A camping trip. A mini-break. It begins like this.
Chicken and halloumi, cooking on a disposable barbecue as the daylight fades. Two gas lamps. Torches. Cautious laughter between two strangers. Wine that tastes of apples and sherbet.
She tells him about The Awakening, about Florence Cathcart and a little boy who was dead and alive, visible and hidden. He says sometimes I feel like that at home, like I’m there but not there, like no one really sees me. She says I’ve felt like that my whole life, like I’m hidden when I want to be seen, like I’m visible when I need to hide. He says that’s sad, she says it’s normal, he says that’s sad, she says maybe. He gives the cat some leftover chicken. They unwrap two individual slices of cheesecake and eat them with plastic forks. Then the conversation stops.
“What was that?” Miriam says.
“What?”
“That sound?”
“I didn’t hear anything.”
“Really?”
“Someone’s out there.”
“You hear all kinds of noises out here, don’t worry.”
“Don’t worry?”
“Really, it’s okay. I would’ve heard it too, wouldn’t I?”
“You were talking.”
“Do you want me to go and look?”
“I’m not sure.”
“I’ll go and look.”
“No, don’t go. We should probably stay together.”
“Are you ever afraid in your house?” Ralph asks, which seems like a strange question. It feels like he is saying she is always afraid.
“Not since my mother died.”
“Did she used to visit a lot?”
“We lived in the same house.”
“Oh. And you were more afraid when she was alive?”
Too much too soon, Ralph. Stop being a shrink.
She nods. He says something to change the subject, something about his own mother, Brenda Swoon, who wears golfing trousers and spends ten minutes a day counting her blessings. They talk about Brenda, and Miriam drinks more wine, and she forgets about the sound of a twig cracking. They don’t hear the footsteps, careful and slow, backing away through the darkness, backing away through the woods.
“Can you sing?” Ralph asks.
“I’m afraid not.”
“Not even a little bit?”
“Listen to me,” she whispers, which makes him blush.
“Sorry.”
“It’s all right.”
“Can I say something that might sound a bit rude?”
“No.”
“No?”
“If you like.”
“I find it hard to understand, the whispering thing, because for me whispering’s a real effort, it’s hard to whisper for a long time, so wouldn’t it be easier to speak normally?”
Easier? How little he knows. There is a gap between them, a knowledge gap. It makes her feel lonely. Words could bridge the gap but she doesn’t know if her words would stick.
“Try, Miriam,” says the unbroken one. Doll inside a doll. She is here, she is sober, she is pushing from within. “Tell him something else.”
Like what?
“Tell him why you whisper.”
Is she out of her mind?
I whisper therefore I am not told off.
I whisper therefore I am not an irritation.
I whisper therefore I am.
“Imagine you’re a little boy,” Miriam says.
He closes his eyes, which surprises her—she doesn’t know that psychotherapists take visualization seriously.
“How old am I?” he says.
“Eight.”
“Okay.”
“If you speak, if you speak normally, you’ll get hit with a cricket bat.”
He opens his eyes, looks at her, closes them again.
“You’ll get yelled at.”
He exhales loudly for a long time.
“You’ll get locked in your room without food and water. Or you’ll have to drink your own urine.”
His eyes are wide open, his forehead creased. “What?”
“At school they say cat got your tongue cat got your tongue, and still you don’t speak because you’re sure that she’ll hear you. She always manages to hear you.”
“I’m so sorry, Miriam.”
Why do people say that when it wasn’t their fault?
Holy moly.
Did those words just come out of her mouth?
She has never told anyone, not even Fenella.
“Holy moly,” she whispers.
Ralph stands up and opens his arms. Without thinking about whether it’s right or wrong, without worrying about the consequences, Miriam steps into them, he is a cave in the woods and he holds her in the dark, just holds her in the dark.
“This is a strange kind of mini-break,” she says, pulling away, embarrassed.
“Why?”
“I don’t know really. I’ve never had a mini-break, so I have nothing to compare it to.”
“If I were a real man, I’d light a fire and play you a song. That’s what you’re supposed to do when you’re camping, isn’t it?”
“Go on then.”
“I’m not sure how.”
“I am.”
“Are you?”
“Yep.”
“Really?”
Miriam gathers wood, she asks if he has a penknife, some matches, a newspaper, and then she makes a stack, a crisscrossing stack, it takes a long time, it’s carefully built, and when she is finished she sets it alight and they watch it go up in flames.
“Well,” Ralph says. “I’m impressed.”
Miriam smiles. “And now I’d like my song,” she says. “If that’s all right.”
He starts strumming ‘Pills’ by the Perishers, then realizes that it’s probably too dark, too solemn, so he switches to ‘Hello, Goodbye’ instead. She mouths the words without making a sound, singing in the only way she knows how, and there’s a lot of you say yes and I say no, and this is probably the most fun she has ever had with another person.
