The Other Ida (17 page)

It was almost totally dark, the streetlights had gone out as well, but Ida could see the shapes of the eight other women who shared the dorm. Three of them had huddled together, their arms round each other's backs as though about to play some American sport. A few of the less popular ones lay alone on their beds, and Nikki was attempting to listen to her Walkman.

“Is it everywhere or just here?” Ida said loudly to Judy, the massive know-it-all woman who slept in the opposite bed.

“Everywhere I think,” said Judy. “Though the phone in the hall's not working so I can't check. Can't find the warden anywhere – reckon she's crapped herself.”

Ida reached under her pillow for her fags and lit one. Then she pulled off her blankets, stood up, and walked across to the window wearing her grey knickers, t-shirt and socks.

Outside was pitch black, the usually bright windows of the houses around Soho Square dark and lifeless. Branches and leaves were blowing everywhere, leaping and swooping violently, occasionally hitting the glass and making Ida jump, while on the grass opposite the house lay the old tree that Ida had tried to climb last week when she was pissed. She thought of all the trees in the garden in Bournemouth and wondered if the rickety house had been squashed or blown away.

“It's a twister,” she said to herself, wondering if at any moment she'd see her mother flying past on a broomstick. “Please look after Alice,” she whispered, closing her eyes.

“Oi, come here.”

It was Judy shouting for her, beckoning Ida back over. She had opened a bottle of Scotch and would share with anyone if they'd listen to her gossip and moan. Ida sat on the edge of the bed next to her fat, dimpled leg and took a swig. Perhaps Judy's constant talking would stop Ida worrying. During the week – Terri had told her – Alice stayed in their father's ordered, solid house. It was the early hours of Friday morning and she'd probably still be there.

“Wait, it's not the holidays is it? Half-term or something?” Ida asked.

“No. Are you even listening?” asked Judy.

Ida felt relieved. “Sorry, carry on.”

Judy began again, ranting about the staff and the food and the police.

Ida looked towards Adelaide who was muttering to herself as always, laughing and chattering throughout the night. She was alright, not as nuts as they said, just confused sometimes. Who wasn't?

“One sec,” Ida said, as she handed Judy the bottle and stood up. She walked over and knelt next to Adelaide. There was a gust and Ida screwed her eyes shut as something cracked above them and someone, somewhere else in the house, screamed. Judy muttered behind them, annoyed that Ida had left her.

“Don't you worry, sweetie,” said Adelaide, patting Ida on the top of the head with her firm hands.

“You think this is it?” Ida asked.

“Undoubtedly. You've had the visions, yes?” She twisted Ida's hair and pushed it behind her ear.

Ida nodded. She had been having visions, and although the doctor said they were booze induced, Ida wasn't sure. People did have visions – not only nutters and druggies – they were always having them in the Bible and in things on TV.

“You shouldn't be drinking at a time like this,” Adelaide said. “Lie down and pray.”

Ida got into bed and lay back, pleased to be told what to do. She felt woozy and it was nice to be in the warm room while chaos reigned outside.

Adelaide began to pray under her breath as the whole house shuddered. Somewhere in the building a window smashed.

Ida shut her eyes. She would tell Jesus what she was grateful for.

Her bed was first – her clean bed – and the house they were in was truly beautiful.

Ida had arrived at the hostel with a note from her doctor, and stood gazing up at the ceiling in the hallway, with its fancy curled plaster, until someone fetched the woman in charge.

Around her the other girls argued and laughed, and even the warden who was showing her round didn't seem that bothered about the plasterwork. Ida knew she sounded manic as she shouted about it enthusiastically into her doughy face.

“Most of the girls who come here, well, they have serious problems. They're not interested in the bloody ceiling,” she said, leading Ida up the marble steps to the dorms.

Ida wanted to pull her back down them. “Whatever my circumstances I always try to appreciate nice things,” she said. “It's one of my gifts. That and nicking stuff.”

