Summer at Hailey
It was now August. All the windows in the rehab unit were wide open. Our friendly nurse Alison told me that this was a welcome change from the last year, when all windows and doors had been locked tight. This had proved very uncomfortable for children and staff alike. The father of one of the children had been let out of prison after serving a short sentence for throwing his daughter down the stairs. The father went missing when he was released from prison, sending the unit into panic fearing he may return to finish the daughter off. Late one night the father returned and broke into the unit despite the security guard and the locked windows. The Father was confronted by a male staff member just as he reached the daughters bedroom. There was a scuffle and the father escaped into the night. Next day they found him hanged in the woods. The staff member had to leave through stress. This did not worry me in the least. After next-door and what had happened to Emma it seemed muted by comparison.
Emma had been at the unit a few months and I was spending more and more time down in Sussex and commuting into London by train, that seemed to take longer and longer. I had started to look for somewhere to live near the hospital but with the problem of selling the house I was a little stuck. If the move did come off It was going to be a big change as I had lived in Orpington all my life, but I really needed to move on.
I would spend most weekends down in Sussex with Emma staying in the room next door. This was satisfactory but you had to share the bathrooms and the kitchen. It may sound like a whinge, but after a while I needed a bit of space. Sometimes if I popped down to see Emma during the week I would use a bed and breakfast but this was expensive and without privacy. Otherwise Emma’s recovery continued, two steps forward and one step back. The head nurse Judy, and the doctors said this was normal and I went with it. I got to know the staff; their lives, husbands, boyfriends, girl-friends (Judy) and the parents of the other children.
Linda’s family were from the North of England. Her mother had knocked her down while reversing the car into the garage. Evidently Linda ran behind the car to meet the mother but she didn’t see her. Her mother put a brave face on it but the guilt was apparent. Mark had been knocked off his bike while out with friends. He had been out far too late at night for someone of his age and was messing around in the road as the car hit him. It was a school night, and his mother had no idea, or care where he was. She had broken up with her husband and had taken up with a volatile boyfriend who did not want Mark around, so the accident was very convenient.
Mark would scream down the phone to his mother;
‘Please take me home’, but she would say that ‘Mick was there now and they were trying for their own baby’. Social services felt that it was better to hold on the Mark for the remaining four months until he was sixteen than send him home to abuse. Paul had put himself in care at 16, as his mother was so domineering, so he walked. He got in with the wrong crowd, drinking and taking drugs, one night they stole a car. He was in the back without a seat belt and went through the front screen when the car crashed. All the other kids got away, Paul took the rap, charged, and is now in a wheelchair for the rest of his life. The sick ironic fact is that his mother has full control on him now.
Sean, another Child from a dysfunctional home with 13 to 14 siblings (depending on jail time) living in a three bed council house. Dad divorced his wife but she still lived there with her new man. Dad’s new woman had an affair with wife’s man, had a baby and so it goes on and on. It was so messy the relations being far too close for comfort. Dad would come up to take Sean home for the weekend, and at the beginning Sean was happy with that arrangement. Yet, the longer he stayed at the unit the more he resisted going home. He responded well to the Units’ structure, the regular meals, having a bath every day, and a set bedtime. He thrived on the ordered educational sessions ran by Mr Morris the visiting tutor. What Sean enjoyed most was the space and freedom of just playing football with Mark and going out and about with Rick, and not have to steel cigarettes for his mother. He was bright and funny and found many interests such as swimming, using the computer. He liked to help in the kitchen cooking breakfast and pizzas for everyone in the evenings.
After one dreadful weekend visit, home he returned with a bruised face and a shaved head. He said that his father did the haircut and step mother the bruise. It was decided by Judy that he should go home less and less. She told the Father that he should not have his head shaved because of the head injury and she would bring charges if there was anymore bruising. One evening after tea Sean shocked us all. After making the pasta he announced
‘I anit gonna swear no more’.He was tired and stressed from all the ‘attitude’ pose, it took so much out of him keeping up the act. But he knew when he went home like a wild animal, released from captivity he would be released to the jungle and would a thick skin to cope.
Sometimes in the afternoons when all the morning ‘Physios’ had been completed I would push Emma along the long forgotten tracks that led out to the country side, Some times Rick would come along with Sean. I was happy with this, he was interesting and didn’t ask too many questions and Emma got along well with Sean. It was hot during those happy weeks with Emma improving every day. It was during one of those hoped for walks that Rick told me a story about when Sean first arrived. Not owning a tooth brush, Rick made Sean brush his teeth and bath before bed every night. Sean had never had a routine, sometimes going to bed, if there was a bed for him to sleep in, (mostly it was an arm-chair) at midnight, many other nights it was much later.
The first time Rick got Sean to brush his teeth and be in bed by 8. This was a struggle but was still recovering from being knocked over. Once in bed Rick came and sat on the side. Sean fearing there was something ‘dodgy’ going on asked;
‘What the fuck are you doing’? Rick taken aback replied;
‘Read you a story’. Now it was Sean’s time to be shocked
‘What for?’ said Rick incredulous ‘what do you mean what for? Don’t you have a bedtime story at home; you must have books and things?’
Rick said Sean had no idea about a bedtime routine, the concept being totally alien to him.
‘Look Sean, just try it, see how things go, this is what people do: have tea, bath, brush their teeth and go to bed. Once there you can a bedtime book and sleep, long before midnight which is about right for a boy of 10.’
Sean was reluctantly receptive to this, for the first time in his life there was a structure and normality. This safe secure routine, that would eventually make him relax and less defensive. His pinched face filled out a little. He grew his hair and enjoyed his lessons with Mr Morris. On his eleventh birthday we made him a huge cake with candles and little footballers on top, it was the first one he ever had.
Emma progressed during those early months; head control, eye-tracking but best of all she had begun to talk. Simple words such as ‘Mumma’, would trill us all, it was so good that she could now make choices, which in turn made her less frustrated, first thing she asked for was ‘dodo’ (drink) boy, did I have a dodo after that. She started eating yogurt and worked up to solids, just like a baby. It really was like she had been born again. She could sing along to ten green bottles quite well. She could make relaxation choices and enjoyed going out in the extensive grounds. She was very anxious of cars and traffic so we kept inside the quiet estate as we wanted to introduce her to this slowly but surly. She could swim with support, thus helping with limb movement. ‘Friends’ her old favourite TV programme would upset her. I suppose seeing the young healthy happy young people progressing with their lives would upset her.
As the days were hot and we didn’t have a killer on the run, we had all the doors and windows of the unit open. I loved the quiet and peace. While Emma was swimming, I lay on the bed reading another Brookner novel. I could hear Rick and Sean coming back from one of their many adventures. They stopped across from my room settling themselves down under the apples trees and listened to them talking.
&nb
sp; ‘How is school going?’ asked Rick, ‘Do you like Mr Morris’? Sean laughed ‘He smells of old clothes and talks posh’
‘But is he ok to you isn’t he? You like the lessons don’t you? Asked Rick.
‘The lessons are easy’ said Sean ‘Old mossey’ thinks I could go to grammar school’
‘You could’ replied Rick enthusiastically.
‘But I don’t want to, they are all posh, they will call me wonky’.
‘Not all of them, anyway you would be just as good as them’ ‘Do you think so’? Said a surprised Sean.
‘Oh yeah’ said Rick seriously ‘just as good as any of them’
‘Did you go to grammar school Rick? Rick laughs
‘Do I look like I have been to grammar school, do you think I would be here if I had?’
‘I don’t know’ said Sean a little puzzled.
‘I couldn’t go to grammar school if you paid me’.
‘Why not?’ quizzed the boy
‘Haven’t got it ‘up here’ said Rick tapping his head.
‘Dad wont let me go’ said Sean despondently
‘Well we will get round that when it comes –you wait and see. My Dad would have liked me to go to grammar school but it didn’t happen, he was nice though’.
‘Did your Dad cut your hair?
Rick laughed ‘Oh no, not even in the old days of long hair, did he ever go on about stuff like that. He was working class through and through, short back and sides that’s him, he liked to watch the TV and he didn’t mind what we did really, though he cared about us. He had been through the war and put up with the posh officers and thought all the rules and regulations were petty and silly’.
‘My dad doesn’t care about me’ said Sean, voice quieter now.’
I found it hard to hear so I edged forward nearer the window desperate to keep out of sight.
‘Yes he does’ snapped Rick, adding; ‘in his own way, and your step mum, but they have got lots of other kids to look after’.
‘Do you have a big family?’ asked Sean.
I cocked my ear a bit higher to hear Rick answer
‘No, just me and my sister Joan, mums dead, cancer, so we were brought up by Dad really. He liked horses my old man, he bought one once on a Sunday afternoon after the pubs chucked out. The gypsies used to sell them outside the pub, all tied to the lampposts along the street.
‘Anyway, he got this horse home, lovely black mare called Sabrina. She lived in the back garden; other families had them so there was not trouble about keeping it. But once Dad was joking with her and said asked how old she was for fun, but she tapped her hoof. He was so shocked he said ‘can you dance as well?’ And up she goes on her hind legs, turns out she had been chucked out of the circus.
‘Have you still got her’? Asked Sean slightly agog.
‘No, she’s dead now, we buried her in the back garden; you should have seen the size of the bloody hole we dug’. Rick chuckled then continued;
‘Another time, me, my sister and dad, were watching ‘Top of the Pops’ years ago when I was about 16. Pot was around you know, joints, weed, blow… and I was puffing away, dad didn’t care but he hated the smell’.
I could hear giggles from Sean.
‘Dad would say ‘can’t they make that stuff smell better than that? Smells like old trousers on fire. So bit later he says to me,
‘I cant see what all the fuss is about, let me have a go on that’, so me and my sister look at him taking these long deep drags, he finished the lot, a really strong smoke as well. After he says to us ‘nothing to it, waste of bloody money’. But I knew he was stoned though’
‘How? Questioned Sean
‘He was tapping his slipper when Hendrix came on the telly!’
‘Who’s Hendrix’? Asked Sean. Rick paused and answered laughing ‘Oh, doesn’t Marker’.
There was a silence, which Sean broke
‘Can I call you dad’? ‘No you can’t, you’ve got a dad’ laughed Rick.
I could hear them getting up so I pulled back from the window, but wheezing chest nearly giving me away.
‘Just checking’ laughed Sean. And off they went into the kitchen to start cooking, chatting and laughing as they went. I watched them go, the man tall and erect, moving forward with that lazy shuffle. The boy hobbling behind, steadying himself by holding on to the back of Rick’s shirt.
I was aware that I was avoiding going back home and to work. Even though I had been off ‘sick’ I was still entitled to my annual leave, so I took a week to get Emma sorted out and look for a house down in Sussex. It was impossible to sell the house with the disturbance from next door, yet I still scanned the local paper at property prices. A move could happen, if I sold the house and split the money with Kenneth, I would still come out with enough for a little flat in one of the towns near the hospital. It was on the last weekend before going back to work that Judy held a summer Bar-bar-que for the unit. It was really meant for the children and parents but Judy’s partner Louise came with Sean and Alison’s husband doing the cooking.
I enjoyed it so much. I felt guilty; just sitting out in the sunshine by the swimming pool. Paul’s mother left early so everyone could relax. While talking to Jenny, the on duty doctor that evening, she mentioned that she was selling her father’s flat who had just been moved into a residential home.
‘It’s one of the flats in the old asylum near Pole Hill. They converted it about ten years ago, like they will do here when we all move out, forty executive homes on this land they say.’
I knew there was talk of moving the unit nearer to the general hospital in town. Yet I remember thinking it would be such a same to lose such a quiet healing environment.
‘Pounds shillings and pence, is what it’s all about now Helen, this land is worth a fortune’ smiled Jenny.
Seeing Rick walking towards us, Jenny called him
‘Rick, come over and tell Helen about Pole Hill’ she said smiling.
‘Rick knows that area well don’t you? I was telling Helen about the flats in the old hospital’.
He had an easy going way about him, slow and easy with a warm smile. He told me about flats with the large shared garden, together with the view of the working farm that was owned by the National Trust at the back of the property. It sounded Ideal.
‘Take her up there’ snorted Jenny, winking at me,
‘You’ve got your bike here haven’t you Rick? Take her for a spin up there, she can use Judy’s helmet’.
Slightly shocked, but to be honest I was a little excited at the thought of a ride on a motor-bike, I found myself saying;
‘Oh no, really, I couldn’t possibly, I should stay here-you know Emma and…’
‘Oh nonsense’ laughed Jenny. Judy, hearing the laughing came over. Within a minute it was decided I should go up to the flat on the back of Rick’s bike and look at the flat. I surprised myself my saying I would. Judy appeared from nowhere with a white helmet with pink furry bunny ears. I looked over at Emma who just nodded with a little smile. I didn’t have any trousers with me, so I had to sort of tuck my dress between my knees and stretch my leg over the bike. It did not feel safe at all. Everyone was calling out at what, I didn’t know, as the helmet blocked out most sound, and away we went. It was fantastic, that lean-back power as the bike took off. I tried to hold on to the little handle behind me on the back of the seat but this felt precarious, so…I held on to Rick-tight feeling the bunny ears bobbling about in the wind. Through the country lanes we weaved, leaning over this way and that. He slowed down behind a car then, seeing the clear road ahead, accelerated, leaving the car far behind as I held on tighter. I thought ‘what would my mother think if she saw me like that?’ shock and surprise probably. I could then see the attraction in bikes; perhaps it was something to do with the speed, danger and freedom.
God only knows what I looked like when we arrived and took the helmet off, but I was smiling with a fast beating heart. A tall white wall with rote-iron gates su
rrounded the house. We walked around the massive Victorian institution, now painted a pale friendly yellow, saying hello to a few residents sitting out in the quiet garden. The outlook at the back was stunning overlooking fields and working farmland. Jenny had given the key to Rick and we let ourselves in. The flat was on the ground floor and Jenny was right, it did smell of ‘old man’ but was a nice size with a lovely view of the land and garden at the back. The sun was now beginning to go down and I felt strange being along here with Rick. Standing tall by the window, he spoke about the hospital and the farm he had gotten to know from working at the unit, but I didn’t hear anything I just wanted to hold and kiss him.
‘Are you all right Helen? Did the bike shake you up?’ he asked aware of a deepening silent.
‘No I’m fine’ I answered. I wanted the flat and him.
‘I think we had better get back’ I said, tearing myself away from this wonderful but increasingly uncomfortable situation. On the way back I held on tight to him, worried that this would be the last time I would be able to do so.
There was much laughter when we arrived back. Some of the children were saying ‘goodnight’ on their way to bed. Emma gave me what looked to me as a knowing smile, or was I guilty. Jenny was sweet, saying she would give me first refusal on the flat. I knew I had to sell the house now, had to move, so I could move forward along with Emma.
‘Rick’s a nice guy’ said Jenny, nodding over to him as he walked in with Sean. ‘We shall miss him, he’s single now so he’s off the Spain’.
‘For a holiday?’ I asked rather to quickly,
‘No dear, to live he has a bought little place out there’.
I tried to calm down, trying my best to sound nonchalant
‘When does he go’? ‘About a month, sounds nice out there, anyway I must get going’. It felt like someone had just popped my birthday balloon.
Feeling (and probably looking) like a silly schoolgirl: dry mouthed, with jittery excitement and seating palms, I watched Rick’s bike follow the long private road from the main street up to the unit. A few days after the trip to the flat, Rick had surprised me by asking if I wanted to take a trip out there again sometime, and I said ‘yes.’ He had to clear it with Judy, as staff fraternizing with patient’s parents was not on, but pretence of seeing the flat allowed such a meeting. Rick had brought me a helmet to wear that looked suspiciously new. Again we flew off into the Sussex countryside, noting we were going a slightly longer way but it felt great just the same. I had worn trousers this time, so I could concentrate on holding on tight rather than reveal cellulite thighs, covered by support-tights as last time. We smiled as we took our helmets off and walked into the flat. The musty old man smell had begun to dissolve thanks to Jenny allowing the caretaker to leave a window open.
‘Thank you for coming’ said Rick, looking shy underneath his long hair.
‘Very kind of you, dear Sir’ I joked, heart beating so hard I thought he might hear it. We went through the motions of looking around the gardens again and came into the flat.
‘You know I am off to Spain?’ he asked.
‘I have a little place down there and perhaps starting a small business’. ‘Very wise investment’ I heard myself saying, while thinking ‘Why don’t you just kiss him’ then fear holding be back of making a fool of myself.
But by this time he had placed his hand on my arm and I moved nearer. The closeness was unbearable, heart pounding, I kissed him. A wonderful kiss, soft gentle and loving. I pulled him nearer holding and caressing each other; I pulled his lovely soft white shirt out from his trousers and started to undo the buttons,
‘No’ he whispered, ‘oh don’t be so silly’, I hissed in his ear.
He pulled away a little but I had the better of him as I pulled the shirt down over his shoulders. I felt a jolt in my head as if I had been punched; my mouth was dry, panic rising through me.
‘Now Helen let me explain, it’s not what you think…
’I ran out of the flat followed by Rick.
‘I don’t want to know, don’t say anything, I really don’t want to know, please go’
‘But Helen…’ I turned away from him, just go, please go’.
I sat down in the smelly flat hearing the bike roar down the drive, funny how all the smells that had been blocked out by the last 15 minutes were now back in full force. What on earth came over me, what the hell was I thinking? More importantly what had I got myself into? I sat down on one of the ‘iffy’ chairs, numbed by my stupidity. I had let my guard down for five minutes and this is what happens, I felt a fool. I sat looking out to the countryside, it seemed dull now, gone the twittering birds and far off tractors. It was all going a little to well: Emma recovering, the new flat then I go and spoil it all by seeing Rick’s tattoo on his back. Jesus, what was going on there? Of course I had seen tattoos before, but this was different, frightening. His back was almost covered from neck to waist, shoulder to shoulder with a large crucified Christ wearing a crown of thorns, but the worst of it was he was upside down. In my fleeting glimpse I had see some words, ‘Death’ was one of them, I didn’t give myself time to see the others. It frightened and unnerved me, it felt like I had been loured into this, who would have such a thing put on his back, Kenneth wouldn’t I can tell you. Did the others now about this back at the unit, was it a joke? I had been made a fool of, but it was the tattoo that repulsed me. Perhaps it was Emma’s accident, the pain and suffering she had been through, the boys next door, and all the negative things that had happened this last year, then embrace someone with such nihilism cut into his back. What mind-set would accept such an aberration? -Not me.
I did not want any part of it. What I fool I had been, should never had even thought about it-no wonder he was single, what on earth did he get up to. Most of all I felt stupid letting my guard down and allowing someone like that in. You see it had not been like that for Kenneth and me. I had only one lover before I married, and then sex it was a routine ritual.
Once a month or so after Kenneth had been to the Golf club on a Saturday night, it would happen. I could always tell when sex would take place as Kenneth would go into the bathroom and put on ‘Christmas’ aftershave. He would come into the bedroom, the light would be off and I would lift my nightdress. To say it was repulsive would be unfair, a chore, would be a better description. But he was my husband and I felt I had a duty. We had tried for a child in the early days of our marriage as it was the thing to do-marry and have children, but they never came. We married because we were lonely, wanting someone so we would be ‘normal’ in the eyes of society, someone who would not rock the boat. It was not love for either of us but the nearest thing to it, and we got on, very well in fact. After a few years we had given up all hope of a child, and got on with our separate lives, then I got pregnant.
Both of us were settled into our perfunctory little worlds of work and home life. We were in our early forties, we did not want a baby at our time of life, yet the thought of the alternatives, made us go along with it. We felt we were middle aged, and looked it furthermore we didn’t mind. Emma upset all that, and I suppose we resented her for taking away our routine. Sitting on that chair in the flat, I felt different about love, it did exist, as I had found with Emma. With Rick I had put my hand in the fire and had gotten burnt, no wonder people resist the temptation. I called a taxi to take me back to the unit; I did not see Rick before he left for Spain.
Mrs Forsyth
‘Two held in house drug seize ’
Ran the small headline in the local paper.
It was so clever, so simple and much more than I had ever expected. The ‘boys’ would get bail and a light sentence, everyone does, but they would move.
Returning to work was hard after the holiday. I had felt foolish and annoyed with myself for even thinking about Rick. I felt like a silly schoolgirl concocting daydreams about the football team captain. Most of all I was aggravated that I had let my guard down and yet believed that the
re was, if not love, at least some affection between us. It was ludicrous that I should think such things. My determination to move house, away from the bad situation was undiminished. Forget the vanilla in the oven and the home baked bread spray, there was only one way I was going to sell the house and that was without the boys next door. I was not the only one in the Close to dislike the neighbours. Although none of us were that friendly, we all knew that my neighbours were the cancer in the community.
Others had complained in all sorts of ways; knocking on the door and asking for the camper van to be moved as it was blocking their drive, only to have the door shut in their face. Property had been put up for sale only to see the boards taken down after a few weeks, as no new resident really wanted to share their drive with a couple of pseudo-outsiders. We in the Close eventually learned to live with it. We had the determination of the middle class to stick it out. It has been said that the strength if the middle class is in sticking together, a ridged stoicism, unbreakable through sheer determination. It became like an occupied country. We would never give up our ways, or our culture, whoever the aggressor.
Maureen sat with her coffee, she asked politely about my holiday and Emma, as we took a break during the ongoing course. It was nearly finished now, and like most of the other training we did, would never be put into practice. I could see the clock behind Maureen; so, with just a few minutes until the end of break I asked her how her son-in-law was. She smiled sagaciously, saying
‘I will wait for you after class’.
On Waterloo Bridge I told her about the planned move and the trouble next door.
‘I don’t want anybody to get hurt’ I heard myself saying, it felt unreal like a film.
‘Don’t worry dear’ soothed Maureen, ‘you just want to move on and have your life back again, it’s not all hit men and jabbing people with poisoned umbrellas’ she laughed.
We walked over to the South Bank, it was still warm, but the evenings were beginning to draw in.
‘It, is for people like you and me, we help each other, we are quiet responsible people, who have done no wrong, and just want justice. This is not revenge, just being fair.’
I felt shocked
‘What do you mean ‘we’ I am not going to be involved’.
‘No dear’ smiled Maureen, but think of it like the WI, we all help each other, then it stays secret and you have some control. You will know nothing about anything, you can pay ‘in kind’ or far into the future, it can better that way. People you would never ever believe, are all helping each other to have a better life’.
‘What about the police’? I asked anxiously. Maureen smiled
‘The police have problems too you know’.
We got a drink and sat down by the National theatre.
‘There are different ways this can be done; now with the Internet, things are much easier. We can sign an abusing vicar up to a child porn site with his credit card, it may take a while, but sooner or later it will be in the parish magazine.’
I couldn’t help smiling at her audacity. It was as if she was describing a play she had seen in the building behind us, so I played it that way, lets pretend.
‘What if someone wanted someone to move out of the house next door, how could that be done’? Maureen breathed in, well… the golden rules and the most effective outcomes are well practiced. You must match the job to the person. If the person is into sport, skiing off piste, driving fast cars, riding a motor bike…’
I didn’t like where this was heading, but she moved on.
‘You do not have incidents stick out like a sore thumb. The best places for accident is in a crowd, say, the M25. Who would blink an eye if there was an accident on the fast lane by Heathrow airport. Or perhaps that suicide ally of a road down near Malaga. Have you ever wondered why your insurance premium goes up every year?’
She continued ‘Its as if you almost expect it to happen to someone; a postman falling off his bike, a money-trader insider dealing’
‘I’m not sure I like this Maureen, it sounds more than I wanted, I…’
‘I know what you want Helen, I am just saying this is what could happen, I don’t know that anything like that goes on, I am like you, I just needed help, you will not know anything, it is better that way. But it is about trust, and if you can help others like us in the future in any way, that would be most kind. It will not be expected, and there is not any pressure at all. Most of the help that’s around is in computing. Looking into what people spend their money on, seeing what they do in private, is the worst that can happen to a certain type of person. That is the strength of all this, it’s about warnings and fear of disclosure’
I felt a little better about this.
‘All they like next door is load music, drinking and being obnoxious’. ‘Any drugs involved’? Asked Maureen passively.
On the way back to the station I felt uneasy, became a little paranoid, who was Maureen was talking about? Did she really know people who could check your private records? I knew there was hacking and people who went through your rubbish to find bank details, perhaps that’s what they do. Weeks went by and Maureen never spoke of it again, at times I thought I had imagined it all. The course finished we said our goodbyes, and that was that, returning to Sussex to stay with Emma.
