The Artificial Anatomy of Parks Read online

  “Of course I didn’t trust him,” my father said. “He wanted to take her away from me. He told me.”

  There was a pause – the person on the other end must have started talking.

  “I know it could never happen,” my father said, sounding angry. “But I wanted to avoid any trouble. You of all people should understand.”

  Pause.

  “Who knows what he would have done if I hadn’t? He certainly threatened to… As I said, it’s irrelevant now. What’s done is done. I’m quite sure we won’t hear from him again. No, don’t make excuses for him, Mother, Jack wants to punish me. I don’t want to talk about it. And I don’t want those earrings in my house. Yes, Merry Christmas. Goodbye.”

  I heard the sound of the receiver being replaced and footsteps coming towards the door of the study. I scrambled back to the living-room and lay down quickly on the sofa, my throat pulsing in time with my heartbeat, trying to make sense of what I’d just heard. My grandmother had been right when she implied Uncle Jack was still around, then.

  ‘He wanted to take her away from me.’

  I realised something that I must have known all along: Uncle Jack had loved my mother, and he’d wanted her to go away with him.

  I concentrated on breathing slowly.

  Would she have gone?

  Maybe she’d really loved him back. Even if she’d warned him off that time in the rose garden, she could have changed her mind. She’d only got depressed after he left, after all. And my father knew it too.

  ‘I should have known… I pushed her away.’

  Had he been talking at cross-purposes to Kathy’s mum? I’d never considered that he could have been talking about pushing her away emotionally – he certainly did that after Uncle Jack appeared.

  He knew that there was something between them. That’s why he’d been angry and cold to her. And then he’d come home early and found them talking. He could have let her die on purpose.

  The footsteps were getting heavier now. The film had started up again and I forced myself to look at the screen. The TV showed the reflection of my father standing in the doorway, looking in at me, but he didn’t say anything. He was in bed by the time I switched it off.

  Twelve

  When 1995 came, my second stint at boarding school came with it. Having had free run of my grandmother’s house and garden made me chafe even more against the rules, the curfews, the separation of the girls and boys, the exact measurements specified in the uniform code. But I was determined to make her proud. I’d promised her I wouldn’t act up. It was hard, though, when the teachers were unsympathetic, and even Edith was off with me. I was glad to get to my first art class. I arrived early and found Mr Hicks setting up the desks. “Hey,” I said, feeling shy.

  “Hi there, Tallulah,” he said, turning around. He looked like he was going to say something else, but then stopped, and gave a short laugh. “Wow.”

  I flushed.

  “You look very different.”

  “My hair’s shorter.”

  “I can see that.”

  “My grandma did it.”

  “Do you want to help me finish setting up?”

  “Okay.”

  He looked at me again, then his eyes slid away, then back. “Sorry, I’m half asleep – here, put a sheet of tracing paper out for everyone.”

  “Okay.”

  “Thank you,” he said, formally.

  He didn’t look at me properly for the rest of the afternoon or comment on my work. I wondered if he was annoyed at me for some reason.

  I had maths after art. I slunk in and took a place at the back. Cressida sat diagonally in front of me, across the aisle from Edith. Halfway through the class she reached across and poked Edith with her pen. “I think you might have lost something,” she said, quietly, and brought something out of her school shirt.

  “My necklace,” Edith said, sounding like she was going to cry. “Where did you get that?”

  “I found it.” Cressida looked back and smiled at me nastily.

  “It’s Edith’s,” I said.

  “I don’t see her name on it.”

  “It’s her St Christopher necklace.”

  Cressida smirked. “Maybe next time she won’t keep her valuables underneath her bed like a retard.”

  I stood up. “I think Cressida’s confused,” I said, loudly. “She thinks the necklace she’s wearing is hers but it’s actually Edith’s.”

  “We’ll discuss this after class,” our maths teacher said.

  “I think we should discuss it now,” I said, even louder.

