The Artificial Anatomy of Parks Page 11

  The man must have taken a few steps back after knocking; he’s leaning against the banister, and his hat is tipped down, so at first I don’t see his face. I see his hands though. They’re the same as before, still brown and hairy, with blunt fingertips and nicotine-coloured nails.

  “Holy fuck,” I say.

  “Hey, doll,” the figure says.

  “Hi Malkie.”

  I open the door further and he steps forwards and envelops me in a hug. I’m stiff inside his arms and I can feel my heart going double-time. I can’t believe this is happening. I can’t believe they’re all catching up with me at once. I bite my lip, take a gulp of air.

  “Your aunt’s all shook up about the way you upped and left, you know,” Malkie says.

  It takes a few swallows before I have enough saliva in my mouth to get it working properly. “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah. Now lemme look at you.” He breaks into a grin, holding me at arm’s length. “You’re very pretty. Didn’t I tell you you’d grow up pretty?”

  “Maybe,” I say. “You want a drink?”

  “That would be a pleasure.”

  I stand back to let him pass. ‘Pull yourself together,’ my boss would say. ‘Be normal.’ I shake myself mentally and go to the fridge and peer inside. “I have some beers. You want a beer?”

  “Sure.”

  I don’t know how to talk to him now I’m not a kid anymore, and my flat feels suddenly strange, like it’s new to me too. Letting in someone from my past, from outside, seems to highlight how closed my world has become recently.

  “Sorry about the shittiness here.”

  “Doesn’t bother me,” he says, looking at the piles of stuff on surfaces and the stains on the walls and table.

  “Sit down.”

  His giant legs fold beneath him and his crumpled jeans ride up over a larger belly than I remember. He smiles at me; that’s the same as before, at least. I put two bottles down in front of him.

  “I don’t have an opener. Normally I just use the side of the table.” I point to the scuff marks notched into the wood.

  “That’s okay.” Malkie picks up a bottle and cracks it open in his mouth. “I’ve never had a bottle opener neither. Want me to do yours?”

  “Yeah, thanks.”

  We drink in silence. After a while I start to notice the hum of the fridge, how soothing it is. Then it starts to remind me of the heart monitor attached to my father, back at the hospital.

  “Jeez, it’s good to see you again.”

  I turn the beer bottle slowly in my hands, not saying anything. I can feel my face pulling itself into some sort of grimace. I know what’s coming next.

  “Pity you gotta be so sulky though. Like I said, your aunt’s worried, doll. Why’d you stop going to see your old man?”

  “I mean this in the nicest possible way,” I tell him. “But mind your own business.”

  Malkie purses his mouth, but he doesn’t say anything.

  “So when did you get back?” I ask him.

  “Six months, a year, give or take.”

  “There’s kind of a difference between them, you know.”

  “Smart too, huh?”

  “Well, I can count.”

  He takes a mouthful of beer.

  “And you didn’t come and find me?” I ask.

  “That why you’re pissed at me?”

  I rub my eyes. “I’m not pissed,” I say. “I’m tired. It’s good to see you too.” I’m lying – I am mad at him, but I feel ashamed of it, almost. Malkie’s so nice he makes you feel like a criminal for thinking bad things around him. And I’ve missed him.

  “I came to see you a couple of months ago,” he says. “But your pa said you weren’t living with him anymore, and he didn’t know where you were. He was kind of short with me, so I guess he wasn’t too pleased that I was back. I been asking around and Vivienne’s girl told me you were still in London, but she wouldn’t say where.”

  Nice of Starr to let me know.

  “I had been writing,” he says. “Cross my heart. Then my letters started getting sent back to me.”

  “Hmm,” I say, but it feels good to know he’d kept his promise. “So what are you doing here now?”

  “This morning Viv calls up, asks me to come and see you. Try to talk you into going back to the hospital.” He fixes me with his gaze. “So, have I persuaded you yet?”

  I take a sip of beer and shrug. We look at each other in silence for a moment.

  “You keeping up with the music?” Malkie asks after a while.