I had not seen Rick during his last few weeks, ducking round corners when he approached. There had been a small leaving do for him the night before he went. I had consciously avoided by being in London.
‘It was a great night last night’ called Alison as I unpacked my little bag. I laid out my things and felt lonely for the first time. It was nearly dark outside and the windows were closed against the cool evening air.
‘Sean was upset, but somehow Rick made him feel good though, there is some good news too, Mr Morris has swung it for Sean to get a place at Emmanuel school, you know, the private one just outside of town where all the kids wear the long gowns, he past the entrance exam the little bugger’.
I said I was delighted for him, and yet I was just a little flat.
‘Oh Rick left a present for you’ said Alison calling down the corridor on her way out,
‘Its in the office’.
I sat with Emma, who had been going through something of a tough time of late. She had started to get angry, swearing and becoming very frustrated She had begun lashing out with her arms and spitting at helpers.
‘All very natural’ soothed Judy ‘it’s a phase, believe me; most, if not all go through it. Sometimes after a head injury or stroke a person can change. Once a mild meek wallflower will be showing everyone her knickers and librarians swearing and punching people. It’s the brain playing up that’s all, it will pass’.
That night Emma was quiet and not very interested in me, so I sneaked along to the office to get the present. How palms and trying not to run I made my way, convincing myself in could be nothing. Saw the box labelled Helen, grabbed it and ran back. I guiltily shut the door, checking no one was out there, and closed the door closed. I savoured the moment of opening the present, wrapped in tissue paper and about the size of box that contained a mobile phone; in fact I thought it might be a mobile phone. There was a card.
‘Sorry I could not see you before I went today, I did check with BR that the trains were running but, I understand. Hope I can explain everything to you one day. I have bought the enclosed in the hope that you will one day come out and visit me in Ole Espanya. You can get good deals from Gatwick and I’m only an hour inland from Malaga, so I could pick you up on the bike. When Emma is sorted (and she will be) I would like you both to come out here, but if you need a break before do let me know. I only have a well and solar panels at the moment but it’s home-of sorts.
Keep in touch
Love Rick’
I felt like running to the phone and calling ‘don’t go anywhere near Malaga, especially on a motor-bike’ but knew that I couldn’t. I would have preferred not to open the present in fear of spoiling the m
oment, yet, I was desperate to. Tearing the paper like a naughty eight-year-old boy, I found the brown box. Off with the lid, through the foam-fill bits, beneath sat a snazzy pair of motorbike goggles. Almost like those used by skiers, with a blue tint with arms that hook around the ears. In front of the mirror I put them on, holding by bush of hair back off my face. It was like I was looking at someone else, someone new. Someone free of the ‘everyday’ life and chores, a free spirit. Not the dreary Helen; corn plasters, diminishing periods, and varicose veins. Even if clothes said my size, they still didn’t fit well, the pale face reflecting with rouged cheeks, yet with the goggles on, all that blurred out, it felt like a beginning rather than expiration.
I should have realised there was something different about the house when I arrived home because the drive did not have next-doors van parked across it. The Close was very quiet, ‘too quiet’ I heard myself thinking, then laughing, as I sounded like a B movie. But it was, like the war was over, empty and silent. I realised that the Close was as it was before the Lovells moved in.
I would not have known what had happened there, had not the local paper reported the case. No one in the Close saw anything, which seems rather strange, as one could not move in that street without a net curtain twitching. I remember Kenneth broke a window in the shed while carrying a ladder. Although it was only just visible from the street we received a letter from the ‘Close’ saying the temporary brown card in the frame was ‘unsightly’.
The paper reported;
‘At 2PM on September 16th a black BMW pulled up at number 71 The Close. Two black men in their early thirties got out leaving the engine running and banged on the front door. Jed Lovells, the younger of the brother’s opened the door. One of the men pushed him into the hall shouting ‘where’s the stuff’? The other man waiting outside smashed a front window. The older brother Jake came to see what was going on and was pushed into the hall of the house by the other assailant. The brothers were punched and kicked to the floor. They were taken into the back garden, where the assailants shouted at them to bring the drugs. When the brothers told them they didn’t have any (drugs) they were further assaulted.
‘When the police arrived a large quantity of drugs was found on the premises. Judge Lane presiding said that this amount of drugs was obviously meant for dealing and sentenced the brothers to 18 months imprisonment’
After an appeal the brothers sentenced was reduced to three months in an open prison.
The above may seem crystal clear yet most of the evidence came from the brothers themselves; none of the neighbours saw anything. All said they knew nothing about it and were either gardening or doing some other chore that took them far from the front windows. When pushed Mrs Forsyth from number 68 said she may have seen a car outside 71, but thought it was ‘red, with two white men inside’ but couldn’t be sure. The police were not called until ten minutes after the BMW had disappeared, and then it was from a public call box on the end of the Close.
Mr Jameson from number 80 came over to me;
‘Looks like it will be a bit quieter now around here, you missed it all, we all did. The police were going through that house for hours, then the two boys were taken away’.
We spoke for a while, I was genuinely shocked. A WPC came to interview me so I told the truth; I wasn’t there, missed it all etc etc…’ and that was it.
I had to reduce the price of the house twice but it sold in the end, leaving me free to buy the flat in the asylum.
Goodbye my dear
At eight in the evening 10 months after Emma had arrived, I escorted my daughters’ body from the unit in Sussex to Orpington Kent. I sat alone beside her coffin on that grey overcast silent day. She had tried so hard to live, overcoming each adversity by pulling through in her own gentle modest way. I had seen her; a hares-breath from death, with machines and pumps keeping her alive. Witness her awaken, thus begin her recovery. Saw her progress, raising all our expectations, apportioning a miss-read hope.
I had been writing to Rick on and off during those months now that he had settled down in Spain, doing up his house and looking for another to rent out. I had decorated the flat and had a ramp made both at the front door and at the back conservatory for Emma, her room would look out over the garden. We had fun discussing the colour she would like her room when she would eventually move back home with me. We were just four weeks from a home visit. She had in fact, started to walk very tentatively and therefore most physiotherapy was concentrated on building up leg muscles. Her legs looked longer than ever, yet pale and worryingly thin.
I had paid my account to Maureen in cash when I sold the house and everything had an optimistic feel to it, I was sucked in. I had been working in London during that Wednesday, having called Alison in the morning for an update on Emma, then promised to call her later that night. Alison said that Emma was very tired after all the physio and that she would have an early night, so I didn’t ring.
Just after 4am Judy called, I knew she was gone. I could hardly drive in, blood racing round my head numbing out any thoughts that might try to make themselves known. I could see the lights on in Emma’s room as I drove nearer. There were many people there surrounding her bed. Judy must have seen me pull-up as she ran to the door to meet me, I pushed past her running to the room. It fell silent as I walked in, a strange weird bad dream. She lay so still on the bed with the sheets pulled up to her neck. Her lovely pale face so rested, the hair brushed to one side neat and tidy. They told me later I shouted to them to ‘get out’ as I broke down, pulling the sheet off her and hugging the lifeless body in my arms.
‘Don’t go away, don’t go away from me, don’t leave me here alone without you. No please stay, Emma please don’t go’.
Someone tried to comfort me, I felt hands on my shoulders, I struggled pushing them away shouting and screaming to leave us alone. My beautiful daughter, so sweet and kind now lifeless like a cold rag doll. I brushed the dark straight hair from her eyes. I lay her down, climbing on the bed to lay with her. Not wanting anyone to touch her or to come in, I was frightened they would take her away.
Around 8am Jenny and Judy came into the room. They sat by me; I could see Judy had been crying. Jenny spoke first;
‘We think it was her heart, the suddenness of the passing, it would have been swift and more than likely in her sleep’.
‘Is that meant to please me’? I snapped
‘No Helen, I just want you to know that she didn’t suffer’ said Jenny putting her hand out to me.
‘Did not to suffer? That is all she has done for the last year and a half, look at her. Look at the scar on her head, her withered legs and her arms’. Judy held me, she cried with me,
‘I loved that girl, I shouldn’t love them I know, it’s wrong and unprofessional, but I couldn’t help it. She was so strong and kind; she didn’t ask anyone for anything but gave us all so much strength. We all loved her, the other children adored her…’
She sat holding me for most of the morning.
Jenny asked me to come into the office and talk with her. She explained what happened. Emma had felt tired and went to bed at 8.30. At midnight and 2am she was checked and seemed fine. Kate, one of the night staff, seeing Emma was not breathing called Judy and me.
I asked if there would be a post mortem.
‘There will have to be for such a sudden death, I’m sorry Helen’.
‘Why will they have to mutilate her’ I remember asking, ‘can’t they just leave her alone now, just to rest’.
It was around that time Kenneth came in. He said he came a fast as he could and wanted to know where Emma was. He was pale, drawn and unshaven, he seemed to have aged, dazed and shaky, I held his arm.
I walked back down the long corridor to Emma’s room, could hear the other children being ‘shushed’ by someone as I walked past. I felt frightened to enter; yet I had to go in and see her. It was very still in the room, with the curtains closed, I remember pulling them open to let the s
un in, I didn’t want Emma to be in the dark. Judy had laid-out Emma, making her appear calm and rested. The stress of the last year and a half had now vanished, yet the joyful happiness that radiated from her during those last few months before the accident she so enjoyed, had long gone. It was as if those worldly thoughts and occupations did not Marker anymore, there was a grace about her. I knew she had gone now, never would I speak to her, or her to me, a finality had set in. Kenneth was more upset than I expected, crying silently.
We sat either side of Emma, she growing paler and waxy by the minute. In what felt like the contractions of childbirth, I would suddenly well up with emotion, sobbing as I lay on Emma’s chest. My main fear now that someone would say she would have to be taken away. It wasn’t until 4pm that afternoon that I could let go of her. My mother was there now, it was noble of her to keep quiet. The undertakers came about ten that night so as the other children would not have to see Emma taken away. My mother stayed over night at the flat returning home at my request the next day. A week later I sit beside Emma in the back of a hearse escorting her back to Orpington. Someone drives, someone sits beside them, they say nothing, as we drift along the road.
We arrived at Orpington crematorium, other funeral staff were waiting to carry Emma into the room where she would lay overnight. The reality hit me hard the next day, I would never see her again, see that lovely face. The floppy black hair clipped over to one side. The straight eyebrows that had never seen a pair of tweezers. The bright blue eyes so innocent, edged with black eyelashes. Her funny face when she pinched her mouth and smudged up her nose when she didn’t like something. But the long slim limbs that presented gawky in early life would later become so beautiful and graceful. None more graceful, than when she worked on her art, and I was so proud to have been with her. All gone, all because someone drank too much and couldn’t give a dam about anyone else. I knew then that I would have to find the killer wherever she was, it didn’t Marker where, Maureen’s people would find her.
The coffin seemed so far away at the front of the crematorium chapel. I had placed two of her silk-screen pictures by her, the ones of the little girl pointing in the jeep. Kenneth sat by Mother and me. There were a number of hymns I could have chosen for the service yet reflecting on those few months we had together they seemed meaningless. The Vicar said some equally meaningless words, then Emma sank below the floor, I broke down as ‘Wedding Bells Blues’ played out.
I had not wanted anyone to come back to my mothers’ house and talk about Emma, I just wanted to run away or die myself, as everything felt over. Yet, outside in the fresh air by the flowers on display, it was comforting to speak to people who had really known her. Not as the shy gawky, nervy girl of her school days, but of the confident, amusing warm art star of her last few months. Her teacher and mentor Mr Stephens was very kind, I had to tell him that if it had not been for him, she would never have got where she did. Bezz and Pippa from her gallery in Texas, still tearful and visibly shaken, said very kind words about her, adding what a great loss it is. And of course Warren was there, standing at the back keeping out the way. He, looking lost as he always did, as if waiting for Emma to ask him to go off and buy some more materials, or for him to hold down a frame, ready for Emma to print. I looked at the tags on the flowers; Notre Dame School, John Lewis, the College, the Unit, even Kenneth’s golf club, and Rick. All people Emma had touched one way or another. She did the best she could, kept out of trouble and offended no-one. She was a good daughter and friend, and now she was gone, my light had gone out. It was time to call Maureen and confront the killer.
‘glue onto silk’
‘With silkscreening, you pick a photograph, blow it up, transfer it in glue onto silk, and then roll ink across it so the ink goes through the silk but not through the glue. That way you get the same image, slightly different each time. It was all so simple-quick and chancy’. (From Popism. A Warhol)
Kenneth would never go to America, said it was a ‘ghastly place-full of Americans’. Yet I rather liked it. I sat in my Mid-town hotel room surveying the landscape of the jutting buildings around me. I had been to New York once before as part of a business trip when I was an interpreter. It was just a weekend conference at the United Nations, didn’t see much, yet pleasant enough. This time however, I plan to see the town in a different way; visiting the Andy Warhol landmarks I promised Emma we would do on the way out to Texas. She had been invited out to the Mid-West after her images had been picked up by the Media company owned ‘Van-Helms’. Emma wanted to follow the route taken by Andy back in 1963, across the States to California then back down to Texas by car. This was the trip the West-Coast Warhol and his friends made, eventually meeting up with the actor Dennis Hopper in Hollywood.
Emma had first fallen in love with Andy while working on her own silkscreen prints. Warhol had taken up the medium back in the early sixties as his preferred method of painting. I couldn’t see the attraction to his work or lifestyle-Kenneth certainly couldn’t. Yet when we had printed those first screens something clicked and it felt good. Emma showed me some of his work, work I hadn’t seen before. I knew the Marilyn Monroe and the Campbell’s soup cans, yet it was the other work that impressed me- in particular, the Jackie Kennedy prints.
Emma’s degree show was moving ever nearer, 30 new screens had been selected and 20 works from her second year to give a context to her progression. We needed to get going. She could not work at college although she did do her print-processing there. She said college life and work seemed so false and contrived. My respect for her grew when I went to help her pick up her processed images from the college. I noticed that she did not have to conform to the ridged dress-down image of the art students. She did not have to wear the props of the conforming non-conformist; the multi piercing, the dyed hair, worn out jeans or base-ball boots. The art students all looked the same, far more of a uniform than the other students at the college, I recall thinking how much it must cost to look so poor. No Emma would wear what she liked.
Her first year in Art College was hard, which was really her second year as she had been fast-tracked by Mr Stephens and her strong portfolio. It was difficult for her attaining the ostensibly laid-back pace of the course. Emma also found that there was a certain way the college expected you to be creative. ‘Think of it this way, try and do things the way you wouldn’t normally do things, think of how so and so artist would approach this’ the tutors would say. We felt that this was really for students (or tutors) who had ‘dried up’. Further frustrations resulted when using the light boxes to process the prints, as many an image would be discarded during that problematic first year.
Emma would use any medium she found useful to enhance her work, yet the tutors found difficult to take. They wanted a look, a type, a ‘student’ painting and I believe that is what set Emma above the rest. Her work looked completed and of a very professional standard. Her end of 2nd year marks were given as somewhere between a 3rd and a 2.2. This was the lowest marks she had ever had, yet her stoic nature kept her going. Kenneth and I would often tell her ‘we told you so, try and get back into history’. She started to work at home more and more. She read and read about Warhol, his Dairies and Popism, the later she said changed her approach to the work; more positive and optimistic, yet more importantly, kept her going. She said that Warhol did his own thing and didn’t care what others thought. That he enjoyed his work and believed in his own talent, as the right way for him to proceed.
The beginning of the third year was just as bad as the end of the second, only now a 3rd was predicted. Things changed when Emma applied to attend a Graphic design workshop by the graphic designer David Carson in Milan. The college tutors were not happy that she had been accepted on the course. They said they were unhappy that she was taking time off, yet it was only three days. Furthermore they somehow felt betrayed, that Emma should look elsewhere for her ideas and inspiration. It irked the college that she did not wish to go on the Barcelona t
rip with the rest of the year 3 students. Emma felt it was too set-up, ridged, and too confined to the narrow vain mined by the art college. They gave her a hard time saying that she was ‘straying’ outside the fine art discipline by taking on graphic art as part of her technique. Emma countered that it was ‘mixed media’, but they didn’t like anyone to think outside the invisible box. One tutor snapped ‘looks like you are a wanabee Graphic designer’ as she did not paint on canvas or board.
This circumscribed constraint was at odds with the way Emma thought about art. She thought it would be freeing, liberation from the history course’s enclosed discipline of dates and policy. It presented a paradox to Emma that history was open to interpretation, as it seemed that any history ‘truth’ was really just agreed opinion, and now art seemed claustrophobic in its parochial attenuation. We scraped together the airfare on a low cost airline with Emma staying in a dormitory. The three-day course by Carson; one of the leading graphic artists from the states showed new techniques of presentation and composition. So, instead of having the subject right in the middle of the picture, he would place them far to the left of the frame to leave a large amount of space to inform context. I thought it sounded like a load of pretentious rubbish, yet when Emma showed me how she had interrupted the idea, the image looked accomplished. At the course she would work all day and have a team ‘crit’ in the evening, looking at each other’s work and learning from them. It was after one of these sessions that Emma was approached by one of the De-Helms people who knew she would be attending.
De-Helms Company attended all Carson’s courses looking for young outstanding talented people with a different ‘eye’ .De-Helms were big in America having started out producing student surf magazines with what was called ‘funky’ design. Now almost every magazine, TV and advertising agency in the States used artwork from the company.
‘I like your work, De-Hems asked me to contact you’ said Bezz a young good-looking American/Latino.
‘That’s very nice, said Emma a little too innocently.
‘Can we have coffee’? Smiled Bezz. He asked Emma if he could email her work back to his office. He explained why he was there, a little about De-Hem and what they did. Emma said it was ‘OK to email the work as long as she held on to any rights’, which I thought was dam bloody sensible of the girl, although I didn’t say so at the time-just couldn’t. Bezz emailed the two pieces she had done for the workshop, both receiving high praise from the other students and course leaders alike.
While drinking from a carton of apple juice on the steps outside the studio, Bezz told her that ‘we need to talk to you’. De-Helms himself had been passed the work for him to look at.
‘Give the girl two thousand for the work and option anything else she does, oh, and ask who she is with and how long the contract is’
Barked De-Hems holding the images tightly.
‘She wants to keep the rights’ said Bezz a little hesitantly.
‘Jesus Christ’ shouted De-hems, ‘did she say that?’
‘Yes, she did’ laughed Bezz.
‘Well, good for her, OK give her a thousand each and she keeps the rights. But this is on the condition that anything she produces while she is there with Mr Carson, I have first pick, OK? Don’t let her go’
‘We like your work, can we talk’? They talked money, art and going out for dinner that evening. Other people had been approached by Bezz at the course but Emma was the only one that De-Hem liked. Bezz was slightly annoyed that his girlfriend was in town with him so she had to as well, this also irked Emma, if the truth be known.
‘I loved them both mum, we went everywhere. Bezz hailed down a cab and we had it for the night. We saw Milan by night, everything, and Pippa was so sweet but I held my ground when they spoke contacts. I said Mr Perkins at home would sort all that out, but I did take the two thousand pounds-I told them it had to be pounds!’
Emma told me all this over the telephone the night before she was to come home, she was so elated yet feet firmly on the ground when it came to the serious stuff. Kenneth and I would despair at her sometimes, never thought she would be able to look-after herself. She would lose her purse at school and college or have it stolen; she would always mislay things, driving us mad. I can remember Kenneth saying
‘What on earth is going to become of that girl? She will be eaten up when she leaves school’.
‘She is now I would reply’
During the last day in Milan Emma took digital photos of a Italian wedding that she Bezz and Pippa came across by chance. She fed the images into a computer changing the photos to negative, thus making the white wedding dress, black. Using red ink Emma wrote the poem ‘The Eve of St Agnes’ by Keats along the bottom. Bezz scanned and emailed the work to De-Hems, he loved it. He shouted to Bezz that he would buy it but would not offer a contract at this stage; he wanted to meet her first. By the end of the day however, he had offered her the moon. What swayed the deal was an Spanish agent approached Emma to work in Spain. Fearing that he would lose her, De-Hems wanted her even more, waning Bezz that if he didn’t have confirmation of Emma coming over to the States he was ‘out’.
Emma returned home happy but we were naturally were suspicious of all this, how could someone offer so much without meeting her. It seemed silly for a few photographs.
All Kenneth could was ‘Their American’ adding ‘more bloody money than sense!’
Our solicitor Mr Perkins agreed to look at the contract. He said it needed a ‘jig’ but otherwise it was very stable and extremely generous.
‘Is it really young Emma? She always seemed so quiet when she came into the office’ said a surprised Perkins.
It was hard for us to take in as well; Emma would be earning more than both of us together. Admittedly, it was only a two-year contract but still, they said they would renew it if things went well.
I put my foot down, ‘you must finish your studies, get that degree, and then we will see about all this’, thinking that all this would go away like a dream.
It didn’t change things for Emma though; she never spoke about again and got down to work on the paintings for her show. She never told college about the offer, just working hard as usual. It was around this time she came in and asked for help. We had almost 20 prints done and we had set up a routine. After getting Kenneth’s tea, I would go to the garage and set things up for the evenings work. We would tune the radio to Capital Gold, the station that plays all the old songs from the 60,s and 70,s. It was not the sort of music I liked, not even when it first came out. I liked Andrew Lloyd Webber’s music and play it on my own, as Kenneth didn’t care for it. But after a while Capital proved good background music, it helped take the stress out of a difficult print. Things did go wrong. The ink would ‘pull’ or flood for no reason, the frame could slip, which was my fault, as it was my job to keep the thing still while Emma pulled the ink through. After a while Emma would let me do the ‘ink pull’, which I absolutely loved, she had the grace to say I did it well, but I knew she was better.
It was a fun time, we would work until 9pm, then I would make tea and bring in a Penguin bar for us. We would sit and look at the work. When we had finished, we would continue working until 10.30 Then we would wash up and try and get some sleep, I would feel so high that it was difficult to wind down thinking how we could make things better or, remember how the print came. I would lie awake thinking how Emma had used a different colour giving a new life to the work. Then Warren started to come round and I felt jealous and angry. He was like the male equivalent of Emma. Tall slim, not quite sure what to do with himself or his long limbs he always called me ‘Mrs Kirby’.
‘This is Warren, smiled Emma, ‘he said he would wash the screens for us’.
It was the worst job of all and felt good that I was still on the ‘print team’. He was like Emma: quiet and helpful, kept out of the way, yet was extremely productive within his invisible inertia. He didn’t want to take my place; he was content to was
h the screens as he liked Emma and would do anything for her. He would only come over on Monday’s and Tuesday’s to help with the much-needed mess we made. In the end I began to look forward to seeing him, cycling up the drive with his lamp on his bike. He would park the bike and take the screens to the side of the house, then turn on the hose. It was not until he had finished the work would he come into the garage.
We had favourite songs, all different, no real style Things like ‘My Girl’ and ‘Wedding Bell Blues’ by the 5th Dimension. I can remember singing along to the song without a hint of embarrassment as we worked into the night as the show drew nearer. All too soon the work was done, so on the last night we lined up all the work, our own private view. I had made a chocolate cake and invited Warren over, as I hoped to make this last evening special for Emma, I was so proud of her. Warren and I waited for her to come into the Garage then I surprised her with the cake.
‘Oh mum, that is so kind of you to do this’ said Emma with such benevolence it upset me.
‘And we have got you something Mrs Kirby’. Said Warren walking out the garage, returning with a bright striped bottle-bag, within it, a magnum of champagne
’Thank you Mum’ said Emma.
‘Yes well done Mrs Kirby said Warren’ turning a little pink at the intimacy.
‘ Would you two join me?’ I asked, wanting to share everything with them. I knew they were still children in my eyes but I wanted to say ‘I respect you and love you, and I’m frightened this is all going to end’, but of course I didn’t. We brought some chairs, turned the radio up, and drank the champagne. Emma went out for a while then returned with a rosy smile on her face.
Now mum, you have to take this the right way, and don’t say no, and that goes for you to’ she said pointing to Warren’.
She handed us each an envelope .
‘No Emma’ I said ‘it’s not right, no, I can’t take it’
I began to stand up, but I realised I being the old Helen, being ‘huffy’.
I could see her face getting ready to see me react this way, I stopped. ‘Thank you my dear but…thank you but you shouldn’t have’
‘I wouldn’t have been able to do it with out you, and anyway, it’s tiny really’.
Warren made similar thank you noises but Emma shushed him.
