Whispers Through a Megaphone (2 page)

R
alph has Treacle all over his legs, his arms, his stomach. Treacle the ginger cat, bored with Ralph’s inactivity, hungry for breakfast. She pads up and down the sleeping bag, treads over the lumps and bumps of her new owner, searching for signs of life.

Treacle had been lost and alone, a stray cat in the woods, patchy and thin. Then she met Ralph Swoon, who was also lost and alone. Now they had each other, and a rickety old shed in the middle of the woods, full of slatted light.

He bought her a can of pilchards.

It was a fishy kind of love, but it was real.

Still wearing yesterday’s clothes, Ralph steps out of his sleeping bag. He runs his fingers through his hair and opens the door, heading for the pile of leaves that has become his outside toilet. Treacle sits in the doorway, waiting. She is already used to this part of their daily routine. She knows that Ralph will stumble back in, tip some food onto that cracked blue plate on the floor, then return to his sleeping bag and invite her inside it. Yesterday they fell asleep like that for three
hours, with Treacle opening her eyes every now and then to make sure Ralph was still breathing.

Feline logic told her that he had dragged himself here to die. Why else would he have turned up in the woods at 11.30 p.m. on 4th August with no bag, no possessions, just a wallet, a phone and a guitar?

But the cat was wrong.

He hadn’t come here to die.

Last week, Ralph was sitting at the breakfast bar in his kitchen, listening to his wife and their two teenage sons out in the garden. Sadie and Arthur were hosing the legs of their new puppy while Stanley watched.

“This dog stinks,” said Arthur.

“It’s just mud. Help me hose it off,” said Sadie.

“He’s your dog, Mum.”

“Don’t start this again.”

“Who went and got him?”

“I bought him for you and Stan. You always wanted a dog.”

“I wanted a dog when I was six. You’re ten years late.”

“Oh fuck off.”

Arthur smirked. The puppy wriggled about, trying to escape the cold water, trying to play.

Ralph had been against the idea of a dog. Didn’t they have enough problems, without attending to the needs of what was effectively a furry baby? As usual, Sadie won. She said it would be good for Arthur, who was showing signs of excessive boredom. It would relax him, teach him responsibility, get him outdoors. A teenager needs a reason to climb out of bed in the morning, she said, otherwise he will sleep all day and all night and life will pass him by like an unremarkable dream. Sounds familiar, thought Ralph.

“Don’t get water in his ears,” said Sadie. “Dogs hate water in their ears.”

“So why does he keep jumping in the river?”

“Spaniels like to swim. They don’t swim
underwater
.”

Arthur dropped the hose on the floor. “He’s clean now, I’m going in.”

“He’s not clean. Look at him, he’s filthy.”

While the puppy shivered between them, Arthur and Sadie glared at each other. Stanley was an absent bystander, his thoughts elsewhere. These departures had been happening since last Friday, when Joe Schwartz kissed him hard, led him upstairs, sat beside him on the bed, kicked off his Converse trainers, flicked the hair out of his eyes and said you’re wonderful, Stan, I really think you’re wonderful.

Canadian Joe. An Adonis. He was a magician too—he had turned down the bickering voices of Arthur and his mother so that Stanley could barely hear them. Something about a filthy dog. Something about his brother having a problem.

“I’m not impressed with you right now,” said Sadie.

“Oh really,” said Arthur.

“You talk to me like I’m a piece of shit. What’s your problem?”

“I don’t have a
problem
.”

“Just go and make me a coffee, Stan can help me finish. Stan, are you with us?”

Arthur marched through the kitchen in muddy boots, tapping on his iPhone.

When the twins were born, Ralph was still an undergraduate. He was twenty years old, passive and unworldly. He hadn’t wanted to call his sons Arthur and Stanley. He preferred Mark, Michael or Christopher, but he would never have risked arguing with Sadie about such crucial matters. They were fine, they were happy, he could lose her at any moment. This was the wordless core of their relationship, known and unknown. Sixteen years later they argued all the time and the sight of her Mini pulling into the driveway, its back seat covered with newspapers and unopened poetry anthologies, had begun to make him queasy.

