You to me Are Everything

Dust motes float in the air. In the beam of light thin and gloomy as weak tea that spills through beautiful, stained glass windows, lighting up in a golden glow the patient blue eyes of Mary, the pale body of Christ hanging, resigned, on the cross and the tiny white coffin, my daughter’s coffin, Becky’s coffin, that stands so alone on the nave. We saw her earlier, Mike and I, sleeping, a doll, shrouded in cool white satin, an orchid laid on her breast … a white orchid … I wish it had been a different flower. “Nothing will ever be as bad as this,” said Mike. “Nothing … ever…” He bent slowly, carefully as an old man to kiss her still, silent lips. And for the first time, she didn’t kiss him back … didn’t hug him, her tiny arms stealing around his neck as warm and comforting as a scarf in winter.

It’s May, spring time; yet rain, heavy, thunderous as applause, beats on the church roof, hurries along rickety gutters, trickles down bumpy walls, seeps into stone, soaks the earth, then drips mournfully, sadly, like glassy tears, from pink blossom, honeysuckle, roses, and daffodils … withered now, dying. The scent of Becky’s wreaths fills the air, clings to my skin, my hair, like the sweet voices of angels; the voices of the choir as they sing the hymns for the service, for Becky’s service … “And did those feet in ancient times walk upon England’s mountains green …”

The grass around the grave is drenched, churned to mud, sticky, slimy. My daughter, Heather, her feet encased in huge, glossy brown, platform shoes, slips and slides, as if on ice. My father-in-law, Ern, holds tightly to her arm, and his head, just level with Heather’s shoulder, peeks from the collar of his jacket like a wrinkled brown tortoise from a shell. I’m so afraid that they’re going to fall into that great gaping mouth in the earth as they cling to each other, staggering, weaving, like drunks. “I don’t want to see Becky in her coffin, mum,” Heather had said to me, her face slick and shiny with tears. “I want to remember her as she was … alive … laughing … singing “Paper Roses; oh mum, she wanted to marry Donny Osmond …”

We gather around the grave, all of us, my brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, mum, confined, in shock, to her wheelchair, sheltering under huge black umbrellas, like spiders hiding beneath fallen leaves, as the vicar intones deeply, melancholy, “and so we commit our daughter, Rebecca, to the ground …” The tiny coffin begins to sink, slowly, unsteadily, inch by torturous inch, the sides scraping against the muddy walls of her tomb; rain drumming relentlessly on the nailed lid; Mike’s hand creeps into mine, giving me strength, as a blinding veil of tears hangs before my eyes and I can’t see any more.

“What happens to the little children when they leave their parents so dear? Are they lifted up into the sunshine, never again to feel fear? Are their soft fragrant bodies well cared for? Is there someone to kiss them goodnight? Is there someone to tell them a story? And hold them ever so tight? What happens to the little children? Will we ever know for sure? They must be in Heaven with Jesus, happy for ever more.”

Mum begins to cry, wailing, keening, she rocks backwards, forwards in her wheelchair, tears falling down her face, and becoming trapped in the wrinkles like people lost in a maze. The rain falling in great silver sheets clings to her hair, the drops round and heavy as pearls. “Bring her back, oh God, please bring my granddaughter back.” My sisters comfort her, flutter around like black butterflies on a hot summer day, their umbrellas tangling like the horns of sparring bulls, as they pat her shoulders, and wipe her tears. Mum’s voice trails to a whisper, “… Becky …”

I stand remote, detached, devoid of feeling; I’m under water … drowning. I see a flash of colour, bright red as blood, as Heather flings a rose into that awful hole, it falls and rest, bewildered, on the coffin lid. Mike dashes tears from his face like a child, a little boy, then gropes again for my hand but I resist it now, I can’t help him, for I can’t help myself, I can’t move … I’m a statue. Perhaps if I keep still, really, really still, it might not have happened. She might not really be dead.

“Mum … are you okay?” I turn to her, to Heather; her voice is panicky, afraid. “No,” I say, holding out my hands like I’m lost … like I can’t find my way in a fog. “No … help me … I hurt … my heart hurts … and I feel sick …” I turn away, my hand, shaking, covering my mouth.

I lay in bed, sleeping, the blankets held tight to my chin with a clenched fist. My face is turned to the wall. I dream, curled into a foetal position. I imagine that I’m floating, an embryo, a foetus, and then a baby, in my mother’s womb. My twin sister, Sue, is with me; we drift and our limbs entwine like the thick, waxy roots of plants until nobody can tell us apart. We are as one. We share the same embryonic fluid, the same placenta. We drink the fluid, gorge on the placenta.

“Ann …Ann …” Somebody shakes me, calls me, “Ann …Ann …” Mike … it sounds like Mike. I turn my face to the wall. Try to go back into the dream. My children are there, standing at the bedside, four shapes, shadowy, ghostly, Heather, Michael, Sarah, Richard … where’s Becky? “Becky …” I call. “Where’s Becky? I have five children … not four … Becky’s missing, where is she? I can’t see her. I can’t see her face.” Heather is here, her eyes are frightened … her lovely hazel eyes … all my children are frightened … “Mum … mum … wake up … mum… please,” I try to sit up, try to smile. I hold out my hands to my children … my four children …but I’m tired … so very, very tired. I lay down … sink, slowly, sensuously, into the mattress, the pillows. My bones collapse. I turn my face to the wall.

But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed. (James, 1)

I think he’s having an affair, messing around, playing away from home, unfaithful … Mike, my husband … father of my five children … for I’ll always have five children … until the day I die I will have five children … that will never change. I have suspicions, vague suspicions that I can’t very easily put into words, “we can’t go on together with suspicious minds …”

I have a little green imp sitting on my shoulder whispering in my ear, planting tiny seeds, that grow bigger and bigger, day by desperate day, “He pays more attention to his appearance than he used to, he wears aftershave, the odor enticing, manly, sexy, he’s fussy with his hair, his clothes, he’s preoccupied, snappy, a bit off his food, he sits in the dining room, staring into space, staring at something that I can’t see, listening to the same song over and over again … “I can’t give you anything but my love, but my love …” Why? Why? Why?

