Every Seven Years (2 page)

But then I see what is in her hand.

It's the book. My smile drops.

Karen's voice is loud in my ear.

A lovely book about the famous painter:
Roy Lik-Tin-Styne! This is, believe it or
not! The very last book Else took out of
our library! Isn't that fun? And Anne-Marie is going to present it to her as a memento
of this lovely visit!

Karen turns and looks straight at me,
giving a loud and hearty laugh. HAHAHA!
she says, straight into my face
HAHAHA! She is so close her gusty laugh
moves my hair.

Anne-Marie drops the big book into
one of my hands and shakes the other
one. She is smiling vacantly over my
shoulder. Then she's gone.

What do you think of that, Else?

I can't speak. I look at it. The flyleaf is
ripped but it is the same book. Time-yellowed
cover, whitened along the spine
from sun exposure. I know then. I will kill
Karen Little. And I'll kill her tonight.

Back in the house I sit in my mum's living
room with a huge glass of straight vodka
in my hand.

I haven't had a drink for seven years
and surprise myself by pouring straight
Smirnoff into a pint glass. This is what I
want. Not a glass of full-bodied red or a
relaxing beer. What I want is a sour, bitter
drink that will wither my tongue and
make me half mad. I want a drink that will
make me sick and screw me up.

Before this morning, before the final
breath went out of her as I held her hand
in the hospital, I thought of Totty as
“Mum.” Now I find I call her “my mum.”
In the Scots Gaelic language there is no
ownership. It isn't
my
cup of tea. The cup
of tea is
with
me. Now that Mum is no
longer with me she has become
my
mum.
I'm claiming ownership of her.

My mum is all around me in this room,
I can smell her. I can see the book she was
reading before she went into the hospital,
open on the arm of the chair. This house
is polluted with books. Her phrase. Polluted.
They're everywhere. They're not
furniture or mementoes. They're not
arranged by spine color on bookcases or
anything like that. They're functioning
things, on the bathroom floor, in the
kitchen by the cooker, on the floor in the
hall, as if she had to stop reading that one
to pull a coat on and go out. And her tastes
were very catholic. Romance, classic, Russian
literature, crime fiction. She'd read
anything. I've known her to read a book
halfway through before realizing that
she'd read it before. She didn't read to
show off at book groups or for discussion.
She never made a show of her erudition.
She just liked to be lost.

The book from the school is on the
table in front of me. Yellow, accusing.
Lichtenstein is on the cover, photographed
in black and white. He is standing contraposto
in the picture, looking a little fey.
The height of the white room behind him
implies a studio space.

I can't look at that anymore.

The couch is facing the window. A sloping
lawn leads down to an angry sea.
America is over there, obscured from view
by the curvature of the earth and nothing
more. Away is over there.

I sat here often while she was alive, on
the couch, planning my exit from this
small place.
I will get away.
The day after
my sixteenth birthday, I left the island like
a rat on fire. Down to London, sleeping on
floors, in beds I didn't particularly want to
be in, just to be away. I would have sold
my soul. But my mum stayed.

She came to visit me in London once I
got a place of my own, when I was doing
the TV soap and the money was rolling in.
Nothing makes you feel rich as much as
having been poor. Totty came down to
London “for a visit.” Always “for a visit.”
Coming back was not negotiable. She was
always going to come back here, to an island
that hated her.

I asked her to stay with me in London.
I did it several times. Sobbing, drunk, and
begging her to stay. She took my hand and
said
I love you
and
you know I can't
and
they'll win then
. Finally she said she
wouldn't come and visit anymore if I
asked her again. And you should stop
drinking, Else. You don't have a problem
but you drink for the wrong reasons. Get
drunk for fun, she said, and only for fun.
Never get drunk to give yourself guts.
That's what I'm doing now. Sipping the
foul vodka as if it were medicine, trying to
swallow it before it touches the sides. I
need guts tonight.

