Whispers Through a Megaphone (15 page)

She heard footsteps behind her. Slow at first, then speeding up. A jogger, probably. About to run past.

No, not a jogger.

Miriam knew this because the feet stopped running when they were right behind her.

He put his arm around her neck.

No.

This can’t be—

Dragged her backwards. His free hand was on her stomach, her arm, her shoulder.

He dragged her across the path and pushed her down onto her knees.

It all happened so fast, the tangle of limbs, the pushing and the pulling, her chest hurt, he gripped her wrist and wouldn’t let go, he clamped her down, he was heavy, his hands all over her, pulling at her clothes until—

Miriam saw her mother, just standing there, watching.

Dripping wet.

Seaweed in her hair.

Wearing a tweed jacket, black trousers and a bowler hat.

The clothes she died in.

She was grinning.

A man on her daughter’s back and she was grinning.

Mum?

Miriam screamed.

The first scream since she was a baby.

Clouds were torn by the sound. Sky full of rags. Stories split in two. Like the story of Miriam Delaney, which ruptured as her elbow hit him in the chest and her teeth broke the skin of his left hand. She pushed herself against him, a human arch, twisting her body around, flinging her arms in all directions until they were face to face.

Then she scratched him. She cut his face deep.

Somehow she was behind him then—how did that happen?—his hands were over his eyes, her arms were a shocking necklace, her body a trailing pendant as he staggered forwards, trying to shake her off, shouting “What the fuck? Are you crazy? What the fuck have you done to my eyes you stupid bitch.”

As he span around, Miriam span with him.

You asked for this, you bastard. He asked for this, didn’t he, Mum?

(No reply.)

Mum?

(No one there.)

Miriam let go. She fell to the floor.

The man—his bloody face, his streaming red eyes—ran towards the woods.

Miriam—her bloody nails, her grazed knees—ran in the opposite direction towards town. When she arrived at 7 Beckford Gardens she opened the front door, ran inside, slammed it shut, locked and bolted it and hid in the kitchen. She sat on the floor in the corner, facing the window, holding her knees up to her chest, shaking.

She stared at the rainbow. An incongruous sky, untimely and cartoonish.

She waited for someone to come.

(Futile, hopeless.)

“I’m so sorry, Miriam,” Ralph says. He wants to hold her hand. “Did the police find him?”

“I didn’t go to the police.”

“Why not?”

“Don’t you see?”

“See what?”

“I was vile.”

“But—”

“You don’t understand.”

“He could’ve killed you.”

She tightens her grip around the Starbucks mug. “I might have killed
him
.”

“Miriam, he—”

“You don’t know what happened. What happened
inside me
.”

“You mean your survival instinct? Fight or flight?”

“I was dangerous. Mad. Like my mother.”

Ralph rubs his face. He is frowning, distressed, confused. “
He
was dangerous.”

Miriam exhales loudly. Why doesn’t he understand what she is trying to say? “I saw her,” she says.

“Sorry?”

“During the attack. I saw her.”

Ralph puts his hand on Miriam’s.

“She was smiling,” she says.

“You’ve been through too much,” he says.

“Too much for what? Nothing compared to what some people go through.”

“Were you too frightened to go back outside?”

“No.”

“No?”

“I wanted to keep people safe.”

“Other people?”

“I couldn’t trust myself around them. When I got home I felt nothing. And I mean for months. I felt
nothing
. It was weird, like I’d used up all my feelings at once.”

Lightning.

Thunder.

“Shit,” Ralph says, standing up.

They pick things up—bags, buckets, cups, a camping stove, a guitar, a sleeping bag, spoons, teabags, UHT milk—and put them inside the shed before it starts to rain, which it does in no time at all. Fat drops of rain, water bombs bursting, heavier than any rain over the past fourteen months (by morning it will be on the news: two months’ worth of rain in one night and more to come this evening, or words to that effect, words about localized flooding, sandbags, communities pulling together, drains unable to cope, rivers rising, cities underwater, and it’s all because of the jet stream,
we blame it on the jet stream
; words accompanied by shots of dogs swimming, residents sweeping sewage from their kitchens, an abandoned car that should never have been driven down that waterlogged street, pensioners being asked if they have ever seen anything like this before).

