Whispers Through a Megaphone (9 page)

Passes the spot where it happened.

Runs straight into the woods.

“D
o you know what you’ve done?” she said. “You’ve ruined my life. And do you know why? You’ve taken away the one person I love.”

Miriam just stood there in a stripy polo neck and grey cords.

“Shall I tell you what happens now?”

She shuddered.

“You’re going to run upstairs and fetch your writing paper.”

What?

“Then we’re going to write a lovely letter to your grandmother. We’re going to tell her all about the fun things we’ve been doing and how happy we are. From now on, you’re going to write what I tell you to write. Your words will be my words. What goes in your mouth and what comes out of it are up to me. Understand?”

That’s
the punishment for telling Mrs Jennings? Miriam expected her mother’s fist or feet. She expected to have to eat a jar of mustard or a piece of stale fish. She expected a mouthful of cotton wool (
you’re lucky I’m here to stop you choking
) or a
pillow dipped in petrol (
be careful missy or I’ll throw a match
). But writing letters?

Easy.

“What’s a lovely thing like you doing out here, eh?” Ralph says, tickling Treacle’s stomach. “You don’t look like a wild cat. No collar, though.”

Today is Ralph’s third day with Treacle. He has made trips in and out of the woods to buy supplies and telephoned Kathy the receptionist (“Can you cancel my appointments this week? I need to start my summer break early, family crisis, if anyone needs urgent help refer them to Karl, yes that’s fine, he’s my emergency contact, it’s absolutely fine, can you explain things to Karl, tell him he might get a call?”), but apart from shop assistants and Kathy he has spoken to no one. His mobile phone is loaded with texts from people he knows, people who claim to know him, people who don’t know him at all because every one of us is fundamentally unknowable. The more we talk the less unknowable we feel, but speech is just a circus act, words thrown from frantic lips, dialogical hocus-pocus.

At 11.30 p.m. on his birthday, Ralph walked through these woods under a full moon with an unfathomable sense of purpose. On any other night he would have been terrified of being out here, but tonight he kept on going. His feet followed an unlit path until the path stopped. No street lamps, twenty-four-hour shops, headlights and neon signs. Just night and night and the cracking of twigs. Dried leaves, unbroken curls. Nocturnal rustling. Creaking branches. Minuscule legs, invisible. He went deeper and deeper, looking up at the moon. He tripped, fell, got back up. He reached out and touched soft bark. Was he approaching the middle or the edge now? He couldn’t tell.
Was anyone else out here? Highly unlikely, but you never know what is looming, what is waiting, ready to jump out.

The ground turned level and easy. The trees seemed to disappear. Ralph was on another path now, which began nowhere near the entrance or the exit. He kept going until he saw something solid. Up close, a kind of hut or shed. Now came the fear. Who was in there? What was it used for? He felt around for a door, trying not to think about the episodes of
Wallander
he had watched on TV, especially the one about the man who lived in the woods, the man who killed swans and set people on fire.

It was even darker inside the shed.

“Hello?”

Nothing.

“Anyone in here?”

Nothing.

He put down his guitar. With his arms stretched out in front of him, he wandered in. He ran his fingers over the back of a wooden chair. On the floor, what felt like a bundle of sheets. He shook a box of matches. Stepped on a plate, cracking it.

On this August night, as his birthday ended and a new day began, Ralph sat on the floor and pulled the sheets over his legs. He didn’t expect to fall asleep, not out here, but he did. He slept until morning.

When he opened his eyes, he didn’t know where he was. He stood up with a sore back and a sore head and opened the door. The sun was already fierce, the birds were singing. He stepped out and looked around. He was in a small clearing in the woods, encircled by a thin path, and he had spent the night in an old shed that looked like it would collapse if someone kicked it. Inside, there was a chair, some old sheets, a box of matches, three metal tins, a cracked blue plate and a teaspoon.

He sat in the sun, leaning against the front of the shed. Yesterday felt like a week ago.

His phone vibrated inside his jacket pocket; he switched it off without reading the messages from Sadie, Kristin and Carol. He rubbed his eyes. No traffic, no passers-by. A stillness that was not still, a silence that was not silent. It was all going on out here: birth, death, eating, mating, idleness, murder, calling, calling back. It was all going on, wordlessly.

