Whispers Through a Megaphone (11 page)

T
hey sat together on the sofa like any other mother and daughter, but one was the voice and one was the pen. Frances dictated the letters—
Mum is so much happier, we’ve been on lots of day trips, school is going really well, Mum helps me do my homework
—and Miriam wrote the words on sheets of pale-blue paper. This went on for several weeks and the response was mysterious. Granny never replied. She clearly disliked these letters, which made Miriam panic.

“Can we ask why she hasn’t written back?” she said.

“Definitely not, that’s rude.”

Then, on Christmas Eve, Frances made her daughter a hot chocolate and asked her to sit down. “There’s something I need to tell you,” she said. “About your grandmother.”

“Is she all right?”

“Very much so. I spoke to her this morning.”

“I thought you didn’t speak to each other?”

“She phoned with important news.”

Miriam imagined a removal van, pulling up outside the house and depositing Granny and her things.

“Old people are unpredictable,” Frances said.

“Pardon?”

“What you need to understand about old people is their personalities are unpredictable. Their brains can alter considerably.”

Miriam held on tight to the removal van.

“Their tastes change—not just for food, but for people and climates.”

Climates?

“She used to be chatty and kind, but now she’s something else, all right, Mim?”

No, it was not all right.

“She doesn’t find you interesting any more.”

Miriam’s lower lip quivered. She turned away from her mother, focused on the Christmas tree and its three decorations: a plastic pineapple, a plastic bunch of grapes and a plastic pear. Nothing says Christmas like artificial fruit.

“It breaks my heart to say this, darling, but I think she was humouring you before. She never told you her house has been on the market, did she? She’s been wanting to move to Spain, darling.”

Darling this and darling that.

“The house has sold.”

Removal van removal van.

“So she’s free to go. I’m so sorry, darling, but she doesn’t want us to bother her.” Frances put her arm around Miriam. “To be honest, this is a good opportunity. You need to learn that people are insincere. They humour each other, lead each other on, and my mother has always been very good at that. Her unpredictability damaged me. It makes me cross sometimes, but it’s just you and me now so we need to stick together.”

Just you and me.

“I’ve always tried to protect you, Mim. That’s why I taught you to whisper. I’ve had a lifetime of people mocking me for the things I say. It’s better that people can’t hear you. It’s
safer
.”

“So I can’t write to her any more?”

“I’m afraid not.”

Miriam stood up. “I’ve had an accident.”

“What?”

Wet pyjamas. Wet sofa. Wet floor.

“I’m sorry, Mum.”

Frances wanted to slap her. She wanted to grab her curls and press her face into the dark patch on the sofa. But she didn’t. She didn’t need to. Her work was done.

There is a tumbledown shed, neither upright nor fallen, in the middle of the woods. It has been standing by itself through years of wild and mundane weather—battered by sleet, fattened by snow, cracked by sun. Its days are numbered, but so are all of our days. If we could see the numbers, we would know how long we had left to make things right.

There is a woman, sitting on a wooden chair beside the shed, drawing circles in the dirt. The circles tell the story of what went round and round, day after day, making her dizzy and sick.

There is a man, rinsing out a Starbucks mug and filling it with water for the woman to drink. He is worried about her throat, even though she has told him that her throat is fine. He doesn’t know her well enough to decide whether she is telling the truth about this or anything else.

There is a cat, lying on its side, enjoying the feel of the man’s fingers running up and down its stomach.

“Can I ask you something?” Ralph says.

“Okay.”

“Have you really not left your house for three years until today?”

“Well, I suppose I told a bit of a lie there.”

“Did you?”

“I went into my back garden to feed the fish.”

“Probably good to get some fresh air.”

Miriam nods.

“What time is it?” he asks.

She looks at her watch. “Just after six.”

“Time flies when you leave the house.”

“It does.”

Ralph stands up and brushes the dirt from the back of his trousers. “Have you had a proper meal today?”

“Depends what you mean by
proper
.”

“I’ll take that as a no. Do you fancy a barbecue?”

“Here?”

“Yes.”

“Now?”

“Unless you have to be going.”

Miriam stands up. She looks into Ralph’s eyes and finds nothing to distress or console her. What is his agenda? Where is this leading? “I need to keep my life simple,” she says, which makes things feel more complicated than before she said it.

“Okay,” Ralph says.

She squints, flicks her hair away from her face, rubs the thumb of her left hand around the palm of her right hand like she’s soothing some kind of pain, but there is no pain. She is trying to decide what to do, but how do you make a decision when you don’t even know what the options are?

