The Girl in the Red Coat (27 page)

FIVE YEARS, 105 DAYS

At night, on the ward, people became lumps under thin hospital blankets.

Night in the hospital was another world. A netherworld: the dim lights, burning through the night; the squeak of doctors’ shoes on disinfected floors; the tense crisis of health where staff and patients diced with death; the coughing heard down the corridor; the stirrings in the sleep; the sudden bursts of giggling by the nurses’ station.

I preferred the nights. I felt better in an environment that said: normality is eggshell thin. Peer round the corner of it and there is this – just out of view.

All my searching had not found Carmel, instead it had brought me here; and I’d gained a reputation for being capable, calm, professional. When I thought of her now it was as a glittering needle: this great wide world and she one tiny point in it.

Twice I thought I’d seen her in the hospital out of the corner of my eye.

Once, standing by the bed of a gravely sick child. Her head was bent down and was sombrely looking into his face, her fingers in the pockets of her red coat. The other time, down the end of a corridor, holding her hand up in a kind of greeting, or farewell.

But most times she was the absent sort of ghost: a cut-out hole in the air.

At first I thought my studies could answer some question about the human puzzle and how we came to be and how we fit together …
living protoplasm is created from other pre-existing living protoplasm
… Instead what was there was another baby. Paul came to find me the night Lucy was brought in for her second labour.

‘She’ll be quick,’ he said. ‘Well, last time was.’ His eyes were shiny bright.

Though, unusually, her second labour was protracted. I forced myself to focus, filling in charts, ready for the doctor’s rounds in the morning. Every time the nurses’ station phone rang I pounced on it.

Light was tingeing the windows by the time he came to find me again.

‘She had a hard time,’ he said. Black circles were daubed under each eye. ‘Beth, it’s a girl. A little girl.’

‘A girl,’ I repeated dumbly. He reached out his arms for me and over his shoulder I focused on the drugs trolley that it was my responsibility to wheel round that night – the red and blue plastic tops ranked in rows. I felt the air being sucked from the building, as if it might be a bomb wrapped in a blanket and tucked inside the see-through plastic cot upstairs in the maternity ward.

‘A girl,’ I said again and we both clung to each other then, wetting each other’s neck with tears, though whether it was joy or grief was hard to know, the two streamed together.

‘Come and see her.’

I shook my head and grabbed onto the handle of the drugs trolley. ‘Lucy will need to rest.’

‘Just for a minute, please. It’s better you do this right away. I want everything to be right, Beth. I can’t have anything holding over her, she’s just a baby.’

The wicked witch arriving at the christening, I thought, the one that leaves a curse on the girl child: that’s what they’re afraid of – deep down, underneath. They want to make sure it’s a blessing I leave.

Lucy gave me an exhausted smile and held out the baby in her arms, pink and sleeping. ‘Meet Flora,’ she said, as I took the living warmth into my hands.

‘Hello Flora,’ I whispered to her, and of course it was not a bomb but another warm baby, tired out from being born. ‘Bless you, bless you,’ I said.

When they left I waved to the three of them from the front steps and turned back inside – back to all the actions, the tiny actions: the drink of water held to the lips in the middle of the night; the smoothing out of bed sheets; the whisking away of the bedpan for dignity and hygiene.

Driving home, the green dawn over the sky and the house, half expectant she could be in the back seat, coming home.
Is she back yet?
No, no, not this time.
Then when?
I chucked my keys in the copper bowl by the door and caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. Hair: cut short and bobbed, suitable for a nurse. My face: thinner than before. With the money I now earned I’d spruced up the house, bought paint and made the walls downstairs glow warm melon yellow.
She’ll love this colour.

Up in Carmel’s room I added
Flora
to her map in bright pink. Jack, Flora, Graham – all new – and I sensed how our maps were splitting, diverging, forming and reforming as people and places came crowding in.

I looked round her room, remembering my own room at my mother’s. Every night, going to bed, I paused at the top of the stairs outside. Mostly the door stayed shut, but there were moments when I slipped inside to look at her folded T-shirts, her drawings, her books and her duvet, and touch them gently. I would fold the tissue paper back and look at the unworn red shoes. While I had them, she couldn’t walk away from me completely.

All day I’ve wanted to read my letter but I won’t while Gramps is there and now disaster’s struck. The truck’s died right in the middle of nowhere.

We get out and walk and I take a blanket at the last minute in case Gramps wants to sit down.

‘Let’s flag down a car,’ I say, ‘and ask for help.’

Gramps stops in the road. ‘We wouldn’t know who they were. Whether they would be friend or foe. No, I remember there’s a town a few miles over that way.’ He jerks his head towards some hills. ‘We’ll find help there.’

We carry on walking and maybe he’s right anyway because when the odd car does go past, the people inside just look and I guess they’re thinking ‘itinerants’ like Dorothy used to say they did.