There was a garden there as well – a secret garden – the nicest Ida had seen since she'd been living in London. She heard an owl cooing there at night, though the others didn't believe her. Bridie had been able to talk to owls, or at least coo at them until they cooed back, and Ida wished she'd paid more attention to how she'd done it.

In the garden there was a chapel too and Ida liked it best of all, with its gold crucifix and stained glass. Her favourite window was the one with St Barnabas on it, the saint of encouragement and consolation. There were stone seats around the edges of the chapel, originally put there for residents to sit on while other people – clean, normal people – could sit on the pews.

The few of them who went to the chapel sat on the pews too these days, but Ida wouldn't. She liked the cold stone, and the way that she felt hidden, as a big, fragile saint stood above her like her very own patron. She prayed a lot when she was there, shutting her eyes as hard as she could and digging her bitten nails into her knees.

Everything meant something these days. When Bridie had been drunk once – properly drunk, the kind where she started affecting an Irish accent and saying she was a terrible writer – she had told Ida she had once lived in a tiny flat on Greek Street, next door to a fortune teller and above a Chinese launderette.

And now Ida was practically living on Greek Street, and she could see where her mother had lived, the swirly letters that said launderette were still painted onto the building, even though it was a butcher's shop now.

There was the sound of something smashing outside and Ida wished they could make it to the chapel, just her and Adelaide, to sit and pray together, listening to all the destruction without the other women distracting them.

The window shook, harder this time, and Adelaide reached across the gap between their beds for Ida's hand. Ida really hoped the owl was alright.

“Let's pray for forgiveness,” she said. “You first darling girl. I've made my peace.”

“I'm sorry for all my drinking and drugs and for leaving my family and for sleeping around,” Ida said.

“Jesus save her. Jesus save her.”

Ida didn't need to speak for a while. Adelaide was off on a tangent, talking to at least three people who Ida couldn't see, smiling and laughing, happy that her misery was going to end.

But Ida didn't feel so happy. She would pray for Alice not to get squashed by a tree. She prayed to St Barnabas for encouragement and consolation, to be rescued, for the money that Bridie had stolen from her savings – a badly forged signature was all that it had taken – to be magically restored so she could go to America after all.

She must have slept because it was light when she opened her eyes and Judy was stumbling to her feet and pulling up her weird green too-short trousers. Adelaide was sitting by the window and reading, not in the least concerned that she hadn't been whisked off to heaven.

“What time is it?” Ida asked. Then, “Did anyone die, down in Bournemouth do you know? Any children?”

“Oh, so you want to talk to me now, now that you need something,” said Judy. She hesitated and Ida knew she'd answer anyway. “A couple of people. No children. It's 9.30. Some of us are off down the Square – going to cut up the tree and have a bonfire.”

“We allowed to do that?” Ida asked.

“Fuck it, it's Armageddon. We'll do whatever we want. And hardly any of the staff have bothered coming in – they're saying the roads are jammed and the buses aren't running.”

They stepped out into Soho Square, the door flying out of Ida's grasp and banging hard behind her, the wind slapping her in the face. Despite the weather there were people everywhere, and roof tiles, branches and rubbish littered the road. Many of the parked cars had been crushed, their windows smashed, and car alarms were going off all over the place. People were cheerful though, talking and laughing as they surveyed the damage.

“Takes a disaster, takes a disaster, a disaster, a disaster, a diiiiis-aster,” Judy muttered under her breath. She looked properly mad, ranting to herself, her eyes wandering and her arm jerking strangely as she walked. Ida wondered if she looked like that too. She didn't think she did – not quite – but was pretty sure she could do soon.

They walked through the cast-iron gate and towards the fallen tree. The pain-in-the-arse warden, Lisa, was there with Nikki and some of the others. Someone had spray painted the trunk ‘For charity use. KEEP OFF'
.
Nikki was wielding an axe. God knew where she'd got it.

“Come back inside, girls,” Lisa was saying, automatically. “It's not the weather to be out here. Let's go inside, have a coffee and get warm. Nikki, put that axe down.”

