Whispers Through a Megaphone Read online

  “I don’t want to see it with Kristin, I want to take you.”

  “But Kristin’s into art.”

  “Will you shut up about Kristin?”

  Kristin Hart. The boys’ godmother. She and her partner Carol were the paragons of contentment, which made them mesmerizing and annoying, even more so since Sadie found herself preoccupied with thoughts of Kristin in bed, Kristin in the shower, Kristin doing stretches before her morning run. Discombobulating, that’s what it was—the sexualization of an old friend. Really quite distracting.

  Ralph closed his eyes.

  He saw flickering lights, blocks of colour.

  Yellow, black, reddish brown.

  The talking had stopped. There was a moment of silence.

  Yes, silence.

  He exhaled into it, feeling his shoulders drop.

  He noticed his fingers, the way they had curled into fists.

  “I’m in such a foul mood,” said Sadie, marching into the kitchen with a cocker spaniel attached to her leg. “I need a coffee.”

  “I’ll make it.”

  “This bloody dog’s driving me insane. You can take him out this afternoon.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Why not? I need to get the food and drink for tomorrow. It’ll take me ages.”

  His birthday party—something else he hadn’t wanted. But it wasn’t really for him. Sadie liked to surround herself with as many people as possible on a regular basis, otherwise his continued presence came as a shock.

  “What do you know about Stan’s girlfriend?” she said, finishing her coffee while the spaniel licked her face.

  “Are you sure he has a girlfriend?”

  “I hope she’s not dull, like that girl he brought to the barbecue last month.”

  “I thought she was perfectly nice.”

  “He can do better than perfectly nice. She had no ambition.”

  “Sadie, she’s a teenager.”

  “When I asked where she wanted to be in five years’ time, do you know what she said?”

  Ralph stood up, trying to decide whether to wash the dishes or go upstairs. “What?” he said, running the hot tap.

  “In a swimming pool.”

  “Maybe she loves swimming.”

  “In five years’ time she wants to be in a fucking swimming pool? She could be in one now, Ralph. What kind of ambition is that? It’s like saying you want to end up on a toilet.”

  “Sadie—”

  “And do you know what else? She said her favourite restaurant was Frankie & Benny’s.”

  His wife was oblivious to her own snobbery. Ralph blamed this on her parents, a lecturer and a mathematician who discussed current affairs, played the banjo and made home-made pesto, all at the same time. They were brilliant, quick, sarcastic. They lived in France and never visited. No child could ever emerge from their narcissism without hating herself, and Sadie had converted her self-loathing into something more tolerable: snobbery.

  Ralph’s mother had been a housewife. His father worked for an upholsterer. It was no worse than Sadie’s background, it was just different, but try telling her that.

  “Whatever,” he said.

  “You sound like Arthur. Is that his hoodie you’re wearing?”

  “Of course not. I don’t go around wearing our sons’ clothes. I bought this last year for running, don’t you remember?”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you run,” she said, head down, fiddling with her phone.

  Ralph went upstairs, leaving a bowl of washing-up water that was supposed to smell of lavender and lemon, but actually smelt like the passageway between Asda and the car park.

  Sadie Swoon @SadieLPeterson

  Off to MK’s this pm for the works: colour, cut, massage.

  Spirits need lifting!

  Kristin Hart @craftyKH

  @SadieLPeterson Coffee afterwards at Monkey Business?

  We need to talk

  Mark Williams @markwills249

  @SadieLPeterson You’re gorgeous as you are #IfonlyIwere10yearsolder

  Sadie Swoon @SadieLPeterson

  @craftyKH Coffee sounds great, meet you at 5pm?

  Upstairs, Ralph was confused.

  “Well blow me, I’ve forgotten why I came up here,” he said to no one.

  Blow me. He almost Googled this phrase once, to discover its origins, but decided against it when he imagined the kind of sites that might pop up. He tried not to utter these words, especially when working with female clients, but saying blow me was something he had inherited from his father, along with narrow shoulders and a pert little bottom. Frank Swoon had been famous for his buttocks. Women wolf-whistled as he walked down the street. “Oh you do make me swoon, Mr Swoon. Just look at those little cheeks.” It was the kind of comment a man would have been slapped for.

