Easy Peasy (27 page)

I made her tea in defiance of all that – and I am proved right to have done so. She is alive, and now her eyes are opening wider and she is smiling at me. She is alive for today – and how precious life seems suddenly, how precious and precarious. If only there was a God I would give thanks.

I turn my face away to hide my expression which must be crazed with relief. I open her curtains to let the grey light in.
Sea-link, Geest, Ferrymaster
, say the sides of the passing lorries. ‘How about a bath?' I say.

There is a spider in the bath, a big palm-sized crouching one. At home I would ask Foxy to remove it. Not that I'm scared of spiders, not at all, it's just touching it … just the idea that it might run up my arm, up my sleeve. Too big to wash down the plug-hole. There is a plastic beaker by the sink, opaque with toothpaste splashes. I nudge the spider inside it with the end of a tooth-brush, stuff a handful of toilet paper in, not tight enough to kill it, just to trap it while I take it downstairs. On the back steps I pull out the wad of paper, the spider clinging to it, fling it as far as I can, slam the door and run back upstairs. It's
not
that I'm frightened of spiders – what is there to be frightened of? It's just that they are so delicate, so fragile, I do not want to do them any harm.

I want this bath to be lovely for Wanda. I wipe the bath which is none too clean, put in the plug, turn on the taps, slosh in some bath-oil. The smell of roses fills the room. I am reminded of Foxy running me a bath, six months ago, the morning after my father died. Foxy bringing me breakfast in bed after that terrible night, caring for me so well. I light the blue candle on the edge of the bath. The cold air fills with scented steam. The radiator is hardly warm. I take the towels downstairs and hang them over chairs in front of the fire.

Wanda is sitting on the edge of the bed when I go in. ‘Ready for me?'

‘It's chilly in the bathroom,' I warn, suddenly anxious. I don't know anything about nursing, whether this is the wrong thing, whether she'll catch cold. I don't want to make her worse. Her hand on the landing wall, steadying herself, I hover behind her. I don't know how much help she needs, whether to let her be private, but she starts to take off her nightdress with no embarrassment. I help her slip it over her head and untie the scarf. Her body is so changed I want to look away but she is watching my face so I only look into her eyes and smile.

‘Always fancied being thin …' Her smile is rueful and invites me to look. Her flesh is yellowish in the candlelight and clutches her bones. Her breasts have pleated themselves against her but her belly is swollen. Her pubic hair has gone and the blunt white place looks so vulnerable I want to moan. I bat away the thought of my father. I hold her arm and she steps into the bath, eases herself down into the water.

‘Not too hot …?'

‘Ahhh … that's bliss,' she breathes, her eyes closing. I can almost feel her pleasure. The candlelight is grainy in the steam. Condensation trickles down the cold window glass but the scent of the bath-oil and the candle have almost masked the smell of sickness and of damp.

‘What would make it even better?' I ask. ‘Music? Tea?'

She opens her eyes. ‘This is as good as it's going to get,' she says. ‘Just let me be.'

I put my hand on the door-handle.

‘But don't go.'

‘You can't relax with me here. Thought I'd change your sheets.'

‘No, stay a bit.'

‘Course.' I sit down on the lid of the toilet.

‘There's things I want to say. There's things
you
want to say, int there?'

I frown at the water. The turquoise of the bath and the pink oil cast a surreal sheen of rose and verdigris on her body. The heat has brought a tinge of colour to her cheeks. Her nipples are the colour of copper.

‘Things you want to know?' She watches me, a half smile of pleasure on her face from the warmth of the cradling water.

‘Yes.'

She shifts herself, the water rocks around her and the candlelight blooms in it. There is a spatter of cold rain against the window. I am unnerved by the weird unworldly beauty of her, hairless, glossy, looking up at me from the watery capsule of the bath. She knows the things I want to know but suddenly I doubt it, doubt I do want to know, have any right.

‘Daddy didn't tell me … I suppose he didn't want me to know.'

‘Why do you reckon?'

‘I don't … don't understand.'

Her fingers move under the water as if she is trying to grasp something. There's the glint of nine vivid nails. ‘Well, don't you reckon he might … he sort of wanted to … protect you?'

‘Maybe.'

