Escape (14 page)

As I looked at Jonny, a cold point expanded inside my stomach,
filling me with dread. I switched my gaze to the cup because it was
rude to stare. I thought about my collection of dolls and how they
might be transformed into mermaids, with sequinned tails.

The ping of the clock on the wall and the whirr of the fridge
became suffocating. I watched tears tracking time down Johnnie's
cheeks, slow as snail trails. The air in the living room seemed to eat my
words. Certainly Johnnie didn't hear them. He stared right through
me as if I didn't exist. Secretly, I began to pinch my thigh under my
dress, just to make sure I was there.

But in comparison with most of the boys who came later, Johnnie
was an angel. And I could see how much Johnnie needed my father.
He followed Dad around everywhere, waiting patiently outside the
bathroom with his half-finished sentences, and when Dad came out,
he took up where he'd left off . The boy was so desperate, and his arm
hurt and he had no mother or father. It was mean and selfish for me
to wish he would disappear like mist in the sun, and let me have my
father back. But in my black heart that was what I wanted.

Dad's expression of sad forgiveness only deepened with the queue
of boys. Older tougher boys with shaved heads, tattoos and swearwords
for parts of the body I'd never even heard of triggered Dad's most
regretful smile and tear-filled eyes. I learnt to take my clothes into the
bathroom for my shower, even my shoes, so that I could tiptoe back
to my bedroom without one inch of private flesh showing. I became
an expert at early morning waking, which gave me time to creep past
the sofa and get my breakfast, shower and read in my room without
having to say anything to anyone. The mornings were precious echoes
of life before.

The terrible truth was I loathed the boys. Every single one of them.
I knew they'd suffered – they had been abused, neglected, brutalised,
hurt themselves with drugs and knives and fights. But I couldn't bear
them.

'When's he going?' I asked my mother about Joe, Brian, Nick,
Johnnie. I repeated the question as often as other children ask, 'Are we
there yet?' driving towards a holiday.

'Ssh,' Deborah would whisper, glancing at Dad. 'Can't you see the
boys are good for your father?'

Once, the question just leapt out of my mouth before I could stop
it.

'When's he going?' I piped out, looking at Nick, who was hogging
the heater, standing so close you'd think the backs of his calves would
catch fire.

Dad looked down at the carpet and coughed loudly. I saw my
stream of words linger in the silence like a speech bubble in a cartoon.
The words were so familiar in my mind, they just tumbled out naturally
into the air.

I didn't say the sentence aloud any more after that, but I thought
about it constantly. I asked my dolls, who all shook their heads and
agreed sympathetically, No time soon, honey!

Nick and Sam guff awed at my dolls, Tom stole my scissors, and
Donald drew vaginal lips in red marker on Sasha.

I retreated into my mermaid world. I liked the way mermaids
were neither one thing nor the other, neither fish nor human, and they
had no vaginal lips as far as I could see. I transferred all my sewing
materials into the velvet hat I'd won at the Easter show. Mermaids
kept their precious belongings in their hats, I'd read, all their treasure
and mirrors and sewing. If a person tried to steal the hat, he would die
by drowning.

When Mum gave me a summer nightie to cut up, I was both
excited and alarmed. 'This is
silk
, Mum,' I protested. 'Why don't you
want it any more?' Deborah said it was too flimsy, and anyway she felt
silly in it, as if she ought to be getting into bed at the Ritz Carlton.
She snorted as she handed it to me, and we exchanged a sad smile that
held so many unsaid words it grew heavy on our faces like a package
we had to put down.

I would have liked a lock on my door, but Mum said that the
family was trying to foster an open environment, and a locked door
signalled exclusion and hierarchy. I became very quiet at home. Words
were signposts to my inner world and I didn't want anyone finding
their way in.

For me, the orphan boys were like something burning on the
stove. It was only a matter of time before one of them exploded and
the family caught fire. They smelled dangerous, with their hormones
and sweat cooking in their socks.

At night I sat on my bed, sewing my mermaids. I could hear Nick
or Brian or Finn talking to my father. Dad didn't sit on my bed any
more and talk to me. Through the new gyprock wall, Dad's calm voice
flowed in. A boy's laugh, a sudden shout perhaps, and my insides
would flinch back from my skin. I imagined myself as the fish frying
in the kitchen, the flesh hunching away from the silver skin as it curled
up in the pan.