  Ralph’s confusion ran deeper than trying to recall why he had come upstairs.

  In fact, it was chronic.

  He was perpetually bewildered. He knew less about his own desires these days than his clients knew about theirs. Compared to him they were models of sanity, able to sit in front of him once a week and articulate their emotions with astounding clarity. Sometimes he wanted to tell them. He wanted to say hey, do you know how astounding this is, the way you know what you want? You may have a catalogue of neuroses, you may be anxious and depressed, but you actually know what you want.

  Sadie had her own theory about his confusion. She was convinced that he hadn’t been the same since Easter, when he walked into a giant garden gnome in B&Q. Who puts an enormous gnome right at the end of an aisle? Ralph had complained to the manager, calling it a MAJOR SAFETY ISSUE. When the manager laughed, trying to hide his amusement inside an unconvincing coughing fit, Ralph threatened to call the police. Yes, he was overreacting. Yes, he should have been looking where he was going. But sometimes a gnome is not a gnome: it is a giant symbol of everything that’s wrong with your life.

  Seconds before he headbutted the gnome, he was pretending to admire a vase of plastic daffodils. Insisting that they buy six bunches, Sadie was tweeting about how authentic they looked, how satisfying it was to have flowers that never died, and why hadn’t she thought of this before? Other people, miles away, were responding to her tweet. She was reading out their comments. Ralph stormed off down the aisle, unable to tolerate the peculiar hoo-ha evoked by the plastic daffodils, and he spotted Julie Parsley. Julie Parsley? And that was when he collided with the giant garden gnome.

  Sadie held up her phone, took a picture of him rubbing his head, sprinted into the customer toilets.

  What was Julie doing here in his local B&Q? Hadn’t she moved away? He remembered her singing ‘Move Over Darling’ on stage at the King’s Head; remembered her singing Ralph you’re so lovely, you really are lovely, to a melody she made up on the spot.

  Her hair was short and wavy now, like that French actor—what was her name? Audrey Tautou. Yes, that’s the one. Ralph’s memory was still intact, despite the bump on his head, but Julie Parsley was nowhere to be seen. Her absence made him furious, even though she had been absent for much longer than the past few minutes. It made him shout. It made him complain about HEALTH and SAFETY and the BLOODY STUPIDITY of making a gnome that was as SOLID as a FUCKING WALL.

  Ralph’s confusion had nothing to do with that day in B&Q.

  It had nothing to do with Julie Parsley, his first love, aged fifteen.

  And it had nothing to do with garden gnomes.

  3

  BUTTONS AND BUTTONS, MOON-HIGH

  When the headmaster set eyes on Frances Delaney, sweeping the floor of the school corridor wearing nothing but a pair of trainer socks, he stood perfectly still and watched. He had never seen anything as strange and beautiful. His face was usually grey but not today. She had coloured him in. All around her, children were being children: wild, callous and despicable. They were like beetles, creeping bugs with hard shells. They said what they liked with vile spontaneity. Apart from little Miriam Delaney, of course. She was quiet, well behaved, positively ghostly. And with a mother like this, who could expect anything less?

  He walked towards her, flicked the children away, took off his jacket and wrapped it around her shoulders. She was warm, because her sweeping had been furious. When Frances cleaned, the bugs knew she was coming. Beside her feet the floor was shining.

  “I think you should come with me,” the headmaster said, leading Frances along the corridors to his office. Her eyes were glazed, there were no words in her mouth. He pulled his National Trust blanket from the cupboard, blue and white and scratchy, smelling of tobacco. “Here,” he said, offering it to Frances. “We’ll find your clothes and then I’ll drive you home. Does that sound like a good plan, Mrs Delaney?” His palms were wet, his breathing was quick. “Were you actually wearing any clothes when you left the house?”

