Whispers Through a Megaphone (12 page)

A
camping trip. A mini-break. It begins like this.

Chicken and halloumi, cooking on a disposable barbecue as the daylight fades. Two gas lamps. Torches. Cautious laughter between two strangers. Wine that tastes of apples and sherbet.

She tells him about
The Awakening
, about Florence Cathcart and a little boy who was dead and alive, visible and hidden. He says sometimes I feel like that at home, like I’m there but not there, like no one really sees me. She says I’ve felt like that my whole life, like I’m hidden when I want to be seen, like I’m visible when I need to hide. He says that’s sad, she says it’s normal, he says that’s sad, she says maybe. He gives the cat some leftover chicken. They unwrap two individual slices of cheesecake and eat them with plastic forks. Then the conversation stops.

“What was that?” Miriam says.

“What?”

“That sound?”

“I didn’t hear anything.”

“A twig cracking.”

“Really?”

“Someone’s out there.”

“You hear all kinds of noises out here, don’t worry.”

“Don’t worry?”

“Really, it’s okay. I would’ve heard it too, wouldn’t I?”

“You were talking.”

“Do you want me to go and look?”

“I’m not sure.”

“I’ll go and look.”

“No, don’t go. We should probably stay together.”

“Are you ever afraid in your house?” Ralph asks, which seems like a strange question. It feels like he is saying she is always afraid.

“Not since my mother died.”

“Did she used to visit a lot?”

“We lived in the same house.”

“Oh. And you were more afraid when she was alive?”

Too much too soon, Ralph. Stop being a shrink
.

She nods. He says something to change the subject, something about his own mother, Brenda Swoon, who wears golfing trousers and spends ten minutes a day counting her blessings. They talk about Brenda, and Miriam drinks more wine, and she forgets about the sound of a twig cracking. They don’t hear the footsteps, careful and slow, backing away through the darkness, backing away through the woods.

“Can you sing?” Ralph asks.

“I’m afraid not.”

“Not even a little bit?”

“Listen to me,” she whispers, which makes him blush.

“Sorry.”

“It’s all right.”

“Can I say something that might sound a bit rude?”

“No.”

“No?”

“If you like.”

“I find it hard to understand, the whispering thing, because for me whispering’s a real effort, it’s hard to whisper for a long time, so wouldn’t it be easier to speak normally?”

Easier? How little he knows. There is a gap between them, a knowledge gap. It makes her feel lonely. Words could bridge the gap but she doesn’t know if her words would stick.

“Try, Miriam,” says the unbroken one. Doll inside a doll. She is here, she is sober, she is pushing from within. “Tell him something else.”

Like what?

“Tell him why you whisper.”

Is she out of her mind?

I whisper therefore I am not told off.

I whisper therefore I am not an irritation.

I whisper therefore I am.

“Imagine you’re a little boy,” Miriam says.

He closes his eyes, which surprises her—she doesn’t know that psychotherapists take visualization seriously.

“How old am I?” he says.

“Eight.”

“Okay.”

“If you speak, if you speak
normally
, you’ll get hit with a cricket bat.”

He opens his eyes, looks at her, closes them again.

“You’ll get yelled at.”

He exhales loudly for a long time.

“You’ll get locked in your room without food and water. Or you’ll have to drink your own urine.”

His eyes are wide open, his forehead creased. “What?”

“At school they say cat got your tongue cat got your tongue, and still you don’t speak because you’re sure that she’ll hear you. She always manages to hear you.”

“I’m so sorry, Miriam.”

Why do people say that when it wasn’t their fault?

Holy moly.

Did those words just come out of her mouth?

She has never told anyone, not even Fenella.

“Holy moly,” she whispers.

Ralph stands up and opens his arms. Without thinking about whether it’s right or wrong, without worrying about the consequences, Miriam steps into them, he is a cave in the woods and he holds her in the dark, just holds her in the dark.

“This is a strange kind of mini-break,” she says, pulling away, embarrassed.

“Why?”

“I don’t know really. I’ve never had a mini-break, so I have nothing to compare it to.”

“If I were a real man, I’d light a fire and play you a song. That’s what you’re supposed to do when you’re camping, isn’t it?”

“Go on then.”

“I’m not sure how.”

“I am.”

“Are you?”

“Yep.”

“Really?”

Miriam gathers wood, she asks if he has a penknife, some matches, a newspaper, and then she makes a stack, a crisscrossing stack, it takes a long time, it’s carefully built, and when she is finished she sets it alight and they watch it go up in flames.

