How You See Me (13 page)

Dear Alice –

A sticky type of dream last night, the kind you can’t stamp out of your mind for the rest of the day. I was running after you, chasing your beautiful hair through a city which looked like Manchester, but which felt like home.

It started at the bus stops in Piccadilly Gardens. I was trying to get off a bus; a mess of raincoats, wet plastic shoulders and hooded heads obstructed me. Then there were your golden curls, just out of reach. You were wearing your green coat; I could see the collar and your white hand reaching up to adjust it, as the doors of the bus folded shut behind you and I was left sitting next to an old man on those sideways seats that face the stairs. The ones reserved for vulnerable passengers. The ones you are ordered to give
up to the pregnant and the old and those with screaming children in tow. I could feel the frayed fabric of the bus seat under my hands. The old man was keening,
It hurts, it hurts.
Over and over, he kept repeating it. And I could not turn and look out through the steamed-up window. I knew I was leaving you, but I couldn’t move. It hurts.

Then there was a street, with shops lining either side, and a busy Saturday crowd milling down its length. A bit like Market Street, but not that exactly. Conversations, none aimed in my direction, passed around and over me, a blur of voices and noise, as I was forced along by the stream of clacking feet. Above us was the shadow of a footbridge, a white figure and a little boy. It didn’t belong there. There was someone with me – Mab? – an angry silence at my shoulder. I wanted to turn and face them and cling to their feet and weep, but the crowd was pressing me forward.

And then suddenly I saw you. You swung out of a shop, that same green coat, those same blonde locks among the dark, bowed, anonymous heads. The sight of you cast a rope across that crowd, a bright cord of attention, along which I drew myself, threw myself, towards you. I could see the thin stretch of your green back, your neat calves working, the patterns of wear on the soles of your shoes as they flipped up behind you; but I could get no closer. The angry presence at my shoulder had become a weight. It had company. It was a great weight that pinned my feet and made me struggle as if mired in some horrible ooze. I had no voice to scream.

You turned down a side street and I fell after you. For a moment, the scent of your hair. Red bricks and cement, the tail of a cello’s song falling from an upper window, your
hair luminous in the gloom. But still your back, forever your back to me. There are bags in your hands, your fists gripped around their plastic handles, your painted nails bitten to the quick. A doorway I don’t recognise. Another door closing behind you. The image of you, a double-exposure on cheap paintwork. Lost. It hurts.

When I came downstairs, Dad had somehow got the record player working: Schubert’s
Death and the Maiden,
String Quartet No.14 in D Minor. I copied that down from the sleeve. I don’t know anything about music. I didn’t think Dad did either. He’s been playing it endlessly, flipping the needle back to the start each time the record plays out. He goes into fits if I venture anywhere near the player.

So we both sit and glower at the fire and I chase you through my dream again and again to the sound of mounting fiddles. I’m sure it’s changed my memory of the dream – nothing like a soundtrack to colour the imagination.

It’s enough to make me miss the TV.

But, just in case, show your face, my darling.

Daniel

8th March

The Studio

Dear Mab –

It’s an odd time. We are all waiting for the exhibition to happen and the days have lost their definition. Nothing exists other than this countdown to noise and people and
paintings. The phone keeps ringing with questions I can’t answer and problems I don’t understand. This doesn’t seem to concern the callers; they’re just grateful that someone picks up the phone, that they have someone to talk to. One woman actually cried as she told me about her dog dying the week before. I felt like Aubrey, dishing out comfort and advice. London must be a very lonely place.

Dad is back to his normal self after the infection. I am still surprised by how comfortable I am with him. All that worry the doctors gave me about synapses healing and reconnecting, and he is as docile as a well-loved pet. More docile, if compared to Tatty. It feels like a forgiveness of a sort, to be wiped out of his brain like that. A simple series of strokes and I find a new father. I even find myself wishing he could talk.

