The Taxi Queue Page 16

  She heard Abe’s feet on the next flight of stairs. She ran out of the room and up into the hall. ‘Abe,’ she called.

  ‘What?’ He stopped and turned round.

  ‘I didn’t mean it. I didn’t mean it like that. Please tell me what happened.’

  Abe stood on the top step, looking down.

  ‘Please. Can’t you be nice to me?’ she begged.

  ‘Nice to you? Why?’

  ‘You’ve done stupid things too.’

  Abe made some dismissive noise. He turned back again, went through his door and closed it behind him.

  Kirsty went down to the basement and into her bedroom. She lay down on her bed. She felt as if her head were underwater and she would have to stay there until she drowned. At first she couldn’t cry, then she started and couldn’t stop. The noise and the heaving passed through her in waves. She didn’t know where they kept coming from. She cried for the unknown couple and their children, if they had any. For Neil and Gloria and Luka and Abe. For herself. She was a thing that convulsed, a switchback, a wailing machine. She carried on and wore herself out. She fell asleep.

  Kirsty woke up, sensing someone standing over her.

  ‘Kirsty?’

  She sat straight up. The lights were on and Luka was standing at the end of the bed. She was as shocked as if he had been a burglar.

  ‘I thought you’d left,’ she said, staring at him.

  ‘I went to my cousin’s in Luton but the children were ill. I couldn’t stay. Why have you got your clothes on, Kirsty?’

  ‘Luton. That’s miles away. Why did you go there?’ she asked.

  ‘I thought you wanted me to go.’

  ‘That’s terrible,’ Kirsty said. She looked down at herself – the crumpled skirt and T-shirt. Her feet were unwashed; grey as newspaper print on top of the white sheet.

  ‘You’ve been crying. You weren’t crying because of me, were you? . . . Kirsty?’ Luka moved to the side of the bed. As he came closer, she smelled the out-of-doors on him – London, night air and public transport. She smelled it on his shirt and on his hands. Kirsty remembered why she was still dressed and why she’d been crying. She wished she had been crying only for Luka. How simple that would have been. ‘I’d better get up,’ she said, pushing him.

  ‘Why?’ he asked.

  ‘I can’t stay here.’ She stopped pushing but she felt the room closing in and Luka as the sentry to the exit.

  ‘What do you mean? Kirsty, you’re not making sense.’

  ‘I don’t know how to put it right. I can’t put it right.’ She tugged at a strand of wiry hair as if to measure the space she was confined in. Luka put his hand on her head. ‘Don’t touch me.’ He took the hand away. ‘No. Hold me,’ she said.

  Luka sat down on the edge of the bed and put his arms round her. She rested her head on his shoulder and closed her eyes. It was different with her eyes shut and Luka holding her. She was grateful. They stayed like that for several minutes. Luka’s hand moved. He started to rub her back. ‘Look, Kirsty,’ he said in her ear, still rubbing, ‘I shall turn the lights out. I’ll come straight back. If you want to talk you can talk. Is that all right?’ Kirsty nodded and Luka disengaged himself. She lay down and waited, still with her eyes closed. She could hear Luka go to the bedroom door. He switched off the light and the colour behind her eyelids changed. He went into the passage, then into the kitchen, turning off lights as he went. Finally it was dark. She heard him return. He shut the door behind him. There was some shuffling – he was taking his shoes off. He came over to the bed and lay down next to her. She shifted so that he could fit his arm underneath her. She moved close to him.

  ‘Will you tell me?’ Luka asked.

  The seconds passed. Luka moved his shoulder to get comfortable. He adjusted the hand that rested on her, so that its position and pressure remained as before.

  ‘You remember last night?’ She spoke as if from the distant end of a tunnel.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘The phone call I told you about?’

  ‘Yes. I think so.’ His ear brushed hers as he nodded.

  Kirsty opened her eyes. She couldn’t make herself understood with them shut. ‘You must remember,’ she said.

  ‘Some gay guy, wasn’t it? Friend of Abe,’ Luka said.

  ‘No. It was a woman. I rang her back and told her to go and see Abe. I was annoyed with Abe. That’s why I did it.’

  ‘Quite right. Abe gave her your number.’

  ‘No, he didn’t. He gave it to her husband,’ she said quickly.

