Came Back to Show You I Could Fly Page 8

  ‘And they’re picked to ring the bell and take messages round the classrooms,’ Seymour said.

  ‘Their socks always stay up. I reckon they use glue.’

  ‘And they never let you cheat off their work in tests.’

  ‘In fact they always sit with their elbows over their work even if you weren’t planning to cheat!’ Angie finished.

  Seymour put the pencil case away, not minding about it so much any more, because it had become funny in some special way and he felt cheered. ‘I always do get given stuff like this,’ he said ruefully. ‘At Christmas it was socks and a new dressing-gown. A Victoria Road Gospel Hall Benevolent Fund sort of dressing-gown.’

  ‘You should have told me it was your birthday on the weekend. I’d have bought you something really terrific, certainly not socks or pencil cases. A skull bed lamp, maybe…Or a dragon kite, or a trip up in a hot-air balloon. I feel rotten not knowing it was your birthday. I must have something I can give you, let’s think…’

  ‘It doesn’t matter, Angie. You don’t have to.’

  ‘Yes, I do. It’s low-down and mean to miss out on a friend’s birthday. I know…it’s not much, and it’s fallen down behind the bedside table so it might be a bit squashed, but…I knew it was here somewhere! Happy birthday, Seymour.’

  It was a small picture in a cardboard frame with splodges of Blu-Tak on the edges. Seymour held it in his hands and looked at it. It was three-dimensional, made of layers of clear liquid-filled plastic in which glittering specks floated. Behind the specks was a little white horse with outspread wings, poised above a silvered, turreted landscape pin-pricked with stars. The effect was mysterious and beautiful, like a landscape on a different planet. When he moved the card gently, the little horse seemed to raise its wings and fly, and all the time, miniscule silver rain fell around it.

  ‘Hey, thanks, Angie!’ he said. ‘It’s fantastic! I’ve never seen anything like this before. Except…’

  ‘Except what?’

  ‘It’s a bit like that tattoo you’ve got on your shoulder.’

  ‘Oh, that,’ Angie said. ‘Yes, well I’m sort of sorry I had that done. It’s too noticeable—people remember you when you don’t particularly want them to. Pegasus, that’s the name of that little flying horse. Wouldn’t it be terrific to have a real one? Just hop on its back when things get rough and take off up into the sky where no one can ever…I used to have that picture pinned up in my room when I was a kid at home. Time I got shot of it, I’m a big girl now, though that’s a debatable point. I’m glad you like it and it’s found a new owner. Listen, you haven’t chosen which earrings I should wear today yet. I had to wear these pineapple ones all weekend because you didn’t show up to pick me out a new pair. Didn’t get round to it myself. How’d you like to have big chunky pineapples stuck in your ears when you’re sick and have to stay in bed?’

  Seymour fetched the jewellery box and chose small red plastic bells. She put them on and inspected herself in a hand mirror.

  ‘Somehow they just don’t go with my face this morning,’ she said. ‘Oh, heck, I look like something that just tottered out of a geriatric ward! All I need is dentures and a walking frame. I should get up and have a shower, only if I moved I think maybe my head might fly off. That’s what it feels like, no kidding.’

  ‘Maybe you’d feel a bit better if you had some breakfast.’

  ‘You and your nagging. That’s all I need at this hour.’ She made a wobbly effort to rise, but sank back to the edge of the bed, arms wrapped about herself, shivering. ‘It’s no use,’ she said flatly. ‘I feel too sick to have a shower, even. I’d better just hop back into bed. Sorry, mate, not being able to take you out somewhere for a birthday treat. Sorry, love…Tomorrow, maybe.’

  ‘That’s okay. But you’d better have something to eat, Angie. How about I cook something up for you.’

  ‘I don’t know what I’ve got in the fridge. Can’t remember if I shopped on Saturday or not, that’s when I usually go down to the market. I just can’t remember Saturday, it’s like it never happened. Maybe it didn’t.’

