Read Whispers Through a Megaphone Online
Authors: Rachel Elliott
“Look, you don’t need to panic,” said Kristin, finishing her coffee. “That’s all I wanted to say. It’s no big deal. I think maybe the wine had gone to our heads and the poetry was crazy and everyone wanted to fuck everyone else that evening.”
Kristin flinched at her own words. Sadie raised her eyebrows.
“We don’t need to read anything into it. That’s all I wanted to say.”
“Okay,” said Sadie.
Kristin moved on to talking about her new screen prints and how Picador had commissioned another book jacket design. Sadie paid for their coffees and cake and walked with Kristin through town, but not all the way to Pizza Express. She wasn’t in the mood for Carol.
“That was an excellent barbecue,” said Marcus, watching Sadie untie her apron and lift it over her head. “You should set up your own business. You could have your own burger van in the middle of town.”
“Why thank you,” she said, exhausted. “That’s what I’ve always wanted for myself—to work in a burger van.”
“I meant it as a compliment.”
A quick half-smile. She had nothing else to offer.
“I think you need to sit down,” said Marcus. “You look knackered. Did you get time to eat?”
“Not yet.”
Sadie took a hot dog from the table, covered it in ketchup and went inside the house. She poured herself a glass of champagne and sat on the stairs. Two teenagers squeezed past, giggling. She had no idea who they were, but the giggling was too loud, she wanted silence and darkness, just for a few minutes, then she would be all right. She wandered from room to room, not wanting to speak to anyone she bumped into, and found herself upstairs, outside the cupboard on the landing. No one would disturb her in there—she could sit on the wooden box full of old photographs, eat her hot dog and drink her champagne in peace.
A woman’s voice. “Sadie, are you up there?”
The only voice she wanted to hear, but still she remained hidden in the cupboard.
“Sadie?”
Footsteps up the stairs and along the landing. Sadie carried on eating in the dark. She was starving. She wished she’d brought herself a plate of salad and some garlic bread.
“Hello?”
Come in, go away. I want you, I don’t want you
. She drank her champagne.
“Sadie, is that you in the bathroom?”
Bloody hell. No, it’s not me in the bathroom, because I’m actually in the cupboard. Yes, that’s right, the cupboard. Don’t ask me why, I have no idea. Do you have any food?
Sadie listened to the music coming from the kitchen and garden—‘Hit’ by the Sugarcubes. She used to love this song. She remembered dancing to it years ago in the student union bar with Alison Grabowski. This memory had the same effect on her body as Rosanna Arquette’s poetry. She saw Alison Grabowski, there in the cupboard, dancing in her black jeans and suede jacket, dancing so close. At university, Sadie and Alison were inseparable. They walked through the park holding hands, smoked their roll-ups in the bandstand, laughed dismissively when people called them a couple. She remembered watching Alison getting dressed, and how Alison just smiled when she noticed her watching. Then she recalled something else—how could she have forgotten this? Alison lying beside her on the bed, suggesting that they have sex just to see how it felt. Sadie wanted to say yes, that’s a very good idea, and really we should do it twice, just to make sure we got it right, but she wasn’t sure whether Alison was being serious or sarcastic and she couldn’t take the risk. “Yeah right, as if,” she said.
The moment was gone.
(
Because I couldn’t take a risk.
)
In the days that passed, everything felt hollow. Then she met Ralph Swoon, who distracted her from the hollowness.
She knew what he meant when careful words came out of his mouth. He was sensitive, serious-minded.
Among the old clothes and shoes, Sadie wanted to cry but she couldn’t. Missed opportunities flew at her in the dark, one after the other, the chances she never took. What had her mind done with these moments? Was it a kind of sexual amnesia? Would she forget Kristin too? Forget that she ever felt anything at all? That process had already begun—just days after it happened, she had forgotten the incident in the bookshop until Kristin brought it up.
There was a moment
.
She heard a faint tapping and ignored it. The outside world could wait. She groaned, hoping it would release her tears, but it didn’t.
