26a

  26a

  DIANA EVANS

  For Paula

  Contents

  The First Bit

  1 Ham

  2 The Wedding

  3 Escape

  4 Sekon

  The Second Bit

  5 Snowgirls

  6 Mr. Hyde

  7 Ginger

  8 Flapjacks

  9 Selected Letters

  The Third Bit

  10 What Is It?

  11 Music

  12 A Cottage by a Hill

  13 See You Monday

  The Best Bit

  14 The Best Bit

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Praise

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  The First Bit

  1

  Ham

  Before they were born, Georgia and Bessi experienced a moment of indecision. They had been traveling through the undergrowth on a crescent moon night with no fixed destination and no notion of where they were, whether it was a field in Buckinghamshire, the Yorkshire Dales or somewhere along the M1 from Staples Corner to Watford. Night birds were singing. The earth smelled of old rain. Through scratchy bramble they scurried, through holes that became warm tunnels and softly lit underground caves. Their paws pressed sweet berries in the long grass and they sniffed each other’s scent to stay together.

  Soon they began to sense that they were coming to a road. One of those huge open spaces of catastrophe where so many had perished. Squirrels smashed into the tarmac. Rabbits, badgers, walking birds—murdered and left for the flies. Bessi thought they should risk it and cross, there was nothing coming for miles. But Georgia wasn’t sure, because you could never be sure, and look at what the consequences might be (a little way up the road a bird lay glistening in its blood, feathers from its wing pointing stiffly up to the sky).

  They crept to the roadside to get a closer look. Nothing coming at all. No engine thunder, no lights. It took a long time for Georgia to come around. Okay then. Let’s be quick, quicker than quick. Run, leap, fly. Be boundless, all speed. They stepped onto the road and shot forward, almost touching, and then the engine came, and for reasons beyond their reach, they stopped.

  That was the memory that stayed with them later: two furry creatures with petrified eyes staring into the oncoming headlights, into the doubled icy sun, into possibility. It helped explain things. It reminded them of who they were.

  A slowness followed the killing. While their blood seeped into the road they experienced warmth, softness, wet. But mostly it was brutal. There were screams and a feeling of being strangled. Then a violent push and they landed freezing cold in surgical electric white, hysterical, blubbering, trying to shake the shock from their hearts. It was a lot to handle. Georgia, who was born first, forty-five minutes first, refused to breathe for seven minutes. And two and a half years later, still resentful, she was rushed back to St. Luke’s Hospital with dishcloth, carpet dust, half her afro, and tassels off the bottom of the sofa clinging to her intestines. She’d eaten them, between and sometimes instead of her rice pudding and ravioli. The ordeal of it. Ida running around the house shouting “Georgia’s dying, my Georgia’s dying!” and the ambulance whisking her off and Bessi feeling that strange sinking back toward the road (which, when they were old enough to explore the wilderness of Neasden, they decided could well have been the North Circular that raged across the bottom of their street).

  There is a photograph of them seated at a table in front of their third birthday cake, about to blow, three candle flames preparing to disappear. Georgia’s arms are raised in protest of something forgotten and across her stomach, hidden, is the scar left over from where they’d slit her open and lifted out the hair and the living-room carpet like bleeding worms and then sewed her back together. The scar grew up with her. It widened like a pale smile and split her in two.

  As for Bessi, she spent her first human month in an incubator, with wires in her chest, limbs straggling and pleading like a beetle on its back. The incubator had a lot to answer for.

  SO GEORGIA AND Bessi understood exactly that look in the eye of the hamster downstairs in the sun lounge. He was ginger-furred with streaks of white, trapped in a cage next to the dishwasher. What is it? the eyes said. Where am I? The view from the cage was a hamster blur of washing machine, stacked buckets, breathless curtains and plastic bags full of plastic bags hanging from the ceiling like the ghosts of slaughter. People, giants, walked through from other parts of the house, slamming the door and setting off wind-chime bells. A sour-faced man with a morning tremble. A woman of whispers in a hairnet, carrying bread and frozen bags of black-eyed beans.

