The Artificial Anatomy of Parks Page 9

  “Like what?”

  “Classical, mostly.”

  “Boring.” My father had a huge collection of classical tapes – all music and no words.

  Malkie looked back at me, resting his chin on his shoulder. “Chopin’s ‘Funeral March’,” he said after a pause. He grinned again. “They played it at JFK’s funeral.”

  “Who’s that?”

  He shook his head. “Don’t you know any history?” he teased. “Kennedy was the President of the USA. Before your time, of course.”

  “Oh,” I said, trying to look like I knew what he was talking about.

  “Jeez,” Malkie said, rubbing his neck. “You never really know how old you are ’til everyone you’ve heard of is dead.” He looked away.

  “How old are you?”

  Malkie grinned again. “I try not to think about that,” he said. “How old are you?”

  “Ten.” I scratched at a bite on my leg. “How does it go?” I asked, “The Kennedy song.”

  “If I had a piano, I’d pick it out for you.”

  “You play the piano?” I was surprised. Malkie’s hands didn’t look like they could do anything delicate.

  He pretended to swipe at me. “Yes I can play the piano, little lady,” he said.

  I stood up. “There’s a music room downstairs,” I said. “We can go down, no one will be there, and it’s soundproofed.” Aunt Gillian wanted her kids to be musical, but she didn’t necessarily want to hear it.

  I led Malkie back into the house, carrying my socks and shoes in my hands. Malkie followed on his tiptoes along the parquet floor.

  He whistled when he saw the piano, a black Steinway Grand. I pulled up the stool from the corner for him; it didn’t seem like Georgia and James had been practising too hard.

  Malkie sat down and ran his fingers lightly over the keys. I sat cross-legged on the wooden floor, my shoes and socks abandoned, my heart thumping in my chest. Malkie started to play. He closed his eyes and swayed slightly, rocking backwards and swelling forwards with the movement of the music. I drew my legs up and buried my face into my knees, using them to squeeze my eyes shut too. I had never played the piano, or heard anyone who was any good play in front of me, and it made me feel the closeness of the room, and the humming of my body and the air around us.

  “That was so sad,” I said, when the piece was over.

  “Yeah,” he agreed.

  I looked down at my feet, my eyes welling up. Malkie must have seen them, because he swung his legs around and faced me. “You can let it all out, doll, I don’t mind.”

  It was just as well – the tears were already spilling out onto my dress. Malkie gathered me up in his arms and sat me down in his lap. I was too big to sit like that with my mother, but I felt almost lost inside Malkie’s giant hug. I waited until my shoulders had stopped heaving before I spoke.

  “It’s my mum’s birthday and she’s sad,” I said.

  “I’m sorry, doll. Do you know why she’s sad?”

  “No. But she got worse after Uncle Jack went away,” I said. I sniffed and wiped snot off my face. Malkie offered me his sleeve.

  “Is that so?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “But I know they’re not friends anymore. I heard them arguing and my mum said Jack wasn’t being fair, and Uncle Jack said she took advantage of my dad.”

  “Oh?”

  “Why would he say that?”

  Malkie looked uneasy. “I dunno,” he muttered.

  I punched my leg in frustration. “I don’t like Uncle Jack,” I said. “I’m not sad about him going away. I just want my mum to be normal, like before.”

  “Sometimes people are sad, doll. You just have to let it run its course.”

  “So do nothing?”

  “Yep.”

  “That’s stupid.”

  “Well that’s my advice,” he said. “You can take it or leave it.”

  “I’m gonna leave it.”

  Malkie chuckled. “You know your own mind, at least,” he said.

  Aunt Gillian swooped down on us when we emerged from the music room. “Tallie,” she cried. “We’ve all been so worried about you.”

  “I was just downstairs with Malkie,” I said, pulling my arm out of her grip. “He was playing the piano for me.”

  “You play the piano?” Aunt Gillian looked a little taken aback. My face burned.

  Malkie inclined his head at her, and gave me a wink.

