The House We Grew Up In (40 page)
‘Yes, but that doesn’t forgive what I did, does it? Nothing could ever do that. Not you, not the passage of time, nothing. It’s here –’ she clutched at her heart – ‘buried in there. All the time. Everywhere I go. And it hurts me.’
Meg nodded and touched Bethan’s knee. ‘It hurt me too. It hurt more than anything ever hurt me in my life. But look at us now. You’re about to have a baby. Me and Bill are happy.’
‘Are you?’ Beth sniffed and looked up miserably at Megan. ‘Seriously?’
‘Yes. We are.’
‘But I don’t understand how you could be.’
‘Because we wanted to be,’ said Megan simply.
Beth flinched. ‘You’re married,’ she said, after drawing a breath.
Megan glanced at her ring. ‘Yes. Last year. Finally. Although we got engaged a year to the day after I let him back into the house.’
‘How long was he out of the house?’
Megan sighed. She didn’t want to do this. She’d put this all in a box and had no desire to unpack it again. ‘A few weeks.’ She shrugged. ‘It was bad. He wanted me to understand. I did not want to understand.’
‘He’s always been nuts about you.’
Megan frowned. ‘Yes.’
‘I was just …’
‘I know what you were. He told me. He said …’
Beth stared at her imploringly. She wanted to hear it. She didn’t want to hear it. It would hurt her. It would help her. Meg sighed. ‘He said that you were the other side of me. The side I wouldn’t let him get to.’
Beth flinched. ‘I know,’ she said after a moment. ‘I knew. It was obvious. I knew it was never, ever about me. It was always about you. Everything was about you.’
‘Is that what your therapist told you?’ Meg asked with a grim smile.
Beth laughed a small laugh and let her head fall on to her chest. ‘Kind of, I suppose. He said lots of things. Lots and lots of things. You were definitely part of it. But, shit, I mean, there was so much other stuff. About Mum, and Rhys. I think …’
Megan watched her sister searching for words. She was plucking at the loose threads on the hammock, her Coke can nestled in the triangle between her crossed legs.
‘I think,’ Beth tried again, ‘that something happened, the night before he killed himself. And I think I might have seen it. Or been part of it.’
Megan straightened at these unexpected words. ‘What?’
‘I don’t know. It’s just this feeling, I’ve always had it. Like it was my fault. Like something happened and it was my fault. And I’ve kind of blocked it out. I used to have these dreams.’
Megan stared at her encouragingly.
‘Awful dreams. About all of us. Kind of …
sexual
.’ She shuddered lightly.
‘Well, that’s fairly normal, isn’t it?’
‘Well, yes. And no. Because I was never in them. It was the rest of you. I was watching the rest of you.’ She shuddered again. ‘And Rhys. Always Rhys. My therapist and I, we never got to the bottom of it. But he thinks it’s connected. To that night.’
Megan shook her head lightly, trying to rearrange her thoughts into a recognisable pattern. ‘What did we do that night?’ she said. ‘I can’t even remember.’
‘Neither can I. Not in any detail.’
‘I remember I had to sleep on a mattress in your room,’ said Meg. ‘Because Mum had dumped loads of stuff in mine. I remember us lying there in the dark, talking about you coming to live in London.’
Beth smiled sadly at the memory. ‘It was before that,’ she said. ‘Early evening. It was still light.’ She sighed loudly and stroked her belly. ‘Everyone was downstairs playing Monopoly or Trivial Pursuit or something. Something noisy, anyway. I came upstairs for some reason or another – I can’t remember – and
I saw Mum coming out of Rhys’s room. And she looked … I can’t really explain it but she looked freaked. Totally and utterly freaked out. And I stared at her and she stared at me and I said, “
Are you OK?
” And she nodded, but I could tell she wasn’t. And I just knew that something awful had happened, and I felt like it was something …’ She stopped. A significant silence stretched out. She smiled. ‘Oh, I don’t know. I guess I’ll never know. And maybe I’m imagining it, anyway. You know, maybe I was so desperate for there to have been a reason for why he did it that I invented one.’ She shrugged.
Megan smiled at her sister. She patted her kneecap and said, ‘The hardest thing to accept is that some things happen for absolutely no reason at all.’
‘I’m not sure I can ever accept that,’ she said and then her face brightened and she sat up. ‘Ouf,’ she said. ‘She’s kicking. Wow, really hard!’
