To Be Someone (5 page)

MAKING AMENDS

T
HERE WAS A TAP AT THE DOOR. GRACE, THE NICEST NURSE, STUCK
her head in. “Are you up for a visitor, Helena?”

“Who is it?”

“It’s Toby Middleton. He’s asking to see you.”

I hesitated. Time to mend a few bridges. “Okay.”

I reached for my dark glasses and hastily smeared a slick of Burt’s Bees lip gloss over my chapped and bumpy lips. Funny how there was once a time when I wouldn’t let anyone see me without extensive makeup. That all seemed kind of pointless now.

Toby sidled into the room, alone. “Hello,” he said nervously.

“Hi,” I replied. “Please sit down.”

“Thanks. Oh, hey, you aren’t lisping! And your teeth look great.”

“Thanks.”

He sat and waited for the apology we both knew he was due. Inwardly, I commended his courage—a lesser man wouldn’t have risked another ear-bashing. But I supposed if your wife was in a coma, you didn’t really care about getting abused by a battered old harridan like me.

“Listen, I’m really, really sorry about what I said before. You’re not a scumbag or anything, of course you aren’t, and thank you so much for the card and the daisies, you really shouldn’t have, after I behaved so appallingly. I feel like a total shit, with your wife so ill and stuff.… How is she? ”

“Still the same, but thanks for asking. I wanted to apologize to you, too. I think we both felt a bit vulnerable that day. I should have been honest with you from the start.”

Toby took off his glasses and polished them on his shirt. I noticed his thick, textured wedding ring. Rugged and solid, like him.

I nodded. “It all just got too much for me. I’ve been so paranoid about the press after that hideous picture of me they got right before the accident. And then when I started to cry like that—I suppose I assumed the worst, that you were going to expose me again—”

“What do you mean, again? That piece I did on you was very complimentary! ‘Blue Idea’s Green-Eyed Dear’—terrible headline, I know, but it wasn’t exactly an exposé.”

Toby sounded quite hurt, but when I looked at him, the corners of his mouth were twitching upward.

“No, not that
you’d
expose me again—actually, I quite liked your article, even though my eyes aren’t green at all, more swamp-colored really—but that I’d get exposed again. It’s all been so humiliating, and I’ve lost my job, and—oh God, I’m doing it again. Going on about me when you’ve got such awful problems.”

Toby grinned properly. “Well, as Bette Midler said, ‘That’s enough about me; what do
you
think of me?’ Actually, it’s quite refreshing to hear someone else’s woes. I get sick of talking about mine. Have you really lost your job? What do you do these days? I’m sure I’d know about it if you were in another band.”

Somewhat huffy that he wasn’t aware of my DJ incarnation, I told him about the New World breakfast show.

“Cool. A DJ! Yes, that figures. I bet you make a brilliant DJ. I don’t live in London anymore. We moved to the country so Kate could have a bigger studio—she’s a potter—and we don’t get New World out in Hampshire. Otherwise I’d definitely have tuned in to your show.”

“But I’m not a DJ anymore. At least—oh, well, it’s a long story. So why is Kate in hospital here if you live in Hampshire? ”

Toby took a deep breath, and I winced at the thought that I was being insensitive.

“Sorry. Listen, you don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.… ”

“It’s fine. It’s really quite nice talking to someone who isn’t upset about her, too. She had the accident here in London, one night—I didn’t even know she was in town. She’d told me that she was going to see someone about a commission in Portsmouth, but I suppose the meeting must have been moved up here. So when they phoned to say there’d been a crash, I didn’t believe it could be her.

“Anyway, they moved her to this hospital because it’s private—we’ve always had BUPA, thank God—and it has an ICU and plastic surgery. When she’s better she’s going to need some work on her face—she’s got a major facial fracture, running from her eyebrow down to her jaw. They’ll have to put in a titanium staple.… It seemed silly to have to move her again when this hospital’s so good, so Ruby and I have been staying with my sister Lulu in Fulham. That’s where Ruby is today.”

I nodded sympathetically, my face aching at the memory of my own recent plastic surgery. My injuries suddenly felt trivial in comparison—a few dozen stitches, a couple of strips of skin relocated from thigh to face. At least I had had no truck with titanium staples, whatever the hell they might be.

“So are you still a journalist?” I tried not to spit when I said the word.