Should your own wife make you feel queasy? Perhaps at the beginning, with the anticipatory fizzing, the urgent desire. But after sixteen years? What would she say if she knew?

“You make me feel queasy, dear.”

“You make me feel queasy too.”

“What now? A dry biscuit, a cracker, Alka-Seltzer?”

He took a digestive biscuit from the packet and put the kettle on. He listened to Sadie telling Stanley about an exhibition she wanted him to see—maybe they could go this afternoon, she said. There was a pause before the inevitable rejection: I’m sorry, Mum, but
no can do
.

“Why not?”

“I’m taking someone to the cinema this afternoon.”

“Can’t you go to the cinema another time?”

“Maybe you could see the exhibition with Kristin.”

“I don’t want to see it with Kristin, I want to take you.”

“But Kristin’s into art.”

“Will you shut up about Kristin?”

Kristin Hart. The boys’ godmother. She and her partner Carol were the paragons of contentment, which made them mesmerizing and annoying, even more so since Sadie found herself preoccupied with thoughts of Kristin in bed, Kristin in the shower, Kristin doing stretches before her morning run. Discombobulating, that’s what it was—the sexualization of an old friend. Really quite
distracting
.

Ralph closed his eyes.

He saw flickering lights, blocks of colour.

Yellow, black, reddish brown.

The talking had stopped. There was a moment of silence.

Yes,
silence
.

He exhaled into it, feeling his shoulders drop.

He noticed his fingers, the way they had curled into fists.

“I’m in such a foul mood,” said Sadie, marching into the kitchen with a cocker spaniel attached to her leg. “I need a coffee.”

“I’ll make it.”

“This bloody dog’s driving me insane. You can take him out this afternoon.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Why not? I need to get the food and drink for tomorrow. It’ll take me ages.”

His birthday party—something else he hadn’t wanted. But it wasn’t really for him. Sadie liked to surround herself with as many people as possible on a regular basis, otherwise his continued presence came as a shock.

“What do you know about Stan’s girlfriend?” she said, finishing her coffee while the spaniel licked her face.

“Are you sure he has a girlfriend?”

“I hope she’s not dull, like that girl he brought to the barbecue last month.”

“I thought she was perfectly nice.”

“He can do better than
perfectly nice
. She had no ambition.”

“Sadie, she’s a teenager.”

“When I asked where she wanted to be in five years’ time, do you know what she said?”

Ralph stood up, trying to decide whether to wash the dishes or go upstairs. “What?” he said, running the hot tap.

“In a swimming pool.”

“Maybe she loves swimming.”

“In five years’ time she wants to be in a fucking swimming pool? She could be in one
now
, Ralph. What kind of ambition is that? It’s like saying you want to end up on a toilet.”

“Sadie—”

“And do you know what else? She said her favourite restaurant was Frankie & Benny’s.”

His wife was oblivious to her own snobbery. Ralph blamed this on her parents, a lecturer and a mathematician who discussed current affairs, played the banjo and made home-made pesto, all at the same time. They were brilliant, quick, sarcastic. They lived in France and never visited. No child could ever emerge from their narcissism without hating herself, and Sadie had converted her self-loathing into something more tolerable: snobbery.

Ralph’s mother had been a housewife. His father worked for an upholsterer. It was no worse than Sadie’s background, it was just different, but try telling
her
that.

“Whatever,” he said.

“You sound like Arthur. Is that his hoodie you’re wearing?”

“Of course not. I don’t go around wearing our sons’ clothes. I bought this last year for running, don’t you remember?”

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you run,” she said, head down, fiddling with her phone.

Ralph went upstairs, leaving a bowl of washing-up water that was supposed to smell of lavender and lemon, but actually smelt like the passageway between Asda and the car park.

Upstairs, Ralph was confused.

“Well blow me, I’ve forgotten why I came up here,” he said to no one.