  What is it?

  Feebly he poked at the plastic wheel in the corner, looking for motion, hoping for escape or clarity. And the explanation never came. It was deeper than needing to know what the wheel was for, where the cage had come from and how he’d gotten there, or in the twins’ case, the meaning of “expialidocious” or why their father liked Val Doonican. It was more of a What is Val Doonican? And therefore, What am I? The question that preceded all others.

  The hamster was alone, which made it worse. Alone with a wheel on a wasteland of wood shavings and newspaper. Georgia and Bessi did everything they could: stuffed him with grapes and cleaned his mess, gave him a name. “Ham,” Georgia said, her eyes level with Ham’s because she was only seven, “be happy some days or you might not wake up in the morning, isn’t it. Here’s a present.” She’d pulled a rose off the rosebush in the garden that was Her Responsibility (Aubrey had said so, and Ida had agreed—so Kemy could shut up) and laid it, the ruby petals flat on one side, a single leaf asleep in the sun, on a saucer. She opened the cage and put the saucer next to Ham. He sniffed it and then was still again, but with a thoughtful look on his face that wasn’t there before. Georgia thought that sometimes flowers were better for people’s health than food. She often spent entire afternoons in the garden with a cloth, a spade and a watering can, wiping dirt off leaves, spraying the lawn with vigor, and pulling away the harmful weeds.

  The twins lived two floors above Ham, in the loft. It was their house. They lived at 26a Waifer Avenue and the other Hunters were 26, down the stairs where the house was darker, particularly in the cupboard under the stairs where Aubrey made them sit and “think about what you’ve done” when they misbehaved (which could involve breaking his stapler, using all the hot water, finishing the ginger nuts or scratching the car with the edge of a bicycle pedal). Other dark corners for thinking about what you’ve done were located at the rear of the dining room next to Aubrey’s desk and outside in the garage with the dirty rags and turpentine.

  On the outside of their front door Georgia and Bessi had written in chalk 26a and on the inside g+b, at eye level, just above the handle. This was the extra dimension. The one after sight, sound, smell, touch and taste where the world multiplied and exploded because it was the sum of two people. Bright was twice as bright. All the colors were extra. Girls with umbrellas skipped across the wallpaper and Georgia and Bessi could hear them laughing.

  The loft had a separate flight of stairs leading up from the first-floor landing and an en suite bathroom with a spaghetti-Western saloon door. Because of its intimacy with the roof, it was the only room in the house that had triangles and slanting walls. The ceiling sloped down over Bessi’s bed and made her feel lucky. There was no other bed in the whole house that the ceiling, that God, was so close to, not even Bel’s, who had the biggest room because she had breasts. That meant that Bessi’s bed was the best. She wrote it down in yellow chalk: BESSI BEST BED, on the wall where her eyes landed in the mornings, just by the attic cupboard where things could be hidden, whole people could be hidden and no one would know to look there because you couldn’
t stand up in it and it was full of old books and buckets and spades for the holidays.

  At the end of Georgia’s bed next to the window—a whole upper wall of window that gave them church bells and sunsets and an evergreen tree in the far distance—was another triangle, an alcove, for thinking. Two beanbags whose bubbles smelled of strawberry were tucked into the corners and that was where they sat. Not many people were allowed to sit there too, just Kemy and Ham. But absolutely no one was allowed to sit there with them when they were thinking, especially when they were making a decision.

  Late in the summer of 1980, Kemy knocked on the door (that was a rule) when the twins were trying to decide whether Ida and Aubrey should get a divorce or not. Georgia had put a jar of roses on the windowsill so that she could picture them while she was deciding, and sliced a nectarine for them to share afterward—the nectarine was their favorite fruit, because its flesh was the color of sunset. Bessi had wrapped her special duvet around her because she couldn’t think when she was cold. Sky-blue slippers on their feet, they sat down in the strawberry corners and shut their eyes. They thought long and hard about it, drifting through possibles. Five minutes passed and ten minutes. Then, into the silence, Georgia said, “Mummy can’t drive.” Bessi had not thought of this. It was definitely important because they needed a car for shopping and getting Ham to the vet next week to see to his cold. A cold could kill a hamster.

