Whispers Through a Megaphone (8 page)

I
t took a great deal of effort to locate Mrs Jennings. Miriam had to obtain information from other people, which meant asking questions and hoping for straight answers. Whisperers don’t get straight answers. They get blank looks, rolling eyes, cold jokes, crookedness.

No one would tell her where the headmaster lived. In the end, she found out from her mother.

“Does he prefer our house to his house?”

“Of course he does.”

“Does he prefer our road to his road?”

“His road is full of old people.”

“Does he live in an old people’s home?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, he’s not old. He lives in a row of bungalows.”

“Oh I know the one, it’s near the church.”

“No it’s not.”

“It’s near the town hall.”

“No.”

“It is.”

“It isn’t.”

“It is.”

“It’s near the fancy-dress shop. What’s got into you today? You’re even more annoying than usual.”

Knock knock. Who’s there? Not Mrs Jennings, that’s for sure. A man covered in tattoos. He said you’ve got the wrong house girly girl. The headmaster lives at number nine, yeah? Over there girly girl.

She had never been called a girly girl before and would never be called one again.

Knock knock. Who’s there? A woman with long brown hair and a pretty face. Tight jeans, a pink jumper. She couldn’t understand what Miriam was saying, asked her to speak up, asked if she was collecting for charity and if that was the case did she realize she was working illegally, charities shouldn’t use children, why wasn’t she at school?

“Are you Polish?” the woman said.

“No,” Miriam whispered.

“What are you saying?”

“Is your husband the headmaster?”

“Speak up.”

“Is your husband the headmaster?” Same words, same volume; obstinate.

“My husband is Mr Jennings.”

“He’s having an affair with my mother.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“He’s screwing my mother.”

A barbaric pause, a deeper voice: “How dare you.”

“It’s the truth,” Miriam said. She could smell the woman’s violence, pressed into the stiffness of her lips.

“What’s wrong with you?”

Isn’t it obvious?

“I’m calling the police. This is a scam, isn’t it? You’re Polish and clearly unwell. Is your father breaking into the back of my house while we’re out here? Is that what’s going on? If he’s looking for cash he won’t find any.”

Miriam knew a Polish boy once. His name was Sebastian and she liked him. He played ball by himself, bouncing through lonely hours, bounce bounce bounce—stop that noise, Sebastian, you’re driving us mad.

“He comes to our house in the evenings. I can give you exact dates and times. I have them written down in a book.” Miriam put her rucksack on the floor and delved about for the notebook. “Here,” she said, handing it to Mrs Jennings. “I’ve listed every visit and how long it lasted.”

There was a moment of inspection. Flicking through pages. Then: “I think you’d better come in.”

“No thank you. I’m sorry for your loss.”

Miriam has done it. She has actually done it. Stepped over the threshold of 7 Beckford Gardens. Walked through four streets.
Four
whole streets! She is standing in the sun. She feels like an alien that has just landed, even though it has only been three years.
Only?
Years the size of planets. Impossible trajectories. Inner space, outer space. Orbiting. Waiting. Orbiting. Waiting.

She steps into a small park. A woman walks past with a poodle and stares at her. The woman looks bemused (this is okay, because bemused is not frightened). The poodle has a strange haircut. The poodle itself isn’t strange, only what a human has turned this poodle into; it has been poodlified, and underneath it’s just an ordinary dog with ordinary needs. Miriam feels sorry for the poodle. She sees herself in it, but not literally, because the dog is not a mirror. She bends down and lets her fingers hang limp in front of its nose. This is
human for
I’m no threat—sniff me and see
. The dog sniffs. It licks Miriam’s fingers. The woman tugs its lead, much harder than necessary, and says something about the poodle having to dash off for a play date. “We’re so late, we’re literally going to get throttled,” the woman says.

Miriam wants to say: That’s not literally true. She wants to say: I know, because I’ve been chasing the truth, the facts, the exact and precise meaning of things for thirty-five years. So let’s tell it like it is, not like it isn’t. Let’s choose our words carefully and only use the ones we really need. But she doesn’t say any of this. Instead she whispers: “A play date?”

The woman looks curious. “With Billy the Jack Russell,” she says, and follows this up with an observation: “You poor thing.”

Miriam quizzes the woman with her face. She is good at doing this. That’s what happens when the people around you have never made sense, your quizzical muscles flex at the drop of a—

Don’t think it, Miriam. Don’t think about the hat.

“It’s going round,” the woman says.

“Sorry?”

“Laryngitis.”

Then she and the poodle are gone gone gone and Miriam is left alone in the small park with the heavy instruments of her own thoughts.

Bowler hat
.

The memory detonates a bomb and her mind is under attack.

Blast from the past
.

If we can’t stop the bombs, the historical time bombs, how are we to live?

A memory is a minefield
.
The mind is a war zone. So many of us at war with ourselves.

Oh no.

Not again.

Breathe long, breathe deep.

It’s all right.

This was bound to happen.

Take one step at a time.

She sits on a bench and tries to gather herself. She has heard this phrase a lot,
gather yourself
, but what does it mean? Is the self a collection of visible parts that can be pulled together in preparation for something or reassembled after a breakage? Miriam spends half an hour thinking about what it might be like to accidentally on purpose mix up the components of herself with those of another person—a woman, perhaps, who is also in the middle of gathering herself, a woman who has left the pieces of her character scattered on the grass in this small park where poodles come to sniff the hands of strangers.

This thinking is good. It is soothing. It clears up the aftermath of memory: Frances Delaney in her bowler hat saying you’re tedious, Miriam—you have nothing to say to anyone.

The woman with the poodle reappears. “Still here?” she says.