I know that I don’t always have time for him. There’s so much to do around the house and with the children, I’m always busy, occupied. I’m lucky to have Heather for she helps me, takes her brothers and sisters off my hands … they go to the park and for walks … I don’t know how I’d manage without her. Becky took up a lot of time … a disabled child always needs more attention … but what will I do now? … I’m lost without her. I know that I don’t always look my best … my hair in curlers, a scarf tied around my head like the sixteen year old working in the Army and Navy Hat and Cap factory … I don’t have time in the mornings to apply make-up … to spend hours in front of the mirror … “Mirror mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of all us?” At the moment I look older than my thirty-four years, tired. Perhaps that’s where I went wrong, where I made my mistake …

I realize these things as I’m slowly, gradually coming round, coming back to life, as if I’ve been in a coma and, like Stephen King’s John Smith, I feel I have to be closely monitored, even told, slowly and carefully, what a ball point pen is. Becky’s death made me escape into sleep, I slept away the days and the nights, wished for a quick passage of time to ease the hurt; to renew my heart; and now I’ve come back to a world, a life; that is different … subtly different, subtly changed. How could this have happened?

I remember after Heather was born, when I sat in mum’s house, holding her in my arms. When I swore that I would try to turn such a terrible mistake into a triumph, that I would be a good wife to Mike and a good mother to Heather; that perhaps I would have more children, a brother and a sister for Heather, perhaps two brothers and two sisters for Heather. Well I did … I did all that I said … and made a lovely home for my husband and my children. Why then, is he being unfaithful to me? Why does he hate me so?

I have no proof of his infidelity … I’ve found nothing even though, furtively, looking over my shoulder, I’ve searched the pockets of his trousers, his jacket, checked the material, closely, for hairs, especially light hairs, blonde hairs, for mine are dark, almost black. I’ve even looked in the car, felt under the seats for a stray earring, a lipstick, but I’ve found nothing. I’m acting on a hunch, a feeling, but even so … I know.

After Heather, I became pregnant again very quickly … I wasn’t prepared … it was too soon. She was only five months old when I found that I was expecting Michael. I was so afraid that I wouldn’t be able to cope … but, somehow, I did. By then we had moved into a house of our own in Bedhampton. I was indomitable, a warrior. My confidence grew, sprouted quickly, effortlessly, like a green leggy plant, a spider plant with babies clinging possessively to the narrow striped leaves, and the bane of my life, the stammer, virtually disappeared.

Three years passed before Sarah came, tiny black haired Sarah, as pale and delicate as a porcelain doll. It was only then, after Sarah’s birth, that I knew that I loved him … Mike … my husband … I fell in love with my own husband and realized, quite suddenly, that I was happy, content. Then came Richard, chubby cheeked, black-eyed Richard; my family was complete … I had borne my last child … or so I thought.

Four years later on a cold, frosty day in December, just before Christmas … Becky arrived. There was a tree on the hospital ward, narrow and sparse of decorations, brown at the tips, twinkling with silver lights. I remember hearing carols, “Away in a manger, no crib for a bed …” sung by children, such dear, sweet voices, as I sweated, grunted and wallowed in my own blood, like an animal in a field; as I pushed her from the darkness of my womb into the light. As soon as she was born, at the first dainty cry, they took her away from me … I had barely a glimpse, just a peek of big eyes, dark as blackberries in September, a nose, turned up at the end like a smile, and a fuzz of silky, black hair. “What do you want to call her?” they asked. “Have you a name? “Rebecca,” I replied. “Rebecca Louise …” There was a hustle and bustle of nurses, their starched dresses rustling like silk, then, hurriedly, a priest baptised her, “In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, I Baptise you Rebecca Louise …” She cried and struggled as drops of water fell onto her forehead like tears.

The doctor came, sat on the bed curled towards me like a letter C that I’d seen in an alphabet book when I was a little girl. He took my hand with fingers as long and narrow as the Christmas tree, told me that there was a problem, that Rebecca had a tiny hole at the base of her spine. I was unconcerned, smiled at him, said wouldn’t it be easy enough to just stitch it up. I didn’t know about Spina Bifida or Hydrocephalus. Is ignorance a sin?

The 1st of August … my sister Gloria’s birthday. I’m at mums, sitting in her garden in sweltering heat, surrounded by her roses, her dahlias; I can smell the sea; salty, tangy, even hear it very faintly, shushing, on the breeze. We’re all here today, the whole family … except dad, of course, for he died last year, and Dave, my sister Pat’s husband, who died the year before, killed by a train, only twenty-eight; a tragic, senseless death, depriving Pat and her four children of a wonderful husband and father.

I wish we were gathered here for a happy reason … a meal and a drink, a party for the children in the conservatory … but we’re not … for mum is dying. Mum is dying on my sister, Gloria’s, birthday. I’ve come outside for air; great gulps of fresh sweet smelling air; for the atmosphere inside is thick and heavy enough to choke me.

Mum’s cancer, laid quiet, dormant, for so many months has, since Becky’s death, flared up with a vengeance, it attacks her poor wasted body, devours her quickly, rapidly, like she’s an expensive delicacy. “I can’t live without Becky, our Ann,” she told me. “She was my sunshine …” “She’s lost the will, said my sisters, my brothers. “Lost the will to live.” I recall Joan, my big sister, the eldest daughter, sobbing harshly, noisily, her hands covering her face. How will I tell Heather?” I ask myself. “She shared mum’s birthday … a special grandchild.”

Mum came to our house every Wednesday, with Sue, my twin; Vera, my sister … we drank enough tea to sink the Titanic all over again, “Put the kettle on Heather,” we’d say. “Put the kettle on Heather …” and ate cake, soft, crumbly, filled with fruit; “Aunty Susan’s cake” my twin told Heather, Michael, Sarah, Richard, Becky as they ate the sugar topped confection, licked their fingers, asked for more.