He watched. He listened. He fell asleep.

When he awoke, he saw a ginger cat. She was sitting and looking and he was sitting and looking. This went on for some time. Who would make the first move? She was a handsome cat with a white chest and white paws, but she was patchy and thin and one of her ears was torn. Ralph waited. The cat waited. Time passed. Was this a test, an initiation, or just laziness?

Slowly, he stood up. The cat remained in the same position. Ralph edged closer, bending, rubbing his thumb against his forefinger. He made a kissing sound with his lips. He didn’t know why humans tended to approach cats in this way. The gesture was an imitation of something he had seen a hundred times before, but did that make it right? He stopped what he was doing. The cat was clearly unimpressed. He stood up straight.

“Hello, I’m Ralph. I’m new. Are you new, or do you live out here? I don’t know much about cats. Might as well come clean about that one. All I know is you purr when you’re happy and you like eating fish. I’m going to touch your head now. Don’t scratch me, okay?”

He stepped forward and stroked the cat’s head, which lifted and pressed against his fingers. He stroked her chin and behind her ears. The cat seemed to like it, she was definitely responding, but she wasn’t making a sound. She rubbed the side of her
body against his legs, turned around and did it again. Weren’t cats supposed to purr at times like this?

“I’m starving. Will you wait here if I go and get us some food?”

He didn’t want to go. The thought of leaving the woods and seeing another person made him feel anxious, but what choice did he have? Hopefully he could buy some supplies without bumping into anyone he knew. He needed fish for the cat, a sleeping bag, food and a takeaway coffee. No, that wasn’t going to be enough. He needed bottled water and lots of it, toilet paper, maybe a kettle and some teabags and dried milk. A cup for the tea. Some kind of gas burner. A tin-opener, a fork. A rucksack for carrying things back and forth, on a daily basis, for as long as he was here.

Ralph took the first of many trips out of the woods and returned with a rucksack, pilchards, a tin-opener, plastic cutlery, water, a latte with caramel, three sandwiches, some fruit, four toilet rolls, a paperback and a sleeping bag. It would do until tomorrow.

The cat was still there. She followed him into the shed and watched him empty a can of pilchards onto the cracked plate. It only took a few seconds for the pilchards to disappear. How long had it been since the cat ate a decent meal? Perhaps he should have given her half at a time in case it made her sick. “I think we’ll call you Treacle,” Ralph said. He drank his coffee, ate a bacon and egg sandwich, rolled the sleeping bag out onto the floor, took off his shoes and got inside. The cat climbed on top, fishy and slow. She curled into a smaller version of herself and fell asleep with his hand on her stomach.

That was Sunday. Today is Tuesday, and Ralph has taken the chair he found in the shed over to the trees, where he is
sitting with his guitar. His phone is still switched off. He has not called Sadie. He is playing ‘Footsteps’ by Pearl Jam. It has been a long time since he sat like this, strumming and singing about scratches and falling apart, not worrying about who might be listening or about to interrupt with a sarcastic quip. In the middle of the woods, with no idea what time of day it is, he sings at the top of his voice and no one comments. No text is sent, ending with ha ha. No remark pops up on Twitter. No observation is committed to mind for blogging purposes. He is safe in his aloneness. (Safety can’t always be found in numbers.) The stillness that is not still, the silence that is not silent, goes on and on.

He sings three more songs by Pearl Jam. Two by the Beatles. Then he stands in the afternoon sun, a wooden chair behind him, singing about a showgirl called Lola who has feathers in her hair. Treacle is stretched out beside the old shed, watching and listening.

Then Ralph stops singing.

He and the cat stare, but not at each other.

They stare at a woman.

She has run into the clearing and stopped. She is bent double, gasping for breath. She is coughing.

Ralph looks at Treacle, Treacle looks at Ralph.

Facts about the woman: she has light-brown hair and is wearing a white shirt, faded jeans, red shoes. A leather bag was across her chest, now it is on the floor. She is standing in a bubble of gasps and wheezes and is obviously not used to running. She is pale and curvy. Her eyes are big and brown with flickers of amber and orange. Actually, they are enormous. Now she is no longer coughing and wheezing. She is standing upright with her hands on her hips, staring at Ralph. She is crying.

