How You See Me (4 page)

(Later)

I look back over what I’ve written and wonder why I’ve told you all this. If I were reading this letter I would believe my sister to be fierce and brutal and proud and glamorous and even a little dangerous. She is all these, but many other things besides. This is a long letter, but there is not enough paper to tell all the stories and memories I have of just this one person. I have tried to do what my father tried before me, to paint a portrait, and it’s as misshapen as his. Mab would hate it.

I know why I’m telling you these things. I feel that I know all of you, because of the hours I’ve spent writing down your words; but perhaps each of those hours was another flawed portrait. What haven’t you told me?

Missing you,
Your Daniel xx

3rd November

The streets of Upchurch

Dear Mab –

Tatty and I went for a walk today. This is not counting our daily trudges at dawn and twilight so I can watch her piss and shit on the tracks round the back field. We have other companions on those jaunts, men and women with
their own dogs and discreetly held little bags of dog turd. It took me some time to learn the rules. One woman stopped me pointedly to tell me they were considering starting DNA testing of dogs fouling the pathways. Would I care to sign a petition and agree to Tatty being sampled?

We all make a fuss of each other’s dogs and look on like proud parents as they sniff each other’s arses. Most of the women, though, seem to know me or someone I went to school with. They ignore me or scuttle past in groups, their dogs placed firmly between us, but I can see them aching for gossip.
I’m
aching for gossip, but I’ve none to give.

Dad is much as he was. The arrival of the district nurse was the reason for our departure. She’s small and pretty and hates Tatty and me in equal measure. I know this because she complains about us loudly to Dad in a stage whisper.

‘Should get that son of yours to give you a better wash in the evening, shouldn’t we, Michael?’

‘I’m sure I’ve told that son of yours a thousand times how to tie a dressing. But does he listen, Michael?’

‘There’s that dreadful dog of yours, Michael. Bringing all that mess and dirt up to bother you. Needs a brush, that dog. Sure that son of yours could have a go at that, if he took the time.’

All this in a bright and breezy falsetto and all addressed to Dad. She’s so sweet to him, while being so rude to me, that I don’t dare question her. Who knows what a replacement would be like? So ‘that dog’ and ‘that son’ have made a habit of taking a walk when she arrives.

Love to Freya – I enclose a letter from a furry friend.

Daniel x

3rd November

My warm bed by the fire

Dear Freya –

My name is Tatty. It’s short for Princess Tatiana, who was a Russian princess, but I’m a dog so you should call me Tatty. I am a small dog with lots of fur. Some people say I’m not a proper dog because I’m small and because I am made up of lots of different types of dog. But I think that is how the best dogs are made. My fur is different colours: brown and white and black and gold. It hangs together in big locks. I think it looks like feathers.

There are two things I would like best in the world: 1. To fly like a bird, and 2. Lots of friends. Your Uncle Dan is my friend. He takes me for walks, and laughs when I bark at the birds with their clever flying, and feeds me tasty bits of food that Grandad can’t finish. Would you be my friend too, Freya? Uncle Dan says you’re very nice.

One of my favourite things is the nice warm fire and going to sleep on Grandad’s feet. Uncle Dan says that I snore and when I dream my paws go running, but I don’t go anywhere. He laughs, but I don’t mind. He seems to like laughing.

My biggest secret is that when I dream I don’t go running. I go flying. Do you know how secrets work? When someone tells you a secret you have to listen very carefully and then curl it up tight in your mind, as if it’s a little bit of paper that you crumple up in your hand. When it is very small, so small you can barely see it, then you have to pretend you are a little dog like me and dig a deep hole. Then you drop the secret into the hole and cover it up with
earth. When you’ve cleaned your paws, nobody else will ever know where to find the secret except you.

Now I’ve told you a secret, will you tell me one of yours? I like digging holes.