Blow me
. He almost Googled this phrase once, to discover its origins, but decided against it when he imagined the kind of sites that might pop up. He tried not to utter these words, especially when working with female clients, but saying
blow me
was something he had inherited from his father, along
with narrow shoulders and a pert little bottom. Frank Swoon had been famous for his buttocks. Women wolf-whistled as he walked down the street. “Oh you do make me swoon, Mr Swoon. Just look at those little cheeks.” It was the kind of comment a man would have been slapped for.

Ralph’s confusion ran deeper than trying to recall why he had come upstairs.

In fact, it was chronic.

He was perpetually bewildered. He knew less about his own desires these days than his clients knew about theirs. Compared to him they were models of sanity, able to sit in front of him once a week and articulate their emotions with astounding clarity. Sometimes he wanted to tell them. He wanted to say hey, do you know how
astounding
this is, the way you know what you want? You may have a catalogue of neuroses, you may be anxious and depressed, but
you actually know what you want
.

Sadie had her own theory about his confusion. She was convinced that he hadn’t been the same since Easter, when he walked into a giant garden gnome in B&Q. Who puts an enormous gnome right at the end of an aisle? Ralph had complained to the manager, calling it a MAJOR SAFETY ISSUE. When the manager laughed, trying to hide his amusement inside an unconvincing coughing fit, Ralph threatened to call the police. Yes, he was overreacting. Yes, he should have been looking where he was going. But sometimes a gnome is not a gnome: it is a giant symbol of everything that’s wrong with your life.

Seconds before he headbutted the gnome, he was pretending to admire a vase of plastic daffodils. Insisting that they buy six bunches, Sadie was tweeting about how authentic they looked, how satisfying it was to have flowers that never died, and why hadn’t she thought of this before? Other people, miles away,
were responding to her tweet. She was reading out their comments. Ralph stormed off down the aisle, unable to tolerate the peculiar hoo-ha evoked by the plastic daffodils, and he spotted Julie Parsley.
Julie Parsley?
And
that
was when he collided with the giant garden gnome.

Sadie held up her phone, took a picture of him rubbing his head, sprinted into the customer toilets.

What was Julie doing here in his local B&Q? Hadn’t she moved away? He remembered her singing ‘Move Over Darling’ on stage at the King’s Head; remembered her singing Ralph you’re so lovely, you really are lovely, to a melody she made up on the spot.

Her hair was short and wavy now, like that French actor—what was her name? Audrey Tautou. Yes, that’s the one. Ralph’s memory was still intact, despite the bump on his head, but Julie Parsley was nowhere to be seen. Her absence made him furious, even though she had been absent for much longer than the past few minutes. It made him shout. It made him complain about HEALTH and SAFETY and the BLOODY STUPIDITY of making a gnome that was as SOLID as a FUCKING WALL.

Ralph’s confusion had nothing to do with that day in B&Q.

It had nothing to do with Julie Parsley, his first love, aged fifteen.

And it had nothing to do with garden gnomes.

W
hen the headmaster set eyes on Frances Delaney, sweeping the floor of the school corridor wearing nothing but a pair of trainer socks, he stood perfectly still and watched. He had never seen anything as strange and beautiful. His face was usually grey but not today. She had coloured him in. All around her, children were being children: wild, callous and despicable. They were like beetles, creeping bugs with hard shells. They said what they liked with vile spontaneity. Apart from little Miriam Delaney, of course. She was quiet, well behaved, positively ghostly. And with a mother like this, who could expect anything less?

He walked towards her, flicked the children away, took off his jacket and wrapped it around her shoulders. She was warm, because her sweeping had been furious. When Frances cleaned, the bugs knew she was coming. Beside her feet the floor was shining.

“I think you should come with me,” the headmaster said, leading Frances along the corridors to his office. Her eyes were glazed, there were no words in her mouth. He pulled
his National Trust blanket from the cupboard, blue and white and scratchy, smelling of tobacco. “Here,” he said, offering it to Frances. “We’ll find your clothes and then I’ll drive you home. Does that sound like a good plan, Mrs Delaney?” His palms were wet, his breathing was quick. “Were you actually wearing any clothes when you left the house?”