Mum would howl with laughter at Sue’s jokes … daring unconventional Sue who wore tiny mini skirts and thigh high white plastic boots … at Becky when she recoiled from her old, liver spotted, hands, “Oh Nanny, haven’t you got horrible hands,” she would compliment me on my lovely home, the new furnishings, carpets, curtains and my five beautiful children … my mum, who, breathless, in the burning heat, used to take us to Hayling Island on the Puffing Billy train … my mum, who was with me at the doctor’s surgery when I was seventeen, afraid, and pregnant with Heather.

“Oh, have you been to our Ann’s?” asks mum, the family listening wide eyed, in awe, my dad, my sisters, my brothers, my nieces and nephews,” It’s beautiful, she’s made a really beautiful home for her husband and children … “

“Ann?” I look up. Mike is standing in the kitchen doorway. I have to squint to see him for the sun is in my eyes and his silhouette is fuzzy, wavering red at the edges, and his face white, flat, his features indistinct. He holds out his hand, “You’d better come in … I think it’s almost over … she’s going.”

“Mike …” I have to say it, I can’t keep quiet any longer. “I know something’s wrong …” I hesitate, teeter on the brink, like I’m going to jump from a great height, a tall building. “Are you having an affair?”

I’m standing in the kitchen, leaning against the sink, holding a cigarette. I suck on it quickly, greedily, taking the smoke so far into the back of my throat that it burns. It smells tainted, evil, clutched in trembling yellow fingers. My heart clangs heavily in my chest. I need a drink, the clean, sharp taste of a gin and tonic … or the decadence of whisky. I don’t really want to hear his reply.

Shock distorts his face; and he swallows so hard that his Adams apple moves violently up and down in his throat. He nods his head, a small, unwilling nod; his eyes are as wet as the pebbles in the garden pond. “Ann … I’ve made a mistake … I didn’t … I wanted to tell you, … ” “He’s stammering,” I think to myself. “eHHHLike me … exactly like me.”

“Before Becky?” I ask. Silence … a deep, dark, secretive silence. “Before Becky?” I shout. “Tell me … I want to know.” He puts his head in shaking hands; slowly, carefully, smooths his hair from his forehead. “Yes …”

“Why? … Why, Mike?” My voice shakes, bubbles with tears; I turn around, lean over the sink, drop the burning cigarette, as water spews like a fountain from my eyes, my nose, my mouth. He steps forward, tries to touch me. I raise my hands, freeze into a block of ice, “N, n, no …” I stammer. “N, n, n, no ….” “Adulterer,” I think to myself. “My husband is an adulterer.”

I missed mum’s funeral to save my marriage. Heather and Michael went in my place. Heather, her eyes livid and full of loathing every time she looked at him … her dad; a dad that had fallen so hard and so fast from his pedestal, it must have broken her heart.

When Heather was a little girl, a toddler, she ate the berries of the deadly nightshade. She came to me, laughing, smiling, not realising what she had done, red staining her lips and the soft white skin around her mouth like blood. I was distraught, I panicked, even thought she might die. “Daddy,” she screamed as she wriggled in my arms, slippery as an eel. “Daddy, daddy …” She screamed for him over and over again, as the doctors, the nurses, fed a tube, as long and wriggly as a snake, into her nostril and into her stomach to suck the poison away. “Daddy, daddy, daddy … ” She didn’t want anyone else …

I didn’t see the procession of ten shiny black cars that wound their dignified way through the white, dusty, silent streets of Havant. I didn’t see friends and neighbours line the paths, two, three deep, bowing their heads respectfully as mum’s flower laden coffin passed by. I didn’t see the men doff their hats or the women, tears wetting their cheeks, put their hands to their hearts in her memory. No, I saw none of this. I was fighting my corner … fighting my own private war.

I go to her house for I know he’ll be there. Our car is parked outside on the road, shiny metallic in the sunlight. It looks wrong, somehow, out of place. It’s a hot day, sticky, sultry, and the back door is open; there’s no wind. The world is bright; glaring … it hurts my eyes. I fumble in my bag for my sunglasses. The grass in the garden is brown at the edges, burnt; littered with brightly colored children’s toys, a paddling pool, the water as still and silent as the mill pond at Emsworth. There must be children … I never thought of that. Where are they? I skulk around like a thief and listen to the voice that echoes hollow from the open kitchen window, Mike’s voice. “She knows, Jean … she asked me … I told her … it has to be over … I came to tell you that it’s over …”

“Jean,” I think. “Her name is Jean …Jean …” I roll it around and around in my mouth like balls of soft, doughy bread, tasting it, savouring it. “Am I supposed to be grateful for that? … You coward,” she spat. “Bloody coward …” I imagine her raising her fist, thumping him, hard, on the chest. Tentatively I knock on the open door, my knuckles are white, strained; my palms sweat. The door is shiny, blue, the colour of mum’s eyes, “If there’s enough blue in the sky to make a sailor suit, it’s going to be a fine day.” I was confused. “How big is the sailor, mum?” “Ann,” says Mike in surprise. “Ann … what are you doing here?” He walks towards me.

I can’t see him … only her. She’s small boned, light, slim; her skin is very white, her eyes a startling green, and she has a mane of deep auburn hair that looks too heavy for her head to carry. Her neck is long, slender; I imagine Mike kissing it, tiny soft kisses that would send shivers running, hurtling, down her spine. My heart aches at such a thought. “Don’t leave me, Mick, don’t leave me …” she whines, again and again, until I want to flex my hands, my wrists, and snap her tiny, delicate frame into two, or four, or six, or eight pieces … and feed it to the birds … the vultures, “Like ghostly vultures in the twilight, they knew her fate at the very first sight.”