Toby noticed and took me to task. “Hey, there’s a bit of a difference between a journalist on the
Melody Maker
and a tabloid hack, you know. Don’t tar us all with the same brush. Anyway, no, I’m not. I never made very much money from my writing, so I jacked it in and eventually set up my own Internet music company. It means I can work from home and be close to Ruby and Kate—well, Ruby, anyhow.… Kate hasn’t been around much recently—she’s taken on quite a few big commissions, and organizing those seems to take more time than actually making the pots. God knows what’s going to happen with them now.…”

He stood up abruptly. “I really should go and see Kate. I just wanted to check that you’re okay and feeling better.”

He rammed his hands into his jeans pockets as if he thought I might grab them and beg him to stay.

“Thanks,” I said. I had been wondering if I dared ask him to come again, but his gesture decided me against it. Besides, he had enough on his plate.

Toby opened the door and looked back toward my bed. All of a sudden he seemed fascinated by the jug of water on top of my locker.

“Um … would it be okay if I popped back again tomorrow? It’s, you know, really nice to have a conversation with someone when I come and visit Kate. It gets quite hard to, er, just sit and talk to a person who doesn’t reply. Would you mind?”

“No,” I said. “I wouldn’t mind.”

Glen Campbell
WICHITA LINEMAN

THE HEL-SAM BOX OF IMPORTANT STUFF!

KEEP OUT!! UNLESS YOU ARE

HELENA JANE NICHOLLS OR SAMANTHA GRANT!!

In the event of the untiemally death of either of us
,
this box is to go immidiatally to the other one’s house and stay there
.
No-one else is ever, ever, allowed to look inside
.
It’s all completely Top Secret
.

I sat back on my heels and admired my handiwork, purple felt-pen blotches all over my hands. Sam was lying on her stomach next to me, laboriously gluing shiny paper flowers onto an old hat box, her tongue sticking out of the side of her mouth.

“What do you think?” I waved the piece of card at her.

“Needs some glitter,” Sam replied.

“Give us the glue, then.” I grabbed it and squeezed twirls of Bostik around the edges of my cardboard notice. I shook generous quantities of silver glitter over an area approximately sixteen square feet, some of which managed to land on the intended target.

“Watch it!” said Sam crossly as I frosted her flowers, the whole hat box, our hands and faces, and the carpet. “Your mum will kill us if she sees the mess in here.”

We were illicitly camped out in my parents’ bedroom, because later that day a new, extra-specially comfortable bed was going to be delivered, to help Mum sleep better. It was to be a surprise for her from Dad, who had dismantled the old one and gone to take it to the dump. Its departure had left a brighter, lusher, thicker square of blue carpet, protected from years of harsh sunlight by the darkness of the bed’s cool underbelly. Impossible for us not to play on.

“This is our magic carpet, to fly us away,” I’d said as we crept into the room.

We had adopted Ali Baba positions, kneeling up, arms folded across horizontally, imagining the square slowly lifting up and out the window, carrying us to a place where Dylan’s Chinese burns and homework didn’t exist.

However, the carpet’s stubborn refusal to levitate eventually became a little disappointing, so we had transformed it into a stage instead, and choreographed a
Guys and Dolls
dance routine to show my mother on her return from the doctor’s, a sort of “Welcome New Bed” ceremony.

We were all set: hair blow-dried into monster flicks; as many plastic necklaces as we could find in Mum’s jewelry box; me, a Guy, sporting Dad’s bright green best shirt, its flared collar flapping around my neck like Dumbo’s ears; Sam wearing a matching (or as close as we could get) chartreuse towel round her waist as a skirt. She always got to be the Doll because she was more petite. (Actually, I wasn’t much of a fan of
Guys and Dolls
, but I went along with it, because Sam would have to do the Carl Douglas “Kung Fu Fighting” routine with me later.)

But ages had passed, and still we hadn’t heard the sound of Mum’s key in the lock. So to while away the time, we decided to decorate the hat box, which had been designated the Hel-Sam Box of Important Stuff.

“Can I keep it at my house?” Sam asked when I had finally succeeded in sticking the decorated label on its lid.

“Okay. For a while.” I was frantically trying to brush glue and glitter off the sleeve of Dad’s shirt. By this stage I was quite keen to be rid of the evidence. “I’d better sweep this carpet—stay there, I’ll be back in a minute.”