That afternoon, at the end of the school day, Miriam walked home by herself as usual. She worried about the safety of cats outside all day long, worried about what kind of concoction she would be given for tea, worried that other children would be meaner than ever and what that meanness might look like. Today had been the loudest day.
No wonder you’re a fucking weirdo, Delaney. Your mother’s a nutter. Get your kit off, show us what you got, you both fucking nudists, is that what you are?

She opened the front door of 7 Beckford Gardens, walked along the hallway to the kitchen.

They were on the table.

On it.

Just like her boiled egg and soldiers this morning.

Just like her colouring books and felt-tip pens.

No amount of disinfectant would ever make this right.

She thought about that as she stood in the doorway.

Thought about cleaning products, wondered how many bottles there were in the world.

And eventually they stopped grunting.

He stumbled backwards and zipped up his trousers.

She was still wearing her trainer socks.

And her black bowler hat.

“Well hello, Miriam,” the headmaster said. “Did you have a good day at school?”

Miriam has vacuumed the front room and the hallway and it’s time for a celebratory cup of tea. She dashes past the glass panels in the kitchen door and catches sight of her own body. She pauses, her eyes widen.
Is that me?
A woman in knickers and novelty slippers, who has just sucked up dust using a hoover called Henry as though there is nothing in the world to be afraid of.

She remembers something Fenella once said: “The past is the past.” Stating the obvious makes Fenella happy. “It is what it is,” she often says.

Miriam tried stating the obvious for a while, to see if it improved her well-being, but it only made her feel crazier than usual:

“This is a packet of Weetabix.”

“The future is the future.”

“Death means never seeing someone again.”

“This is a pint of milk.”

“The present is the present.”

“I’ve never spoken in more than a whisper.”

“What I mean,” Fenella explained, “is no one can set foot in this house without your permission. Your mother’s gone. The past is the past. Catch my drift?”

None of those statements seemed connected, but Miriam caught her drift. It can take a long time to believe that something is over.
That’s
what Fenella had been trying to say. But it is. What’s done is done.

She sits at the kitchen table and sips her tea. For once, just for a few minutes, there is no history on her back. There is no history crawling over her skin and poking into her mouth. History will return as quickly as you can whisper
Frances Delaney
, but these small moments, these victories, have to be marked. They are the flags of progress. Signposts to normality.

The letterbox rattles.

Who gets post at eleven o’clock at night?

It’s another postcard, the sixth one Miriam has received over the past few weeks. On the front, a photograph of an old-fashioned bike, leaning against the wall of a French cafe. On the back, written in green ink:

Like the others, this postcard is anonymous. She sticks it on the noticeboard beside the rest and looks down at her slippers. These slippers are not sexy, she thinks. But have I ever been sexy? She flexes her toes, making the two West Highland terriers nod and say of course you have, Miriam, of course you have.

Sex. Now
that
should have appeared on the list of things she is afraid of. It’s not sex itself that’s the issue, it’s the fact that it has to involve another
person
. She told Fenella this last week.

“What on earth do you mean?” Fenella said.

“Well, it’s not the
act
of sex,” Miriam said, wishing she hadn’t phoned. Fenella had just got home from Zumba and was disarmingly energized.

“Right.”

“It’s having to
be with someone
.”

“So you’d be fine with a blow-up doll, is that what you’re saying?”

“That is certainly not what I’m saying.”

Fenella laughed. She opened a packet of Quavers and settled into an armchair.

“What’s that noise?”

“I’m eating crisps.”

“Doesn’t that defeat the object of Zumba?”

“How could it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Exactly. So back to sex. It’s never too late to get started,” Fenella said, but it was all right for her. She started when she was sixteen in a caravan in Newquay with a boy who liked to be called Lucy. It was the Price family’s summer holiday. Her parents were playing bingo in the town hall. Her brother was in the pub with a girl who liked to be called Pattie. It was raining, they were playing cards and Lucy (otherwise known as Martin Henley) said let’s do it and they did.