“Well,” Ralph says. “I’m impressed.”

Miriam smiles. “And now I’d like my song,” she says. “If that’s all right.”

He starts strumming ‘Pills’ by the Perishers, then realizes that it’s probably too dark, too solemn, so he switches to ‘Hello, Goodbye’ instead. She mouths the words without making a sound, singing in the only way she knows how, and there’s a lot of you say yes and I say no, and this is probably the most fun she has ever had with another person.

A twig cracks again, then another, but they are too busy singing as quietly and as loudly as they can to hear the cracking. Two sets of footsteps this time, meandering through the trees, coming closer.

“You’re quite a good singer,” Miriam says, holding her hands close to the fire.

“Thanks.”

“Who taught you to play the guitar?”

“My dad taught me a bit, then I got lessons.”

She nods, because she has seen other people do this—
nod nod nod, I’m listening, please go on
.

“So what do you do, Miriam?”

“What do I do?”

“For a living.”

“For a living?”

“For money.”

“I don’t have to work at the moment. I inherited some money.”

“Have you ever worked?”

“I worked in Morrisons for a bit,” she says, “at the deli counter, you know, with all the cheeses and cold meats.”

“Did you enjoy it?”

“I enjoyed the cheese.”

“Did you eat it?”

“Absolutely not, but I spent a long time looking at it. Stilton’s the best, mainly for its strength and blue veins. I like the way it’s shaped like a cylinder, it reminds me of a felled tree.”

Ralph refills her glass with wine and she sips it quickly.

“There was a lovely man behind the fish counter at Morrisons, people called him Crackhead but his name was Philippe.”

“Crackhead?”

“There was a party one night after closing, and he headbutted a packet of Jacob’s cream crackers.”

“Why?”

“He was angry. He didn’t know why. I liked him a lot. They made him pay for the crackers.”

Was that an anecdote, Miriam? Are you telling stories like a
normal person?

Miriam and Philippe. Philippe and Miriam. It was never going to happen, she knew it all along, but she couldn’t stop watching his hands as he slapped the cod loins down onto ice, one loin after another, boneless and yellow. How can I help you madam, how can I help you sir, always with a smile, bright eyes, fishy fingers. He had worked at this branch of Morrisons for nine years, but really, underneath the white hat and coat, underneath the blue plastic gloves, Philippe was a world-famous wrestler. Or he would have been, if not for his father, a pacifist from Luton who hated his son’s passion for wrestling and boxing and all things physical. You can’t call it sport, his father said—it doesn’t even come
close
to sport. So Philippe wrestled in secret at the back of Morrisons with David Flint, the assistant manager, and the staff gathered around to watch, putting bets on who would win, and it was always David,
always David Flint. Flinty was a right-wing homosexual with a left-wing wife, and Philippe didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of beating him, not ever. Flinty’s frustration could power an army, a tank, a submarine.

“You know the phrase
snowball’s chance in hell?
” Miriam says.

“Yeah.”

“I like the idea of a snowball in hell, thriving in the heat.”

Her thoughts begin to drift.

I am the snowball. The snowball is me. It’s a funny kind of reflection, but it’s mine
.

She drifts further back.

“None of us is what we think we are,” said Frances to her daughter. “I know it, Mim, but no one will admit it. We are nothing but sights, sounds and sensations. There’s no Mummy in my head and no Miriam in yours. You don’t exist, I don’t exist.” She picked up a copy of
Charlotte’s Web
and waved it in the air. “What’s this?” she said.

“A book.”

“A book of what?”

“It’s about a girl and a spider and a pig.”

“Is the girl real or fictional?”

“She’s made up.”

Frances whacked Miriam on the head with
Charlotte’s Web
. For a small paperback it packed quite a punch. Miriam thought this was probably because the paperback had lived for a very long time. It cost 50p from Mr Garbon’s second-hand bookshop and was previously owned by a woman who sold all her books to help pay for her wedding dress, which made this battered paperback very special indeed. According to Mr Garbon, it was a book that made love possible—a book to have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to
cherish till death us do part. “I do,” Miriam said, giggling, as she handed Mr Garbon 50p.

“Charlotte is as real as we are, you silly girl,” said Frances. “The very
idea
of fact and fiction is preposterous. We make it up as we go along,
we are all made up
, do you understand, are you listening, can you hear me?”

The book came down hard a second time, then a third. Miriam imagined a spider and a pig inside it, jumping up and down in protest. They were on her side. Someone had to be.

