Came Back to Show You I Could Fly

His mother came for her promised visit and stayed the weekend. There were many secretive, murmured conferences between her and Thelma in the front room, with Seymour banished to the kitchen to make endless pots of tea. In between the conferences in which he had no part, his mother kept insisting how wonderful it would be when they were back together at the end of the month, how the new situation at Carrucan would make up for these four trying, solitary weeks. Seymour made agreeable responses, but kept his mind perfectly blank, not allowing any expectations to take seed. He knew just how stark the gap between imagination and reality could be.

She took him out on Saturday, but it wasn’t an enjoyable excursion. Even the start of it was charged with drama. First she opened the front door a crack and peered through, then went dramatically to the gate to check that his father wasn’t lurking about in Victoria Road. And when they travelled into the city, most of the time was spent in buying new school clothes. The only emotion Seymour felt when he tried on the new uniform was a detached curiosity about how much wear he’d actually get out of it before they moved on to some other place.

Uniforms, he thought dully, were really only suitable for kids who lived predictable ordinary lives. In nice predictable ordinary suburbs where nothing ever altered except someone building a new garage, someone else having an extra room added to their house. That’s what his mother wanted, to live in a place like that. She’d keep such a house so trim, too, as neat as a little cuckoo clock. Suddenly he noticed how she glanced at certain things on display in the store—curtain material, cushions—and in those glances he thought he detected the same degree of yearning he’d experienced himself over objects. It was…sad.

He raged silently at his father, seeing him as a useless wastrel, a no-hoper. It wasn’t too much to ask, a permanent home somewhere, a job like everyone else’s father. Only…a memory edged into his mind, of the little fold-down table in the caravan and a newspaper spread out at the employment ads, some of them ringed with pencil. Seymour, almost asleep in the top bunk, had watched the pencil suddenly roll away from tired fingers and drop to the floor. He had watched his father’s hands go up to his temples, and the worry lines across his forehead deepen into something like despair.

There was no way they’d ever all live together in a little cuckoo-clock house in a garden suburb like—well, Merken, where Angie had grown up. Only, perhaps it didn’t matter all that much, anyhow. There hadn’t been much evidence of happiness in Angie’s former house. She hadn’t liked it, she’d moved on. Perhaps it was as he’d suspected all along, no place was ever going to be any good, and you just had to come to terms with it.

Maybe he’d been wrong about his mother hankering after curtain fabric and cushions. She certainly wasn’t now—she was hurrying him briskly towards the cafeteria, pleased with herself because she’d found some needlework stuff at half-price on a display counter. All those little mats she made, he thought, sitting down to lunch. Why does she bother? She’s got no house full of tables and shelves to put mats on, no place of her own…But she chatted, with what seemed like enthusiasm, of the new job and the possibility of it being permanent if things worked out as she thought they might.

‘We could even get some of our stuff out of storage,’ she said. ‘Take it along with us when we move, just in case. There’s my little chintz chair…Don’t put your elbows on the table, Seymour, you know better than that.’

‘What if…’ Seymour began, intending to say, ‘What if Dad gets that maintenance job at the golf links he was talking about, aren’t you going to give him another chance? Aren’t we all going to be living back together again?’

‘Don’t talk with your mouth full,’ said his mother. ‘Goodness, I hope you haven’t been doing that at Thelma’s. She’ll think I haven’t brought you up properly. I don’t want you getting into sloppy habits, dear. It was a mistake letting you go to your father even for that short time. I don’t know, every time I go against my better judgment and let you visit—not that he deserves it—what was it you wanted to say?’

After lunch in the department-store cafeteria, they went to a film, but not one of his choosing, for his mother had already booked the tickets. Going to the movie was his birthday outing treat, and the school clothes, a five-dollar note and new pencil box were his gifts.

The rest of the weekend seemed interminable, just more whispered conversations which changed to facile general chat when he brought in fresh pots of tea. He gathered that some sort of legal custody action was being planned, but his mother didn’t tell him any details. He was even relieved when Monday morning came and she left at the same time as Thelma.