  That afternoon, at the end of the school day, Miriam walked home by herself as usual. She worried about the safety of cats outside all day long, worried about what kind of concoction she would be given for tea, worried that other children would be meaner than ever and what that meanness might look like. Today had been the loudest day. No wonder you’re a fucking weirdo, Delaney. Your mother’s a nutter. Get your kit off, show us what you got, you both fucking nudists, is that what you are?

  She opened the front door of 7 Beckford Gardens, walked along the hallway to the kitchen.

  They were on the table.

  On it.

  Just like her boiled egg and soldiers this morning.

  Just like her colouring books and felt-tip pens.

  No amount of disinfectant would ever make this right.

  She thought about that as she stood in the doorway.

  Thought about cleaning product
s, wondered how many bottles there were in the world.

  And eventually they stopped grunting.

  He stumbled backwards and zipped up his trousers.

  She was still wearing her trainer socks.

  And her black bowler hat.

  “Well hello, Miriam,” the headmaster said. “Did you have a good day at school?”

  *

  Miriam has vacuumed the front room and the hallway and it’s time for a celebratory cup of tea. She dashes past the glass panels in the kitchen door and catches sight of her own body. She pauses, her eyes widen. Is that me? A woman in knickers and novelty slippers, who has just sucked up dust using a hoover called Henry as though there is nothing in the world to be afraid of.

  She remembers something Fenella once said: “The past is the past.” Stating the obvious makes Fenella happy. “It is what it is,” she often says.

  Miriam tried stating the obvious for a while, to see if it improved her well-being, but it only made her feel crazier than usual:

  “This is a packet of Weetabix.”

  “The future is the future.”

  “Death means never seeing someone again.”

  “This is a pint of milk.”

  “The present is the present.”

  “I’ve never spoken in more than a whisper.”

  “What I mean,” Fenella explained, “is no one can set foot in this house without your permission. Your mother’s gone. The past is the past. Catch my drift?”

  None of those statements seemed connected, but Miriam caught her drift. It can take a long time to believe that something is over. That’s what Fenella had been trying to say. But it is. What’s done is done.

  She sits at the kitchen table and sips her tea. For once, just for a few minutes, there is no history on her back. There is no history crawling over her skin and poking into her mouth. History will return as quickly as you can whisper Frances Delaney, but these small moments, these victories, have to be marked. They are the flags of progress. Signposts to normality.

  The letterbox rattles.

  Who gets post at eleven o’clock at night?

  It’s another postcard, the sixth one Miriam has received over the past few weeks. On the front, a photograph of an old-fashioned bike, leaning against the wall of a French cafe. On the back, written in green ink:

  YOU COULD SIT AND READ A BOOK IN A CAFE,

  MIRIAM. YOU COULD CYCLE THROUGH THE

  STREETS WITH THE WIND IN YOUR HAIR

  Like the others, this postcard is anonymous. She sticks it on the noticeboard beside the rest and looks down at her slippers. These slippers are not sexy, she thinks. But have I ever been sexy? She flexes her toes, making the two West Highland terriers nod and say of course you have, Miriam, of course you have.

  Sex. Now that should have appeared on the list of things she is afraid of. It’s not sex itself that’s the issue, it’s the fact that it has to involve another person. She told Fenella this last week.

  “What on earth do you mean?” Fenella said.

  “Well, it’s not the act of sex,” Miriam said, wishing she hadn’t phoned. Fenella had just got home from Zumba and was disarmingly energized.

  “Right.”

  “It’s having to be with someone.”

  “So you’d be fine with a blow-up doll, is that what you’re saying?”

  “That is certainly not what I’m saying.”

  Fenella laughed. She opened a packet of Quavers and settled into an armchair.

  “What’s that noise?”

  “I’m eating crisps.”

  “Doesn’t that defeat the object of Zumba?”

  “How could it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Exactly. So back to sex. It’s never too late to get started,” Fenella said, but it was all right for her. She started when she was sixteen in a caravan in Newquay with a boy who liked to be called Lucy. It was the Price family’s summer holiday. Her parents were playing bingo in the town hall. Her brother was in the pub with a girl who liked to be called Pattie. It was raining, they were playing cards and Lucy (otherwise known as Martin Henley) said let’s do it and they did.

