The Things We Never Said (3 page)

CHAPTER FOUR

Maggie can feel someone shaking her gently, but opening her eyes is an effort. She recognises the nurse. ‘Betty?’

‘Hetty,’ the nurse smiles. ‘Not bad, though. This time last week you couldn’t remember your own name, never mind no one else’s. Up you get then; you’ve been asleep since breakfast and you’re to see His Nibs after dinner, by all accounts.’

‘Who’s—?’

‘Dr Carver, lord and master. He says you can get dressed today.’

Maggie thinks for a minute. ‘Dr Carver,’ she mutters. The name is familiar. She looks at the nurse. ‘I can’t remember—’

‘Don’t you worry about that, dear. It’ll come back, you know, bit by bit.’ She starts to tidy the bedcovers. ‘Meself, I don’t think them pills are helping, neither.’ She tucks the sheet in briskly. ‘But what do I know? I’m only a nurse.’

Maggie dresses in the things Hetty has brought for her. Although she vaguely remembers these clothes – navy Crimplene slacks, a white blouse and a pink Orlon cardigan – the process of putting them on feels odd and unfamiliar, and the seams feel abrasive against her skin.

‘Now, come down and talk to some of the other ladies, there’s a good girl.’ Maggie should feel patronised, but she doesn’t, because she now knows who Hetty reminds her of: it’s her mother. A pang of sadness creeps through her, because at the same moment as she remembers this, she also remembers that both her parents are dead.

She follows Hetty down the ward, out through the double doors and along a dark, tiled hallway with a shiny parquet floor that smells of Johnson’s furniture polish. The day room has the same high arched ceiling and tall windows as the ward. Cigarette smoke swirls in the sunlight, and Maggie remembers that she smokes. She feels four years old again, on her first day at school when she didn’t know where to hang her coat or who to sit next to. Some of the women sit at the tables playing cards or doing jigsaw puzzles; one or two look up as she and Hetty pass, but mostly they don’t seem to notice. There is a television set in the corner, with the word
Rediffusion
in white lettering at the bottom of the polished wooden casing. Right in front of the set, a balding, skeletally thin woman in a turquoise dressing gown is kneeling with her face inches from the screen, apparently watching the test card. More women sit in the chairs that line the walls, some rocking back and forth, others quietly weeping or just staring into the past.

As they make their way through the room, an elderly lady with crudely dyed blue-black pigtails bounces towards them. ‘Cha cha cha,’ she says cheerily. Her voice is high like a child’s, her face beaming. ‘What’s going on; what’s coming off.’ She twirls around, holding out the hem of her ill-fitting frock, and then sinks into an expansive curtsey. ‘I’m a little bit up the pole today,’ she tells Maggie. ‘Better than being down the pole, but Dr Carver says I’ve got to stay in the middle. Cha cha cha.’

‘Norma, love,’ Hetty lays a hand on her arm. ‘Don’t get too excited, now.’

Norma grins, curtseys again and with another tinkling ‘cha cha cha’, dances off to talk to someone else.

Maggie can feel her heart thudding. She stands a little closer to Hetty.

‘Pauline!’ Hetty calls out to a young woman who has just come into the room. ‘Sleeping Beauty here has finally woken up. You’ll look after her for me, dear, won’t you?’ She pats Maggie on the shoulder and nods encouragement before bustling off to attend to something else.

Pauline is about Maggie’s age and looks like a model in her candy-pink summer dress with a white cardigan slung loosely around her shoulders. Her hair is lacquered into a beehive and she’s freshly made-up; Maggie can see the powder on her cheeks.

‘Hello, Maggie,’ she says, her voice unexpectedly deep and smooth. ‘Feeling better? It’s nice to see you up and about again.’

‘Again?’ Maggie is sure she must sound like a complete idiot. But she doesn’t know this glamorous woman. Perhaps she’s one of the nurses, off duty. ‘I don’t think we’ve—’

‘Don’t worry. It’s the treatment; it plays havoc with your memory. Still, they’ll probably ease it off a bit now you’re improving. Shocking, isn’t it, what shocking does to you?’ She laughs heartily at her own joke.

‘Shocks?’ Again Maggie hears herself repeating what’s being said to her like a simpleton. ‘Electric shock treatment?’ She has to say it aloud so that she can take it in. ‘Is that what I’ve had?’ But then a memory switches on in her mind: there’s a black box with wires; cold jelly is rubbed into her temples and she feels something rubbery being shoved between her teeth. Someone is holding her arms. A hot silver pain flashes in her skull, making her gasp. She has the sensation of being flung about, her bones and teeth shaking and rattling as though they’ll never stop, then she feels herself plummeting down, down, down . . .