  “I think we should see what Mr Purvis has to say about your behaviour,” she said, but she looked at Cressida. “Is that your necklace, Cressida?”

  “It looks like it,” Cressida said, simpering. “I could have picked up the wrong one though.”

  “Edith?”

  “I probably left it lying around,” Edith said.

  “Give it to me,” the teacher said. “You’re not meant to be wearing jewellery anyway. Edith, you can collect it after class.”

  I was sent to the Headmaster’s office and escorted immediately back by the secretary. “Tallulah is having some adjustment issues,” she said to my maths teacher. She had pink acrylic nails that day. She spoke in a stage-whisper, so the whole classroom could hear her. “Herbert feels that she should be allowed to settle back in at her own pace, for now.”

  “Who’s Herbert?” I asked, and the other students sniggered.

  “Mr Purvis, of course,” the secretary said. Her face had gone the same colour as her nails.

  “Alright then, thank you for bringing her back, Miss Duvall,” the teacher said. “Tallulah, work with Edith for now. We’ve moved on to trigonometry problems. And no more interruptions.”

  I slid into a chair next to Edith, who stared at me. “Thanks,” she said, shyly.

  “It’s okay,” I said.

  I circle the waiting-room while a group of medical students check on my father. I brush past the fronds of overly-green synthetic plants, underneath neon strip-lighting. The air seems stale and I wonder, fleetingly, how my father found the strength to walk through the hospital doors day after day for the last twenty-five years.

  The aunts arrive. I tell them what the hospital has told me – he’s been in and out of consciousness since his eyes opened, and they’re monitoring him closely.

  “They say no need to panic,” I say, “but they’d prefer us in here for now.”

  “Of course. Come sit down,” Aunt Gillian says, soothingly, although I think I see her lower lip tremble.

  The chairs are hard, plastic, orange versions of the ones you find in schools. I always hated sitting still on them. In summertime, when you stood up, sweat slicks showed where the backs of your thighs and knees had been. Much better to keep moving.

  Maybe I never felt comfortable inside my skin. My grandmother would have a lot to say about that.

  I flick through the magazines. Someone called Lady Helen Taylor is on the front of Vogue, showing a lot of even white teeth and striking greenish-blue eyes. They’re the same colour as my mother’s; the same colour as Toby’s.

  My mother would be turning forty-six this month if she’d lived. Uncle Jack, out there somewhere in the world, must be forty-nine, if he’s five and a half years younger than my father. Toby was about eighteen the last time I saw him.

  My father’s birthday is the fifth of May, born three and a half years after the end of the Second World War when my grandmother was still twenty-one. The same age I am now. I don’t know how she did it; there’s no way I could cope. Clearly my father felt the same way – he was in his early thirties when I came along, but he and my mother must have decided not to have any more children after me. He probably realised he wasn’t cut out for fatherhood.

  “I haven’t seen a soul since we got here,” Aunt Vivienne says, standing up. “No wonder people die of neglect in these places.”

  “Where are you going?” Aunt Gilli
an asks.

  “If you must know, I’m going to the bathroom,” Aunt Vivienne says over her shoulder.

  “What if he goes back into a coma?” Aunt Gillian asks, when she’s gone. “How are they going to wake him up?”

  “They normally reverse the cause of the coma,” I say. “Like, they’ll give someone a glucose shock if they had low sugar, or medicate them to reduce swelling on the brain, things like that. Sometimes they induce hypothermia for cardiac patients.”

  “Isn’t that dangerous?”

  “Apparently it works,” I say. “They cool them down to two or three degrees lower than body temperature for about a day, externally or intravascularly.”

  “This isn’t some experimental treatment they do in the East?”

  “I read about it this morning,” I say. “In a British medical textbook.”

  “I still don’t like the sound of it,” Aunt Gillian says.

  “It’s probably to reduce the risk of ischemic injury,” I say.

  “That sounds familiar,” Aunt Gillian says; she looks half-placated.