So far, I’ve more or less ignored the speech therapist’s advice about picture charts or the possibility of electronic gizmos to help him communicate. Well, if I’m truthful, I completely ignored it. I let her come along with the district nurse and play her playschool games with him. If she ever asked, I gave my dutiful face and told them we’d been practising. She must be so disappointed by his progress.

I haven’t been treating Dad badly as such. I’ve just been scared about what might come out of his mouth if he were able to shape words, or point at the right pictures on a card. I guess I’m still a little scared about what might be lurking behind the silence. I imagine it would be something like using a Ouija, placing his hand over the picture board. That same half-terror that he might actually spell out sense.

He gave me a look this morning as I was washing him in the bath. It was tender, Mab, can you imagine that? And
it’s not just that – there have been a series of such moments since he’s recovered from the last illness. When I’ve woken him up from a night’s sleep, he’s seemed pleased to see me. Even smiled. And yesterday, when I sat rolling him cigarettes, he came over and took hold of my arm. We stayed like that together for a long time.

Love to Freya and to you,

Daniel

8th March

The Studio

Dear Freya –

I wonder if spring is as nice where you are? I went for a walk with Tatty today. Everything is green and waking up after sleeping through the long cold winter. The field which had been carved into great waves of earth is flat and sprouting. There were even a few little flowers. Tatty watered them.

Still no letter from you. I do miss the sight of one. And didn’t you promise me some photographs? It would be nice to see what shape your smiling face has grown into. And then I’ll be able to recognise you when you arrive.

Did you get your invitation to the exhibition? It seems your mum is going to give us a bit of a show too. The actors have been booked, she tells me. I suppose it will give the guests something to do the night before the exhibition. Most people are coming for the weekend. You don’t need to worry about places filling up; you’ll stay
here with us. I’ll even let you have my room. Tatty can’t wait to meet you.

With love,

Uncle Dan

13th March

The Studio

Dear Mab –

I have seen the details of your mask demonstration. I have invited Alice, and am hopeful she will be able to get the time off work. You’ll get to meet her at last. Be kind to her, Mab.

I’ve been letting myself worry about the Alice situation recently. I don’t know why, but I feel as if there is something wrong. She is so wonderful; I don’t want to lose her. But there is more distance between us than the literal one. I worry that there might be someone else. Last time I was in the bookshop where she works, last time I was in Manchester, there was a guy behind the counter. I didn’t recognise him. He must have been new. Alice wasn’t there – I think I told you, it took me a while to track her down – but for some reason I could see how they’d be together. He wasn’t flashy or anything, he wasn’t even particularly good-looking, but there was an easiness about him. They must laugh together, the way I saw him laughing with a customer as he piled up her books next to the till. He looked like the kind of man who touches women as he talks, casually drawing them into an intimacy with a hand
on the arm. He hummed as he shelved paperbacks, and that, along with his haircut, made me wonder if he was in a band. He even came over to ask me if I needed any help. I was glad I was taller than him. I was glad there was an angry red rash of spots across the top of his cheeks. But I found myself smiling at him, just because he was smiling at me.

I keep imagining them together. Her smiling back at him, just because he’s smiling at her. She wouldn’t mean anything by it, she doesn’t know how men can be, but she’d like the touches on her arm and the loose friendliness of him. So different from me. She’ll tell him about the customers and how they make her cry. Maybe he’ll catch her weeping by the bookshelves and just lean in. ‘Hey, are you OK?’ Then there would be a hug. So natural, that hug. Just a ‘Come here, you,’ and my girlfriend is in his arms.

She must be lonely without me. Maybe there will be drinks after work. Talk and laughter in our favourite bar. She’ll lead him there, keen to show off her find. Keen to impress him. They’ll have to bend their heads together to be heard over the music. He’ll tell her about his band; maybe invite her to their next gig; share some third-hand anecdotes as if they’re his own. He’ll pull out all his best lines – she really is that beautiful. And they’ll be close, so close. She will have had a couple of drinks and if they found our table then the light would be soft. A kind light for the spotty boy drinking with my girlfriend.