“You look a little stressed,” Ralph says.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Well, I don’t want to offend you.”

“Go on.”

“You seem very nice, but there’s no one else around. Anything could happen and there’s no one to help.”

“I understand,” he says.

“Do you?”

“Of course. You don’t know me. I could be a serial killer. It’s perfectly sensible to be stressed.”

Miriam scratches her knee. Something has bitten her. “It’s not that I don’t want to stay and talk,” she says. “And a barbecue sounds interesting.”

Ralph half closes his eyes and clasps the corner of his bottom lip between his teeth. “I have an idea,” he says. “Do you have your phone on you?”

“I don’t own a mobile phone.”

“Really? Well how about I give you mine? I also have a knife in the shed.”

Is that supposed to make her feel less stressed?

“It came with the fork I bought for eating my tea.”

“Oh.”

“You take the knife and phone, then you can call the police or just stab me if I try anything stupid. Not that I would,” he says, smiling.

Miriam isn’t smiling.

Does he know what he’s saying?

Does he know what she’s capable of?

“I’m just trying to give you all the power,” he says. It was enjoyable at first, meeting someone new, but now he feels a flicker of resentment. Of course a woman might feel scared out here with a man she doesn’t know, but how does that make the man feel?
The personal is political
—that’s what Sadie’s always saying. All he wants to do is buy one of those cheap throwaway
barbecues and cook her some chicken, and yet he feels like a lowlife. “Nothing’s easy,” he says.

“No,” she says, looking like she might cry.

“Okay,” he says. “Here’s the plan. I’m going into town to buy some food, and if you’d like to you can walk with me. Then you can head home if that feels best.”

“All right.”

Ralph grabs his wallet and rucksack and Miriam picks up her bag. They set off through the woods, talking about the names of trees and birds and how neither of them knows as much about these things as they should. Ralph is better with trees than birds. Miriam owns a book called
Remarkable Trees of the World
, but she can’t remember many names, apart from all the usual ones like oak and cedar and fir. It’s pathetic really, when you think about it, which she rarely does, because she is usually thinking about less ordinary matters, like her father and whether he loved her, like madness and whether it’s catching. She doesn’t tell Ralph this part, because they are about to say goodbye and he is talking about how a person can snap.

“So in a nutshell,” he says, “something snapped. That’s what people say, isn’t it? But to be honest, now I hear myself saying it, I don’t think that’s right. I wonder if something
mended
. Maybe something joined up.” He looks pleased with himself.

Make your mind up, Ralph. Did you snap or did you mend?

“Maybe your tolerance snapped.”

“Tolerance?”

“Yes.”

“Maybe.”

Now Ralph is saying what a long story it is, the story of what he can no longer tolerate, and Miriam isn’t listening. They have walked through the woods and come to the path, the one that passes a gate and a field, the one that leads through a meadow
and into town. She can hear Ralph’s voice, it is warm and pleasant but she can’t really hear what he is saying. She wonders how she would reply if he asked what was going on inside her. MY HEART IS IN MY MOUTH. Those are the words. An easy cliché. She thinks of her heart moving up her body towards her throat. She imagines it sitting on her tongue, beating by itself, just sitting there with its own branches, pathways and tracks, bloody and plump. She imagines coughing it up onto the floor and no longer having a heart. What a stupid phrase. Sickening. Nonsensical.

“Miriam?”

She is walking the tangent tightrope, skirting around the outskirts, circling the outer circles, looping the loop. Welcome to the fringes of reality, but who says that the fringes are even the fringes? Maybe they’re the crux of it. Maybe they’re the real deal. Miriam has thought about this a hundred times but she doesn’t think about it now. She and a man she has only just met are about to hit the spot. The spot where it happened. Where push came to shove. Her arms, a shocking necklace. Her body, a trailing pendant. “What the fuck? Are you crazy?” he said, trying to shake her off. That was more than three years ago. Miriam tells herself this as she walks over the spot.

“I’m going to Asda,” Ralph says.

Miriam looks at him. He has no idea. He seems sweet. She hasn’t noticed the sweetness until now.

“I’m going to get one of those throwaway barbecues. I’m rubbish at barbecues, but how hard can it be? You just drop a bit of chicken on it and wait, don’t you?”

“I haven’t had a barbecue since I was six,” Miriam says, walking into the meadow. In the distance she can see the children’s play area, a woman with a toddler and a pram, a man in a red coat walking three dogs.