  ‘Who cares? Abe shouldn’t give your number to other people.’

  ‘But it’s a sort of joke. I know about it.’

  Luka raised himself on the elbow that was underneath her and leant over her. ‘What happened, Kirsty? I can’t help you if you don’t tell me.’

  ‘I shouldn’t have done it. It was none of my business.’

  ‘But what happened?’ His voice was too loud.

  ‘Lie down,’ she said. ‘I don’t like you up there. I can’t think.’

  Luka lay down flat. This time he held her hand. She thought of Abe three floors above and wondered if he was asleep. She told Luka what Abe had said. She remembered the conversation verbatim. She didn’t exaggerate. When she had finished Luka took a deep breath. He moved his head from side to side as if he had a stiff neck.

  ‘Kirsty,’ he said. ‘Nothing happened. Probably.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You don’t know. Abe didn’t tell you. The woman, the wife, she goes to the clinic place. Maybe she has treatment.’

  ‘No one has treatment if they don’t need it. I keep telling you, she went to see Abe. I sent her. Why would Abe have said that stuff – that I’d wrecked people’s lives – if it wasn’t true?’

  ‘Kirsty.’ Luka made her name sound like a warning. He squeezed her hand tighter.

  ‘Let go, that hurts,’ she said. He relaxed his grip and she continued, ‘I can bear anything – as long as it happens to me, not to other people.’

  ‘Nice idea – but I don’t think so.’

  ‘Hearing the detail wouldn’t change anything,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, of course it would. Some facts. He’s just winding you up. Did you give the woman Abe’s number?’

  ‘Yes, I think so.’

  ‘Then no worries. She called Abe and he told her to piss off.’

  Kirsty shifted away from Luka. ‘You just don’t like him,’ she said. ‘I wish I hadn’t told you.’ Luka’s reasonableness felt like an insult.

  ‘Kirsty. Just think. Please. Even if this woman went to see Abe today – imagining whatever. Abe’s as clever as fuck. He fixed it. If he can’t do that, no one can.’

  ‘No one can,’ she repeated. ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Please don’t start crying again. People like Abe can do anything,’ Luka said, as the heaving began somewhere underneath Kirsty’s ribcage. He put his arm underneath her again and pulled her closer. She fitted herself against him so that they touched each other all the way down to their feet. The heaving subsided.

  Kirsty had a memory of standing in a crowd waiting for the fireworks to begin. It dated from childhood and came back to her, like a dream, when she was anxious. She saw sudden shafts of London and glittery sky. It was as if the wind were parting the branches of trees, revealing snatches of view. Abe, aged about eight, had disappeared – to find something he needed, he said. When he wormed his way back he was waving a lighted sparkler, clearing himself a space among the legs by writing his name. He stood in front of Kirsty in his dark parka with its furry hood – solid compared with the gusting faraway lights. He took a second wire out of his pocket and set it ablaze by touching the dull tip to the sparkling one. Kirsty forgot the fireworks, wanting only that the twinkly confusion of the sparklers would last for ever. Abe poked one of them at her and said, ‘Take it, take it, are you scared or something?’ Kirsty pressed her hands to her sides but in the end her right hand shot out and too
k hold of it. She had to concentrate to keep it tight without flinching as the sparks came nearer to her fingers. They were all she could see. She blocked out the world.

  ‘Did you see that?’ Abe shouted.

  Kirsty held on.

  ‘Didn’t you see it?’

  The burning end was almost at her fingertips. She stared at the spluttering light and willed it to stop. It edged closer. She felt a sharp, ice-cold pain and her hand flew open. She struggled to work out what anything meant. Because Abe was four years older, she pretended that she knew everything he knew. She still did. It was more painful than everyday lying; it felt more like holding her head underwater and realising she might have to stay there until she drowned.

  ‘You saw it, didn’t you? The big face made of fireworks,’ Abe said.

  Kirsty was still looking at the ground at the dead bit of wire.

  ‘The mouth was big and orange and the eyes were green with black holes, like pupils, and it had big hair, like ours, and there were seven colours in it. All the colours,’ Abe said.

  Kirsty looked up at the sky and saw fountains and starbursts and sunbursts – wave after wave of them – and heard bangs that cracked open the night but she didn’t see a face. She cried. She carried on crying all through the display and all the way to the bus stop.