Often I lay with my palms facing upwards on the sheets, seeing
how long I could hold my breath. Eyes closed, I swam down inside
myself. Here there were no boys or smells or swearwords. I hovered at
a level that was almost comfortable, imagining Sasha and me floating
in an endless sea. But it wasn't always safe in there. Below the comfort
there was an empty place, cold and grey like one of those stainless
steel chamber pots that Dad had used at the hospital. Achieving
stillness meant not joggling my insides. Any movement could set off
an avalanche and I'd spill over, down past the quiet and familiar, into
the empty grey pit forever.

Sometimes Mum flung open the door, her apron flapping. 'What
are you doing, lazing about? Why don't you come and help me peg
out the washing, heaven knows there's a mountain of it.'

After the boys arrived, my mother changed. She hadn't time to
dissect the television news, she was too busy clearing up after dinner.
She didn't bother recommending improving books about women in
trades or how to make your own radio. There was a new fold between
her brows and she took up smoking again. When I got out of bed late
one night to go to the toilet, my mother was standing out in the garden
in her dressing-gown, her feet bare, puffing on a Peter Stuyvesant.

Deborah no longer rose early in the morning to vacuum or clean
the bathroom. 'It'll just get dirty again tomorrow,' she said, 'so why
bother?' She lay in bed as long as she could, the sheets up to her chin.
Sometimes they covered her head like a dead person. When she did
that I lingered at the door, watching to make sure the sheet rose up and
down with her breath. Now and then a book lay open on her chest,
but mostly she seemed to be muttering to herself.

At high school I tried having intimate conversations with Joanna
Mulgrade. She was the closest thing I had to a best friend. Joanna told
me about her fears of ice-skating when she was little, and how she
couldn't get it out of her mind that below the clean white surface there
was a hole of dark water that went down forever. When she said that I
felt so close to her. I could understand how threatening just the idea of
that hole might have been. Sometimes I was invited to her house for
a sleepover. It was wonderful to be in a home smelling of floor polish
and jonquils instead of sorrow. As I stepped into my friend's gleaming
hallway with my overnight bag, I felt the little spring of freedom like
when we were let out of school early. Joanna's parents had barbecues
with invited guests only, who all politely went home at the end.

After that dinner with my parents, I realised that Guido's behaviour
at my place was just another instance of his being true to himself –
he
was
a private person, no doubt about that, and he'd prickled at
interrogation. He'd felt no need to put on a mask and be slavishly
polite or unctuously agreeable; he didn't have to play the role of some
wet, would-be boyfriend in order to be accepted. Guido wanted to
start out as he meant to go on: being himself.

He might be private with other people, I thought, but I wanted
him to be different with me. I wanted to know him, to explore the
deep underground rivers that flowed beneath his beautiful skin. Poetry
brought buried feelings to the surface – for me it was often a quick
piercing, a surge of insight. 'We read so as not to be alone,' someone
famous once said. Well, perhaps we could share poetry, and then, our
selves
.

When I went over to Guido's place the next day, I brought Gerard
Manley Hopkins with me. I told Guido about Hopkins' wrestle with
the dark – his strict Jesuit beliefs and periods of spiritual desolation.
'But even if you're not religious, his sense of abandonment by god can
be a symbol, you know, for the loneliness of the human condition.'

I tried to be quiet while he read. Surely Guido would respond
to the urgency in those dazzling, newly stamped words of Hopkins':
dapple-drawn falcon
,
thunder-purple
,
river-rounded
. Or maybe the
English was too difficult.

'Well, that one might be depressing,' I couldn't help saying after a
while, looking over his shoulder. '
Carrion Comfort
I mean. But really,
Hopkins found such joy in nature.'

'This poet is good,' Guido said finally. 'I am glad you showed me.'

'Oh!' I said. 'And look at this one, "As kingfishers catch fire,
dragonflies draw flame" . . . that's my favourite. See how he changes
"self " into a verb?
Each mortal thing selves
. Isn't that daring? Like
he's caught the flashpoint of being alive. Makes me think of
someone running for their lives, a moving target out in the open,
dangerous!'