‘And your mum.'

‘But then … why would he talk to you … and Vassily?' A childish whine in my voice I can't quite suppress.

She waits, rolls her head against the back of the bath and a little trail of bubbles rise. ‘Well, this is what I reckon … He talked to me because I wasn't as
good
as your mum in his eyes. I wasn't as … as clean.'

‘Clean?' I almost laugh at the irony of this from Wanda's bath.

‘No … Mum says he …'

‘What?'

A drop of blue wax escapes from the candle and runs down the side of the bath, setting above a cluster of older runnels and drips. The flame is reflected in each tap, in the water, in its circle of melted wax, and, when I look back at Wanda, in her eyes.

‘What?' What pleasure it might give her if I tell her that my mother said he loved her. But she continues before the words will gather on my tongue. ‘I think he was sort of overawed by your mum … and me!' She laughs and the thin skin on her lower lip splits. She licks away the sudden bead of blood, I wince, thinking how sore that must be, how very fragile her skin. ‘I might be wrong. That wouldn't be the first time. But anyway, what
I
reckon is, he wanted to keep her away from all that, her and you too, all that horrid stuff. Whereas me and Vass … well …'

‘But he came to you as a prostitute!' I didn't mean to shout. Looking at her sheeny body, utterly naked, utterly, utterly vulnerable, I feel a sudden surge of rage, the lovingness gone. Bodies. His purply penis, his woolly chest all gone now, up in smoke and hers a ruin. Vassily's body. My ants … oh I don't know. Fury. Foxy with her hands, her mouth, on someone else. Too angry to sit down any more I stand up; see at once how easy it would be to press her down under the water, no violence required, just the steady pressing of my hands until she breathed in the oily pink water and filled her lungs. No one would ever know it wasn't an accident – or suicide.

Life so precious.

I leave the room before I can, run down the stairs. Think I will leave the house. Leave her to it. She can get herself out. I don't trust the anger in my hands. Or maybe she'll drown without me, drown or die of cold. Buttoning my coat, I catch my face in the mirror again, my hair a sight, a frown that will harden as I grow old, lines that will deepen, the corners of my mouth dragged down. I stop and make it pleasant, smile, see Vassily again, the little one, that small, snaggle-toothed face. Teeth straight now, must have worn braces after I knew him, must have looked worse before he looked better.

Some memory of a kiss: I think I must have dreamed it.

I cannot leave Wanda in the bath. As if I ever would. I take off my coat and go back upstairs.

‘Ready to get out?'

She looks at me warily. ‘That's getting cold.'

‘Shall I just wash your back?'

‘Mmmm.' I help her sit up and she leans forward. There are red marks on her skin where the bath has pressed against her. The skin is loose. I put soap on a flannel and start rubbing roughly, not too roughly. She says nothing, but I see the marks I'm making. I'm sorry. The anger drips out of my fingers with the water from the flannel. I stroke gently from the nape of her neck down the bumpy ridge of her spine. Little moles on her shoulders, a couple of tiny scars, pearly soap bubbles clinging to her shoulder-blades that are sharp as wings. Goose-pimples rise on her arms. ‘I'll fetch the towels,' I say.

9

Dirty clouds are lumbering over the sea, but at least the rain has stopped. After her bath, Wanda was exhausted. I got her back into bed and then the district nurse arrived, so I left them and came for a walk by the sea. My stupid shoes are pinching but I'm warm – Wanda's trousers that I borrowed, Vassily's sweater, Wanda's coat. I go into the Oxfam shop – out of habit – to see if there's anything for Second Hand Rose. I find a pair of purple Doc Marten's, Foxy would like them but they're my size, not hers. I slide my feet into them, not my style, but I feel solid and rooted and my toes are happy. They spread out with relief. I hesitate over the purchase, but they're cheap enough and anyway I can always sell them on. On my way out I spot a shawl, fine soft wool, a deep foggy green, a delicate lacy pattern, and I go back and buy that too. I stop again and get myself a pair of woollen socks.

Sitting on a bench on the promenade I remove my slim Italian shoes, withered and muddy from their soaking last night, put on the warm socks and the boots. It reminds me of being a little girl, cold from the sea, how tickly and wonderful when my mother dried between my toes and put my socks on me. The boots feel heavy and odd. Foxy bought me these shoes in Milan. My best shoes, narrow, fine tan leather – but they've never been comfortable. I've never admitted it to myself before now.