We had the garage door open and heard the noise from next door, but that night we couldn’t care less. We had to order a taxi for Warren, as he was a little unsteady on his bike. It was a lovely evening, probably one of the happiest time I have ever had. I called Warren the next day to see if he got home safe. He told me Emma had given him £400 and that he should return it. I told him not to, explaining that she wanted him to have it. I had been resistant opening the envelope myself but knew I had to. £1000 in cash, it felt absolutely delicious, yet I felt guilty taking it. But I remembered her face, so happy and proud of us helping her to get the work ready, to return it would hurt her.
After the show Emma did not tell the tutors that the work had been sold outright to a Texas media Company. She was granted a 2.2-degree that stung a little but was not unexpected, due to the negative response to the work from the tutors. Only Mr Stephens seemed pleased with the work. We told him about Emma going out to America and meet De-Hems. She asked me to go with her and said we could go the Andy Warhol way, starting in New York and drive most of the way to the West coast. Once that would have filled me with horror now, it filled me with joy. De-Hems would pay for flights and car-hire, we would pay for accommodation, I didn’t know I would have to go alone.
The old Fire House
Emma wanted to see Warhol’s ‘Factory’ where he produced some of his best work and played host to the rich, famous and downright bizarre. The Factory as it was does not exist today. But you can still go down to 47th Street and imagine the ‘goings ons’ there. Every famous person from the 60’s went there, Pop groups like the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. Presidents and captains of industry all wanted to get hip! The factory really had been a factory, about 100 feet long that was completely covered in silver paint and silver foil by Warhol’s friend Billy Name. See, I now know these things. Andy had moved there from the Old Fire House on East 87th Street as he had grown out of it. Next I travel over to 33 Union Square West. The new premises are designed as a place of business, rather than a meeting-place for hangers-on. It was the place that Valerie Solanas shot Andy on 3rd of June 1968. He survived the shooting dying in 1987 following a gall-bladder operation. I lay the flowers at the Factory entrance in accordance with Emma’s wishes.
The next day I take a cab downtown to Greenwich Village to a small internet café. I pay to print off the email containing the whereabouts of Lesley Howard. The address quite clear yet slightly coded. As I said at the beginning, I was very surprised to receive it so quick having only requesting the information a few days before. I knew where she was now and that was all that Markered. I would confront and hurt her somehow. ‘They’ discovered that Lesley had been moved twice over the last year as people had found out who she was. I had not told anyone where I was, I had taken an extended holiday and living on a little money I had over from the sale of the house. I didn’t care anymore, this was all I wanted to do, had to do. I liked New York while I was there, there must be the killing and violence going on somewhere but I didn’t see any. The people were nice and friendly, the prices in the shops reasonable, and lots to see and do, but it was now time to move on. I took the ‘A’ train up to Midtown feeling empowered due to my knowing Lesley’s address even her new name; Mary Kelly’. I booked the flight to Phoenix and a hire car. The slow car drive across country would have to wait; I could do that on the way home. I would not inform De-Helms of my intentions I didn’t need anyone one to know what I was doing.
Once in the air the fear raced through me, scores of questions buzzed around my head; why was I doing this, what for, for me or Emma, what good would it do? None, but I just had to do it. To calm my nerves I opened the Spanish post-marked letter. I had read and reread it many times when comfort was needed and now was such a time.
Dear Helen
I feel I must write and explain a few things before it is too late-if it’s not already. I hope what I tell you will change your mind, if not, at least know that I did not want to hurt you in any way.
You don’t need me to tell you, that what you did was right (I would have done the same) you must have thought you had met up with Marilyn Manson’s long lost Dad. First I want to tell you that I was married once to a girl called Juliet. We lived together for three years before her manic depression fully evolved and both of us could not cope any longer. She did the Lithium thing but once she felt better she would stop and things would get out of hand. She went to Asia to ‘find’ herself but found someone else and a baby.
The tattoo…it’s a long story, but I will shorten it. When I was fifteen and in my last year at school, l, together with a couple of friends, noticed something chalked on the large library wall ‘RICK CUTHBERT FOR JACKIE MARTIN’ To most people that would seem a silly juvenile vandalism, to me, it was death. Jackie Martin was the younger sister of Melvin Martin, the head of the local Hells Angels; the rough early motor-cycle gang, not the globalised franchise it is today. Anyway, she had chose me and there was no going back. I started to ‘go out’ with her and got to know her world. There were her heavy mob friends, who would meet up on a Saturday night and wait for the bike gang to turn up. They were the sort of girls that only a dirty, violent, fight- loving motorcycle gang would find attractive; heavily made up-some under-age, mini-skirted trouble-makers, yet most were nice to me. While waiting for the gang to turn up I remember a girl asking a dolled up jail-bait called Kim Collgate ‘who you gonna fuck tonight’? Without hesitation Kim replied ‘the one with the most fags’. Who said romance is dead!
I got to know Jackie’s brother Melvin, as I would to go round to his ‘house’ when we bunked off school (I had to). He lived in what could only be described as a garage with a di
rty sofa in it. Motorbike bits covered the caravan, as well as drunk blokes laying on the floor asleep, or having sex with some girl (Kim usually).
The gang would go out for a ‘run’ in which there could be up to around eighty bikers. Every so often, Jackie would jump on the back of one of the other guys and I would ride with one of the prospects (Hells Angel apprentice)
It all happened after a drinking session at Melvin’s. Everyone was wired up for the run and ready for action, I didn’t practically want to go but there had already been a fight and things looked bad so I couldn’t back out. We ended up at a fair ground where the guys were pulling girls and pushing people around. A fight erupted and the police were called, it was Bedlam and I wanted out before it got messy. The bikes began to leave as the Panta-car (remember them) drove into the fair ground.
I was on the back of a guy called Harry Raswell; a fearless nutter. The others got away, but our bike did not start and before we knew it we were alone. The police pulled up. Peter Jumped off the bike and stood in front of the police car, pulled out a chain and started to lash the car doors preventing the policemen getting out. Peter shouted at me to do the same. Seeing a large metal stake used to hold rope as a makeshift fence grabbed it and started to smash the door in. It was more out of fear, I knew the police would be all right if they stayed in the car, and by the look of their faces were not going anywhere. I didn’t want to be arrested or to put my dad through any trouble.
I must have looked like a mad man smashing the doors as Peter got the bike going he called over and I jumped on. I was a hero for the night. After much drinking (which was spiked with something) and partying, I was told we ended up at the tattoo parlour down by the docks. Jackie told me later I had to be held down because of the pain. Most of the other guys had work done as well, it was a sort of pagan ritual.
The design was the motive of the gang, not the best or most tasteful work of art in the world, as I am sure you would agree. I couldn’t tell Dad but of course he found out later. Years later, I tried to have it changed but the tattoo artist said that all he could do was fill it in, thus ending up with a black back. Anyway my wife thought it was cool when she was ‘up’. That’s why I never went swimming at the centre, I know Judy wouldn’t care but I wouldn’t want to embarrass her.
It’s an ironic world we live in. Melvin joined the new Hells Angels when Paul McCartney brought them over to this country from California. He left them not long after as he felt them as’ too regimented, do this, can’t do that’ he had had enough. He now works on the rail repair for BR. And Jackie? A week after the tattoo, there was another name on the library wall, and that was me out, and not a day too soon either.
When my marriage broke down, I found it hard to cope on the building sites and someone suggested volunteering at the unit, a short while later Judy offered me a job. The work has kept me sane but it was time to move on and build a life (and house) in Spain, then you came and my world changed.
I would love to hear from you
Love Rick
Home life
Cleaning Emma’s room after the accident left me bitter and upset that I hardly knew the girl. We had moved on in our relationship and had been able to laugh and work together, yet only in the last six months of her life, why the hell was that? Of course there are many reasons some I would convince myself are the answer such as things from childhood and family upbringing. I will most likely smokescreen real issues by blaming other people as I would repress the authentic issues that are too painful to acknowledge. Emma’s room was upstairs and at the front of the house. Quite a big room but not as big as ours, which overlooked the garden. When Emma was knocked down and in Guy’s she didn’t really need anything, and essentials I bought either from the hospital shop or my sister Jane brought them in later. I was staying at the hospital and having a tough time with Kenneth, things were going down hill for us both. I felt so bad about him that I didn’t want him to go into Emma’s room and start pulling out clothes and things, I wanted him to leave her room alone. I knew I would have to go in there when she was moved to the Sussex rehab unit but it was hard to go in.
It was like opening a door not only to her room but also to her inner life, one I really had no idea about. When I met Kenneth in the mid seventies I had only had one boyfriend before, the only one I had slept with. I had left school and read languages at university. Even though it was the late sixties and all that sexual revolution rubbish, in reality it was just the fifties in colour. The construction of the myth of the swinging sixties was well known by everyone, even at the time, but the 1000 or so people involved in the love revolution; media people, pop groups and artists and photographs made the news and perpetrated myth that survives today. There was/is a saying;
‘If you can remember the sixties you weren’t there’.
I believe a truer picture would be: you remember the sixties the way the papers portrayed it, you were on drugs’
The nearest I got to being part of the ‘swinging set’ was standing by the wall of a college dance with two other plain girls, all dressed in Laura Ashley dresses and wishing it would end.
I couldn’t wait to leave university all those young people being led along like sheep. I got a job as interpreter for a French bank in Barkley Square in London. There was something nice about working there; the lovely houses around the square now mostly offices. You could walk to Selfridges in the lunch hour, as most of the people working there were older, we all didn’t have to pretend to be ‘hip’. The seventies brought big changes and I was in the right place at the right time. There had been talk of Britain joining the Common Market for some time. The bank I was working for had been keeping a close eye on things and it was really just a case of not, if but when. I knew it would happen, and that things were decided long before the announcement as there were lots of Interrupter jobs advertised, I had a pick of three or four to choose from.
I had no idea that the job I went for a Conservative MP who was going to be living and working at the common market. For reasons I will explain later I will just call him Sir J. I had got the post weeks before the official announcement and had been putting policies into action as we all knew it was going to happen. Sir J was 45 and considered young for the post within the agricultural office. We worked well together because he needed organising, and I liked to have some order and control. He was married with two children who were away at school. I had bought a flat in Orpington that was quiet and good for the station and was only 20 minutes from London Bridge. I didn’t stay there much I was mostly living and working in Europe during those early years of the EEC; things were going well. In 1977 my mother told me she saw me on the 9 o’clock News, standing behind Sir J when the latest farming crisis hit Europe. It was with Sir J that I travelled to New York. He had been before and I wasn’t that interested as the other people in the office said it was over rated and not much fun. We did the UN conference working late into the night, winning a tough fought funding contract and celebrated by sleeping together. I knew in my heart he would never leave his wife and I didn’t want him too, but things had changed, it was the beginning of the end.
I felt uncomfortable with him and we never spoke about ‘New York’, he clearly regretted it and I felt shamed and embarrassed. It was just once and my first time even though I was in my mid twenties. I started to look for another job as I was being left back in the London office, therefore missing all the big meetings and conferences. It was during this time that I met Kenneth. I had joined a bell-ring group at my local church, first going along with my mother and then by myself. I had nothing to do and liked to keep myself busy in the evenings so I didn’t have to sit and brood. Kenneth was like me, plain and out of step with his age. I often thought we should have been born a decade or two before. He worked in Bromley Council in the transport section, not really mixing with the other young men there, who would go to the pub after work on a Friday night and be sick after a curry.
He played golf at th
e local club and prided himself at being able to play at the weekend. During a bell-ring outing to Durham cathedral we started to see each other. We knew we were right for each other as we recognised each other’s problem; pressure of marriage from work colleagues and family. We wanted more than anything to be ‘normal’ but not having found anyone to love or take us on we were stuck. It was the nearest thing to love and the best we were going to get so our unspoken pack was to treat the marriage as a job. Not really a marriage of convenience, more just suitable and workable. It would stop the men at Kenneth’s work saying unkind things about him, get our parents off our back and present as being able to marry someone.
The wedding was a cold affair, but pleasant enough, yet had it’s problems, starting with Kenneth trying to find a best man. He asked his younger brother thinking this would get him off the hook with trying to find a friend, but it was not to be. His brother said he ‘didn’t think he knew him well enough’ so Kenneth roped in Malcolm, another loner at the golf club on the premise that if he got married he would reciprocate the honour. Luckily my sister Jane did agree to be my matron of honour and it was done. I think the idea of sex was better than the act itself, so after a while we didn’t bother. But if we thought we were off the hook in the social acceptance scale, we were wrong, now we needed a baby, Kenneth’s mother told us as much. We both thought it would be a good thing to do, as it would really be part of the norm, and could drift into middle age and thank God, never have to be young again.
We did try once a week for about six months but nothing happened. We had sex less and less; even Kenneth’s mother gave up asking when the baby was due.
‘It’s not right you being married and living in the same house without a baby it’s wrong’ she huffed, adding; ‘People at my church are asking questions’ then it happened. It was from a one off sex session, but by then I/we were settled into a nice routine. Furthermore, I didn’t want the baby because it would confirm to people that I really did have sex with Kenneth, I could stand up to Kenneth’s mother better as I was becoming as bitter as she was and, I was 38.
These days 38 is no age to have a baby, women in the paper are getting pregnant in their late forties, but I felt so old and we were comfortable. We did not speak much around that time, with me working until late, gardening at the weekend and Kenneth at the golf club. We got along quite well really; we didn’t dislike each other and worked well as a team. We paid the mortgage on our comfortable house in Orpington, and knew how to keep out of each other’s way. With the arrival of the baby, we would be thrown together, we would have to talk and visit, and be visited by people. I would have to stop work for a while and the thought of being in the house along with the baby and all that mess panicked me. I don’t hold it against Kenneth for asking me to ‘get rid of it’ I can see what he was losing. We had come through the whispers and questions from people on why we had not had a baby. Now we could just go on living in our own safe little world. Something inside would not let me terminate it. I looked at leaflets and even saw the doctor who gave me some telephone numbers to ring. It all seemed so cold and hard as if they were talking about selling a house or dumping a car. I promised Kenneth it would not change anything between us and that I would do the work and he could carry on with is work and golf. This pleased him and me because although I didn’t love him we both knew that being together worked well socially and therefore didn’t have to answer any questions anymore. It would be there in the pram for all to see, we were respectable and doing the proper thing.
We were told it was a girl us neither of us liked surprises. We called her Emma after my mother’s suggestion. There were some worries about blood pressure but otherwise it was a good pregnancy, yet ended in a C-section at my GP’s insistence. When we brought Emma home, we were lost, like two teenagers. Not being very tactile people, plus neither of us had changed a nappy or really cuddled much before, made the whole thing feel strange. Emma cried for a week then stopped, perhaps knowing that crying didn’t get her anywhere. She became very quiet and that suited us all. She was a long baby, long limbs and above average height. This she must have got from me as I stood a bit too tall, where as Kenneth was just below average height. Like Kenneth, I got ‘along’ with Emma, only picking her up when necessary and putting her down as soon as I could. Kenneth never really touched her and never changed her nappy, which was unthinkable to him. Of course I read and heard about the ‘bond’ with baby, that so called, overwhelming feeling of joy at birth some women experience, but all I can say it didn’t happen to me, It just didn’t come. Luckily, I didn’t have postnatal depression but could be tearful and get the ‘blues’.
I was glad when it was time to get back to work, so I could be free for a while during the day. I had started working at the Charity after the Sir J fling, and had been getting on well, although not really with my colleagues who, though I was ‘off’ with them I was not one of the ‘girls’. This suited me fine as I was going to go back and leave Emma with a child-minder who looked after my sister Jane’ s young girl. I never thought of Emma at work, never put her picture up on my desk as the other mums did in the office. By the time I got home Emma was ready for bed and then Kenneth would come home and it was almost normal again. We found a small prep school close by and drew some joy from Emma’s work there.
She was a good child, we didn’t know quite how good she was until we saw other children making a mess and being obnoxious, such as my sister’s children who could be rude and offensive. They would answer back and be rude to Jane and her husband Alan. I would sometimes say to Jane
‘Why do you let them say such things’ Jane would just laugh saying ‘there children Helen, that’s what children are like’.
We were not like that when we were young. We always had to feel lucky that our father was able to get us a place at the Notre-Dame. The school, one of many in that part of the county, catering to the low middle-class. The school was/is expensive enough to put most low-earning parents off, yet affordable to a new generation of parents who for the first time in their family history, were able to send the children to a fee-paying school Jane and I fitted in well by keeping quiet and being plain, therefore no threat to the lonely, troubled and sometimes mad, girls residing there.
The only real embarrassing moments occurred when we had dad for a lesson. Most time we were timetabled away from him, but sometimes he would cover a lesson and there was no choice. The girls obviously knew we were his daughters; there are no secrets in private school. The other girls held back (a little) on the jokes about dad when we were there, helping us through that traumatic time.
By the time Emma had joined the school dad had retired he had been shot in the arm while in the war and the pains in his arms and shoulders had increased in his sixties. He was very proud of his grand children and was chuffed to bits when we had Emma. Jane’s had a boy and a girl a few years older than Emma, perhaps, because she was quite and shy they didn’t really mix. I once heard (the Brat) Sam, say to his sister that Emma was ‘a retard’. This hurt me but I didn’t tell Jane. Emma could appear withdrawn, I am not sure that it wasn’t us that made her that way. We did not encourage her to express herself, such as reading her stories out to us. I remember saying to her ‘not now darling’, many times when she would ask if she could show us a little dance she had made up.
After around the age of ten she stopped asking us anything.
She did well enough at school, she was quite good at languages, which pleased me. She didn’t seem to make many friends or if she did, she never really spoke about them and we never asked. However, I always tried to help at sports days, as I would have practical things to do, such as making the drinks and organise the children to take the chairs out to the sports field. I didn’t really watch Emma when she was in one of the races as I felt I had a job to do. But one race I saw her run, run so well yet, seemed to give the race away as she scanned the watching parents for her mother. She got a Saturday job John Lewis Department
store in the net department, of which she enjoyed and did well as far as I know.
6996 Grasshopper Drive
It was now the third night of staking out Lesley’s house that was located in a quiet Tucson street. Tucson lies in a valley surrounded by the desert mountains as a backdrop. The residential streets criss-cross the endless roads and highways stretching out to the desert. Lesley lived on the outer edges of the city, on a sweeping crescent of houses that backed on to open land. I had driven up and down this street so many times, even parking opposite her house, but not one peep of the woman. The only bit of luck I was having was a food delivery van would pull up at the house around 10pm. The name on the side of the van said ‘Fresh-Mart’. It parked outside the house with the driver using the side entrance for delivery; this meant however, that it was impossible to see Lesley from the car. I had a restlessness growing within me; part fear, part anger. I wanted to get in and do this job, then get out as soon as possible. I had passed the next day wandering around the stores and reading until it got dark. I parked the car a little way back from the house on the sleeping street. Constantly looking at my watch, I feared that the food van would come, but just after 10.15 it stopped as usual outside the house. Inside the van, a male driver waited as his assistant; a middle-aged woman struggled with two heavy bags of groceries from the back of the van, then waddled down the side passage.
I slid out the car, and began to walk slowly down towards the house. In all the time I had sat in the hired car outside the house, I had never seen anyone walking along the street, not many cars come to think of it. therefore I knew that if I walked too far down the street I would attract attention. By the time I neared the house I was close enough to hear the woman knock the door calling; ‘Fresh-Mart Mam’.
I could not hear a reply so I walked passed straining my ears. A few houses up the street I heard the van pull away so I turned back towards the house. A yellowish low watt lamp above the door, gave the side passage a gloomy glow, I knocked, the large piece of wood held tightly in my hand. I was about to knock again after what seemed an age of a vacuumed silence came the faint reply ‘yes?’
I called ‘Fresh Mart mam,-sorry’ another long silence. The door clicked.
With beating heart I pushed the door as hard as I could, adrenaline supplying me a surprising strength. I felt something give behind the door and I was in. It was so bright inside, I had trouble adjusting my eyes to the brightness following the gloom of the passage. I held my hand over my eyes and scanned the room. The blood now pumping fast in my veins, as I searched the room for her, looking this way and that, then I saw someone, someone else. In my confusion and raising panic I felt had the wrong house, I shouted ‘where is she? Lesley-Mary whatever she is called now?’ My eyes adjusted now to the light, saw the woman stood behind the serving bar of the kitchen, frightened, mouth open in shock.
She was at least 20 stone, with dark greasy hair hanging over a bloated face, her mouth was surrounded by a chocolate mess The tent-like dress, hung from neck to swollen ankles, was also covered in a yellowish substance, that could have been anything from egg to sick. The smell was dreadful; hundreds of plastic ‘Fresh-mart’ bags filled with foul-smelling rubbish covered the floor. I was standing in the kitchen and what looked like the dinning area, but couldn’t be sure due to the rubbish. The woman’s face was so fearful I began to apologise;
‘I am so sorry, I thought…’ then she spoke;
‘How did you find me?’ I felt dazed, confusion swirling in my brain, this couldn’t be.
‘No you can’t be-you can’t be Lesley’.
She waddled back behind the serving hatch as fast as she could. She pulled open a draw beneath the kitchen top, fearing for a moment she had a gun, I moved back towards the door. I saw the large knife flash in the bright light, with the briefest of glances at me; she pulled the blade across her left wrist. There seemed no reaction in the dull vacant eyes. One hand over my mouth the other reaching out to her, she rested the knife on the kitchen top, lent her elbow on the handle, and ran her right wrist along the glinting blade.
I watched this in stunned silence, mouth wide open, shocked into numb paralysis. Everything I had planned or anticipated about this meeting dissolved in seconds. I was now in the middle of a living nightmare, this could not be happening. Lesley broke the spell, as she stumbled behind the counter, slumping on to one knee. Being too large to fall over, she lay wedged half way to the floor, her glazed eyes staring impassively vacant. The blood was everywhere; her dress, the floor, the kitchen counter was covered. For that moment I was aware what was happening, just calmly watching and waiting for it to be over, her eyes began to close. I panicked, grapping a dirty tea towel I tied it round the left wrist, which was the worst wound, as it gaped open, using blood.
I had to close wound, by pinching the flapping skin together, then wrapping the cloth round and round, finishing with a tight knot. Desperately I searched for something to tie the right arm, but the mess and the blood prevented me finding anything. I knocked the bags out of the way, kicking them aside until found a fifthly rag on the floor that could have been anything; tee shirt, dishcloth, underwear who knows? While tying the wrist, I felt the warm bloody breath on the side of my face, as she whispered ‘don’t, please don’t’.
‘Your not going that easy’ I snapped. I picked up the wall phone, tapping 911.
‘Help, there has been an accident at 6996 Grasshopper Drive… she tried to kill her self-cut her wrists…’
The voice on the end of the line was calm and professional.
‘Is she still breathing, have you dressed the wound?’
‘Yes, yes please send an ambulance, now’.
‘I have Madam’ came the calm reply ‘it will be with you very soon, who is calling please?’
For the first time in this madness, I realised how this could look; the revenge of the victim. I was not going to give Lesley that satisfaction ‘ I am her sister in law, I came to visit’.
I could her the siren from the ambulance coming down the street. I ran to the front door but it was heavily fortified with at least five locks.
‘Go to the side’ I shouted turning to look at Lesley, her breathing barely audible. I saw the look of shock on the men’s faces as they entered the house, the bags of sticking rubbish strewn across the floor, then they saw Lesley. As professional as the men were, it was not a graceful sight seeing them trying to ease Lesley from the back of the serving bar. They could not get behind Lesley to lift her as she was wedged in with buckled legs. Inch by inch the men shuffled her out from behind the bar.
One of the men lowered the wheeled trolley bed as far as it would go, and with great deal of effort stained her onto it. A drip was set up and oxygen mask placed over Lesley’s face. The men were kind;
‘don’t worry Lesley, everything gonna be just fine’.
‘Are you going to follow on?’ one of them asked. It had not occurred to me that I would go with her, I didn’t want to get tangled up in all this but I was, very much so. How would it look if the sister-in-law refused to her relative?
‘Where to?’ I asked
‘George Bush Med Centre, just off the interstate. Bring her insurance and something for the stay; you know wash things, change of clothes’
I heard them pull away, leaving a dream-like silence, all this had taken just under twenty minutes.
This was mad, bloody mad, what was I thinking. What was I doing here in this empty street in the middle of Arizona mixed up in all this? I had to force myself to go back into the house. The first thing I did was turn down some of the lights. This seemed to help calm me down, perhaps as I had some control over the environment. The foul smell, the rubbish bags and the blood made it look like a horror film. I found the downstairs bathroom and vomited down the toilet, head pounding. Easing myself up I looked in the mirror, blood covered my clothes, I was pale and shaking. I washed blood from me the best I could.