She shudders, feels faintly nauseous at the memory.

‘Most of us have it at some point,’ Pauline says. ‘Makes you forget why you lost your mind, helps you to find it, then makes you forget where you put it again!’

‘You’ve had it too?’

Pauline’s face darkens. ‘Four or five times a week at first.’ She glances left and right. ‘You want to be careful; make sure you talk to the others even if you don’t feel like it, especially in front of the nurses – if you’re too quiet they’ll say you’re “morose and withdrawn”. And whatever you do, don’t let them catch you daydreaming or looking out of the window – that counts as “vacant and preoccupied”.’

Maggie looks at the women sitting in the chairs by the wall; most of them look vacant and preoccupied.

‘Didn’t know what bloody day it was half the time,’ Pauline is saying. ‘Nor whether I was supposed to be eating breakfast, dinner or tea. Still, it usually comes back in the end, the memory.’

‘Usually?’

‘Well, that’s what they say. You’ll be all right; you’re not a Chronic, and it’s mainly the Chronics who have problems.’ She leans towards Maggie. ‘See her, over there?’

The woman standing by the window must be in her sixties, Maggie guesses. She’s looking out of the window while brushing her long, seal-grey hair.

‘She’s waiting for her husband to come and pick her up. He’s been dead twelve years, but she forgets. They used to keep telling her, hoping she’d hang on to it, but they stopped in the end because they were just putting her through the horror of it again and again, every single day.’

Maggie tries to take all this in but it is too much, and she feels her eyes fill with tears. Pauline produces a packet of Kensitas, lights one and hands it to her. She takes a deep draw on the cigarette, feeling instantly calmed as the smoke hits the back of her throat, then she sways a little, suddenly dizzy. Pauline puts a hand out to steady her, then guides her to a chair. ‘Don’t worry,’ Pauline says gently. ‘I’ll keep an eye on you. I’m on a home visit this afternoon, but I’ll be back by teatime.’

Home. The word starts to poke around Maggie’s consciousness like all the other memories. Home. She tries to concentrate, but she can’t make the word break its moorings.

‘Where do you live?’ she asks Pauline.

‘St Leonard’s-on-Sea. It’s near Hastings. Do you know it?’

Hastings, Maggie thinks. It definitely . . . and then she remembers. ‘Leonard!’ She grabs Pauline’s hand. ‘That’s my brother!’ She can see his face. Her mother and father are dead, but she has a brother, Leonard! His features are just beginning to solidify in her mind when a loud clapping of hands slaps her thoughts shut.

‘Ladies, to the dining room please!’

*

The walls in the day room and on the ward are plain and unadorned, but here there is wallpaper: orange, green and brown circles, all jumbled up on a beige background. There are lots of square, dark wood tables, all set for four and all with a small vase of red carnations in the middle. It looks . . . nice. Maggie sits at a table with Pauline and Norma. Her mind is still bubbling with the new information: she lives in Hastings, and she has a big brother. Little snapshots of memory: Leonard combing Brylcreem through his hair and looking anxious as he prepares for a date; his broad grin as he twirled her round the day he returned from National Service; the inch-long scar above his left eyebrow where he fell off his bike when he was ten. She narrows her eyes with the effort of remembering, and a dark pain zips across her forehead.

A skinny little nurse with bony elbows and bad skin bangs down plates of food onto the tables. It can’t be very hot, Maggie thinks, noticing how the nurse holds the metal plates in her bare hands. Then her memory leaps again; she can see Leonard holding a plate, the side of his hand covered with little red scars. He was always burning his hands on the hotel oven, a huge thing with double doors and eight gas rings. She remembers the heat in the windowless kitchen, steam, smoke from the steaks on the open grill, shouting, pans clashing, and rows and rows of white plates. She looks down at her own hands and sees similar scars.

The food in front of her is slopped on the plate willy-nilly, one thing on top of another; everything seems to be the same colour, and the whole meal is pale and insipid. It takes her a moment to identify what’s on her plate: there’s mashed potato on top of plain white spaghetti and next to it, a clodge of slimy white cabbage that’s been boiled to within an inch of its life. ‘I can’t eat this,’ she mutters. ‘Potatoes and spaghetti shouldn’t be served together. They’re both starches. It’s like having mashed potato and chips.’

Norma grins. ‘Mashed potato and chips,’ she sings. ‘Ha ha! Mashed potato and chips! Cha cha cha.’

‘Food not good enough for you, Madam?’ the nurse sneers, her greasy blonde hair sticking out at all angles from under her white cap.