  There was nothing in the fridge except a carton of milk and some oranges. He searched through the cupboards but found nothing much there, either, and when he turned around Angie had dozed off again on the pillow. Her face wasn’t the calm face of a person asleep, it was troubled and unhappy, fighting bad dreams. Seymour went back across the alley to Thelma’s house. He took a can of tomato soup and some slices of bread from the kitchen, hoping their absence wouldn’t be noticed, and returned to Angie’s place. The soup turned lumpy because the only saucepan he could find to cook it in had an uneven base, but he toasted the bread under the griller and arranged everything neatly on the tray. Angie woke up—or perhaps she hadn’t really been asleep at all behind that restless face—and tried to eat the lunch he’d prepared, but left most of it on the tray.

  ‘You’re still shivering,’ Seymour said. ‘Thelma’s got a hot-water bottle in her laundry. Want me to go over and get it?’

  ‘Geeze, you’re sweet,’ Angie said huskily, gazing at him over the lunch she hadn’t eaten. ‘No, I don’t want a hot-water bottle, but thanks anyhow, pal. You’re looking after me as though I’m your own mum or something like that…’

  ‘My mother never stays in bed when she gets sick,’ Seymour said and thought of her, sharp and slim as a needle, darting through his life. ‘She just takes an Aspro and keeps going. She reckons everything would fall apart in our family if it wasn’t for her,’ he added, unsure if it were something to be proud of or otherwise, and thinking it had all fallen apart, anyway, in spite of her taut, brittle energy.

  ‘Well, I guess she wouldn’t approve of me, then, slouching around like this. I’ll have to pull my socks up a bit when I have…Jas and me are going to get married just as soon as things work out, and you never know, I just might have a kid straight off. Sooner than I planned, even, with my rotten luck. What do you think about that, me being a mum? Freaky, isn’t it, the whole idea? Still, you can be its uncle if you like. I mean if it even happens.’

  Seymour didn’t know anything much about babies, but once he’d been in a queue at the post office behind a young mother. The baby she’d held had made him uncomfortable by staring at him fixedly with clear blue eyes, like glass buttons. But then, with no invitation on his part, it had suddenly smiled right into his face, an unpractised smile like someone learning to drive, but one of incredible sweetness and trust. Not knowing him, not knowing anything about him, even his name, but it had focused its clear eyes on his face and smiled like that. He still remembered how pleased and almost honoured he’d felt.

  ‘Of course, I’ll have a proper house by then,’ Angie said. ‘Something will turn up. Couldn’t possibly have a baby in this place, could I? That house we saw in Gresham Avenue, that’ll be the one. That’ll do to keep the rain out. My baby’s only going to have the best, right from the start.’

  ‘What would you call it?’

  ‘Names? Heavens, I haven’t got as far as that yet. I haven’t even decided whether to…Why, what do you think I should call it—that is, if I ever do decide to have a kid?’

  Seymour tried to remember names from all the schools he’d attended. There had been a kid, way back when he was in Year Three and starting halfway through a term when everyone already knew everyone else. He still remembered that girl’s name, Melissa Miller, and the way she’d given him a bunch of grapes from her lunch box.

  ‘How about Melissa?’

  ‘Yes, that’s nice. What if it’s a boy, though? Tell you what, we could start making a list, and put down any good name we come up with. You never know, that list might come in handy sooner than expected. Melissa. We’ll definitely grab that one because you thought of it.’

  She printed Melissa on a new page in a polka-dot covered memo book from her handbag. They both became so involved with listing names that a whole half hour passed, and Angie regained some of her sparkle. She began making up improbable,
far-fetched names.

  ‘Cinnamon,’ she said. ‘Or how about Lancelot—that’d suit him if he turns out to be a famous surgeon.’

  ‘That’s sick. Archibald would do for when he’s a baby,’ Seymour said. ‘Babies don’t have much hair.’

  ‘Get out, my baby’s going to have the most beautiful hair in the world, right from the start. How about Tressaline? Or something really different—Pegasus. Bet no one’s ever been called that. Pegasus Tressaline Lancelot…’

  ‘Miss Reynolds,’ someone called, and rapped sharply on the door. ‘Miss Reynolds, I’d like a word with you, please.’

  Angie tensed, her pink tasselled pencil scribbling to a halt. ‘Oh, shivers, it’s the old dragon about the rent!’ she whispered in consternation.