Where were
you
in the storm? The storm that lasted half the night before it fell silent, the storm that reappeared the following evening.

Tucked up in bed, of course. For the first part, at least. Where else would I have been? Not in a rickety old shed in the woods, with water coming in through the roof and the ill-fitting door.

“This isn’t good,” Ralph says, as water drips onto the sheet, the sleeping bag, their piled-up belongings.

They look at the roof, which is starting to bow under the pressure of this cloudburst, this deluge. Ralph grabs Treacle and holds her under his arm in case the roof collapses. He directs his torch at Miriam like a question.

“Okay,” she says, pushing wet hair back from her face. “Would you like to come to my house?”

“Is that all right?”

“Yes. Let’s pack up what you need and leave the rest.”

“I don’t need most of this stuff,” he says. “Can I bring the cat?”

“Yes,” she says, putting her bag across her shoulder, picking up Ralph’s guitar, wondering what this man is going to make of 7 Beckford Gardens with its brown and orange carpet from 1973, its cuckoo clock from 1958, its life-size cardboard cut-out of Neil Armstrong.

With a rucksack, a guitar, a bag and a cat, Ralph and Miriam head through the woods, through the darkness, their feet splashing through puddles, their clothes soaked, a cat bouncing in Ralph’s arms, their laughter turning manic as they struggle to see, their legs covered in mud as they slip and slide.

Ralph shouts OH MY GOD at the rain. Gargantuan words, wild and robust. He opens his mouth and they are launched at the world, just like that.

Miraculous, Miriam thinks. It’s
miraculous
.

A
pineapple, a bunch of grapes, a pear. Hanging from Betty Hopkins’s Christmas tree. The tree was real, the fruit was not.

“We need some new decorations,” Betty said to her daughter. “Would you like to choose them?”

“What’s the point?”

“Your father’s coming home soon. It’ll brighten the place up.”

Frances shrugged.

They were at the market. So far, they had bought a new cobweb brush and some dishcloths. Now they were at the Christmas stall, an impatient man was dressed as Santa, he said what can I get you, what do you want, how about some baubles, how about some tinsel.

“My daughter is about to choose some decorations,” Betty said. She looked embarrassed. “Aren’t you, dear?”

“I don’t think she is,” the man said.

“Please, Fran. Just pick something.
Now
.”

“These,” said Frances, pointing.

“Really? You like the plastic fruit?”

Then she walked away, leaving her mother at the stall, fiddling with her purse, trying to pay quickly, saying hold on dear I won’t be a minute.

Little Fran Hopkins. Fran the man, the boys said. You look like a man with that hair. Cut it myself didn’t I, bet
you’ve
never cut anything, no limits to what I can cut, come here, I’ll cut you, I will, I can.

Sitting in a car park, aged thirteen. An older boy soon to arrive. Sleet blew sideways, hit her in the face. The boy said he loved her. Real love, that’s what this is. Do I scare you? she said. ’Course not, he said. She was sore for days, the soreness was precious, he held her tight, he wouldn’t let go.

After that, he didn’t know her. Boys in blazers, sitting on a wall, smoky throats. Fuck off girl, why are you staring at
me?

I ache all over, she said to her mother. My stomach hurts my head hurts you don’t care about me I don’t need you.

Betty told the doctor, she spoke of holes kicked in fences, hair cut off, arms cut up, sleeping always sleeping, impossible to comfort and there are boys, I’m sure there are boys, she’s going to get pregnant, tell me what to do. Frances sat in silence. They looked at her. Is this correct, are there boys? he said. No, she said. Discipline, Mrs Hopkins, that’s what I prescribe, that’s what
this
girl needs. If she’s broken your resolve perhaps someone can assist you, just for a while, until you feel better. May I ask about your husband? Betty said he’s taken to working abroad, he’s away such a lot, and who can blame him, poor man. You’re not alone, Mrs Hopkins, the doctor said. Take these Valium, buy some magazines, but do address this urgently, your girl’s running wild, adolescence needs curtailing, shall we say. The only thing that will heal
this
mind is punishment, you mark my words, you can trust me, please stop crying.