A twig cracks again, then another, but they are too busy singing as quietly and as loudly as they can to hear the cracking. Two sets of footsteps this time, meandering through the trees, coming closer.
“You’re quite a good singer,” Miriam says, holding her hands close to the fire.
“Thanks.”
“Who taught you to play the guitar?”
“My dad taught me a bit, then I got lessons.”
She nods, because she has seen other people do this—nod nod nod, I’m listening, please go on.
“So what do you do, Miriam?”
“What do I do?”
“For a living.”
“For a living?”
“For money.”
“I don’t have to work at the moment. I inherited some money.”
“Have you ever worked?”
“I worked in Morrisons for a bit,” she says, “at the deli counter, you know, with all the cheeses and cold meats.”
“Did you enjoy it?”
“I enjoyed the cheese.”
“Absolutely not, but I spent a long time looking at it. Stilton’s the best, mainly for its strength and blue veins. I like the way it’s shaped like a cylinder, it reminds me of a felled tree.”
Ralph refills her glass with wine and she sips it quickly.
“There was a lovely man behind the fish counter at Morrisons, people called him Crackhead but his name was Philippe.”
“Crackhead?”
“There was a party one night after closing, and he headbutted a packet of Jacob’s cream crackers.”
“Why?”
“He was angry. He didn’t know why. I liked him a lot. They made him pay for the crackers.”
Was that an anecdote, Miriam? Are you telling stories like a normal person?
Miriam and Philippe. Philippe and Miriam. It was never going to happen, she knew it all along, but she couldn’t stop watching his hands as he slapped the cod loins down onto ice, one loin after another, boneless and yellow. How can I help you madam, how can I help you sir, always with a smile, bright eyes, fishy fingers. He had worked at this branch of Morrisons for nine years, but really, underneath the white hat and coat, underneath the blue plastic gloves, Philippe was a world-famous wrestler. Or he would have been, if not for his father, a pacifist from Luton who hated his son’s passion for wrestling and boxing and all things physical. You can’t call it sport, his father said—it doesn’t even come close to sport. So Philippe wrestled in secret at the back of Morrisons with David Flint, the assistant manager, and the staff gathered around to watch, putting bets on who would win, and it was always David, always David Flint. Flinty was a right-wing homosexual with a left-wing wife, and Philippe didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of beating him, not ever. Flinty’s frustration could power an army, a tank, a submarine.
“You know the phrase snowball’s chance in hell?” Miriam says.
“Yeah.”
“I like the idea of a snowball in hell, thriving in the heat.”
Her thoughts begin to drift.
I am the snowball. The snowball is me. It’s a funny kind of reflection, but it’s mine.
She drifts further back.
“None of us is what we think we are,” said Frances to her daughter. “I know it, Mim, but no one will admit it. We are nothing but sights, sounds and sensations. There’s no Mummy in my head and no Miriam in yours. You don’t exist, I don’t exist.” She picked up a copy of Charlotte’s Web and waved it in the air. “What’s this?” she said.
“A book.”
“A book of what?”
“It’s about a girl and a spider and a pig.”
“Is the girl real or fictional?”
“She’s made up.”
Frances whacked Miriam on the head with Charlotte’s Web. For a small paperback it packed quite a punch. Miriam thought this was probably because the paperback had lived for a very long time. It cost 50p from Mr Garbon’s second-hand bookshop and was previously owned by a woman who sold all her books to help pay for her wedding dress, which made this battered paperback very special indeed. According to Mr Garbon, it was a book that made love possible—a book to have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish till death us do part. “I do,” Miriam said, giggling, as she handed Mr Garbon 50p.
“Charlotte is as real as we are, you silly girl,” said Frances. “The very idea of fact and fiction is preposterous. We make it up as we go along, we are all made up, do you understand, are you listening, can you hear me?”
The book came down hard a second time, then a third. Miriam imagined a spider and a pig inside it, jumping up and down in protest. They were on her side. Someone had to be.
Now Ralph is saying that one of his sons, the one called Arthur, should have taken up a sport like wrestling to channel his aggression. He is saying that maybe Arthur has some kind of food allergy, maybe that’s what’s causing his fatigue and hostility. Miriam is saying that she always feels a little anxious after eating pumpkin, but this could be something to do with Halloween and ghoulish associations. The wine that tastes of apples and sherbet keeps flowing. Miriam has never drunk this much so quickly. Ralph is topping up her glass and she is emptying it and he is topping it up and—
A suspicion comes and goes. If you were a man who wanted to take advantage of a woman in the woods, you would top up her glass, wouldn’t you? No, of course not, you stupid woman. You’d just punch her, kick her, push her to the floor. You wouldn’t go to the trouble of buying wine and cheesecake and cooking chicken out here, where no one is watching or listening, no one at all.
Apart from two men.
Two men who have been watching and listening but not hearing very much.
Two men who have been whispering to each other, using words like you and when and maybe and dunno.