5

The room was freezing, the heating had gone off, I didn’t have the strength to go and see the bloke downstairs. Last floor. Last leg. I wasn’t going back down. I wouldn’t complain, he could watch his match in peace. I felt the cold in there straight away, but I also noticed straight away that the room was lit by the moon. Not a beautiful round moon, no, but nearly a half, a roughly drawn shape but it shed a little light on the bed, there didn’t have to be just rain in the sky, no, there could be something else, we’d moved on to something else.

Kevin wanted to go straight to bed. I didn’t want him to. I wanted him to be clean. To have the face of a five-year-old, with no black stains from his tears and the rain, no snot or salt from his chips, no reminders of that day.

I dragged him to the bathroom and ran some water over his face, wiping away the stains and the hours, all those hours, I wiped everything away except his tiredness, but that… was for later. I gave him a farty kiss on his neck. He laughed. I did it again. He laughed again, a little laugh that couldn’t cope any more, slightly irritable, slightly surprised too, normally farty kisses are on the stomach and on Sundays. But weren’t we at home here? And seeing as we didn’t know the time and seeing as we didn’t know the day, we were free to do what we liked! But Stan came and joined us and told us to stop, we were making too much noise. There’s no one here, I said, they’re all at the fair, all out in the rain and we’re never going to get soaked like that again, I’ll never let that happen again, never, I swear to you. Your hair’s still wet, he said, like I was a liar but at the same time I could tell he wanted to take care of me but couldn’t seem to, he couldn’t seem to any more. Have a wash and go to bed, I said and I took Kevin in my arms to cope with that big brown corridor.

How long was it since I’d carried a child in my arms? Billions of years. Kids grow up fast, they stick out in every direction, they’re heavy, then you can only hold them by the hand but not hug them to you any more, otherwise you knock into each other, you don’t know how to go about it, you get an arm or a shoulder in the way, you never find the right position. It isn’t any better with babies. You’re frightened you’ll drop them, or make them sick, everyone says, Careful with his head! you have to hold the head, it’s fragile, it’s heavy, it can bump into things or tip back or twist the neck, it’s dangerous holding a baby in your arms, it doesn’t matter how often they show you how to in hospital, it’s not reassuring, that’s for sure. And when the head does stay put all on its own, the baby’s not a baby any more and cuddles hurt. Maybe the only real cuddle is in your tummy, when you’ve still got the baby in your tummy, I mean. No one to tell you what to do, to say you’re pampering it too much or not enough or not at the right time. You mustn’t wake a baby. You mustn’t ruin his appetite. You mustn’t hurt his head. You’re just with him. That’s all. You’re with him.

Kevin and Stanley were clean, they were ready for the night, as they said, yes, they often said I’m getting ready for the night, it’s nice, getting yourself all sorted for the night, they never say I’m getting ready for the day, because daytime doesn’t really warrant it, you’ve go to do it so you do, that’s all, but at night there’s a sort of preparation, like before a journey.

They got into bed, already accustomed to that brown hotel, the rain on the window, the false noonoo and even the cold, but I was afraid of the cold, I knew we had to fight it, that we should always head towards the warm not the cold, not into its world, its jaws, the sea of ice… like a glacier, what is a glacier exactly? Maybe we should have gone to see the sea of ice… were there buses to take you there? And beaches? And what colour was the water? White? Blue? Grey? A sea without waves, then, without noise, a sea that never stirred, never went away, was that it? Would Stan have been able to walk on it? Would it have made him happy?

It was too late now. Maybe we’d got the wrong bus and the wrong hotel, it was too late. They were here. In the clean but old sheets. Don’t sleep at the bottom of the bed, Kevin said, sleep with us. I promise, I said, but without meaning to, I broke the word in half, pro… mise, pro… mise, I coughed a bit, there was a huge lump blocking my throat. Quietly, very very quietly, I said I’m not going to bed yet, I’m staying here but not going to bed yet, okay? I’m watching the moon. But it was them I watched, I watched them go to sleep.