Lots of love and woofs,

Tatty

4th November

The Studio

Dear Aubrey –

I have a case study for you. One I think you’ll appreciate. It involves a story that’s been told before. Certainly I’ve heard it or overheard it. Maybe it will bore you, you’re the one with all the connections, after all. But it’s a story that bears retelling – according to the men of Upchurch, at least.

Man walks into a pub. He shouldn’t have left his house, but he’s just lost an argument with his sick father for a bottle of whisky and now the sick father is drunk and snoring. It’s still early and frankly this man is starved of company. He takes the paper he’s already read and its half-completed crossword. He nods to the men standing at the bar and takes his pint and his paper to the corner of the snug.

‘Back looking after your dad, are you?’ The man at the bar doesn’t turn until he has asked the question.

Our guy nods his head and folds up his paper; clicks his pen open and pretends to study the next clue. These sweet steps of masculine etiquette. Do both men know the
game they’re playing? Another man turns at the bar; both settle back on their elbows, drink in hand, unfavoured foot finding the shelf in the wooden panelling. Our man is observed.

‘Who’s this, then?’

‘This is the artist’s boy. Been up north, haven’t you, Danny?’

‘Danny Laird. Went to school with my Sam, you did. What you up to these days?’

‘His dad’s just out of the hospital. Stroke, wasn’t it?’

‘I heard something like, but you never know with our resident artist, do you? Lot of rumours. That girl of Laird’s.’

‘Not in front of the boy.’

‘No, you’re right there. Still up at Miracle’s place?’

‘Now there’s a name I haven’t heard for years.’

‘You know that story about Miracle, do you, Danny?’

Of course he knows the story – it helped make him… but he keeps his mouth shut. It’s not often you get to hear your life discussed by strangers while you’re in the same room.

‘Lives in Miracle’s house, doesn’t he? And it’s not like old Maggie is one to hold her tongue when there’s something to be said.’

‘That’s no story you’d tell a kid.’

‘Never know what went on in that house. Naked girls doing flits across the garden.’

‘You’d know all about that, Ron. Wasn’t your wife one of them?’

‘She wasn’t the one that ran screaming.’

‘Not in front of the boy.’

Would they notice if Danny Laird got up and walked away? Is he necessary to this plot?

‘Miracle was the name he got from that illness he had as a kid. There was something growing in his brain and no hospital or doctor could do a thing to stop it. Then there was talk about some special operation in America. Said it was his last hope. My dad used to talk about that mother of his walking up and down the streets with a plastic ice-cream tub, photo of the boy stuck to the side of it, begging for donations to help. There was nothing that woman didn’t do: sponsored events and letters to all the rich people she could think of. It was worse than the church roof.

‘The boy, though – well, he ran wild. Used to plough that bike of his right through the allotments and broke all the windows in one of the sheds. Never saw him at the school. But no one had the heart to chide him, not with him dying and all. The mother had no control and anyway she was too busy with her fund-raising to notice much else that went on.

‘Anyhow, they were getting close to their target, but the tumour in his head had its own clock and the doctors here said they’d have to do something soon. America or no America, they were going to operate. Well, the mother was desperate and took up pleading and begging for more time. In the end, probably just to shut the woman up, they agreed to one more scan. And it was gone. That massive tumour had completely disappeared.

‘The mother went round and gave everyone back their money, I’ll give her that. And Miracle went back to school. That’s what they called him in the papers. “The Miracle Boy”. Used to have a clipping in a frame up in here at one time.’

‘Killed himself, though, didn’t he?’

‘Blew his brains out.’

‘Only in his forties, wasn’t he? That’s no age.’

‘I heard it was his vanity. Some dentist told him he needed a set of false teeth, so he drove home and did himself in.’

‘No. He hit that woman on the dual carriageway. Must have been nearly twenty years ago now. Couldn’t live with himself after that.’

‘Not in front of the boy, Clive.’

‘Still, they took his house over, didn’t they. Lived there. It’s no wonder what happened next.’