That night, Frances overheard a conversation:

“I’m at the end of my tether,” her mother said. “It’s like she’s not even mine. She’s beyond me, she really is. She’s breaking my heart.”

She had heard it all before:

I don’t know what to do with you.

You’ve driven your father away, that’s what you’ve done.

Why do you hate me?

I love you but—

You’re too much for me.

You’re impossible.

I love you but—

You’re beyond me.

(Mum says I’m beyond her, which means she’s far away from me, which means she can’t reach me, which means I am alone.)

Finally, at the end of a line of boys, stood Eric Delaney. He fixed cars, wore overalls, carved pretty shapes from old wood.

“Do I scare you?” she said.

“I’m not scared,” he said.

“Tell me everything will be all right.”

“Everything will be all right.”

She wanted to believe him.

She set out to test him.

She asked him to hold her tight.

C
entral heating. Food delivered at regular times in a cereal bowl. Soft carpet (brown and orange, garish to some and retro to others, depending on your position, your vantage point, your mood at the precise moment of looking, all of which is shifting, so the brown and orange carpet is a magic carpet, pre-existing and conjured up). What else? Don’t get this cat started—her magnificent list could go on and on. There’s a garden to prowl through. There’s Ralph anxiously calling her name. There are floors and walls and ceilings, a woolly blanket, the joy of rubbing against human legs while human mouths open and close to exchange the details of domestic life. 7 Beckford Gardens—it’s heaven, that’s what it is. To a cat, if not a human.

Treacle is on the dining-room floor, rolling and stretching, playing with the tassels of a yellow cushion. Ralph and Miriam are sitting at the table, eating Heinz tomato soup from cereal bowls. They have just finished a game of Monopoly (Miriam was the dog, Ralph the car). The game took a long time because Miriam had no idea how to play it. Now Ralph is talking about the Internet.

“How do you find it all?” he says.

“Sorry?”

“Being online.”

“I just use Google,” she says.

“Are you on Facebook or Twitter or anything like that?”

“No.”

“You have no online presence?”

Is he suggesting that she doesn’t exist? Surely it’s hard enough for people to establish an
offline
presence, let alone another kind? How many presences can one person have?

“No.”

“Well good for you.”

“Why is it?”

“Well played, that’s all I’m saying.”

“I didn’t do it on purpose. I didn’t
choose
anything.”

“You’re off-grid, Miriam. Totally off-grid.”

“What?”

“No one can find you.”

“I’m not sure that’s true.”

“Oh it is,” he says. “It really is.”

The business of daily life has clearly changed for
proper
people. Activities like eating and sleeping and taking a shower are now thought of as being offline, incommunicado, absent, AWOL.

“I’d like to be on a grid,” she says. “
Someone’s
grid.”

“Well I envy you, I really do.”

“You envy
me?
”

“You have your privacy.”

“I have nothing.”

“My wife thinks it’s acceptable to put the details of our private life online, but how does that differ from writing it on paper and sticking it on a lamp post? I feel like a character in her online stories.”

“I’m sorry your wife is crazy.”

“I don’t think she can be classed as
crazy
, Miriam.”

“Do you think you might be partially responsible?”

“For what?”

“Her stories.”

The cheek. The audacity! “What do you mean?”

“Well, sometimes I pretend to be a normal person so I feel like one.”

“You
are
a normal person.”

“Sometimes you have to fake something to make it real,” she says, quoting the book Fenella lent her about staying sane in a mad world. This special method of being is called “acting as if you already possess what you desire”.
Act as if you’re confident and confidence will grow. Act as if you’re happy and
… It’s amateur dramatics. Self-help theatre.

