The Cement Garden (6 page)

Mother had fallen asleep. Sue took the glasses out of her hand, folded them and placed them on the bedside table, and then she left the room. I listened to the rise and fall of my mother’s breathing. A particular arrangement of mucus in her nose caused a faint, high-pitched sound like a sharp blade in the air, and then that faded. To have the dining-room table up here was still a novelty to me, I could not quite leave it. I saw for the first time the swirling black lines of the wood’s grain beneath the dark lacquer stain. I rested my bare arms along its cool surface. It seemed more substantial here and I could no longer imagine it downstairs. From her bed my mother made a brief, soft, chewing sound with her tongue against her teeth, as though she were dreaming of being thirsty. Finally I went and stood by the window, yawning frequently. I had homework to do but since the long summer holiday was about to begin I no longer cared. I was not even sure if I wanted to return to school in the autumn, and yet I had no plans to do anything else. Outside, Tom and another boy about his size pulled a large lorry tyre along the street till they were out of sight. The fact that they were dragging it along and not rolling it made me feel immensely weary.

I was about to sit down at the table again when my mother called my name, and I went to sit on her bed. She smiled and touched my wrist. I moved my hand between my knees. I did not want to be touched, it was too hot.

‘What are you up to?’ she said.

‘Nothing,’ I told her through a sigh.

‘Fed up?’ I nodded. She tried to stroke me with her hand but I was sitting just out of her reach.

‘Let’s hope you can find yourself a job for the holidays, get yourself a little pocket money.’ I grunted ambiguously, and briefly turned my face towards her. Her eyes as always were sunk deep, and the skin around her eyes was dark and convoluted, as though it too were a seeing surface. Her hair was thinner and greyer, a few strands of it lay on the sheet. She wore a greyish-pink cardigan over her nightdress, and its sleeve bulged at the wrist because she kept her handkerchiefs tucked in there.

‘Sit a little nearer, Jack,’ she said. ‘There’s something I want to tell you and I don’t want the others to hear.’ I moved up the bed and she rested her hand on my forearm.

A minute or two passed and she did not speak. I waited, a little bored, a little suspicious that she wanted to talk to me about my appearance or my squandered blood. If it was to be that, I was ready to walk away from the bed and out of the room. At last she said, ‘I might have to go away soon.’

‘Where?’ I said instantly.

‘To the hospital to give them a chance to get to the bottom of whatever it is I’ve got.’

‘How long for?’ She paused, and her eyes moved from mine and stared over my shoulder.

‘It might be quite a long time. That’s why I want to talk to you.’ I was more interested in how long she really meant, a sense of freedom was tugging at my concern. But she was saying, ‘It really means that Julie and you will have to be in charge.’

‘You mean Julie will.’ I was sullen.

‘Both of you,’ she said firmlv. ‘It’s not fair to leave it all to her.’

‘You tell her then,’ I said, ‘that I’m in charge too.’

‘The house must be run properly, Jack, and Tom has to be looked after. You’ve got to keep things clean and tidy otherwise you know what will happen.’

‘What?’

‘They’ll come and put Tom in care, and perhaps you and Susan too. Julie wouldn’t stay here by herself. So the house would stand empty, the word would get around and it wouldn’t be long before people would be breaking in, taking things, smashing everything up.’ She squeezed my arm and smiled. ‘And then when I came out of hospital there would be nothing for us all to come back to.’ I nodded. ‘I’ve opened an account at the post office for Julie, and money will get paid into it from my savings. There’s enough for you all for quite a while, easily enough till I come out of hospital.’ She settled back against the pillows and half closed her eyes. I stood up.

‘Okay,’ I said, ‘when do you go in?’

‘It might not be for a week or two yet,’ she said without opening her eyes. As I reached the door she said, ‘The sooner the better, I think.’

‘Yes.’ The different position of my voice made her open her eyes. I stood at the door, ready to leave. She said, ‘I’m tired of lying here doing nothing all day.’

Three days later she was dead. Julie found her when she got in from school on Friday afternoon, the last day of the summer term. Sue had taken Tom swimming, and I arrived back minutes after Julie. As I turned down our front path I saw her leaning out of Mother’s window and she saw me, but we ignored each other. I did not go upstairs immediately. I took my jacket and shoes off and drank a glass of cold water from the tap in the kitchen. I looked in the refrigerator for something to eat, found some cheese and ate it with an apple. The house was very quiet and I felt oppressed by the empty weeks ahead. I had not found a job yet, I had not even looked for one. Out of habit, I went upstairs to say hello to my mother. I found Julie on the landing just outside Mother’s bedroom and when she saw me she pulled the door shut and stooped to lock it. Trembling slightly, she stood facing me, the key clenched tightly in her fist.