Kevin took a while, he was all wound up, his legs twitched all by themselves, making little kicking movements annoying his brother, but Stan was the first to get to sleep. Curled up, curled up so tight he looked like a little lump, a boy with no legs. If I’d had any voice instead of that knot blocking the way, if I’d had any voice I’d have sung a song to Kevin so he could sleep, too. But I was full of spiteful little aches and pains, biting away at me. My throat, my heart, my stomach and my hands were all wet. The rain had crept between my clothes and my skin, so that I’d never forget it, maybe it would leave scars, like an illness.

I could see the children’s faces clearly thanks to the special night light provided by the moon. Kevin was looking at the wall, was he seeing the same things I saw earlier? Or was it a whole different story? What stories did Kevin tell himself to get to sleep – or to avoid getting to sleep? Sometimes he would say, I’m not going to sleep tonight, he was proud of that, but he never managed it and Stan would tease him. Kevin was like me, he wanted to know where we went to at night, where it took us. He ran his finger over the wall, maybe he was inventing drawings, words, cuddles, or just nothing, maybe his finger was moving all on its own, maybe the rest, all the rest was going to sleep and his finger would go on… what was I going to do if a little bit of him never went to sleep? Is that sort of thing possible?

But his finger eventually slipped down the wall, and fell onto the bed, I heard the littl’un sucking his noonoo faster and he went to sleep. All of him. He was holding his noonoo against his mouth and his nose, all I could see now was his wet hair and his forehead… there were my boys… Both asleep and I didn’t know where they were any more. In their dreams, each in his own dream, far away from me, somewhere else. With the moon overhead, wanting me to look at it, to look up, not down at the mud, the girls who sold shoes, the mechanics, the shopkeepers, the nightwatchmen and the men who served hot chocolate. Nothing down there could do us any harm now.

Why hadn’t I watched the red car? Why hadn’t I seen my two cowboys in their dodgem? Did they bump into lots of people? Were they the kings of the road? Were they brave enough to pay with my stupid bloody coins or did they get rid of them behind a truck, in a bin full of burst balloons and half-eaten bags of candyfloss? Had they lied to me? Did they already know how to pretend? Was it already too late?

The rain kept knocking on the window, insistent, wanting me to notice it, I couldn’t give a stuff about it now, it was the moon I was looking at. The rain falls down, it’s for all those people down below, I’m on the top floor. Higher up than the big wheel, higher than the sea, and anyway the sea had left town, it had got the picture long ago and pissed off, where the waves used to be there was nothing left but sand, with empty seashells, open ones, broken ones, not the sort you could give to anyone.

I remembered Kevin in the toilets at the café. Will you write a note? With mine, I knew the teachers corrected my spelling mistakes, Stan had been writing notes himself for ages, he just asked me to sign them. Stan knew loads of things already. Far too much. How did I end up here? There’s childhood. Okay. Then straight afterwards there’s the whole hostile world. You have to find that out. Had Stan already finished his childhood? I really hoped not. He acted grown up but he slept like a child with no legs, like he was still afraid and didn’t want to take up too much room and get himself noticed.

They were sleeping differently now, with louder breathing, big sighs, it’s the sighs that take the tiredness away, deliver us from it, a bit like tears, but can you cry in your sleep?

I’d decided to start with the littlest, start with Kevin, I knew it would help me for Stan, because without Kevin Stan couldn’t be the big brother any more and that’s who he was, yes, it was the littl’un first.

I lifted his head to pull out his pillow, it was damp from his hair, from his saliva and his noonoo, mustn’t smell that pillow, must stay strong. I looked at the moon, that scrap of moon lighting Kevin’s face from so far away, that light coming from so far away to my son’s face. I sat down next to him, on the bed, with his knees against my back. I thought of those monks, there was bound to be one who’d just got up for me and he was a whole lot closer than the moon, he was just the other side of the door, a brown monk next to a brown door, with his candle in his hand and his never-ending prayer.

I put the pillow over Kevin’s face and pushed down on it. With all my strength. I didn’t want him to wake up and be frightened. I pushed even harder to make that chunk of time go by, the time for fear, because I know all about that and I didn’t want to give it to him, I hope he never knew it, even when he waited for me at the school gates and I didn’t come, not at the same time as the others, not when I was supposed to. I didn’t want to spoil his face but I had to push hard and my shoulders hurt, I had to keep at it, for several minutes, to be sure.

