Dear Nobody (16 page)

You can't mean it. Please don't mean it. Please see me again. Please let's talk.

And that.

I wrote them all again, and posted them in one envelope. I wrote every day. She didn't answer. She hadn't got the decency to answer. Suddenly I didn't exist. Suddenly fifty per cent of that baby was deleted for ever. She didn't even ask me what I wanted. She just told me what she wanted and walked away, out of my life, into a room with a locked door. Ruthlyn told me Helen was upset. Too damned right she should be upset. She'd locked me out from the start. That was what I realized then. She'd made every decision on her own, as if it had nothing to do with me.

And when I wasn't feeling anger, I was feeling despair. I was helpless to do anything. I was adrift in space, and looking at Earth, looking at Helen; I was a million miles away and I was in exile.

My dad heard me crying one night. He didn't give me the old cliches about plenty more fish in the sea, or I'd get over it, and I was better off without her, or even big boys don't cry. Nothing like that. He came in and sat on the chair by my bed and touched my shoulder, just to let me know he was there, and he said I might fancy watching Ireland playing Romania later, and he'd save a pint for me. I just watched the play-off penalties. For five whole minutes I forgot about Helen. Almost.

Tom asked me to come and watch England and Belgium in the semi-final on the big screen at the Poly. We went to the climbing wall first. I just sat and watched him. All those voices round me, echoing like sleep. All those students moving about and laughing and acting as if nothing had happened. I couldn't believe they didn't know, that they didn't care. I felt as if I was drowning in some grey, gluey paste. I followed Tom out like an old man.

‘You're as miserable as sin,' Tom said.

‘Get lost, Tom,' I said.

‘She's a cow to do this to you,' he said.

I nearly hit him. If he hadn't been bigger than me, and strong enough to hold my arm back, I'd have punched his nose in. He put his arm across my shoulder and steered me into the Mandela Building. It was crowded with students, about a thousand of them at least, all sitting round watching the match on a big screen. I sat like a gawping fish all through the game, Helen's face floating in front of the screen, Helen laughing, Helen tilting back her head, Helen dancing with her eyes closed and her hair drifting across her face. Suddenly, in the last minute of extra time, England scored. It was like a shot from a gun – bang! straight into goal. Clean as ice. I was up on my feet and yelling with the rest of them. I didn't even know I was doing it. The whole room was up, screaming their heads off, waving their arms about. We never heard the commentary after that. We barged out of the Mandela Building with our arms in the air yelling and cheering our heads off, about a thousand of us storming down the Moor, waving our arms in the air. It was like being swept along in a tide. We were delirious. England, England! I was shouting.

I don't remember getting home that night.

I was sick. I remember that.

When I knew that she really meant it the only thing I could think about was getting away. After I'd spent days cycling up and down her road, waiting round our old haunts in town and going to our special places to look out for her, the places all turned sour on me. I couldn't bear the thought of being there without her. The Leadmill, the record shops, Fox House, the bar at Atkinson's where we used to drink hot chocolate; I hated them all. I dreaded the thought of bumping into her and her not talking to me. I was afraid I might break down or do something stupid if I saw her. Everywhere I went was haunted by Helen. Every time I got on a bus I expected her to be on it. Every time I went into a room I thought she'd be in it. She inhabited all the spaces of Sheffield, yet she wasn't there. She was nowhere. She'd been spirited away from my life, and the best part of me had gone with her.

So when Tom came round one day and sat with me in the yard for a bit and said, ‘The offer's still on, Chris. If you'd like to come to France, I'll lend you the dosh,' I rose up out of my coma and said, ‘Yes, I'll go.'

I wish I hadn't.

Dear Nobody,

Today I was sitting on my bed with all these letters to you spread round me, and Chris's photograph in my hand, and Mum came into the room. She stood in the doorway with some clean sheets for my bed folded over her arms and watched me. I could feel her eyes on me. I
kept thinking about what my nan had said, ‘Like mother, like daughter.' What did she mean, Mum? I wanted to say, and daren't. And I wanted to say, I've finished with Chris. Help me, Mum.

I was looking at Chris's photograph for the last time because I had decided to put it away, out of sight, out of mind. She just stood there saying nothing and then she came over to my bed. I couldn't look at her. I wanted to reach out to her and tell her. If she stops in my room, I thought, I'll tell her. For a moment she hesitated by my bed, and I knew she was looking at the photograph and wondering, perhaps, at all these letters. For a moment it seemed as if she was going to say something. We were in a web of silence in that room, and something was swaying between us, spinning strands from one to the other. I was afraid to move or to breathe in case the strands broke. She leaned forward, very slightly, and put my clean sheets on my bed, covering the letters, covering his photograph, and as I looked up she walked out of the room, head bowed a little, and closed the door behind her.

