Whispers Through a Megaphone (23 page)

F
enella jogs into Beckford Gardens. She runs straight past Miriam's house and knocks on Boo's front door.

“Hello there,” he says. He has met Fenella several times, mainly out in the street, but he can't remember her name. “You're Miriam's friend.”

“Fenella.”

“Oh yes, of course. I'm Boo Hodgkinson.”

“That's right. May I have a quick word with you in private?”

“Of course, come in. Please excuse the mess.”

Fenella follows him through the hallway into the dining room, where he offers her a seat. “What mess?” she says, sitting down. “This place is immaculate.”

“If only that were true,” he says.

“It is true.”

“You're very kind. Can I get you a cup of tea or coffee?”

“No thanks, I'm on my way to Zumba.”

“Zumba?”

“It's an exercise class—you dance to music.”

“Do they play Chumbawamba at Zumba?” he says, then
blushes. It's a silly joke, a
bad
joke, he has no idea where it came from. He doesn't even
like
Chumbawamba—too much swearing. They look at each other for what feels like a long time, their faces serious. Then Fenella laughs as though she is blowing air through her lips while trying to keep her mouth closed. In the air, saliva and song. She sings about getting knocked down and getting up again, it must be a Chumbawamba song, but Boo doesn't know it. He strokes his moustache, a moustache with many purposes—a transitional object, a hairy comfort blanket, a symbol of masculinity (or so he believes, which is the important thing), a bit of curly fun.

“I can't wait to tell my Zumba teacher about this,” she says. “They should start every class with that song.”

“Mmnn,” he says.

“Anyway, I'd like to talk to you about Miriam.”

The room smells of lavender. Recently polished, the dining table reflects their faces.

“Is she all right?”

“She's not like other women.”

“That's true.”

Fenella eyes the red velour tracksuit hanging in the kitchen and wonders if it would suit her. “She tells me you have feelings for her. Is that correct or is she confused?”

“She told you that already?”

Who pressed the turbocharge button on my slow-motion life?

“So you do like her?”

“Yes.”

“Right. Well, the thing is, Miriam's never had a relationship before.”

“I see.”

“She's
unusual
.”

“I know, that's why I like her.”

“If you're going to ask her out we need a plan.”

“A plan?”

“I'm Miriam's planner.” Fenella sniffs, sits up straight, leans forward. “I laminate things,” she says. “And I'd like to laminate something for you.”

Boo looks nervous. Is she
hitting
on him?

“Project M&B should be slow and delicate. I'm thinking that phase one could be consistent friendliness and compassion—you need to show her you're a good person.”

“I've completed that phase. I cleaned her windows and mowed her lawn.”

“Okay, so straight to phase two: old-fashioned courting. Do you think you can do that?”

Boo snorts, which Fenella finds comforting. “Was that a yes?” she says.

“Courting is my middle name,” he says.

“Oh really.”

“Yes really.”

Fenella pauses. She mentally undresses Boo from the waist up. Funny what's in front of you all the time. Funny how she never really noticed him before. He's an old-fashioned tin of boiled sweets and other men are loose jelly babies. He will do nicely for Miriam.

“Well, I was thinking that you could take her to an exhibition or an Italian restaurant,” she says. “She likes cheese and cold meats.”

“All good ideas,” he says.

“If things go well, we could start to improvise.”

“How many of us will there be in this relationship?”

“Think of me as a silent partner.”

“You are very caring, but also slightly disturbing.”

Fenella beams. “I think this could work,” she says.

S
he is carrying a holdall full of buttons. He is carrying a rucksack containing felt, charcoal, pencils, pens, scissors, glue and a sketchbook. She is standing outside the art gallery, counting the buttons on people’s clothing. He is approaching the gallery, wearing brown shoes, flared trousers and a yellow T-shirt.

“Good morning, sister.”

Miriam pauses. This will take some getting used to. “Good morning,
brother
,” she whispers.