My Kevin. We had some good laughs, the two of us. We had face-pulling competitions. Impersonations. Farty kisses. Jokes. Loads of things you’re not supposed to do. My Kevin. I’d given him one wall in the house to do drawings, I called it Kevin’s wall, he drew little men with no arms and red aliens, the social worker was horrified, she made a note of it in her book, but the littl’un loved that wall, when it was full up I’d paint it over in white and he started again.

I think it was six minutes, the exact time. You had to keep the pressure on for six minutes. I didn’t have a watch. I looked at the moon and tried to feel the time passing, the raindrops kept on falling but they couldn’t see my little boy any more, stupid bitches, he’d cried with cold, he’d kept his head down to walk through the mud and they’d bitten his neck, I hated them. Two days they’d been attacking him, with no let-up, and he was so defenceless, thinking the sea knew him and that you drink hot chocolate with a straw. My innocent boy, that pillow felt so heavy at arm’s length, but it was taking everything far away, turning away all the bad luck, I had to hold on, hold on and think about you really hard, all my love on you, just for you, all of it.

I remembered the day Kevin wrote a word on the wall, his first word, it was me, it was mummy in stick letters, he was proud and so was I, that’s who I was, he’d recognized it straight away, I was mummy, no more or less than the others, mummy, that’s what I did, what I knew how to do, mummy, and I left it there, I never covered it with white paint so all the pictures had to be done round that word, MUMY, like the little stick men he drew, maybe I even saw their hands behind their backs while the red aliens spiralled round me, and I showed it to the social worker, my name on the wall in stick letters, how could she compete with that?

I was still pushing down on the pillow, Kevin hadn’t moved, he was a good boy, he did as he was told. I was thinking only of him and I remembered his first word. His first word came one morning when he was lying on the floor with loads of cushions round him because he couldn’t sit up very well, he was blowing bubbles of spit, Stan was lying on the lino laughing, his head on his hands, really close to Kevin, and the littl’un leant forwards, he took a handful of his hair and said Stan. That was his first word. That evening in the kitchen Stan told me he wasn’t his half-brother, he was his whole brother now, I said okay.

 

My arms hurt more and more, I changed them over from time to time pushing with one, then with the other so that they took turns to rest, but I was tiring faster and faster, I was hot, the raindrops on my back had dried and now it was drops of sweat that I could feel running under my arms. I could feel them breaking out and running down. One after the other. They went right down to my stomach. I mustn’t think about it. I had to think about Kevin. All the time. All the time. Was he still dreaming? Was he already on his way somewhere else? Could he feel me? Was he alright? I looked at the white pillow, my wrist bent back, no strength in my hand, no blood, white against the white of the sheet, then a cloud passed over the moon and I couldn’t see anything any more. How could I calculate the time? I could hear the rain on the window, how long did a song last, should I sing? No, mustn’t leave Kevin, had to stay with him to the end.

I remembered the day I knew I was pregnant with Kevin. I was at the health centre with Stan, he had an ear infection, he’d cried all night, the neighbours had banged on the radiator, I was exhausted. We were in the waiting room, it was already Doctor Dart in those days – goodbye, Doctor Dart! – yes, it was always him who looked after the kids, and we were all jumbled up in that waiting room, old people, young people, tiny babies, there was coughing, there was shouting, you could hear children crying in the consulting room, it was hot, the phone wouldn’t stop ringing, Stan was bright red and he was in so much pain he kept banging his head against the wall, whinging and banging his head, we waited a long time. I remember. No one looked at anyone else, except when a door opened because everyone was frightened of missing their turn, none of us liked being like that, jumbled in with the others, with their illnesses. I remember I was worried. I hadn’t had my period for three months and I was often sick in the morning. And then a woman, an Arab woman, came and sat down opposite me. In her arms she had a tiny baby, I mean really tiny! Never seen such a tiny baby. And I knew I had one too. Almost invisible but secretly taking root. I nearly smacked Stan to shut him up. I got up and we left.