  “It’s a restriction of blood supply to tissues,” I say. “After a heart attack, the blood flow’s insufficient and… ”

  Someone runs past the waiting-room door, screaming, and we both freeze, but it’s just a kid in a Spiderman outfit.

  “Mac, get back here,” a woman calls after him.

  We exchange looks – Aunt Gillian releases her breath and I wipe away the trickle of sweat that’s started down my face.

  “Now where’s Vivienne got to?” Aunt Gillian murmurs.

  Exams came. I sat in the stuffy room with two hundred and twenty-three other students and stared at the questions in front of me. Someone had left their coffee mug on the original paper, the photocopier reproducing two hundred and twenty-four faint smudgy rings. I bit my lip in frustration, I cursed my private tutor. I tried working on several problems, but gave up halfway through each. I looked at the clock – only fifteen minutes in. We weren’t allowed to leave before half an hour was up, but after ten minutes more of tapping my pen on the desk, a teacher came and told me I could go.

  After that, Mr Purvis summoned me to his office and told me I was on a final warning. Mr Hicks had volunteered to take over as my personal mentor, he said, and we would meet once a week to work through the assignments I was struggling with most. If I still didn’t improve… He looked bored, shuffled his papers and I was dismissed.

  Mr Hicks was in the corridor outside, chatting to some female students. When he saw me come out of the office he waved me over.

  “Walk with me to the studio,” he said.

  I carried his register for him and he made small-talk until we were out of earshot.

  “Did Mr Purvis tell you the plan?”

  “Yep.”

  “You’re going to have to pull your socks up, you know.”

  “I guess.”

  “Look, Tallulah, I honestly think you’re a talented student.”

  I kept quiet, but I felt my skin heat up.

  He put his hand on my shoulder. “Let’s say we meet lunchtime every Friday – we can have thirty-minute progress sessions. And, of course I’ll be available if you have any problems during the rest of the week. But you’ll have to trust me, and work hard even when you don’t like the subjects.”

  “Okay.”

  “Promise?”

  “Promise.”

  “Friday, then,” he said. “Come find me in my office.”

  When I failed all my exams, Mr Hicks got the teachers to give me extra essays to get me in practice, and catch-up notes for the last term. He was still positive in art class. I was very good at shading and perspective, he said. Edith elbowed me in the ribs.

  “You’re his favourite,” she said. “He never says anything about my work.”

  I looked at her drawing. Bright balls of colour stuck rigidly out of a vase, which was sitting on a perfectly square table.

  “That’s because you don’t have any perspective,” I said, taking her pencil. “Draw the table like this – the lines should get closer to each other here to show that they’re further off in the distance, see? Things nearer your eye are bigger, things further away are smaller.”

  “If only you could apply some of that knowledge to your physics homework,” Mr Hicks murmured behind me.

  I jumped.

  “I’m sorry, I thought you knew I was here.” He winked at me. “Well carry on with the good work. But don’t put me out of a job.” He smiled and strolled off.

  “You like him back,” Edith hissed.

  “I don’t.”

  “You do. You’ve gone red.”

  “I don’t. I was just surprised,” I said lamely.

  “He’s cute. He’s got dimples.”

  “Do you want me to help you or not?”

  “Yes, help me. Teacher’s Pet.”

  My first session with Mr Hicks was scheduled for three weeks into the term, after I was ‘settled’, he said. I was five minutes late, so I ran; I was out of breath by the time I reached his office.

  “Come in,” he called.

  I pushed the door open and stopped there. None of us had ever seen the inside – Mr Hicks called it his sanctuary. A rumour had gone around that he’d been seen going into the room with nothing but a towel on once, and a few girls in my year had tried to look through the keyhole after that, but it’d been too dark to make anything out. As far as I could see, the room was basically a cupboard, with shelves lining three of the four walls, and a deep, wooden desk piled high with paper in the middle of the floor. The one unusual item I could see was a futon mattress shoved behind one of the shelving units, and I wondered if Mr Hicks lived here.

