The Girl in the Red Coat (30 page)

And the crowd turn from a pack of baying wolves to ones that are sniffing about and thinking what to do next. There’s a smell coming off them too. A smell of warm hair. I think, it’s not me that’s wrong – it’s this. If I could just be calm and quiet I’d be fine. I decide something: this is the last ever time I’m going to lay hands for Munroe or Gramps. I’m going to tell Gramps today and however much he wails and shouts he’s not going to change my mind because if I carry on like this it’ll go away.

Then Gramps is by my side and all I can say is, ‘Where is she? Where is she?’ Because I don’t want to see any of the wolves. I only want that girl with the gold stilettos and for everyone else to go away and leave us on our own.

‘Carmel, come back, come back,’ I hear Gramps’s cry as I fight through the crowd. But I won’t. I won’t do anything till I find her. It feels like my life depends on it and I catch a glimpse of her through the bodies – red hair and a gold shoe in between people’s legs.

‘Stand back now.’ It’s a roar from Gramps, so loud the crowd actually do start hanging back like cowed dogs. But the stink they’ve made stays, hot and heavy.

As I push past, people reach out to try and touch me but I shove them off. Some even wave paper money at me but I push that away too. For a horrible minute I think she’s going to get squashed by a tall man in a frayed old suit who seems so overcome by spirit he looks like he’s drowning. But he lurches off towards the door and I’m beside her clutching at one of her skinny hands that feels like a broken bird in mine. I look down and I think flowers are bursting out of
her fingers and then I realise they’re coloured rings and I’m nearly cutting myself on the petals of plastic roses.

‘S’OK. S’OK. Sorry.’ I loosen my grip and say right into her ear, ‘What’s your name?’

She says something back but her voice is a wisp so I have to put my ear right next to her mouth.

‘Say again.’

‘Maxine.’

I want to help Maxine so much but the ugly thought that got smeared all over me is there and to try and make it wash off I say, ‘It’s true. It really is true. I can heal you, Maxine. I can.’

And she says nothing but smiles at me and nods and her hand trembles in mine and I get really, really close to her and she smells of baby powder.

I kneel in front of her. At first the stupid dress gets caught under my knees, just about slicing my neck at the back. I grab onto the hem and yank it up without letting go of her with my other hand, scared that this horrible crowd will separate us, because they think she’s not important at all – and it doesn’t matter if she’s forgotten as long as they get their money’s worth that will go into the sack afterwards at the door.

‘Let me touch your stomach,’ I say. She unbuckles the harness and I can feel how hollow her stomach is under the polka-dot dress. I close my eyes and I try to grope around for what I’m always looking for, the glow, the ropes of light, but I can’t feel anything. When I open my eyes she’s there patiently waiting. I’m crying and I press harder trying to find the glow but I don’t want to hurt her so I don’t press too hard.

She’s saying something again so I lean in to hear. She says, ‘Don’t worry, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter.’

I scrabble my tears away. ‘No, no. It does, it does, it matters more than anything.’ I’m shouting and crying now but I don’t care. So I focus this time. I let the crowd around me melt away and instead of their dog smell I catch onto the wafts of baby powder coming off Maxine and float on them. This lovely girl, I think, with her Minnie Mouse costume and her sweet baby smell, let me help her. If I never help anyone again, let me help her. And slowly there’s a glow and a humming, faint at first, and I concentrate hard, fanning away at it with my mind, trying to get it going like a bonfire on a rainy day.

Keep going, I’m thinking, keep going. And the fire jumps up, flaring beneath my hands.

And I’m falling into her. Her flesh is collapsing around mine as I fall and the liquids in her body wrap themselves round me, red and gold. I’m right in the middle of her: worming through her body, round the pipes of her veins, bumping against bones and wriggling through her guts.

Then I pop my head into her head and I’m working her body from the inside, or we’re working it together. So I open her eyes and I can see – I can see
me
kneeling down in front of us.

I can feel her mouth on my face and it’s smiling. But Carmel in front, she’s crying again. There’s tears slipping off her face and we’re saying, ‘It’s alright, everything’s gonna be alright.’ And I can see Carmel – because I know her so well – feels bad. She’s thinking – it should be me saying that, I’m the one that can get up and walk about on my two legs, not her.