  ‘This is stupid, Kirst,’ Gloria said. ‘No one wants to hear you wailing. Just stop it before the bus comes, would you.’

  She was sharing a cigarette with a boyfriend, Danny, who had come along for the occasion but she wasn’t distracted. She was never distracted.

  ‘Why are you smoking, Mum?’ Abe asked.

  ‘Because it’s Bonfire Night,’ Gloria answered.

  ‘Kirsty didn’t like the bangs,’ Abe said in a sincere voice – sincerely concerned for his sister.

  ‘They weren’t especially loud,’ Gloria said. ‘It was pretty tame, really. They were louder last year. And there were hot dogs.’

  ‘I did,’ Kirsty said, between sobs. ‘I liked them.’

  ‘What’s the matter with her?’ Gloria asked.

  ‘I missed it,’ she wailed. ‘That’s all. That’s all.’

  ‘What did she miss?’ Gloria ground the cigarette under her foot because the bus was coming.

  ‘That’s not your cigarette, Mum. It’s Danny’s,’ Abe said.

  ‘Mind your own business, Abe,’ Gloria told him. ‘If I want your advice I’ll ask for it.’

  ‘Kirsty wanted to see a face made of fireworks,’ Abe said in a confiding voice but loud enough for the boyfriend to hear.

  ‘He said there was. He said there was,’ Kirsty screamed but no one understood her because her voice was distorted by grief.

  ‘Why can’t she enjoy what’s in front of her?’ Gloria said. ‘It’s Bonfire Night, for God’s sake. Lighten up. All she has to do, for once, is enjoy what’s in front of her.’

  4

  MARTHA HAD DISCOVERED among her grandmother’s cast-off books a childhood relic – a book that began with blossom and ended with jam, though the middle section about blackberrying was, in her opinion, the best. Martha liked a clear narrative line without surprises and The Tale of a Little Black Fruit ticked the boxes. The book had been in good condition when Martha found it, having hardly been read in the last sixty-five years, but after a month of her ownership the spine was fractured and the ivory-coloured pages fell open automatically at ‘Girls beware! The sweet black chap stains hands and hair.’ Although Martha was past the age of shouting out in the supermarket, Vivienne had explained to her that other people, less enthralled by the work of Mildred Mary Dibbs, wouldn’t necessarily enjoy hearing this said aloud.

  The book had accompanied Martha to the rented cottage in Sussex and was lying on a lace-edged mat that covered the bedside table between the girls’ single beds. They had discussed blackberries in the car on the way down. How charming, Vivienne had thought, that my children are talking about the hedgerows of Sussex. Some went round the farmers’ fields and some went down to the edge of the sea. Birds lived in them, and hedgehogs and mice. They were made of different bushes all mixed up – holly and oak and honeysuckle and blackberry. At this time of year the blackberries were tiny and green – so tiny that you could hardly see them. Of course, everybody knew that at this time of year they were green. The conversation had rattled along. ‘But that doesn’t mean you can’t pick them. You can’t pick them to eat but you can pick them for the sake of picking,’ Martha had said.

  ‘You scum,’ Bethany had said. ‘Everybody knows you can’t go blackberrying in June.’ Frances had said that ‘scum’ was very, very rude. Martha and Bethany had started to fight. They had both screamed. Frances had done her best from the front seat, half turning round, with her seat belt straining – patting the writhing legs, interposing her veined hand between them, as they sped along the motorway in the fast lane. Frances had said that green blackberries helped to set jelly. She had said that there was a Scottish dinner called Amulree Grouse and that they very likely used green blackberries in that. She had said that Amulree Grouse had whisky in it too and that it was always a good idea to have a miniature bottle with you for moments like these. Vivienne had considered driving into the crash barrier to put an end to it all. She had yelled that she would have to stop driving if the noise carried on.

  Now Martha was never going to leave the bedroom.

  ‘We may as well eat with the girls,’ Vivienne said. ‘The sausages are nice. We’ll have them with new potatoes and cauliflower. It will save cooking twice. We’ll have a glass of wine when we eat.’

  ‘I was rather banking on having one in the next five minutes,’ Frances said. ‘That bottle I popped in the freezer will be cold by now.’