‘Can I feel?’
Beth nodded and Meg put her hand on the hard, tight bump. And there it was.
Bump
against the palm of her hand.
Bump
again. The small heel or fist of her unborn niece. She looked at Beth, her baby sister, one of the greatest loves of her life, and she said, ‘I missed you.’
Beth took her hand, smiled and said, ‘I’m back.’
‘Are you doing this on your own, then?’
Beth nodded. ‘Just me and her.’ She looked up at Megan. ‘And you,’ she said, in a small voice, ‘if you’ll have me?’
Megan squeezed her hand. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Of course.’
Saturday 5th February 2011
Thank you, Jim, for your honesty.
It was awfully nosy of me to ask but as ever you took me the right way. You are about the only person, Jim, in my whole life, who has really known how to take me. It is a glorious thing! It was fascinating for me to hear in your own words how you feel when you’re on a bender. Although it did, of course, also make me feel unutterably sad. It made me want to rush up there on the first train and look into your eyes and hold your hands and tell you that I had the key to make you stop. But I don’t, of course. I know as well as you do that only the individual has the key to change themselves. It’s buried deep inside each and every one of us and although someone else can help us to find the key, we’re the only ones who can use it. And there, of course, is the pathetic irony that in order for me to come to you and help you find your key I’d have to find my own first. It’s all just a series of tightly wound threads. It’s all just impossible, Jim, truly.
And thank you, as well, for sharing with me the things that happened to you when you were young. You poor, poor little thing. Is it any wonder, really, that some of us can’t cope with being grownups when adults treated us the way they did. If an adult cannot do a simple thing like take care of a child … well, it’s just an endless cycle. I’m sure your mother had her own stories, her own bad experiences and so it goes on. You wanted to know about the blemish on my childhood. I can see what you’re trying to do here, Jim, you’re trying to fix me, aren’t you?! Long-distance analysis so that maybe one day I might be well enough to come and see you. And my goodness I would like to be well enough to come and see you, so I will offer myself up to you for you – analyse away!
My mother was raped. By a family friend. I knew nothing about it at the time, but my sister told me when I was about sixteen. Turns out it was the same family friend who’d tried to stick his tongue down my throat the week before she told me. I’d laughed that off, dirty old man, you know. But then to discover that that same sleazebag had done what he did to my mother. And no, we never discussed it. I always wanted to. I always meant to. Every time I found myself alone with my mother I’d open my mouth to ask about it, but the words wouldn’t come, I was terrified I was going to rip open a wound that had healed. And then she died. And then my dad died. And that was that. Her rapist turned up at her funeral. I punched him. Can you believe that? Me! Lorelei Bird! I punched a six-foot man, clean on his jaw, hurt me more than it hurt him, I’d wager. But it made me feel good. I think it changed me for ever, that punch.
But yes, there it was, all the way through my childhood, first the stillborn girl, then the rape and all the silence and all the secrecy. The atmosphere, always there like a sinister fog. The resentment (my
father clearly believed it had something to do with my mother, that she’d
brought it on herself
in some way. He used to talk to her as if he HATED her) and the focus on the SELF that such a psychological injury can incur. My mother was always gazing at her own navel, to the detriment of her daughters. Awful, awful. So I leapt on the first undamaged man to cross my path and made him fill me up with babies so that I could do it my way. And hey, whaddya know, my way has ended up full of secrets and silence too!! Different silence. Different secrets. But still, it’s all there. The Things We Cannot Talk About. And I can see now how it’s poisoned everything. It’s all such a terrible shame.
But well, hopefully the rot will stop with Megan. She’s such a super mother and wife. Really. I know I moan about her and her obsession with cleanliness and order. But really, she is doing an amazing job. She’s so grounded and I have no idea how or why. Her children adore her and they adore each other. And as for her husband (if she can forgive him, then so can I), he worships the ground she walks on. So yes, hopefully, there it is. The end of the cycle. For them, at least.
So there you go, gorgeous Jim. Another chunk of ME for you to play about with. Can you fix me? Could you? Please? I dream about your belt buckle, Jim, I dream about unclasping it …
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Monday 14th February 2011
Happy Valentine’s, Darling Jim! Not that I’m a fan of Valentine’s, really. I always thought that every day should be Valentine’s. Well, POTENTIALLY Valentine’s at least, if you see what I mean. You know, why wait for a certain day if you want to buy flowers now?