  “Not so much.”

  “You were good, doll.”

  “I don’t have a piano.”

  “What you been up to, then?”

  “I left school,” I say. “I’m working as a waitress. Nothing, really.”

  He shakes his head again and stretches out, cracking his knuckles. “No wonder you had a fight with your old man.”

  I finish my beer and stand up, rinse my bottle out and put it on the draining board, keeping my back to Malkie. You have no idea, I want to tell him.

  “I hate seeing you cut yourself off from everyone,” I can hear him say.

  “I haven’t.”

  “It sure looks like it from here.”

  I turn around and stare at him. I can’t believe he can’t tell the truth by looking at me. I want to break something, scream, get his attention somehow. Something happened to me, Malkie. It wasn’t my decision.

  “Doll, I know that you’re angry,” he says. “But your pa’s sick, and he’s family. You gotta go see him. Reconcile yourselves.”

  “I don’t want a reconciliation,” I say. I know I sound petulant, but I can’t explain it to him. I could say I was betrayed, and he’d look at me with those sad, brown eyes and tell me that it’s better to forgive – for me as well. But it’s anger that keeps me going – that allows me to get up, to work and eat. And I’ve kept this secret for so long I can’t physically force it out now.

  “Look at it this way,” Malkie says. “If you go, and he wakes up, and you talk – you’ll never regret it. Even if you can’t be friends after all.” He stands up. “But if you don’t go, and you never talk again… ” He comes over to me, putting his hands on my shoulders. “You’ll regret that, okay? Maybe not for a while, but it’ll hit you some day.”

  I can feel myself wilting underneath the pressure of his arms; he’s staring at me, making me blink. “Okay,” I say. “I’ll think about it.” Maybe he’s right, maybe I would regret it. It’s hard to say anymore.

  “Good,” he says, and relaxes. He smiles at me. “I’d better be off. I’d like to come back and do this again though.”

  “Yeah, fine,” I say. My flat is small and cold, and I know if he doesn’t leave soon I’ll try to make him stay, even offer to cook dinner tonight.

  “See you later, princess.”

  He stoops and gives my forehead a kiss. I wait, hearing him clomping on his way out and the front door slam, then I run into the bedroom and throw the sash open. Malkie’s a few metres down the road. “Hey,” I call to him, waving. “Sorry for being a dick.”

  He looks back, waving too. “Hey yourself,” he says. “Take care.”

  That night I heat up some soup and chain-smoke over the meal. Seeing Malkie has made my stomach tight, and I can’t finish the food in front of me. I pour the soup down the sink and go into the bedroom, undress slowly and climb into my pyjamas.

  How is it possible that Malkie’s only the second real friend I’ve seen in years? How can this be my life?

  It’s still warm outside, even though it’s past ten. I grab my cigarettes, a thin cardigan to wear over my pyjamas, and go outside. I sit on the doorstep, barefooted. My downstairs neighbour raps on his window and waves to me. He’s wearing a white vest and big headphones; he does a quick burst of shadowboxing as I’m looking at him, maybe to impress me. I hold my cigarette up in a mock salute.

  I know what went wrong, really. Or at least, I know where it start
ed to go wrong.

  Seven

  We lived in Battersea: No.1 Kassala Road, the end furthest away from the park. All the houses on the street were the same – Victorian terraced buildings in red and brown brick, with small front gardens enclosed by box hedges, or white picket fences, or low walls. Every house had a bay window on the ground floor, a kitchen extension, a cellar and a loft conversion. The street ran north to south, so the houses were either east-facing, or west-facing. Ours was west-facing, so it got sun in the afternoon, when the day was hottest. There was another house to the right, and to the left there was a narrow strip of grass, leading to the back garden, that I called The Corridor. The Friday before I was meant to be going back to school I was in The Corridor, bouncing a ball against the kitchen wall. A shadow on the front lawn caught my eye. Malkie was standing at the gate.

  “Hello, dollface,” he said. “Your mom in?”

