The Artificial Anatomy of Parks Read online

  The school wanted to call my father.

  “Don’t bother,” I told them.

  “Who should we call instead?” the school secretary asked. She was standing with a neatly squared fingernail pressed down on the telephone hook, the handset cradled between her chin and shoulder and gold bangles clinking on her wrist. “We have to call someone.”

  My grandmother blew into school. From the window I saw her stop the headmaster on his way from the car park to his office; we could all hear snatches of her shouting at him. The headmaster must have realised this, because he tried to steer her inside, taking hold of her elbow. My grandmother shook him off and started thrusting her finger into his chest. The school secretary tutted behind me. “What on earth does she think she’s doing?” she asked.

  “He shouldn’t have tried to grab her,” I said.

  She gave me a dark look.

  It was agreed that I could spend some time living with my grandmother, and that she would get a private tutor for me.

  “Tallulah’s grades have never been very impressive,” Mr Purvis said, flicking through my academic reports. “She’s failing maths and physics, and she’s only just scraping by in French. I don’t even have a Latin report for her… ” He looked at me over the rims of his glasses. “Tallulah, have you attended Latin at all this year?”

  “No,” I said.

  He faced me for a moment, then cleared his throat and shot a look at my grandmother. My grandmother stared back at him. “Moving on then,” he said. “Just about the only subjects she does okay in are biology and art.”

  “Art,” my grandmother snorted.

  Mr Purvis stood, came around the front of his desk, and leaned back against it. “The way things are going… ” He rearranged his tie. “We have an academic reputation to uphold, and she has a lot of catching up to do in these next two years before she sits her exams. Perhaps you can persuade her to apply herself. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a meeting to get to.” He ushered us out of his office and closed the door.

  My grandmother pursed her lips at me, and told the secretary to order us a taxi.

  We didn’t speak on the ride back to her house. My grandmother hummed something under her breath, I had the window rolled down and the wind blew my hair across my face. Already I felt my shoulders lifting.

  When we arrived, I turned left at the top of the staircase out of habit and walked towards my old bedroom. Then I stopped, and went back. I put my suitcase in the room that my parents had always shared, showered in the en-suite then unpacked my clothes into the dresser and went downstairs to find my grandmother.

  She was sitting in the living-room, drinking. “Gin and tonic.” She waved it at me. “Want one?”

  “Alright,” I said. I hadn’t drunk gin before. At school we’d had vodka a couple of times, straight, after the lights were out and the Housemistress’ footsteps had died away. It had burned my throat and my insides, and the hairs in my nose had felt like they were curling up in protest. My first cigarette had been just as unpleasant, but after a while I’d stopped noticing how harsh the smoke felt and enjoyed the rhythm of the inhale, exhale.

  My grandmother poured me a small measure of gin and a lot of tonic, and dropped two ice-cubes and a slice of lemon into the glass. “For beginners,” she said.

  “Thanks.”

  I sipped my drink. It tasted much nicer than the vodka, which hadn’t even had a label on the bottle. My grandmother was humming again, not looking at me. “How old are you?” she asked suddenly.

  “Thirteen and a half.”

  “It’s a wonder it took you so long to run off, really.” She took another sip. “Well, you’re here for a few months. See if I can’t straighten you out, or something along those lines.”

  I took another slurp of my drink. My grandmother raised an eyebrow. “May I ask, however, why you called me and not your father?”

  “Dunno,” I lied.

  “Hruh,” she said, looking at her glass. “I forgot how life for young people is merely a series of spontaneous decisions.”

  There was a silence.

  “Are you gonna call my father?”

  “Don’t worry about that,” she said, waving her hand. “I’ll smooth things out with Edward.” She got up and headed for the door. “You can amuse yourself now.”