“Are you all right?” Ralph says.

Facts about the man: he too has brown hair, but his is dark and tidy and short. He is wearing a checked shirt, black jeans and walking shoes. His eyes are bluish green, greenish blue. He looks rumpled and unshaven, but you know just from looking that no degree of unkemptness will ever destroy his neatness, because it burns inside him, relentless.

“Sorry,” Miriam says.

“Pardon?”

“I said I’m sorry.”

New fact about the woman: she has some kind of throat infection, possibly laryngitis. Fancy going jogging with laryngitis. She should be tucked up in bed, drinking plenty of fluids, gargling with warm salty water, sucking lozenges. Ralph knows this from when Stanley had laryngitis last year. He was told to avoid speaking until he was better, and that included whispering, which can damage the larynx. He will tell her this once they have calmed down and introduced themselves. He will tell her this and she will look at him like he’s peculiar.

“What are you sorry for?”

“Startling you.”

“No problem. I was just playing my guitar.”

Miriam nods. Ralph nods back. His nod is fleeting, automatic.

“Were you jogging?” he asks. (Surely not in those shoes?)

“No.”

He nods again, firmly this time, like he means it. (That’s a relief. You’d have blisters the size of plums if you were jogging in those shoes.)

“Do you live out here?” she asks. (Please say no. I could really do without a scary man who lives in the woods. Will I make it out of here alive? Is yours the last face I will ever see? Is this how the story ends? If so, how fitting. Karma karma karma karma karma chameleon.)

“No, I don’t live here. I’m just, well, I’m not sure what I’m doing.” He shrugs, making light of what is heavy. “But it’s nice,” he says.

“Right,” Miriam says. “I was running.”

“Not jogging.”

“No.”

“Running away from something?”

“Yes and no. Sort of.”

“I get that.”

“Oh.”

Treacle sits up and licks a paw. These humans have started speaking in the language of befuddlement. A curious lingo, short and woolly, full of
yes
and
no
and
sort of
.

“Well,” Miriam says.

“Well,” Ralph says.

“I’m sorry to interrupt your playing.”

“It’s okay.”

Miriam looks at the cat. “Your friend?”

“I’ve named her Treacle.”

“Have you been here all day?”

“I’ve been here for three days now—I’ve been sleeping in there.” He turns to look at the shed. “I’m not homeless, though.”

Miriam wonders if he is a criminal. He might have escaped from prison. He might have killed someone and now be hiding in the woods, hiding from the police, hiding from everyone. But she has found him. Or maybe he has found her. They haven’t found each other, not yet.

“Sorry, I’m Ralph by the way,” he says, walking over, holding out his hand.

“Miriam Delaney,” she says, shaking his hand, hoping it’s not dirty, half expecting him to tighten his grip and fling her
over his shoulder. He doesn’t look strong enough to do that, but people are savage and unpredictable.

“Ralph Swoon.”

“Swoon?”

“Yes.”

She smiles. He notices that it makes her look kind.

“That’s an unusual name. Is it a kind of superpower?”

“Sorry?”

“Do you go around making people swoon?”

“Unfortunately not.”

“Oh.” He smiles. She notices that it makes him look sad. “That would be a good superpower,” she says.

“I suppose it would.” Nostalgia curves his lips. The puppetry of the past, it keeps us dancing, keeps us smiling these melancholy smiles. “My dad used to make people swoon, back in his heyday. Women used to stare at his bottom.”

“His bottom?”

“He had a nice one, apparently.”

“And did he?”

“What?”

“Have a nice bottom?”

“I couldn’t say.”

“Why?”

“Well, I’m his son. It would be really weird if I went around saying that my dad had a nice bottom.”

“Technically speaking you do go around saying that, otherwise we wouldn’t be having this conversation.” Miriam grins and sniffs.

Ralph laughs by exhaling through his nose in short puffs. Miriam isn’t sure what he is laughing at and she hopes it isn’t her. She has had a lifetime of people puffing for all the wrong reasons.

“Is he dead?”

“Who?”

“Your dad?”

“No. Why?”

“You made it sound like he was dead.”

“He and my mum are very much alive.”

“Right.”