  I ran to him, then stopped, not knowing whether he would want a hug or not. He was looking down at me with his mouth twitching. I scuffed my shoes in the grass, and he reached down and squeezed my shoulder. He was wearing a light brown jacket, checked shirt and faded blue jeans.

  “She’s inside,” I said, and ran back to the house.

  My mother came to the front door and beckoned Malkie inside. I followed, slowly. Malkie stopped just inside the hallway. I stopped too, in the doorway. My mother paused; we all shuffled our feet.

  “Would you like a drink?”

  “A beer would be great.”

  “It’s only twelve o’clock,” I pointed out.

  “Ignore her. Come into the kitchen,” my mother suggested. “Tallie, go get Malkie a beer from the cellar.”

  I loved going to the cellar. I loved the coolness of the air, the smell of wet earth and walls, and the little chinks of light that struggled in through the tiny windows. My father had a stack of beers in the fridge down there, and a rack of wine that ran the length of the room.

  Reaching in for a beer, I scraped my arm on the ice that had crystallised in the freezer compartment. When I pulled it out there was a trickle of blood running down from my elbow; a drop or two had fallen onto the ice and spread, pinkly.

  On the way back to the kitchen I stopped halfway up the stairs, clutching the bottle to my chest; I could hear muffled voices speaking quickly.

  “Why would I want to talk to him?”

  “Sorry, Evie. I thought… ”

  “And don’t bring him up while Tallulah’s here.”

  “I won’t.”

  “No, it’s fine. I know you’re only trying to do the right thing by your friend. I just knew he wouldn’t stay away.”

  By the time I came back upstairs Malkie and my mother were facing each other over the table, Malkie was leaning towards her, his giant body spilling out of his chair. I washed my arm, opened Malkie’s bottle for him and fetched a glass from the cupboard. I couldn’t believe he was there, in our kitchen. He made everything seem smaller, especially my mother.

  “How you doing, doll?” he asked.

  “I’m good,” I said. I pulled out a chair next to him, and sat, my face cupped in my hand, looking up at him. He smiled down at me. I smiled back.

  “Would you like to have piano lessons?” he asked.

  I was surprised. My mother looked surprised too.

  “I could teach her,” he said, turning back to my mother.

  “It’s a very kind offer,” she murmured.

  “Can I, then?” I said.

  “I’ll talk it over with Edward,” she said. “We’d pay, of course.”

  “No you won’t,” Malkie said. “I like spending the time with her. Besides, she’ll keep me out of trouble, won’t you, Tallie?”

  His large hand thumped me playfully on the back, taking my breath away. “Come on, Evie,” he said. “It’ll be like old times.”

  “When you two were friends?” I asked.

  “Oh yes,” she said. “When I was a lot younger, and a lot less wise.”

  I held my breath in case Malkie was offended, but now they were smiling at each other and I realised my mother was joking.

  “We were the three amigos, plus one I guess,” Malkie said.

  “Oh… Yeah,” I said, angry with him for bringing Uncle Jack into it.

  My mother saw my face. “I think maybe we should get on with the chores,” she said.

  Malkie mussed my hair and pushed himself away from the table. “Well then, I’d better get,” he said.

  “Tallie, why don’t you give Malkie some jam to take home?” my mother said.

  “What’s your favourite fruit?” I asked him.

  “That depends,” he said, rubbing his chin. “Do you do pineapple jam?”

  I made a face. “Maybe I’ll pick one out for you.”

  “Maybe you should,” he agreed, grinning.

  I stood in the pantry, gazing at the shelves. The jars were identical in the dark, but I knew which was which off by heart. I reached up and took one of the apricot jams down. My father liked blackberry, my mother preferred plum, but apricot was the best, I thought.

  Malkie took my present with a deep bow. He kissed my mother goodbye, and swung me up into his arms. “I’ll say I tried,” he said quietly, looking at my mother.

  “He can come round this afternoon, if he wants,” she said, like she was sad about something.

  “Okay.”

  “Thanks for stopping by, Malkie.”

  He kissed the top of my head, then put me down. “Just let me know about the lessons,” he said. “Bye, princess.”