‘There’s nothing wrong with it; it’s just that there’s no meat or fish. And really, spaghetti should be served with a beef and tomato sauce, not potatoes. It’s called spaghetti bolognese; it’s Italian.’ She’s not sure how she knows this.

‘Oh,
Italian,
is it?’ the nurse says. ‘And there was me, thinking our humble English food would be good enough! Well, forgive me, your ladyship. Pardoneh-moi.’

‘That’s French,’ Pauline mutters, and Maggie feels her mouth twitch into a smile.

The nurse turns to Pauline. ‘Something to say, Mrs Wilkes?’

‘No. I didn’t say anything.’

The nurse’s eyes grow colder and they don’t leave Pauline’s face. ‘Oh, come now. I think you did.’

Pauline shakes her head. ‘I didn’t, Nurse. Honest.’

‘No? Talking to yourself then, perhaps?’

Pauline looks up sharply. ‘No. I don’t talk to myself.’

‘Well, I most definitely heard something. I think you’d better stay on the ward this afternoon, where I can keep an eye on you. We don’t want to send you off on a home visit until we can be sure you’re ready, do we?’

‘Oh no, please. I didn’t mean anything; it was just a joke.’

Maggie is taken aback by the sudden wild panic in Pauline’s eyes. Pauline, who seemed so calm and normal.

‘I haven’t seen my little girl for weeks . . . please . . .’ Pauline gets to her feet, knocking over a beaker of water, which spills onto her plate. Her voice is rising out of control. ‘You’ve got to let me go home—’

‘I haven’t “got” to do anything, my lady.’ The nurse’s voice is like splintered ice. ‘Now look at the mess you’ve made with your dinner. No, I really don’t think it would be a good idea for you to go home this week. Not while you’re so excitable.’

Maggie tries to mop up the spilt water with a couple of tissues but then Pauline begins to yell. ‘Please, Nurse;
please.
I’ve got to go home; I want to see my baby. I can’t stand it . . . please let me go . . . please . . .’

The nurse tries to lead her away but then Pauline rounds on her and kicks her hard on the shin. The nurse shrieks and others come running and one of them is blowing a whistle and then everyone is dashing around and shouting or crying or knocking things over. Norma puts down her spoon and looks around, eyes sparkling with excitement. ‘What’s going on,’ she says in her singsong voice. ‘What’s coming off.’

Maggie is frozen for a moment, sitting on a chair in the midst of this pandemonium. My God, she thinks, this is really happening: I am in a mental hospital.

CHAPTER FIVE

The visit with his parents has made Jonathan feel slow and heavy; Fiona is up in the spare room when he gets in, and he has to drag himself upstairs. She’s wearing black leggings and a long, baggy green jumper that he hasn’t seen before, and her hair is pulled back in a pony tail, making her look much younger. ‘My sister came round earlier,’ she says. ‘Look, how about this for curtains? She bought it for Noah and Molly’s room but never used it.’ She holds up a length of fabric, tiny yellow chicks on a white background. He reaches out to touch it; it feels clean and new. There’s a baby chair and a changing mat in the corner, and a huge pile of baby clothes on the bed. Lucy’s obviously been having a clear-out. Fiona grabs a cushion and shoves it under her jumper. ‘What do you think?’ she grins, turning sideways so he can get the full effect. ‘Will you still love me when I look like a barrage balloon?’

He smiles. ‘I expect so.’ He can smell the fresh lemony scent of her shower gel as she passes him to toss the cushion back on the bed. He stands still for a moment, breathing it in, gathering up the imprint she’s left on the air. She’s in a good mood; he can tell by the way she’s moving, like a dancer, full of energy and life. She was like this the day they found out. She’d bounded out of the bathroom waving the Predictor and grinning, and they’d stood together on the landing, foreheads touching, gazing at the pink line as though it were the baby itself. After two years of taking temperatures and filling in charts, he’d begun to wonder if it was ever going to happen, though he’d never voiced that fear to Fiona, nor she to him. They’d wanted to stay positive, but those things hung unsaid between them: the ‘what if’ discussions; fertility treatment; maybe even adoption. And then there was the pink line, and everything was going to be all right. At the early scan, he’d mistaken the baby’s bottom for its head, and he couldn’t tell the hands from the feet, but actually seeing it, the realness of it, he’d felt a surge of – not love, exactly, not yet, more like awe at the evidence that they’d done this amazing thing, created this real live baby, all by themselves.