“You’ve got a good memory.”

“Yes.”

Ralph has the sense that he might know things about this woman that he doesn’t yet know. The known unknown is full of sorrow. “I’m sorry,” he says.

“What for?”

“I don’t know.”

Miriam likes this. She asks if she can come to Asda. He says yes, of course, and he wants to hold out his hand but he keeps it in his pocket.

“I don’t really want to go home,” she says, as he throws a pack of chicken breasts into his shopping basket.

“Don’t go then.”

“I have to.”

“Why?”

“Nowhere else to go.”

“Stay in the shed with me.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Not like that.”

“For how long?”

“Just for tonight.”

“With you?”

“Why not?”

“I’m not sure.”

“You’re safe with me.”

“Am I?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Why?”

“Yes.”

“You just are. Think of it as a camping trip. A one-night mini-break.”

She has never had a mini-break before. Fenella had one last month—she went to Berlin and met Leon, who bought her a spicy sausage and kissed away her tiredness.

“I don’t want any funny business,” Miriam says.

“I know,” he says.

She is glad that he knows, but also disappointed. It means that she wears her reticence like a high-visibility jacket, which makes her a lollipop lady or a child on a school trip. Her buttons are fluorescent. Her innocence glows in the dark.

S
adie is wearing tracksuit bottoms and one of Stanley’s T-shirts. She is smoking on the sofa, eating popcorn, drinking Coke. Why? Because fruit smoothies are overrated, low-calorie snacks are disappointing and resisting temptation is dangerous. Look where it gets you. Just look.

On the floor in front of her, all the photos she could find from university. Alison Grabowski outside their student house, holding the neighbour’s kitten. Alison Grabowski in their kitchen, wearing a Smiths T-shirt, laughing, a glass of wine in her hand, a cigarette in her mouth. Alison Grabowski here and Alison Grabowski there and you get the picture but what else do you get? Nothing at all, because the moment passed, it just disappeared, so you may as well eat popcorn and smoke. (This is what’s known as hitting a brick wall while sitting on your sofa.)

Ralph wasn’t the one who kissed another woman, but earlier today, Sadie cut some of his clothes into shreds with scissors. It felt good and necessary. She feels better now the shreds are visible, scattered all over the bedroom floor—outside herself, instead of inside.

“Sorting out your photos?” Arthur says, walking into the room and eyeing his mother’s oversized T-shirt and tracksuit bottoms with apprehension, disgust, anxiety.

“Kind of.”

“Looking back at your past?”

“Something like that.”

He picks up a photo. Alison Grabowski wearing nothing but a long checked shirt, making a pasta salad. “Who’s this?”

“Just someone I went to college with.”

“She looks like Kristin.”

They stare at the picture. Sadie’s cheeks flush. “No, I don’t see any resemblance,” she says, tossing the photo onto the floor. She puts her glass on the coffee table, placing it in the middle of the square coaster so that she no longer has to look at a moose dressed as a waiter. She doesn’t understand why she spent money on coasters with drawings of animals wearing random outfits—just totally
revolting
.

“Did you find any old pics of Dad?”

“Haven’t come across any yet.”

“Right. What’s with the smoking?”

“It’s just temporary.”

“It’s gross. Makes the house stink.”

“Am I supposed to believe you’ve never smoked?”

“Not that shit.”

“My son the connoisseur of cigarettes?”

He shrugs. “I want to watch TV.”

“So watch TV.”

“Can you go and smoke somewhere else? Like in the garden?”

“Will you and your brother stop bossing me about? I’m taking some time out.”

“Time out from
what?
”

She looks at her son, the one who resembles her the most, and sees contempt on his face. She looks at the tulips, the ones you plug in so they light up, the ones you can set to flash on and off, which turns your sitting room into a disco, a bloody fucking disco. She jumps to her feet, opens the window, picks up the tulip lamp, throws it outside.

“What the fuck?”

First the lamp, then two vases of plastic daffodils smashing into pieces on concrete outside the window. The wedding photo is next, then the photo of Arthur and Stanley in the silver frame, the little Buddha, the carriage clock, the pot full of pens and pencils and rubber bands, the plate on the wall from a holiday in France, the DVD box sets, the tiny jug from a Spanish market, the one that just sits there, empty, through all the days and all the nights, gathering dust while everything changes and stays exactly the same.

Arthur just stands there.