Her calling him Mick enrages me, “His name is Mike,” I wanted to say. “Mike, Mike, Mike …” I wanted to shout it at her, my face close to hers; veins bulging like bright blue pipes in my neck. She clings to him, my husband, drapes herself around him like a sable cloak on an actress, like a second skin. “It’s over, Jean,” says Mike. “I’m going back to Ann … to my children …”

“I’ll kill myself,” she threatens, “I’ve already taken tablets … look …” She waves an empty bottle in the air; Mike looks distraught, forces her to be sick, but I’m not fooled, even when she bends over the sink, in her rigid kitchen where cups hang from little white hooks beneath the wall cupboards; fingers down her throat, retching, heaving; I still don’t believe her. “Why do you want her?” she demands, glancing at Mike then spinning around to face me; I see spittle, thick and gluey, running down her chin, her beautiful, treacle, hair is wild, demented. “Why her?”

I smile, laugh … I know I look good … I’m dressed to the nines, my make-up perfect as Liz Taylor playing Cleopatra, my hair dark, glossy, a thick, black curl falling irresistibly over my shoulder. I wear a skirt so short that it shows most of my long, tanned legs. I want him to realize what he would be missing … if he left me. He doesn’t reply; he’s struck dumb, I have to answer for him, “Because he loves me …” I turn to Mike, my husband, I hold out my hand, “I’ve come to take you home.”

For a split second he hesitates, looks at her, then slowly shakes his head, “I’m sorry.“ She cries, screams, swears, stamps her feet, as we walk away, the two of us, together, side by side, so close … yet so far apart. We smiled at each other, I shivered and he pulled me close, caressed my neck, my cheek, then, just before kissing my lips, told me for the very first time that he loved me.

***

Heather has a boyfriend … his name is Billy. They met at college in October when leaves that crunched under foot, bright orange and red as blood, littered the paths; scampered in the breeze, and a sun, weak as a flickering light bulb, shone half heartedly from a china blue sky. I watch them together, walking, their hands clasped in the voluminous pocket of his overcoat. He holds her carefully, delicately, like expensive porcelain; like mum’s Capo Di Monté figurines. I think he’s in love.

Christmas is drawing near and I’m trying so hard to be normal, to be sane, but sometimes I can feel it, hysteria, rising higher and higher, stifling me, like cruel fingers with long, sharp nails digging into my throat. The temptation to lie in bed, sleeping, my face turned to the wall is overwhelming. I resist it for I have a husband and four living, breathing children … I must be brave; but the mornings are a fight … a battle with my soul. Heather listens to “Bohemian Rhapsody” every minute of every day. I can’t get the song out of my head.

We’ve hung decorations, all of us, me, Mike, Heather, Michael, Sarah and Richard, adorned the ceilings and walls with colorful paper chains, balloons, holly and mistletoe. Heather insisted on mistletoe with a sweet, dreamy look in her eyes that said, “Billy, Billy, Billy.” We decorated the tree and it stands, sparkling, majestic, in a corner of the sitting room. It’s so beautiful. Becky loved the Christmas tree. Richard, being the youngest child now; seriously, carefully, hung the lower wider spreading branches with baubles and swathed them in tinsel and chocolate novelties … for Becky wasn’t there to do it. She’s gone … gone to Heaven to be an Angel. Gone … gone into a deep black hole in the earth and we can’t see her any more; we can’t speak to her any more; we can’t touch her any more.

From the window I see flurries of snow like angel’s gentle fingers appearing from a sky that is low, white … almost as if the clouds have massed together as one and are going to fall upon the earth. A robin sits on the fence fluttering his wings; his red breast like a splash of blood against the chalky whiteness. I remember when Heather was a little girl, she ran to me from the garden screaming that the clouds were going to fall on her head; that Anna, the girl next door, had told her that the clouds would fall on her head and kill her.

I don’t know why but I run outside and stand in the garden, shivering, my face turned to the milky sky, arms clenched rigidly around my body … for the air is freezing now and the snow falling thicker, and faster, and I worry that Becky is cold … she won’t be cold will she? Mum will keep her warm … and Dad … and Dave … and Lily, my mother-in-law. She should have a scarf, a warm coat, gloves, a hat … I didn’t think of that at the time. I wish that she was at home, cosy, sitting on the fluffy orange rug in front of the fire, and not in a box with a nailed lid, that lies down a deep, dark hole in the earth. My heart pounds with terror.

They lead me inside, Mike and my children, and I sit and stare … still, unblinking. Heather makes me tea … hot tea …boiling … steam rises from the metallic orange brew like a baby’s breath. Sarah and Heather are upstairs now, playing records. I hear heart rending music … Barry White’s music … “Love’s Theme.” When Becky went upstairs with them, they always played “Puppy Love.” She loved that song. Michael, Richard and Mike are watching the telly … there’s the sound of gunshots, screams, the pounding of horses hooves. A western … I love westerns but I don’t want to watch it, I can’t concentrate on the telly at the moment.

Events at the hospital pass through my mind; Becky, towards the end, her voice, airy, breathless, “Mum, Dad, are you coming tomorrow?” Afterwards I held her in my arms, kissed her closed, empty face, her eyelids. I think of mum, her final breath as she passed away, her jaw sagging open, full of secrets, like a door partly ajar, a sliver of light; the panic in my heart, then the relief that she’d gone to take care of Becky. I think of Mike, of his lover, Jean, I see the weight of her hair tilting her head, exposing her neck, long and white, dewy with my husband’s kisses. He’s told me it’s all over … but she lingers in his heart. “I can’t give you anything but my love … but my love …”

***

It’s January, my birthday month, and I’m thirty-five. The weather is icy cold, draughty, and in the garden shy white-faced snowdrops push their unwilling, torturous way through frozen earth. The sky is grey and sunken for the clouds are sleeping. Becky has a gravestone now; a sweet white heart inscribed from all of us with tender, loving words of farewell, “Cherished memories of Rebecca Louise … ” It was her birthday on the twenty-first … just before Christmas. She would have been five. We went to the cemetery laden with bunches of flowers and a holly wreath.