The art teacher is called Marianne. She has long ginger hair and black glasses. She shakes Miriam’s hand, holds on to it for a few seconds, lets it go. Brave, Miriam thinks. You could catch anything by holding on to a hand for that long. She watches Marianne shake Matthew’s hand and wonders if everyone in this class will have a name beginning with M. The answer is no. There’s a Penny, a Seth and a Benjamin. A Lance and a River. A Lisa and a Dominic. Plus a garrulous Peggy from the Isle of Man who has three children and six chickens (she shares this information with the class as if it’s poignant, relevant, vital to their combined artistic endeavour).

“I’m just here to guide you,” Marianne says, “with whatever you want to do. Please remember this is a workshop, a class,
not
a competition.”

“Can I draw your face?” Matthew says to his sister.

“Mine?”

“Yes.”

“I’m not sure.” It feels dangerous, the idea of someone looking at her face for a long time. If he sees what is really there and catches it on paper, will it
always
be there?

“Please?”

After a lengthy discussion, mediated by Marianne, they decide that Matthew will sketch Miriam while she works, instead of staring at her face. This feels safer. Strange but good. So Matthew draws and Miriam glues buttons and she asks if he’s ever seen a film called
The Awakening
.

“I have,” he says. “Incredibly sad.”

“All about a brother’s love,” Miriam says, then blushes.

“Murderous love, wasn’t it?”

“How’s it going?” Marianne says. She is holding a cup of tea and eating a Lion Bar. She glances at Miriam’s sheet of blue felt and reads what she has written in buttons. “This is deep,” she says, “really deep.” She stands beside Matthew and looks at his sketch. He has drawn an owl. “Interesting interpretation,” she says. She touches his back, notices the warmth of his skin through his cotton T-shirt, then walks off to find out why loud-mouthed Peggy is trying to pull the legs off a table.

Mr Eric Delaney. Wood sculptor. Husband. Officially the father of two. Unofficially the father of three. Waiting outside the gallery. Standing where Miriam’s feet were standing three hours ago while she counted the buttons on people’s clothing.
He paces. He waits. They are late. He is holding a bunch of gerberas. Say it with flowers. Say
what
, for goodness’ sake?

He spots Matthew, rucksack on his back. He smiles and waves. Then a woman. She is behind him, coming into view. Something under one arm, a holdall in the other. Long hair, light brown, wavy. First impressions? Not what he was expecting. She looks relaxed, for a start. He expected edgy, nervous, eyes darting from left to right. She is laughing, presumably at something Matthew has said. She looks like her mother.

“Dad, this is Miriam.”

She holds out her hand for him to shake.

Shakey Shakey milkshakes. Shakin’ Stevens. My hand is shaking. Is he going to take it and shake it or not?

Thirty-four years have passed since he last held her hand.

Her hand was tiny then.

He can still remember it.

She remembers nothing.

She has never seen him before.

(If she can’t remember, was he ever there?)

“Dad?” Matthew’s voice. Perturbed.

Eric takes his daughter’s hand. Shakes it. Smiles. He is lost but she mustn’t know this. It’s time to step up, not be lost again.

Dad
. His warm hands, his rough fingers.
I recognize you. I don’t remember you at all and yet I do. I know you, Daddy. I don’t know you.

“Hello,” she whispers.

That whisper. Like on the phone. Damage. Devastating. His fault.

Matthew glares.
Dad? Are you going to say something?

Social abandonment.

(So many ways to abandon each other.)

Miriam takes the sheet of felt from under her arm and lays it on the floor in front of Eric’s feet.

In buttons: HOW COULD YOU LEAVE?

The buttons have spoken, said their piece.

The answer opens in Eric’s mind.

Memory: a pop-up theatre whose actors never age.

He feels a sharp pain in his head.

“I can’t do this,” said Frances, opening and closing the oven door, checking the roast lamb. “You need to move out.”

“We’ve only just moved in,” said Eric, washing the oil from his hands in the kitchen sink. He glanced at the baby, sleeping in a pram in the corner.