  “Well, it was very nice of you to show Tallie,” Aunt Gillian said. “But really, none of us knew where she was. Everyone’s very upset.”

  “Who’s upset?” I asked.

  She ignored me. “Evelyn’s… not strong at the moment,” she said to Malkie. “And the children… ”

  James strutted out of the kitchen with the largest sandwich I’d ever seen. “Hi, Dolly,” he said to me, spraying crumbs everywhere.

  Aunt Gillian looked a little put out. “Dolly?”

  “Dolly Parton,” James said. He dug me in the ribs with his elbow, then remembered the last time and quickly sidestepped away. “It’s a joke, Mum. ’Cos she’s got no tits.”

  “James,” Aunt Gillian said, looking shocked. “I can’t believe I just heard that word come out of your mouth.”

  “Yeah, shut up, idiot,” I said. I refrained from kicking him; I didn’t want Malkie to see me lose my cool.

  “I’m sorry, Gillian,” Malkie said. “I didn’t mean to cause any trouble.”

  “Well in that case you shouldn’t be here at all,” Uncle George said, suddenly behind Aunt Gillian and James and putting his hands on their shoulders.

  Malkie narrowed his eyes. “I don’t see how it’s any of your business.”

  “It’s my house, sonny. And I don’t appreciate old skeletons forcing their way out of locked closets.”

  “Matilda invited me.”

  “Well, no one else wants you here.”

  “Why can’t Malkie stay?” I said.

  The sunlight falling through the hall window glinted off Uncle George’s glasses, hiding his eyes. “Because, Tallulah,” he said slowly. “Your aunt and I don’t welcome thieves and drug addicts into our house. Especially not crack-heads who ruin people’s lives. Why don’t you just run on back to Canada, where you belong.”

  Malkie’s bellow was like no sound I’d ever heard a human make. James’ mouth fell open and Aunt Gillian whimpered. Turning towards Malkie, I saw him ball his hand into a fist and start advancing on Uncle George, then, “Mr Jones,” my father said, appearing from the kitchen. I realised he must have been standing just out of sight, listening to our conversation. Malkie stopped and my father gestured towards the front door. “If you wouldn’t mind stepping outside.”

  “Malkie,” Aunt Gillian said, her voice trembling. “Malkie, please – we’re just trying to think of the children.”

  Malkie glared at Uncle George and followed my father outside. Uncle George faced Aunt Gillian, wiping his forehead. “Did you see that?” he asked. “He was going to hit me!”

  Aunt Gillian put her hand on his arm and shook her head quickly. She looked at me and James, then at someone behind us. I turned to see Michael with a strange expression on his face.

  “Tallulah, James, you two run off and play now,” she said. “Michael, can you make sure they stay upstairs for a bit?”

  “We don’t need looking after,” James grumbled, but he followed his older brother and so did I.

  Upstairs, James shut his bedroom door behind us, muffling the buzz of the party downstairs. We sat on the floor, leaning against his bed. Michael stood at the window, kicking his heels against the wall.

  “Why was your dad hiding in the kitchen?” James said.

  “Why was your dad so mean?”

  “He’s not our dad,” Michael said, without looking at me.

  I was surprised. Uncle George was Aunt Gillian’s second husband, but my cousins never talked about it. Uncle John, Gillian’s first husband, had died when I was one, and I’d never q
uestioned how the children would feel about his replacement.

  “Your stepdad then,” I said. “What he said was horrible.” I hadn’t understood what he’d meant exactly, but I’d caught the tone. “What’s a crack-head?”

  Michael was ignoring us, fiddling with the cord that tied the curtain back, so I turned to James who shrugged. I felt angry. Malkie had been nice to me. I didn’t understand why everyone was being rude to him.

  “He called Malkie a thief, but he wasn’t stealing – I was with him, he didn’t touch anything.”

  “George doesn’t like Uncle Jack or his friends,” Michael said.

  “Why?”

  “He’s a bad influence,” James said. “Jack always has problems and we always have to pick up the pieces.”

  Michael snorted. “You’re just repeating George word for word.”

