order and the tension would flood back so that his eyes burnt with the effort it took not to cry. He’d grabbed at the chance Dot offered him, but along with everything else he’d got that wrong too: it had been yet more nothing and the realisation that only his wife offered him a something was starting to make him feel desperate.