It gets so quiet it feels kind of spooky and the sky seems to be pressing down on us hard. The hills around us start turning black. I’m walking right behind Gramps. I think: it’s just the two of us rattling around this lonely world now. We might as well be in our own little chain gang of two. Even if I had a sharp saw in my hand I couldn’t cut through metal like this. It puts its dead weight around your leg and holds you there.

I decide to concentrate on Gramps’s back, large and heavy in his black coat. There’s drops of cold moisture growing on the felty fabric.

‘What can you see?’ I ask eventually.

He scans ahead. ‘Not much, there’s a light some way over there though.’

I duck out from behind him and look. The lights are twinkling bright but they look like a long way off.

‘That looks further than a few miles. Maybe we should have gone the other way. Back towards the city.’

‘Oh no, no. That was even further and we’d be walking into the city with no vehicle or weapon. We might be set upon. We might be robbed and beaten.’

‘I suppose. Well, we’ll have to carry on walking then.’

So we do, we leave our footprints in the mud beside the road. I feel glad for some reason – that we’re leaving some sort of trace. We stay as far off the road as we can in case a car comes past and can’t see us in the twilight and runs right over us. Ahead of me Gramps starts slowing down, his limp is making his body judder and the drops on his jacket swing about as if they were hundreds of children and he’s their father and they’re clinging onto his back for dear life.

‘Gramps, let me go ahead of you. You can’t see anything with your head all bent down like that, except for your shoes.’

‘I can’t,’ he pants. ‘I’m done for. We’ll have to stop.’

‘We’ll stop for a rest and maybe you’ll get your energy back so we can carry on. Or maybe we should get back to the truck and sleep there for the night and think about what to do in the morning?’

‘No, I’m done for,’ he says again. ‘I can’t take another step – my hip feels like it’s on fire. We should say some prayers. We’ve never needed help so much.’

I can see his face in the fading light, twisted in pain, and truly I’m worried then, we’re so alone.

‘Here, sit by the side of the road,’ I say and Gramps slowly lowers himself down so he’s sitting on a grassy bump. He holds onto my arm as he does this so he doesn’t lose his balance and fall onto the ground.

‘What have things come to, Carmel? We’re being sorely tested. When I think of how things could have been.’

‘We could pray like you said. For help?’ He’s forgotten about doing that.

‘Yes, yes. Only …’

‘What?’

‘I’m so weary. Do you think you could lead the prayers? This one time?’

I think about it for a minute. This will be unusual for us. ‘Yes, I guess. If it would help?’

I crouch down next to him so he can hold my hands in between his. I know he likes to do this and I think it might be him trying to catch some healing from me, on the sly, but I don’t mind, not really.

‘Say whatever comes into your heart,’ he says.

I close my eyes. ‘Dear world.’ I think hard about what I want to say. ‘Sometimes you are a very difficult place to live. Please if you could – will you send us a new truck. And some more dollars would help us too.’ I go quiet because I’m praying about seeing Nico again and I don’t want Gramps to hear that bit. I open my eyes then and see Gramps looking at me and he doesn’t look pleased.

‘That wasn’t a very pious sort of prayer.’

‘But you said to say what came into my heart.’

‘You can’t ask for worldly goods and for them just to
be delivered to you, Carmel. God is not a catalogue. He doesn’t own a car lot.’

I sigh. ‘OK, I’ll try again.’

‘No, I think that’s enough from you.’

‘But ––’ I don’t want to say it but I’ve got the real urge to pray about Mum now. And to say I hope she can see us here, even though I know she can’t.

‘No more praying, I don’t know if God would want to hear that sort of prayer.’

I decide to save my prayer about Mum for later. I stand up then and that’s when I notice something.

‘Look, Gramps, look. There’s a ditch behind you.’ It’s just as well we stopped praying when we did as there’s not much light left and if it had gone completely dark I wouldn’t have seen it.

I’ve never been so excited to see a ditch in my whole life. I go and jump right into it and crouch down, feeling with my fingers.

‘It’s dry. Dry as a bone.’ I jump out again. ‘We can sleep here for the night.’

Gramps seems almost pleased someone is telling him what will happen.

‘Well, if you say so, child.’

I help him climb into the ditch. There’s even some ferny plants at the bottom so we’re not sleeping on bare earth. I tuck the blanket round him and make a pillow out of a corner of it for his head. He’s so tired he falls asleep almost straight away and I think about my letter and I think, dare I? Very quietly I take it out of my pocket. The sound of ripping paper makes him mutter and stir so I freeze solid. But I have to see who it’s come from. So I wait till he goes back to sleep
again, hoping there’ll be enough light left when he does.

I can only just see it by the time he’s snoring.

I touch my finger to her name and think of their pink house in the bright sunshine which must have been got with all the dollars Dorothy stole. I’m glad for Melody but it doesn’t seem quite fair what with me and Gramps and the truck dying. I creep under a spare corner of the blanket with Gramps and say a prayer for Melody and then one to Mum. I tell Mum I love her still and hope maybe she can see us here if she’s made it into heaven. But then I change my mind about that because I’m not sure I’d like her to see me sleeping in a ditch with only a blanket over me.

