Tree of Pearls. Louisa Young

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СКАЧАТЬ and then I looked.

      Blue dot or no blue dot?

      Oh – which means which?

      Look at the instructions again.

      Ah.

      So I went and lay down with Lily again, and hugged her to me and remembered how she had felt as a tiny baby in my arms, her hair then, her face, changing shape every time you looked at it; her little boneless arms, her growing strength, her words, her tongue, her belly button and the creases of her neck, her sweet greedy mouth, her lengthening limbs. This long girl-child, whose feet now kick my knees when we lie down together, where once they only reached my ribs. She had learned to walk at the same time as I had learned to walk again after breaking myself in the accident, hobbling and wobbling together at Mum and Dad’s when we were staying there, stumbling together, seeing each other through. Coming back to the flat together for the first time, on our own four feet. Not now my only child.

      I didn’t think that I could love this new thing as much as I love Lily. I didn’t think it was entirely right to grow my own-flesh-child when I had Lily. It might make her sad. She might feel left out.

      And at the same time, despite that, I was very profoundly happy.

      *

      On Sunday I sat very still. Lily played around me, my satellite. I was actually in a trance of some kind. I stared a lot. Lily was gentle with me. Brigid called with the children and took her to the park. I declined, in favour of sleep. Brigid gave me a long look but I said nothing. Brigid, my friend and neighbour, mother of four, knows me well. I was afraid to speak to her because she would guess. Zeinab, my Egyptian friend from our schooldays, rang to see if we wanted to go and play. I let the machine take it.

      While they were out, Chrissie turned up on my doorstep, standing on the communal balcony looking like a rich person who has strayed from her red carpet by mistake into some grubby area of reality, beyond the limelight of money.

      ‘Oh no,’ I said. ‘What are you doing here?’

      She was carrying a handbag and wearing big hair and sunglasses, which she took off immediately I answered the door. I could see she had been crying.

      ‘Are you drunk?’ I said.

      ‘Absolutely not,’ she replied. ‘Still clean and planning to remain so but, please, I need your help.’

      Oh no. No no no.

      ‘What?’ I said. Now why did I say that? Something in her face made me. Something in my heart. I didn’t say fuck off, madwoman. I said, ‘What?’

      ‘I want to tell you something because I can’t think of anyone else to tell. I don’t know what to do. I am going out of my mind. I terribly don’t want to. I want to be normal and I – can I come in?’

      I let her in. I don’t have much truck with words like normal – either we’re all normal or we’re all strange. In which case it’s perfectly normal to be strange – indeed it might be strange to be normal. None of which is any help to anything – so why bother to mention it? But I knew what she meant. I knew about desiring the safety you perceive other people’s lives to contain. We went through to the kitchen.

      ‘I see in you that you like to be normal too,’ she said. ‘But you’re not. So I thought you might understand. And you might tell me if I’m crazy. Which I might be anyway because of the drying out but I cannot tell the people at the clinic about this because it is the kind of thing they section you for. I would, if I was them.’

      ‘What.’ I said.

      I was still standing.

      ‘I’ve been visiting Eddie’s grave,’ she said.

      I said nothing.

      ‘Well his – filing cabinet. Like they have in Italy. Little cupboard, for his urn.’

      ‘Yes,’ I said.

      ‘A few times.’

      I let her breathe for a while.

      ‘Quite often actually.’

      Fair enough.

      ‘Can I sit down?’

      You can’t say no.

      She sat on my old sofa, her knees together and her ankles splayed and taut with their high-heeled shoes.

      ‘To begin with, I was drunk – well, I’d go up there and drink. I miss him, you know. In a way. In a funny way.’ She didn’t start crying again. ‘And I’d sit, and drink. Then later I’d go up sober and sit and think. Trying to work things out, and talking to him and so on. And …’

      I didn’t like this.

      ‘There’s a gravedigger up there, George. We got chatting – he’s nice. Well accustomed to widows, he says. Sympathetic. Likes a drink too. So we’d drink together. On Eddie’s doorstep. And then. Oh god.’

      I was sure I didn’t like it.

      ‘Angeline, he says there’s nothing in Eddie’s grave.’

      She looked at me, mascara wide as sunrays round her eyes. Like a picture by a child who has just noticed eyelashes.

      ‘In his cupboard,’ she said. ‘He says he was the one who sealed it up, and that the urn in there was empty, and he swears it. He said he wasn’t meant to know, but that the urn was too light and he checked in case he had the wrong one, but the undertaker said to him, yes, he’d been given that one sealed up, even though it was usually his job to get the ashes together and put them in, and he could tell by the weight that it was empty, so he’d checked it, and there were a few ashes but not, you know, human ashes, and he thought it was really odd but didn’t say anything. The gravedigger was drunk when he said it and later he tried to say he didn’t mean it but he did, I know he did because why else would he say it? Why would he say it if he didn’t mean it? And how could he mean it? So I shouted at him not to lie, and he said yes it was true, and then I didn’t believe him, but later I was sober and I could see he was telling the truth. He was so upset. He said he couldn’t bear the sight of me weeping day after day at an empty grave. He’s a nice man. Kind. And he said, he said: “You ask around. You ask some of those people. Someone’ll tell you.” But I daren’t because I don’t know what it means. I wanted to ask the undertaker but the gravedigger wouldn’t tell me his name; he didn’t want anyone getting into trouble. What can it mean, Angeline? Do you know?’

      ‘No,’ I said. Without a flicker. ‘I haven’t: a clue. It sounds like nonsense.’

      Her shoulders went down a little. They must have been up. Tension. Not that she looked relaxed now. More – disappointed.

      ‘But why would he say—?’

      ‘I don’t know. People are strange. I don’t know.’ I was very blank with her. Very Teflon. This is nothing to do with me.

      ‘Are you all right?’ she asked suddenly. Her head went to one side for a moment and for that moment I could see what she must have looked like as a girl. Gymkhanas, Fergus had said. County military girl. Boarding school, and gone wild СКАЧАТЬ