“This isn’t your house.”

“I know. It’s
our
house.”

“Dad bought it.”

“It’s our marital home, Frances. What are you talking about?”

“You’re an oaf.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You make too much noise. I need to be alone.”

Eric dried his hands with a tea towel. On the tea towel, the words HAPPILY EVER AFTER. “Do you need to see the doctor again?” he said.

“You can eat this roast dinner, but that’s as far as it goes,” she said. “If you try to see her, I’ll push her in the canal. I’ll say it was an accident on an icy path. I’ll say my chest hurt and I thought I was dying. The pram raced down the slope and ran into the river and my heart went with it, my precious little—”

Eric grabbed her shoulders. “Frances, for God’s sake.”

“That’s it, go on, give me some bruises, that’s exactly what I need.”

He recoiled, stepped backwards, stumbled into the pram. The baby began to cry. He lifted the woollen blanket and picked her up.

“Enjoy it while you can.”

It
?

His mother had warned him about Frances Hopkins, but he hadn’t listened. She told him her family was wealthy and her nails were clean, but her mind was dark. Dark like the winters in Norway, he said, and talked about the magical northern lights. We haven’t brought you up to be fanciful, his mother said. You need your wits about you, otherwise her winter will be your winter. That’s what love does. You could lose yourself.

Eric held Miriam in his arms, jiggled her up and down, made up a song on the spot about a father and a daughter. She stopped crying. She smiled. He held her in the air as his wife marched towards them.

“Now give her to me,” she said.

“No.”

“Hand her over.”

“You need to see a doctor. There’s something very wrong with you.”

“You sound scared.”

“That’s because I
am
scared.”

Frances huffed and stomped over to the oven. She took out the lamb and put it on the hob. “I don’t care how old she is,” she said, taking the lid off a bubbling saucepan, “if you try to contact her I’ll kill her. And if you tell anyone about this conversation, I’ll show them the burns you gave me.”

“What burns?”

She removed the saucepan from the electric hob and placed her arm where it had been.

She grimaced, her eyes were half shut.

The skin on her arm was stuck, hard to pull free.

Eric held the baby tight. He thought about running, taking Miriam with him, but how could he look after a baby by himself? All he had was a job at the garage.

“I won’t hurt the child,” she said.

“You say that now.”

“It’s a promise. I’ll keep her safe. As long as she’s quiet and she lives by my rules, I’ll keep her safe.”

Eric looks down at the buttons: HOW COULD YOU LEAVE?

It’s a relief, actually, to see those words. It’s not small talk or pretending.

The words are made of circles.

He looks up from the floor, looks into Miriam’s eyes, holds out the bunch of gerberas. “We have a lot of talking to do,” he says.

Miriam picks up the felt, says nothing.

“I think I’ll give you two some space,” Matthew says, as he spots Marianne walking down the steps of the gallery, carrying a suitcase. “That okay?”

Miriam blinks three times.

Is that a yes?

He rushes over to Marianne, says something with a look of great seriousness and takes the suitcase from her hand.

Eric has an idea. He’s not sure if it’s a good one. The idea involves driving his daughter to the botanical gardens and sitting on a bench. A bench with a memorial plaque. FRANCES DELANEY, LOST AT SEA. Yes, they could do something lighter, more superficial, like drink tea and ask questions about hobbies and work and their favourite things, but his gut instinct is telling him that something else needs to happen.
Go back to where this started. Go forward by going back.

No one has ever bought Miriam flowers before. She is busy smelling them. She won’t tell him this is her first bouquet, because her own gut instinct is to withhold, refuse, deny.

He says something about his car and a bench and the botanical gardens. He assumes she has been there before, but he’s wrong.

In the car, she watches his hands on the steering wheel. He has big hands, worn and wide. They held her when she was a baby. Lifted her up. Stroked her wispy hair. Apparently.
Daddy, is that you?
She wants to love him but she doesn’t.