Upstairs was as bad as down. T
he dirty unmade bed surrounded by fast food boxes and sweet wrappers, the television was on. I opened jumbled draws looking for a clean nightdress and underwear among the greasy clothes. I found a couple of huge nearly clean tee shirts that I thought would service as night dresses. Despite my efforts, I couldn’t find any clean underwear at all, everything item was dirty and stained. In desperation I searched the small draw in the dressing table, looking in made me pull back. The whole draw was gracefully laid out; pure white tops, beautiful sets of underclothes in what must have been her former size; they looked tiny. The soft white feminine briefs, that once must have made her look and feel pretty, would now not get past her swollen lower calf. I left the draw as it was, looking for some medical insurance, not having any luck decided I would come back later. I decided I would drive back to the hotel, change, and go straight to the hospital. On the way my hands trembled, yet my real worry was that she would die before I could confront her; ask why she killed my daughter, and tell her what she had done, not just to Emma but to us all.
George Bush Med Centre
The streets were quiet as I drove back to the hotel. There seemed to be an excessive amount of red traffic lights that prevented me from reaching the hotel. I had the air conditioning on high in the car, as I felt so hot and flustered together with the numb feeling in my head trying to block out the last hour. Almost two years of waiting for this moment and now it all going so wrong. I knew everything about this woman, or at least I thought I did; the early relationship with Reeves, her work in the US and the move to London and Oxford. Knew of her marriage to Julian and his sister-in-law Charlotte, who in some bizarre twist, I had turned into. There was no other way to get in to meet Lesley if I said who I really was, I might even be accused of hurting Lesley or at least pressurising her to cut herself. I was going to meet her tonight, I didn’t care if there was trouble later I couldn’t wait any longer. She might be moved again and although I could find her again, this I was sure of, I didn’t want to go through all this again. A restriction order may be placed on me or perhaps, visa refusal. If that happened it would tear me apart for the rest of my life.
My hands were shaking as I opened the hotel door. It was all so peaceful and quiet, the soft lighting so comforting, I longed to get into bed and sleep for weeks until all this disappeared. I would wake refreshed and it would all have been a bad dream, but time was running out. I showered, feeling the sticky blood slide off me as I soaped myself in hot steaming shower, allowing myself to relax for a while. It was just before midnight when I left, the hotel bar was still busy, businessmen and a few couples enjoying a few innocent drinks before bed. I wished to be normal again, back in Orpington, before the boys next door arrived and made things so unbearable. I wanted to be busy at home in the garden, watering my hanging baskets on a summer evening when Kenneth would be at the golf club. After I started working with Emma in the garage I remember cutting the string that held the roses bushes back, letting them spring free. I wanted it to be 4.30 on a Friday afternoon when we finished work early for the weekend. I would buy the Evening Standard and check to see if the Gardening programmes were on television. I knew they would be, but it was a comforting ritual, then I could sit back on the train and look forward to the weekend.
‘Are you alright mam’?
Asked the receptionist, as I tried to sneak past the desk. I suddenly felt guilty,
’Yes thank you, I just need to pop out and get some things. Is that Wall Mart still open down the Highway?’
‘Yes Mam, it’s an all night store’. I walked out to the call of
’You take care now’.
The American clothe sizing was different; in England I guessed that Lesley would be something around a size 24. I picked out the biggest nightdresses I could find and two packs of XXXX underwear. I filled a basket with toiletries, then picked up drinks and some biscuits. I was like shopping for my mother, only she did most of the chores herself, Lesley could not do that. After paying for the items I sat in the car with a cup of coffee, looking at the normal night-shoppers come and go, really putting off the time when I would have to leave.
I followed the well marked signs to the hospital, thankful that is was easy to find. The car park seemed miles away, yet the walk to the hospital was lined with tall palm tress and tiny lights along the path. The receptionist was friendly looking at me over her reading glasses as she logging my name into the computer;
‘Ms Charlotte Howard sister in law of Lesley’.
I was pleased that I had not used her new name when I spoke to the med team. Once on the tenth floor I gave my details again even though the nurse on the desk had been informed of my visit. ‘Welcome Ms Howard, my name is Beth Sharp and I am the on-duty head nurse for this section and will be looking after Lesley until tomorrow. She has been stabilised and is sleeping at the moment. You can go in, but please let do not wake her. Later I will need you to help me fill out a form, otherwise, please make yourself welcome to George Bush Medical Centre’.
I filled in the form, and promised to look for Lesley’s Medical insurance papers. Another nurse led me through the roomed ward; low soft lighting gave a calm comforting atmosphere. There were many doors with pulled blinds leading off the main area, the end one held Lesley, I went in.
The hospital bed appeared to be filled with, what looked like the contents of a dug grave, then covered with a hospital sheet. A drip hung high. and attached to the sleeping mound, the bandaged hands lay outside the covers. The large round face looked rested now, God knows what drugs she was on. I stood looking at her; this was not the object of my obsession and nightmares. Where had the pretty blond bitch gone? ‘to pot’ is what my mother would have said. This new woman looked so different laying there, the large belly silently moving up and down. I knew I could finish her off there and then, pull out the drip, put a pillow over her face and run. But I wanted to hear what she had to say, wanted her to tell me why, and me to tell her what she had done. I unpacked the shopping, putting the nightdresses and underwear away in a draw, reminding myself to get some slippers next time I was in Wal-Mart. I put the drinks on the table and the biscuits in the cupboard by the bed.
The large window had a silver Venetian blind, filtering the colours of the night, the twinkling lights from the far off City danced in front of the mountains, like a bowl of stars, it was beautiful. I stood looking out at the scene and thought of Rick in Spain, what would he think of all this? I would love to call him. But I think he would say the same as Kenneth, my mother, and just about everyone I knew (Maureen excepted) that I should ‘let things go’.
I took it that that meant Emma and the burden I carried with me, that manifested in detached low-rev anger. Yet how could I let Emma go, and let Lesley get away with it? The door opened, it was the young nurse.
‘Could you come with me a moment’? The numb tiredness was now beginning to take hold; I simply nodded and followed her a policeman stood by the desk. Beth Sharp stood smiling.
‘Charlotte, this is Officer Ragan, he would like to have a few words with you’. The heavyset gun wearing man with brushed back short hair, nodded to me.
‘Just a few words Mam, won’t keep you long’.
Run or faint? I could do neither, so woolly headed, in stricken panic, I followed the man to the side office.
‘Just wanted to clear a few things up Mam. You are Lesley Howard’s sister-in law-are you not?’
‘Yes’, I mumbled.
‘Can you tell me why you are here?’ he said taking a small pad out of his shirt pocket.
‘Well I…, I, just wanted to, see Lesley’
I could feel my voice was beginning to falter. My mouth was dry and I was feeling dizzy. I longed to tell him the truth, to stop all this, I felt so tired.
‘You see mam, as you may well know, Lesley is on a Prisoner Protection programme and no one knows where she is right now including your brother. Nor does any of her family know where she is, and we would like to know how you found
out?’
I looked down as I twisted my hands, then spoke
‘She wrote to me, said she wanted to talk with me, I told her I would come and when I met her she did… she cut herself’.
Quiet where I got that answer from I have no idea, but it was the best I could come up with. ‘You see mam, all letters and communication go through her link-worker or the police, for her own protection you see. She had trouble with a anti-drink driving group some time back, and she has been moved out of state once before.
‘I know she told me’ I said, trying desperately to appear confident.
Officer Ragan leaned back on the plastic chair making it creak.
‘How long you intend on staying Charlotte?’
‘I was only going to stay a couple of weeks, but now, well I may stay a little longer as I would like to help her. We always got on well you know’
I knew this was true, before the accident Lesley had been close to Charlotte, but Julian’s mother Margaret had refused her to provide a positive character witness for Lesley at the trail.
‘I’m sure you did, but turning up like this without Miss Howard telling her link-worker put stress on the department-you could be anyone’.
‘I am very sorry’ I said nodding my head reverently,
‘I thought she would have told the link-worker, I just wanted to see her, I don’t know why she did that to her arms, I really don’t, but I think she needs help’.
‘Help Mam?’ Ragan laughed, creaking the chair a bit more,
‘That lady killed a young girl, through her own stupidity, drinking and driving don’t mix, she has had help, from this state and Texas. Now, if you want to help her you can, but the state will not look kindly on this, going behind her link-worker and federal procedure and all’.
‘I understand’ I said as he stood up, filling the little office with his bulk and putting his notebook back. On the way out he asked me where I was staying, so I told him. I did not like this, thinking he might check up on me, but at that moment I had passed the first test and didn’t care. He nodded on his way out, stopping to talk with Beth Sharp at the desk.
‘Are you going to get some rest’? She asked when she came over to me. The big policeman entered the lift eyeing me suspiciously.
‘There is a small room here, or you can rest in the chair in with Lesley’. I told Beth I would like to use the small room that turned out to be quite comfortable with a small single bed and bedside light. Before I went into the room Beth touched my arm.
‘I thought you might like to know that Lesley was talking when she came in. It sounded like ‘sorry Helen’, she kept repeating this, I thought you might to know this’
‘Thank you for telling me’ I smiled , thank you very much, you have been most kind’.
The little bed felt so beautiful, it felt strangely safe, sleeping until eight the next day, where everything had changed.
The corridor was busy with the swishing hum of a floor cleaner being manoeuvred by a small Asian man. People where busy walking up and down the corridor; staff patients, health workers, and cleaners. The day outside was now hot and sunny, the mountains now blue, held orange in the distance. Angela Wickham the senior Day nurse looked stressed.
‘We are pretty busy right now but if you would like to get some breakfast down at the café on the ground floor you are most welcome. Lesley had a good night and I will keep you up dated during the morning, but we have had two other emergencies come in during the night’.
I said I would come back later and walked to the lift. It struck me how easy I felt in hospitals. I had spent almost the last two years within a hospital setting. I knew that all the staff were under pressure, be it from the workload or violent patients, in this country or at home. I knew that pushing to get information would not help; you would just end up waiting longer. If you let the staff be they would come and see you, if only for light relief from the other demanding patients and tasks. Changeover from the night to day-staff was always busy so I took the lift down to get some Breakfast. There was tea, thank God, and toast still warm. I looked round at the people there; some patients in their dressing gowns chatting to each other, ready for another day in the microcosm of human suffering.
Helen and Lesley
‘Ms Howard, said the nurse,
‘Lesley is awake now, would you like to come up?’ After breakfast I had walked back to the room where I had slept preparing myself for a morning of not thinking. I had somehow made myself believe that I would be able to see Lesley for days. I had ideas of going back to the hotel and sorting myself out and prepare what to say, but now I would have to face it
‘Yes’ I replied voice slightly faltering. We walked together, I felt rushed and unprepared. The hospital bed shortage appeared to be universal and it was clear they needed Lesley’s bed, we stopped at the door.
‘Is she well enough for visitors?’ I enquired hoping to put off the meeting.
‘Miss Howard is doing very well; in fact she wanted to see you. Try not to be too long; she is still very fragile. She probably needs to see a nice friendly face’.
I didn’t want to talk to Lesley here, I wasn’t ready, but how could I refuse it just would wash, after coming all this way from England . She was in control now; she must have known that she would be safe there in the hospital bed. I would not even be able to raise my voice without being thrown out on to the baking street. I nodded my head and went in.
‘Lesley’, called the nurse knocking gently on the door before entering.
‘Charlotte is here to see you’. The nurse turned to me and smiled.
‘I’m sure you have a lot to talk about, I’ll leave you to it’.
I waited for the door to close before turning to look at her. She was sat-up in bed; the hair had been washed and brushed away from her rough ruddy complexion. Her eyes puffy and heavily swollen, sagging above the jowls hanging from her face. Her bandaged arms were outside the bedclothes, fat and fleshy bruised from medical staff finding a vain for the drip, I though as I looked at the huge mound lying before me.
‘I know it won’t help but I am so sorry about your daughter, I have no excuse I was drunk’
Again she caught me off-balance, getting in first with the speech. Like her cutting herself, she pre-empt the situation, taking control, and pulling the carpet out from under me.
‘No, you can’t get out of it that easily, you have no excuse, none at all’
It was all I could say, anger welling up inside me.
‘I really did want to finish it, I have for a long time’ she whispered
‘Quite right too’ I snapped, moving over to the window, beginning to feel increasing uncomfortable.
‘I only called the ambulance so you could hear what I have to say. You killed my daughter, my friend, the only one I really loved…’
I started to break down, pulling myself away from the vortex that was sucking me in. I could have kicked myself for opening up that much in front of her. I longed to run out but I could not miss this opportunity yet this was all wrong, how was it that I was standing here, with her laying there, in control with others outside ready to protect her? I stood near the window, the nearest to outside without actually leaving. I pulled myself together.
‘You ruined my daughters life, before she died she had great hopes and a life others dream of. You cut her down, she had so much to live for and so much to give. You drank too much and killed her. Took her away from me, She was alive for over a year before she died. She knew that her career and life had been restricted, that her life and all those dreams had vanished.
I had began to shout
‘She had to endure a life without hands, can you imagine what it is like to lose your hands? And at such a young age. She was the most beautiful person in the world, and you killed her, and your alive, laying there feeling sorry for yourself. You will have a life, will grow old and see adulthood, take a lover, marry, have children, she won’t, do you understand that?’
&nbs
p; I could see Lesley glance towards the frosted glass door, as the handle turned.
‘Everything OK in here’? Asked a nurse putting her head around the door looking to each of us in turn.
‘Yes’ said Lesley. That too felt to me like taking control again. I should be in charge here, me running the show, but I was crumbling in front of her. ‘Yes, we will be fine, just an misunderstanding’ said Lesley who seemed to wobble as she talked, the double/triple chin flabby with the movement. The nurse looked at me and I nodded.
‘I will be right out here should you need me’ she cautioned, giving one last sagacious look before closing the door.
‘I can’t imagine what it is like to lose your hands, she looked so young and beautiful, I cannot tell you how much I wish it didn’t happen, wish that I never had a drink and never got mixed up in all this. I am so sorry, it doesn’t sound much, but I am. Those things you speak of; marriage and family, I have quite rightly lost them all, and have no wish to have anything like that again.
‘Who would want me anyway a child killer? I deserve my life, it’s not justice for the death of a child I know, but I am not free, nor should I be’.
I looked at her, she seemed to mean what she said, and by the look of her she was probably right. An obese, alcoholic, drug addict and child killer, were not the sort of details that would look attractive on a dating agency database, but I was not finished yet.
‘You brought this on yourself, you did it all, don’t come on like you are hard done by, the victim, you alone killed her and ruined my life, all my families lives, and it will never go away.
A heavy silence hung over the room, I paced the floor not really knowing what to do or say, Lesley spoke first.
‘Thank you for saving me, it has given me a chance to say sorry to you, I know it won’t heal the hurt you have inside, I did not mean to do it, it was my fault I know that, but, and I hope this makes you feel better; I will try to finish my life again’.
‘Thank you’ I said, hatred in my voice adding bitterly ‘I’d like that’.
I wanted to say other things, hurtful things, but she had just promised me to kill herself at the first convenient opportunity. So it appeared there was not much else to say. I looked out the window once more, there must be something else to say, this couldn’t be ‘IT’. Even though Lesley would hopefully be dead in a few months through her own hand, the feeling still wasn’t right.
What a waste, nothing seemed to have been achieved I felt empty and cheated. I turned to go, filled with a feeling of anticlimactic dissatisfaction.
‘I promise I will do it, I swear I will. But I want to tell you this, I have no recollection of killing your daughter, I know I was drunk, but that was not the real me, I was normal until that night. I was married, working in your country as a nurse and loving every minute of it. It was all I ever wanted to do all my life was to help people, and look what happened.
‘I loved life and being a nurse. I really drink or do drugs, not even in high school. I had pets as a child, and loved caring for them and even looked forward to having children of my own. I know all you can see is this carcass, this horrible dead body who killed your daughter, but I was not like that, never was, I was normal, wanted to give and receive love. I had plans, small ones but life plans; have children, have my folks come over from the states for the christening. Support my husband’s work and move out to the country when the children got older. That was me, a boring homemaker who worked part-time as a nurse. I don’t know what happened that night.
‘This is not an excuse for what I did, I know I did it; a bottle of whiskey a day, and every heart stopping food cannot take away the thought of killing someone. I don’t eat for comfort, I eat because I hate and repulse myself. I think I have been waiting for you, to show you how sorry I am and how I intended to kill myself because I cannot live with me, or the thought of my actions anymore. It may be better that you watch me die slowly for the lifestyle I have chosen, witness my slow death that way, I will do whatever you say or want me to do’
She began to cry; heavy sobs making the whole bed wobble. I have always been suspicious of crying, or the ‘waterworks’ as Kenneth would call it. Women can turn them on to order, but this looked real, something deep deep in me wanted to comfort her; just one hand on her fat arm, but the hate would not allow. She continued to cry; this unnerved me, as it seemed to confirm authenticity.
‘Shut up, now shut up’ I shouted ‘I’m asking you a question,
‘Why didn’t your husband or anyone else tell you why you got drunk’? ‘They said I was upset, upset about the marriage but our friends couldn’t say why, but I was drinking. Julian said I had been depressed but had not really been with me at the function in London and didn’t know I was drinking so much. Then the court case came, and I couldn’t remember a thing, of course everyone said it was because I was so drunk. Until now I have blocked it all out, I have no. I have thought of asking friends, but they didn’t want to know or be associated with a drink driving killer.’
She lay sobbing, the large form shaking the bed, not wailing, as one might expect due to her size, but silently, the way Emma did, unwilling or unable to share her grief.
‘How are you two girls getting along’? Asked the nurse popping her head round the door, taken aback by the sight of the blanket dune shaking.
‘Are you OK Lesley/’ said the nurse coming over to her and patting her arm.
‘Yes I’m fine, just glad Charlottes here, -really I’m fine’
The nurse looked at me accusingly.
‘Well Lesley, I have some good news. I have spoken to the doctor and she says that if there is support at home, and you contact your personal counsellor, you can go home this afternoon. Your link-worker Eve, has been contacted as she out of town, but said she will visit you on Friday, so that will give you and Charlotte a few day alone to have some quality time’.
She turned to me with just a hint of hostility
‘You will be staying to help your sister-in-law won’t you? She does need your help you know, and you are family’.
I didn’t think Lesley was anyway ready to go home, but there was obviously a bed crisis and they needed the room, and as Lesley’s wounds were self-inflicted there was not much of a case if a child had been brought in from an RTA.
‘Charlotte has to get back, she is very busy’
Lesley began dabbing her face. The nurse looked at me, waiting for me to reject the women lying on the bed.
‘I can stay a while’ I heard myself say, more to spite the nurse than help Lesley in any way.
‘Would you like me to call a taxi or do you have a car’? I have a car I said wondering what the hell I was saying. Yet I knew I had to get out of there someway and going with the flow appeared to be the simplest way. So after a light lunch and a final check with the on-duty doctor, I helped Lesley get dressed; the large pants just about squeezing onto her legs then covered with a tent like cotton dress. And there we were, heading back to her house in my rented car wondering how I ever got into this situation.
The smell of the house was dreadful. I pushed the door open, shoving the full carrier bags behind it across the filthy floor. We had driven back along the highway after we had managed to squeeze Lesley into the car. She was not the best size for the economy car choice, perhaps I should have given into the pressure from the salesman at the airport, but in reality I said no as he was so pushy. We drove in silence, yet when she did speak she was well spoken with a mid-Atlantic accent that was mellow and comforting, something that must have won her Brownie points and promotion during her working life.
She had to give me directions to the housed as things seemed very different in the day-light, furthermore the housing estates began to blur. I didn’t really want to talk to her but it was strange sitting in the car so close; very close as Lesley was wedged up against me and was glad to get out the car as it was cramped and uncomfortable. The street looked very different in the light; wide and empty, sleeping
silently in the baking sun with a dark shadow to the side of the house. All the houses looked the same; A-framed, part timbered painted white. A wide garage stood proud at the front, the front door to set back flush with a front window. Upstairs had a window overlooking the street silent and watching. The house looked pretty painted white, with details such as the door-frame and fascia boards picked out in primrose yellow. Her door number was 6996, so I supposed there must be another 6965 houses somewhere down the street, yet it all felt so quiet, enclosed and empty. The street was wide, very wide, with the houses opposite mirroring those on the other. Lesley’s house was on the far edge of the valley backing on to the desert land leading on to mountains while those opposite could see the mountains clearly from their front windows.
Although you would not think so to look at it, Grasshopper Drive is a through-road, snaking the perimeter line of the foothills for miles. All this was revealed now, as the darkness, anger and fear had cloaked all this when I first arrived just a couple of very long days before.
I parked the car in front of the house and helped Lesley out. That meant her doing something of a three-point-turn to manoeuvre herself out, rocking the vehicle as she went. She puffed heavily as we neared the door, her inner thighs rubbing together, and her feet padding with each footstep, suddenly she stopped, gripped by a fear. We waited a little while for her to gain control, she then nodded to me, I unlocked the door. The smell nearly knocked me over as I pushed open the door, my stomach retching with the smell of stale alcohol, rotten food, body odour and neglect. The carrier bags covered the floor giving a fermenting repulsive sickening stench, seeing it in daylight in all its glory didn’t help. There seemed to be stains everywhere, on the walls, doors and even the ceiling. It could have been coffee beer or worse, that I didn’t dare contemplate.
After clearing the sticky damp mess off the sofa, I sat Lesley down, exhaustion taking over her body. I opened the window to let out some of the heady hum that permeated the house, then moved to the kitchen. I stood, hand over mouth surveying the bloodstains and the chaotic mess, feeling confused and helpless in the disarray. Opening the back door, which is really at the side I threw out the first of the carrier bags, within an hour I had a high pile of around three hundred stinking bags at the side passage. At least now it was outside, I searched for a floor mop and some cleaning fluid. In the small utility room off the kitchen I found a wide range of cleaning products one could imagine, all unopened. I got to work on the kitchen floor, scraping the stubborn stains sometime with a knife. God only knows, what was on the floor, but she must have not made it to the toilet a few times. I forced myself to keep going until the kitchen smelt (almost) TV advert ‘lemon clean’.
I scrubbed the kitchen tops, loosening the congealed blood that had now dried hard and turned dark brown. The cooker was the only clean thing in the whole room; evidently Lesley had used every telephone takeaway and convenience food known to man to create her size. The warm air breezed in, as I worked the floor, walls and kitchen tops.
At 1.30 I had to stop, my arms were aching and I was sweating profusely. I went through to see Lesley but she was asleep; lying awkwardly with her neck to one side, looking like an over-weight young girl. I became aware I was hungry and really needed a shower so I looked upstairs. After opening the curtains that must have been wedged closed, for all the time she had been there, as the dust had collected in them to choke level. There were still bags all over the upstairs floor, but the light now flooded in as I opened all the windows to the street below. This could be a lovely house, what a waste, did she ever look out towards those wonderful mountains? In the back bedroom the foothills were a hazy blue, with the mountaintops wonderful reddish ochre. It reminded me of a sort of Trans-Atlantic Miss Haversham’s house.
Once in the bathroom I realised why Lesley stank, she would never have been able to take a shower or to take a bath without extreme difficulty, even if she wanted to. She would be wedged like Pooh, only to escape when she had slimmed down. Taking an unopened towel from the bags of things I had bought for Lesley I decided to take a quick shower. Before I turned on the stiff taps, I noticed a long bathroom cupboard. Giving the door a good yank, the bags fell on top me, tumbling down from the tall shelves. The smell was horrendous, a putrid vomit inducing odour, making me gag. I immediately could see very well what was in the bags hundreds of used sanitary towels, now brown, the dried blood perfectly visible through the white plastic shopping bags. What the hell was going on, who on earth would store such things? After the quick shower I found the ever-diminishing roll of refuse bags, and filled them with the bloodstained bags. The shower took my mind off the mess for a moment, and made me want to get out and get some air, even if it was just to the shops. I wanted to see people, normal people doing normal things, no more death, knives and this madness. I seemed to be locked in a world of destruction within a strange circle of negativity.
The road and the sky
Just getting out of the oppressive house and situation made me feel better. Those last few nights have taken so much out of me, yet I felt I had crossed a mark and could move on. My plan was to buy some food and essentials for Lesley, talk with her some more and get things straight, see she was settled and go home.