'Mm,' said Guido. 'Is interesting. 'Opkings reminds me of my
favourite poet. You 'ave heard of Giacomo Leopardi?
Famosissimo
, the
greatest poet of the nineteenth century—'

'Your namesake!' I burst out, 'isn't that amazing?'

Guido waved his hand dismissively. 'A coincidence, yes. Leopardi
suffered too, like 'Opkings. He was often ill as a child. In 'is poetry
Leopardi expressed a universal sense of
pessimismo
. 'E said the
melancholy is an essential part of life.'

'Oh.'

'Of course, 'e does appreciate beauty. Is there in the poems. But
nature cheats us – is promising to us great joy when we are young,
even though everything is dying, our illusions, our physical bodies,
our 'opes. Leopardi cannot believe in the illusion of permanence.
This is the shadow behind every moment.' Guido came back from the
window and stood over me. 'You should read the poems, Rachel.'

He bent down and put his lips to my ear, as if he was about to tell
me a secret. His breath was warm on my cheek. A familiar ache started
in my groin. '
Ma in verità questa vita è trista e infelice, ogni giardino è
quasi un vasto ospitale (luogo ben più deplorabile che un cemeterio), e se
questi esseri sentono o, vogliamo dire, sentissero, certo è che il non essere
sarebbe per loro assai meglio che l'essere
.'

'Is that Leopardi?' I breathed. 'It's like music. What does he say?'

Guido sat down next to me on the bed and leant heavily against
the wall. 'That every garden is a kind of hospital, where all the plants
are in the various stages of dying. This is not brilliant?'

I gazed at his eager face. The ache in my groin dulled.

'That if the beings in this garden could feel,' he went on, 'they
would choose not to be rather than to be. This is the only choice you
can make once you 'ave knowledge of the true state of things.
Beh
– so
it goes, Leopardi's universal law of sadness.'

Guido leant across me to pull out a drawer from his bedside table.
He found a bunch of papers and put them in my lap. 'You see, I 'ave
translated some early poems of Leopardi, inspired by Dante. You can
read them, and I can explain the references.'

I looked at the papers on my knees. His writing was dense and
almost impossible to read. Only the name
LEOPARDI
at the top was
large and bold, with swirls like those ribbons on birthday presents
specially curled with scissors. Guido coughed impatiently.

'You know,' I said, staring blankly at the elegant
LEOPARDI
, 'I
can't get over the coincidence of your name and his.' I giggled stupidly
into the silence. 'I mean, I've always thought names had a special
significance – don't you think they influence how you turn out? It's
as if you have to live up to the label your parents gave you, obey it
somehow. You know, did Mr Stitch become a surgeon because of his
name? Or Ron Bark a dog trainer?'

Guido sighed.

'Could we have a glass of wine?' I asked.

He got up slowly and found two plastic beer glasses. 'I do not 'ave
wine. Did you bring it?'

I remembered the bottle sweating in my bag. A Lambrusco, an
Italian wine that I'd never tried.

'But this is sweet,' said Guido. 'Is not for the afternoon. And
should be very cold.'

'For instance, look at this name!' I picked up a letter that lay on
Guido's bedside table. 'James Heartacher. What a beauty! I love that
– let's see if I can guess what profession he has? Something terribly
romantic. Maybe he runs a dating agency, or, I don't know, makes love
potions or maybe he's a cardiac surgeon!' I finished on a yelp, high-pitched
like the yap of the silly Jack Russell dog that lived at number
23. I looked away from Guido's stony face. His teeth had clamped
shut.

I stared at the blue airmail envelope in my hand. 'An Italian
postmark! Is this from one of your friends?' The letter was poking
out the top of the envelope. It was thick, maybe four pages, five. 'It's
all in Italian!' My voice crashed into the quiet. 'But wouldn't James
Heartacher be an English name?'

Guido strode over to the bed. Without a word he took hold of the
envelope and the letter fell out. He bent to pick it up as I reached for
it. For a moment we both held it in our hands. I couldn't bear to part
with it, not yet. Here, between my fingers, was another person in the
world who knew Guido.