Soon, I think, any minute I’ll inflate and put my arms through hers like I’m putting on a jumper, and wriggle my legs down into hers like they’re jeans. We’ll kick off those high heels, and they’ll fly across the tent and land – clonk, clonk – on the stage, and when I’ve done that I’ll surge forward and stand up wearing her body like a dress. I’ll walk about in it, and as I do, she’ll find
she
can do it too. And somehow, I haven’t figured out how yet, I’ll be able to step back out and she’ll be left standing and walking but strong this time, strong as a tree, and after we’ve separated she’ll keep my energy inside her and it’ll stay there forever.

But there’s a ripple of disturbance through her body and I get shaken about like a bottle of milk. And I bounce around so much I end up bouncing right out of her till, whoomf, I’m back inside myself, kneeling on the floor in front of her wheelchair.

Mayhem is breaking out. I look up to find Maxine and some person I can’t see is spinning her wheelchair around. The wheelchair arm whacks me in the face, whipping my head sideways on its stem.

I put my hand up to my face because I really got a thump there and the voices and tumult around is like the tower of Babel Gramps is always talking about. From the floor all I can see of Maxine – through people’s legs – is her shoes bumping up and down on the footrest of her wheelchair as she’s shoved out of the door and as she reaches daylight, the sun flashes on her gold shoe as it kicks into the air. Then gone. I kneel there holding my face and crying and people keep falling over me. Eventually I say to myself, ‘Get up, Carmel.’ And I do.

Gramps is nowhere to be seen.

I join the crowd and they’re taking no notice of me now – Mercy, the miracle girl. I’m just another body getting squashed as we all fight each other to get out into the open air.

Outside, the cold stings my cheek and each gasp of fresh air is so freezing it hurts inside. At first I can’t work out why everybody is leaving in great swarms like ants marching towards the gate. But then dotted around I see even bigger, blacker ants and these ants are police in uniforms. One is holding up something to his mouth and speaking through it and his words come out in a robot’s voice.

‘This is an illegal religious gathering with no permit. Leave immediately …’

There’s a buzzing of angry voices because there’s people who don’t want to leave. They want to carry on buying Bibles and getting healed and they were probably looking forward to the worship at four o’clock round the giant cross. Munroe said he was expecting transcendence and epileptic fits and all manner of things caused by the holy spirit alighting down. People falling flat on the ground dead even. I could tell he’d been looking forward to it.

I see Nico coming towards me – I’m so glad to see his face I want to throw my arms around him and kiss him. But I’ve wanted to do that since I was about eight, so no change there. Then Nico actually puts his arm around
me
and I’m nearly dizzy with the feel of it, strong, like a man’s almost. It’s like I’ve been dreaming about all these years.

‘Quick. You’re gonna get crushed here, Carmel. People are getting mad.’

I say, ‘Yes, Nico.’ Because all of a sudden it’s like we could be boyfriend and girlfriend together and we’re making decisions just the two of us.

People are gathering round the policeman with the voice machine and someone tries to throw a rock at him and it misses but even so he takes his gun out and waves it round in the air.

‘Disperse immediately. Disperse immediately. This is a gathering with no permit.’

One of the crowd yells out, ‘And Jesus Christ didn’t have no permit either. You sayin’ he’s an illegal?’

The crowd around the cop jeer at him and some are praying with their eyes rolling back into their heads and the cop starts looking scared and I know how he’s feeling because when I first witnessed the speaking in tongues I could hardly believe my eyes and I was scared too. Even though I’m over that now and sights such as those are as normal as breathing to me.

I can feel Nico’s hand on the small of my back and it’s setting the bones there shivering clackety clack, rippling up and down like my spine’s turned into a snake. ‘OK, honey. Let’s get you somewhere that’s safe.’

I nod at him and the crowd pushing and pulling us melt away for a minute. Even the cop with the gun melts because Nico called me ‘honey’.

‘Over here.’ He grabs my hand and leads me to one of the corners of the tent where it’s pulled tight with ropes staked into the ground. We both crouch down behind the rope and use it as a guard but people’s legs knock against it, nearly falling on top of us. And quite truthfully I think I could have found a better hiding place on my own, though I don’t say because I love having Nico looking after me like this, and I don’t ever want him to stop being behind me with his warm chest against my back.

Because I’m thinking about hiding places the hobbit houses at the place Gramps first took me pop into my head.