  ‘But your name’s not…’

  ‘Never mind about that now! Listen, be a sport and tell her I’m asleep, got an appendicitis attack, anything…just get rid of her for me, there’s a honey.’ She shot down under the blankets, placed one hand over her eyes and gave an incredibly good performance of someone locked into a sleep so critical that permanent illness might result from its interruption.

  Seymour had no time to retreat into his usual fazed shyness. He found himself opening the door to a pugnacious woman who glowered at him suspiciously.

  ‘She’s not feeling well,’ Seymour stammered, eyes cast down. The woman’s shoes were enormous and looked as though they could easily force a way into the room past his frail defences, with the same ruthless authority as battle ships. ‘She’s got…a very bad attack of flu. The doctor said she had to have plenty of sleep. I’m looking after her.’

  ‘Oh, and who are you?’

  ‘I’m…her brother. Just visiting, it’s school holidays…’

  ‘Would you mind telling her, please, that her rent’s overdue?’ said the cross lady. ‘I made it quite clear it was to be paid on the first Thursday of each month. That was our arrangement, and this is the second time she’s been late.’

  ‘Okay, I’ll tell her, but I’m sorry, she’s fast asleep right now. The doctor gave her…what do you call them, antibiotics. He said I was to let her sleep and not wake her up. It’s the only way to deal with flu, you can get serious complications.’ The little snippets of information gleaned from listening to years of his mother’s medical talk rolled off his tongue like oil.

  The woman on the doorstep shot him an annoyed, frustrated look, but just said, ‘Very well. I’ll leave it for now, but when she wakes up, you make sure she knows to drop that rent in by tomorrow morning at the latest. Plenty of other people are after a nice flat like this one.’

  Seymour nodded and shut the door, then went back to the bed. ‘Angie, why didn’t you help me out?’ he said indignantly. ‘That was a rotten thing to do, letting me cop all that! It’s dumb, forgetting to pay your rent, you get a bad name. My mum never…I reckon you’d better get up and go in and pay her right now!’

  But Angie, he discovered, was truly asleep, not shamming at all. The hand had fallen from her eyes and lay tangled in her damp, tumbled hair. She was drifting somewhere a long way from him, almost as though she’d floated away to the huge silvered landscape in his picture, had drifted away to the huge spinning rings of Saturn. All his exasperated, worried mutterings couldn’t bring her back, so after a while he pulled the blind down so the sun wouldn’t burn her face, shut the door behind him and went back dejectedly across the alleyway to Thelma’s house.

  REDECORATING IDEAS:

  • pink wallpaper with rose pattern

  • mirror tiles in shower recess (fix hole in wall first)

  • fluffy pink mat and matching towels from market

  • turn bed into settee with rose cover and matching cushions

  • row of potplants painted white on windowsill

  • get decent cutlery and kitchen stuff

  • new curtains—or stripey pink/white blind?

  • paint wardrobe with gloss enamel, gold knobs

  • waste paper basket covered with stickers

  • cane rocking chair from secondhand shop painted gloss white

  • patchwork cushion

  COST?!!

  Won’t be here all that long, anyway, waste of money!!!

  TO HELL WITH IT!!!!

  Angie,

  Honestly, I’m sorry I was such a bitch on the phone, and maybe I shouldn’t have hung up on you, but—you’ve got a NERVE even asking. That bracelet was Grandma’s. Mum would notice straight away if I wasn’t wearing it or if it wasn’t around. No, I won’t let you borrow it! Take that as final! Plus all that bulldust about wanting to wear it somewhere special doesn’t fool me for one little moment, either. It would be the little pearl studs all over again, wouldn’t it?

  Come on Angie, just when are you going to get yourself out of this rotten mess? Sometimes I get so MAD at you! When’s it all going to stop? Quit asking me to do things behind their backs, OK? I know all the stuff Gran left is pretty yuk, but she meant it to be passed on to you and me and then our kids, kept in the family. I won’t let you take any of it away.