“I’m not sure what you’re suggesting,” Ralph says.

“Well, she could be telling stories about a marriage to make it
feel
like a marriage.”

Ralph stares at Miriam. She is erupting. There is no other word for it. The excitement of learning Monopoly has made her erupt and he liked her better before, when she was less confident.

(She is only acting
as if
, Ralph. She is
pretending
to be confident.)

Treacle spots Miriam’s slippers, white and fluffy, twitching under the table, and prepares to pounce. Ralph says something about a woman called Parsley. He says that sometimes he wonders if he should have married Julie Parsley instead of Sadie. Miriam sneezes, then says that she has never had the opportunity to marry one person, let alone two, and thank goodness for that really, because she wouldn’t know what to do with a person who kept
returning to her. Your plate is full, she tells him, and yet you moan all the time.

“Do I?” he says.

“Yes,” she says, then wonders if this observation is one of the things you are not supposed to say. There is a list of these things; people like Fenella are born with it inside them.

She looks at his face—yes, something has happened. He has altered. She assesses her options. She could slap his face. No, that’s not acceptable, so how do people navigate their way through these things?

“Do you like Tracey Emin?” she asks, watching him finish his soup and sit upright in his chair. “I do. I’d like to make a big neon sign, just like one of hers, with the words
audible smog
in lights.”

“Do you do that kind of thing?”

“What kind of thing?”

“Are you artistic?”

“I’m not sure I’m anything in particular.”

“Of course you are. We’re all something in particular, but how possible is it to
know
what that something is? That’s the question.”

It’s
a
question, Miriam thinks. Not
the
question. And being with another person is so complicated and difficult and maybe it’s not worth the effort.

In the garden next to Miriam’s, Boo Hodgkinson reaches the top of his ladder and finds himself glancing, staring,
gawping
at Miriam Delaney. “Holy crumpets,” he says. It’s a good phrase, holy crumpets, and Boo has always liked it. Why? Because crumpets actually have holes in them. Unlike so many exclamations (You’re joking! My God! Fuck me!), this one is loaded with truth. It is a statement of fact.

As he balances on his ladder, trying to get a good look at what’s happening in Miriam’s dining room, he remembers reading about a woman whose entire life was overshadowed by an acute fear of crumpets. She suffered from trypophobia, a fear of holes that appear in small clusters, which is sometimes known as repetitive-pattern phobia. After ten minutes of intense Googling, Boo discovered that it comes from the Greek word
trypo
, meaning drilling or punching holes, and
phobia
. He also discovered that thousands of people across the world are horrified and repulsed and existentially challenged by beehives, ant holes, pumice stones, honeycombs, coral, meat, wood, muffins and bundles of drinking straws.

Boo is supposed to be cleaning out his guttering. His home is not simply his castle, it is one of the great loves of his life. He adores every bit of it, from its tiny basement to its brand-new roof, its double-glazed windows to its double garage, its summerhouse to its front porch. So when there is a storm, a freak midsummer storm that batters his house and thrashes against it, Boo pulls his waterproof trousers up and over his red tracksuit bottoms, clicks his tool belt into place and heads into the garden to assess the damage. He rests the ladder against the wall, climbs to the top and peers into the guttering with great tenderness and concern. While he is up here, flicking clumps of moss onto the grass below, filling a tiny crack with sealant, he spots Miriam in her dining room. Oh what a lovely sight. But what is
that? Who
is that? A man? Surely not? He knows that Miriam left her house but he hadn’t seen her return (
with a man
). This can’t be right. She’s an innocent, not a floozy. Maybe he’s a handyman or a plumber or a man who came to read the gas meter (
who ended up playing Monopoly, Boo?
).

Oh no, she has seen him. She is waving. He smiles, waves back. He throws his hands up in the air, it’s a gesture about the
craziness of the storm and he knows she will understand, she will read him correctly. She is nodding now, he is holding up a lump of moss in a dramatic way as if it fell from the sky, and he can tell she understands, she is following what he’s saying about the impact, the damage, the aftermath. They are talking without words, attending to what is broken.