Michael, Sarah and Richard are back at school and Heather at college … I’m alone … except for the dog, Blue and Fluffy the cat. Every day is long, bleak, and colorless, as if the whole world is tinted sepia, or black and white. A cruel wind nips and squeezes my cheeks and my nose as I trudge to the shops, my fingers clutching the light, stringy handle of a shopping bag instead of the strong, sturdy handle of a pushchair … Becky’s pushchair. Oh God, how I miss her. I miss her high pitched childish chatter, ”Mum, I want to go to America to marry Donny Osmond …” her smile that filled my heart with beams of yellow sunshine, and the vulnerable, uneven parting at the back of her head that separated her soft, downy hair into pigtails. “I imagine their bright happy faces, free from sadness and pain, enfolded in the wings of Angels, never to suffer again.”

I’m all alone … except for my children … Heather, Michael, Sarah and Richard; for Becky has gone, mum has gone and even Sue, my twin, for she re-married and has moved away … I miss her. I can’t get used to her being just a vague, disembodied voice at the end of a static telephone line. And even though Mike is near, he’s so very far away, for I feel that he’s shut me out of his heart …and hidden the key … somewhere out of reach.

Christmas has gone, thank God, the first one without Becky. I watched it slink away like an uninvited guest. I even waved, a little delighted wiggle of the fingers … goodbye. Heather was so drunk on Christmas day that she collapsed onto my immaculate red and silver table, her head dangling in her dinner, like a rag doll, like the rag dolls with long stripy legs that we bought for her and Sarah many Christmases ago; pieces of cabbage clung to her hair like seaweed and thick, dark gravy mingled with tears, large as old pennies, as she cried hysterically for her sister … for Becky. “I want Becky back … oh, God, I want Becky back …” Sarah giggled, embarrassed, her hand covering her mouth; I noticed a blue plastic ring on her finger, yet Michael looked worried, upset, he stood up, hesitated, then tried to help control her wayward limbs, “Heather’s drunk, Heather’s drunk,” crowed Richard, who wore a bright orange paper hat, low on his forehead, almost covering his eyes. Mike and Billy had to carry her upstairs, to bed, where she stayed all afternoon sleeping off the effects of too many Babycham’s. I blamed Mike … Mike blamed his dad … Ern.

“As if I haven’t had enough,” I said. “Of you and Ern arriving home tipsy on Sundays and Christmas day year after dismal year … now you have my daughter doing it as well.”

“I didn’t realize how many she’d had,” argued Mike. “Anyway, it’s the situation this year … she’s upset …” “Yes,” I agreed, pointedly. “Yes, it’s the situation.”

“What’s up with her, Ann, Michael?” asked Ern, he’d never been a big man but was now a shrunken husk, lost in the deep, soft cushions of the settee. “What’s up with her?” he repeated. “She’s drunk, Dad,” Mike boomed. “Drunk …” Ern giggled like a girl then grinned, showing teeth large and discolored as leaning tombstones. “Only had Babycham,” he said, shaking his head sorrowfully. “Babycham won’t do no harm …” He sucked heavily, greedily on his pipe, emitting odorous fumes like a dirty, puffing steam train. “Well it has,” said Mike. “It’s done a lot of harm …”

Billy was quiet: shy, ill at ease at first without Heather, looking at the telly with big brown eyes that were watchful, serious. “I’m so sorry, Billy,” “It’s all right, Ann, I just want her to be happy. “She isn’t at the moment,” I told him. “I know,” he replied. He talked to Michael and Richard, teased Sarah. They played games, Billy, Michael, Sarah, Richard, “Cluedo,” “Frustration,” and “Mouse Trap.” We watched the telly, Top of the Pops then a film, “The Sound of Music.” He drank beer, smoked cigarettes, and ate fruit, chocolate, mince pies. He seemed more relaxed now, his long legs stretched out, feet planted into the carpet, rooted. I talked to him, Billy, while Mike and Ern snored and snuffled the festive season away, their mouths gaping open, wide as trapdoors; such a lovely boy. I was so glad that I’d asked Heather to write “I love you” in his Christmas card. Heather slept on.

***

Guess what? I’ve been out with friends, neighbours, Joy and Irene. We’ve been to pubs in Portsmouth and to the Mecca and even to pubs and nightclubs in Southsea. There’s a big wide world out there that I didn’t even know existed. A world of deep, dark, caverns lit with flashing lights, red, green, yellow and blue, like quivering rainbows, psychedelic dance floors and pulsing disco music that reverberates through my body like tiny, buzzing, electric shocks. Oh, such wonderful, wonderful music, “I love to love, but my baby just loves to dance, she does …” And then there’s the men … oh yes … the men. “It’s like being in a cattle market … like we’re on show,” commented Joy, as the men stood, drinking, staring over the top of their pint glasses, three or four deep: around the dance floor. “So?” said Irene. Wedding rings glittered from slim fingers, pudgy fingers, gentle fingers, willing fingers, unfaithful fingers. I glanced at my own, it glowed in the colored lights like a reproach or a warning … I hid my hand.

Thirty-five … yet I’d never been out drinking and dancing on my own … I’d never been in a pub without Mike and certainly not a night club … he’d only ever taken me to his work’s dinner dances. “Dancing Queen … feel the beat of the tambourine … oh yeah …”

Mike was not happy at this sudden turn of events, his baby, his fledging, flying the nest, suddenly independent … he barely spoke to me as I was getting ready; just hovered in the bedroom doorway, glaring, his eyes hard, cold, flinty, as I applied blue or green sparkling eye shadow, rosy blusher; as I slicked shiny red on my lips and combed my hair, a dark, tight afro now. He watched as I dressed myself, slowly, carefully in a cream trouser suit and a black silk shirt that slid so cool and sensuous against my perfumed skin. He didn’t even say goodbye when I left the house, but I turned around, waved, and saw his face, a pale blur, briefly, fleetingly, at the window.

Heather was shocked that I would even consider going to those places; she said that she had heard of them; had been told that they were dens of drunkenness and sexual temptation. I laughed at her, and, typical of a teenager, she pulled away as I tried to kiss the frown lines from her forehead and told her not to worry, “I’m a big girl now,” I said.