Would she tell him about me? Would she even remember me when she’s sitting there with the boy from the bookshop?

Daniel

24th March

The Studio

Dear Aubrey –

I should have known that despite my best efforts you’d manage to get yourself invited. Yes, you can stay here, you cheapskate. Mab – and possibly Freya – will be here too. You might have to bunk up with Dad, but we’ll find you a bed.

Sadly, I think I’ll actually be pleased to see you. I’ve been driving myself mad recently. Girl problems. I won’t bore you with the details, but I thought that my girlfriend would make it down for the exhibition and it turns out she won’t. So, I’m stuck with you as my date. And you’re stuck with me. You can’t even evict me this time, old boy.

Maybe the show, and all it entails, will be exactly the distraction I need. I’m certainly busy enough. The London types have been on the phone all week, asking me to find reservations for them at one of our finest hotels. The more exacting they sound, the worse the establishment I recommend. They don’t seem to mind, though. They are all just crazy about Dad and everything about him. They all want to come to the house and meet him privately. They want to discuss his work and see the pond and generally eye up the fixtures and fittings of our life.

I’ve put them off as best I can. I don’t know what you expect from Dad, but don’t expect much. The great artist Michael Laird is at present seated in front of the TV, the lights from some game show reflected on his glasses so vividly it seems to be playing out of his head. The TV is on mute, but he doesn’t seem to have noticed. He’s naked from the waist down, apart from the catheter snaking from his
penis to the bag strapped to his ankle. He did something to the tube this morning and urine leaked all over his trousers. I found him struggling to get himself changed, like a guilty child. I cleaned him up in the bathroom and then sat him on a towel to dry. It didn’t seem worthwhile getting him out of the rest of his clothes.

I don’t know how we’re going to get through next week. I hate to say it, but I think I’m going to need your help, Aubrey.

See you soon,

Daniel

26th March

The Studio

Dear Alice –

No word from you about the exhibition. Are you offended because you didn’t get an embossed invitation on thick cream card? The agency sent those out, but they’ve given me a few for ‘family and friends’. I enclose it for you. I need you to come here and be with me.

I’m on my single bed with the duvet thrown over my head, trying to remember the comfort of your sweet smell mingled with my own. Instead, I just breathe my own stink. I realise how petulant and teenage this is, sulking under the duvet. Add a torch and I regress another five years. I should be downstairs. There is the washing-up to do and the catheter bag to empty. Dad tore his hand open somehow yesterday and I have to change his dressing.

I really should get up. I managed to get myself dressed, but thoughts of you, of how far away you are from me, drove me back under the covers with my writing paper. I even have my shoes and socks on. Maggie would complain about the state of the sheets.

Come to me and I’ll find us a proper room. Most of the London visitors are staying at the Crown Hotel. A new family have taken it over and spruced it up. The models used to talk about the Crown and the old man who lived in it. His wife had died suddenly long before I was born. It was said that he chased everyone out of the place as soon as he got the news. There were rumours of plates of food half-eaten and board games half-played. A life suspended behind net curtains and dust sheets, with the old man circulating like Miss Havisham at her wedding feast.

I could get us a suite and we could hide away together, rediscover each other, under their sheets. I’ll even bring a torch. We could play like children. It would be so innocent and beautiful just to be with you. If you’d only send me a reply and tell me you are coming.

I ask so little of you, Alice, just your fidelity and your affection. I feel as if I’m losing both. Why are you abandoning me when I need you most? I can’t understand what I could have done to deserve it. I would never do anything to hurt you or risk our relationship. It’s what keeps me sane here. And now I’m losing everything, including that sanity.

I’m desperate, darling. I’m not afraid to say it. Remember that nonsense Aubrey fed you about the river of your thoughts? Well, my river is polluted and full of bloated corpses. I’ve tried to weigh them down, but they bob to the
surface and accuse me with their gaping wounds. You were the one clear stream.