No one answered his knocking when he went across to visit Angie at ten-thirty, although the door wasn’t locked. He put his head inside to investigate and saw that she was still half asleep.

‘Angie…hey, Ange, wake up! You’ll be late picking up your medicine at the hospital,’ he said, but she only muttered something about it being too late, that he should nick off and for God’s sake leave her alone, and slumbered on. The room was even more untidy than usual. Quietly, being careful not to disturb her, he filled in time by straightening up the kitchen section. He tackled the washing up and scrubbed a patina of grime from the little sink. Then he glanced uncertainly at Angie, who had slept through all the subdued clatter of things being made orderly. She looked ill, her eyes circled by dark rims like bruising, and apparently she hadn’t bothered to change into a nightgown, but had just tumbled fully clad into bed the previous night. He made coffee and took it to the bedside.

‘Come on, now, lazy,’ he coaxed. ‘You can’t stay in bed sleeping all day. How about what you told your mum, that you were going to look for a job?’

It took many persistent shakes, but finally Angie opened her eyes and sat up and glared at him. Groaning quietly, she sipped the coffee and lit a cigarette. The ashtray by the bed was choked with stubbed cigarettes and ash, so he emptied it into the kitchen rubbish bin and brought it back clean. Angie didn’t thank him or even seem to notice.

‘You could still make it out to the hospital if you get a move on,’ he said, for punctuality and routine had been instilled in him all his life by his mother and it made him edgy when people deviated from it. ‘You said you had to pick up that medicine every day, Angie.’ He paused and added, without looking at her, ‘What sort of stuff is it? What’s it for?’

‘Told you that already, and don’t nag, my head can’t stand it…’ Angie snapped. ‘My metabolism. I’m giving the hospital a miss this morning. No point. I don’t think I’ve quite got the hang of today, yet. Thanks for the coffee, anyway.’ Her hands shook, splashing coffee and ash on to the blanket, and Seymour dabbed ineffectually with a tissue from the bedside table.

‘Sit down,’ Angie said irritably. ‘Don’t be darting about like Sadie the cleaning lady. You’ll end up a fuddy-duddy old bachelor before you even reach your teens if you don’t watch out.’

The chair was piled with clothes, so he perched awkwardly on the end of the bed, feeling depressed because the day wasn’t turning out as he’d planned. He’d been looking forward to choosing earrings to match whatever she planned to wear, hadn’t even minded about the lengthy trip to the hospital, for after that was over they could have gone somewhere else and spent a cheerful, bright afternoon.

Angie certainly didn’t look cheerful now, and he thought of the quarrel she’d had with her mother, all those things he’d overheard and didn’t understand, or only half understood. They fluttered softly about in his mind like bats in a cave, but suddenly alarmed, not wanting to know, he pushed those thoughts into a separate compartment and slammed the shutters down. Angie smiled at him over the coffee, a wan shadow of her usual joyful smile, but his spirits lifted a little.

‘So, where’d you get to yesterday, Buster?’ she said moodily. ‘Standing me up, eh? I could have taken you to the zoo, you know. There’s this cute orang-outang there. He’s got this old chaff-bag like a security blanket and he just sits with it over his head, like he’s got it lined with rude postcards or he can’t bear the sight of the world. He kills me, that orang-outang. Only you didn’t show up…’

‘But I told you I couldn’t drop in over the weekend, Angie, don’t you remember? It was when we were coming back from your mum’s, that’s when I told you. I had to go into town for school things.’

‘Oh, well, maybe you did tell me, my mind’s like a colander. I had a sort of busy weekend myself, anyway. Ran into some mates I hadn’t seen for ages. We went…went…’ Angie wrinkled her forehead, shook her head as though it were too much of an effort to remember and slid down with her arms folded behind her tousled head. She stared through the tiny window at the patch of cornflower sky, and seemed to forget that he was there. Her face emptied of everything else except melancholy.

‘You look sort of white, Angie, like you’ve got the flu or something,’ Seymour said. ‘Maybe it’s not a bad idea if you got your act together and went out to that hospital and saw a doctor.’