‘So,’ she says, ‘how did it go?’ At that point, the doorbell rings. ‘That’ll be dinner,’ she looks at him with mock guilt. ‘I know it was my turn to cook but I couldn’t think of anything. I promise I’ll learn to cook one day.
Promise!
’

He smiles. ‘Yeah, right!’ It’s only after they’ve unpacked the little brown paper carrier bags and spooned rice and saag and chicken balti onto heated plates that she asks again.

‘I didn’t get round to it in the end,’ he says, pouring grape juice for her and opening some wine for himself.

She stops, her fork halfway to her mouth. ‘Why the hell not?’

‘The mood wasn’t right. You know what they’re like. It started off all right but—’

‘The
mood
wasn’t right? What does that mean? What
mood
do you need to tell your parents they’re going to be grandparents, for God’s sake?’ She gets up, jolting the table and sending a balti-coated spoon clattering to the floor.

‘It just didn’t feel right. The atmosphere sort of . . . soured.’ Gerald’s face ripples into his mind. His father is old and sick; he tries to imagine him mellowed and smiling at the news. But it’s like trying to imagine a colour that doesn’t exist.
You? A father? May the Lord above preserve us.
He tries to push the image away.

‘You don’t want this baby, do you?’ Fiona says, her back to him as she stands at the sink running water into a glass. ‘Admit it.’

Her words punch him in the gut; he can hardly believe what he’s hearing and for a moment, he can’t speak. ‘No, Fi,’ he says when he finds his voice. ‘That simply isn’t true.’ Gently, he touches her shoulder, but she shrugs him off and whirls round to face him. ‘What then?’ Her eyes flash. ‘I can’t start telling people until both sets of parents know. Why are you finding it so difficult?’ Before he can reply, she stalks out of the kitchen, slamming the door behind her. He’s about to follow her, then thinks better of it. He mops up the wine that spilt when she knocked into the table and then slumps onto a chair, drains his own glass, refills it, and takes another gulp. He’s always wanted kids with Fiona; he knew almost from the moment he first saw her. It was at a party at the then newly-wed Malcolm and Cassie’s on a warm, sunny evening in late summer, and when Jonathan arrived, everyone was in the garden, drinking chilled white wine. A slight breeze murmured through the grass, and there she was, standing in front of a bush that was heavy with full-blown roses, head thrown back and laughing at something Cass was saying. Her skin, tanned from a recent holiday, was the shade of toasted almonds and the sun had bleached her hair to pale amber. Her dress, which fluttered slightly in the breeze, was virtually the same shade as her hair and skin, so the whole effect was of a golden glow, illuminated by the sun. He can’t remember what he’d said when Malcolm introduced them, but he’d had to stop himself from gibbering like an idiot as he shook her hand, because he knew right then, even though it was crazy: here was his soulmate; here was the mother of his children. It was so different to how he’d felt with Sian. He and Sian were together for five years, but it became a habit, easy and comfortable for both of them. Sian’s body clock had begun ticking and they started to think about babies. That was when he realised. It wasn’t babies per se, just the certain knowledge that he and Sian weren’t right together, that any baby they made would be half of him and half of her, but never quite whole.

He tears off a piece of naan and dunks it in the balti sauce, but he barely notices the taste as he chews. He picks a bit more at the cooling food, finishes his wine and immediately pours himself a refill. The wine is soothing and he drinks it quickly, then empties the last of the bottle into his glass, surprised that he’s finished it already. He drains it in one, enjoying the slight recklessness of it and wishing he still smoked. He looks at the remains of the takeaway and decides to leave clearing it up until the morning. Right now, he has to talk to Fiona. He has to
connect
with her again, and then everything else will come right. He wobbles slightly as he stands up – that wine was quite strong – and makes his way upstairs carefully; he doesn’t want to stumble or bump into anything in case she thinks he’s drunk, and he needs to tell her how much he loves her, how much he wants this baby. Better still, actions speak louder than words. Yes, that’s what he’ll do; he’ll show her and tell her at the same time. Best idea he’s had all day. He’ll whisper to her, tell her over and over again while making love to her as tenderly as possible. She’ll pretend to be asleep but she’ll press herself back against him, gently encouraging him without turning round. It’s a game they used to play: one feigns sleep while the other kisses and touches and strokes. The idea is to see how long you can go without responding. She likes him to lie spoon-like behind her, kissing her neck, cupping her breasts, running his hands over her thighs and belly; sometimes he can even enter her, thrusting gently once or twice before she’ll turn over, grinning, pulling him on top of her and clamping her legs around him to draw him in deeper. When it’s his turn he’ll try not to move as she wriggles down the bed, but he knows that the moment he feels her warm breath on his belly or a strand of her hair trail across his thigh, he’ll be lost.