  “Just like that?” Miriam said.

  “Just like that,” Fenella said. “It was bloody awful but I felt fantastic afterwards.”

  “You’re not exactly selling it.”

  “I don’t need to sell it. It’s everywhere. It sells itself.”

  “Why did he like to be called Lucy?”

  “Why not?”

  It was a good question. Fenella was full of those—questions that probed your assumptions and required no answers.

  “At least I could do the pillow talk,” Miriam said, which made both of them quiet and sad.

  “One day,” Fenella said.

  “What if it never happens?”

  “Whispering’s not a crime.”

  So why does she feel like a criminal?

  Miriam runs upstairs and puts on her pyjamas. That’s enough cleaning for one night—no need to overdo it. She sets a track playing on her CD player: ‘Wicked Game’ by Chris Isaak. It’s a song about the wickedness of love and a woman who has made someone think about her all the time. Miriam understands that kind of wicked—the taking over of mind and body—but she knows nothing about love. She has never experienced the kind of thing Chris Isaak is singing about, never fallen in love or had anyone fall in love with her. In fact, she is not even sure that she has met someone who is in love. Do they look different to other people? Are they easy to spot? Her mother always said that love was for people with dirty houses.

  She looks in the mirror and knows what she is. She is buttoned-up. Buttons and buttons, moon-high. Imagine a night sky studded with buttons. Imagine Miriam’s buttoned-upness living in a jar—the jar would be full of navy-blue ink, the kind you might use to write a letter to your grandmother, a letter on Basildon Bond writing paper, watermarked blue, saying you were sorry, so sorry, for everything.

  Dear Granny,

  I am so sorry Mummy does not let me visit. She says you are too normal to be good for me. I have looked for normal in the dictionary at school and copied out what it means in case you cant remember.

  conforming, usual, typical, expected, free from physical or mental disorders

  I think normal is nice can we meet in secret to be normal soon? Please write back and tell me if you think this would be nice.

  Lots of love,

  Miss Miriam Delaney

  Chris Isaak has a soul-stirring voice. Some people can do that—they can reach into your soul and stir things around. He is truly soulful. My voice is full of your soul—the parts I took when I stirred you around. His crooning makes Miriam wonder what it would be like to look at her bed and see someone lying under the duvet. Someone else. What a wicked song! It’s the soundtrack to a future that feels terrifying, exciting, possible, impossible. Her toes tingle inside her fluffy slippers.

  Dear Granny,

  I have still not heard from you and it has been two long days. Please reply immediately thankyou. I need to know if you would like to be normal and have a secret life with me.

  Love Miriam xxx

  Dear Mrs Betty Hopkins,

  It has now been three days and I hope you are not ill. You are my hero Granny. I will keep this letter short in case you are very very busy. I love you.

  M xxxxXxxxx

  Dearest Miriam,

  How lovely to hear from you! I daren’t call, because your mother isn’t well and she says that my phone calls upset her. Don’t fret about things, Miriam. Your mother is trying some new medication and all will be well soon. When she recovers I’ll take you to the park, or into town, and we’ll revel in normality. Look up “revel” in your school dictionary, Miriam—I think you’ll like it. It means to have lively and noisy fun. Your mother doesn’t like noise, and this must be hard for you, but please remember she is poorly and it isn’t your fault. Keep in touch, and if anything nasty happens just run out of the house and get in a taxi and I will pay the bill when you get here, all right? In the meantime, I’ve enclosed some new buttons for your collection. I bought them while I was on holiday in Scarborough. There are lots of buttons up north.

  With love, as always,

  Granny

  Miriam sighs. She still misses her grandmother. The sight of those envelopes, her own name and address in that small, neat handwriting, made her feel like a real girl in a real house—a person of fixed abode, properly and officially there. But just as important was what happened in the act of writing. When Miriam composed her sentences, the voice inside her head sounded like any other girl. There was an unbroken stranger inside Miriam Delaney—the same age but louder, the same height but taller.