“It’s dad’s fault,” she said nastily. “If he hadn’t had his fling, you wouldn’t be going out now …” “Heather …” I said. She interrupted me, cut my words of defence from her heart, dashed tears from her eyes and told me that I looked fab; that I was to have a good time …”

“Keep an eye on your brothers and … sister,” I said. “I have two sisters …” she replied. “I know,” I said gently. “Of course I know you have two sisters … is Billy coming round?” “Yes … I’m glad … I don’t want to be alone with dad now … I don’t know what to say …”

My heart ached when she said that. “Oh Mike … what have you done? Heather … who used to talk to you about everything. Was it worth it? Was she worth it against losing your daughter?”

***

A whole long year since Becky died. May. Spring time. The fifth month … Becky died on the fifth. The garden riots with daffodils, browning at the tips now; almost over, and tulips glow from the flowerbeds like red and yellow flames. Roses, curled into tight, mysterious buds, are waiting to bloom, and in the cemetery a tree cascades pink blossom over Becky’s grave.

The weather is boiling hot … all the time … day and night … the earth is parched, hungry for water, and leaves, normally green and perky at this time of year, droop listlessly from the trees. Most days I lay in the garden, sunbathing, slick with coconut oil, sizzling like meat under a grill, trying to close my mind, to concentrate on reading a book or the paper, but I can’t help thinking and worrying, for without looking at Becky’s picture, kissing it, touching it, the glass frigid and hard beneath my fingers and my lips, I still can’t see her face.

Billy has asked Heather to get engaged; she hesitates. Panic flares briefly, like the hiss of a snake, in her eyes. “Why don’t you wait until September?” I suggest. “When Billy’s eighteen …” Billy looks unsure but Heather nods her head, looks relieved, “Yes,” she says. “Yes …” I watch him put his arms around her; lovingly kiss her cheek, “Babe,” he says. “I love you, babe …” Her shoulders are rigid, hard as a brick wall.

“It’s Mike’s fault,” I think to myself. “Him and his bloody affair … Heather trusts nobody now … she won’t let herself love Billy because she’s afraid of being hurt … again …”

The atmosphere indoors is heavy, thick, and noxious as car fumes. I feel I may suffocate on it; so I go into the garden, sit in the heat and breathe, deeply, calmly. Sweat pours in tiny itchy rivers from my tanned skin. I smoke a cigarette until my eyes sting with tears and my heart feels mauled and bruised.

***

“Do you want to dance?” I feel the pressure of a warm hand on my bare shoulder; I spin around, my dress brushing my thighs, to see him gazing down at me, a smile touching his lips and his eyes, beautiful eyes that are as green and glassy as the depths of the sea, the sea that was all around me, dragging me in its current, drowning me, as I walked down the aisle clinging to my dad’s arm on my wedding day. “Yes,” I reply. As we dance I feel the palm of his hand, his fingers, resting on the small of my back. “There was no wedding march … and I wore flowers in my hair, pink flowers, and a pink dress, not white … fallen women can’t wear white …”

We don’t want the evening to end … anything to prolong it. We go to a hotel. The room is large but even so, to my adulterous eye, the bed dominates it, and the bedspread, a rough bright orange, hurts my eyes; then tickles my bare skin; my back, my neck, my buttocks and the back of my legs as I sink into it. He lays down facing me, cups my breasts, then kisses me, hard, on the mouth; I taste beer and whisky on his tongue and his teeth. Our bodies fuse together like leaves to the branch of a tree and, as he moves against me, juices like sap run between us … sticky and sweet. Afterwards, I watch blue smoke float in wavering rings from our cigarettes. My body is at peace. I feel guilt … but only a little … like a stab through the heart.

***

Summer 1976. The weather is still unbearably hot. I sit in the garden with Irene and Joy, in the cool shade of trees that droop and sag in the heat like melting candles; we smoke cigarettes and drink white wine, chilled, straight from the fridge, or a rich, warm red that lies in the cavern of my mouth like berries … it makes us light headed, flushed, giggly … it loosens my tongue for I tell them of my adultery, I tell them in whispers, behind the secretive palm of my hand, into the secretive whorls of their ears. They shrug, and world weary say, “Welcome to the club …it means nothing … doesn’t everybody do it eventually …” “No,” I say. “No, this is different … this is serious …”

Heather tells me that it’s front-page news that the heat wave is going to carry on indefinitely (forever and ever, she says) that people are throwing away their umbrellas, getting rid of their raincoats, furs, hats, coats, anoraks, scarves, and gloves. She says that dustbin men have been working overtime because of the amount of rubbish being disposed of … boots, thermals, long johns, socks, even stockings and tights.

I gape at her open mouthed, ask for the paper, “I want to read about it …” say I couldn’t imagine not having rain sometimes, what about the plants and flowers in the garden? How will they survive? “What about Christmas?” I ask. “Will it still be hot then?” I ramble on, say I don’t know if I’ll like it being so warm on Christmas day. “It’s not right,” I say. “Unnatural.” She laughs at me, shakes her head, tells me that I’m a doylum, a div, for believing her, “If you believe that,” she says. “You’ll believe anything.” I hear her telling the same story to Michael, Sarah and Richard … but not Mike … not her dad. The sound of their laughter reminds me of the past, of old times, before Becky died, before mum died, before Mike made such a terrible mistake. It touches my heart.

***

I feel as though I’m living in a bubble, a multi-faceted bouncy bubble, where muted colors, red, blue, yellow and green, spin and change like a kaleidoscope. I touch the soft jelly walls that surround me; they yield gently beneath my probing fingers and palms, but they never burst. My secret is safe within the bubble; I hold it, stroke it, taste it like smooth caramel or chocolate, and drink it, inhale it, like the pungency of gin or the harshness of whisky. We meet every week, every Wednesday evening, and in between he phones, and his voice, moving so rapidly towards me inside the thin, dusty telephone wires is like millions and millions of tiny caresses flowing erotically along the length of my spine.