It was a dream-like drive to the Mall that afternoon. Once through the quiet residential streets I reached the highway. Other people were going about their business, driving to the shops, travelling to work, going to see people, oh, and of course, going shopping for your daughters’ killer. I felt in a haze but just kept driving, anything to keep reality nearby. My old life was behind me now, I could feel it receding. The controlling grip I had on my life had now gone, I was freefalling on the freeway. To be honest it wasn’t altogether unpleasant. The During the drive I thought that If I could just do this meeting with Lesley, get it out of my system one way or another I could go forward. I needed to start over with my life, never forget Emma, but move forward in a way I’m sure she would have approved. I started to think about Rick and how he would love it out here. He loved the sun and these long straight highways would be perfect for his motorbike, better than those cold wet bendy suicide roads of Europe, where ‘motorcyclist’ was short-hand for kidney donor. I missed him and his quiet way, the smile that made everything right, allowing the fears to reside. He had intimated that we had some kind future together, and yet that seemed to be in Spain, could I cope with even more change? Perhaps it would do me good.
I wondered if Emma had still been alive and I became serious with Rick, would they have got on? They seemed to get on well enough in hospital, but that is such a strange enclosed environment, plus it is difficult to tell due to it’s unrealistic support system. I must say it would have been nice to take Emma out to Spain, live far away in a new country, perhaps she would carry on her work…This daydream was getting too big and real, I needed to stop it now. Emma had gone, Lesley had killed her, I was now shopping for her. It was all too bizarre.
I parked near the 25-screen cinema complex. The baking heat refreshed me as the shower did earlier, but it still felt wonderful to have the air-conditioning whoosh over my body as I entered the mall. I had noticed that I felt physically better in Arizona; my head was clearer and I was breathing easier. I had always had a small respiratory problem, a form of asthma that would give me a tight chest in summer. This tightness could result in some panicky nights when I would wake gasping for breath. Now I felt lighter and healthier than ever before, my lungs expanding a little more with each day. In my internet search on Arizona, I had discovered that detox units were springing up here due to the quality of atmosphere. This didn’t surprise me, I could truly understand it, the kind air and warm environment, gave me a pleasant sense of well-being, pity I was there for such a negative reason.
Two giant floors of retail space waited before me, every type of store was there. Nail-bars, hairdressers, many women’s and men’s clothing outlets, men’s boots and a gun and ‘outdoor living’ store.
Fancy china, a bookstore, Gap, and a Native American Indian shop, all under one massive roof. I looked in the gun-store and wondered who would want such a thing, I had to go in.
Every type of firearm was hung proudly on the walls. Knifes with long glinting jagged blades held my fascination. Combat gear, gas masks, camouflage clothes, even bow and arrows together with deadly cross-bows filled the store. Looking at all this armoury made me I remember my flight into Tucson. I had flown to into Houston from London, taking an internal flight into Tucson a few hours later. The seats were narrower than those of the trans-Atlantic flight and found myself wedged against the window by a huge businessman with sweat-stained armpits. It was a Friday night and Houston had the feeling of ‘home for the weekend’ as travellers called husbands, wives, and lovers sometimes both, on cell-phones saying, they would be home soon ‘and tell Johnny I have the computer game.’ Flowers were being bought at the retail stands, along with candy, gift-wrapped for the waiting love at the other end of the homeward bound flight.
Not long after take-off Mr sweat opened wide his broadsheet news paper, a quick flick through the day’s news before settling in for the ‘Hunting and Gun Supplement’. Weekend long-bow courses, and desert survival training adverts peppered the front page of the supplement, but it was ‘This Weeks Special’ that caught both our eyes.
‘HOW TO KILL, SKIN, AND DISMEMBER A DEER WITH YOUR BARE HANDS’.
I got as far as biting a hole in the animal, and tearing it open from neck to genitals, then easing the fur off the creature, ‘as easy as slipping a coat off an child’. This he read with intense concentration, sometimes licking his fat lips. Once he finished the skinning section, he turned the page to read the recipes for cooking the deer. I knew then I was in a different country, I wasn’t in Kansas anymore Toto, or maybe I was, it was difficult to tell. I know there is hunting in every country, yet there, high in the sky over America, ripping a young deer’s guts open was described as calmly as UK Times would explain how to prune roses. My fellow flier must have been aware of my reading over his shoulder because, once he had finished the article asked very kindly if I would like to read the paper. I said that ‘I didn’t, thank you’ which he replied ‘Roast deer’s nice huh’? All I could say was ‘yes very tasty’.
I found what I was looking for, an out-size women’s clothes shop The window was dressed with outsize models displaying sexy underwear, including skimpy lacy red knickers and bras. I bought a nightdress, some tee-shirts and a plain dress for Lesley. I found a store that sold bed linen, as I had noticed that Lesley’s bed clothes were as dirty and disgusting as her kitchen floor. I planned to throw these or burn them ASAP. The nylon sheets made my hair stand on end just feeling them, so I bought a bargain pack of white sheets with just a discrete blue line around the edge. On the way back I looked in the hairdressers; just to look really. My own mousy brown hair now dry, thick and greying looked a mess. I never really thought too much about it until I met Rick. The photos in the window showed smiling black and Latino woman with pretty but complex styles dressed with beads, or pulled straight with glossy shine. Other pictures showed ‘Suburban housewife hair’: shoulder-length bob, high-lighted to white, one or two wearing what used to be called ‘Alice-bands’. All the women smiling, that perfect smile, overly made-up yet attractive all the same. I thought It might be nice to have a haircut, something nice, something that Kenneth would call ‘a waste of bloody money’, I took their card.
I came across the Harley Davison store in the middle of the Mall. Not somewhere I would normally go, but I just thought ‘well why not!’ I presumed there would be Hells Angel types or Middle aged men with grey pony-tails, gloating over the bikes. Therefore it was pleasant surprise to notice a rich mix of people, and so I didn’t feel out of place, in fact it seemed quite natural it be there shopping for a little something for Rick. A young lady assistant, reed thin with long wavy hair and tight jeans spotted me as she came in. I tried to avoid her but she had an agenda.
‘Welcome to the Alan Longford Harley Dealership. I would just like to say a special welcome to our visitors and inform you that we do export our products across the world with a very competitive shipping fee’.
‘Thank you’ I said turning away. ‘Are you British madam?’
‘Yes’ I replied looking at the exit.
‘Could I take your name Madam, this is a real pleasure to meet you and welcome to our country’
To get rid of her I told her my name, kicking myself straight after for doing so. The store was as big as a football pitch, with hundreds of bikes covering the floor. They had a display of ‘History of Harley’ that I knew Rick would have loved, but it was the clothes and gifts I wanted to see.
All the paraphernalia gleamed on the counters; watches, sun-glasses, badges, jackets, anything and everything you could think of related or unrelated to the idea of bikes; freedom, youth, the wild West, but oddly enough not rebellion. I found out later on that Harley had always tried to play down the outlaw/Hells Angel association, but not too much, as the income was good. I bought a sweatshirt and tee shirt for fun, then noticed the gigantic rolling marquee running bright around the store. High up in four-foot high coloured letters ran:
‘ALAN LONGFORD HARLEY DEALERSHIP WELCOMES HELEN KIRBY-FROM BRITAIN’
Not until my face changed from bright red to pink in the car park, did I smile at the thought that my name was in lights at last. After being given a chromed metal ‘Harley’ badge (which I still have) and a ‘good biking Madam’ from the sales clerk, I left the store making a mental note to go back there one day with Rick, If Kenneth had seen me there he would have thought I was mental. Next and last stop, Wal-Mart for food.
I found all I wanted, paid for the items and packed my shopping bags then struggled to the exit. I had noticed some young girls hanging around the exit when I had went in and they were still there when I come out.
‘Afternoon Mam, how are you today, do you like softball?’ my fingers were beginning to cut with the loaded plastic bags, and wanted none of this.
‘No, not really’, ‘I said a little harshly’.
‘It’s a fun’ game’ said one of the girls, smiling pleasantly.
‘I’m not sure I know what it is’ I relented ‘is it like Rounders?’
One girl was white, around 13 with bleached blond hair tied back off her face into a dancing ponytail. She had large healthy teeth that every so often revealed her chewing gum. She had pimply skin and large blue eyes heavily made up, the other was a tall thin black girl. She was at least 5ft 10, her hair was also scraped back off her face into two puff-balls either side of her head, that gave the impression of Minnie Mouse. She was sweet looking, with long relaxed limbs and laconic smile. Chewing Gum started talking to me again, blocking my way by the crowded exit door, crammed with trolley carts and people waiting, I was stuck. I put the bags down. ‘What’s Rounders?’ said Chewing Gum.
‘Well’ I sighed, rubbing my hands ‘I think it’s like your base-ball but with a smaller bat’.
Chewing Gum started to say something, but was totally incomprehensible.
‘Will you take that gum out of your mouth, lady can’t hear a single thing you saying’ scolded Minnie Mouse.
‘I chew this stuff so I can lose a few pounds’ said Chewing Gum earnestly. She turned to me.
‘We are in the semi final of the 3a State Champion Runner Up’s, and we are collecting for new kit’.
Without the gum in her mouth, she had a nice face and a warm smile.
‘She don’t really need to lose weight’ said Minnie, in her laid-back drawl, ‘she fine as she is’
‘Well what about this?’ said Miss Gum, un-tucking her red sports tee-shirt, showing me the beginnings of a spare-tyre.
‘Feel this!’ demanded Gum, pinching the slight swell of flab around her tummy.
‘No’ I said backing off, realising I was shuck added ‘no, thank you’.
‘Do you think I need to lose it?’ Gu
m asked, concern on her face, as if whatever I said, would determine the fate of her weight gain and eating habits for life.
‘No my dear’ I said, ‘you look very nice and just about the right weight for your height, you look lovely’
It just fell out of me, I was not used to being spoken to so openly and I suppose I caught the candour. It was true; she was not over-weight by any means, just that teenage puppy-fat.
‘See’ said Minnie, smiling for the first time at her friend, then turning to me.
‘She’s obsessed by her weight, I tell her she looks cool, but she having none of it.’
I had to smile, then the girls did, they looked lovely together, and so easy with each other’s company.
‘Shall I put something in your collecting box?’ I asked, opening my purse.
‘I’m Becky’ said Chewing Gum, ‘and this is Joyce’ pointing to Minnie Mouse. She’s not really my friend, she hasn’t any, so I hang out with her due to Christian kindness’ laughed Becky
‘I will pitch your backside young lady’ Laughed Joyce, as they began nudging each other with bony elbows, giggling.
Apart from a few low value coins I had hiding in the deep darkness of my purse; all I had was a $50 note.
‘Would one of these be OK’? I said.
They stopped giggling, staring at the note, pupils dilating.
‘Are you sure Mam? That’s a lot of money’ blinked Becky, as if in a dream.
‘It’s fine really’ I said, ‘take it, and good luck with the match’
Joyce opened a coffee jar half filled will nickels and dimes, I put the money in, then she sealed it shut, giving a suspicious look at the people around us. I picked up the bags, but Becky had not finished, no wonder they had collected so little money with all this talking.
‘If we beat San Manuel Phoenix Garard in the semi final, we will play either North West Community Christian or, God help us, Glendale Cactus Moon Valley. We did beat Snowflake Eloy Santa Cruz, who beat Glendale Cactus. But since they topped the league beating Joseph City Tucson Palo Verde into second place, our only other worry was Kearny Ray Winkeleman Hayden…’
‘Put that gum back in your mouth Becky, you’re peaking’ Laughed Joyce, pointing to her head and revolving her finger as if to say ‘mad, totally mad’. Becky gave her friend a friendly slap on the arm.
‘I’m just explaining to the lady’, then turned to me.
‘She’s so cruel, but you will come wont you? It’s only down the highway about 10 miles, turn left at Yuma Union, across at Deer Valley and you can’t miss it ‘Desert View High School’ home of the ugliest boy’s in Tucson’.
They laughed again, then Joyce fished out a pink handout sheet from her little-back-pack.
‘Don’t listen to her and her crazy directions’ smiled Joyce, ‘you with probably end up in New Mexico, this will get you there. Friday night 8pm, we start late, it’s cooler then. Expect a floodlight game, with seating behind the home team, oh, best to bring a sponge pillow as those seats can be tough on the back-side’.
I pushed the leaflet into one of the bags, picked them up and said ‘goodbye and good luck’.
‘Thank you Mam’ they chorused.
After finding the car in the huge car park, I put the shopping on the back seat and felt a tap on my arm, looking up, there they were; the terrible two.
‘You forgot your bag mam’ Joyce stood holding the salad bag, Becky standing beside her, it looked like they would fall over unless they were standing together.
‘Thank you girls, that’s very kind of you’ I said with a note of finality. Having put the bag in and fastened my seat belt, they still stood there watching.
‘You will come won’t you’? Said Becky anxiously, we will look out for you, Mom and Dad are cooking for the team afterwards just Hot-dogs and stuff, you can sit in the ‘Friends’ stand with them I will tell them your coming’ she said nodding her head.
‘She will tell them’ said Joyce nodding in unison, ‘if she says she will do something she will-swear to God’
I wanted to say something, but could only manage to mumble ‘I will do my very best’.
I pulled out of the car park dabbing my eyes, I couldn’t comprehend why I was so emotional, but pulled myself together when I found I was heading on the wrong direction towards the highway. The sun was beginning to go down behind the mountains, and although I wanted to get back home something in Arizona was tugging at my sleeve.
Smashed face and forgiveness
I found a way to avoid driving through the mass of housing between the highway and the mountain road that consisted part of Grasshopper Drive. It took a little longer due to the traffic lights that evidently prevent drivers from using it as a rat-run, so that all that remained was a trickle of traffic. The mountain roads curved a soft serpentine rather than the notorious hair-pin bends of mountain roads in Spain and France. The mountains now dark blue/black now, with what looked like a raging forest fire behind them as the sun-light disappeared. It gave me time to look at the sunset and feel the loneliness and melancholy such open spaces induce in me. It seemed to me there was everything you could ever want and more in America, whether it was the wide-open spaces or the supposed lack of class structure, yet something was missing. It was the something that created that great big empty hole inside some people. It could be that in England, we are so accepting of our social positioning that we find a perverse comfort within that structure. Everything in England has been thought of, tried before, so we have two millennium of experience to go on. We take great consolation and cosiness in months of grey overcast skies, then, gladdened by an hour of warm sun once every few months. We somehow expect disappointment, yet in the States the impression is given of endless possibility, ‘The American Dream’ meaning; anyone can achieve fame and success, you just have to watch a bit more TV. That is true for a very tiny number, but the fall out from failure creates a graving, it must be difficult to be contented. I drove on, lost in the twilight at that terrible time of day, when it’s best to keep busy rather than be pulled under by the dusk. Such were the feeling of melancholy, I was glad to see the house as I pulled up in the dark.
A light was on in the house so I unpacked the shopping from the car and walked down the side passage, the smell of the rubbish bags stacked outside making me hurry to the door. The evenings could cool down out here, but the heat of the day began to cook the contents of the black sacks filling the passing nostrils with a dreadful stench. I knocked once and turned the handle lifting the bags as I stepped into the house. With the door open behind me I dropped the shopping on the floor. Lesley who had been cleaning out the kitchen cupboards turned to look at me; wet washcloth in hand, cleaning products stood around her.
‘You came back’ she smiled the warmest smile; ‘I was so frightened you would go and just leave me’.
She looked brighter; the work had given her both a purpose and a glow in her chubby cheeks. The first blow impacted hard on her left temple, I could feel the flabby flesh smack against the side of her skull, as the inside of my clenched fist, knocked her head to one side. She wobbled, the shock still on her face, I took advantage of this by thumping her full on the side of the face, I hit the right cheek and the fist slid along the mouth. She tumbled back; as she did, I pushed her so she fell to the clean floor. Once again I was at her; pounding her face as a range of strange but vivid images raced through my mind; Emma’s hands, Lesley’s smile at the trial, telling Emma her hands had been removed, breaking up with Kenneth, her death, the funeral, the empty gaping hole inside me. All this pumped through my head, as I hit her again and again until I could hit no more;
’You killed her, you fucking zombie; you killed my gorgeous girl. Not like you, you killing drunk, you killing fucking cunt’.
Knelling on the floor, crouched with head in hands sobbing, deep subterranean pounding that convulsed me. I was rocking myself, or an imaginary baby I couldn’t tell which, while I cried. I kept whispering
&nbs
p; ‘Never see her again, never…’
How long I lay like that I have no idea, but my legs and knees where aching badly, I rolled onto my side, sitting with my back against on the kitchen units, feet outstretched in front of me. My breathing began to return to normal and with it, the pains in my hands revealed themselves. Both wrists were extremely painful; I found it hard to unfurl my fists, my fingers covered in blood. Beside me the large bloody mess lying beside me, I didn’t care if it never moved again. I tried to flatten my hand on the floor but found it too painful. I kept it on the cool tiled floor and felt a hand rest on mine. I couldn’t look for some time but when I did, the shock gave me a start. Her face was a bloody shambles, a heavily swollen confusion of flesh. Her eyes were punched closed, her ears bleeding. She squeezed my hand and I let her.
Standing was difficult, I ached everywhere, my nose was running and eyes stung from the saline weep. I edged up, straightening my back, then looked down at her. Flat out, motionless, face like a large helping of red jelly. The clean nightdress she had put on now covered in blood and rucked up, exposing her underwear and large legs; red sores between her thighs from friction burn. I made it to the downstairs bathroom. Running the water over my hands made them even more painful. The woman in the mirror was a horror etching from an earlier age that washing helped to soften like a worn out plate. There was a towel on the side by the basin that I held under the running warm tap. Having wrung out the towel, I knelt beside her, gently dabbing her face. Washing the blood away disclosed the bruising already taking place. I cleaned the eyes the best I could so she could open them a little; just the narrowest of split was all she could manage, yet even then it had that kind look, the one from the photos the tabloids used, the ones our charity used; the look of a sad angel, it disarmed me.
The blood had stopped running from her ear, after I cleaned it, then wrung out the bloody towel and started again; softening the Marked hair caked in brown blood. One of her wrists had started to bleed again through the bandages so I wrapped a tea towel round it.
‘Can you sit up’ I asked, seeing a movement from her. Getting behind her with my arms under hers, I tried to sit her up, she put her good hand down and we heaved together until she sat up, starting the blood to gush from her nose. She managed to shuffle so she could sit with her back to the units as I had done, as I mopped up the nose bleed and the blood now seeping from her mouth. Once she had spat out the thick clots she whispered ‘thank you, thank you so much’.
Some hours later, after helping her up and shuffling her down the hall, she sat on the sofa in the front-room of the house, a bag of ice-cubes wrapped in a plastic shopping bag held against her face. I had changed her into a clean nightdress. Washed now, I sat on the chair beside her looking out at the sky, turning light blue above the silence of the houses across the street. We sat in silence witnessing a new dawn in Grasshopper Drive, then drifted off to sleep.
After the fight
We had woken the next morning following the ‘fight’ to a calm feeling. Neither of us said anything about my beating her up, I did not feel any guilt at all which surprised me, I felt it was justified and over. Early that morning Lesley began to vomit, so I cleaned her up and made her up a bed on the sofa in the front room. We spoke about her medication and what she should and shouldn’t be taking. She had been on so many antidepressants that we decided that it was best to carry on taking the proscribed amount and look towards weaning herself off them over time.
Around 11am she became twitchy and edgy. She began to look around for something, something to take I suppose. While she sweated I held her hands.
‘Would you want a small drink’? I asked, thinking that we could wean her off the alcohol as with the drugs.
‘No’ she said resolutely, ‘I have had my last drink, no more, I’ve had enough’.
I made her coffee and some toast, (which both came up later) while in the kitchen I washed and massaged my hands, as they were badly bruised and swollen, and felt painful. I settled her for a while then took a shower hoping wash off the night before then dried myself with a smelly towel.
‘This is what mid-morning looks like’ croaked Lesley.
I have been in this house for over a year and this is the first time I have been sober, it’s very quiet’ she added as if seeing the house for the first time.
‘I want to wash’ she said rather loudly not realising her hearing in her left ear had gone. I got up from the chair
‘Come on lets get you sorted out’. She puffed up the stairs and went into the bathroom filling the room. She started to brush her teeth as I turned on the shower in the cubicle. I noticed she was spiting out blood when she rinsed her mouth.
‘Don’t look at me please’ she said, as she took off the bloodstained dress.
‘Come on’ I said, trying to be brave. As much as we tried she could not fit her into the shower. She did actually manage to squeeze in to the cubicle but it was difficult to move, let alone wash herself, so we had to almost rock her out again, making the whole unit move and tremble until she popped free.
Standing in the bath I hosed her down. We decided it would be best if she knelt down while | washed her hair because we both knew she would get stuck in the tub if sat in it. The large back, and sack-like belly hanging down in front aged her, she must have only been in her early thirties yet she could have passed for sixty. The pretty bobbed, highlighted hair of the court photographs had gone; now grown out into long mousy rat-tails, her scalp impacted with scurf and dandruff. I towel dried her hair and wrapped it round her head into a turban. I held out the tee shirts I had bought;
‘Which one’? She pointed to the yellow one saying
‘This one looks pretty’, then started to cry, crying heavily while holding the tee-shirt to her chest. I felt like holding her yet thought it would be like those abusive husband’s promising their beaten wives, they would never do it again. I did not hold her; It’s not that I was pleased, more relieved I had hit her. I was not a violent person, but rightly or wrongly, this felt right to me. I would not be a hypocrite and say I was sorry- I wasn’t.
‘Come on’ I said, ‘lets get you dressed, have you a bra’? ‘No’ not for this size, I guess I have let myself go’.
She said this without any hint of sarcasm at the under-statement, almost as if it had only just dawned on her, how big she was and the hole she had dug herself into.
‘Well we must get you one or they will be touching the floor’ I smiled.
Instinctively she touched my hand for a split second, then took it away, both of us embarrassed at the gesture, making her fuss with the tee-shirt
‘It’s beautiful, really beautiful’ she gushed holding the shirt up to look at it. We both realised pretty quick that she would not be able to wear it as she had nothing else to wear below it, so she put on the new nightshirt and the underwear promising her to buy some clothes as she got dressed.
I made a chicken salad early afternoon, which Lesley managed to keep down and gave her plenty of fluids and coffee and some chocolate as her cravings began to overwhelm her about five in the afternoon. She dozed a little early evening, while I tidied up and dusted the front room. It was already getting dark when Lesley awoke at 7.30. I had found a company to take rubbish away and called them on the phone, having found the name in the book. The bags at the side of the house were beginning to smell dreadful and were becoming a health hazard. The rubbish removal company said they could pick up the ‘trash’ tomorrow and set a fair price. Her hands were trembling and seemed as if she had a taste in her mouth she couldn’t get rid of.
‘I didn’t mean to kill her’ said Lesley looking vacantly out the window to the darkness.
‘I know I did but I didn’t want to, or mean to do it.
‘It was inevitable that you would kill someone if you drank that amount of alcohol and drove round London, I don’t think you have any excuses, please don’t make yourself out to be the victim’.
All my self-c
omposure had vanished, I felt my blood pressure rising as I spoke.
‘I am sorry, that’s all I meant,’ she said through her podgy lips, then sat silent. I thought of driving back to the hotel, having a nice shower and meal in the little restaurant. Watch some mindless TV and sleep well, but Lesley started to vomit again. I brought a bowl in and she filled it gagging, she began to shake, her body quivering as she clutched onto the sofa arms.
‘Why should I be doing the dirty work, where is everyone I thought?’ But that was the thing, she had no one. She had almost died, she has heart complications, hypertension and God knows what else, any of these could kill her, if she or me didn’t do it first. In fact it looked like the previous two or so years had been one long suicide. Where were her family? The famous link-worker, a doctor, friends, someone just to see how she was, and how the hell was it so easy for me to find her? I cleaned her up once more and realised I would be there all night.
‘Where is everyone? Doesn’t anyone come to see you, can you ask your family for help’? I was becoming annoyed, It felt that if I hadn’t been there, she would have been back on the phone pushing up the share price of the American wine product.
‘Your family live in this country where are they?’ I asked.
She sat up the best she could, and held onto a towel, rolling it into a ball and holding it close to her for some comfort.
‘Mom, well Mom, lets see now…’. It seemed she was trying to remember a long lost friend or relative, as if she was recalling a bit-player in the screenplay of her life.
‘Mom, well, she was very kind, came over to see me for the court-case, you may have seen her. She stayed on to visit me in Holloway and paid for an attorney to help repatriate me back to the states. This was not going to happen but…I had to be moved due to the violence. I didn’t care, but I was taken out anyway. I served a three months term in a small federal prison near home in Kansas, and hoped to return close to Moms, but Dad got sick.’