  Ange, if you don’t want to give Lakeview another try, there was this other place I read about in the paper. Run by some church, can’t remember what religion, but they’re all into meditation and health food and that. The cure rate they’ve got there is really high, 60% or something like that. I cut out the article and I’ll send it to you with this letter care of Judy, seeing I don’t know your new address. I don’t know why I bother, though. I get so MAD at you.

  Mum was so upset when you came out and said all those awful things, she cried for hours after you’d gone. I found her crying over all your baby photos, for heaven’s sake! That was horrible, turning up here dressed like that, making a scene, what are you trying to prove, Angie?

  No, I won’t ‘lend’ you that little gold bracelet, don’t go ringing me up again when you know they’re all out, either, you’ll just get the phone slammed down in your ear again.

  Angie, I get so sad, give them a break, all right? Dad’s starting to look so old and tired. Give us all a break, damn you!

  Lynne

  Dear Jas,

  You know I want to keep it, you know how I feel about kids. Maybe it would work out, hey? I could go on the supporting parents benefit or whatever it’s called like Judy did. She’s managing OK and she got a Min. of Housing flat, too, you should see how she’s done it up.

  Jas, write and tell me what I should do.

  You owe me about a hundred letters already, you lazy slob. (Anyone would think your time isn’t your own! Joke.) Oh Jas, I miss you!

  North Road’s not too bad, apart from that bitch Marilyn who’s in charge, she really looks down her nose when you front up every day.

  Rick was keeping me company out there, but he got kicked off the program (surprise surprise). I’m going really well, you’d be so proud of me!

  Judy said to say hello (only not all that enthusiastically). She keeps pretty much to herself these days. You should see her baby, Amy Siobhann she called it, it’s so sweet! Amy was OK at birth, didn’t even have to go into intensive care and the birth weight was fine, how lucky can you get, eh? Jude’s going great guns, she’s even given up smoking as well! Maybe it would work out for me, too.

  Haven’t told my folks yet, don’t know how to. How can I tell them, I don’t even know what I’m going to do yet!!! Have to make up my mind pretty soon, hey?

  Jas, please write and tell me what I should do.

  Love ya always,

  Angie

  Chapter 8

  ‘I never let that old witch worry me,’ Angie said airily. ‘If you’re even five minutes late with the rent, she flaps about wringing her hands like someone out of an opera. I already fixed it, so don’t remind me about it on a beautiful day like this. I thought we came out to have some fun. That’s why I wore Carmen Miranda.’ Carmen Miranda was a short, tiered skirt of different colours, resembling three bright parasols placed one on top of another, and
a red shirt tied in a knot at the waistline. ‘Though you wouldn’t know who Carmen Miranda was unless you watch old midday movies,’ Angie added. ‘She used to wear her hair all piled up with tropical fruit ornaments and danced the rumba. And her earrings—they were fabulous! Today I’m going to shout myself a new pair of earrings.’

  ‘Can you afford it?’ Seymour asked automatically, because his mother was fond of saying, ‘Need, not Greed. First work out if you really need something, and you’ll find out that ninety-nine per cent of the time you can get by without it.’

  But Angie seemed merrily oblivious of sayings like ‘Need, not Greed’. After they’d called in at the North Road hospital and returned to the bus terminal, she went into a nearby shop and looked at cheap jewellery. Seymour found himself covertly watching, feeling diminished a little by his action, to make sure that she really did pay for the items she finally chose. She certainly seemed to have plenty of money in the little silver mesh purse she drew out of her handbag. It bulged with the weight of notes and coins. She bought a pair of earrings shaped like gaudy parrots and put them on in the shop. As well as the earrings, she bought two little china ballet slippers attached to each other with pink ribbon. Seymour privately thought they were pretty useless, but Angie seemed to adore them and asked for them to be gift wrapped with a shiny rosette to seal the parcel.

  ‘Now,’ she said, pulling him on to a bus just as it was about to move off. ‘Out we go to East Merken. We’re meeting someone there and I’m shouting you both to lunch. You can order anything you like and second helpings, too.’

  Seymour immediately shrank away from the thought of meeting another person, a stranger, and having to make conversation. Angie wouldn’t tell him who it was and laughed at his reluctant face.