Now Ralph is saying that one of his sons, the one called Arthur, should have taken up a sport like wrestling to channel his aggression. He is saying that maybe Arthur has some kind of food allergy, maybe that’s what’s causing his fatigue and hostility. Miriam is saying that she always feels a little anxious after eating pumpkin, but this could be something to do with Halloween and ghoulish associations. The wine that tastes of apples and sherbet keeps flowing. Miriam has never drunk this much so quickly. Ralph is topping up her glass and she is emptying it and he is topping it up and—

A suspicion comes and goes. If you were a man who wanted to take advantage of a woman in the woods, you
would
top up her glass, wouldn’t you? No, of course not, you stupid woman. You’d just punch her, kick her, push her to the floor. You wouldn’t go to the trouble of buying wine and cheesecake and cooking chicken out here, where no one is watching or listening, no one at all.

Apart from two men.

Two men who have been watching and listening but not hearing very much.

Two men who have been whispering to each other, using words like
you
and
when
and
maybe
and
dunno
.

B
everley Smart opens her eyes. It takes a few seconds for her to realize that she is not in her own bed. So whose bed is this? She turns over. What?
HOW?
She looks under the duvet to confirm her suspicions—yes, she is naked. She is completely naked. And so is Sadie Swoon, who is lying beside her, snoring. She looks at Sadie’s body—her breasts, her flat stomach, her narrow hips.
Bloody hell!

She had arranged to pick Sadie up at seven o’clock. That was Plan A. But when you make plans with Sadie Swoon, you don’t expect Plan A to be the whole story. Why? Because Sadie is flighty, changeable, some might call it
undependable
. So here comes Plan A, made verbally or on text, and just when you’ve started to make other plans around it, the telephone rings. “Actually, I was thinking that 7 p.m. isn’t good for me. Can we make it 7.30? Fab. That’s fab.” So now we have Plan B. But hold on, what’s this? Another phone call? Who can it be? “So sorry, I’m a complete idiot. Don’t bother picking me up, I’ll meet you instead. Is that
okay
? Let’s say 8 p.m.
Do you know a place called Jackson Townhouse? I’ll text you the address.”

Plan C is good going. Once it went as far as Plan G. But where the hell is Jackson Townhouse? Is it a cocktail bar? Beverley hopes so, because she’s dying for another banana daiquiri. Those things are addictive. Life feels better with a banana daiquiri in her hand. No, not just better—it feels
bearable
.

So here she is, sitting on a leather sofa, drinking a glass of white wine in the Jackson Townhouse, where they only sell cocktails on a Thursday.

“Why do you only sell cocktails on a Thursday?” she asks.

“Because Thursday is cocktail night,” the barman says. His manner is acerbic, his hair is a mighty quiff. “Three pounds each and they’re all you can buy.”

“No other drinks at all?”

He shakes his head. “Best cocktails in town. Things taste better when you’ve had to wait for them.”

Do they? Beverley isn’t so sure. What about the anticlimax? What about delayed gratification that’s been completely mistimed, the delay lasting too long, resulting in a loss of appetite? He is talking to an expert here. Beverley’s
Mastermind
specialist subject would be Waiting For Things That Do Not Come.

As the barman turns to use the till, Beverley notices that he has no hair at all apart from the quiff. It springs up out of nowhere, a white wave, unexpected.

Sadie is late. No surprise there. She hates tardiness in others, yet she is always late. Beverley heads towards an unoccupied sofa in the corner and watches two men kissing beside a pool table. How lovely, she thinks. The men spot her watching and she looks away.

“Oh my God, I’m so sorry I’m late. I got a taxi. The traffic was dreadful. What on earth’s going on with the weather? Did you
hear the rain last night? The streets in town are just waterlogged.
Totally
waterlogged. I had to borrow Ralph’s umbrella. Look at this thing, it’s hideous. Who would buy a
brown
umbrella? What are you drinking? Shall I get you another drink?”

Whirlwind. Tornado. Dressed in the skinniest jeans Beverley has ever seen. How did she even get inside them?
Mutton
springs to mind, and Beverley’s hand instinctively rushes to her mouth as if the word might otherwise burst out. She isn’t proud of her bitchy streak; it used to amuse her, but now it mainly feels cruel and shameful, like a habit she can’t quite break. She had some counselling once, to deal with this problem, an issue that can only be described as
mushrooming anger
—the kind that springs from the most concealed of beginnings, pops up from life’s undergrowth, spreads and spreads like fungi—and it emerged during this counselling (yes, just like that, no one saw it coming, it was
amazing
) that her bitchiness was a kind of inflation, a rancorous
puffing up
when she felt insecure or diminished.
So how do I stop this happening, counsellor?
Well, Beverley, this mushrooming anger is just a smokescreen.
Really?
Yes. What you need to do is address the diminishment, otherwise you’ll keep puffing up.