The cloud moved on past the moon and the glimmer of light came back. I thought I felt Kevin move underneath me but it was just my hand slipping. He was still motionless. Under the pillow. All limp. I thought that maybe he was dead but I didn’t dare check. I didn’t want to see him. Not yet. Was he blue? Were his eyes open? Did he still have his noonoo in his mouth? Maybe the noonoo had helped him, maybe the noonoo had suffocated him too and I needn’t have pressed for so long?

I remembered his father. Kevin often saw him without realizing it, and he didn’t know either, the father. Well, he may have guessed, he might have wondered. I don’t know and it’s better that way. He was very young, he’d left school and was training to be a plumber, something like that, his parents were the caretakers of our building, he came to the flat once, something to do with exterminating rats, I think, or a Christmas box, I had a problem with my radiators and he came in to have a look. He reminded me of my brother, that boy, Didi they called him.

In the end, memories don’t always help. It was like the things I was thinking about were taking me away from Kevin, I’ve always had trouble concentrating for any length of time, but who could tell me how much time had passed? I’m not used to memories, do they take long? Are they quick? How many times had I changed hands? Was I hurting Kevin? Was he frightened? Had the moon moved in the sky? Was it getting lighter and lighter or was it me getting used to the dark?

All of a sudden I was frightened Stan might be watching me, like he watches me when I stay sitting in the kitchen for hours. And I didn’t even know where Kevin was now. Death is full of people, but where are they all? What are they like? And, most of all, how do they get on together? Stan really had to join Kevin, he couldn’t be left all on his own like that, Keep an eye on your brother, Stan, keep an eye on your brother… I lifted the pillow. Very gently. Slowly. I lifted it high up above Kevin’s head and then I put it down on the bed so I could see. See my little boy. He hadn’t moved. His face was still turned towards the wall. His hair all over the place. His eyes closed. But his noonoo wasn’t in his mouth any more. I realized it was over. I moved right up to him, he wasn’t breathing any more, he didn’t smell of him any more already, he wasn’t sleeping any more, no, it was something else.

I stayed there, looking at him for a while. He was dead. I put his hands under the covers so they didn’t get cold. The moon was making little pictures on him, shadows, little men just the way he likes them. I pushed the hair off his forehead, tidied it a bit and then I kissed him. You should always kiss the dead. My head was spinning, my mouth was full of cramps, full of ants, even the roof of my mouth and my teeth. I was thirsty.

Stan moved. It startled me. He turned his face towards me. I had to get on with it. Get on with it fast. Very gently, I picked the pillow back up, walked round the bed, on tiptoe, and sat down next to him. My back was blocking the moonlight. I couldn’t see a thing. I would have liked to see Stan’s face one last time. He was in the dark already. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking, what he was dreaming, and did he already sense that his brother was dead? Kevin was waiting for him. He couldn’t be left on his own at the gates of death, at just five, how would he cope? I had to work fast. I couldn’t. I couldn’t make my mind up, I’d already given so much for Kevin, it had taken so much effort to see it through, to remember and feel the time passing.

I wanted to open the window and feel the rain on me, have a good dousing and look right at the moon, if I could have landed on it like I did on the big wheel, rested a bit somewhere far away and full of light, if I could I would have done it, would have breathed that distant air.

I had one child dead and the other alive. That was no good. You can’t have that: one here and the other on his own. I’d rather have both hands empty than have an arm missing and lean to one side like a cripple. I had one child dead and the other alive, I had to get a move on.

I was holding the pillow tight against my stomach and I rocked for a while to give me courage. I shouldn’t have let Stan get so big, what was he thinking about on that beach, just before he thumped my arm? He had walked along that beach like he was used to it, had he seen it all already? Was it really too late? I’d let him grow up because he was the older brother and the littl’un couldn’t go without him, one without the other was impossible, you have to appreciate that, one without the other… And before? Yes, before Kevin was born, what was Stan like? I couldn’t remember… I can’t picture myself in hospital, or walking in parks, I see myself standing over him at night, watching him in pain, when a baby coughs I always think it’s going to tear itself in half, I was afraid of that, yes, I was afraid for him, definitely… but it’s all so hazy, and maybe it isn’t him, maybe I’m the one I can’t capture any more because I wasn’t really there.

