Make Me Clean, page 20
He disappears into his bedroom as Maria takes a sip of the thick chocolate and brandy warms her on its way down. She sits and closes her eyes a second. The drink is like a hug.
Balogan returns with a large grey woollen banket decorated with geometric patterns and stylised reindeer and lays it over Maria’s legs.
She jumps as his hand brushes her hip, spilling a little hot chocolate on her hand, hurriedly licking it before it dribbles on to the blanket.
‘Sorry!’
‘I think you might say that word too much.’
‘Yes, sor—’
‘You are about to say sorry for saying sorry!’ He laughs. It is a good, deep sound. He comes to sit next to her, pulling the blanket over his legs as well as hers.
‘And how is Maria?’ he enquires amiably.
‘Tired,’ she answers honestly.
‘And your friend? The old lady? How is she?’
‘Elsie? She’s, sort of … as well as can be expected.’
‘This is an odd phrase, “As well as can be expected.” Another English expression. Surely, we should hope for the best?’
‘Hope for the best, expect the worst, shoot down the middle,’ says Maria. ‘My dad used to say that.’
‘Used to?’
‘He died. A long time after my mum. She died when I was born.’ Why did she tell him that?
‘Both of us orphans,’ says Balogan.
It might be that comment, it might be exhaustion, or the brandy, or a million other things, but Maria suddenly bursts into loud sobs.
They’re both shocked.
She puts down her mug. ‘I’m so sorry!’ she gulps, fighting to get a grip on her emotions. ‘I’ll just get my things and go—’
Before she can get up, Balogan reaches round and hugs her to him. And he holds her there against the warmth of his barrel chest, one hand on her bristly head, the other wrapped around her shoulders.
She braces against him for a second, two, but despite everything, her muscles start relaxing and her body becomes so heavy she thinks she might rest there for ever. There is nothing sexual in the gesture, which is comforting.
It is only when his phone buzzes that the moment passes.
He reads a text, then looks up. They regard each other. She hesitates. What does she want from him? Should she even trust him?
And then she blurts it out. ‘I saw what was in the cupboard. Under the stairs. In the scarf.’
His whole body tenses.
She wonders if he might pretend he doesn’t know what she’s talking about, bluff it out.
Instead, he asks, ‘Did you touch it?’
‘No.’ The lie is instantaneous.
‘Good.’ The blueness of his eyes is glacial.
‘I’d better go.’
‘Yes.’
She gets her coat. As she heads for the door, he calls after her, ‘Maria?’
She turns to him.
‘Never snoop in my things again. If you do, I guarantee you will be very sorry.’
It’s like a punch.
49
Maria hears a scream. She forces her eye open. It isn’t yet light.
She’s not sure if the cry came from the past or the present, from her own mouth, or if it’s Elsie. She pushes herself up to sitting. The wail comes again.
Elsie must have forgotten she sleeps downstairs now. She’s probably tried to get up to her old room, because when Maria rushes to the landing she sees Elsie sprawled at the bottom of the stairs. The angles of her body are all wrong.
Oh God! Is this a replay of her gran? Maria hurtles down, two steps at a time.
‘Elsie! What happened? Where does it hurt?’
Elsie’s fingers dig into Maria’s arm. She tries to move and screams again.
Maria modulates her voice and says, with a good deal more authority than she feels, ‘You need to stay still, love. You might have broken something. You’re going to be okay. You fell. I need to get help.’
‘Don’t leave me,’ cries Elsie.
‘I need to, just for a second while I get my phone. Hang on!’
She shouts through, telling her everything will be okay, trying to calm her as she calls for an ambulance. She calls Del but it goes straight to voicemail. Of course, any normal person would be asleep at this time.
Elsie whimpers, on and off, for best part of two hours – two hours cutting through Maria like an accusation, until finally, the ambulance arrives.
Del eventually turns up at the hospital, although Elsie doesn’t seem to recognise either of them by that time. She’s probably confused by the new surroundings as much as the effects of the painkillers. Maria knows this is to be expected, but it still makes her wince.