Not much of a case study for you really. Certainly not as difficult as today’s cryptic proved to be. Pretty easy for you to form a hypothesis and draw a conclusion. But I wonder if it explains anything at all.

Regards,
Daniel

5th November

The Studio

Dear Alice –

A dream last night:

There is a small boy and the boy is me. He is holding his mother’s hand. They are walking on a footpath towards a bridge. The bridge is not a real bridge because there is no water to cross. Instead of water there is a road and fast fast cars that never stop, so people have to walk over them
instead of through them. There are steps up one side, from house and shops and the footpath, and then steps down the other side to more houses and a school, where the boy is going, and a tall church, where his mother is going.

At the top of the first steps sits a man. A homeless man. He is the first homeless man the boy has ever seen. He is very dirty and he has a blanket under him. The boy stops to look at him. The boy is wearing his school uniform. The trousers are brand new. There are still creases in them where they had been folded into a packet. His mother is wearing a summer dress, though it’s not quite summer any more.

The boy calls the homeless man Smiler, because he smiles all the time. The mother gives the boy a fifty-pence piece. Smiler still scares the boy, because he is so strange. The boy sees there is a folded pocket in Smiler’s blanket with some coins in it. The folds are there so when you throw your money it will not roll away. The boy lets go of his mother’s hand and runs towards Smiler. He drops his coin on to the other coins in Smiler’s blanket. Clink. The boy watches to see what will happen, but Smiler just keeps smiling.

Because the boy is watching Smiler, he does not see his mother climb over the railing at the edge of the bridge. He does not see his mother jump into the water that is not water, but road and cars. And he misses the white white white of her summer dress as she falls.

It’s a dream I have often, recurring with slight differences over the years. Maybe it’s not right to call it a dream. This is the story I tout as my first memory – I might have told it to you already? This is the day my memory began. The day my mother died. I’ve been told about that moment so many
times by so many people, I can’t be sure the images belong to me. It’s like pressing a memory on to an old photograph and then being told you weren’t even born when the shot was taken. Memory or fiction, does it really matter? It is part of me now.

With love to you,

Daniel xx

10th November

The Studio

Dear Alice –

I probably shouldn’t have done it, but the nurses are always on at me about Dad getting more ‘air’.
Get him outside. Keep him as active as you can. He’s not going to get any better just sitting, is he, Mr Laird?
What they don’t take into account is what a fucking operation it is to move him anywhere.

Still, the weather eased today (after the last few days, a couple of degrees feels positively balmy) so I wrapped Dad up as best I could and sat him out on the lawn in one of the old garden chairs. I brought out some blankets, the radio from the kitchen, and fed him hot tea and cigarettes.

I tucked him in and, while he dozed, I wandered round our little garden enjoying the sun on my face. I haven’t been out there much since I’ve been back, apart from walking back and forth to get the wood. There’s still a crust of snow clinging to the corners of the lawn and under the shadow of the house and shrubs.

Tatty wandered out through the back door and I called to her. She sniffed at Dad, squinted at me, squatted to piss and then took herself back off inside to the fire. She works her body like a mechanical toy over the steps, rocking from front legs to back. She probably wondered why we were determined to sit out in what she considers her toilet. I could see a litter of frozen turds punctuating the grass. Avoiding them, I made my way over to the pool.

The pool is really little more than a deep pond. You’ve probably heard about it, and certainly you’ve seen it – it’s what he used for the Submerged Nude series. Sarah was the primary model for that series. In fact it was her arrival that inspired the digging of the pool, and her comfort that inspired the dangerous collection of heating pipes Dad installed under the water. He always made sure the power was off before she got in. There even used to be fish in there at one point, Sarah would blame any twitches or movement on the shock of their rushed scuffs against her ankles. Not that Dad ever allowed excuses. She would work in there until her fingers and toes were puckered and white, Dad glowering down at her from that stepladder contraption he used. It was my job to hold the ladder still and then be ready with robe and towels for Sarah’s breaks, to smooth soft cotton over her shuddering limbs.