The Artificial Anatomy of Parks Page 13

  “She’s just proud of her daughter. Why can’t you let her be happy about it?”

  “Happy has nothing to do with it, my dear.”

  “What?”

  “Think about it,” Aunt Vivienne says. “Gillian’s just relieved her little Georgia’s following an acceptable trajectory.” She sneers. “Marrying her off at some ungodly age to a man practically old enough to be her father. It’s hardly the romance of the century. She wanted to make sure her daughter didn’t turn into a ruined woman, like me… Or you… ”

  Aunt Gillian appears behind her sister as Vivienne says, “We’ve been failed by our mothers, Tallulah. But at least no one will be able to say Gillian produced a bad seed.”

  “Viv… ” Gillian says, looking at me.

  Aunt Vivienne closes her mouth and bites her lip. Aunt Gillian’s doing the same thing. So there are similarities after all.

  My mother chewed her fingernails instead. She told me how her mother had put bitter aloes on her nails to make sure she wouldn’t want to taste them. ‘It was awful,’ she’d told me. ‘People use it as a laxative, so for the first few weeks I had stomach pains all the time.’

  I feel my breath catch in my throat when I remember this. “Well, anyway,” I say. I pull my wallet from my bag and fish out a twenty. “That should cover me.”

  “But we’re not finished,” Aunt Gillian says.

  “For God’s sake, Gillian,” Aunt Vivienne murmurs. “Let’s just pay the bill and go.”

  The waitress is only too eager to get rid of us. She brings us our change and I scrape back my chair. I can’t bring myself to meet Aunt Vivienne’s eye.

  I want to know what exactly my mother did to make Vivienne dislike her so much. But at the same time I’m scared to find out.

  I was furious with my father, with myself, with the world, with the driver of the car for taking my mother away. I withdrew. I pretended not to hear my father when he called me for meals, or asked me questions. Eventually he gave up and we ate separately and in silence. I couldn’t stop seeing my mother being loaded into the ambulance, covered in tubes and a mask and blankets. Paramedics’ hands, holding me back as I tried to climb in after her – ‘No, sweetheart, go with this lady here’ – and Kathy’s mother crying. Kathy, who’d been fetched from her house, in the back with me, saying it’ll be alright. Following the stretcher into the hospital, and seeing my mother’s arm falling out and dangling there, bumping around as the doctors ran with her to surgery. Then the waiting room and nurses stooping down to talk to me as I lay across three chairs, dry-eyed.

  Then I’d see my father, pacing up and down, answering questions the police put to him, wringing his hands. “It’s my fault,” he shouted at one of them, the older one, who gave his partner a look. They put their pens away and straightened their faces.

  “We’ll come back later,” the older one said to my father. “You’ve been very helpful.”

  I remembered Kathy’s mother hugging my father, saying, “How were you to know she’d run out?”

  “They were talking – I should have known, I did know.”

  “Drivers should be more careful.”

  “I pushed her away.”

  Then, finally, the white sheet, pulled up over her face, the shape of her body underneath it.

  Kathy’s dad had turned up halfway through the evening and driven her home, so she hadn’t heard my father. “What do you think he meant?” she asked me, when I confided in her. “He must be talking about something else. He didn’t actually push her into the road.”

  “How do you know?” I said.

  We were brushing the manes of her My Little Pony set, arranged by colour and height. My one had a tangle in the hair somewhere that I wasn’t managing to separate successfully with the little plastic brush. Kathy took the pony off me and starting working on the knot. I slumped backwards, propping my head up against her chest of drawers and letting my arms fall to my sides. I’d been feeling heavy all the time, like I was carrying something around inside me, and my eyes felt like they were tiny slits, although, apart from a slight pink rim around them, they looked normal in the mirror.

  “Your dad wouldn’t do that,” Kathy said.

  “Maybe he pushed her and she fell.”

  “My mum said it was an accident.” Kathy put the brush down. “She said your mum just didn’t see the car.”