In the morning I wake up much sooner than Gramps. There’s a strange and beautiful colour in the sky – grey and purple – and it seems to make the air around us that colour too. I slide out from underneath the blanket that’s got tangled round us in the night. I’m stiff and cold from sleeping on the ground so I pull my knees up to my chin and blow on my hands to try and warm up.

Gramps is sleeping peacefully. The blanket moves up and down as he breathes. A bird jumps on top of him and it’s bobbing its tiny head and pecking at the blanket, as if it’s going to find food there. There’s a soft lovely wind blowing round us that makes the grasses rustle. Then Gramps starts to wake, muttering and grumbling, and the bird jumps off him and flies away. Gramps sits up with the blanket half falling around him.

‘Where are we?’ He looks around us, then remembers. His face goes all hard and gloomy. ‘What now, Carmel? What now for us?’

I don’t know how to answer this so I blow on my hands some more.

He turns his eyes up towards the sky. ‘Please God, look upon our time of need …’

I look up too and watch the purple-grey clouds shift about. He carries on, praying beside me. He runs out of prayers in the end.

‘You should put your hands together when we pray,’ he says.

I shrug a bit instead, hoping we can change the subject. Thinking we should be deciding what to do now, not praying. Anyway, I feel angry with God today and sometimes I remember how Dad didn’t believe there was one and even
Mum said she wasn’t sure.

Gramps takes his glasses out of his top coat pocket to clean them. Without them, his eyes look naked and pale.

‘Wilful child. God is listening to us, how can you think He’s not?’ Sometimes he seems to know exactly what I’m thinking. It’s creepy.

I don’t want to have an argument with him – even though I can see he does. I start doing star jumps to get some feeling back into my legs.

‘Well. What have you got to say?’ He doesn’t want to leave me alone. I can feel I’m getting annoyed now.

‘All this talking to the sky – the sky doesn’t care about us, it just cares for itself. And pretty soon it’s going to rain on us so we better make a move.’

But he buries his head in his hands. ‘How can you, you of all people, say such a thing? I’ve taken you on, I’ve nurtured you and now you utter this nonsense about talking to the sky. To deny when God has chosen you to be His instrument. It’s a desperate sin, child. You’ll kill me with this talk. I’m half dead from it already.’

I don’t like it when Gramps makes out I’m an angel or a saint. I just want to be a real person.

‘It’s the people, Gramps, I think it mostly comes from the people themselves.’

‘And me? What does that mean? In all these years nothing could be done for me.’ His shoulders are heaving and I think he’s about to start sobbing.

All I can say is, ‘That’s the way it is; it just is, is all. I don’t know why.’

We go quiet for a while, then he starts talking through his fingers because he’s still got his head in his hands.

‘Sometimes I think someone is after us, Carmel.’

‘Whatever do you mean?’

‘I see him. I catch glimpses of him. In the mirrors of the truck, or through a window …’

‘Who, Gramps? What are you talking about?’

‘He wants you. He wants what’s mine. He’ll go to any lengths …’

I shout then, because it seems that’s the only way anything will get through to him. ‘Gramps, who? Why would he be after us?’

‘To rescue you. To take you back.’

‘Rescue me from what?

‘From me …’

‘Gramps, you’re not making any sense. Who is he? What does he look like?’

He opens up his fingers so I can only see one eye. ‘I don’t know. All I’ve seen is a hat. Sometimes a raincoat. He looks different every time.’

I sigh. ‘Gramps, I think you’re imagining things. You have to stay calm, you can’t go round thinking about men in hats. Why are you always thinking that I’ll be taken off you?’

‘You’re right. You belong to me.’

‘No, I don’t
belong
.’ I kick at some tall grass. ‘I’m not a parcel. Anyway, I’ve never asked why you got to keep me?’
My
forehead might look like a garlic bulb now.

‘You know why, child. Your father didn’t want you. I took on the burden, the responsibility, that he was too selfish to bear.’

‘But,’ I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, ‘he might have changed his mind by now?’

I stick my toe in the dirt and scrape it around because I know I shouldn’t have said all this but he’s silent and when I look down at him again the expression on his face makes me freeze. Without warning, the prickles are there, racing right over me.

‘Maybe we should just end it here,’ he says.

‘What d’you mean?’

‘I mean, end it. For both of us, for once and for all.’

I really shout then. ‘Shut up! You stupid old man. You ––’

He stands up like his hip’s not hurting him at all, and the blanket falls to the ground. I see a terrible flash of his old power then and his shoulders go back and his arms seem to grow bigger.

‘You’re not a child, you’re a fiend.’

Then it flies out of my mouth. ‘Who’s Mercy, Gramps? Who is she?’

‘She’s you.’

‘No, the other one. The real one in the passport. What did you do with her? Where is she?’

He goes quiet and still. ‘What do you know about Mercy, snooper?’

The prickles nearly make me fall over they’re so strong.