  That was a No.

  What Bessi had been thinking about was the apple trees that were Her Responsibility. Ida liked to make pies, and Aubrey liked to eat them, so Bessi had to watch the apple trees all year round until the apples started thumping to the ground in September. Then she’d make the announcement, projecting her voice: “APPLE PIE TIME!” And everyone had to follow her with their baskets and stepladders and Safeway bags, even Bel with her hips. Bessi didn’t know whether she could give up this position because she felt, in some way, it was important training for the future. And it was almost September. So now she murmured, “It’s almost apple.”

  That was another No.

  But if they did get a divorce, thought Georgia, they’d all get more sleep, wherever they were, and surely that was a yes.

  But not if they ended up sleeping in Gladstone Park. And that wasn’t definitely impossible.

  Then Kemy knocked on the door, which was irritating because they hadn’t gotten very far.

  “What?” they moaned.

  “Can I come in?”

  “No,” said Bessi, “we’re deciding.”

  “What about?” Kemy was disappointed. “I want to too.”

  “No. Go away,” said Georgia. “’Simportant.”

  Kemy was five and didn’t know what simportant meant, so she started crying. “I’m telling Daddy you’re deciding,” she shouted, and stamped downstairs.

  Georgia and Bessi adjourned the divorce decision, agreeing that it would be best to wait until after the vet and after this year’s apples. And anyway, “It’s not up to us,” Bessi pointed out, taking a piece of nectarine. “No,” said Georgia, “it’s up to Bel.”

  IN THE MORNINGS they went first into the sun lounge to check on Ham and then out into the garden for the apples and the roses. They put their anoraks on—Georgia’s red and blue, Bessi’s yellow and green—over their pajamas when it was cold. It was usually cold because heating was expensive in the sun lounge (thin walls, a plastic corrugated roof ) and there was no heating outside unless it was summer. They understood that. It would be a waste of money to put heaters along the fence outside. Imagine how much it would cost to heat all the outsides in the world. Probably more than three hundred pounds.

  Georgia climbed the stepladder and unhooked the hose from the wall. Ham watched. He’d been awake for hours watching the hazy dawn pull in the morning. Today, a Wednesday, he was especially not happy. Wednesdays were hard and the twins understood this too. It was the being in the middle of the beginning and the end when things tumbled, things tossed. The day was reluctant and didn’t know what to wear. It dreamed and reached out for dusk, but people carried on as if it was Tuesday, or Friday, as if time’s moods didn’t matter. This was confusing for Ham and the twins, but they did the best they could to join in.

  With the hose over her arm Georgia peered into Ham’s cage. It smelled of dry wood and droppings. He blinked very slowly and looked at her chin. “Chocolate drop for brekky treat?” She rustled in the food tray under the table. “Cheer you up today.” There was no noticeable response, not even a quicker breath or a quiet sneeze.

  Georgia stepped out into the crispy sun and studied Bessi through the bushes that separated the front back garden from the back back garden. The back back garden was wild. Aubrey only mowed the lawn up there once a year because no one ever showed an interest in shaking out a mat and lying down. It had shadows. A hulk of old grass turning to straw by the back wall. A shack next to it full of incredible spiders. Bessi shone through the leaves like stained glass. Very still. She was waiting for thumps with her eyes closed but none had happened yet. She felt that if she concentrated hard enough something would, right in front of her.