  “But she wasn’t there.”

  “She talked to the police.”

  “My mum wouldn’t run out into the road,” I said. “She always made me stand on the kerb and look both ways.”

  “Sometimes people forget to look both ways.”

  “My mum never forgot,” I said. I was furious with Kathy for suggesting it; I wanted to throw her ponies out of the window. “It must be my dad’s fault. He must have distracted her. Or pushed her.”

  “I don’t think he pushed her.”

  “I don’t care what you think,” I shouted.

  Kathy turned away and started brushing the pony again.

  I felt ashamed of myself, but I couldn’t say sorry. After a moment of silence I picked up a different pony and showed it to her. “This one’s cool, I like the rainbows on her leg.”

  “His leg,” Kathy said.

  “Oh.”

  “He’s one of my favourites,” Kathy said after a while, and we went back to brushing.

  It was weird to be let back into the house by Kathy’s mum. The lights were off, but after she flicked the switch in the hallway my father came out of his study, blinking.

  “Oh, Edward, you’re home already. I’ll just give you these back now,” she said, putting my mum’s old set of keys down on the hall table.

  “Thank you for looking after Tallulah so often over this… period,” my father said.

  “Glad to help out. I’d better skedaddle though. Get dinner on for Ted and Kathy.” She bent down and gave me a kiss on the forehead. “Tallie, you’re welcome at ours any time, you know that, right?”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “Yes, thanks again,” my father said. He shut the door after her. “Now, Tallulah, I think we should have a little chat.” He laid his hand on the top of my head and for a moment I was so shocked at his touching me I didn’t say anything.

  “I miss your mother too, you know.” He looked at my expression. “Of course I do. I’ve been trying to plan the funeral and… ” he sighed. “It’s very hard for all of us.”

  He didn’t even look sad, I thought, just far away. His hand felt hot through my hair and I jerked it off. He stared at the front door, like he could see through it to the road.

  “I didn’t think it would be this hard,” he said. “Maybe… ”

  Mr Tickles appeared, crying for food. My father frowned at him and then at me; his eyes looked less cloudy all of a sudden. “I’m going to need your co-operation, Tallulah. No more tantrums. We can all behave nicely to one other, at least.” He walked back into his study and shut the door, leaving me in the hallway with my heart hammering, although I wasn’t sure why.

  It was at the reception after my mother’s funeral that I found out I was going to be joining Starr at boarding school, although not from Starr or Aunt Vivienne, who didn’t even come to the funeral.

  I was sitting in the boiler room, hiding from everyone, trying to make myself cry. I heard a creaking outside the door, then it opened and my grandmother looked in.

  “Aren’t you getting rather hot?”

  “No.”

  “Suit yourself,” she said, and closed the door again.

  I waited a moment, then scrambled after her. She was sitting on the step opposite, looking straight at me.

  I sat down next to her. “How did you know I was in there?”

  “I saw you go in.”

  “Oh.”

  “A few people seem to be missing today,” she said. “Don’t you find it odd that your uncle and aunt couldn’t make it to the funeral?”

  “Uncle Jack isn’t in the country.”


  “Is that what your father told you?”

  I nodded.

  My grandmother took a cigarette out of a gold case. “The trouble with stories,” she said, pointing it at me, “is remembering what’s been said to whom.”

  “What?”

  She put the case away. “Your father wants to send you to boarding school,” she said. “You’ll go to middle school first then transfer after a year.”

  I felt my heart flip inside my chest. “Why?”

  “He thinks he’s too busy to be able to take care of you properly, and you’re too young to be spending all your time alone.”

  “I don’t want to go.”

  “No one ever does,” my grandmother said, grimly. “But they say they enjoy it afterwards – when they’re older.”

  “Do I have to go?”

  “That’s up to your father.”

  “Why are you telling me?”

  My grandmother looked at me. “I didn’t think it was a good idea,” she said. “But I guess we’ll see.”