“Ann you have committed two cardinal sins …as a teenager you performed the sexual act before marriage and became with child, and now you have performed the sexual act within the sanctity of your marriage with a man other than you husband … you have committed the sin of adultery … you are an adulterer … and for your sins Heaven will close and lock its pearly gates against you, and may you rot in hell … for all eternity.” I think of the Catholic Church, of the thin spire pointing into the Heavens like an accusing finger, and the cold, hard face of the priest on my wedding day. How could I ever prove my innocence?

Does Mike know that I’m having an affair; that I’m playing around, seeing another man, as I did when he tainted our love with Jean? Can he tell? Can he see that I’m different? For I feel different. Isn’t it obvious? Surely he can see that soft glow shining from my eyes … the windows to my heart. When I look in the mirror I don’t see myself … I don’t see Ann “I think I’ll call you Angie,” he says with a grin… I’m somebody else … somebody more glamorous, more desirable … a woman who wears sexy, lacy underwear beneath her tight fitting jeans and mini skirts, a woman who wears mascara, eye shadow and bright red lipstick even when she’s only going to the local shops or staying at home all day. Surely he can see that … Or is he blind? … Or just pretending to be?

I tell Heather, my right arm, “you’re not only my daughter but my friend … ” for even she guesses that something is different. She’s in her bedroom, getting ready for Billy, she’s changed into jeans that hang bravely, precariously, on her skinny hips and a tight black tee shirt.

“I’ve met someone,” I tell her. “At the Mecca?” she asks, round-eyed.

I nod, whisper, “I think he’s special.”

She looks so afraid. “Oh mum … what do you mean, special? You won’t leave, will you?”

I shake my head, try to cuddle her, but she tightens like a spring, shrugs me away. “No,” I say. “I won’t leave.” Then, “Your dad deserves it, Heather … doesn’t he?

She hesitates then nods her head, agrees with me, yes … he deserves it.

Later, I go back over the conversation, repeat each word over and over in my mind, I recall her hesitation, her reluctance, and regret making her agree with me.

***

Sunday … the roast is in the oven … a piece of beef, thick, sturdy, succulent as the earth, an island, surrounded by a sea of crispy roast potatoes bubbling in scorching fat. It’s hot in here, in the kitchen, hotter than hell… “Ann you have committed two cardinal sins … and for your sins the church will close and lock its pearly gates against you and may you rot in hell for all eternity …” My face heaves with sweat, it collects in wet, greasy droplets on scanty, plucked eyebrows and lies along my soft upper lip like a damp moustache. Wearily, raising the back of my hand, I wipe it away. Outside, all is glassy, still, tropical, under the glaring heat of the sun. When I look out of the window, I almost expect to see palm trees standing erect in place of the beautiful willow that shades the pond, its long narrow yellow tipped leaves trailing in the water like greedy fingers hunting for fish.

I hear the splish splash of water as Sarah and Richard jump in and out of the paddling pool, the murmur of their voices, reminding me of her garden, her children’s paddling pool, and the day of mum’s funeral when I dragged my husband from her evil clutches. Drops of water sparkle like tears, like diamonds, on Sarah and Richard’s sunburned skin, and cut grass clings to their bare feet and ankles like thin green veins. I think of Becky … of her warm pink skin that I so loved to kiss, to smell, to breathe in the odor of her favourite perfume, Avon’s “Elegance” … never again to sparkle with water or be tickled with fronds of spiky green grass, but mouldering now, dying into the earth, flaking into dust and ashes. “Don’t look back, for your heart will break and it hurts so much when it bleeds.”

Vaguely I hear Billy talking to Heather, something about a record that he’s bought her. “I’ve never heard of it, …” she says. “Go upstairs and listen to it …” urges Billy. ”Listen to the words…” Curious, I look over Heather’s shoulder. “Oh, The Real Thing … that’s a lovely song … it’s in the charts …” “I’ve never heard of it,” she repeats, dismayed. I hum it to myself, sing, “You to me are everything …the sweetest song that I can sing …” as I go back into the kitchen; take a quick peek in the oven, then recoil as a blast of heat hits me hard in the face.

Mike and Ern arrive home; Mike is beer flushed, smiling, pleased with himself. He has oval sweat marks under the arms of his white shirt, jagged lines across his back. Ern, giggling, swaying slightly, his trilby pushed rakishly to the back of his head, puts coins into Sarah and Richard’s wet palms, he has bars of chocolate, soggy, curving in the heat, “Thank you granddad … thank you granddad…” He turns to me, grinning, “Hello our Ann …” “Hello dad …” I hesitate, then lean forward, kiss him on the cheek. Whisky hangs heavily on his breath. “Dinners almost ready.” I turn to Sarah and Richard, wave my index finger at them: “Don’t eat that chocolate now.”

Mike claps his hands, strides up and down the baking kitchen, “A nice piece of beef,” he says. “A nice piece of beef … lovely … have we got mustard, Ann?” I nod yes; then, suddenly, imagine him, my lover, the flash of his green eyes, and his small, white teeth nipping my arching body, my neck, my shoulder, and my breast. Overcome with desire I avert my face and, taking a deep breath, dive into the roaring flames and pull the sizzling meat from the oven.

***

Mike knows. He heard me talking to Irene. Talking of my lover, my paramour, my boyfriend, he heard the words that spewed from my trembling lips into her excited waiting ear; contaminated words, tainted words, corrupt words. I didn’t expect him home so early. Irene and I were sitting in the cool shade of the kitchen; we talked, laughed; smoked like belching chimneystacks, drank wine. She is having an affair, deceiving her husband, her neglectful husband, she says. Her boyfriend’s name is Ray. Ray is gorgeous, with eyes as penetrating a blue as the summer sky, he wears very tight jeans and shirts; the top buttons undone, showing a smooth tanned chest. I can’t blame her for Ray.

Mike appeared, very suddenly, in the kitchen doorway. I’d heard nothing. No car engine, no whine of brakes or the creak of a hand brake, no footsteps on the garden path or intake of breath, or clearing of a congested throat, not even a cough, a sniff. He appeared from nowhere, a large, dark shape, blocking the light into the kitchen from the garden, and heard every word … every adulterous word.