‘I remember hiding …’

Nico says, ‘What?’ I was talking to myself almost.

I turn my head. ‘It’s not important. I’ve just remembered hiding when I was little. There was a row of tiny houses with doors and the doors had round holes cut in them.’

‘Was it a place where they put poor people?’

‘I guess.’

‘They had them in Romania too. I saw them – my uncle told me they used to lock people inside and they’d have to bash away at a rock and they only got something to eat when the rock was small enough to push through the holes.’

I don’t know why this shocks me so much. ‘So they were for locking up? Not hiding?’

‘If they were the same.’ Nico’s breath tickles my ear as he speaks.

Then I see Gramps. ‘What’s he doing?’ He’s rushing up to one of the cops, one of the ones who’s got his gun out.

‘Stop it, Gramps, stop it,’ I shout out, even though I know it’s useless because the noise of the crowd is too much. But Gramps is pulling on the cop’s sleeve now and he looks like he’s trying to explain something and for the life of me I don’t know what he’s playing at.

‘Gramps, don’t,’ I shout. ‘Come over here.’

‘Calm down, he can’t hear you,’ says Nico in my ear. ‘He’s probably explaining how this is just a gathering of the faithful so they’ll leave us alone.’

‘No, no. He wouldn’t do that. He’s mortally terrified of cops. He’ll do anything to avoid them.’

Gramps’s eyes are everywhere and at the same time he’s
pulling at the cop’s sleeve and babbling at him. The policeman’s big and muscled and he’s jutting his chin towards Gramps with one great meaty hand fingering the butt of his gun. His fair eyebrows the colour of sand pull tighter and tighter together, but Gramps can’t seem to see any of this happening and won’t stop his babbling.

‘I’m worried about him. What’s he up to?’

Nico holds me tight in his arms. ‘Nothing you can do there, Carmel. You leave them both to it, looks like trouble to me.’

Gramps’s eyes don’t stop scanning and searching and I wonder – is he looking for me? There’s this expression on his face that’s not only wild and afraid but something else – like he’s drowning in some kind of relief. The cop does some talking on the radio with one hand and with the other he’s reaching for his belt.

Then I see him locking a metal band round Gramps’s wrist.

I want to jump up and say, ‘Ta-da, surprise,’ like I used to when I was a little kid, to make everything better, to calm everyone down. And I do jump up and Gramps sees me, I know he does. But all he does is lift his hand that isn’t cuffed to the cop in a kind of wave that isn’t really a wave. It’s more he’s giving me some kind of blessing from a distance, sending it winging over the field. Then the cop cuffs his other hand and tugs on the cuffs making Gramps jerk – a fish on a line. He walks away leading Gramps, who’s like a bull now, not a fish, because he has no choice but to stumble after.

‘Oh no. No.’

‘What’s happening?’ Nico’s standing up behind me now.

‘Gramps said he was going to get judged today.’ For a moment I feel like one of the tents has fallen on top of me and I don’t care even that Nico’s there or not.

‘What’s the old fool done?’ he says, and when he says that it doesn’t seem to matter about his strong arms or his lovely eyes.

‘Don’t call him that,’ I say, tears stinging in my eyes.

He shrugs. Now it’s not like we’re boyfriend and girlfriend, but we’re like Mum and Dad were in the old days, getting ourselves geared up to have a fight. I’ve got my nose in the air pointing up at him and his eyebrows are curling down. Then his mother’s coming towards us and calling his name like he’s a five-year-old. Her gypsy earrings have gone and she’s wearing a jacket with fluffy white fur round the hood and stretchy pink slacks over her great big American behind and we’re back being kids again.

‘Bye Carmel.’ He leans down and kisses me on the mouth so quick it’s over before I know what’s happening.

‘Go find the other one you came with. Go find him – he’ll look after you.’ That’s the last thing I want to do but he steps over the rope to join his mum and I watch until they get lost in the crowd and I can’t see them any more. I realise then that Nico’s probably not thought about me, like I have him, all the time, for years and years.

A freezing wind is blowing. It blows in from the direction of the cross and as it blasts it seems to peel people away, they blow on past towards the car park. Back to their cars where they can crank up the heating and take themselves back to where they belong. Back to their homes where they’ve got beds and microwaves where they can heat up pizza for their dinner. Back to gardens with swings, or trampolines that are
tumbling across the grass in the wind.