  Now the tears came easily enough. I ran upstairs and lay on my bed, face-down in the pillow, not wanting to see anyone.

  It felt like hours before my father was standing at the door.

  “Tallulah? Why are you lying here in the dark?”

  I turned to face him. “Why are you sending me to boarding school?”

  There was a pause. “I gather Mother told you, then.”

  I was silent.

  “I’m sorry, Tallulah. It’s the only solution I can think of.”

  I know it’s your fault somehow. I know she’s dead because of you.

  “Fine,” I said. “I don’t want to stay here anyway.”

  In the light of the corridor behind him, I saw my father put his hands in his pockets and look at something on the ceiling. “I’ll give you some time alone,” he said. “It’s been an emotional day for both of us.”

  I felt my whole body seething with hate. I tried to keep my voice steady when I spoke. “When am I going?”

  “It’s probably best if you start as soon as possible.”

  Eventually he left. I heard his shoes squeak as he went downstairs, then I turned to the wall and cried until my face was so swollen, Mr Tickles meowed in fright at the sight of it.

  Evening visiting hours over, we stand outside the main entrance. Around us, cafés and shops are closing up, everyone gathering up their belongings, ready to journey home.

  “I suppose I’ll see you both here tomorrow?” Aunt Vivienne says, patting her hair.

  “Are you coming back then, Viv?” Aunt Gillian asks, frostily. “I thought you might be too busy for boring family affairs.”

  “I know how to stand by my family, Gillian,” Aunt Vivienne says. “Well – until tomorrow.” She gives me a curt nod and sashays away. Aunt Gillian looks disapproving, but she doesn’t say anything.

  “Are you getting the 74?” I ask.

  “Oh yes, let’s get it together,” she says. “So much nicer to have a travelling companion.”

  It means getting two buses instead of one, but I guess I owe her some time together after running away before.

  “Sure,” I say. “Is Paul back soon?”

  “Not for another night or two.” She takes my arm. “But he spends most of his time at his club, anyway. Do you live alone?”

  “Yep.”

  “And you don’t get lonely?”

  “Nope.”

  “Oh well, it must be me,” Aunt Gillian says. “I was always a nervous child, apparently. Didn’t like to be by myself for too long. I was so pleased when Mother said she’d had another little girl. Edward was a dear, but he was a boy, and not too into playing with dolls.” She smiles at me. “But then Vivienne was quite horrid, and not at all the playmate I was expecting. I suppose we’re not very well suited. And then Vivienne is so good at holding grudges… ”

  “What did you do to her?”

  “Oh.” Aunt Gillian shakes her head quickly. “Everything I did was wrong.”

  The bus pulls up at the stop and Aunt Gillian lets go of me to climb aboard, and then we have to wait while she finds her change purse.

  “I’m not used to getting public transport,” she whispers to me as we sit down. “Georgia used to drive me around until she moved out.”

  “When did she move out?”

  “Just before the wedding. It made it a little bittersweet, I suppose, letting go of her like that. But I knew she was going to be well taken care of, and that’s what you want for your children.” She must remember the conversation at dinner, because she changes the subject hastily. “Any romantic interest in your life, Tallulah?”

  “Not so much.”

  “Well now, that must be temporary,” she says, comfortingly. “You’ve turned into quite a beautiful young lady. I’m sure you’ll find a nice young man soon.” She pats my hand.

  “It’s okay,” I tell her. “I’m not that bothered.” That’s a lie, Aunt Gillian, it’s just that I pushed away the guy I was bothered about and now I’m too gutless to try to get back in touch with him.

  “James hasn’t found anyone either,” Aunt Gillian says. “I wish he’d get himself a girlfriend and stop going out all hours of the night.”

  “Does he still live at home?”

  “He’s converted the rooms above the garage into a little flat. We hardly see him.”

  “Do you miss Michael?”

  “Of course I do,” she says, surprising me. For some reason I never thought the two of them were that close. “Michael turned out very like his father, in the end.” She smiles, looking softer. “It’s funny, I can’t really see John in either of the other two at all. But then, I guess, children aren’t always like their parents.”