What was the time? Do we go around the moon or does the moon go around us? Are there any people in this hotel or did I imagine someone knocking on the wall, someone dropping something, I don’t think this hotel makes a profit, no, it should be demolished, and quickly too, rip off the doors and pictures, make the earth shake under those beds that are too big for the rooms. I prayed for the earth to shake, I said, Oh God make the earth shake! and I rocked myself with the pillow against my stomach.

Stan moved slightly, he turned his face towards the window, it made me jump, and what if he woke up and saw Kevin, how could I explain and convince him to go too? Stan was moving, but maybe he wasn’t there any more than his brother was, he was wandering in a dream, the closest country to death. Yes, I had to take my chance while he was dreaming and then he would do like Kevin, he would simply slip from one country to the other.

I looked outside. It didn’t look like morning was coming, at night the hours stretch out, all hooked onto each other, all the same, nothing to tell them apart, that’s why it’s so long and that’s why you can get lost in it. Living those hours through the night one by one can drive you mad, it’s like having an eye ripped out, you lose your balance… and that badly drawn moon which couldn’t make up its mind to be a proper one was no longer helping me now that my back was blocking its light. It wasn’t generous and dazzling now, I’d thought it was on my side but deep down I knew everything had given up on me. I had to take care of Stan, who would give me the strength?

He moved again, his hands came out from under the covers, I was sure his cheek had creases from the pillow, but I couldn’t see well enough to check. He had such fine skin and the sheets always left marks on him. He used to grumble about it. When I got up it was already too late, they’d faded, but he told me about them, he often told me it worried him, I’d never seen it, this thing that bothered him.

I looked at him for a long time, like I wanted to get inside him, to find a little door and be inside him, he once told me how come we stand on the ground instead of falling over or flying away, It’s because the earth pulls us towards it, he told me, and I wanted it to be the same here, to be pulled in by him, for him to be my earth, and definitely, definitely not to hover above him but fall towards him like a magnet.

And I put the pillow over his face. I covered it and then sat closer, right next to his face so I wouldn’t let him go, not ever. And it was him, it was Stan who helped me. He didn’t struggle, just his legs a bit, straightening out in little jerks, he tapped my back, and I liked it, how long was it since our bodies had touched each other, just our hands, nothing else for such a long time, since for ever perhaps.

His legs stretched out and then he went quiet. Kevin had pulled his hair and said Stan and he said He’s my whole brother and there was the day he picked him up from nursery and the littl’un was all upset but full of admiration He’s my whole brother and the day Stan threw himself in front of a barking dog to protect him He’s my whole brother and the breakfasts Stan used to bring me in bed on Sundays the sound of the mug against the plate Kevin’s little footsteps following him a whole family and Stan watching me sleeping and Stan watching me stare at the kitchen wall and Stan who’s afraid I’ll wake up on my own a whole family a family far away from the hostile world.

I was exhausted. My hair had fallen across my eyes, drenched with rain and sweat, were they together at last, did I have to go on struggling, my heart was pounding, there was only one heart now for three people or was Stan still there? Who was on their own? Kevin or me?

Never cold again, I thought. And I pressed. Never cold or ashamed again. My arms were so tired they were shaking, I turned my face to the moon, it looked so bloody proud, up there, so high up there, asking me whether I could hold out for a whole night, one whole night isn’t so hard, I’d held on for so many years, with the chemicals, without the chemicals, with sleep and with insomnia, with my own kids and with kids that the world swallowed up.

I collapsed, my body against Stan’s. Between our two faces, a pillow with his last breath in it, my son’s last effort. I got back up gently, I was sweating and cold. I took the pillow away, put my face very close to Stan’s and I saw it, I saw the mark left by the sheets on his cheek. He hadn’t lied. I kissed him, there, right on the mark, his soft crumpled skin.

 

I had two dead children. And them? What did they have? I stood up to look at them both, now they were the same. I looked at their bodies hidden by those old sheets and thin blankets, Kevin’s curled up in a ball and Stan’s stretched out. I looked at them and I saw. I saw something I’d never thought of, something I’d never imagined ever: Kevin’s face was turned towards the wall, and Stan’s towards the window. They had their backs to each other. They weren’t together, no, each had gone his separate way. They weren’t joined together in death, they’d lost each other there.

And I screamed.