  “Take a seat,” he said. He was sitting on the other side of the desk, so all I could see of what he was wearing was a white linen shirt, and a dark leather bracelet. He could have had a towel wrapped around him instead of trousers. I blushed when I thought of this.

  He put away a cigarette he’d been rolling and smiled at me. “Look, I know exams seem pointless. But everyone has to do them, so what we’ll be discussing here is how you get through them with minimum fuss, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “As well as anything else that’s been on your mind.” His smile dropped for a moment. “So, if you don’t mind me asking… ”

  “What?”

  “Last September,” he said. “When you went to live with your grandmother. Miss Duvall tells me you asked to telephone her rather than your father.”

  “Did she?” I muttered.

  “I was just wondering if there was a problem between you and your father?” He smiled encouragingly.

  “Like what?”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t like to pry, but obviously I care about your welfare… ” He pulled a face. “I’m trying to be delicate here, but I’ll just come out and ask. Does your father in any way mistreat you?”

  I felt myself flushing. “Like touching me?”

  Mr Hicks looked awkward. “Or put you down, verbally. Or even hit you. They’re all forms of abuse.”

  “No,” I said, louder than I’d intended.

  “I’m sorry, Tallulah. I didn’t want to put you on the defensive. I want you to feel that you can talk to me about anything.”

  “Yeah, fine.”

  He drummed his fingers on the desk. “We’ve obviously hit a nerve,” he said. “Let’s start again. How about I tell you something about myself and my relationship with my parents, and then you can see I’m not judging you.”

  I shrugged.

  “Well.” He cleared his throat. “Take my father, for instance. He had a thing about art being only for girls and homosexuals.”

  Mr Hicks wasn’t looking in my direction, but I thought I saw his jaw tighten. “By the end of my time in that house we only spoke to each other through my mother. And then she died over Christmas, and we haven’t spoken since. So you see, I understand completely not getting along with a parent.�
��

  He looked sad, and I wondered how close he’d been to his mum. I wanted to comfort him, but that thought made me blush as well.

  “Sorry your mum died.”

  He sighed. “People can’t possibly understand until they go through it.”

  “Everyone thinks they know best,” I said. “They either want to forget it, or talk about her. Especially if they didn’t know her, they want to talk about her.”

  Mr Hicks gave me a half-smile. He’d taken the cigarette out again and was pinching it at both ends. “I’ll take that as a hint. But back to what we were saying. It’s stupid, but my father will never change his mind.”

  “He sounds like an idiot.”

  “Well… Some people just can’t get along. Does this sound familiar?”

  “Yeah, kind of.”

  In my head I saw my father’s disinterested face. Whenever I thought of him, he did the same thing: he looked blank, then he turned away. I could see him turning away from me in the hall, going into his study, turning away from me and walking back to the car when he dropped me off at school. I pushed the images away.

  Mr Hicks nodded. “It’s perfectly normal,” he said. “And I’m sure your dad’s very fond of you, really. But you do deserve to be told how special you are. Which is why you’ve got me. And now the important thing is to get you to start socialising, showing some team spirit – it’ll go down well with Mr Purvis, if nothing else. How about a sport? How are you at netball?”

  I was okay at netball it turned out, and my PE teacher said they needed someone tall to stand by the goal and hit the ball away when it came near. It was easy, she said. After the first few games, I started to enjoy it. It was easy, and in the summer it was nice to be outside, the sun baking the tarmac.

  “I’ve heard you’re practically an Olympian,” my grandmother said during our next telephone conversation.

  “What does that mean?”

  “That you’re doing very well for yourself.”

  “Oh.” I wondered who could have mentioned it.

  She gave a hacking cough.

  “What did the tests show?” I asked.

  “Nothing.”

  I sighed. “I know you’re keeping things from me.”