“I don’t love anyone,” she says. (Better out than in.)

He bites his bottom lip, flicks the indicator, turns left. “That’s a shame,” he says.

She frowns.

“Did you love your mother?”

“She’s in the sea,” is all Miriam can think of to say.

Dead monster, my monster, devil you know, devil I know.

“I read about it in the papers.”

“Before that she was all at sea, so what’s the difference?”

He stops at a pedestrian crossing, waves at a woman walking past the car with her dog. The woman waves back. Miriam notices that his wave is simple and brief while hers is frenzied and eager. She wonders if they always wave like this, every time they see someone they know, or if the waves fluctuate, depending on how pleased they are to see the other person. Does Eric sometimes wave in a frenzied, eager way? Who makes him do this?

“Did
you
love my mother?” she says.

He takes another left turn and looks for somewhere to park. “She was my first love,” he says.

They walk around the botanical gardens, looking for Frances Delaney.

Someone is sitting on her. A man with greasy hair, eating a pork pie. Piggish man. A bloated obstruction. These are cruel thoughts, and Miriam hates being cruel, but he is sitting on her mother and she doesn’t like it.

Eric walks up to the man. He says something, they glance at Miriam, the man gets up and moves to another bench.

She wonders how he just did that—how he made someone walk away. Is it really that easy?

“Ladies first,” Eric says.

Then they are side by side.

There is a gap between them.

Frances Delaney is in the gap, her name in sunlight.

They just sit there, looking ahead, looking at their feet, the plaque, each other. They sit for ten minutes, saying nothing. It feels uncomfortable at first, like a failure, like the worst kind of loneliness, but as the silence deepens it becomes something they are making together, as yet unbroken. It belongs to them.

Miriam tells herself that
he
will be the one to break it. Eric worries that she is feeling abandoned again, or lonely, or like she’s sitting with a man who has no idea what to say. But her father is a man of the gut, not of the mind, and his gut tells him to sit beside her and wait.
She
will be the one to break it.

(Stubbornness. It runs in the family, but they don’t feel like family yet, so there is nowhere for the stubbornness to run.)

Then there is a breakage.

“Excuse me, do you have the time?” a woman says. She is wearing a red raincoat. Her hair is tied back so tightly it must hurt. “Where is the zoo?”

Eric tells her the time. “There is no zoo,” he says. “Well not around here. Obviously there is a zoo
somewhere
.”

Miriam smiles. Of all the breakages she has experienced, this isn’t such a bad one.

The woman asks what he means about the zoo. “No zoo?” she says.

“No zoo.”

“What about a tapas bar, is there a tapas bar nearby?”

“I really don’t know,” Eric says. “There are pubs and cafes.”

The woman sighs. “No zoo, no tapas,” she says.

“Sorry,” Eric says.

“It’s not your fault.”

Then she is gone.

“Would you like to meet your other brother?” Eric says.

Other brother from another mother.

“Where?”

“My house.”

“Your house?”

“My wife will be there too. Angelina.”

“Angelina?”

“Yes.”

“Her name’s Angelina?”

He nods. Small questions. Easy.

“That name is so full of possibility,” she says.

“Sorry?”

“Is she an Ange, Angie, Angel, Lina or Geli?”

He laughs.

“Why’s that funny?”

“
Geli
?”

“It’s the centre of Angelina.”

“Not
my
Angelina.”

“What’s she like?”

“She’s very patient. A whizz in the kitchen.”

So
this
is what they will talk about after all these years? Angelina? Eric hadn’t expected Miriam to be interested in his wife. He describes Angelina Delaney in as much detail as he
can and she listens, captivated, as if it’s the most exciting thing she has ever heard.

As they stand up to leave, Miriam lays the bunch of flowers on the bench, just beneath the plaque. He doesn’t want to make this gesture any bigger or smaller than it is, so he pretends not to notice, and she asks him something else about Angelina, and they walk away from Frances Delaney, whose name is no longer in sunlight.