Miriam steps away from the window. Boo climbs down the ladder and goes inside. He takes off his waterproof trousers, makes a coffee, walks through to his living room and sits in a chair by the window. He is hungry but he doesn’t feel like eating, tired but he doesn’t feel like sleeping. Seeing Miriam in her dining room with a man has changed the atmosphere of his day. He wonders if his latest herbal remedy—a natural antidote to anxiety, acronymically named Anata—is making him oversensitive. (Anata is still in its trial period, which basically means that Boo swigs it from the bottle twice a day and scribbles observations in a Moleskin notebook.)

He is looking out of the window, watching the cars drive along the waterlogged street, when he sees something. A boy. Running up to Miriam’s front door.

The letterbox rattles and Miriam hopes it’s what she thinks it is—not junk mail, not proper post, just an unsigned card from an unknown person. Yes, she thinks. Yes yes yes. She picks it up, reads it, shows it to her house guest. On the front, a photograph of a tree. On the back, written in turquoise ink:

“Who’s it from?” Ralph says.

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

“They just come through the door.”

“They?”

“Would you like to see the others?”

On the front of every card, a photograph. On the back, handwritten in capital letters, a statement. Ralph flicks through them:

“And these were all hand-delivered?” Ralph says.

“Yep.”

“And they haven’t freaked you out?”

“Why would they?”

“If I got postcards from a stranger it would freak me out.”

“I find them comforting.”

An incredulous sniff.

“I like what they say,” Miriam says.

Ralph flicks through the postcards a second time, as if this will somehow disclose a name and address. “We were just seconds away from seeing who delivered this,” he says, waving the final card around.

“Never mind,” Miriam says, taking it from his hand in case he bends it.

“You like getting these, don’t you? You actually like it.”

“I do.”

There is a knock at the door. Ralph stands up as if it’s his house,
his
door, then pauses. He watches Miriam open the front door and say hello to a man in a red tracksuit.

“I chased,” the man says, shaking his head. He pants and wheezes as he tries to speak. “No good, no good.” Boo looks down at his legs, oily water on red velour, sartorial tragedy. “Oh no,” he says. “I got
splashed
.”

“Ralph, this is Boo. He lives next door. He’s the one I was waving at just now.”

“You were up a ladder,” Ralph says, eyeing the man’s thick moustache.

“And this is Ralph,” Miriam says. “I found him in the woods.”

Boo feels a little woozy, which rhymes with floozy, which makes him think of Miriam doing God knows what with this man from the woods and he can’t believe what it makes
him feel—how
physical
it is, how
acidic
. “Do you have any Gaviscon?” he says.

“You’d better come in,” Miriam says.

“There was a boy,” Boo says.

“A boy?”

“I ran after him—thought he might be the one.”

“He was.”

“Was he?”

“Yes.”

“You received another card?”

“I did.”

Ralph watches as Miriam feeds her neighbour Gaviscon on a plastic spoon and shows him the latest card, the one about a tree of simplicity.

“This is an invitation,” Boo says.

“Do you think so?”

“I do.”

The postcard and the boy and Boo’s dirty legs—it happens like this.

“So are you in or are you out?” Matthew says, standing by the door of the bedroom he shares with his brother.

“I’m too tired,” Alfie says, from one of two single beds. He is propped up on three pillows, reading a magazine called
Doctor Who Adventures
.

“Why are you in my bed?”

“It’s more comfy.”

“How can it be?”

“Dunno, it just is.”

Matthew closes the door and walks over to his bed. This doesn’t take long because their room is small. In fact, the whole house is small. This two-bedroom Victorian terrace may have
high ceilings, but its rooms make non-violent animal-loving people declare that there isn’t enough space to swing a cat. (Even when there are thousands of ways to say it, ancient words still rise from our mouths. Are the words inside us or are we inside the words?)

“I’ll pay you,” Matthew says, sitting on the edge of the bed.

“How much?”

“Five quid.”

“What if she sees me?”