  The apple trees, who were very pregnant now, creaked and swayed into another long Wednesday. They were twins too. So far this year they’d released three unblushing apples between them. Not nearly enough for Bessi to say Apple Pie Time. There had to be at least four each, with rosy cheeks. And then the things could happen. The ceremonial march into the wild, the picking, peeling, boiling and baking, apple pies and applesauce with inside sugar and all of it up to her. Dear God, she thought, please help them drop the apples so that we can pick them up. Thank you. Amen.

  Georgia went and stood next to Bessi and their knuckles brushed together. There was a shiver on the wind. Bessi opened her eyes.

  “I think Ham’s d’stressed,” Georgia said, staring through the grass.

  There was a pause. Sometimes, when Ida hadn’t gotten enough sleep, she closed the bathroom door and locked it. She had a bath for five hours, during which time they would put their ears up against the door and hear her talking to someone in Edo (usually Nne-Nne, her mother, whom she missed). When the bathroom door finally shuddered open, Ida would wander out into the hall as if it were a dirt track into a whole new country and she’d arrived at the airport with nothing but her magic dressing gown and a toilet bag. Georgia asked Bel what it meant because being clean didn’t usually take that much time. Usually it took twenty minutes, or an hour if they had bubble bath. Bel had lowered her voice and told her that Ida might have d’stression. When Georgia had asked her what that meant she’d said it had to do with being sad, that being sad could be like having a cold if there was enough of it.

  And Ham had a cold.

  “Is he in the bathroom?” asked Bessi.

  “No. He’s in his room.”

  Bessi frowned. “But if he’s not in the bath, how can he be d’stressed?”

  “You don’t have to have a bath. You just have to have a cold.”

  “Oh.”

  They stared at the base of a thumpless apple tree. A sparrow who nested in its branches peeked down at them and waited.

  “What shall we do?” said Bessi.

  “Gave him a chocolate but he doesn’t want it.”

  “What about Vicks? On his nose.”

  “Have to ask Mummy.”

  “Okay.”

  Georgia went quiet. She fell into deep thought and put her hand on her stomach over her scar. She said, “What if he dies, Bess?”

  “Don’t know. We might have to put him in a box and have a funeral.”

  NEASDEN WAS LIKE the high heel at the bottom of Italy. It was what the city stepped on to be sexy. London needed its Neasdens to make the Piccadilly lights, the dazzling Strand, the pigeons at Trafalgar Square and the Queen waving from her Buckingham balcony seem exciting, all that way away, over acres of rail track and miles and miles of traffic. The children of the city suburbs watched it all on TV. It was only very occasionally that the Hunters ven
tured past Kilburn because most of the things they needed could be bought from Brent Cross, which had all the shops. And when they did go into town the Little Ones (Kemy and the twins) bumped into things and someone always got lost (Kemy in the bedding department of the Oxford Street branch of Debenhams, Georgia at the Leicester Square fair one winter, underneath an orange polka-dot horse with wings).

  Neasden was easier. A little hilly place next to a river and a motorway with nodding trees and one stubby row of shops. One bank, one library, one optician, one pharmacist, one chip shop, one Chinese takeaway, pub, hairdresser, liquor store, cash ’n’ carry, greengrocer and two newsagents, a full stop at each end of Neasden Lane. There was also a chocolate-smelling chocolate-biscuit factory said by the older locals to have driven people to madness. Schoolchildren were given unforgettable guided tours through it, the chocolate warm, melting, over freshly baked biscuits on conveyor belts. Georgia and Bessi had been there, and afterward they’d laughed a lot.

  The place had clean air and history. Its hills were the result of Victorian golfers who’d whacked their golf balls toward far-off holes that now were tiny memories underneath houses, alleyways, wonky car parks and Brent Council bus stops. It was a place where cyclists’ legs started to hurt, where they stopped and swigged water in the summer, leaning on their bikes halfway up Parkview and breathing in the chocolate air (which deepened in the heat). The roads snaked and dipped and wound themselves around the hollows and windswept peaks in dedication to the open countryside, now lost to concrete. Except for Gladstone Park with its ghosts, and the Welsh Harp marsh, where the river rushed on.