  “What problems does Uncle Jack have?” I asked.

  James gave me a funny look. “You can’t actually be as thick as you seem,” he said pityingly.

  I went to kick him, but he scrambled out of the way.

  “Stop it, kids,” Michael said, but I saw his grin.

  I lay down; James stayed where he was, looking down at me. “You know, Tallie, if you don’t change your behaviour, you’re going to end up like Jack,” he said.

  “Like how?” I asked.

  James muttered something under his breath.

  “I can’t hear you,” I said. “But you better not be calling me names.”

  “Don’t say anything,” Michael warned from across the room.

  “I won’t. Tallie’s too much of a baby, anyway, and she’d just tell her mum.”

  “I wouldn’t,” I said. “I don’t tell her everything.”

  I was annoyed – I really didn’t know anything about Uncle Jack, like I’d told Malkie, and no one seemed to want to tell me, either. Even James knew something.

  “I’m bored of babysitting,” Michael said after a while. “I’m going downstairs. Tallie, if he’s annoying you have my permission to thump him.”

  “You can’t give permission for that,” James yelled.

  “I’m your older brother – I can do what I want,” Michael said. He walked over to us and cuffed James around the head. “Like that.”

  James tried to throw a punch but Michael blocked it easily and cuffed him again.

  “Get lost,” James shouted after the closed door, then turned to me. “I can beat him.”

  “In your dreams,” I said. “So tell me about Uncle Jack.”

  “He was in prison.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “Am not,” James said, inspecting his nails.

  “When was he in prison?”

  “Until this year.”

  “What was he in for?”

  James looked shifty. “I think drugs,” he said.

  “You don’t know.”

  “I do – Dad said he was into drugs, so it must be drugs, right?”

  My mouth felt dry. I thought of my mother at the kitchen table, ring finger clinking against her coffee mug, and wondered if she knew about Uncle Jack being in prison, and why she’d never told me if she did.

  “He was selling drugs to people.” James’s voice was starting to make me feel sick. “You do that, you go to prison – it’s as simple as that, and anyone who says different is just a hippy.”

  “Stop it.”

  “I can say whatever I want.”

  “My mum says it’s society’s fault if someone becomes a criminal.”

  James smirked. “That’s just more proof she’s going mental.”

  “What?”

  “Everyone’s been talking about it. They say your mum’s cracking up.”

  I felt my stomach rush towards the floor. “Don’t say that about my mum.”

  “Why not?”

  “Shut up.”

  “I’m just telling you what they’re saying.”

  I kicked his bed. “Don’t talk about my mum like that.” My voice was high and James started to look worried.

  “Sorry, Tallie,” he said. “I didn’t think you’d go mental.” He came over and tried to touch my arm. I scratched his face.

  “Leave me alone,” I yelled.

  He backed away from me. “Sorry,” he said again, looking even more frightened. He paused. “Can we make up?”

  I stood there, waiting, until I could breathe again.

  “Tallie,” James whispered after a moment. “You won’t say anything to anyone, will you?”

  I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand, then my nose. He looked really scared and for a second I thought about telling.

  “Tallie?”

  “I’m not a grass.”

  James looked relieved. “Friends, okay?”

  “Fine.”

  We went downstairs. Aunt Gillian shrieked when she saw the scratch on James’ face, which was bleeding a little. “James. What happened to you?” she asked, mopping at him with a tissue.

  James looked guilty again, and a little sick at the sight of the blood.

  “I scratched him,” I said. “We were fighting.”

  “Tallulah.” Aunt Gillian straightened up and looked disapprovingly at me. “You’ve been very naughty today. Going off with strangers, and now fighting.”

  Uncle George, who was skulking behind her, muttered something like: “Blood will out.”

  I stared at him with what I hoped looked like hate. If Malkie could have come in just then and smashed Uncle George in half I would have clapped. I tried to imagine it happening. I imagined the piano wire snapping and taking Uncle George’s head off, blood pouring from his neck and his body crumpling to the floor. I imagined kicking his head as it rolled towards me, or jumping on it until it was a pulpy mess beneath my feet.