When he opens the bedroom door, it takes a moment for his eyes to adjust to the dark, but he doesn’t need light to tell him she isn’t there. The room is cold and empty, the bed neatly made. The desire that has been building evaporates as he goes along the landing to the spare room. They never sleep apart, never. The door is closed and he opens it as quietly as possible then creeps across the carpet, picking his way through the bags of baby stuff she was looking through so happily just a couple of hours ago. She’s lying on her back, her tiny form barely making a shape in the bed. He can’t see her face because the covers are pulled right up, so he hooks his finger under the edge of the duvet and lifts it slightly. Her arm is curved up above her head, and she’s got on the old pyjamas she wears when she has her period or if she’s not feeling well. In the pinkish light from the landing, he can see her puffy skin, mascara smudged under her eyes, damp hair clinging to the side of her face. This is his fault. His parents are going on some church trip tomorrow, but he’ll tell them about the baby when they get back. He wonders briefly whether to write to Gerald, expectant father to established father, try to break down this barrier. He’ll think about it tomorrow. As he tries to silently navigate a path through the black bags, he stumbles, then veers sideways, cannoning off the wall and stubbing his toe on the wardrobe. ‘Shit!’ he says in a stage whisper. Fiona stirs but doesn’t wake. He swears again under his breath as he limps back along the landing, toe throbbing, elbow stinging where he bashed the wall. He climbs into bed and lies there, straining to hear the sound of her footsteps coming back along the hall and aching for the closeness they used to share.

They’d met in late August and had married eight weeks later; both being teachers, they’d taken their honeymoon over the October half-term holiday. Fiona had moved into Jonathan’s a while before the wedding, but it was that week in Cornwall when they’d really got to know each other. It had rained the entire time but they hadn’t cared. They’d rented a little cottage on the edge of the moors and had spent the whole of the first day in bed, listening to the rain battering the leaded windows, drinking pink champagne and eating warm bagels with scrambled eggs and saying the words ‘wife’ and ‘husband’ as often as they could. They talked about their lives before they met. She once wanted to be a policewoman, she told him; he confessed to a brief childhood ambition to be a cat burglar. Her worst ever job was in a cake factory, taking clumps of raisins that were stuck together, separating them and putting them back on the conveyor belt; his was in a chip shop, digging the eyes out of potatoes before loading them into the peeling machine. They talked about his love of football and her preference for snooker; his liking of dogs, hers of cats. They discovered that they’d both had their tonsils out when they were six, that they could both play a guitar but that neither of them could sing. There was so much to talk about. It was as if they’d been together in a previous life but had been separated for thirty-odd years. That night, they’d ventured out to a pub across the moor, arriving wet and windswept and hoping for atmosphere and the ghosts of long-dead smugglers; instead they were greeted by a sign saying
kid’s meal’s half price
, and the smell of chips and stale beer. But they were still so intoxicated by the romance of their wedding and the thrill of their first day as husband and wife that the disappointment barely touched them. Later, when they got back from the pub, they’d lit the open fire and sat drinking brandy and gazing into the flames in silence, all talked-out and just basking in contentment, and then he’d become aware of a charge in the air, like a prickle of electricity. At the same moment, they’d put their glasses aside and turned to each other. He still wasn’t sure who pulled whom down onto the rug, but they’d torn at each other’s garments and had made love so suddenly and urgently that they’d still been half-clothed when they collapsed together, breathless and exhilarated. After a couple of moments, she’d begun to giggle, then he’d joined in and they found they just couldn’t stop, and they’d laughed and laughed, still holding each other, until they had to wipe away the tears.

How have they moved from that to this, he thinks now, snapping at each other, shutting each other out? It is the last thought he has before sinking into a fitful sleep.

He dreams he’s making his way along a sandy beach in a dim, thickening light. On his left is a sheer wall of barnacle-encrusted stone; to his right, the ocean. The beach ahead just comes to an end, tapering off to a point with the wall on one side, sea on the other. Ferocious, pewter-grey rollers close in on him. He turns to go back, but black seawater is powering towards him, filling in and obliterating his footprints. Fiona is looking down from the top of the wall, but it is too late; he is engulfed, the water closing over his head again and again as he struggles for air. He can hear her voice . . .

Jonathan . . . Jonathan!

He gasps, torn out of the dream as Fiona shakes him awake. He’s instantly aware of several things at once: the fluorescent green digits on the alarm clock say 3.52; Fiona is standing next to him, holding the phone; she doesn’t look angry any more.

‘Wha . . . ?’

‘Jonno,’ she says gently. ‘It’s your mum.’