With an alarming rumble of wheels, two boys shoot past on skateboards and my heart is suddenly in my mouth. A fat gingery dog skitters past, followed by a man in a tweed overcoat and trilby. ‘Cold enough for you?' he says. ‘Yes.' I look after him, stunned, something about his voice – Daddy. Since he died I see him everywhere. In one man's posture, another man's voice, the smile of another. And sometimes, when I'm driving or being driven, I see him on the pavement, I'm sure I do, I really see him, really him. If I stopped and ran after him, called him, the man who turned would wear a stranger's face. Of course I know that, but still, since he died, I do see him everywhere.

I put my hand in my bag, bury it in the cloudy softness of the shawl. I want to know what made Daddy scream in the night. I want to know what was in his dreams.

‘Nothing,' Mummy used to say, ‘just the past.'
Just
the past! And she didn't know, he couldn't tell
her
.

And is Foxy just
my
past?

Why should that sound like less than the future?

There is a public telephone near the pier. I could ring her. I could be speaking to her in a few minutes. I can picture her, at the other end, picking up the phone. By now she will be worried, but she will be working – nothing would put her off her work. Her hair will be knotted loosely back, her glasses on the end of her nose, a pencil, maybe, behind her ear, lipstick smudged. Does she wear lipstick when nobody's there? I think, yes. In the early days I used to nip home from work unexpectedly and drag her into bed. She'd laugh and protest – but not too strongly. And once, I can scarcely believe this now, once she came to the shop when I was there alone and got me to shut the shop, pull down the blinds, and made love to me under my low wooden desk in a scramble of clothes she'd pulled from their hangers, and then she'd pinned up her hair, re-done her lips and sailed out like a snooty customer leaving me dozy and melting – with a pile of ironing to do. But nothing like that for a very long time.

I get up and walk away, leaving my shoes on the bench. Gulls are bobbing on the sullen sea that is the same grey as the sky so you can hardly see the line between them. I stalk, hands in pockets, towards the pier. No children on the big rippled slide. The candy-floss kiosk shut – but I can smell chips. Even though it is too early for lunch I am seized by a sudden urge for chips, more to warm my hands on than anything. They come not wrapped in real newspaper but in a cardboard cone printed to look like newspaper. That would make Foxy laugh and she'd hold the cone up to read the text, trying to work out whether it was genuine news or pastiche. Fancy that, she'd muse, fancy writing imaginary news stories to be printed on artificial newspaper for the sale of fish and chips. She might even use the word post-modern. Wanda wouldn't think that, Wanda wouldn't think anything, she'd just scoff the chips. She would have done, once. I douse them with vinegar and frost them with salt. Delicious.

I walk along past old couples, muffled and clinging to each other or to sticks; people in wheelchairs; mothers with push-chairs; the boys on the skateboards back again; scampering dogs. A wind is picking up, slits of cold sunshine escape from rips in the sky, glint on the sea.

I swap the chips from hand to hand to warm them both. The taste of vinegar is strong and withers the insides of my cheeks. The wind is in my face, icy, my eyes water. I turn back towards the pier, go into the amusement arcade. Dim inside, lights blink from the machines, an oily smell. Colours flash and pictures roll, dice and naked women, guns firing straight at me, lasers. The carpet is tacky under my feet. A cluster of teenagers round a machine, nudging. It's a schoolday, so, a cluster of truants. I would never have dared. A man watches them, narrow-eyed, oil-slick hair pushed back, leather jacket, the sort of man that lurks in the nightmares of parents I should think.

I have ten pence change in my pocket from the chips. I put it in a slot. If I win I will go back to Foxy and we will try again. Everything will be all right. Colours, a siren noise, a roll of dice, buttons to press. I don't know what I'm doing, I press something, a blast of noise, now and then a chunter, chunter, chunter as the coins spill out, spill and spill and the kids crowd round. ‘Fuckinell,' they say in one voice. I fill my fists with silver but it is too much. I'm embarrassed by these sudden riches, find I didn't want to win.