Tom and I left for France very early on the 11 th of July, exactly twenty days after Helen finished with me. It was a terrible journey. I got a puncture cycling to the station, the guard didn't want us to put our bikes in the goods van even though we'd paid for them, the train broke down so by the time we reached London it was the rush hour and we had to cycle through death traffic to get to Victoria Station, and Tom was sick on the ferry. But at last we were in France. We were training it down to the Loire Valley, then doing a sort of cross-France tour, finishing up in the Alps and cycling home at the end of the month. Hippy Harrington had given us some books at the end of the exams – his bibles, he called them. One of them was called
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
‘Is it a manual?' Tom asked me. ‘Not much point having a manual for motor bikes.' ‘Is it hell,' I said. ‘It's a pillow and it's about the pain of existence.' I think it kept me sane, that book. Tom was hopeless. He'd happily do all the shopping and cooking and put both tents up rather than get his spanners out and mend his bike, so I did all that. Helps you to think, anyway, about life, I suppose. Brings you down to basics, when you have to cope with staying alive. Sometimes I found that I was really happy. I wouldn't have believed it possible. We'd be cycling down one of those amazing straight French roads with fields and fields of massive yellow sunflowers on either side of us and only birds to hear, or Tom chanting away on his bike, and the long, hot day stretching in front of us and behind us, and I'd realize that I felt completely happy. When I finished reading
Zen
at night and put my torch out and lay listening to owls in the dark: that was when the aching started up.

‘Chris,' Tom said to me one night. His tent was pitched a couple of metres away. ‘Are you awake?'

‘No.'

‘Are you still missing her?'

‘Christ, Tom!'

‘You're not snoring so I knew you were awake.'

He put his torch on and crawled over to my tent on his belly, still in his sleeping bag. He unzipped my tent and we both sat in the opening. The stars were huge. We could hear a stream trickling near by. The night seemed to be full of noises, bumping into each other, starting up out of the darkness.

‘Hear that dog?' Tom asked.

‘Fox, I bet,' I said.

‘Bet you're right.'

There was a hare or something too, trapped out there, crying like a child.

‘Finished your book?' he asked.

‘Nah. Savouring it. It's good.'

‘I'm reading that Kerouac book.
On the Road.'

‘Another of Hippy's recommendations.'

‘Can't believe it was written in 1959, though! I mean, it's a history book!'

‘But maybe all kids want to get out in wagons and burn off across the horizon,' I said. ‘Maybe that's why it still works.'

‘It sold eighteen million copies, that book. That says something, I suppose. That means eighteen million kids have read it and wanted to drive vast distances and turn their heads over and meet themselves again at the other side.' We were lying on our backs now with our sleeping bags tucked up round us and our hands under our heads, looking up at the sky, like a pair of caterpillars that had been rolled over the wrong way. ‘Are they chasing something or running away from something?'

‘I rolled over. Those stars were too bright to look at, too hard and cold and icy. ‘I reckon they're just going somewhere, anywhere, just for the hell of it.'

‘Is there anywhere to go, anyway?'

Tom and I talked for hours about it. Anyway, ten years after he wrote it, Jack Kerouac was dead. Drank himself into oblivion. That says something too, I suppose. That's another kind of journey. All the time we were talking, drifting to sleep and waking up and talking again, Helen was there, right in front of my mind, brighter than the stars.

July 17th

Dear Nobody,

I can't believe it's the middle of July, and that you have been inside me now for six months. It's no secret now, however loose my dresses are. It would be like trying to stop day coming, if I tried to hide you now. You keep pushing out with your leg or your arm, as if you're trying to wave in there, to say hey! I'm here! You're not taking any notice of me. But I'm thinking about you all the time. I can't take my mind off you.

And it's so hot! We're in the middle of a heatwave. I feel as if I'm trudging along with a bag of shopping tied round my middle. I try to imagine you, in the cool sea cave that's your home. Is it like being in a dark rock pool, turning over and over with the tide of my beating
heart? Are you calm in there, and all crouched up safe? You're a real person. I can't wait to see you.

Oh but these are happy daytime thoughts, little Nobody. Night after night now I wake up lonely and afraid. I went out into the garden last night. The sky was clear, the stars looked enormous. I could hear the hum of the city, even at that time, the drone of traffic. Everywhere, everywhere in the world, people were on the move, people were dying, people were being born. Our garden was full of shadows, trees and moonlight and shadows, silver and velvet, lonely, quiet, humming shadows. I wanted to scream out into them. What will I do? I don't know where we're going to live, or what we're going to live on. I don't know how to look after you. I don't know if I'm strong enough for this. I'm frightened of the dark. And when I turned back into the house, into the kitchen with all its gleaming, useful machinery, all its domestic reassurances, I was frightened of the light. I don't know anything. I want Chris to hold me in his arms and say, it's all right, we'll manage, we can do it together. But I've turned my back on all that, and nothing will stop day coming, nothing will stop you being born. You'll march into the world bursting with power and wisdom because you know how to be born. I don't know anything.