I was just galloping down the stairs to retrieve the carpet-sweeper when the front door began to open. I could tell immediately, before Mum had even entered the house, how uptight she was—it was a Thinifer period, and I had developed a kind of sixth sense about the state of her moods.

“Hello, Mummy, come and see—me and Sam have got a dance for you,” I said nervously, helping her out of her swing coat.

“Sam and I,” Mum corrected automatically. Several beads of sweat had managed to struggle through the thick blanket of face powder covering her forehead, and she stopped in front of the hall mirror to pat them away with a tissue.

“And we’ve decorated the hat box you gave us. It’s going to be the Hel-Sam Box of Important Stuff. We’re not watching telly, like you said. We’re amusing ourselves.”

I took my mother’s hand and tried to drag her upstairs, and for the first time she noticed my appearance.

“Helena—what
on earth
are you wearing? And what’s that all over the sleeves? Felt pen? And glue? You’re covered with glitter! How could you be so naughty and thoughtless, to do gluing in Daddy’s best shirt!”

My head drooped. “But I had to wear it; it’s part of your surprise,” I said in a small voice. “Come and see.”

I was miserably aware that Mum was working herself up into a full Thinifer rage. Her eyes were bugging out, and a drop of the escaping sweat on her forehead was making a bid for freedom down the side of her cheek.

“For heaven’s sake, Helena!” she snapped. “I told you and Sam to play quietly until I came back. I did not tell you to root through your father’s wardrobe and then get his best shirt all mucky. And if there’s that much glitter on you, what sort of state is your bedroom floor in, might I ask? ”

“It’s perfectly clean,” I said truthfully, my heart sinking further. Mum bustled past me and up the stairs.

“Good. I’m sorry, Helena, but I’m too tired to watch you do anything at the moment. I’m going for a lie down in my … 
Oh!
”

I raced up after her, to find Sam standing in the middle of my parents’ bedless room, clad in necklaces and a green towel, hair in a flick that could put your eye out—but thankfully with no incriminating signs of the box, glue, felt-tip pens, or colored paper. Even more fortunately, the sun had gone behind a cloud, making the glitter in the carpet invisible.

“What have you done with the
bed
?” screeched my mother, as if Sam and I had personally carried it, iron bedstead, mattress, and all, down the stairs and into the coal shed.

“Nothing,” we chorused.

I didn’t want to let out the secret, but some explanation was obviously required.

“You’re getting a new bed. It’s a surprise from Daddy,” I admitted reluctantly.

“It certainly is,” said Mum, tight-lipped. “Now just go away, you two, out from under my feet. Put that towel back in the airing cupboard, and that shirt’ll have to be washed. If the glue doesn’t come off it, you’ll be buying Daddy a new one from your pocket money. And who gave you permission to put on my necklaces and use my curling tongs?
Go!
”

Sam shot out of the room, but I lingered for a moment. “But why can’t we do our dance for you, Mummy?”

She flopped down on the vanity stool in front of her dressing table and fanned herself with a copy of last week’s
Radio Times
, which she’d picked out of the wastepaper basket for that purpose.

“I’m sorry, love,” she said, making an effort. My mother always seemed to be apologizing to me. “Maybe later, eh?”

I lost my temper. Hot tears of frustration burst out of my eyes, and I stamped my foot on the magic carpet. “You’re always sorry, and you’re always telling me to go away! Well, one of these days I’ll go and I won’t come back! In fact, I’m going to go and live at the Grants’—Mrs.
Grant
never tells me to go away! In
fact
, I wish Mrs. Grant was my mother instead of you. So there!”

I ripped off the necklaces and the gluey green shirt, just catching Mum’s stricken, defeated look as I flounced out of the room.

Sam was waiting for me at the bottom of the stairs. “Come on, Augenbrau, let’s go to my place,” she said sympathetically, putting an arm around my neck as we went through the back gate and toward the Prince of Wales.

Augenbrau was one of our many code names for each other. It was usually accompanied by sweeping a forefinger slowly across one’s eyebrow while looking shiftily from right to left, and could be used in any language, although it sounded best in German. We already knew the word for
eyebrow
in about six different languages.