She trailed off, her shakes had stopped and she sat quiet and still, lost in Kansas I supposed.
‘What was wrong with Dad’? I asked. Pulling herself back, Lesley continued.
‘After my wrongdoing, Dad had gone down hill. We lived in a small community and Dad was the local doctor, everyone new him and in the early days he had delivered many babies and they still came to see him, sometimes coming back with their own children. He was well respected and everyone was pleased when I became a nurse, ‘just like your pappy’ people would say. Anyway, not long after my wrong-doing, he had a stroke, although Mom didn’t say it out-right, it was implied and I guess they were right, that the court case and my going to prison hurt him deeply. What nearly killed him was that I knocked down a young girl while I was drunk, being a nurse didn’t help Markers, and I was a disgrace to the family and community. Dad had to give up work, the thing he loved and was loved for. He had lost everything his speech, mobility and worst of all he couldn’t think straight, and knew it. I left the prison and moved near Mom but things didn’t work out. People in the town turned against me, I had tainted the community, a drunk driver, who had almost killed the loved and respected Doctor in the town. Late at night things would be thrown through the windows: bricks, beer-cans anything. Bad words would be painted on the fence and walls, all justified, but it hurt mom, and of course dad even more. My husband Howard had been paying for me to live and I was moved with the courts help, across the state line to Missouri. So what I am trying to say is, that it is not Moms fault that I am alone, it’s mine’.
‘What about your brother, the one I saw in court’ I asked.
I had known little about her, only what was reported in the papers and going by my experience you could only believe half of that. I had always thought there had been full support from the family, one of the many reasons I had hated her so much. She appeared to have everything, even after all she had done.
‘Oh Michael, this curse I had brought on the family affected hi as well. He was a pilot in the US army, married to Susan who was one of my best friends. Because of the stress with the court-case and imprisonment of his sister, plus dad being sick, Michael began to lose it. It, being his nerve for flying, and soon after he was grounded. He suffered the jibes from the other men in the troop, Susan started to see someone else and Michael found them in bed together.
Susan became pregnant and that was the end of it. Michael had to leave the Army and now works in security in New York State. Mom stopped contacting me when I moved first time and I changed my name’.
‘Is Dad still alive now’? I asked genuinely interested.
‘Sure, but not well at all, he is nursed at home by Mom, he has very bad dementia, and is bed-bound really. Mom told me he just seemed to give up’.
‘Does your husband still keep in contact’? I asked
‘Oh Howard has been very good through all this, and has paid for the moves and the houses. We of course divorced, and he is living just outside Oxford.’
I wanted to know more but she was shaking again. It was pitch black outside and it felt good to see some lights on in the houses across the street. There wasn’t anything to do other than just sit and wait to go to bed. I had seen a television in the kitchen but it had been smashed and pushed onto the floor, God knows what she did all day I thought, but I knew what she did, drink eat, and mess herself. I tidied the kitchen things and showered; when I came down I prepared her medicine. We thought it best she should continue to take a sleeping pill as well as all the others. I covered her up on the sofa keeping the ice-cube bag on her face as I thought it might help to reduce the bruising during the night, then started for the stairs
‘You won’t go will you? don’t go please’ she said as I stepped up,
‘No, not yet, goodnight’ then went to bed.
Day two
I changed the sheets starting in the front bedroom, this was by far the sunniest in the house. The room had been over-decorated for my taste; flora wallpaper, gaudy picture and dado rail, a textured ceiling with the windows heavily draped, blocking the sunrise and morning light. I rectified this by pulling the heavy curtains back off the window to let the sun through. It was felt gratifying as I threw the dirty nylon bed sheet onto the floor ready for the wash, then making the bed with the wonderful new cotton sheets I bought in the mall. Lifting the double sheet high above my head and watching it billow slowly down concealing the taint of yesterday. Is there anything more satisfying than having the window open letting in the warm fresh air and the promise of new sheets later that night?
The pictures on the walls were those of rented accommodation. They showed an overly pretty cottage garden, soft pastel colours reducing the garden to a vulgar hazy blur. The bed I had slept in the bed the night before smelt of BO, drink and sick. The sheets were greasy and damp. It was now Wednesday morning, and looking out at the houses across the road gave me the impression of a film set. One of those fake cowboy main-street sets of a picture of houses propped up at the back with a stick. No one appeared to go in or out of the houses. I had been up in the front bedroom from early this morning and no one went to work. The street all so clean and tidy, no dogs nor their mess, no postmen or dustbin men blocking the street with the cart.
I felt I could clean all day as I felt so well. I had not been a ‘sickly’ child but had to see the doctor every so often due to my asthma. I have had to carry an inhaler since they first came out years ago, yet hardly using it during the summer.
Since I had been in Arizona I hadn’t used the inhaler at all, except when I landed as a Marker of routine. I’m not sure what the feeling was, it’s like there was less gravity there, therefore I felt less sluggish and didn’t have the feeling of wearing neither concrete shoes, nor having asbestos in my chest. My energy levels were up, but not in some manic way in response to my stresses here, but a nice lift in spirit and increased stamina. My light slacks I packed for the trip were beginning to slip down as I constantly yanked them up as I worked.
I loo
ked back at the cleaned bedroom, window open, consenting the warm breeze to flow around the room. The bathroom was next-door; now clean and fresh, well stocked up with toiletries and smelling, as it should with that mixture of shower/bath gel, shampoo and conditioner. Everything was bright, light, and fresh with fluffy tubby lemon coloured towels. I looked in the spare bedroom, where there where boxes of stuff there containing God knows what, but I did see a little children’s chairs and some toys.
‘The coffee is on’ called Lesley as I waddle down the stairs carrying the washing.
‘OK won’t be long’ I call pushing the bedclothes in the machine, then we sit down to coffee. Her face is of course heavily bruised; the nose is at a strange angle but unbroken.
‘My goal today is to clean all the back windows and clean out the kitchen draws and reorganise then into a more ergonomic way’
She says this with a smile showing through her fat swollen lips. I pore her some more coffee
‘Well, don’t over do it, your wrists may open’.
‘Oh I enjoy it, no really I do. I used to enjoy cleaning windows when I was small. I used to clean them with my Dad, he would do the outside and I the in. he would make funny faces…’ I smiled and thought about lunch;
‘Do you think you could stomach chicken salad again?’ it’s all we have until I go to the shops’.
She gave me that look again; ‘when are you going out? You will leave something here, just so I know…’
‘Yes’ I said watching her grip the coffee mug.
‘I will leave the bag, but you know what I said?’
‘Sure OK’ she sighed relaxing back into her chair’.
The agreement was I would stay until the end of the week, then I would arrange for her Key-worker to call in. I didn’t really care what she thought, but Lesley said that she would say she got drunk and was beaten up outside the house. Becky and Joyce had got me thinking; I was in two minds whether to go to the Softball match. It was strange, I could not think of a reason not to go.
Leaving Lesley while I went to the shops would be a risk; food and drink would be the harder to resist. She told me she would order at least two bottles of wine each day from the store and somehow they would empty throughout the day and night. She would take her first drink as soon as she would wake up, wherever she had past out the night before. While cleaning up in the kitchen I found some wine bottles squired away around the house. Hidden behind curtains, under chairs, quite who she was hiding them from I couldn’t imagine as no one seemed to come here, perhaps herself. During our coffee break I asked Lesley if she wanted me to dispose of the drink.
‘I do’ she answered then added; ‘it dulled the thoughts away’.
‘Well then’ I snapped, ‘you will have to think about it everyday as I do, won’t you?’ She seemed slapped.
‘After lunch I will change your bed then I will go to the shops, I would like to finish upstairs then I will know it’s done. If you can think of anything you will need just let me know so your will be stocked up when I go.’
I had pored all the wine down the sink and created a huge collection of cheap wine bottles that I hoped to dispose of at some form of bottle bank. The Mattress on Lesley’s bed really needed burning but I turned it over to hid the larger stains. I could change the Mattrress with the one in the front room or she could move in there, the smell alone could choke you.
Taking the prescriptions that the hospital had given Lesley and promising to buy her a dress of some sort I drove back to Wal-mart. Of course the girls were not collecting for softball that day. I knew that they wouldn’t, but felt flat not to see them. The shop was busy, I wanted to get everything so I did not have to go back again, I’d had enough of shopping. I found a couple of dresses for Lesley, one orange and the other black. One extreme to the other I thought as a friendly voice called out to me.
‘Can’t leave us alone can you?’ Laughed a young man who had helped me with the packing last time I came.
‘You keeping well mam?’ he smiled ‘Yes very well thank you’
‘Ok, have a nice day’. I did like it out there, I knew that people joked about the Americans saying things like that, but it felt nice when you are far from home, and lets face it he didn’t have to say it. He wasn’t going to get a rise or anything, but it did make me buy more, as I had a little spring in my step. I felt anew, that something had passed and I could move on. I still held on to a lot of things, things that I was freighted to let go of; Emma’s smiling face, her kindness, yet I felt guilty of wanting to let the bad go. The memory of telling her about her hands, her death, I carried these thoughts with me all the time. I felt that I was betraying her by moving on; I believed I would, and should, feel bad forever, yet today, some dark cloud had lifted. Now I had to decide if I could forgive Lesley, and if I did, would that mean I had sold Emma short? I only knew that this felt right, I could kick myself for being stupid when I got home.
I bought some clothes for myself as well, just some cheap things to keep me going, underwear, tops and so forth. The cart was beginning to fill; food clothes newspapers and a small radio. I paid for the goods then hesitated by the door as I walked out hoping inside me that they would be there. It worried me that I was looking for an Emma substitute, but reasoned that if I was aware of this, it was not that serious. Therefore I would not start kidnapping teenage girls at gunpoint, and make them paint in the garage.
Lesley was pleased with the dresses, holding them up in the air like a little girl going to a party;
‘I will keep the black one for best’ she said to herself as she went upstairs to change, unable to wait any longer.
‘Where will you go when you leave, will you go back home, do you still live near London’? She asked all these questions sitting at the kitchen table, the orange dress giving the wall a hazy sunny tint.
‘I was going to fly out to Emma’s agent out in Texas, did you know her art had taken off, selling most out here you know, adverts and the like, she had a good future, there was a job waiting for her but…’I felt my stomach churning,
‘This is what it is all about; the waste of it all, that’s why I hit you, she had so much to give, her whole life in front of her, and what a life she would have had’.
The tears came easy now, I sat looking away from her, thankful that Lesley stayed silent. ‘Can you understand that’? I asked spluttered.
‘I understand and think of nothing else’. She answered simply.
‘Anyway, I will go home I need to sort some things out back there’.
I didn’t want to go into Rick, but work and everything else that I had been putting off until I met this woman was still there.
Everything had been put on hold until this meeting, now it all looked so different, not as I had expected it to be at all. Not better, not worse, but further on and freer, yet I was tired and wanted to go home. I was not in the right frame of mind to sort out Emma’s contract I would contact De-Hems and put off the meeting. Sorting this out was much more important right now.
‘And what will you do when I have gone’
I asked pulling myself together and drying my eyes. She looked at me sheepishly, so I added; ‘well after you have killed yourself that is?’
She laughed, making me smile.
‘With your blessing I would like to do something useful. I will never be able to set foot in any hospital again, well not to work anyway. I would love to nurse again but that will never happen with what I have done. Right now, my goal is to give up the drink, then wean myself off the drugs and the food. I want to help mom, help Michael, tell them I’m sorry, show them I am sorry, but I feel that by staying away is the best thing I can do for them at the moment. I want to help you, I would like to earn your forgiveness for my wrongdoing’.
Around 6.30 in the evening, we sat in the shadow of the front of the house, as it was cooler and comfortable. We sat watching the neighbours not come home from work
‘Tell me who you are’ I asked her.
‘Sure’ she said, ‘but there’s not much to tell’ she smiled; the lips still discoloured but less swollen.
‘I will Helen, but can I ask you something’? Go on then’ I said
‘Can I make you dinner first? Please, I would be honoured to make dinner for you, just something simple like pasta, please’.
It was almost a plea. ‘Are you well enough’? I asked her.
‘It would make me well’
She giggled, taking my hand spontaneously, then dropping it when she realised she had over stepped the mark. I could see then, even through the bruised face, the massive body and addiction, why her husband had loved her. Why the judge had felt sorry for her; that innocence, the child-like enthusiasm caught hold of you.
‘Alright just tonight’ I answered unable to look at her. As if twelve stone lighter, she sprang from the chair waddling towards the kitchen calling; is 7.30 too early’?
‘No, it’s fine’ I called. ‘Ok take it easy’. I could here the pots and pans being organised, bowls and cutlery being set out. ‘Do you want some help’? I called.
‘No no no, this is my treat, please relax, I want to do this’.
It was drive-time on the radio, competitions and ‘phone ins’ littered the airways. It was fun to listen to the people phone into the country station and win a CD by some unknown Western singer. There were traffic reports and sports, of which I was pleased to hear them mention the softball results, I decided I would go to see Becky and Joyce there and then.
‘So what’ I thought, it would be nice to get out and see them again before I went home. At 7.15 the singing stopped and the kitchen went quiet. At 7.30 I was called into the kitchen where the smiling host wearing the black dress, invited me to sit down.
‘I couldn’t do the zipper right the way up but that’s another goal’ said Lesley pretending to write an invisible list on her hand. The table laid for two, candles flicked and the food smelted wholesome and comforting.
We spoke about her growing up in Kansas that seemed ostensibly, to be idyllic. The Father, the centre of a small community. Her mother, the paragon of voluntary work, a busy doctors wife who still had the time to bring up two beautiful children. The only blip to spoil the Norman Rockwell painting was Michael joining the Army.
‘There were hopes that he would follow his father into medicine, but Michael had loved flying and with a friend they enlisted’ enthused Lesley serving the pasta.
‘He saw action in the first Gulf war and was decorated’ she said proudly.
Apparently it was not seen as an act of rebellion on Michael’s behalf, just a disappointment he did not follow his father, so Lesley did the decent thing and became a nurse.
‘I trained in Texas but could fly home every month or so. Mom and dad would fly down to see me and we would all go out for wonderful meals. I met my first real boyfriend Reeves while training and that gave me some stability as a student. He lived just outside London like you, but on the other side in Plumstead. Reeves was a Feeding Pump rep, you know, making money and seeing the world at the same time. He would travel everywhere and I would miss him. When I graduated it was time to decide what I wanted to do with my training. There was talk of working with my father, even joining the Army at one point, as Michael made it out to be so wonderful, but I was smitten with Reeves and London was somewhere I always wanted to visit.
‘It was so funny, flying back from Texas to Kansas. The pilot, once we wee up in the sky did the talk of flying time and stuff, made an announcement;
‘We have been told we have a very cleaver young lady on board, as she has just graduated in her nursing finals. She is flying home to proud parents John and Anna, lets have a big hand for Lesley in seat 23 C’
By the look on Lesley’s face telling the story word for word, she was still up in the clouds lost in love and innocence with the promise of happiness, glowing in the pride of her parents.
‘London was a shock, cold, hard and difficult. The other nurses resented us from outside the UK, even though there was a staff shortage. I liked the work but the Whittington Hospital you know, is in a tough part of town, there were lots of violence towards the staff, and just about anyone else outside a pub at closing time. I lived in the nursing home for a while before sharing a flat near Archway; you know that high bridge that everyone jumps from? Well, we had people coming in from there, not quite dead, it was a tough job.
‘I shared with a couple of other nurses but found them to be trouble; always drinking, God listen to me now, I’ve probably drank more than them both in the last year, than they did in their whole lives. They liked to party hard, too hard for me; they thought me a bore for not doing it. It just wasn’t me. I moved back to the hospital for a while but it was just as bad there, I needed to do something. I had still been seeing Reeves all this time but he seemed to be travelling more and more. This got me down and with everything else that was going on I finished with him and London’.
She talked and talked, refilling my plate with pasta and poring me bottled water, she continued
‘As soon as I moved to Oxford I felt at home. I missed Reeves and wrote to him a few times but he didn’t write back. I found a flat-share with Christine, a young teacher who, like me, was contented to stay in. At weekends she would go home to her folks in Scotland, or help at the church. I am not a prude, but I liked it that way. We lived in the middle of town in a beautiful flat owned by Christine’s father. We could walk everywhere, no need for cars or anything. I helped at the church every so often but I mostly enjoyed the quiet and just being in the City. I made friends there and would go to some lovely dinner parties; at one of these I met Julian, tall, blond and handsome. He was now an junior Orthopaedic surgeon working at the Radcliff. He was charming and swept me off my feet. He pursued me, I couldn’t wait to tell mom and dad I was getting married to such a man’.
Lesley stopped there, stopped smiling and stared for a moment into the distance.
I broke the spell by saying I would wash up, telling her
‘You have done enough’ she looked up at me then smiled;
‘No, no you are my guest’ we pretended to argue then I said;
‘Ok, I will wash, you dry’ this appeased her, so we got on with it.
It didn’t take long as Lesley had kept everything tidy as she had cooked rather than piling up a mess that had to be cleaned up later. I liked this, I did the same, we were alike in many ways, but I couldn’t accept this. She was practical and pragmatic and organised, wonderful qualities in my book. I had always believed she got by on her looks, when she had them, but I now felt that she would have got on well, perhaps better without them. She insisted I sit down and have a coffee. It was dark now, with a lovely clear starry sky, I could see from the open door.
‘There’s a couple of chairs out back’ she said ‘we could sit there awhile-the breeze is nice’.
The view was beautiful; sky was dark blue, filled with stars. The hills and mountains black and mysterious toped with a soft hue that edged the night. There were two white plastic chairs and a wobbly matching table. It was dusty from lack of use.
‘I’ve’ never really been out here’ smiled Lesley carrying the tray of coffee, she was shaking.
‘Are you alright’? I asked, thinking it must be withdrawal. She forced a smile.
‘I’ll be fine’ she said ‘the coffee will help’.
‘Why didn’t you come out here it’s wonderful’ I said sweeping my arm at the distance.
‘I’m not so good at open spaces anymore, but if I sit with my back to the wall I will feel safe’, then added; ‘being with you makes me feel safe, thank you. That’s why I called out for food and things, I can’t go out to the store; I have lost my confidence about going out.
‘Don’t be so silly’ I barked a little too harshly. The old Helen popping her head through, then added softly;
‘You have the rest of your life, how are you going to get along when I go? You have been in hospital, at de
aths door, victim of a fight (it was the only way I could put it) and no one, but no one, has come to see you, not even your Key-worker. You can’t just sit in here there, look at what you are missing, come on lets walk through the garden, come on lets start today’.
Looking at me quizzically, she smiled.
‘Haven’t you guys heard of therapy?’ She laughed
‘In this country we would have had to undergone months of counselling to get over something like this’
I laughed too; ‘I’ve done my therapy bit, and it does help, but at the end of the day you have to decide for yourself if you want to get better, then think a different way. You have made your mind up to believe you can’t go out, but look at the progress that’s been made already. Did you think this time last week that you would have given up drinking, cleaned your house, chose a better life-style and walked out into the garden? No! I know it’s hard but you have to let go of the therapist’s hand at some stage, and once you have done it once, you know you can do it again. Look at that meal you made this evening, how nice you look in your new dress…’ I decided to stop.
She lightened the moment;
‘Did you ever drill soldiers in the army? It made me smile despite myself;
‘Well you had better stand to attention then’ I laughed.
She stood up; the plastic chair still wedged to her bottom which I pretended not to notice, then into the darkness went Laurel and Hardy.
The garden was around fifty foot wide and about 150 foot long. It was surrounded by a six foot high fence that looked in the darkness either to be wood panel painted white or some form of plastic made out to look like timber. Once off the patio we crunched the shingle that had been laid. It covered the whole of the garden, white stone chips that gave an appearance of snow. Lesley held my arm tight as we ventured out into the night. The light from the house and our eyes becoming adjusted to the night, allowed us to make out shooting green plants with sharp looking pointed leaves. Clumps of cactus surrounded by fountains of dark green fusing desert grass.
‘Well someone must have put all this here’ I said to Lesley.
‘I think the real estate company did all this’ she replied ‘or perhaps the previous people who rented out the house. Julian paid for all this and got it sorted out with Mom and Michael, the police and my key-worker, had a say as well. To be honest I didn’t know what was going on when I moved here. I was so out of it on medication I just went along with it all, and was dam pleased with whatever I got’.
There was a lovely breeze, the stars were out, and looking back at the house it appeared charming and homely. The kitchen lit up, looked inviting, even the little patio with the plastic chairs waited for our return.
‘I don’t like these plants, what do you think?’ She asked as we bumped into another island of cactus in the ocean of shingle.
‘No, I’m not keen either, it may look better in the daylight but it doesn’t feel right’ I said, not really sure why I didn’t like it, but it reminded me of something Emma had told me.
‘Do you know what my daughter would have to say about vague feelings?’ Saying this to Lesley felt natural yet strangely candid, it felt right taking to her this way, as if showing off Emma to a friend at any excuse, but she had killed her, yet it felt too late to go back now.
‘I know it sound callous, but I would love to hear what she said, would love to know more about her’.
‘Maybe in time’ I said, a little coldly.
‘Anyway, she would say these things about art. You know when people say ‘what is art?’ etc. You see I had to ask her because I haven’t a clue about any of it. ‘First’ she would say; ‘if you like it, its right, don’t worry what others say, go with your gut feelings, and don’t confuse art and craft. Just because something has been painted and framed it does not mean it is art. The audience makes the art not the picture. ‘Art’ she would say; ‘is difficult to describe but easy to recognise’. She was so witty that way, but it would drive me mad because I wasn’t sure what she meant. I think this place is a back yard rather than a garden’.
Lesley held my arm tighter now.
‘She was an art student wasn’t she?’ Lesley asked quietly.
‘A photographer, a very good one…’ I answered, this made me feel uncomfortable, so moved on;
‘What is it you don’t you like about the yard?’
‘Oh I don’t know, it seems very set and enclosed with this fence. Its like they have enclosed a piece of the desert and locked the rest out, oh I’m being silly aren’t I? She laughed, but began to tremble.
I had forgotten about her withdrawal. It annoyed me that it had returned, annoyed me that she had got like this and it was all taking so long, but even I realised it would take months even years to come off all the rubbish she was addicted to. I walked her in to the front sitting room and gave her a drink of water and her night time tablets. She was sweating, her armpits and back were soaked, I wondered perhaps a little callously, if it would stain the dress with a white mark.
After a while she regained her composure. I had sat with her while she shook on the chair holding a towel close to her then wiping her face as the sweat pored down her face. The tablets must have started working or it ended naturally I can’t be sure, as she squeezed my hand and said ‘thank you’ ’you just relax a while’ I replied.
‘It’s your last full day tomorrow, when do you return home?’ She said,
I could see she was worried, the anxiety showing on the tension in her hands strangling the wet towel.
‘Don’t start worrying about things like that, I will contact your key-worker and have her come over on Saturday after I leave. I will sort out some things then fly Monday, if possible, I know there is a flight and I would have thought I could get a seat this time of year, don’t worry. Her grip on the towel lessened,
‘I will miss you’ she said beginning to doze off.
She looked younger now, as she lay with her head back to one side drifting off to medication land. Perhaps some of the stain, fear, and the massive guilt she carried that mirrored her weight had now begun to dissolve. It worried me I had given away too much, been too forgiving, and open but I felt different now, felt lighter and free, like those days with Emma when she asked me for help. I had to let go, let her show me how to stop controlling the situation, as I had for so long. I suppose I didn’t want her to be able to show or teach me anything, maybe I thought it was weakness of my behalf. Then, when I let go, that vice-like white-knuckle grip, loosen off millimetre by millimetre. Yet to my surprise, nothing happened, the roof didn’t fall in, nor did Emma or anyone else take advantage of me in fact so much good emerged. I was some way off total forgiveness, but not far from lifting the black veil from my face. I felt deep inside me, a change, perhaps recovery, but I was tired, tired of it all, I needed to go home.
Lesley was snoring now, so I walked back to the garden picking up one of the plastic chairs, and walked down the shingle. I stood the chair against the fence at bottom of the garden and looked over the boundary fence. Once my eyes adjusted to the dark, the magical hidden view behind the fence was all mine. The desert there is not all sand, but a rich scrubby land filled with spiky, tough vegetation, spreading out for miles and miles into the dark distance. Silhouettes of strange cactus forms black in the darkness peppered the landscape. These mysterious characters cooling off from the heat packed daytime. The mountains far off revealing a few twinkling lights, it was glorious. The fence panel on which I leaned was like a dam holding in a small stagnant lake.