The tapping sound again, louder this time. Someone knocking on the door. Sadie reached out to open it, but there was no handle on the inside. She was stuck.
“Who’s in there?” said Kristin.
“It’s me.”
“Sadie?”
“Yes.”
“Why are you in a cupboard?”
“I’m stuck. Can you open the door?”
And then there was light. Sadie didn’t move.
“Are you okay?” said Kristin, stepping inside. “What’s happened?”
An opportunity. A chance. Kristin sat beside her on the wooden box. Sadie leant forward and closed the door.
No running away now, Sadie Swoon, Sadie Peterson, whoever you are, whoever you were
.
“What’s going on?”
“I’ve realized something,” said Sadie, not wanting to waste another second. She put her hand on Kristin’s leg.
“What are you doing?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” She moved her hand higher.
“Sadie, I—”
She touched Kristin’s face, pulled her closer. Then she kissed her.
A first kiss. Every kiss that should have happened. A hundred kisses rolled into one.
It grew darker. Sadie felt the darkness all over her. “I want you to fuck me,” she said.
Kristin pulled away.
“Please.”
“No.”
“No?”
Kristin stood up. “What on earth’s got into you?” She started banging on the door. “Hello? Anyone out there?”
“Kristin, don’t. Don’t go.”
“Hello? We’re stuck in here.
Hello?
”
Footsteps. The creak of floorboards. Then light from the hallway, cold and intrusive. Sadie’s chance had escaped. It was gone. She felt hollow again.
Ralph looked confused. “Why?” he said, holding the door open. “Why are you two in here?”
Kristin stepped out and stood beside him. Now they were both on the outside, looking in at Sadie in the half-light, her head buried in her hands.
How quickly things change, thought Sadie. It’s nauseating.
Ralph looked at Kristin. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing’s going on. I found her crying.”
“I have a name. And I
wasn’t
crying.”
“Why were you crying in a cupboard? You were fine a moment ago, I saw you talking to Marcus. Did he upset you? Did he say something?”
Keep talking, thought Ralph. Keep talking to your wife and we can all ignore the fact that she stepped into a cupboard and closed the door and—
He remembered Jilly Perkins: “Do you ever worry that Sadie’s having an affair with her friend Kristin? I’m a little suspicious.”
“This house has so much storage space,” said Kristin. “It’s the ideal place to have a breakdown, when you think about it.”
“A breakdown?” said Sadie, standing up. “Is that what you normally say to women you’ve been flirting with? Do you accuse them of being mentally unstable?”
“What the hell?” said Kristin.
“How dare you,” said Sadie.
“How dare I what?”
“Blame it all on me.”
“Blame what on you? Nothing happened.”
“That kiss was nothing was it? Well that’s charming.”
“Ralph, this isn’t how it seems,” said Kristin, shocked by what was occurring on Ralph’s face. Had he taken something? He was laughing. No, not just laughing, he was hysterical, he was bright red, tears were running down his cheeks.
Sadie and Kristin looked at each other.
The laughter stopped.
They were surrounded by a wild silence.
A wilderness.
Dear Granny,
Days pass in gales. I listen to the wind outside my window at night and it sounds like me. Might pick me up one day, fancy that. I tap my feet to music that isn’t here. Yesterday I left school in the middle of the morning and went to the cathedral. Rope across a gap, no entry sign, I snuck under the rope, went up a winding staircase. (Wish the staircase would go up and up and up.) Room full of candles with Jesus on a cross. I sat on a gold cushion and prayed. This room is for grieving families the man said. You shouldn’t be in here you’re not bereaved. He said he wasn’t joking but I wasn’t laughing so I don’t understand why he said that. I won’t be posting this note. You are in Spain and I bore you. I’m fourteen now. I turned fourteen today. No birthday card from you. Funny how I still expect you to turn up and say it’s time to get you out of here. Mum says you two fell out, people do that, they get sick of their children and their grandchildren, they lose contact, that’s
just the way it is. Look at EastEnders she said—people shout and scream and decide not to know each other any more. The world is gigantic and small and people get lost in it. End of. Sometimes it’s like I imagined us. I hope you’re happy and wearing sun cream.