Raking a glittery hand across my eyes and sniffing unattractively, I said in a tremulous voice, “Where’s the Hel-Sam box? And how did you hide all the bits of felt and glue and stuff? ”

“It’s all in your room. I swept up most of the glitter with your mum’s hairbrush,” Sam said sheepishly. “As long as she doesn’t want to do her hair until you’ve had a chance to clean the brush a bit, we should be all right.”

I smiled at her, ruefully giving the Sign of the Eyebrow to show my gratitude.

“Thanks. You’re one hell of an eyebrow, girl.”

Arriving at the pub, we cut through the bar. Mr. Grant looked up from wiping beer mugs to give us a cheery wave as we headed up the stairs. Dylan was sitting at the kitchen table when we arrived, leafing through the pages of
Shoot!
magazine and picking his nose. “What’s the matter with you, then, fatso?” he said to me without looking up.

“Get lost, moron,” I retorted as we passed through the kitchen in search of Mrs. Grant. She was in the living room, ironing shirts and dancing around to the Jackson 5 on the tinny transistor that dangled by its plastic handle from the doorknob.
“ ‘Oh no, no no-oo no, never can say good-byeeee,’
” she warbled to herself. Fascinated, we watched her fluorescent polyester-clad hips shimmying to and fro, until she spotted us in the doorway and wiggled to a halt.

“Oh, hello, girls! What are you up to?” she asked in a cheerful voice. Unlike my own mother, Mrs. Grant always seemed to be in a good mood.

“Helena’s had an argument with her mum because her dad’s taken the bed and she wouldn’t let us do our dance for her and she’s all cross and Thinifer,” gabbled Sam.

“I can’t do anything right. I don’t think Mummy loves me,” I said dramatically, making my eyes tear up again with self-pity.

Mrs. Grant smiled faintly and propped the iron up on its base. She leaned across the ironing board to talk to me, the contours of her breasts puffing out sympathetically across its scorched surface. “Listen, sweetheart. Your mummy loves you very much. I think she just gets tired a lot of the time, doesn’t she? ”

“But why?” I asked.
“You
don’t.”

She laughed. “Oh, I do. It goes with the territory. Maybe not quite as tired as Mummy, though. Just try and be a good girl for her—I think that’s all you can do, really. She often doesn’t feel well, and it’s very hard to be jolly when you’re poorly, isn’t it?”

“But Mum,” Sam joined in. “Mrs. Nicholls is really scary when she’s cross! Even more scary than the witch in
Pufnstuf
!”

Mrs. Grant gave her a look, and picked up the iron again to attack a recalcitrant crease in one of Mr. Grant’s sleeves. “Don’t worry about it, Helena, love. Why not do something extra-nice for her later? Make her one of your super cards or something.”

“All right,” I said, feeling fobbed off. “Thank you, Mrs. Grant.”

“Oh, good gracious! How many times have I told you to call me Cynthia?”

Many times, it was true—but I just could never bring myself to call a parent by her Christian name. Somehow it didn’t seem right. I loved that she always asked me to, though. It made me feel very grown-up.

Just then a different song came on the radio. Mrs. Grant immediately turned up the volume. “Listen, girls, it’s the Wichita Lineman!” she said. “I love Glen Campbell!”

Sam rolled her eyes and looked bored, but I began to listen. It was a bit confusing: Glen needed me more than wanted me, wanted me for all time—but what did that have to do with tennis?

“Um, Mrs. Gra—er, Cyth-nia, is Wichita like Wimbledon, you know, where they have the tennis tournaments? ”

I pictured Glen as a lanky thirteen-year-old dressed in a purple shirt and green shorts, crouched at the side of a tennis court, poised to run out after stray balls. Perhaps he was in love with Billie Jean King, and that was who he was singing about, although he did sound a bit old to be a linesman.…

Mrs. Grant looked askance at me. “I don’t think so, poppet. It’s just a place in the middle of America.”

It was no clearer to me than Root 66 had been three years earlier, but the tender sentiment of the song sent a sudden wave of emotion funneling up inside me, and I began to cry again, for real this time.

Mrs. Grant seemed concerned. “Aaah—come here, duckling, and give me a hug!”

She came out from behind the ironing board and gathered me into her arms, bracelets jingling. She smelled of Chanel No. 5. I knew that’s what it was because Sam and I had often sneaked into her bedroom for an illicit squirt while she was working in the bar downstairs.

I buried my face in her generous bosom and wept. Right then I really did wish she was my mother.