Unimaginative really, isn’t it, buying overpriced roses on the same day as everybody else. You know, you see a woman walking home with a bouquet of flowers, you think, Wow, someone really loves her! You see the same woman with the same bouquet on Valentine’s and you just get the feeling that someone was going through the motions.
But anyway, that’s just me. Good luck to the rest of the world! And out of special consideration to my feelings on the subject I declare this email a romance-free zone!
So instead I shall regale you with the fact that I have spent the last twenty-four hours on the toilet. Sorry. Probably TMI, as they say. But there you go. Something I ate probably. Or maybe a bug I picked up from the swimming baths last time I went. Either way, YUCK. Horrible. And it’s times like this that I miss living with another human. Do you feel like that, Jim? So many advantages to living solo, until you’ve got a dire case of the squits. Then you just want someone there so you can say, Poor me, aren’t I a poor, poor, thing? And have someone stroke your back and say, Yes, YES, you are a poor, poor thing. And make you drink fluids and give you things to help. Ah well. Choices made. Paths chosen, etc.
No word from Rory since his last email. I’ve written a few times, but he still doesn’t have a proper email account set up. So I suppose I’ll just have to be patient. I spoke to Meg at the weekend. They’re planning a skiing trip for the Easter holidays, apparently. Skiing. Eugh. Can’t imagine anything worse. God gives you a pair of perfectly good feet and then you go and stick some big long bits of metal on them and throw yourself down the side of a mountain. No, thank YOU! And it costs a fortune. I try not to get too cross when I think of all those thousands of pounds spent in a fortnight that would last me all year probably. But Meg won’t give me any money. Says she’d like to
but she’s convinced I’d spend it all on tat. And she’s probably right. Oh, God. What an absolute pain in the arse I am!
Well, on that note, I will leave you. I sincerely hope you’re not out on the razz tonight at a table for two with some lovely young thing clutching a bouquet. Oh, the very thought of it makes my blood boil and bubble! And, well, rest assured that I am here (close to a toilet!!), my thoughts with you, my heart with you, my everything with you, tonight and every night.
My love,
Xxxxxxxx
Tuesday 15
th
February 2011
Urgh, I am STILL not well, darling Jim. I have been pretty much glued to the toilet for the last forty-eight hours. I feel very weak with it. I am making myself eat (although I have no appetite WHATSOEVER) but it’s all just coming clean through me moments later. I suppose, if it’s still like this by this time tomorrow, I should make an appointment to see my GP. Yuck. I hate my GP. Big loud woman with meaty fingers. She’s very patronising, She calls me ‘dear’. As if I was an old lady. For God’s sake! I can’t bear her. And the thought of her putting those big meaty fingers of hers anywhere near my back passage. Oh, good grief, Jim! I think I’d throw up! So keep your fingers crossed for me that this all blows over very soon and I am spared that particular humiliation.
But I have an announcement to make. Jim, I have decided I am going to work on getting out of the house. I mean, properly, so that I can spend the night with you!!! I truly believe that all this is helping, you know, all this talking, all this analysing. I truly believe that. I was speaking to Madeleine yesterday, she’s Vicky’s eldest, she’s twenty.
Delightful girl. We went through a rough time together when she lived here (my fault, all totally and utterly my fault) but we’ve made a kind of friendship now. She lives with her boyfriend just outside Cheltenham and I was telling her about you, about our chats, about your problems and my problems, and she said I should try a night at hers. Soon. You know, she’s only three-quarters of an hour away. If it was a total disaster I could always drive home. Obviously I’m making this sound a thousand times more straightforward than it was when actually, had you been there, you’d have seen me shaking uncontrollably in a coffee shop, halfway to a panic attack at the mere thought. I had to go outside for air! Daft COW!
Still, it is a start, it is something to focus on. I hope that makes you happy, Jim. I do so want you to be happy. But in the meantime, we must keep talking, we must keep this open, this incredible, life-changing connection we’ve made to each other. It’s becoming like oxygen to me, Jim, it really is. I need it more and more, every day. You are making me stronger. I love you so much, more than I’ve ever loved anyone.
Oh, here we go again, the toilet beckons.
More anon, beautiful man of mine xxxx