I look at the book on the table and I'm
back at the event in the small, packed library.
Why did they even have a podium,
I wonder now. Everyone could see me perfectly
well. In hindsight it feels like a freak
show tent, with me as the freak everyone
wants to peer at. Karen planned it all
around the giving of the book. She must
have known while she watched me speak
about my pathetic career, my reality show
appearances, the failed comedy series. She
must have known when she cornered me
in the chemist's.

I look down at the book.

I'm getting drunk and I try to think of
an alternative explanation: is this a custom?
Do people give people “the last book
they took out of their school library”? No.

I should have asked: did someone else
suggest this? But I know in my gut that the
answer would be no. No one else suggested
this. Karen Little suggested giving
you this book. No one else would know
which was the last book you took out of
the school library. And why would they?
Why the hell would they? It means nothing
to anyone but Karen and me.

I open it. Tech solutions hadn't reached
this little corner of Scotland yet. There
were no chips or automatic reminders
sent by text to the mobiles of borrowers.
They still stamped books out of the library.
The book has never been taken out
since I had it, seven years ago. Of course it
hasn't. Its been sitting in Karen's cupboard.

I start to cry and stroke the torn flyleaf.
I realize that I'm glad my mum was already
dead when Karen gave me this.

I flick through the book, as if casually,
but I know, even before the pages fall
open, that the handwritten note will still
be there. The pages part like the Red Sea.
A ripped corner of foolscap paper, narrow,
faint lines. Even the small hairs at the
ripped edge are flattened perfectly after
seven years.

It is facing down, but the ink is showing
through. I pick it up and turn it over.
There in a careful hand to disguise the
writing, it says,

She got herself raped by

Paki Harris.
That's
why.

The stock in the school library has always
been old. Most of it was second
hand, given to the school by well-meaning
locals after post mortem clear-outs of
family houses. The history books were
hangovers from the Empire. Books that
referred to “coolies” and other anachronisms.
The Lichtenstein book was bang
up to date by comparison. It was only fifteen
years old and was about a modern
painter. I was thrilled when I stumbled
across it. I didn't know Lichtenstein's
work. I was a pretentious teenager. I
imagined myself walking through town
with the book in my hand. I imagined
myself in New York, in London, discussing
Lichtenstein with Londoners. I
didn't know until I got there that, one way
or another, most Londoners are from
small, hateful islands, too.

At the bus stop, on the way home from
school, waiting with the book on my knee
so anyone passing could see me reading it.
I'd Rather Drown Than Ask Brad For Help
.
And then turning the page and finding the
note. My whole life story shifting painfully
to the side. Who I was. What I was. Looking
up. Karen Little standing across the
road, doing her death stare. The greatest
acting lesson I ever had.

Replace the note in the pages.

Shut the book.

Bite your lip.

Smile past Karen and look for the bus.
I thought I might be sick. I thought I
might cry. I did neither. I sat, apparently
calm, imagined what someone who hadn't
just been punched in the heart would look
like, and I did that. I looked for the bus.

I scratched my face.

I saw a sheep on the sea front and my
eyes followed it calmly for a few minutes.
Karen kept her eyes on me the whole time,
until the bus came and I got on and
smiled at the driver and took my seat.
Maybe she thought I didn't get the note.
Maybe that's why she's giving it to me
again. Karen Little made me an actor anyway.
I have to give her that.

When I got to the end of our drive I was
struck by terror. Totty might find the
book. It might be true and she might tell
me so. Why didn't I just throw the note
away? It seemed inseparable from the
book. I wrapped the book in a plastic bag
and tucked it under a thick gorse bush. I
left it there all night and picked it up in the
morning and took it back to the library. I
should have taken the note out but I didn't
dare look at it again or touch it.

I wondered about the writing at the
time. Did Karen disguise her writing because
I knew her? Why stand there, watching
me find it at the bus stop? Or did she
disguise it in case the police became involved?

I never told Totty about the note. Ever.
And I'm glad. And I know I'll be glad
about that forever.