None of them moved. Ida looked across the square and saw another tree had fallen on top of a house. Part of the roof and top floor was squished and nearly all the front wall missing.

“Fine, fuck it, was trying to do you a favour. Pub?” Nikki asked the crowd and they all laughed.

“You do know that if you return smelling of alcohol we won't be able to admit you?” Lisa said, sounding relieved that without them there she could do her word-search book in peace.

No one answered and some of them began to walk off, as Nikki held the axe in the air and led them like some kind of crazed tour guide before throwing it on the grass and laughing, knowing that she'd get arrested again if she took it into the pub.

Lisa jogged limply to pick it up.

Ida had spent enough time with that lot. There were things to explore. She walked across the square, jumping over branches and scrabbling over some of the bigger trunks, before stepping through the swinging wooden gate outside the destroyed house.

It was an oak tree that had fallen, its roots ripped out of the ground and its leaves and branches sticking out of the roof.

Through a jagged hole on the first floor she could see band posters and an unmade cabin bed and in the bathroom a still-dripping shower, wide open to the street. Downstairs, through a dusty sitting room, was a telly. She should nick it really, but part of her didn't want to change anything. It was like a wonderful set at the theatre. She imagined the family who lived there making their entrances and doing a show just for her.
Normal People,
it could be called.

The wind was starting to pick up again and she turned to see a middle aged woman frantically pulling a black Labrador inside her house while it barked at thousands of flying leaves. The tall pine trees around the square had been swaying before but now they were starting to bend right over, almost down to the ground. She thought of the woods back at home. Perhaps she'd summon up the courage to call Alice later.

Ida began walking back over the square, fighting her way through the fallen trees almost blindly as the wind pushed her backwards and wound her hair round her face. Small things – twigs and plastic bottles – flew at her and she batted them away with her hands and arms.

She was halfway across a large pile of branches when something much harder and bigger hit her face, snapping back her neck and pushing her off balance until with one final gust she flew back onto the grass.

“Fuck,” she said out loud as she lay on the ground with her eyes shut. Everything hurt – her head and her back most of all. She could feel warm blood running down the side of her head, pooling below her ear. Someone should call an ambulance. “Help,” she shouted, “hello?” but she couldn't even hear herself over the wind and knew it was useless.

She opened her eyes slowly and looked at the sky. She thought it was birds at first but as her vision cleared she realised it was leaves and sticks, the occasional wing mirror or fence panel, swooping across the silvery sky like some weird junk ballet.

I'm the only one who's seeing this, she thought. It was somehow soothing.

Slowly she wiggled every bit of herself from her ankles upwards to check nothing was broken.

Then, wincing, she inched her way onto her elbows before putting her hands on the ground and beginning to crawl. It reminded her of something firemen or army men would say, ‘stay low in a storm'.

Her palms were getting stuck with pine needles and bits of glass but it was too dangerous out here and she knew she wasn't well. All she wanted to do was lie down and sleep. She was beginning to feel sick.

“Hello,” someone shouted from across the street, then, “Aggie, call an ambulance.”

Ida tried to turn her head to look but it hurt too much. She felt a soft gloved hand on the back of her neck.

“Stop moving. Stop moving. I've done first aid. Don't move! Don't panic,” the woman said. She sounded older, at least sixty, with the reassuring, bossy voice of an ex-teacher or hospital matron.

Ida relaxed her arms and fell onto her front, relieved, as the woman knelt down and stroked the back of her head. It was so long since anyone had touched her like that. How wonderful to be stroked.

She asked Ida questions, “What's your name? Where does it hurt? Do you live nearby?” shouting her awake when it looked like she might pass out.

There was a muffled shout from across the road before, more clearly, “The phone's not working. Janet! The phone's not working.” It was an Irish voice, a voice Ida knew but couldn't quite place. Then, “Where's another one? Frith Street? Or I could try the church. Is she okay? What can I do?”

And then there were other fingers on Ida's shoulder and she felt breath on her cooling, blood-soaked ear.