‘Doctors,’ she scoffed. ‘The ones at that hospital aren’t any good. They’re jerks out there. I reckon they’ve all been deregistered for funny business, and they’ve snuck in again through the back door. It’s the pits, that clinic, stuck all the way out on North Road. They expect people to hold down jobs and still get out there every day somehow, and they don’t dare be ten minutes late. Doctors only tell you things you don’t want to know about. I’ll be okay, you don’t have to worry about me. I might get up later and do a few things, but right now I’ll just lie here and rest. I feel really tired…Oh God, I feel so damned tired…’

‘Do you want me to go, then?’ Seymour asked, thinking of Thelma’s house and the hours of arid boredom that waited for him across the alley.

‘No, you don’t have to scarper. Stay and talk to me, keep me company. Keep me comforty, that’s what my little sister used to say when she was learning to talk. Cute, eh? When she was sick in bed she’d say, “Don’t go to school, Angie, stay home and keep me comforty.” Lynne’s pretty, isn’t she? Talented, too. She’ll get a place in any ballet company she applies to when she’s older, no doubts about that. She’s got one of those ballet faces, you know the sort of faces those girls always have, neat and pure like flowers. Didn’t you reckon she was pretty?’

‘It’s beaut having a little sister, though I guess fourteen isn’t little any more. And my brother David, he’s a real whizz with maths and computers and stuff like that. You should have seen the things he used to make when he was only in primary school. Good at sport, too. Takes after my dad, he’s pretty smart as well. High achievers, that’s what my family’s all about—did you just happen to notice all those trophies and certificates and stuff on the mantel, cups for this and that?’

‘I’m the odd one out. Not that they ever let me feel it, mind. I mean, they weren’t always staring at me over the table and saying things like, “What a shame Angie’s so dumb, maybe there could have been a mix-up at the maternity hospital when she was born.” Nothing like that, I haven’t got that as an excuse…oh hell, all it takes is one lousy party! Just one lousy rotten party and showing off, wanting to sparkle like a Christmas tree…Little smartypants Angie, in over her neck…I must have been a very big disappointment to my family, you know. I didn’t win anything, even when I was in Brownies. Only ever got one badge for First Aid and that’s just because the lady doing the testing was a friend of mum’s, so she couldn’t very well not pass me.’

‘I never won anything, either,’ Seymour said. ‘At school or anywhere else. I guess it’s because we move round a lot. It’s rotten. I don’t mean not winning stuff, but you don’t stay anywhere long enough to make friends, either. Not that I’m much good at that. Kids sort of pick on you when you’re new.’

‘Well, you don’t have to be a prize fighter all covered in battle scars. There’s other ways of coming out top—you’ve just got to outsmart people when they start to hassle you, be one jump ahead. Sort of talk your way out of things if you can’t do it the other way. Like having a secret weapon.’

Seymour contemplated that advice dubiously and didn’t think it applied to him. He saw himself as a soldier with no weapons at all, secret or otherwise. Someone had forgotten right from the start to equip him with any weapons and soon there would be another stage in that long haphazard march.

‘Got my new school uniform yesterday,’ he said glumly. ‘Geeze, I’m dreading it. You just get used to one teacher and then you have to move on to some place else and start all over again…’

Seymour remembered his pencil case and took it out of the paper bag to show her. A birthday gift, even if this wasn’t a spectacular one, was after all something out of the ordinary. The pencil case was made of stone-grey fabric with a strong zip, utilitarian, practical as concrete. As he gazed at it, he wished suddenly he hadn’t brought it across the alley, after all. ‘Got this for my birthday on Saturday,’ he explained, embarrassed.

‘It’s…very nice,’ Angie said politely, then she grinned, then burst out laughing. ‘Seymour, who gave it to you, the Gospel Hall Benevolent Fund? It’s exactly like something those nerdy kids at school would have, you know those kids—every school has them, always sucking up to teachers and putting the date on their work without being told and they never let you have a loan of their coloured pencils.’

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

‘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…’

‘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…’

‘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.’

‘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.’

‘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.

‘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.

‘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.’

‘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 7