  If I’d found my grandmother’s house shabby before, the few years that had passed had turned it into more of a decaying shell. Window panes had fallen out in several bedrooms, plaster was crumbling from the ceiling. Instead of tackling the problems, my grandmother had shut off large areas; in a house of well over twenty rooms, we lived in the kitchen, the living-room, my bedroom and hers. The whole place creaked in the cold. Gusts of wind prised themselves through cracks and vents to hug us as we went about our business indoors. The ceilings were too high, and except for in the hallway, there were no carpets. Every morning, after my shower, I felt steam rise from my skin when I stepped out of the bathtub; no matter how frantically I rubbed myself with my towel, my body was goose-pimpled within seconds. My teeth chattered constantly. My grandmother didn’t believe in central heating – she drew the green velvet drapes in the living-room and told me to put another jumper on.

  We ate every meal together, and aside from the noises made by the house, we ate in silence. A few days after I’d arrived, I cracked during breakfast. My grandmother had been snapping the pages of the newspaper open and I’d been staring at the ceiling, which was developing a large brown stain, like a dirty tributary across the white.

  “Don’t you think it’s kind of unsafe living like this?” I asked.

  “When I want your opinion,” my grandmother said, acidly, “I’ll send you to structural engineering school.”

  I bent over my bowl, playing with my cereal, splashing milk around to mask the burning I felt in my cheeks. My grandmother watched me for a moment before saying, “If you don’t want it now, you can finish it for lunch.”

  I shoved the bowl in the fridge and stomped upstairs. “I hope you find something dead in yours,” I said, as soon as I was out of earshot.

  I decided to carry out a survey of the rooms. Whatever my grandmother thought, my father and Aunt Gillian would probably agree that some upkeep was needed. That was how I came across the library – most of the rooms I’d seen before, but once, poking at a door I’d previously assumed to lead to a cupboard, I felt it swing open, dislodging a ton of dust. Books covered three of the four walls; the fourth wall had a bay window with red and gold curtains tied up with red velvet ropes, and there was a fireplace with a poker, coal scuttle, shovel and brush arranged neatly in one corner. The air inside smelled odd – maybe mould – but it was in surprisingly good shape in comparison to the other rooms.

  A few afternoons later, when the tutor had left for the day, I was flicking through Gulliver’s Travels. I’d chosen it because it had a cool picture of a ship on the front, half submerged beneath cartoon waves. I was only a couple of chapters in when my grandmother burst into the room, looking thunderous.

  “What are you doing in here?”

  “Reading. I found it on the shelf.”

  “Leave,” she snapped.

  “But… ”

  “Get out of here immediately.”

  “Aren’t I allowed to read?”

  She snatched the book away from me.

  “You can’t do that.”

  Her face was red and her eyes were shimmering, as if she was about to cry, but she didn’t, and she didn’t speak again.

  “Sorry.” I said after a moment. “I didn’t know… ”

  After a moment I left. I skulked upstairs for most of the afternoon before going to find her. She was sitting on the sofa in the living-room, her eyes closed and her legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles.

  “I’m sorry for doing something I shouldn’t,” I said.

  “You weren’t to know.”

  “Are you still angry with me?”

  She opened her eyes. “No,
I’m not,” she said, finally. “But I don’t want you snooping around in there.”

  “Why?”

  “I have my reasons.”

  Like – you’re crazy? I lingered. “Can I sit down here with you?”

  “I’m going to watch television,” she said. “You can stay or you can go, but you have to be quiet.”

  My grandmother watched Murder, She Wrote regularly. She liked Angela Lansbury’s perm and disapproving looks. I didn’t want to go back to my parents’ old room and lie on the bed by myself, so I stayed. We watched as Angela’s character, the mystery writer, tramped all around the murder scene, interrupting police, shaking her head and picking up clues. My grandmother waved her drink around and shouted at the screen: “No, not there… Why don’t you think, woman? It’s not going to be the schoolteacher is it?”

  When it was over she turned the TV off and leaned back into the sofa, lighting a cigarette. “What did you think of it?”

  “Does that happen every episode?” I asked.

  “Does what happen?”

  “Does she always find dead bodies?”