Cushions, a blanket, the telephone, an address book, a carriage clock, four batteries, the TV remote, cufflinks. Better out than in. Better than murdering someone. Better than killing yourself. Possibly. Marginally. She picks things up, throws them out of the window, relishes the sound they make, a symphony of regret.

“Doesn’t that look better?” she says.

“Mum, for God’s sake.”

“Give me your glass.”

“No.”

“No?”

“No.”

“It’s
my
glass. I bought it.”

“You’re having a breakdown. I’m ringing Gran.”

“Don’t you dare.”

“Hello, is that Brenda?”

“Sadie?”

“Yes. How are you?”

“Oh not too bad. Is everything all right?” Brenda had seen Ralph’s home number appear on her phone’s display and expected it to be him. She hasn’t had a call from Sadie for years. Actually, has Sadie ever called? She tries to remember, but she can’t think of a reason why her daughter-in-law would ever have bothered. Which can only mean one of two things: she wants something, or someone is
dead
.

“Is Ralph there?” Sadie asks.

“Here?”

“Yes.”

“No, he’s not here. Is he supposed to be?”

“I thought he might be.”

“What’s happened?”

“We had a fight, nothing major. It’ll blow over.”

“But you don’t know where he is?” Brenda covers the phone with her hand and whispers to her husband: “Ralph’s left her.” Frank, who is not usually prone to childish gestures, claps his hands together and squeaks. The squeak takes him by surprise, it was supposed to be a kind of mmmmm sound, rising at the end like a question, like a sound that says oh really,
how interesting
. His glee descends into self-disgust and he looks down at the carpet.

“He’s probably staying with a friend,” Sadie says, wishing she hadn’t phoned.

“How long has he been gone?” Brenda’s panic has infused her voice with headmistressy strictness, sharpening her casual round vowels, making her sound like Hyacinth Bucket from
Keeping Up Appearances
.

“Only a few days,” Sadie says.

“A few days? Oh I don’t like this, Sadie, I don’t like it at all. Ralph would never go off for a few days without letting
someone
know where he was.”

Sadie listens to the rustle and crackle of Brenda’s hand over the receiver. She listens to the muffled voices of her in-laws: he’s missing, surely not, no it’s true,
gone for a few days
, no idea where he is, good grief,
I know
. She pictures a pigeon in a golfing jumper, standing in the middle of a puddle, flapping. She thinks of Catrina, a woman she used to go to school with, who now makes a surprisingly good living from drawing things like birds in jumpers, dogs in pyjamas, monkeys dressed as tennis players. She had a stall at last year’s Christmas market and Sadie bought coasters, a tea towel, four mugs and three cards, her pity dusted with fake excitability, her disdain sprinkled with festiveness.

There is a discussion about what to do next and Brenda says she’s feeling nauseous, she has a
very bad feeling
, and Frank pulls the phone from her clammy hand, says it’s time to call the police.

“There’s no need for that,” Sadie says. “Actually, I think I might know where he is.”

“Really?”

“I’ve just thought of it. Can’t believe I didn’t think of it before really, but sometimes you don’t, do you? The blatantly obvious is right there and you just don’t see it.”

“Just spit it out, for God’s sake.”

“He might be with Catrina.”

Sadie can hear Brenda saying what, what’s happening, Frank what’s going on?

“He’s having an affair?”

“Well, they’ve been spending a lot of time together.”

“That’s such a relief.”

“Oh that’s charming.”

“Well he’s probably with this Catrina, isn’t he? That’s all I meant.”

“You’re relieved to think he’s betraying me?”

“Of course not.” Frank rolls his eyes. High maintenance, that’s what she is.

Brenda is beside herself now, she’s yelling about a speakerphone button, saying push the bloody speakerphone button, and Frank, who is technologically challenged, has no idea what she means.

“I don’t wish to be rude, but I’d much rather he was with another woman than under a bus, and I’m sure you feel the same,” he says.

“I’m not sure I do.”

“Well that’s indecent.”

“Indecent?”

“Not indecent. What’s the word? Dishonourable, that’s what it is.”

“I’m going to ring off now, Frank.”

“Will you ring Catrina? We’d like to know for sure.”

“Fine.”

Sadie goes upstairs and collapses onto the bed. She lies still for a few minutes, thinking about Catrina and her husband Rupert, smirking at the preposterous notion of Ralph and Catrina together. Then she sends Brenda a text:
I’ve spoken to Catrina and Ralph is there. She says they’re not having an affair. He’s sleeping in the guest room. All is well. He just needs a little space x

Brenda replies straight away:
Oh thank GOD for that!

