Leaving Ferryhill, Fran had tramped miles cross-country just to spill out her feelings to Liz. She wished she had a horse, to bring her much quicker to the sickroom. She wanted to fly that distance at great speed. Liz was the first person she had wanted to talk with.
They drew up their chairs around the bed, Tom, Elsie and Nesta.
Didn’t she look a treat? Under white blankets and sheets Liz lay very still and straight. Nesta was right. Her colour was back, peaches and cream. Those strong, mannish features. What a handsome woman. Tom felt the urge to pray, and suppressed it. When he looked at Liz he felt almost sexy. She was lovely, but it wasn’t sexy in the usual way he felt. He was hungry for something bigger. This was different to the body and its usual appetites.
He looked at Nesta. She looked so dopey. Frustration rose in him. Don’t let any of these bitches let me down. Liz is my bridge to another world..Nesta is my mediator to Liz. He hated being this dependent. He had to fight down the panic, learn to depend. Learn to trust these silly women. “Nesta?” he asked gently.
Something went through her head. A beat, a message. That running of the beat of a song she had heard. When her adopted father died, she told her adopted mother that what she needed was a radio. They play you pop music twenty-four hours a day and that distracts you from thoughts of the dead. The ongoing music makes the time go fast. Fills up your thoughts. What you get into your head is a beat going on like this, like rap music, insistent. A kind of music Nesta never liked, but there you go. It was funny what got into your head.
She liked her mind because there was never a dull moment. Is everyone as entertained as this? As busy like me? Music and pictures and links between scenes and words over pictures and then all change. Nothing long enough to catch a hold of. When some time in the eighties, when the new computer technology took over the telly, when rap music and jazzy coloured graphics came on everything, for the first time she felt at home. Telly became more complicated, more demanding to watch. For the first time she had something to point at and say, There! That’s how I think! That’s what it’s like in my mind all the time! Music and pictures and changing, shifting one thing for the next. You can’t unsnag the sense of things. Which was why Nesta found it hard to keep on top of the plot.
She didn’t move at the same speed as other people. Her mind was faster. She worked at the speed of telly.
At first Nesta didn’t know what to say. She looked down at her lap, the chapped hands resting there.
“Clear your mind,” Tom told her. “Slow your breath, the pace of your thoughts. Breathe in time with Liz. Listen to Liz breathing and you match that. Be at one.”
Fat chance. This was like music and movement, all those years ago at school. Miss Simmonds clapping her hands in the school hall, which smelled of varnish, dust, dirty sandshoes. The record player would start up, the Nutcracker Suite crackling out of a box of blond wood, like a coffin with a grill on the front.
Everyone urged to dance round in squeaky sandshoes in their dark-blue knickers. Dance round like sugar plums, like fairies, dance round, use the space, feel the music, express yourselves. Miss clapped her hands to start, to speed up. Everyone moved. Someone giggled. Someone farted. Someone giggled some more.
“Talk with her,” Tom said. “Keep your breathing even, Nesta.”
Who does that old bastard think he is? thought Nesta. He’s like Uri thingy on the telly, Geller. Bending spoons and putting you in trances. Do us a trick, man.
Nesta stared down, shy all of a sudden. She didn’t know what to say now. The talking she had done before, she had done because she wanted to. Big Sue should be here as well. She felt bullied by Tom.
She found she was staring at the silver locket she always wore. In her teens she had pasted in two tiny cameo pictures cut from the TV Times: Bet Lynch from Coronation Street and Meg Mortimer from Crossroads. They were her strong women icons. They were the faces that would inspire her to get what she wanted from life. She clicked open the silver locket and looked at the faces of these women.
Inspire. Inspire me and Liz. Breathe in with Liz, and out. If only she could shut out those faces of Elsie and Tom staring, wanting a part of this. They were like vultures them two. Like vampires.
“Do you remember how David Hunter was always trying to take ownership of the Crossroads Motel off Meg?” she said. “Meg would never give in. She was saving it for her children. Crippled, ginger Sandy, who was in a wheelchair and died. And Jill, who was blonde and lived in that lovely house called Chimneys. She was divorced from a man who beat her. Meg wanted the motel for Jill, who ended up marrying another awful, slimy man called Adam Chance. Then Meg had had enough and you thought she’d committed suicide, swallowing an overdose of Valium while the motel was on fire. It was Bonfire Night, about 1980, remember? The motel in flames. Only Meg indoors. All the staff and guests at the firework display. Jill turned, saw the real fire, yelled out, ‘Mum!’ It was terrible. But Meg survived. Went off on the QE2. Signed over her shares in the motel. That evil smoothie David Hunter —what a charmer! — took over. Adam Chance — another smoothie! — took over some of Jill’s shares when they married. Jill went back on