Kind regards,
Miss Miriam Delaney
“You’re not still cleaning are you?” Fenella says. She is on Miriam’s doorstep, jogging on the spot, going nowhere.
“I’m not really cleaning any more. I’m
clearing
,” Miriam says.
“Decluttering?”
“Something like that.”
Fenella takes a bag of chocolate-covered raisins from her pocket, offers them to Miriam, throws one up in the air and catches it in her mouth. “Still planning to leave the house?” she says, chewing.
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Tomorrow.”
“Really?”
“Yep.”
“Crikey. Will you recognize the outside world? Will it recognize you?”
“I’ve never been able to do that thing you just did,” Miriam says.
“What thing?”
“Catching food in your mouth.”
They stand there for five minutes, with Fenella throwing and Miriam bobbing up and down with an open mouth, until the bag is empty and the floor is covered with raisins. Boo’s cat appears. It sniffs the raisins and walks away. Miriam notices
that the cat’s movements are like a performance of disappointment, feline theatre, a slinky enactment of her own feelings. She wants to reach out and touch the cat but it’s always too far away.
“Oh well, you can’t be good at everything,” Fenella says.
“What am I good at?”
Fenella smiles. “Talk later,” she says. She kisses Miriam on the cheek and jogs off across the lawn and the question disappears as if it never existed.
You cannot predict how long a question will live. Some questions are bigger than others. If you weigh them on special scales, you’ll find that the small ones are usually the heaviest.
That night, Miriam makes herself a cheese and sweetcorn omelette and eats it fast. She pours herself a glass of white wine, holds it up, toasts the house. “To this house, for not growing sick and tired of me over the past three years, for not collapsing around me in exhaustion, for not going up in smoke. I’m leaving you tomorrow, maybe for a few hours, maybe for longer. I’m sorry you are so full of ghosts. It must feel like you have rats running through your walls and your pipes. I’m sorry I haunt you with my whispers.”
She drinks her wine and listens to the reply. The humming, creaking and clicking. The humdrum. Her glass is empty now. She fills it up.
As it approaches midnight, she stumbles into the back garden.
Will you recognize the outside world? Will it recognize you?
The world has changed since Miriam was last out there. It has become faster and busier and chattier than ever. She knows this because she heard it on the radio last week. You have to be bionic, supersonic, virtually histrionic, in ten places at once and forever full of comment:
I am here, are you listening? I am
sharing the minutia of my everyday life. Please reply with a comment, whoever you are
. The air is thick with opinion. Audible smog. But what if you have nothing to say?
She looks up at the night sky, the bluish star-studded darkness. Fenella is working tomorrow and she could never ask Boo to accompany her. This will be a solo mission, but where to go? What do people actually
do
out there?
There is a voice. It says: “They stroll around parks. They go to the cinema. They buy sandwiches and eat them while walking along.”
The voice came from inside her. It was the unbroken one again, doll inside a doll, getting fidgety and excited under the skin.
R
alph was no longer laughing. He walked away from Sadie and Kristin, two statues on the landing. He went into the bedroom, sat on the bed, took off his trainers. He pulled his walking shoes out of the wardrobe, the ones Sadie hated, and put them on. Through the bedroom window he could see his friends and his parents in the garden below. Some of Stanley’s friends were dancing, or maybe they were Arthur’s friends. Beverley was in the middle, swaying about with her eyes closed. She looked strange and desperate, twenty years too old for the circle around her. If she had been a man, and the teenagers girls instead of boys, someone would have asked her to stop. They would have used words like predatory and sad. But Beverley wasn’t a man and the teenagers weren’t girls and she was dancing in the middle, eyes closed.
Ralph spotted Carol, walking through the garden by herself. He picked up his wallet and phone and went downstairs to find her, ignoring Sadie and Kristin as he passed.