I remember that she's gone for the fifteenth
time in an hour. My thoughts are
flying, racing somewhere and then BANG.
Shock. Disbelief.

Totty's gone. The world feels poorer. It
feels pointless. The next breath feels pointless.

I sit on the couch and watch the waves
break on each other as they struggle inland,
then are dragged back out by their
heels. Striving pointlessly. Then I make an
effort. Studiously, I drink the crazy drink
and get crazy drunk.

It's the middle of the night and I wake up
on the couch. I'm sweaty and I smell unfamiliar
to myself, strange and sour. The
sea is howling outside, fierce gray. A self-harming
sea. I'm going kill Karen Little.
I'm so angry I can hardly breathe in.

The first problem is the car. I get into
the car and start the engine and back it
into a wall. It sounds as if it was probably
a bad crash, from the crumple of metal,
but I can't be bothered getting out to look
at it. It's windy. The sea spray is as thick as
a fog over the windscreen.

It's in
reverse
. That's the problem there.
I've solved a problem and feel buoyed.

I change gear. I go for a front-ways one
this time and move off. I pass the gorse
bush where I hid the Lik-Tin-Stein all
those years ago. The engine is groaning
and growling, doesn't sound happy, so
maybe it's third gear. First gear. That's the
one. So I put it in first and it sounds happy
now. Am I wearing a coat? Where does
Karen even live now? I'll find her. Wherever
she lives.

I get all the way up the hill, looking
down on the lights of the town and the
harbor. Its inky dark up here and the road
is disappearing in front of me, swallowed
in the blackness. Lights! Of course! My
lights are off.

I stop on the top of the hill, over the
town. She's down there somewhere. I
crank on the hand break and look for the
lights. I don't know this car. The switch
should be on the wheel but it's not. Not
on the dashboard. Why would they hide a
thing like that? It's ridiculous, it's not safe.
I'm going to write to the company.

A glass-tap and a shout through the
sheeting rain—HELLO?

A face. Man-face at the window. Smiling.

I wind the window down. I'm already
indignant about the safety flaws in the car
and the rain comes in making my leg cold.
Now I'm furious.

The hell're you
doing
out here?

Else? He smiles, sweet, as round faced
as he ever was. Tam. God, he's handsome.

I heard she died, Else. I was coming to
see you.

So there's a dissonant thing going on
now:
inside
my head I'm saying “Tam”
over and over in different ways, friendly
way, surprised, delighted, howthehellareye! ways. But outside my head, I'm
making a noise, a squeal like a hurt
piglet, very high noise. My face is tight so
I can't will it to move and I'm holding the
steering wheel tight with both hands.
And my face is wet.

Auch, darlin', says Tam.

He opens the door and all the rain's getting
on me and he's carrying me to his car
and then I'm in the kitchen.

Tam.

Tam's pouring coffee. I hope it's for me because
it looks really nice. He's telling me a
lot of things that are surprising but also
nice. Tam was my first boyfriend and,
honestly, I have never stopped loving that
man. We were inseparable before I left so
abruptly. He knew why. I never wrote to
him or called. I never asked him to visit.
But Tam isn't bitter. He's winning his race.

Tam's telling me that he's gay and he
has a man and he's happy. It makes me feel
so pleased, as if a part of me is now gay
and has a man and is happy, too.

Now he's telling me very carefully that
it wasn't me that turned him gay, you
know. Tam? The hell are you on about?
He sees that I'm laughing at him. I'm
laughing in a loving way because, Tam,
you don't need to explain that to me! For
godsake! Well, anyway he's laughing too,
now, but his laughter is more from relief
really.

He explains that he went out with another
girl from the other side of the island.
Well, she's kind of angry with Tam
for being gay. She thinks either she turned
him gay by being unattractive or that he
tricked her into covering for him. She
hasn't settled on one reading of events
just yet, but even though it was five years
ago, she's still very annoyed about it.