ADDRESS THE DIMINISHMENT. DO NOT PUFF UP!

While Sadie is at the bar, Beverley’s forehead tightens, creating an unforeseen world of wrinkles as she tries to restrain her bitchiness. She draws two equations on a blackboard in her mind. Bev sees friend in skinniest jeans ever + Bev feels fat and frumpy in comparison = diminishment. Mutton dressed as lamb = bitchy thought = a way to turn friend into an idiot = also a way to turn Bev into smug person who dresses appropriately for her age = puffing. If only the counsellor could see her now! But she can’t, because she moved to Nashville, which made Beverley gulp and cry and say
you are a disgrace to your profession
.

Sadie is on her way back now, holding two large glasses of wine. She stops to speak to a group of young women, then slides onto the sofa beside Beverley. “Those girls,” she says, “gave me this.” She puts a leaflet on Beverley’s lap.

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Why not?”

“I’m not going to a pole-dancing night.”

“Too late,” Sadie says, pointing at the leaflet. “It’s tonight.”

“What?”

“Downstairs, apparently.”

“Absolutely not. What’s going on with you?”

“What do you mean?”

“Is this because I saw Ralph with a woman?”

Sadie is about to answer when she hears squeals from the other side of the bar. Muffled voices.

“Dear God!”

The lights have gone out. The music has stopped.

“It’s all right everyone, just stay where you are,” says the man with the mighty quiff. He is waving his arms around but no one can see him waving. “It’s a power cut. Looks like the whole street is out. We lost power last night too, but only for an hour. Don’t panic!”

Darkness. Giggling. Voices louder now, even though the music has stopped and it’s easier to be heard. A frisson of excitement. Contagious childishness. Everyone feels less alone.

A light comes on in Sadie’s hand as she begins to tap on her phone.

There are other lights too. Hands illuminated by smartphones.

“It’s all right everyone, just sit tight,” says Mr Mighty Quiff. He dashes from table to table with a tray of lit candles, saying “time to get romantic” over and over like a creepy pre-programmed robot.

“It’s the weather,” Beverley says.

“Yes,” Sadie says, without looking up. She is summoning the attention of followers with her fingers.

Then there are drinks. Free drinks. To say thank you for sticking it out, thank you for not leaving. Such community spirit! We don’t have music or a working till, but we have atmospheric lighting and free drinks and just listen to the rain, have you ever heard rain like this?

Sadie is laughing. She is enjoying this small drama about weather and electricity, revelling in the melodrama on Twitter, the #freaksummerstorm flurry of activity. What did people do during blackouts in the time before smartphones (BS)?

Beverley has other matters on her mind: cocktails. She is sauntering through the darkness, destination Mr Mighty Quiff, and when she reaches him she puts on her best flirty voice: “You’re doing a marvellous job.”

“Why thank you, dear. I’ve always been good in a crisis.”

“Shall I give you a hand?”

“Really?”

“I’d be happy to.”

“Have you ever worked behind a bar?”

“Of course. Who hasn’t?” (She hasn’t, actually, but this is an emergency. Time to
pull together
.)

“I’m Dylan,” he says, holding out his hand. “Fancy a rum and Coke?”

“Don’t mind if I do.”

Beverley and Dylan have come up with an idea, and this idea is called Prosecco. Glasses and glasses of it, being passed around on a tray. “Can I interest you in something fizzy?” he says. “A lovely glass of Prosecco on the house?” she says. Sadie is so busy typing that she doesn’t even recognize Beverley’s voice. She nods and mutters and takes a glass. Beverley doesn’t care. She is buzzing with camaraderie, revelling in the joy of an evening interrupted. Normal service will be resumed soon, but how wonderful, just for a while, to be snapped out of the daze, the stupor of consciousness, the trance of breakfast lunch and dinner (breakfast lunch and supper if you’re Sadie Swoon). The on and on. Every working day spent driving around in a black Mini with the words GEORGE MICHAEL ESTATE AGENTS on the side. Beverley hadn’t planned to be an estate agent. She always wanted to be a cartoonist like Chris Ware,
Alison Bechdel or Simone Lia, and write a graphic novel about love and aloneness and the futile nature of existence. But her mother got ill. Her father moved to LA with a thirty-year-old. Forget art college, life said. You need to get a job, otherwise your mother will die alone and you will spend your entire life choosing the wrong kind of lovers to assuage your guilt.
And if I get a job and look after Mum, what kind of lovers will I choose then?
Still the wrong kind, but at least your mother will be able to meet them.