‘She’s dead,’ Julie said evenly.

‘What do you mean? How do you know?’

‘She’s been dying for months.’ Julie pushed past me on the stairs. ‘She didn’t want you lot to know.’ I resented ‘you lot’ immediately.

‘I want to see,’ I said. ‘Give me that key.’ Julie shook her head.

‘You’d better come down and talk before Tom and Sue get in.’ For a moment I thought of snatching at the key, but I turned and, lightheaded, close to blasphemous laughter, followed my sister down.

5

By the time I got to the kitchen Julie had already arranged herself there. She had tied her hair in a pony-tail and was leaning back against the sink, her arms folded. All her weight was on one foot and the other rested flat against the cupboard behind her so that her knee protruded.

‘Where have you been?’ she said, but I did not understand her.

‘I want to see,’ I said. Julie shook her head. ‘We’re both in charge,’ I said as I circled the kitchen table. ‘She told me.’

‘She’s dead,’ Julie said. ‘Sit down. Don’t you understand yet? She’s dead.’ I sat down.

‘I’m in charge too,’ I said and began to cry because I felt cheated. My mother had gone without explaining to Julie what she had told me. Not to hospital, but gone completely, and there could be no verification. For a moment I perceived clearly the fact of her death, and my crying became dry and hard. But then I pictured myself as someone whose mother had just died and my crying was wet and easy again. Julie’s hand was on my shoulder. As soon as I became aware of it I saw, as though through the kitchen window, the unmoving tableau we formed, sitter and stander, and I was unsure briefly which was me. Someone below me sat weeping at the end of my fingers. I was uncertain whether Julie was waiting tenderly or impatiently for me to stop crying. I did not know if she was thinking of me at all for the hand on my shoulder was neutral in touch. This uncertainty made me stop crying. I wished to see the expression on her face. Julie resumed her position by the sink and said, ‘Tom and Sue will be here.’ I wiped my face and blew my nose on the kitchen towel. ‘We might as well tell them as soon as they get in.’ I nodded, and we stood about waiting in silence for almost half an hour.

When Sue came in and Julie told her the news, both girls burst into tears and embraced each other. Tom was still outside somewhere. I watched my sisters crying, I sensed it would seem hostile to look elsewhere. I felt excluded but I did not wish to appear so. At one point I placed my hand on Sue’s shoulder, the way Julie had on mine, but neither of them noticed me, any more than wrestlers in a clinch would, so I removed it. Through their crying Julie and Sue were saying unintelligible things, to themselves perhaps, or to each other. I wished I could abandon myself like them, but I felt watched. I wanted to go and look at myself in the mirror. When Tom came in the girls separated and turned their faces. He demanded a glass of squash, drank it and left. Sue and I followed Julie upstairs, and while we were standing behind her on the landing waiting for her to open the door, I thought of Sue and myself as a married couple about to be shown into a sinister hotel room. I belched, Sue giggled and Julie made a shushing noise.

The curtains were not drawn in order, Julie told me later, to ‘avoid suspicion’. The room was full of sunlight. Mother lay propped up by pillows, her hands under the sheet. She could have been about to doze off, for her eyes were not open and staring like dead people’s in films, nor were they completely closed. On the floor near the bed were her magazines and books, and on the bedside table there was an alarm clock which still ticked, a glass of water and an orange. While Sue and I watched from the foot of the bed, Julie took hold of the sheet and tried to draw it over Mother’s head. Because she was sitting up the sheet would not reach. Julie pulled harder, the sheet came loose and she was able to cover the head. Mother’s feet appeared, they stuck out from underneath the blanket, bluish-white with a space between each toe. Sue and I giggled again. Julie pulled the blanket over the feet and Mother’s head was revealed once more like an unveiled statue. Sue and I laughed uncontrollably. Julie was laughing too; through clenched teeth her whole body shook. The bedclothes were finally in place, and Julie came and stood by us at the foot of the bed. The shape of Mother’s head and shoulders was obvious through the white sheet.

‘It looks ridiculous like that,’ Sue wailed.

‘No she doesn’t,’ Julie said violently. Sue reached forward and pulled the sheet clear of Mother’s head, and almost simultaneously Julie punched Sue hard on the arm and shouted, ‘Leave it alone.’ The door behind us opened and Tom was in the room, breathless from his game in the street.