HIGH HITTERS, HIGH HITTERS YEAH YEAH YEAH
I woke next day feeling I was late for something. Usually I wake at each day at 6am, but to my horror it was 8. I could sleep better as my chest didn’t keep my awake as I shifted around so I could breath easier or sit up to relive the tightness. It was Friday and my last full day with Lesley and in this house. I needed to go home, I seemed to have been away so long but it was only three weeks and yet so much had ha
ppened. I knew I was due to visit De-Hems about Emma’s work but it was really only a polite social visit. I felt I could contact him and discuss any important issues with him on the phone, I was tired and didn’t really want to fly to Texas, well I did, but not now. Work and getting back to the flat was what I craved. I didn’t really have the answers to the questions I wanted, and in my worst moments of doubt, I still could not be sure of her, or the crash. The nagging worry in my head always was that she was manipulating me. Other times I felt that I should recognise what progress I had made move on. Even being able to sleep later made me feel positive, and ready to pack.
‘I’ve had some toast, would you like some’? She asked looking like an advert for battered wives charity.
I sat at the table in the kitchen, every day the house was slowly but surly returning to what it must have been like before hurricane Lesley blew in and trashed the place. She must have been cleaning this morning, as everything was tidy and smelling Wal-Mart ‘lemon-fresh’.
‘How are you today’? I asked both of us knowing that this was a euphemism for ‘do you feel like drinking’?
She knew what I was talking about.
‘Fine, it feels like something is missing when I woke up, and a little nauseous, but I can remember the night before, which is something I am not used to, it’s wonderful. I feel like doing so much, I really do…’
She stopped and looked at me.
‘It’s you; it’s all your help, thank you. I don’t want you to go, I know you must but I want you to stay’.
‘You will be fine’ I ventured, putting a cheerful note in my voice,
‘Your link-worker will come tomorrow, remind me to call her’.
‘Are you coming to that soft-ball match tonight’ I asked, ‘it would do you good’
‘No’ she said, pulling back,
‘I couldn’t go looking like this, no you go please, they seem nice kids, not like this’.
In just these few days I had known her, I had begun to look past the largeness, but obviously she was waking up to the shock of it. How she got from the perfection of natural beauty to this, I had no idea. Perhaps she didn’t either, but pounds of chocolate, endless fast food, and cases of wine don’t help a girl complexion
‘Is it your face?’ I asked, realising that it may be the discoloured bruised face that caused her to stay home.
‘No, it’s this’ she said patting her tummy and thighs.
‘The bruising, I’m not ashamed of, but look at me, where have I gone?’
‘It will go’ I said ‘you look better already, I will get you a new dress today if you like, tell me what you want food-wise, and if there is any clothes or things I can get for you’. She looked nervous at my going out, so I added;
‘We can have a nice lunch and relax this afternoon, I wont be long’.
‘Anything that is low in fat, and another dress please, that’s all, thank you’.
Everything at the store seemed to have some sort of dietary spin to it; low-carb, low fat, lowers blood pressure, added vitamins I bought another black dress for Lesley, as I didn’t want to go to the mall, in spite of the fact that it was only 25 miles away (everything you want in America feels like it is only 25 miles away). The shopping was beginning to feel like a chore and I wanted out. Once back home, (home?) I carried the shopping in and there on the table was a huge bouquet of flowers.
Becky had given me good simple directions and soon found the highway turn off and saw the signs for ‘Desert View High’. I was directed to the car park at the side of the tall Yellowstone faceless building. It was four stories high with concrete steps leading up to the front glass doors. A young girl came over to the car
‘Good evening mam, are you home or visitors?’
She was wearing a red nylon sports tee-shirt with ‘HIGH HITTER HIGH’ printed in large white letters.
‘Oh, home side’ I said then added
‘I’ve come to see Becky and Joyce do you know them?’ The girl laughed, ’park your car over there Mam those girls and ready and waitin’
The pitch was flood-lit with wire fencing all around it. Chairs had been placed around three sides of the square (diamond) two deep and were already filled with people shouting and holding teddy bears dressed with either red or yellow clothes. Behind the hitting area there was large covered stand with thirty rows of seats-mostly taken banking up into a covered terrace. It began to dawn on me that I had made a mistake in coming, I didn’t know these people, then reasoned that it was good to be out and I could go at half time-if there was one. As I looked for Becky and Joyce amongst the teams sitting on the benches either side of the hitting area, I felt someone pulling my arm.
‘Excuse me mam’
I turned and saw I woman in her forties, round metal glasses, brown hair cut into a Bob, dressed in ‘High Hitters Mom’ white tee-shirt’ she let go of my arm and smiled;
‘Are you a friend of Rebecca Nelson’? She saw the bewilderment on my face so asked; ‘Becky, that young girl over there waving like a church bell’
I looked over, Becky and Joyce waving with both arms, then Becky doing the thumbs up sign to the lady next to me.
‘Becky said I could come and watch tonight’
The woman gave a kind loving smile
‘You are very welcome; I am Rebecca’s mother, Brenda. She has told me all about you’
Quite what Becky or ‘Rebecca’ had said I wasn’t sure, but Brenda seemed kind enough, she led me around the pitch and up the steps in the stand.
‘We have saved you a special seat with us up here; you should have a good view. I suppose Rebecca told you it’s a semi-final match, we are playing San Manuel Phoenix Garrrd, a good team, bit rough and ready, but the girls have been training hard, oh this is my husband’.
We arrived at the seat after much excuse-me’s through a row of people high in the stand. A well-fed man in his mid-forties stood up and smiled a welcome to me holding out his hand
‘Very glad you could come, it means a lot to Becky, ignoring his wife’s scowl at the abbreviation.
‘This is my husband Stephen, and this is Helen’ said Brenda showing me to my seat between the couple.
‘Rebecca told us you were very encouraging and generous, I hope she didn’t annoy you, she is very keen…We are not to happy with the girls collecting from the store but it’s sort of a long tradition, been going five years now and coach thinks it gives them character’.
‘Not at all it was nothing really’ I smiled, ‘I was pleased to be asked.’
‘Used to raise money the old way’ said Stephen smiling ‘tumbleweed letters, you familiar with that?’
I had to admit I wasn’t
‘They don’t do it so much round these parts but over Western Tucson, it’s quite popular. Each kid or family would buy a tumbleweed and put a letter in and let the wind take it. We got letters back from Northern New Mexico. We kinda stopped it when people started cheating. One guy said that he got his letter back from southern New Mexico, but man, it would have had to cross a couple of rivers’ he shock his head laughing
‘We gave him a prize anyway for tenacity.’
‘You familiar with High-School softball?’
Asked Stephen, slight sweat-patches showing under his neatly pressed short-sleeved yellow checked shirt. He explained the basic rules and the game started, Manuel were batting first, they looked good. Even I could tell they were much more focused, better trained and practiced, as they whacked the ball around the pitch.
When there was a break in play, I looked around at the school, there seemed to be so much space. The school was in fact a large L shape with the football field filling the angle of the L, the softball pitch and car park over to the side of the building. The far off lights showed there was some housing in the distance but otherwise there was nothing else just the remote hills and the blue/black sky. I could see Joyce bowling, she had a determined look on her face, people were calling out; ‘pitch high girl, easy goes’ The
High-Hitters looked a year or two younger than their opposition and soon it was their turn in. After much shouting and running from her team-mates it was time for Becky to bat. Dressed in the red shirt and white leggings of the home team she did quite well. Stephen shouted at her when she hit the ball and started running ‘go girl, run’. I could see Brenda’s hands clutched tight, white-knuckle bone peaking, though she stayed glued to her seat. The High-Hitters were not doing well; they seemed to be batting well but getting stumped out when running to the posts. The home crowd became noisier, and when the last ‘Hitter’ was run out even Brenda stood up and shouted; ‘Dear Lord’. It was all over, Manuel were through, the Hitters out.
Stephen tried to retain some semblance of calm;
’Just not good enough, just didn’t have it’ he said shaking his well-groomed head as we filed down the isles. Brenda walked down the steps ashen faced and silent watching her daughter running towards her, Becky was crying. She held on to her mother sobbing on her shoulder, Joyce standing beside her friend hand on her shoulder.
‘I told her it wasn’t her fault, she played well’. But Becky could not be consoled. Stephen, Joyce and me, stood while Brenda patted her daughter’s back while she bawled. As expected, her eyes were that of a panda bear, all dignity and makeup smudged all over her face.
She turned to me; ‘I am so sorry’, then turned to her mother sobbing harder than ever. A little later we walked back towards the school building.
‘You will stay for a bite to eat won’t you’? Asked Brenda, you would be most welcome’.
She wore what was a unofficial uniform for most of the Moms there; white sleeveless cotton shirt with a turned up collar. Fitted scrubbed clean slightly faded jeans threaded with a thin leather brown belt. On her feet, glowing white sports socks and snowy white trainers. There was another version to this look; kaki shorts instead of the jeans that most of the larger Moms wore. Several of the women had highlighted hair, either swept into a pony-tail or held back with an decorated Alice- band. They looked smart though, the men well fed and relaxed with themselves.
‘Can I help you, I would like to help’.
I was born to help at school sports days, organising the men to take out the chairs, brewing up a large urn of tea. Biscuits on a plate (not too sugary we don’t want too many tantrums), orange squash in a large plastic jug. I knew how to do this, it was universal the world over; three cheers for the winning house and a clap for the helpers.
‘That would be most kind’ smiled Brenda knowing now I understood the way of things.
There was a large patio just outside the open French doors of the school building. The men were setting up some tables and chairs, and us women went into the building to bring out the food. Some moms had been busy cooking during the game, as the hotdogs and hamburgers were ready to eat.
‘She takes it all so seriously, it’s a shame they lost, it’s the first time they have gotten this far’ said Brenda unwrapping the cling-film from the bread rolls.
‘She’s a nice girl’ I ventured.
‘Yes, she’s a good girl’ she said giving me bowls of salad to take out.
The ‘Dads’ had put a large table at the side of the patio where we laid the salad, bread and drinks. After setting out the food we sat down at a table decorated with red ribbon. Stephen came to join us asking me how I came to be in this part of town.
‘Not many outsiders come out this far from Tucson’
I told them I was visiting a friend from England who had settled here, and I was due back in England soon. I asked what he did for a living.
‘Oh like a lot of people who came to this area I was involved in the Copper business, you know, the mining companies, mostly gone now though. My background was in engineering, oil and gas mostly. Then came here about 1980 as the money was good and seemed the place to be. As I said mostly all gone now, can get copper cheaper elsewhere these days’
He lent back in the chair and continued
‘Now though, I’m still in the copper trade but it’s conductor boards people want now, computers and the like, don’t need the big conducing rods so much as they used to. When the big mining stuff went, county gave some grants to people to start businesses and I was lucky enough to go into the circuit-board business. Sounds old fashioned now don’t it? With all the microchips and all, but you still need circuit boards- thank the Lord’ he adding laughing.
‘Do you mind me asking if you have a family Helen, you seem to get along with the girls just fine’? Asked Brenda in a most serious tone.
I was not sure if I wanted to share Emma with her, but they seemed so nice and friendly, furthermore the candour was catching.
‘I lost my daughter about six months ago’ then added ‘in a road traffic accident’ before she asked, as everyone seemed to.
‘Did you hear that Stephen’? Brenda called out a shade too loudly.
‘Helen lost her daughter’. Stephen turned round from waving to a friend across the patio.
‘I’m sorry to hear that Helen, that is a real tragedy’ they looked at each other for a moment.
‘May God bless you and your loss’ Whispered Brenda patting my hand. They looked at each other again, then Stephen nodded to his wife.
‘We lost our son Patrick, three years this fall. He had a congenital heart condition since birth. There was talk of a transplant but there were other complications and it was never done, considered too dangerous by the doctors. He was born with the aliment and I think that Rebecca has had a tough time of it, my long trips away at the hospital and all. We try to provide her with as much quality time as we can, not that we spoil her but…’
Brenda’s voice trailed off. I could see she was becoming tearful. Stephen stepped in; ‘He was a great kid though, tough as nails and loved life’.
Stephen laughed; ‘He may have been small for his age but he could rough it like any other ten year old’. Brenda recovered a little,
‘The church has helped us as a family and our minister Reverent Seger saw us through a time when we needed him and the Lord most’.
We sat in silence for a while, all of us able to think what to say, deadlocked in death. Stephen to the rescue; ‘I have a picture’
From the wallet she showed me a thin fail looking boy wearing a basketball shirt that only served to emphasise his emaciated body. He had dark curly untidy hair, perhaps I thought, like his mothers’ before she blow-dried it. Stephen looked like Becky; fair skinned and ready to smile yet sensitive with it.
‘How old was you daughter Helen’? asked Brenda in a way that looked patronising in it’s sincerity, but she was serious. ’20 when she was knocked down and 21 when she died. She was in hospital for a year then she just died, her heart gave out’.
They asked some more about Emma; what she was like, her interests and education her photography, the agency interest in her French photos.
‘She sounds like a delightful young lady, Rebecca likes art she very creative, isn’t she Steve’?
‘Oh very artistic, very cleaver’ replied Steve glowing in pride.
The girls came over to the table, it seemed that Becky had gotten over the defeat, as she was laughing with Joyce.
‘Can Joyce stay for a sleep-over’? Said Becky, fluttering her eyes at Daddy.
‘If your homework has been done young lady’ said Brenda in a semi mock warning.
‘I can do it Sunday’ then turning to Stephen ‘can’t I Daddy?’
He looked embarrassed, finally saying ‘OK, if your mother says so’
Brenda nodded curtly at her daughter, it was settled.
‘How’s your mother Joyce?’ asked Stephen kindly, he had a nice way about him, and Joyce lit up when she spoke to him.
‘Working hard, but OK really, we going to see aunt Rita next weekend, you know down in Vine, Rita been poorly’.
She turned to me politely asking ’Did you enjoy the game’?
‘Very much so, I think you were good enough to be in the final,
and I think you have the potential of a winning team’
‘Hear that Becky? Lady said we can do it next time, so it’s Ok now, you hear?’
Becky nodded, ‘I just get upset when I lose, that’s all, nobody likes to lose, do they Dad’?
‘Not you honey’ laughed the dotting Dad.
The conversation turned to England, with Stephen telling he had worked there for a few weeks when North Sea Oil was running, laughing how cold Scotland was. Becky asked about Harry Potter and some pop groups I had never heard of making me felt very old. The girls thanked me for coming and for the donation and they were gone.
‘We let her get away with more than we perhaps should’ said Brenda with a slight twitch. ‘When Patrick passed away we focused our love on Becky and maybe she’s a little precocious.
‘Joyce seems a nice girl’ I said as the conversation was getting a little maudlin.
‘Joyce has been a great friend to Rebecca’ said Brenda cheering up.
‘She has had a tough time. Her mother raised her by herself when her husband went off with another woman. She has held down a steady job and cared for Joyce and her elder sister Joan very well. She loves the Lord and is a decent Christian woman’.
‘She keeps Becky’s feet on the ground’ laughed Stephen.
‘When Patrick passed away, we wanted to do something in his memory, some college trust, and thought that we could help Joyce but her mother would have none of it, she thanked us kindly but said that God would provide and so far he has, she’s a wonderful woman’.
‘Steve still puts Patrick’s college fund away each month as well as money to the heart charity’
‘Brenda’ scolded Stephen, embarrassed at his wife’s indiscretion.
‘Well it’s true, it’s a good thing, he donated some seats to the stand here, we will find someone who needs it when the times right’.
Stephen laughed; ‘I’m no angel, it’s all tax free, we have got Becky sorted out, Lord only knows what she will do at college’.
Time was getting on so I made some getting ready to go body-language. Some of their friends stopped by to say ‘Hi and goodbye’ and Brenda introduced us. They all seemed like nice people, holding sports bags while their daughters giggled.
It was cooling down, I had had a lovely time, a little uncomfortable about talking so openly about money, but that’s how it was and they seemed fine about it. It was the same when people started talking about God or ‘The Lord’ as they called him. Spoke so freely as if he was the bank manager or a relative. I always thought when people spoke like that, I would be handed a booklet and asked my views on heaven, but there it was different. They seemed to have a bond, something that didn’t make them break up. Perhaps it was Becky or ‘The Lord’ maybe both, who could tell, but they were working things out, had a balance to the situation and making a jolly good go of it. We exchanged addresses, they were nice people, I promised that I would visit them when I came back. People were tiding up the patio and the lights had been turned off over the stadium, Brenda took in some plates. Stephen stopped me.
‘You will come back now? I know Becky would love it, we have a spare room you can have-anytime now, you hear’?
‘Can I be open with you’? I heard myself saying.
‘Sure’ he said then laughed ‘I think so’.
‘Does your donation have to be to an American child? It’s just that, well I may know someone…’
He looked at me, wide smile on his face,
‘Well dear God’ he said as he looked to the sky, ‘you have sent us someone to help, thank you. Now you let me know all about this when you get back safe and sound, so we can discuss it Helen’ adding, ‘praise be’.
‘Will you give my love to the girls, I am very pleased they invited me here, it was wonderful to meet you both’ I said walking towards the car.
‘Likewise I’m sure’ said Brenda, meaning it. ‘You helped my daughter to keep going, she was a little down at the store that evening, and you came along and made her day. She worries about her weight and things, but girls do’ she said with a sigh, then added ‘ I’m sorry Helen I am so thoughtless, talking of such things when you have lost your dear daughter’.
‘Don’t worry’ I said, ‘don’t worry you haven’t upset me, believe me, I’m fine with Emma, really’.
It was true, seeing the girls didn’t bring me down; in fact I felt closer to Emma and loved her more. Something in the way the couple spoke helped me, perhaps it was the loss of their son, I don’t know but I was Ok. They had lost their son and had moved on, yet hadn’t forgotten him at all, I was learning. I went to shake Brenda’s hand, but she took me off guard by pulling me close and hugging me;
‘Don’t forget us now, you take very good care and come back and see us’ She seemed genuinely upset. Stephen shook my hand, not really saying anything, just nodding. I became a little choked myself, mumbling; I will come back, I will, thank you’.
It was a lovely dark drive back to the house; I actually looked forward to going there. Perhaps it was the quiet tranquillity that soothed my mind, I could think clearer there. Lesley was asleep on the kitchen table; head resting on her arms. It was only 10.45 but she was fast asleep, filled no doubt with tablets. There were flowers on the table with a note ‘Thank you Helen’
This was not how things were planned, I was not meant to feel happy, the only sadness was that I was leaving, but I had to, had to get back to normality. I slept well and left early the next day, seen off by the killer of my daughter in floods of tears, waving from her front door in her orange dress. I would not return there for a year.
Spring
When I returned from America I received a letter from Rick. He said he had now bought the place in Spain he had been after and that things were working out. He had bought an old farmhouse out in the dry desert area of Southern Spain. He said that he had purchased an old building that he hoped to convert into holiday accommodation; two things worried me about this. One, he was going to be living in Spain and I would be living in the UK. Two, I I loved him. We spoke on the phone, he telling me his ideas and how he would love me to come out and stay with him. It rankled me a little that he expected me to go out to him and me, give up my life, but he was so enthusiastic about it, I tried my best to understand. He had planned all this for years before I came on the scene, but I didn’t want to move there, well not yet anyway. And there was one more thing; he wanted to rent the accommodation out to bikers.‘
What? gangs of bikers turning up each weekend?’ I asked him
‘Helen’ he said in his usual calm way, ‘not gangs, motorcycle clubs, people like you and me who want to travel together and have somewhere they can park, and fix their bikes while they stay at the houses. Come out when you can, please, I miss you, you’ll see it’s OK’
I wasn’t sure how I felt about Rick sometimes, I could go a couple of days without thinking of him then the phone would ring and I would be desperately disappointed it wasn’t him. The tattoo thing didn’t worry me any longer. I missed him, wanted to be with him but not like that; providing bed and breakfast to the Hells Angels. I promised to come out to see him at Christmas but that didn’t work out, as there was another woman-sort of.
Two days before I was due to fly out to see Rick he called me. I had enjoyed searching for presents for him the weeks before Christmas. I would leave work at 5 then take the tube to Oxford Street hunting for gifts for him. He was tall and I was unsure of his clothes size. I would have liked to have been able to buy him something personal, but I was unsure and didn’t want to buy the rude things that some of the girls at the office were buying for their boyfriends, nor the thick awful patterned pullovers that Kenneth would wear.
After weeks of looking I saw one of the office staff at the Christmas party wearing a watch I thought Rick would like. It was one of those pieces with a chunky stainless-steal band. The face had multiple winders on the side and little clock faces within clock faces on the front. What they were for, God o
nly knows, and would he really be likely to down dive in water to a depth of 500 meters? The price was a shock, so I thought and thought about it for a minute or two, then bought it, I tried it on, it felt wonderful. I planned to give it to him after our Christmas lunch at the Spanish house, perhaps making love in front of the huge open fire he had to light to keep off the worst of the Spanish winter winds, but no, he called me and said his wife would be coming out for Christmas.
‘She doesn’t have anywhere else to go, she is very down and is not coping with Saffron very well. She doesn’t have any real family anymore, and the ones she does have, are all as fed up as she is. She can sleep in the little house I have converted, so it will be just us.
‘Think about it Helen, I really want you to stay’ It sounded like he meant it, and at one point I said I would consider it, but when I did I said no.
‘Look’ I said ‘I would like to see you, you know that, God I haven’t seen you in months, it’s nothing against Juliet, I know she is ill, but Christmas, why then?’
Of course I realised why she wanted to be there, I felt mean. I didn’t want this to keep happening if we are to stay together, I was angry with him, but he was kind like that. He would let anyone stay with him and I could see Juliet living out in Spain forever. I was sad that I would be without him over Christmas. I would be spending the day with my sister and her family; my mother would be staying with them. I would go over for the day coming back to my flat alone for the first time. I didn’t mind this; I had somehow come to terms with being alone, plus I could think about Emma without other well meaning distractions. But I did not want the motorcycle gangs and the soap opera that waited for me in Spain. I wanted the quiet life and yet it seemed not to be, sharing Rick with Spain and Juliet was going to be difficult. After all the fuss, Juliet did not arrive at Rick’s place at Christmas, no reason why was forthcoming, I felt a fool.
During that busy few months of the new year I was happy and contented. Rick came back to England and stayed with me for a wonderful happy weekend. We would walk in the deep woods late of the day, stopping off for an early warming drink in one of the many country pubs dotted around the woodland. Rick would insist on cooking dinner and then that beautiful closeness. We did not talk about the motorbike business but he showed me the photographs of the progressing building work that looked stunning; the large red-roofed two-story farmhouse with flowers around the door. The farm buildings to the side which had a tall storage barn with traditional wooden window frames, and farmhouse doors that opened out onto a large patio square. It hurt to say goodbye to him on such unresolved feelings but I did love him and thought very seriously about moving out there with him. We rang each other every couple of days and agreed to meet just after Easter as he had a group (gang) of Dutch bikers staying at house during the holiday. The bikers had booked through the internet and had been attracted by Rick’s research and information on motorcycle tours, which they called ‘runs’. Furthermore the bikers liked to have somewhere to tinker with their machines, then store them safely with like-minded hosts.
He sounded tired, making beds and providing breakfast for his guests after staying up late talking bikes, and was beginning to tire him. At last my long weekend came and I flew to Malaga. Seeing Rick’s face as I came through arrivals gave my heart a little skip. He looked great with his laid-back nature, standing upright and sturdy in his tall frame. His hair was longer, which suited him, but I felt any longer would be a mid-life crisis, visions of a grey ponytail appeared.
It was up in the 20’s in Spain, giving a comfortable warm relaxing air, having left London with grey overcast skies and strong winds that made take-off from Gatwick just a little bit scary. We had tilted to one side on the way up then dropped what felt like miles, before gaining height, then levelled out above the clouds; upwards and onwards to the drinks- trolley.
I had studied Spanish, yet had never really visited the place. I had spent a few days here and there; Madrid and Barcelona, yet Brussels had came along and that was that. It wasn’t too surprising to see how industrial the country had become as I had witnessed the regeneration and subsidy funding for Southern Spain when I worked for the European Community. What did surprise and please me was that the country, at least in this part, remained appealing. I liked the dusty farms, surrounded by rows of olives and almonds and the mountains and hills, covered with those strange harsh-looking pom-pom bushes. It was nice to be away, I was going to make the most of it.
Although he was jovial enough, Rick seemed distracted, and after a bit of digging from me, he came out with it.