Del seems less rattled. Maria suspects he’s relieved that Elsie is temporarily someone else’s problem.
They’re told that doctors may replace Elsie’s broken hip, risky though the procedure will be at her age..
Outside the hospital Del starts making noises about Elsie having, ‘a little holiday’ when she gets out, by which he means a trial run in a care home, although he doesn’t say so, probably because of the way Maria is looking at him.
It will break Elsie’s heart. It will break Maria’s heart. Maria wonders if Elsie will ever return to her own home. Will she be able to manage her little dances round the kitchen – chicken arms and Babs Windsor vibes with ‘The Lambeth Walk’. The attempted high kicks always worried Maria, and if she saw Elsie try to twizzle, she’d shout at her to stop, but the enthusiastic ‘Oi! Oi!’ at the top of her lungs always made Maria smile. What about the gentler shuffle steps of Flanagan and Allen’s ‘Strolling’? Will she even be able to do that again?
Maria hates hospitals. They bring back bad memories. Her gran. Her own time in Leicester Royal after the baby; in the Spanish hospital, after Joby.
Hospitals make her want to die.
50
She can’t remember sitting down, but she must have done, just for a moment, because now she’s on the sofa looking up at him, and Balogan’s sitting next to her, holding her hand and asking, ‘Maria. Are you ill? Maria? Can you hear me?’
‘Oh God, I’m so sorry. I felt a bit dizzy. I’m not sure … It won’t happen again.’ She stumbles to her feet, mortified.
‘No. Sit.’ He doesn’t seem angry with her, just concerned. ‘What happened? Are you not well?’
‘No. Sorry. I didn’t get any sleep last night.’
‘The old woman?’
‘Yes. She’s in hospital.’ Her voice sounds pathetic.
‘I am sorry to hear that.’
His face is so different when he’s not frowning – kind. But this is also a man who keeps a gun in his flat; a man who makes threats.
The music from the neighbours is loud – another Friday-night party.
She gathers her rucksack and coat, pulls on her hat, and prepares to head out.
‘I’ve finished everything. You need more toilet roll.’ As she turns to leave, she adds, ‘I’m sorry about … before. The fuse box…’
He nods, inscrutable.
He might have been about to say something else, but they are interrupted by a scream from next door.
Balogan shoots up from his seat and storms past her. Maria’s never seen him move so fast. She stands and follows, hesitating as he bangs on the door to the neighbouring flat. The music silences. The door opens and a man starts shouting, ‘This is nothing to do with you. This has nothing to do with business. This is between me and her.’
It is not Mal’s voice.
Maria puts Balogan’s door on the latch. She doesn’t feel able to walk past the altercation to go home.
Balogan stands in the neighbours’ doorway and says something so quietly she can’t make it out.
Suddenly a man hurtles out into the corridor. He seems a lot younger than Mal. He has a man bun and, given his belligerent tone, an unlikely sweatshirt proclaiming Peace, Love, Harmony. Maria notices he’s also holding a baseball bat by his side.
‘It’s got nothing to do with you or Mal. Back off!’ he threatens. ‘This is about me and Cass.’ His face is furiously twitchy.
He starts waving the bat around. His movements are wild and some of the swings seem very close to Balogan’s head.
Balogan dodges and says, almost calmly, ‘One shot.’
The lad hesitates a second and then flails at him.
The movement is so fast she almost misses it, but Balogan swerves, catches the bat in one huge hand, grabs it with both, and yanks it away. His attacker is unbalanced by the action and the next second Balogan has him on the floor, with the bat pressed against his throat.
The lad makes a strangled sound somewhere between a croak and a gurgle and a girl’s squeal comes from inside the flat. It sounds like Cass.
Maria steps forwards and Balogan notices her.
‘A moment, Maria.’
He turns back to the youth sprawled on the corridor floor beneath him. ‘You will never get a second chance. I suggest you leave.’