He stands here now, leaning against the worktop, staring at me; his eyes are as wet as dirty, grimy puddles. I think he’s in shock. I don’t know why, for didn’t he half expect this to happen? I start to cry, deep shuddering sobs, not just for Mike and my unfaithfulness, but also for Becky and for mum … and for him, my boyfriend, a man who has made me come alive again … I cry tears that have festered inside for so long, spoiling, going bad as rotting apples. “What would mum think?” I wonder. She used to laugh at Sue’s exploits with other men, but somehow, I don’t know why, I really don’t think that mine would amuse her. “You’ve made your bed, our Ann, you’ll have to lie in it …”

“Why?” he asks.

“Why not … you did it to me,” I reply, flippantly.

“I wondered,” he said. “About the red lipstick, short skirts, sexy underwear … wasn’t for me was it?”

I drag hard on my cigarette, “I’m surprised you noticed, …” I say, harshly, sarcastically. Tiny puffs of smoke waft from my mouth with every word.

Irene looks unhappy, ill at ease, then relieved when Heather walks through the door, home from work (she has a job in a solicitor’s office now … we’re all so proud of her) She looks very white, drained and I can imagine that her feet burn inside her clumsy, platform shoes. “What’s going on?” she asks. With a quick, reassuring squeeze to my shoulder, Irene glides quietly out of the door.

“He knows,” I tell her. “About him …”

Mike starts ranting and raving because she didn’t tell him, didn’t tell him that her mum was having an affair … how could I have put her in such a position?

“It’s your own fault,” she tells him. “If you hadn’t messed around … mum wouldn’t have either …”

He steps towards her, his face is red, mottled, with temper, “Now listen to me … you’ve no idea, Heather …”

“No, don’t bother saying anything …” she interrupted. “You hurt us all …especially mum … I’m tired and hot ... I’m going upstairs for a cold bath …”

As she went out, the door shook, and then sighed as it settled back into its wooden frame. I heard her tread, heavy, dispirited, on the stairs.

***

I broke it off swiftly, brutally, the way you rip a plaster from a child’s tender skin. I hoped that it would lessen the hurt, but it didn’t, for my heart, already heavy and sore within my breast, ached more than ever. “You have to take your sweets with your sours, our Ann,” says mum. ”Where’s my sweets, mum?” I ask, desperately. “Haven’t I had enough sours?”

“I can’t see you any more,” I told him over the phone. “Mike’s found out … “ my chest heaved as I sobbed, as I almost choked on my tears, while he begged to see me once more, that it couldn’t end like this, “Please let me see you again … if only once more … please … “ “I can’t,” I told him. I could barely speak. “It’s better like this, … ““I’ll phone,” he said, urgently. “Do you hear me … I’ll phone, …”

I didn’t want to, but I hung up carefully, gently; the faint marks of my fingers still visible where I’d gripped the receiver. I sat unmoving for a long time, until the clean yellow light of the sun, reddening at the edges, began to sink outside the window, and my tears stopped falling and dried, white and flaky, like the marks of slimy snails, around my eyes, my cheeks, my chin.

***

There’s something wrong with Heather. She’s seems so down, so depressed … I had hoped that she might be coming to terms with the awful things that have happened, mainly the deaths, Becky’s, her Nan’s, her uncle’s, but also Mike’s affair, my affair, I think she was beginning to, but there’s something else … I know there’s something else.

“Have you been sick?” I ask her, when I hear the sound of retching, cleverly masked by the flushing of the toilet, coming from the bathroom, when I see her face, white as dough, beaded with tiny balls of sweat. Shaking her head, trying to smile, she denies it, tells me I’m imagining things. “Don’t be a doylum, mum,” she says. “I’m fine …” “Anorexia,” I think to myself. “That eating disorder … but no … not Heather … when you make yourself sick … no … what about the other one … I’d seen a programme on the telly … bulimia … no … not Heather …”

I hint to Billy, ask him things in a roundabout way, I’m a detective, snooping around, trying to find out who committed the crime … I’m Telly Savalas, “Who loves ya baby?” Perhaps, to look more authentic, I should start sucking lollipops. Billy says that Heather’s okay, he shrugs, shakes his head. I suppose he must be used to her being so sad, so down. After all, she’s been sad for a long time, long before she met Billy. I watch her with Billy, with her friends, Sonia, Vicky, Janet and Alison. She laughs more with her friends, with Billy she’s quiet, but affectionate, they kiss a lot, and cuddle. I know she cares for him. I have a feeling, a hunch, “she might be pregnant, imagine … Heather and a baby, I hug the thought to myself like a precious gift from God, I can’t stop my face from smiling, my mouth from turning up at the corners,” but I mustn’t jump to conclusions. I need to ask her.

I knock on her bedroom door, once, twice, three times, but she can’t hear me. All I can hear is that record over and over again, “You to me are everything, the sweetest song that I can sing, oh baby …” I don’t know why but something in that song reminds me of him and I don’t want to be reminded of him … not now. I don’t want to think of his mouth, the curve of his lips, the secret shadow of his green eyes, his hair, springy, curly, like silk against my fingers … the way he closed his eyes when he kissed me …

I open the door a fraction, peep in, she’s hunched over the record player, humming to herself, listening to the words, “Go upstairs and listen to the words,” says Billy. “Heather …”This time she hears me, for she stands up, clutching her chest, saying that I made her jump, “To you I guess I’m just a clown who picks you up each time you’re down, oh baby …” She stops the record; quietly, I shut the door. Her bedroom is very warm even though the windows gape wide open and the curtains, almost closed, move languidly in a half-hearted breeze. A dull black fly buzzes around the ceiling, the walls.

She stands staring at me, her hands still clutching her chest; long fingers laced together, white knuckled, like an angel praying. Her eyes are shiny, very wet and very green. “Oh mum, I don’t know what to do,” she gabbles. “… My period’s late … I’m so scared … I think I might be pregnant …” “Oh Heather …” Sobbing and sobbing, her limbs shaking, she falls, helplessly, into the comforting circle of my arms.