‘Juliet is back; I know I said she was away but she arrived the day before yesterday. She had taken Saffron out of school, drove to Portsmouth and got a ferry to Northern France and spent the last of her money on a train ticket, which got her as far as Southern France, she has been hitching for over a week. She is a bit high, her wild ideas for the place, paint the houses, each a different colour, bright colours she thinks will attract customers. She said she would like to set up an arts and therapy centre and invite some of the people she met in India over and put a ad in the Ham and High as she thinks it will hit the right demographic’.
He said all this with a tone of desperation; I sank lower and lower in my seat trying to recall if I noticed a flight back later that day.
‘I told her that she should really go back, but she said that she doesn’t have anyone and she is broke. I think she had stopped her medication that seems to be her pattern. Look, I said she could stay a few days and I would call her brother and get him to sort something out back home. I have managed to get her to take her tablets and things have levelled out a little. She is over in one of the guest rooms, she will not be anywhere near us’.
I sat in silence looking at the poly-tunnels and broken-down farmhouses dating back to Franco’s rural exodus, I wanted to flee with them.
‘Why is it Rick? Why does she keep coming back to you? Is it because you have not divorced her, I am finding it difficult to understand’
‘I will divorce her, but at the moment I don’t know what she will do, plus she’s got Saffron to care for, Got Knows what the child thinks’
‘She is using you Rick; I know that for sure, she is fully aware what’s going on, she is manipulating the situation. Does she want to help herself? , that child with her, is going to have some big problems later on if she keeps on like this.’
We drove on in silent dread, the roads becoming progressively uneven and dusty. The countryside either side of the road fanned out giving superb views of the surrounding countryside, I didn’t want to spoil our time together, but it felt as if Juliet had done this on purpose and it was unfair. I made an effort to lighten the mood.
‘How’s business? You must be a dab hand at the bed making now’
I said making him give that smile that always made me feel good.
‘Oh you should see my nurses corners’ he laughed, ‘but there’s a lot of work, too much really, there is just one couple at the moment from Belgium, doing the tour round to Portugal. I am already booked for the Paris Dakar Race at the end of the year. I never knew so many bikes followed the race, most trailing the riders right the way through to Africa.’
I should have been more interested, but Juliet had returned to my thoughts as we bumped along the track to the house. Once through the concrete gateposts I could see the house slightly hidden behind some tough looking trees that seemed they could survive drought, flood and Franco. The main house, now finished, looked even better in real life; the aged stone now re-pointed showing off the tasteful window frames and doors imbedded in the walls. To the side a long barn divided into three small giets, each with a front door and sweet wooden window. The far house contained Juliet, the one nearest to the house contained the Belgium’s.
In front of both of the buildings, Rick had set out tables and chairs for eating and relaxing. There was a warm breeze that felt kind against my face and bare arms. The inside of the main house had been
gutted to make it lighter, with a long living room painted with a soothing off white, the large French windows allowed in the wonderful sunny day. The new extension at the back gave wonderful views to the mountains. Everything was new, the kitchen, bathroom, furniture, and deep plump sofas in front of an open fire set the scene for an idea rural retreat. That is, apart from the other people there staying at the end house.
‘It’s beautiful Rick, I’m shocked how nice it is, not that I didn’t think it would be nice, wonderful really wonderful’.
He showed me around outside. Behind the large barn another smaller building of the same type although a little run-down, rested against the side of the main house.
‘This is what people, well the men at least come here for, not my cooking you may be surprised to hear’ he chuckled, switching on the light to a large motorcycle garage. The pristine space lined with giant red multi-draw toolboxes on wheels. Electric and compressed air lines hung down from the ceiling. Heavy looking electric hydraulic lifts took centre stage ready to ‘hike the bike’ up, making it easier to work on. The garage even a had small paint spraying booth for those crash repairs.
‘It’s cleaner than the house’ laughed Rick, running a finger along the spotless stainless-steel workbench.
‘I’m impressed’ I said holding him close to me. I could see his bike in the corner; just thinking of being on the back of it with him sent a flutter through me.
‘Bikers want to have somewhere they can do repairs or just keep the bike looking good and running well. They know that when they stop here they can get parts on next day delivery’ he said proudly.
I didn’t care about any of that.
‘Are you sleeping with her Rick? Just tell me, that’s all I want to know, no, there is something else, does she want you back?’
There, it was out, how it had stayed inside me for the last two hours I could only guess.
‘No, No and no, that’s if there was a third question, no way. She is a sick woman, she doesn’t have anyone to help her, even her brother is tired of it. I will sort it out. Don’t let this spoil things, come on I will show you ‘our’ room’
Yes it was wonderful; yes it had large windows that looked out over glorious rural views of lines of vineyards and olive trees, yes, it had a great big bed. The only fly in the ointment was the barking dogs. How could we be so far away from anyone and still hear those little yapping mutts kilometres away. Yet even they made us laugh, with Rick howling back as we lay on the large iron bed on the afternoon of my first day.
‘When will I meet her?’ I asked floating back to reality.
‘To be honest I thought she would have been over already, but if she has ‘gone down’ and your coming could have done that, we may not see her for a while’
‘What about the child? Is that fair, is it right that the girl should have to put up with it?’
‘She does love Saffron, but it’s difficult to say anything about her, as she is not my child. Juliet does love her daughter, she really does, you should see her with her when she is Ok. I wish she would keep up with the tablets, she knows she should. Trouble is, when she feels so well she can’t see the point of them, do you want to meet her now so, get it over with?’
‘Yes’ I said getting dressed-slowly.
Rick made some tea and filled a jug with orange squash. He opened some of those funny Spanish biscuits and took them outside, putting them on the table in the square in front of the house, then knocked on Juliet’s door. He seemed to be knocking for ages before the door inched open revealing a pale-faced girl of around 7. Her hair was raggedy blond, fringing a pale downcast sullen face. She didn’t say anything, staring blankly at us.
‘Hello Saffron, this is Helen I told you about, I have some drinks and biscuits over on the table, is Mum around?’
The door closed, another age, then Saffron returned shutting the door behind her.
‘She will be over soon’
She was sullen wearing a (very) homemade floral print dress. The dirty hair looked like it been homemade as well; looking as if it had been cut unevenly with blunt scissors to just above her shoulders, a crooked hacked fringe, hung over the ashen face. She held on white-knuckle tight, to the bottom of her light green home-knit cardigan with her left hand, the right hand twitching.
She ate the biscuits with her back to us resisting any questions for us,
‘Do you like Spain Saffron?’ I asked
‘No’
‘Saffron likes painting, don’t you Saffron?’ said Rick, glancing at me, shrugging and raising his hands
‘Not any more’
A little later the door opened and Juliet came over. She was quite short, pinched smokers face, wild frizzy dis-coloured 70’s art-student hair and sludge coloured woollen jumper.
‘So your Helen’ she said shaking my hand, it felt small and frail, like that of an old person. She lit a roll-up cigarette. The multi coloured Aztec patterned skirt incongruous to the mood of the table.
I tried a few pleasantries but nothing was forthcoming.
‘You are so lucky’ she finally said ‘you have a job, a nice home and now Rick, I didn’t think he would go for someone like you’
I felt she was being deliberately provocative so held my tongue.
‘You are lucky, you can come out here and enjoy all this, Rick’s told me you might be coming out here, and what does that mean? Goodbye Juliet, what will I be left with? Nothing’
I thought this grossly unfair, perhaps I was lucky, but saying these things in front of Saffron seemed wrong and made her seem worthless.
‘Do you want me to go now Rick, with nothing to feed my daughter , shall I go so you can be alone with her?’ She said this with a smirk on her bitter face.
‘Ok Juliet that’s enough’ said Rick ‘I said you could stay until you could sort your self out’
‘How can I when I haven’t any money?’
I couldn’t stand it any more, ‘Why don’t you work?’ I asked, trying not very successfully to keep calm.
‘Because I am sick’ hasn’t Rick told you? Anyway I am still married to him you know, he is MY husband’
I was finding it harder and harder to face this woman.
‘Well then, I shall leave you to it then’ I got up to leave.
‘Helen’ called Rick ‘come back’, he ran over to me, ‘don’t let her get to you, it’s what she wants’.
I pushed passed him, and ran to the bedroom, shutting the door behind me. Was there a flight back today? I thought wringing my hands. How could I stay there, why didn’t Rick say something, why didn’t I clonk her? All this went raced my head as I felt the self-esteem I had gained over the last few months drain away into the surrounding vineyards. Why was I so lucky? Is it lucky to lose you daughter, lucky to break up with your husband, have to take time from work because of stress, where was all the luck then?
A little while later Rick came to the room,
‘Look I’m sorry about her, she plays up like this when she feels threatened, she feels insecure’
‘I don’t think I can stay if she is still here, honestly Rick, why is she here?’
‘She just turned up, I didn’t invite her, but she has agreed to apologise to you, I will do my best to get rid of her’
He held me and I began to feel a little better. Early evening, we heard the Belgium couple return on their bike from their day trip out. Both were in there early sixties; he tubby with a long grey moustache, perhaps compensating for the balding head. She short, brown bobbed cut hair, now flattened by the helmet, the apple shaped body fitted into tight leather trousers. She had the look of having worked sitting down for thirty years, eating her lunch at her desk for most of that time. Her glasses were modern; narrow and black rimmed over crow’s feet surrounded the eyes, she was delightful. The couple invited us out to the patio table for a drink later that evening; luckily Juliet was in her house with Saffron.
Bridget joined me at the table, a nip in the air b
ut still nice enough to sit out. We spoke about Brussels and the men joined us after they had stored the bike and caught up on some running repairs. Reno puffing on his curly pipe told us of their trip through France then Spain, Portugal, northern Spain and back to Belgium. It felt good sitting out talking to these nice people, I saw for the first time Rick’s vision for the complex, then the music started. Loud 80’s pop preventing any chance of conversation. All four of us looked towards the end house, the window wide open for maximum effect. Rick looked at us in mute apology.
‘I’ll just go and see how things are’ he reassured, walking briskly to the end house.
We all watched as he banged on the door. It took a while then the shouting started resulting in the door being slammed shut, then opening again with Juliet, pulling Saffron out into the square, with the music louder than ever, Juliet stood with her daughter a little way from us.
‘Come on Saffron lets dance, don’t let these bores spoil our holiday, it’s fun, isn’t it?’
She pulled the girl this way and that, a strange sad, contorted take on Rock and Roll, twirling the worried looking young child round and round. Juliet seemed lost as she swilled her daughter round, a strange wide grin moulded on her face. Saffron held tight to her tee shirt with her left hand, her face anxious as if she was being thrown around by a gale-force wind. The music and spectacle prevented any conversation, although we did not wish to witness this show, it was difficult to ignore. We sat in embarrassed silence until the music ran out, Rick stood up
‘Thank you very much that was very entertaining’
Juliet looked angry pulling the little girl off to walk. Rick apologised to the Belgian couple who, still in a state of shock kindly smiled saying; ‘no no , it’s fine’
Rick explained that Juliet had been unwell and perhaps she had forgotten to take it. Although we all felt on edge we managed to chat happily for a while, The thought of Juliet returning gave each of us an edge, yet we all managed to have these thoughts remain unspoken, for fear of giving in to her.
As the Belgians were saying their ‘goodnights’ we heard them come back, looking the other way as they rushed to the house and slammed the door for greatest attention. The music started again, louder than ever, so loud in fact it drowned out the far away howling dogs. All four of us stood for a while unable to speak. Whether it was the collective unconscious, critical-mass or just the end of our tether, we marched in unison to the door and banged loud.
Saffron put her head round the door ‘Mummy hates you all’ the door shut.
We banged again even harder, this time Juliet opened the door.
‘Get the fuck out of here, you sad fucks, get a life’
Reno was the first in, pushing the door open and turning the music off. Saffron huddled in front of her mother, Juliet’s eyes flashing like a cornered Vixen.
‘You are a very rude young woman’ said Bridget, her voice quivering with rage.
‘You have no manners and have upset us all. You have gone out of your way to aggravate us with you show. If you are ill I am sorry, but look what you are doing to your daughter, what sort of life does she have with this rubbish going on?’
Juliet looked at Rick for support, but he just lifted his hands as if to say ‘it was the last straw’.
Bridget continued ‘do you have your medication with you?’ silence. She moved closer to her.
‘Do you have it with you?’ she hissed, we could sense her rage, so Rick took over.
‘Saffron, does your mother have her tablets?’ The little girl looked at her mother then nodded.
‘We are not going until you have taken them’ he said looking at Juliet.
‘I don’t like to see you like this, please take them’ he said gently, then turning to Saffron ‘will you get them for mummy?’
The little girl walked to the bed and crawled underneath; her thin legs poking out like two sticks as she hunted. She bought out five bottles; each had a bright label stuck over the drug companies with Childs writing;
‘ONCE A DAY. TWO TIMES A DAY. AFTER TEA. BEDTIME. ‘BAD’ TIMES.
Rick ran some water handing the glass to Juliet.
‘I fucking hate all of you’ snapped Juliet,
Bridget ignored the remark, lowering her voice
‘It’s a nice place here, you could have some real fun with Saffron’
Juliet swallowed the tablets, slamming the glass down on the table, walked to the back bedroom and slammed the door.
We said goodnight to Saffron, telling her that she could call on us during the night if she wished, but Juliet called out sadly; ‘leave her alone’
We said goodnight to Reno and Bridget in the now quiet square.
Reno and Bridget left early the next day, so Rick took advantage of the time off to take me to a strange little place far inland The place he took me, not a million miles away from where they shot the Spaghetti western films, back in the sixties. Although it was sunny, there was a chill in the air as we biked through the countryside leaving the coastal green for the more desert yellow and scrubby ochre inland. Pulling off the main roads we followed the winding tracks leaving a trail of dust in our wake to a sleepy small village. Around what looked like an outdoor swimming pool, small café’s and ice cream stalls, now shut up for the season waited for summer. The water in the pool was a pure light green, soft to the touch and warm. Every twenty yards or so, a shrine to the Madonna over-looked the sparkling water. Rick told me that a hundred or so years ago, when this was parched desert, a natural spring cracked open the baked earth and flooded the land. The water irrigated the land so well that people moved there, soon farms and vineyards sprang up like the water.
The local people built the large pool for people to swim, as it is said to help all sorts of aliments. Three times a year there is a fiesta to the Madonna, as thanks to Mary for such a miracle of wonderful water to spring from the earth at a time of great need.
We drank coffee in a small café that was open for locals. The thick tobacco smoke, blaring TV, the odd dog licking himself, set the scene for a central-casting rural Spain café bar. We arrived back happy at lunchtime, everything looked quiet over at Juliet’s. We relaxed and we spoke about Lesley. I had of course told him after I had returned from seeing her, I am not sure he approved of my actions and methods, I don’t think anyone would have especially Kenneth. But it was something I had to do. I told Rick I thought I might see her again when I went out to visit Emma’s agent who was now constantly writing to me, regarding contracts and licences on her work. De-Hems had told me her work was in demand in the States and projects were moving forward. He was kind enough saying through his PA that things needed to be sorted out sooner rather than later, and to come out ASAP. I knew I would have to face all that, but I wanted and needed was time.
The afternoon was warming up, Rick’s next guests would be arriving Monday, the day after tomorrow, it would be my last day. That meant we had a day free, that is apart from Juliet. I asked Rick if we should call in to see her but he said no.
‘I know things look bad, but when she is good she is great. She just gets mixed up and sick to death of being reliant on drugs. Deep-down she knows she has got to get back on board, even if it is just for Saffron’
Later that evening we saw Saffron looking out of the door, when she saw us she pooped back in. All was quiet over there, this worried us a little, but we passed the evening reading and going to bed early; looking at the snowball stars, through the large open window.
The next day we though we would take a walk for a while in the late afternoon. There was a dusty track at the back of the house that led to some vineyards so we ambled along silently, both thinking how hard it would be to say goodbye the next day. We never really spoke about how the situation would resolve itself; me in England, he is Spain; making a pretty good go of things. I could retire, and move out, but I didn’t really want to do B&B, or to live in Spain, it was nice enough, but not to live. Rick however, loved it, not the hard wo
rk, but a success of his own ideas. The bookings were coming in through the web site, but it was really the word of mouth, that brought the most bookings. So we just denied the heavy thoughts as we walked home, me making noises that I would come over every so often to see him.
Juliet’s door was wide open, for a moment we thought she had gone, a moment later we saw Saffron coming out of the geit where Reno and Bridget had stayed. We ran over to the house
‘God she’s wrecking the place’ puffed Rick
‘We’re changing the beds’ said Saffron smiling, holding pillowcases.
Juliet stood over by the bed, holding the sheets, she looked calm and lovely. That hurt me, she really was beautiful, her face was less pinched, her eyes soft and tender. Her thick shinny hair was tied back with string, bits of the fringe escaping falling in her eyes, giving a healthy youthful appearance. She wore a pair of Rick’s cord trousers; turned up at the bottom, belt tight at the top.
‘I will stop if you want me too’ she whispered to the floor, ‘I just thought I would help that’s all.’
That’s why Rick has stood by her, this new girl, and she really did look young, standing with her glowing young sweet daughter.
‘I’m helping mum’ she smiled.
Rick looked at me silently quizzing me, would I shout at her, did I want her to go? No
‘No’ I said, questioning Rick with my stare
‘That’s fine by me, Rick?’
‘Oh that great by me too, thank you. How are you today Saffron?’ he asked.
‘Fine thank you, where are the clean things for the bed?’
I walked with Rick to the linen store inside his house.
Mother and daughter worked there way through the rooms and started on the other giets, Saffron singing as she went; if she sang one bar of ‘whistle while we work’ I would have run her over. A little later I looked through the window of the main kitchen, as was Juliet emptying out the cupboards and re-arranging the disorganised storage. When I went back the whole place was perfect. I heard her saying to Rick;
‘Don’t be silly Rick, you know I can cook and entertain, I will do all this, you need to concentrate on the clients and bikes, leave this to me and Saffron’ adding go and have some fun!’
The dinning table amazed us; the long wooden table, now covered in a white linen cloth with candles and flowers arranged beautifully, making the composition subtle and perfect in the dying light of the day. Juliet could lay an exquisite table, yet I could attempt the same task, and look like I laid bricks. She had ‘that’ touch, the touch I didn’t have, and it’s something you can’t really learn.
She made Rick take her and Saffron into town to buy food and good wine. They arrived back with huge bunches of flowers that she arranged in each room and on the little reception desk, she had set up just inside the main house, it was just what the place needed, the cow. She had taken the edge off the place, from a garage with some rooms available, to relaxing pleasant place to stay.
‘Are you going to let her stay?’ I asked as soon as we got into the kitchen.
‘What do you say?’ asked Rick, reading my face for the answer. It was not quite a ‘I told you so’ face’ but he was not as shocked as I was at Juliet’s appearance or work, but I was increasingly worried and insecure.
‘A couple of days ago I would have said yes, but now she seems so, so bloody nice, I’m worried now you will sleep with her, and God knows she’s bloody gorgeous enough. I don’t want to go back to England and be all churned up inside, I’ve had enough of that’
Rick laughed.
‘Don’t laugh at me Rick, I am serious, I will be leaving you here with Snow White cleaning the cottages with Pollyanna, how is this going to work out Rick? if she stays on the tablets and looks like that, I’m done for. I know what you are thinking, and what she is thinking, you would make a good team and Saffron could be happy here. Don’t tell me this thought didn’t cross your mind, as soon as you saw her in the house. You must have, because I did, and I don’t even want it to happen’ I huffed and puffed.
‘Well, I do want you to be alright, but I don’t want the other stuff, the back together stuff. But if you do, tell me now, don’t mess me around’
‘You are the brightest person I know’ soothed Rick; ‘yes I did think it, a little. But it’s you now, lets see how she gets on’
I brought the clean sheets down to Juliet, determined to be a part of this set up. I knew I could be racing away with my imagination but seeing her there; so beautiful in her scruffy clothes, changing the beds and helping around the house, she was as much a part of this house now as Rick. She knew what he wanted, and how things should be done, in was a fine team.
I handed the sheets to the now jolly Saffron; Juliet was cleaning the toilet with a long brush.
‘Thank you for bringing the things over’. Said Juliet, standing up smiling, rubber glove holding the brush. She was flushed from cleaning and attempted to brush the luscious hair from her eyes.
‘I am so sorry about yesterday, really I am, I know I was bad, sorry Helen’
Unfortunately she really did look sorry, it was terrible to see that face unhappy.
‘No, not at all, Rick tells me you have been ill’
‘I have been ill for some time, it’s kind of like Bi-Polar, a depressive illness, but I get episodes when I feel trapped in the drugs, and just want to be like everyone else. I have apologised to Saffron, and will to Rick. He has got a good thing going here and I don’t want to spoil it for him’
‘Yes, I said, still harbouring some anger from the night before or was it because she still wearing his trousers ‘it would be sad to see it all go down’.
‘I’m glad he has someone like you, I am sorry I said those things yesterday, I was very jealous, but I am pleased, you are right for each other’.
Her sincerity took me off guard, touching me deeply.
‘What are your plans?’ I asked almost rhetorically.
‘Oh I don’t know, ask Rick to lend me the money to go home, I won’t hide that from you. Try and find some work and a nice school for Saffron. The benefit system was built for me, but I don’t like to use it’.
‘Why not stay on here for a while and sort yourself out?’
She looked surprised, almost shocked, mouth slight agape.
I continued, ‘If you do, I will ask you to carry on taking the medication because I don’t think you, Rick and especially Saffron, can take that crap anymore.’
Who was I to tell her anything about her life? But I had to say it, and she seemed to want to hear it.
She put the brush down and slid off the rubber gloves, set them down on the basin, then turned and hugged me.
‘Thank you Helen’ she whispered in me ear. She held on for a long time, her arms around my neck holding me close. She felt lovely and smelt fresh and new. Saffron came into the bathroom, then seeing us hugging said ‘where’s mine?’
At dinner that night, Julie asked me about Emma, she knew all about her, yet still listened as I tentatively told of Emma’s art and even her father. It was all very civilised, she telling of her trip to India to find herself and what a waste of time it all was. She said the trip had produced Saffron, and that was good enough. Later Rick asked Julie if she would stay and work with him until she was ready to move on. Much later I would reflect that meeting and wonder how it all went so fast, how things could change so much overnight. I had interviewed hundreds of people for work and know that you can, and do, make up your mind on someone within 20 seconds of them coming into the office. All this regardless of experience, educational and ability (and rationality). But most of all it felt right, that they should be there, that Julie be with Rick and help him. As much as I didn’t want them to be together, it was right for the time being.
For now, mother and child could stay in the large mobile home Rick used when restoring the house, this was agreeable to both parties. It eased my edgy feeling of jealously a little, having them separated and the
y not using the spare room in the large house. Yet I was aware that if they wanted to jump into bed they could, and there was nothing I could do to stop them. It was my last night there and Rick looked tired, yet happy and contented. We stayed out in the open air for a while, enjoying the peace before the midnight barkers made their presence felt.
Next day we heard the bikes coming long before we could see them. Two large Honda’s with all the storage boxes made their way up the dusty track to the house. Philip and Gerard greeted us in their graceful French way. They looked like those modern day French footballers; tall and lean with the obligatorily long black hair, both, I guessed in their early thirties, dressed neck to toe in black leather. They, like most bikers passing through were touring the country having found the place on the web site. They were on their way to Africa for a two-week holiday. Julie showed them to the giets; chatting to the larger one Gerard, then introducing him to Saffron. Julie, I noticed took just a little longer to explain about the accommodation to Philip, he in turn keeping her talking, by asking her about the surroundings and how old her daughter was. They walked back to the house Saffron skipping behind them.
‘Looks like they have hit it off’ said Rick smiling.
‘Don’t you mind just a little?’ I asked half teasing, half desperate.
‘Oh God no, I’m happy for her, but I don’t want her to rush into anything, she needs rest and stability’
‘Don’t we all I joked’ perhaps a little bitterly. But I was far more secure now, seeing Julie wallowing in the glow of Philip’s interest. Later Rick pleased me by saying he would never introduce Julie as his wife, ‘that would just complicate things.’
It was time for me to move on. I said goodbye to Saffron, both arms tight around my waist.
‘Do come back soon’ said Julie, she seemed to mean it.
‘I will when I can, you must look after yourself my dear, and tell Rick not to over do it’.
As I loaded the car and waited for Rick from the house Julie came over.
‘I won’t wear his clothes any more, that was thoughtless, I am glad it’s you, really I am’
‘So am I’ I said ‘It’s good you are here, take care, and love to Saffron.
At the airport I kissed Rick goodbye, promising to call when I got back.