Miriam smiles apologetically, even though she has nothing to be sorry for. She nods. Yes I am still here but why did you ask when you already know? Laryngitis isn’t what’s going round—there’s a disease called Confirm What Is Obvious and everybody’s got it.

The poodle is off the lead and it runs over to Miriam. “We got the wrong day,” the woman says, as though the dog is jointly responsible for the mismanagement of their social calendar. “I think we’d literally forget our heads if they weren’t screwed on.”

Miriam ruffles the pom-pom on top of the dog’s head. Fancy having a pom-pom for a head, a pom-pom at the end of your tail and pom-poms around your ankles. Why doesn’t that make people sad?

She sets off again, walking through familiar streets and streets she has never been to before. She has nowhere to go and nowhere to be. This thought is a stone in her shoe, pushing into the soft flesh of her foot. She walks faster. The pain in her foot makes her feel alive and it makes her feel like crying, because surely feeling alive is about more than this?

There is a voice: “Spend some money. Buy something. Eat something.”

When she died, Frances Delaney left a lot of money to Miriam and no one knew where it came from. Miriam saw it as dirty money, loaded with germs, highly infectious. She bundled it into a savings account and has lived on it ever since. Now she opens her purse. It is full of notes and coins and she has no idea how to spend them. Then she has an idea. She could see a film. She hasn’t been to the cinema since 1987 (
Dirty Dancing
). Do people still eat popcorn or is that old hat? Imagine being given a tub of salty old hats. How much would
that cost? If hats were advertised as the latest and greatest snack, would people actually eat them?

STOP IT.

“Your thoughts don’t all have to end in hats, Miriam.”

The unbroken one is on form today. She leads Miriam through town to the cinema—a quaint affair with two screens, a small kiosk and old-fashioned decor. But eight pounds for a ticket? Goodness me. How long have I been gone? She looks at the poster on the door—they are showing a series of ghost films, one of which starts in twenty minutes. She would have preferred a dark comedy or a feature-length episode of
The Bridge
. She buys a ticket, wanders over to the kiosk, buys a tub of salted popcorn, a hot chocolate and some Rolos, then settles into a seat at the end of an aisle and waits. She is good at waiting. Waiting is her middle name (not literally).

Other people start to come in.
Other people
. They join her in the darkness. Together they watch adverts and trailers and Miriam can’t believe the noise of it all, coming from every direction. The screen widens—she hadn’t seen
that
coming—and now it’s time for the main event:
The Awakening
.

Miriam eats her popcorn and slides down low in her seat. She likes this film. It’s slightly creepy, but she likes it. The main character, Florence Cathcart, is a no-nonsense truth-teller. She is scientific, rational, methodical. Using a mesmerizing set of equipment, she exposes charlatans and fakes and proves that there is no such thing as a ghost. The dead are not with us. The deceased do not haunt us. In our living, breathing bodies we are alone. That idea is as sweet as the hot chocolate in Miriam’s mouth. She touches her face—her cheeks are hot. It is warm in here, she is watching a film by herself with other people, she is not at home and she is not outside.

Hold on a minute.

Miriam frowns at the screen, shocked by what is unfolding, shocked by the fact that no-nonsense Florence is
afraid
. She is running through hallways, peering through cracks, kneeling in front of a doll’s house. The doll inside the house is a mini Florence with Florence hair and Florence clothes. What happened to her logic, her steeliness, her belief in the power of the living?

She has seen a ghost, that’s what’s happened. A boy who looks like any other boy, but not everyone can see him.
She
can see him, because he’s her brother, Tom.

Miriam opens her Rolos and leans forward in her seat.

Tom was killed when he and Florence were children. He has missed her ever since and now he wants her back.

No!

Afterwards, Miriam stumbles out into the light. She is all churned up. The film has done it. Big fat churning machine. It’s the idea of someone watching, lingering in the afterlife, about to reappear. It’s the idea of a child, suspended in a life that is no life at all.

She sees a sign: Society Cafe. She goes inside, orders a cup of tea and sits in the corner. There is an old bicycle hanging on the wall. The walls themselves are stripped and worn. It looks as though a painter and decorator prepared the area and wandered off without finishing the job. Apparently this look is fashionable right now, it says so in the magazine on the table—
shabby chic
. It’s all about salvaging, reusing, recycling. Miriam likes the look of it but not the philosophy. She is too immersed in letting go and throwing away to stomach this cafe full of old things that probably attract dead people who used to own them years ago.

“Thank you for the tea,” Miriam says, on her way out of the door.

“You’re welcome, honey,” says the man behind the counter.

Miriam smiles. It’s weird being called honey by a man. Fenella uses that word all the time but it feels different when she says it. She turns around and buys a flapjack from the man. The flapjack is made by a company in Devon called Honeybuns. The man tells her this as he smiles and chats so easily, so lightly, and Miriam wants to say isn’t that a coincidence, you called me honey and this is a Honeybuns flapjack, and the way you talk so easily and so lightly is awesome.

Now she is eating and walking in the sun. She thinks of Florence, who is actually the actor Rebecca Hall, two women rolled into one, separate but never distinct. Thoughts of Florence lead to thoughts of the path. The one you take if you want to cross the fields and go to the pub; the one you take if you want to walk straight into the woods.

She remembers his eyes: brown, hard, confused, scared.

She remembers the words: “What the fuck? Are you crazy?”

She remembers running. Slamming the front door. Locking it with key and bolt and chain.

Is he still there? How ridiculous, Miriam—of course he’s not. It’s perfectly safe to go there again. So is that what I need to do? Is it like throwing away my mother’s things?
Is that what I need to do?

And so she walks.

Walks until she can see the woods.

Stops and stares.

The path is five minutes away—all she has to do is cross the meadow and she’s on it.

Go, Miriam. You can do this.

She crosses the meadow.

Walks faster and faster.

Breaks into a run.