Tonight, however, Beverley Smart is not an estate agent. She is a barmaid, swigging Prosecco from the bottle while Dylan’s back is turned. An hour later, she sways across the bar and puts her arm around Sadie Swoon. “What’s wrong? Why are you crying?”

“I’m not crying.”

“Are you sure? Did those girls upset you?”

By
girls
she means the women who are two years younger than they are, who shop in Superdry and have messy haircuts. They were just talking to Sadie, asking about the nearest Indian restaurant and whether she might like to join them.

“What girls?”

“The ones you were sitting with.”

“My phone’s gone off.”

Silence. Is
that
why she’s upset?

“It’s never happened to me before.”

“What hasn’t?”

“The battery just died.”

Beverley looks into Sadie’s eyes. She sees fear. Distress. Over a dead battery? “Come downstairs,” she slurs, holding out her hand.

“What for?”

“Pole dancing.”

“In the dark?”

“They have candles.”

“Isn’t that dangerous?”

“Come on. You wanted to go, didn’t you?”

“You can’t dance without music.”

“They have a ghetto blaster. Now
come on
.”

Sadie’s face brightens. She takes hold of Beverley’s hand. Beverley Smart, the straightest woman she knows, inviting her to pole dance. The room is spinning as she gets pulled through it, and now they are downstairs, where everyone is doing it with everyone else.

“What?” Beverley shouts.

“I said this is brilliant.”

“Fuckingwell is.”

“It’s my first time.” Sadie laughs. It’s a dirty laugh. Sid James.

Thankfully, there are no professional pole dancers here to witness this. A room full of inelegant legs twisting around poles, bodies swinging round and around, rubbing up and down, mouths opening to release the words
look at me—sexy!
Mock erotic. Urban abandonment. A spoof. Liberation. Free alcohol. Dance music from a 1997 ghetto blaster.
We have no electricity! Look at us—we’re fucking pole dancers, that’s what we are.

Dylan can’t remember a better night than this. A night when people were so uninhibited, so open. This bar doesn’t usually know what it is. It caters for everyone and no one. It gets it wrong. But not tonight. The front door is locked, nobody can get in or out, the roof is leaking and he’s dancing topless with a woman called Bernadette who is fully clothed, looks like Penélope Cruz and calls him Deelaan.
I like your little quiff, Deelaan. I like the way you dance, Deelaan.

Sadie wants to take a photo of all this and post it to Instagram. She wants to text and tweet. What’s the point of
an experience if you can’t share it? If you can’t tell other people what’s going on?

“Just let it go,” Beverley shouts, grabbing Sadie’s hands.

Let it go? Is Beverley some kind of mind reader? What else does she know?

They break away from the crowd and dance by themselves. Sadie closes her eyes. She thinks of Alison Grabowski, eighteen years ago, Friday nights in the student-union bar, indie night, dancing in each other’s arms, the snakebite and black giving them permission to act like lovers, and when they left the bar they would no longer act like lovers. The oscillation between gain and loss: intoxicating, wonderful, unbearable.

What is this, some kind of mid-life crisis?

No, it’s not a mid-life crisis. It’s the feverish prelude to divorce. The undoing of what was too quickly sewn up. The unmaking of a promise. Deconstruct and demolish. Wrestle your way out of one life and into another.

Beverley is smiling inanely and swaying from side to side. She sees Sadie open her eyes. Now Sadie is smiling too, there is hunger in her smile, it’s a smile Beverley hasn’t seen before, not on her friend anyway, not on Sadie Swoon, who leans in close, touches her face, kisses her. Now they have both closed their eyes, they are kissing and kissing and when Sadie breaks the kiss she says the word
taxi
. Now they are kissing in the back of a car, the driver is watching them in his rear-view mirror and he wants to laugh, he wants to say blimey but he sits in silence and drives. Now they are kissing in a hallway, on a staircase, on a landing, in a bedroom, in a king-size bed. Sadie kisses Alison, she moves up and over her and then back down, taking it all in. No, not Alison. Beverley Smart. She hears Alison gasp, Alison Grabowski, here in her bed, doing what should have been done, making it all right, those
losses and gains, the excruciating oscillation, the things they missed out on.