  “Believe me, young lady, you have no reason to be smirking like that,” Aunt Gillian said.

  I went home in disgrace.

  Six

  “You’re late,” my boss says when I turn up for the early-morning shift the next day.

  “I know,” I say. I’m already annoyed with myself for bottling out of finding Toby, and now I’m working my least favourite shift: six a.m until two p.m, with a half-hour for lunch. I’ll have to deal with the truckers and builders in the morning, the vulgar comments and the blatant sexism, and the local office workers around midday, sexist in a subtler way. On the whole I prefer the builders.

  I take the plates Sean is holding out to me, push my way through the kitchen doors and put them down in front of the two men on table three.

  “Lovely,” one of them says. He’s got a scar running diagonally across his face, dissecting his mouth so it looks like he’s talking out of one side of it.

  “This isn’t ours,” the other one says. He’s got a tattoo of a bluebird on his neck.

  I check the order again – it’s for table eight. “Okay,” I say, scooping the plates back up.

  “I don’t mind,” the first one says. “I’m fucking starving.”

  “I’ll bring yours out soon,” I say, and deliver the plates to the right table. Table eight don’t say anything; they don’t look up from their newspapers.

  “Any sauces?” I ask. “Ketchup, mayonnaise, mustard?”

  One of them grunts, probably a no. I go back behind the counter and refill the coffee pot. The bell goes off by the serving hatch and I take the plates out to table four, then table five, then table three.

  “About bloody time,” the first guy says.

  “Don’t mind him,” the other one says, winking. When I turn around I feel a sting on my arse. I look back and he’s leering at me. I pick up his fork and bend down towards him.

  “If you do that again,” I say, “I’ll put this through your hand.”

  “Fucking hell.”

  “Calm down – he’s only playing around,” the first one says.

  “I’m not,” I say. I put the fork back on the table and give him my best Aunt Vivienne smile.

  My boss is standing be
hind the counter; he beckons me over. “What the fuck’s going on?” he hisses.

  “Nothing.”

  “What were you doing with his fork?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Where’s my ketchup?” the guy from table eight yells.

  “Pull yourself together,” my boss says. “I dunno what your problem is today, but it better fucking disappear.”

  I take the ketchup over and settle the bill for tables four and five; I refill coffee mugs for table two and take table six’s order. I clear surfaces and dry the cutlery that’s just come out of the dishwasher with a teatowel. One of the guys on table three makes a signal with his hand and I take their bill over.

  “Sorry about before,” the first guy says. “He was only playing though, sweetheart.”

  “Eight pounds ten,” I say.

  “We don’t wanna make any trouble – we come here all the time.”

  “You shouldn’t eat so much fried food,” I say. “It’s bad for your heart.”

  “I know, I know,” he says. “But the fags’ll probably kill me first.”

  I take the tenner he’s holding out and dig in the pockets of my apron for some change.

  “Keep it, love.”

  “Thanks,” I say, trying for a real smile this time.

  I wipe the table down after them. I think about my father, and how healthily he ate, compared to this lot. Salads and fresh fruit juices, muesli for breakfast. It went downhill a little after my mother died; maybe he stopped altogether after I was out of the picture. Maybe he spent the last five years gorging himself. Toby used to be able to get through two dinners a night.

  I vaguely hear the bell from the kitchen, but it doesn’t register until my boss shouts my name across the café. “Are you bloody deaf?”

  All the workers are laughing. I carry the plates over to table six. I try to avoid looking anyone in the eye. Halfway across the room I stumble and the contents of one of the plates slops all over the floor. My boss is fuming when I get back behind the counter. “That’s coming out of your wages.”

  “I know.”

  “Go and clean it up.”

  I get the mop and some cheap blue kitchen roll and clean it up as best as I can. I take the new plate over when it’s ready and put it down in front of the guy. “Sorry,” I say. “Any sauces?”

  “Let’s not risk it, eh?” he says.