  I catch the No.19 at Hyde Park Corner and I’m back home an hour and half after I boarded the first bus. I’m hungry again – dinner with Gillian and Vivienne feels like ages ago, and I’ve been burning nervous energy all day. I start to peel a clementine, digging my nails into the orange skin. I like the smell of citrus that will stay under them until I next have a shower. I’m almost too tired to eat though; each day I get through without my father waking up leaves me drained and relieved at the same time. And at the same time, there’s the knowledge at the back of my head that the longer he stays under, the less likely he is to ever come round.

  If he dies, I’ll be an orphan, like my mother was. Like my father is, like all of them are, now – Aunt Gillian, Aunt Vivienne, Uncle Jack.

  I’ve lived like an orphan since I left home. I’ve been completely alone, not counting the others in the hostel, and it’s never bothered me too much until now. Maybe Aunt Gillian’s right when she says children aren’t always like their parents, or Aunt Vivienne could be right instead, I could be more like my father than I realise. He spent his whole life with his brain switched on, researching, operating, in studies and hospital theatres. He didn’t know how to relax with us when he came through the front door; we were probably harder work for him than his patients.

  But how could I turn out like him when I tried so hard not to? I guess we both lost my mother, and it changed us, even if he was already drawing away from me before that day.

  I eat the clementine. No point in worrying about my father until the hospital staff bring it up. I should be concerned instead that I tried to drop in unannounced on my best-friend-and-maybe-more the other day, after years of radio silence, and now I’m dreaming about him. Am I obsessing? He’s been quietly nagging at me, I realise, ever since Starr told me that she ran into him recently. But he’d have every right to be angry as he was in my dream. So now what?

  I throw away the peel and crawl into bed.

  My father drove me to the school. I was in the passenger seat, the first time I’d been up at the front, and I nuzzled against the seatbelt, trying to catch the smell of my mother’s soap, or her perfume, tracing patterns with my fingers on the glovebox, imagining they were her fingers.

  The journey that day w
as the same as to my grandmother’s. I could almost predict when we would change lanes, merge with the M1, when the signs for Watford would appear, then for Birmingham, then Shrewsbury. I stared out at the landscape as it altered gradually, first dusty fields and small villages, and later railways and hills – the green slopes streaked brown with beeches and sweet chestnuts – and market towns, until the houses turned from red brick to grey stone, and iron bridges sprang up over emerald rivers.

  My father didn’t look at me once during the whole journey. I snuck glances at his profile, trying to work out what he was thinking. Kathy’s voice kept coming back to me, ‘Sometimes people forget to look both ways.’ My mother would never have run out into the road though, I told myself, because that would be dangerous and she would never put herself in danger in case something happened and then I wouldn’t have her anymore.

  I knew this. I knew it because I knew, for a fact, that my mother never, ever stopped thinking about me.

  Kathy was probably right about my father not pushing her, or the police would already have arrested him. But why did he say it was his fault? Why wouldn’t he look me in the eye? I tried to work it out while he was driving, and staring at the road, but he might as well have been made of glass.

  We ignored the turn for the market town closest to my grandmother, and drove ten minutes in the other direction. The roads were emptier now, and once, turning a corner, we startled a flock of birds who took off flashing orange, brown and white.

  “Those were wrynecks,” my father said. It was the first time he’d spoken since we got in the car.

  Eventually, he put the handbrake on and turned the engine off. “We’re here.”

  The school was exactly as I had pictured boarding school to be: redbrick main buildings and dormitories, green walls in the canteen. The paths around the grounds were gravelled and kept in pristine condition; the gym and swimming pool were modern and tucked away at the back of the grounds, past the boys’ dormitories and the playing fields.

  My father came on the tour with me, walking a few steps behind. When we got around to the front of the building again, he got my suitcase out of the trunk and handed it to me.