Maria finds it more chilling that Balogan doesn’t shout, doesn’t swear, doesn’t actually strike him – but the look of terror on the youth’s face as he scrambles to his feet and flees towards the lift tells Maria everything she needs to know.
Mal sticks his head out of the flat now, addresses Balogan. ‘We good, yeah?’ He looks nervous.
Balogan nods.
From inside, Cass cries, ‘Let me go after him!’ but, as Mal slams the door, he shouts, ‘Shut the fuck up, Cass.’
Maria asks Balogan, ‘Is she okay?’
He sighs. ‘Yes.’
‘Are you sure?’
He regards her coldly. ‘You doubt my word?’
‘No … Sorry. I need to go.’
She is very careful not to catch Balogan’s eyes as she slowly edges around him and then walks quickly to the lift.
She gets no further rest – on the bus, or back at Elsie’s, where she has to feed the cats. She’s too wired.
After half an hour lying down with her eyes closed, she knows there’s no chance of sleep, so she gets up, strips Elsie’s bed and puts on a load. She sees to the cats, puts out the bins, the recycling, and sets off for the hospital.
As she walks, Maria berates herself. How stupid is she! She said sorry to Balogan for finding a gun?
What does she want from him? He doesn’t want her like that. She changed her appearance so no one would want her like that. All that brought was trouble. Now, she’s good enough to clean and that’s it.
And why is she interested anyway? The man’s an animal. So are the neighbours. They’re all off their heads on drugs and they work for him.
And they’re scared of him. She should be scared of him too.
Where men are concerned, perhaps she is cursed.
As she crosses Crouch Hill, distracted by her thoughts, she steps out in front of a van. The driver slams on the brakes and the horn. He makes an angry gesture indicating she is insane. Maria is well aware of this.
She attracts violence.
Joby’s mother said she was cursed. Perhaps she is.
Or perhaps she is the curse itself.
51
With Elsie in hospital, there’s a conflab back at the house: Del and Ann discussing Elsie’s future over mugs of tea. Ann has invited herself round after Del called to tell her about Elsie’s fall and she’s now appointed herself the expert opinion. Maria isn’t exactly included in this discussion – she says her piece, but her views aren’t called for because she isn’t family. Her role is reduced to supplying the tea and biscuits, although she doesn’t put out the box of Fox’s (Elsie’s favourite) because she’s saving them for when Elsie gets back home – if she ever does.
Harry, not reading the room, winds his way round Del’s legs, pushing his whiskers against his trousers.
‘This lot will have to go,’ says Ann, making a face as she indicates the cats loitering around the kitchen in the perpetual hope of food.
‘No!’ says Maria. ‘You can’t do that!’
She’s ignored.
Maria had hoped there might be a reprieve. At the hospital one of the nurses said it would be better if Elsie recuperated at home, where she felt safe and comfortable and knew the layout of the house. Both Elsie and Maria had been included in that discussion and Del had nodded as if he was on board. But now, with Ann in his corner, he’s changed his tune.
And he’s just announced he’s going to put the house on the market.
Which means Maria is going to be out of a job – although in the grand scheme of things that’s the least of her problems.
Maria sits silent and sickly as Ann says, ‘If our Nick turns up, he’ll have to have his say. He’s still her husband – on paper, if nothing else.’
‘Yeah. But she made me the power of attorney. It’s up to me what to do,’ says Del.
‘Fair dos,’ says Ann. ‘But he’ll want to have a say anyway. You know our Nick.’
‘Still no word?’ asks Del.
‘Not a bloody dicky bird,’ says Ann. ‘One of his mates reckons he’s gone to Tenerife with that bit from the betting shop.’ (She pronounces Tenerife to rhyme with beefy.) ‘She’s disappeared as well, by all accounts. Left her job. Might have had a win. If he has, I won’t see any of it.’ She sniffs.
‘You thought of contacting the police?’
Maria’s bowels contract further.
