Hello, My Name is May. Rosalind Stopps

THREE

      October 2017

      Lewisham

      The door across the corridor has been closed for days. Whoever he is, he likes his privacy, that’s clear, although sometimes I get this prickly feeling. In the back of my neck, as if I’m being watched. I look out when I can but there’s nothing much to see from my room except passing ghouls leaning on sticks or walking frames or being pushed like babies. There are trolleys, of course, and if I could talk I’d try some conversation openers about them. Trolley dolly, I could say, or, have you got any gin on there? I used to know a whole song about hostess trolleys but I can’t get it out, even when I try really hard, one word at a time. I wouldn’t mind how it sounded if I could just say something. I read about someone once, had a stroke and when they started speaking again, they had a Russian accent. I’d even be happy with a Hull one.

      It was an odd place, Hull. Always an ill wind blowing. An east wind off the sea. I’m glad I’ve ended up here. The Thames, that’s my idea of a river, you can keep the Humber. Maybe it’s because I’m a Londoner, I try to sing when they bring the lunch. It’s a small token of identity but that Kelly, I really do not like her, she holds my good hand down where I’m trying to make it conduct the imaginary band, and stuffs a spoonful of soup in my mouth. I hate soup. Food is food and drink is drink and let’s not get the two things mixed up, that’s what I say. What I used to say.

      Jenny understands me sometimes. She’s the only one who does, and she doesn’t seem to mind about the spit thing. She leans in close, listens hard and then answers me. I’ve never been so glad to see her as I am these days. She comes most evenings, after work. She’s a teacher, my Jenny, like I was. It must be genetic, I tell her, only that always makes her frown and I think it’s because she doesn’t like being compared to me. I can’t blame her.

      We’re doing an autumn display for the assembly hall, she said last night, leaves hanging from coloured hoops and some big firework paintings.

      She used to love fireworks when she was little, my Jenny. All the kiddies did. The smell of burning and the excitement, choosing all the little fireworks one by one and imagining what they would be like on the night. All fakery, all up in smoke but she liked it.

      Bonfire? I tried to say, then just, fire?

      I’m sure she understood. I’m sure she knew that I was asking to go to see some fireworks, in my chair. I saw the shadow pass across her face and I read what was behind it. Please don’t ask me to do more than I can do, it said. I wished I could say more, maybe beg her to take me. She would probably have given in in the end, she’s weak like that, but I wasn’t going to get carried away. Not for a stupid firework display, with its oohs and aahs and heads pointed at the sky till the necks hurt. I’m glad when Jenny goes home.

      Hull Fair was always on in October. It probably still is. Such a big thing, loads of streets shut off and all the children bundled into their coats for the first time that year and eating candy floss. I went with Alain. We didn’t have many dates before I got pregnant but for a little while afterwards we had some lovely ones. He used to say he was carrying the courtship into the marriage, or some such nonsense. I ate burnt cinder toffee, I remember the taste even now. I’d been sick a lot in the pregnancy, and I couldn’t keep much down at all, but that toffee, it tasted like something magic. Angel food, as long as angels don’t have teeth. He won me a Womble, Alain did, throwing darts at a target. He always had good aim, Alain, and I was as pleased as a child with it. I hadn’t ever done anything like that before, been to the fair with a boy. A man. I was as giddy as a girl.

      I was older than Alain, but much less experienced. I’d spent most of my teens and twenties being the kind of girl that was asked along by other girls as a last resort. The kind of girl who went home on her own at the end of every evening out, unless one of her friends was extremely unlucky. A fat girl, if I am completely honest. A fat jolly girl with loads of pals and three similar navy blue dresses, worn in rotation. I see the fat girls now and they wear anything they like, bright pink leggings, crop tops, miniskirts, shorts. I don’t know what I think about that, but I do know it wasn’t a thing that could have been done in the early seventies. Fat girls bought their clothes from the fuller figure range at Arding and Hobbs, Clapham Junction, or Binns in Hull. There were Peter Pan collars and ruches and tucks that were supposed to hide the fat, only they didn’t.

      I did have a boyfriend once. Brendan. He was a bit like me, awkward and tubby so everyone thought it was the best match, the cutest thing but he got handsome, almost overnight. That’s how I remember it, one moment he was like me, waistband straining and T-shirt too tight, and the next he was slim and tanned and could take his pick. He chose Cherry, picked her right away and I didn’t blame him at all. It made sense to me.

      I stopped being a fat girl in 1976. Summer 1976 to be exact, when I started my teacher training year and everyone was singing ‘Dancing Queen’. It wasn’t my sort of music, but I used to put it on the record player every morning anyway, and I’d dance along to get my metabolism going. I was still doing it when I met Alain that Christmas, only I never told him. I was as slim as all the other young women by then, and I could see in the mirror that I was looking OK, but I couldn’t believe he chose me. He could have had anyone.

      I’ve put the song into my head now, like a fool. I try drumming it out with my good hand on the tray over my bed, that always used to get rid of it. I’m hoping to send the blasted song packing but instead I’ve knocked over the cold soup that was sitting on my tray. It’s splashed all over the floor, the bed and even up the wall a little.

      Kelly comes in. What have we got here, she says, what’s this? She pulls the bed covers back more roughly than she needs to and I don’t have time to make sure I’m decent underneath. What would happen if we all threw things we didn’t like, huh? Who would do the cleaning up then? I didn’t, I try to say, it was just that Abba song, that was all, I needed a drum roll but my hand wouldn’t do it.

      We don’t need all that slobbering now do we she says, if you can’t speak properly best say nothing.

      By the time she’s cleaned me up and settled me back into my chair we’ve used up at least half an hour. Even better, the head honcho, or shift supervisor or whatever they’re called, she comes in and has a bit of a go at Kelly.

      Why are you doing that on your own, she says, you should have called for help.

      I didn’t want to take anyone away from their own jobs, Kelly says, but head honcho sees right through that.

      It’s not your decision, she says, it’s policy and that’s what we do here. She has a sniff in her tone that you could hear from across the river. But she’s good with the patients, or inmates, or whatever it is we are. It’s all, are you OK Mrs Beecham and I try to say, Ms, but she takes it as a yes.

      Splendid, she says, splendid, shall I get the girls to bring you some more soup? I shake my head at that one, don’t even try to speak.

      Fair enough, she says, let Kelly here know if you want anything else, won’t you.

      She isn’t keen on that at all, Kelly, but she doesn’t dare to be rough any more. She has a killer look when she puts the blanket round my knees, but it only makes me laugh. I’ve seen worse than that, I want to tell her, I don’t scare so easily, not these days. You could probably get an axe murderer in here wielding his weapon and I wouldn’t flinch. The old me, the fat sad little me that I was in my young life, she was scared of everything. Everything.

      Jenny comes later, after school like she usually does.

      I hear there was a problem, Mum, she says, a problem with the soup.

      Soup, I try to say.

      For a moment I’ve forgotten and I have no idea what she’s talking about.

      I forget where I am and think of soup, trickling down the walls, hot soup tipped over my head. Trying to wash the pieces out of my hair later.

      No, I try to say, no no.

      It’s OK Mum, it doesn’t matter, Jenny