As soon as Julie and I caught hold of him he said, ‘I want Mum.’

‘She’s asleep,’ we whispered, ‘look, you can see.’ Tom struggled to get by us.

‘Why were you shouting then? Anyway, she’s not asleep, are you, Mum?’

‘She’s very asleep,’ said Sue. For a moment it seemed that through sleep, a very deep sleep, we might initiate Tom in the concept of death. But we knew no more about it than he did, and he sensed something was up.

‘Mum!’ he yelled, and tried to fight his way round the bed. I held him by his wrists.

‘You can’t,’ I said. Tom kicked my ankle, pulled free, and slipped round Julie to the head of the bed. Steadying himself with one hand on Mother’s shoulder, Tom took his shoes off and glared at us triumphantly. Scenes like this had happened before, and sometimes he got his way. By now I was all for letting him find out for himself, I just wanted to watch what happened. But as soon as Tom pulled back the bedclothes to climb in beside his mother, Julie sprang forward and caught Tom by the arm.

‘Come on,’ she said gently, and pulled him.

‘No, no …’ Tom squealed, just like he always did, and with his free hand held on to the sleeve of Mother’s nightdress. As Julie pulled, Mother toppled sideways in a frightening, wooden sort of way, her head struck the bedside table and the clock and the glass of water crashed to the floor. Her head remained wedged between the bed and the table, and now one hand was visible by the pillow. Tom became quiet and still, almost rigid, and let himself be led away like a blind man by Julie. Sue had already left, though I did not notice her go. I paused a moment wondering whether I should push the corpse into an upright position. I took a pace towards her, but I could not bear the idea of touching her. I ran out of the room, slammed the door shut, turned the key and put it in my pocket.

In the early evening Tom cried himself to sleep on the sofa downstairs. We covered him with a bath towel because no one wanted to go upstairs alone to fetch a blanket. For the rest of the evening we sat about the living room without saying much. Once or twice Sue began to cry, and gave up, as if the effort was too much for her. Julie said, ‘She probably died in her sleep,’ and Sue and I nodded. After a couple of minutes Sue added, ‘It didn’t hurt.’ Julie and I murmured in agreement. A long pause and then I said again, ‘Are you hungry?’ My sisters shook their heads. I longed to eat but I did not want to eat alone. I did not want to do anything alone. When finally they did agree to have something I brought in bread, butter and marmalade and two pints of milk. While we were eating and drinking, conversation picked up. Julie told us that she first ‘knew’ two weeks before my birthday.

‘When you did your handstand,’ I said.

‘And you sang “Greensleeves”,’ said Sue. ‘But what did I do?’ We could not remember what Sue had done, and she kept saying, ‘I know I did
something
.’ till I told her to shut up. A little after midnight we went upstairs together, keeping very close on the stairs. Julie went first, and I carried Tom. On the first landing we stopped and huddled together before passing Mother’s door. I thought I could hear the alarm clock ticking. I was glad the door was locked. We put Tom to bed without waking him. The girls had agreed, without even talking about it, that they would sleep in the same bed. I got into my own bed and lay on my back tensely, and turned my head violently to one side whenever there was a thought or an image I wanted to avoid. After half an hour I went into Tom’s bedroom and carried him to my own bed. I noticed the light was still on in Julie’s room. I put my arms round my brother and fell asleep.

Towards the end of the next day, Sue said, ‘Don’t you think we ought to tell someone?’

We were sitting round the rockery. We had spent the whole day in the garden because it was hot, and because we were afraid of the house at our backs whose small windows now suggested not concentration, but heavy sleep. In the morning there had been a row over Julie’s bikini. Sue thought it was wrong of her to wear it. I said I did not care. Sue said that if Julie wore the bikini it. meant she didn’t care about Mum. Tom started to cry and Julie went indoors to take her bikini off. I passed the day looking through a pile of old comics, some of them Tom’s. At the back of my mind I had a sense of us sitting about waiting for some terrible event, and then I would remember that it had already happened. Sue looked through her books and sometimes cried to herself. Julie sat on top of the rockery rattling pebbles in her cupped hands, tossing them up and catching them. She was irritable with Tom, who one moment was whining and wanting attention, and the next was off playing as if nothing had happened. Once he tried to cling on to Julie’s knee and I heard her say as she pushed him away, ‘Go away.
Please
go away.’ Later on I read to him from one of the comics.