“Carol,” he said, out of breath. “Can we talk?”
On two wooden chairs beneath the apple tree, they drank whisky and ate peanuts.
“I’ve been confused,” Ralph said. “I’ve felt sedated, like I can’t get hold of my thoughts. I wondered if Sadie was drugging me.”
“Why on earth would you think that?”
He shrugged, catching sight of Kristin stepping out onto the decking. “I walked into a garden gnome once,” he said.
Carol pictured him knocking over a tiny gnome. Inconsequential. Odd.
“And I’m leaving.”
“Are you?”
“In five minutes.”
“Where are you going?”
“I don’t know, but don’t tell Sadie, she can’t be trusted.”
“Why not?”
Kristin arrived at the apple tree. “You two look cosy,” she said, her face flushed.
Ralph finished the last of his whisky and stood up. “There’s no need to worry,” he said.
“He’s drunk,” Carol said.
“I’m the sharpest I’ve been for years. Sharp as a stranger.”
Carol and Kristin glanced at each other.
“I’m a fucking stranger. That should feel awful shouldn’t it? Bloody awful. But it doesn’t. It’s a relief.”
Ralph spotted his guitar leaning against the wall. He walked past his friends, his mother and father, Beverley and the teenagers and the nondescript neighbour whose name he could never remember. He picked up the guitar, walked along the garden path, opened the wooden gate, marched down his driveway into the street. He could hear laughter and conversation and ‘Papa Don’t Preach’ by Madonna, all coming from a party that was for him and never for him.
Sadie Swoon @SadieLPeterson
Sometimes all you can do is listen to the Smiths and hope it all ends soon
Jilly Perkins @JillyBPerks
@SadieLPeterson What’s up babe?
Sadie Swoon @SadieLPeterson
@JillyBPerks Do I know you? Have we met?
Jilly Perkins @JillyBPerks
@SadieLPeterson I’m sharing a black russian with my dog
Ralph kept walking. He walked through streets half lit and streets in darkness. He walked past empty shops, a queue outside a nightclub, people smoking outside pubs, urinating on walls, waiting for buses. He looked away from kisses fast and deep. He remembered standing at a bus stop with Julie Parsley, back when they were teenagers. She was leaning against a wall, her face lit by a street lamp as she offered to sing him a song, any song, all he had to do was name it. He pictured her standing on stage in the local pub singing ‘The Look of Love’. That performance made everyone wonder what on earth Julie had been getting up to. She laced the song with violence, sang it so slowly, so mysteriously, as if the words had her crawling along a filthy floor in a torn nightdress. She revealed everything and nothing, it was eerie and irresistible. Julie Parsley was not like other girls—everyone understood this but no one knew why.
“You be careful around that Julie,” his mother said. “I find her a little unnerving.”
“What do you mean?” Ralph said.
“Well, she’s not like you. She’s
different
.”
Ralph stared. He took a cola cube from a paper bag and put it in his mouth.
“She’s stony.”
“What?”
“There’s something sordid about her.
Dirty
.”
Ralph laughed. This was not the way to put a teenage boy off a girl.
And yet it did.
His friend had already told him that Julie was out of his league. Maybe it was true. He was inexperienced, shy. He ate cola cubes and read comics.
“You’ll find a good woman when you’re older,” his mother said. “Don’t you worry. And when you do, everything else will take care of itself.”
Ralph walked across a meadow and along a footpath until he came to the woods. He looked at his watch. It was coming up to half-past eleven, the time of his birth, thirty-seven years ago in a hospital in Norfolk, right in the middle of his parents’ holiday by the sea, right in the middle of Brenda’s annual treat—highlights and a supercurl at Tiffany’s Salon. He had emerged from a woman whose hair was curly on one side and straight on the other. Welcome to your mother. Welcome to your father. Welcome to the world, which is curly on one side, straight on the other.
He resisted the urge to cry as he entered the woods.