Sadie sends another text, this time to her husband:
Where the hell are you? Text me immediately

And another:
Do you think this is acceptable?

Followed by:
Just give me a call so we can sort things out

And:
Are you all right?

And:
I’m furious now!

And:
If you don’t call within the hour I’m going to leave you & take the boys & Harvey

And:
I AM NOT FUCKING JOKING

Twenty-four tweets. Nineteen texts. Three Jaffa Cakes. Then a phone call from Beverley Smart, who is halfway through her third banana daiquiri.

“Hi, Sadie.”

“Where are you? I can hardly hear you.”

“Bar 246.”

“God, I haven’t been there for ages. Who are you with?”

“If I tell you, don’t think badly of me.”

“Now you
have
to tell me.”

“I’m with your neighbour.”

“Sorry?”

“The one from the party.”

“Bev, why are you with
him?
”

“I like him.”

“Nobody likes him.”

“You must, surely?”

“Why must I?”

“You invited him to Ralph’s party.”

“I felt sorry for him. His wife’s seriously ill. You know he has a wife, do you?”

“Sadie, I haven’t called to talk about this. I’ve only got a sec. Is Ralph really away on business?”

“He’s at a trauma conference.”

“Right.”

“Why?”

“Well, I don’t know how to say this really.”

“What?”

“Sadie, I’m so sorry, but I saw him.”

“What do you mean?”

“I saw him earlier, coming out of Asda with a
woman
.”

Since he left, Sadie has been picturing Ralph in a mid-priced hotel, somewhere clean and comfortable rather than luxurious, revelling in obstinacy and US sitcoms on Sky TV. She hasn’t entertained the idea of a
woman
.

“Sadie, are you still there?”

She is sitting on the edge of her bed, thinking that she would like to slap the woman who has stolen her husband, the husband she doesn’t really want, but that’s not the point, not the point at all.

“What did she look like?”

“Who?”

“The woman with Ralph.”

“Nothing special.”

“Young?”

“Our age, probably. I didn’t get a close look. Brown curly hair, jeans. Let’s talk about it tomorrow night, yeah?”

“Tomorrow night?”

“At the pub quiz.”

“Actually, can we go somewhere else?”

“Fine. You choose. I’ll pick you up at seven.”

Sadie walks through to Arthur’s bedroom and looks out of the window. He is on the front lawn, picking things up and throwing them into a holdall. It’s the first time she has ever seen him tidying up. Stanley appears, their faces turn serious, then Stanley starts picking things up too and they look like they’re doing community service in their own garden.

She watches Stanley answer his phone. Some girl probably. Pretty and thin.

She takes Arthur’s iPad from the desk, opens Safari and types five words into Google:
Jackson Townhouse Crossley Street gay
. She heard about this bar years ago, back when it had a rainbow flag in the window—is it still a gay bar? Do gay bars actually exist in this day and age or have they been phased out, integrated, assimilated into the postmodern homogeneous world, local and global, all of us in touch all the time on a shifting spectrum? She would like to ask Kristin but it’s too soon for that. So she types
Jackson Townhouse Crossley Street gay
into Google and reads the description on screen:
Drink and be merry with people not labels
. What on earth is
that
supposed to mean? Oh fuck it, she thinks. I’ll go anyway. I’ll take Beverley with me. Tomorrow night.

She types two more words into Google:
Alison Grabowski
.

In a few days from now, Sadie will watch Alison through a window, observing the changes in her appearance, wondering if she would recognize her if they collided in the street. But this evening she puts Arthur’s iPad on his bed, leaving Alison’s website to disappear as the device goes to sleep, and
walks across the room, down the stairs, into the kitchen to see her sons.

“Your father’s fine,” she says, trying to look neutral and calm while glancing at the holdall on the floor, the one containing a little Buddha, a carriage clock, DVD box sets and a tiny jug from a Spanish market. “He’s staying with a friend. He just needs some space, then he’ll be back. All right? So you can stop worrying about everything.”

Stanley puts his arm around her shoulder. “We know,” he says.

“Sorry?”

“Gran just rang me. She wanted to know what Catrina was like.”

“Oh for God’s sake.”

“Come on, Mum,” Arthur says, his mouth full of ham and white bread. “Dish the dirt. Who the hell is Catrina?”