‘Don’t be bloody stupid,’ snaps Ann.
Maria wonders if Ann still has Nick’s drugs in her cellar.
There’s more talk of what the house might fetch and the lock-up Nick had promised Del and, as they chat, Maria sits and contemplates her life falling further apart.
After Ann and Del have left, Maria washes up and feels sorry for herself. Both of them have homes to go to. Ann has the luxury of an actual council flat; Del his house-share in Walthamstow, and while he can’t stand the blokes he shares with, at least he has a roof over his head. She can’t bear to go back to her sad bedsit, even though it’s recently been rebranded a studio apartment, according to the ad in the local estate agent’s window – they’re renting out one of her neighbours’ places. For what it is, the rent’s obscene.
She doesn’t think she’ll manage to sleep when she finally puts her feet up. But stress burns out the adrenals. Her eyes close of their own accord.
And her current anxieties, the recent flashes of violence, dredge up worse memories from a different time.
52
Maria is wrenched back to the Basque mountains.
The taste of smoke in the back of her throat.
The moon a dispassionate eye watching a woman flee for her life.
The owl’s lament.
Why is she running from him? Why does he want to harm her? He’s the love of her life!
She is so focused on trying to make out the way ahead in the darkness of the forest that she can’t see him charge at her and he spins her round and the wood of the axe handle smashes into her face. Her cheek explodes in agony.
She prays then – not to Christ or his father, but to the older gods of the region, the ones Itzal told her about.
Madre Mari, keep me safe.
Joby raises the axe to finish her.
She wants to close her eyes against this final blow, but they are wide with terror, and she sees the rage in the set of his jaw, the violence in his eyes. And she realises it is not personal, this hatred, it is the archetypal fury men aim at women – they try to destroy what they fear. His own mother predicted it.
The metal of the axe catches the moonlight, and she tries to make herself small, to scuttle away, but a tree is at her back and her face is on fire.
Bile is spewing from his mouth, raining blame down upon her – blame for his brother, blame for her betrayals – but her own lips are also moving, forming an incantation that she feels in her gut rather than understands with her mind.
And, as he swings the blade up and back – to cut off her head, like all the queens before her – the branches above them creak and twist and claw at the axe. And Joby’s face contorts with confusion. He can’t hold on. The axe is caught; the branches seem to rip it from his hands – and he loses his grip as he stumbles with the momentum of his swing, floundering, falling backwards over a gnarled tree root.
And she is lifted by a strange raw energy, springing forwards, lunging for the axe where he’s dropped it on the forest floor. A force possesses her, and she rises to her full height, standing above him.
Joby’s on his back, his neck turned to a weird angle – like an owl’s head turning round on itself to see what might be creeping up behind it.
The moon is huge. And she is full of rage.
She feels the power like electricity in her body. She brings the axe high, mother moon glinting in anticipation, and then she swoops the blade down. There is a manic joy in the action. After so long imprisoned in the smallness of the caravan, doing nothing but waiting, shrivelling, becoming more helpless and pathetic by the day, by the hour, she is freed by this momentum.
The first slice is delicious.
And then she is hacking and hacking – the blade chewing through flesh and bone and gristle and tendons – putting her back into it, all her will and fury, savage, and she is drenched with spurts of his blood as she slashes at his neck. She can’t stop.
Until – a last clean cut and his head comes away from his body.
She is covered with gore, splattered with his blood and her own.
Blood has no colour in moonlight.
She falls to her knees – for a moment, for an aeon. She might howl.
Then she takes off her nightdress and wraps his head in it, almost tenderly.
The earth is soft, swollen with the blast of heavy rain. She claws at the ground with her bare hands, nails ragged, grabbing a sharp branch, hewing out a hollow. It is a shallow grave.
She places his axe by his side like one of the ancients.
And she buries him.
Hauling and dropping rocks on top of him, feeling her flesh tear, dragging more branches, an upended sapling, on and on until she can lift nothing more.