  “There has to be a murder, doesn’t there?” She took a long drag.

  “But that’s not even realistic,” I said. “How many episodes have there been? How many dead bodies has she found?”

  “There are more dead people in the world now than living,” my grandmother said, blowing out smoke.

  “Hhmm.”

  “Are worried you’ve shacked up with a madwoman?”

  “No,” I lied.

  “Go on, I know you brats used to make up stories about me,” she said, waving the smoke away.

  “No we didn’t.”

  “I suppose I deserved them. I was always standoff-ish.”

  “I guess you were a little bit.”

  She smiled wryly. “That’s better. Your mother always said honesty came naturally to you.”

  I blinked, surprised by the mention of my mother.

  “I’m going to start on lunch,” my grandmother said. “Are you coming?”

  I looked at the cobwebs drooping from the ceiling, and the dust-streaked windows. My mother had been here; she’d sat underneath the cobwebs, and talked about me to my grandmother, apparently.

  “I’m going outside for a bit.”

  “As you wish.”

  I went out and played badminton in the garden, ducking underneath the net I’d set up between two hawthorn trees the day before, trying to reach the shuttlecock’s downward swoop before it hit the ground. Maybe my grandmother was the only person who was actually nice to my mother, then, I thought, although I couldn’t really remember them talking, except during the picnic.

  I hit a particularly mean overhand, scrambled across, and the shuttlecock sailed over my outstretched racquet and into the water behind me. “Shit.”

  I parted the reeds along the edge of the lake with my racquet; if the shuttlecock was there, I’d never find it. I scuffed my shoe along the cracked wood of the jetty, trailing my racquet in the water. Just beyond the edge of the landing stage, something was glinting in the water, blurred by the ripples. I lay on my stomach and tried to focus on it; it seemed to be round and small and shiny. I tried to scoop it up with my racquet, but the water was already way too deep. I stood up and kicked off my shoes, closing my eyes as I jumped.

  The cold made my heart stumble. I opened my eyes – everything was soft and muted, shimmering in the waves I’d created. Below me I saw our rowing boat shift then settle again in the shadows; we’d sunk it a few summers before, trying to drive a mast into it. Something slimy wrapped itself around my wrist and I struggled frantically, until I realised it was just a reed. I doggy-paddled in one spot. I could hear the wood of the jetty groaning, and a faint buzzing that I couldn’t identify.

  I dived towards the shiny object. Down there, it didn’t look so shiny. My fingers closed around it and I swam upwards, kicking until I broke the surface.

  Now I could make out what the other noise had been. My grandmother was running down the lawn, her long legs eating up the grass and wisps of grey hair tumbling out of her bun. “I’m coming,” she was yelling. “I’m coming.”

  I heaved myself up and out of the water and stood there shivering until she reached me.

  “What happened? Did you fall?”

  “I jumped.”

  Her mouth fell open, then she stretched out her hand and gripped me by the upper arm. “Let’s get you inside.”

  “What on earth were you doing, diving into the lake at this time of year?” she asked, when I was changed and sitting in the living-room. Just this once, she’d allowed a fire to be lit, hauling logs from the gardening shed into the house. “Are you ill?” She clamped her hand against my forehead.

  “No,” I said, pushing her away. “I’m fine.” I took a gulp of my tea. “I thought I saw something.”

  “What did you see?”

  “Nothing.”

  “So help me, my girl, if this is your way of paying me back… ”

  “It’s got nothing to do with you,” I said, and I was taken aback to find tears coursing down my face. I opened my palm and showed her the aluminium ring pull I’d dredged up.

  My grandmother shook her head at me.

  “I thought it was my mum’s wedding ring.”

  “Why would your mother’s wedding ring be in the lake?”

  “I don’t know, no reason,” I said, sniffing and sipping at my tea. I just wanted it to be, I thought, and then I’d have something of hers for myself.

  “Tallulah, you can’t dive into the lake in the middle of winter – you could make yourself sick.”