  ‘It’s only half past five, Mummy,’ Vivienne said.

  ‘Well, it’s my birthday tomorrow. And we deserve it. My goodness me, we deserve it, darling,’ Frances said. ‘We’re both absolute saints, I think. Not to have throttled them.’

  The cottage was solidly built on the outside but the inner partitions were flimsy. Vivienne had already ascertained that everything that happened downstairs could be heard above. The grandfather clock, with flowers on its face, for example, seemed to tick in all the bedrooms, although it stood in the kitchen. Martha would be able to hear everything they said through the floorboards. ‘Them,’ Frances had said, ‘throttled them.’ That wouldn’t go down well. Martha would only want Bethany throttled. Vivienne pointed upwards and made a warning face. Frances pretended not to notice. ‘Douggie and I came down here for a wedding once. Do you remember the Adcocks? It was their daughter’s wedding. She was barely nineteen. Their only child. The groom was a much older man. He was rather good-looking in a suntanned kind of way. I said to Douggie, “I hope he’s not a bigamist.”’

  ‘What did Daddy say?’ Vivienne asked. She split open the plastic bag that contained the potatoes and tipped them into a pan of water. She switched on the hob.

  ‘“Unlikely. It’s illegal.” He never liked what he called “loose talk”. But, you know, it was only ever a bit of fun. That’s all it was. Those look very good potatoes. You don’t scrape them? That’s the modern way. It’s all right. Roughage. But I can’t say I really enjoy those little brown flaky bits. The flowers in the church were wonderful. All from the garden, though it was late in the year and everything was going over. Rosehips and eryngium and Japanese anemones. Kate Adcock always had a good garden. She must have worried about her daughter. Though there is something rather special about a very young bride. A young bride on her father’s arm. A kind of freshness which is just not there later on when a woman knows all about . . .’ Frances’s voice trailed away.

  ‘About what?’ Vivienne asked. There were twelve sausages in the packet. She hoped that would be enough. ‘Farm assured’ it said on the label. She laid them out on the grill pan and switched on the electric grill. The smell of the cooking would find its way through the floorboards along with the ticking of the clock. Sausage smell wasn�
�t too bad but cauliflower water wouldn’t do. She would steam the cauliflower.

  ‘They went to Singapore after they were married,’ Frances said. ‘That’s the last we heard of them. Not that we were really close to the Adcocks. It’s funny how you know so much about people’s children and then it just stops. As if it all becomes dull. Or something goes wrong and people would rather not talk about it. I suppose something does, quite often, go wrong.’

  ‘Grandchildren, though. They talk about grandchildren,’ Vivienne said.

  ‘Yes, they do. Though not as much as you might imagine. Older people can be very selfish. They talk about holidays and friends they’ve made on holidays whom you’ve never heard of. Bill and Annie and Raymond and Veronica. Then they meet friends of the friends and we have to hear all about that. Have you opened that bottle yet, darling? The church had some connection with Edward the Confessor, or was it Edward the Martyr? It had good glass, I remember. We could go on Sunday if you liked, darling; it’s probably only a few miles from here. I wouldn’t mind.’

  ‘You don’t go to church,’ Bethany said from the far side of the kitchen.

  Vivienne had almost forgotten her elder daughter was there, she had been so quiet. She was playing the good child, choosing cutlery for supper from the dresser drawer.

  ‘Every now and then,’ Frances said.

  ‘You don’t believe in God,’ Bethany said.

  ‘I most certainly do, Bethany,’ Frances said. ‘He’s just not a personal friend of mine.’

  Vivienne smiled brightly. ‘I’d better go and see if Martha’s all right. Just watch the sausages, would you, Mummy?’

  ‘Leave her, darling. She’ll be fine. I heard her skipping around up there a while ago. She’ll come down when she’s ready. We don’t want any more hullabaloo,’ Frances said.

  There was an oval mirror on the dressing table with hinges either side. When Martha pushed it, it tilted. She caught different images: the floorboards with the fringed edge of the white bed cover; the leaves at the window and the triangles of sun between them. It was like taking pictures with a camera but the objects moved in the wind. Martha appeared not to be interested in her own reflection, nor in Vivienne who stood in the doorway watching her.