  After he’d gone, my mother stood in the kitchen, holding on to the back of a chair. Something about her face made me not want to ask about who was going to be calling.

  “Well,” she said after a while. “That was a surprise.”

  “Are you going back to bed?” I asked. I came to stand next to her, and she put her arm around me.

  “No,” she said. “I wasn’t expecting to see Malkie, that’s all. He’s from a different part of my life, and it can be a bit strange when he appears.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Can I still have piano lessons?”

  My mother squeezed me. “You like him?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Me too,” she said.

  “Why doesn’t Uncle George like him?”

  “Well, Malkie can be a bit gruff,” she said. “But he’d never hurt anyone.”

  I remembered Malkie’s eyes at the party when Uncle George was being rude – he’d definitely hurt Uncle George if he got the chance.

  “It’s really just that Uncle George has a hard time believing that Malkie has changed,” my mother said.

  “Changed from what?”

  “Well, sweetheart… He was in prison for a while. He hasn’t had a very easy life, and he made a few mistakes. But he’s a good person.”

  “Malkie was in prison?” I asked. Everything felt a little blurry, and I shook my mother’s arm off. She turned to face me.

  “What did he do?” I asked.

  “He was involved in drugs.”

  “Like Uncle Jack? He was in prison too, wasn’t he?”

  She went white. “Who told you that?”

  I didn’t say anything, remembering my promise to James.

  “Who told you?” my mother asked. She was angry, but I wouldn’t speak. I shook my head.

  “For God’s sake,” she said, turning away from me. “Nothing is sacred in this bloody family.”

  She hugged me when I started crying, and suddenly she wasn’t angry anymore.

  “I’m not mad at you,” she said. “I’m not even mad at all really, it’s just… ” She shrugged her shoulders. “I’m disappointed in some of the grown-ups. Not with you.”

  My insides were hurting now; I’d never worried about being a disappointment before.

  “And don’t think badly of Malkie,” she said. “I met him when he’d already realised his mistakes. So you see, it didn’t matter to me that he’d done bad things in the
past, as long as he tried to be good in the present.” My mother blinked a couple of times and squeezed me harder. “And Tallulah, we’re not going to mention this to your father, okay? It’ll just be our little secret that Malkie came to see us.”

  I felt my stomach drop when she said that, and I turned away from her. “Okay.”

  Later that afternoon, about an hour or so after Malkie had left, I went downstairs, planning to help my mother in the kitchen. Halfway down I could hear her crying – chopping the carrots up and sobbing quietly.

  “Mum?”

  She turned around to face me, wiping her eyes quickly with the corner of her apron.

  “Tallie, I thought you were upstairs.”

  I went to give her a hug, but she’d turned back to the chopping. “I was going to call you in a bit, you should be outdoors on a day like today.”

  I went back to The Corridor and sat propped up against the wall. Mr Tickles was sunning himself on top of the dustbin. I called him to me; he lifted his head and yawned, but didn’t get up.

  My mother came out after a while, wiping the backs of her hands on her cheeks. “Kathy got back yesterday, didn’t she?”

  I shrugged.

  “I’m just going to the main road to buy some coconut milk,” she said. “Why don’t we call on Kathy and see if she wants to play?”

  “I want to stay here.”

  “Well, it’ll be easier for me to get on with dinner if I’m not worrying about how bored you are.”

  “I’m not bored.”

  “Come on, it’ll be nice to have the company while I walk.”

  “Okay.”

  My mother got her purse and we walked the hundred yards up Brynmaer Road to Kathy’s house. The pavement was littered with blossoms and the sun was golden on the windscreens of the parked cars; I put my hands over my eyes to stop myself from being blinded and my mother guided me, her hand on my shoulder squeezing me if there was an obstacle in the way, like we used to do when I was five.

  She dropped me off at Kathy’s house and promised to come and pick me up before dinner. “Be good now,” she said, and dropped a kiss on my cheek. I threw my arms around her neck and breathed her in. She untangled herself, laughing, and went down the road and out of sight.