“Just like that?” Miriam said.

“Just like that,” Fenella said. “It was bloody awful but I felt fantastic afterwards.”

“You’re not exactly selling it.”

“I don’t
need
to sell it. It’s everywhere. It sells itself.”

“Why did he like to be called Lucy?”

“Why not?”

It was a good question. Fenella was full of those—questions that probed your assumptions and required no answers.

“At least I could do the pillow talk,” Miriam said, which made both of them quiet and sad.

“One day,” Fenella said.

“What if it never happens?”

“Whispering’s not a crime.”

So why does she feel like a criminal?

Miriam runs upstairs and puts on her pyjamas. That’s enough cleaning for one night—no need to overdo it. She sets a track playing on her CD player: ‘Wicked Game’ by Chris Isaak. It’s a song about the wickedness of love and a woman who has made someone think about her all the time. Miriam understands
that
kind of wicked—the taking over of mind and body—but she knows nothing about love. She has never experienced the kind of thing Chris Isaak is singing about, never fallen in love or had anyone fall in love with her. In fact, she is not even sure that she has met someone who is in love. Do they look different to other people? Are they easy to spot? Her mother always said that love was for people with dirty houses.

She looks in the mirror and knows what she is. She is buttoned-up. Buttons and buttons, moon-high. Imagine a night sky studded with buttons. Imagine Miriam’s buttoned-upness living in a jar—the jar would be full of navy-blue ink, the kind you might use to write a letter to your grandmother, a letter on Basildon Bond writing paper, watermarked blue, saying you were sorry, so sorry, for everything.

Chris Isaak has a soul-stirring voice. Some people can do that—they can reach into your soul and stir things around. He is truly soulful.
My voice is full of your soul—the parts I took when I stirred you around.
His crooning makes Miriam wonder
what it would be like to look at her bed and see someone lying under the duvet.
Someone else
. What a wicked song! It’s the soundtrack to a future that feels terrifying, exciting, possible, impossible. Her toes tingle inside her fluffy slippers.

Miriam sighs. She still misses her grandmother. The sight of those envelopes, her own name and address in that small, neat handwriting, made her feel like a real girl in a real house—a person of fixed abode, properly and officially there. But just as important was what happened in the act of writing. When Miriam composed her sentences, the voice inside her head sounded like any other girl. There was an unbroken stranger inside Miriam Delaney—the same age but louder, the same height but taller.

That stranger is now a woman and she is still buried deep. She is a doll inside a doll. Pull a string on the outer doll and nothing happens. Pull a string on the inner doll and she speaks. Trouble is, no one can hear the inner doll. No one knows she’s there.

How long is a piece of string?

People just string me along.

What’s done is not done.

She blinks her thoughts away, walks across her bedroom to the window. What’s happening out there in other people’s houses? She imagines a parallel world, another Miriam, then another. The multiplication of a person. All the possible versions of Miriam Delaney. Longer hair, short hair, dressed all in black, multicoloured, tomboy, girlish, a woman with a powerful voice, a leader, a follower, an artist, a midwife, a waitress, a driver, a baker, a scientist, a policewoman. No, not a policewoman—then she would have to arrest herself for the
thing that happened. A woman with a boyfriend, a girlfriend, a son, a daughter, a cat, a dog. A woman who receives invitations and says yes please, thank you so much for inviting me. A woman who receives compliments and says thank you, how kind of you to say so, instead of blushing and squirming and hating the person for taking the mickey.

Which version would she be now if Frances Delaney had handed her to her father and walked away? A brand-new baby, a brand-new life. He lived in this house for almost a year after she was born, then he went into the garden and never came back. Ruptured brain aneurysm. He was hanging out the washing—Miriam’s Babygro. It was yellow, with a brown monkey on the front. It had to be washed again because it fell in the mud. So many details but none of them matter.

He was here and he was gone.

It was what it was.

It is what it is.

She closes her eyes, watches him smile as he jiggles her up and down, hears him sing a lullaby as he puts her to bed.

Made-up memories of a dad.

Stupid.