  I brushed my cheeks with the heel of my hand. “I won’t do it again.”

  “Good.”

  “Thanks for not being angry.”

  “Of course I’m not angry.”

  It’s how my father would have dealt with it though.

  “Thanks anyway,” I said.

  She stroked a lock of hair away from my face. “Anytime.”

  A week later, I was leaning out of my bedroom window, smoking a cigarette I’d stolen from my grandmother, when I heard the doorbell. My grandmother answered the door and a man’s voice filled the hallway.

  “Tallulah,” she called.

  I sprayed deodorant on myself generously then went downstairs, praying it wasn’t my father. My heart did a funny dance when I saw Malkie standing in front of the door. We smiled awkwardly at each other.

  “What’s wrong with the two of you?” my grandmother asked. “Cat got your tongues?”

  “What’ve you done with your hair, doll?” Malkie asked.

  Earlier that day my grandmother had marched me into the bathroom, pushed me onto the toilet lid and taken her scissors to my hair, rapping me on the head when I swore. Now I was fringe-less and sleek locks fell in waves around my face.

  I ran my fingers through my new cut. “It’s gone,” I said.

  “I can see that,” he said.

  “Don’t you like it?”

  “It’s nice. Just makes you look a little… older.”

  “Hruh,” my grandmother said. “I think you’ll find the word you’re searching for, Malcolm, is feminine. And Tallulah, don’t stand chatting on the stairs. Come down and greet our guest properly.”

  “Hi, Malcolm,” I said, offering him my hand. “How do you do?”

  “Very well, thank you,” Malkie said, taking my hand in his. I giggled. My grandmother gave us a cold look. “Malcolm is going to be teaching you piano,” she said. “Apparently this was a long-standing agreement.” She looked at her watch. “You know where the piano is, Tallulah.”

  I took Malkie through to the dining-room and sat on the piano stool; he drew up a chair next to me. “First,” he said, “we gotta get your posture right.” He placed one hand on my shoulder, and the other on my lower back. “Drop your shoulders,” he said. “And straighten your back.”

  I tried to drop my shoulders. Across the hallway we could he
ar my grandmother shouting at the TV: “What’s this nonsense about ghosts – come on, woman, it’s not going to be a ghost, is it?”

  “Why are you really here?” I asked.

  “I’m a friendly face, and Matilda thinks you need one right now.” He took a penny out of his pocket. “So here I am, if you ever need to talk. On the other hand, as we’re sitting at the piano, why don’t we give it a whirl?”

  He took my right hand and placed it on the keys with the penny on top of it. “Move your fingers,” he said. “Play some notes.”

  I played a few notes. The penny slipped off my hand. Malkie picked it up and put it back. I played again; he caught it this time before it hit the floor.

  “The trick,” he said, “is to move your fingers without moving your hands too much. It should come from your wrists and arms.”

  I stared at him. “How can I move my fingers and wrists without moving my hands?”

  “You gotta use gravity.”

  “What?”

  “It’s all about control,” he said. “You gotta control your fingers, but you gotta let other stuff help you.”

  “Riiiiight,” I said.

  He poked my back again. “Don’t slouch. Why don’t you practise single notes with the penny on your hand? We can start with middle C.”

  I took him to the front door when he left. “Can I ask you a question?”

  “Sure.”

  “Did you meet Uncle Jack in prison?”

  “Nope,” Malkie said. “And that’s not a very polite question to ask, young lady.”

  “Sorry,” I said, squirming inside.

  “I met him in about 1974,” Malkie said. “Your aunt too. She was wearing flared trousers back then, and neat little waistcoats.”

  I tried to picture Aunt Vivienne in flares and a waistcoat, but I couldn’t.

  “And your mom – she looked like a blonder Raquel Welch. Jeez she was pretty.”

  “Who was that?”

  “Look her up, doll.”

  I paused. “Why did you all stop… being friends?”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “I didn’t know you when I was younger. Or Uncle Jack.”