54. Maggie
54. Maggie
‘Hey, there’s a Fortnum and Mason hamper on the doorstep and a box of champagne!’ I call out. ‘Someone’s planning a fancy Christmas!’
He doesn’t respond.
‘I’ll fetch them in, then, shall I?’ I say, heaving in first the hamper and then the champagne, and leaving them by the back door. ‘I mean why bother getting the strong ex-soldier to do the manual labour when you’ve got me around, eh?’
I address my comments to the dogs. Mungo and Mr Jones eye me sleepily from their beds.
It’s a flipping big box. ‘So who’s your fancy admirer, then?’
It’s so like Carl not to respond. Not to acknowledge something as exciting as finding a hamper from Fortnum & Mason on the doorstep. As if it’s something that happens every day of the week, as mundane as a delivery of dog food.
Only Mr Jones looks excited. He staggers towards me, wagging his tail.
I bend down to pick him up, and kiss him on the nose. ‘Hello there, little one,’ I say, scuffing him behind the ears, then gently laying him back down on the floor while I take my coat off. I hang it on the back of the door, on top of Carl’s leather jacket.
I smile when I see it, because it means he must be in. ‘So you are here,’ I call out.
I thought this new girlfriend of his was coming to stay, but maybe I got that wrong, because there’s no sign of an extra coat or pair of shoes. I won’t pretend I’m not secretly relieved. I hate the idea of someone taking Carl away from us – away from me.
I call out his name. ‘Carl?’
No answer.
‘I’ve just come to drop off Mungo’s eye drops. I took them home with me by mistake last night.’ I did take the drops home with me, but accidentally on purpose. I want to check out this girl, whoever she is. See if she’s good enough for Carl.
Still no answer.
He must be next door in his chair, probably dozing in front of the fire. I pop the eye drops on the kitchen counter, then I fill the kettle, jam the lid down, and put it on the hob to boil. A couple of minutes later, it begins to emit a threatening hiss.
‘That’s it,’ I say decisively. ‘I’m buying you an electric kettle for Christmas. I swear this one has it in for me. D’you want tea?’ I ask, already reaching into the cupboard for our favourite mugs. Carl’s is the ancient, chipped Leeds United one, and mine is a white mug Carl bought me for my birthday, with Smash the Patriarchy in big, angry black capital letters.
I pick Mr Jones up again. I feel his warm little body wriggle against mine until he eventually settles his head on my shoulder. I stare down at him. Sweet little Jonesy. I love him to bits. I love all the dogs to bits. I even love grumpy old Carl.
I’m so lucky to have this job. Not that I’d ever admit that to him. I listen to my mates complain about how much they hate their office, their boss, their lecturers, or whatever degree it is they’ve decided to study, and I feel so lucky that I get to spend my days here, with the dogs, on the moors, joking around with Carl.
And while he does his best to pretend to be crotchety, I know it’s all a front. I see how gentle he is with the dogs. How lovely he is to my mum. For such a giant of a bloke he’s actually the biggest softie I know.
‘You’ll never guess what happened at the pantomime,’ I call out to him, warming myself up in front of the Rayburn.
Just thinking about it again makes me laugh out loud. Mr Jones lifts his head, eyeing me momentarily, then he puts it back on my shoulder and exhales, as if I’m boring him.
‘They only went and had a fight onstage!’ I laugh. ‘And to think I only went because Mum made me. Turned out to be the best show I’ve ever seen! I mean, not really, obviously it was every bit as awful as I thought it was going to be. Until the fight. Captain Hook and Tick-Tock the Crocodile tearing chunks out of each other. I told you! I told you Peter Pan was up to no good with Captain Hook!’ I wait. ‘Carl? Come on, that’s funny!’
Still no response.
But then I’m used to our one-sided conversations. Carl isn’t exactly what you’d call chatty. Unless you count having a conversation with his eyebrows as being chatty. He does this thing where he arches them so high you could park a bus under them. You can have entire conversations with his eyebrows, with him not saying a thing, and still know what he means. I imagine him listening to this story now, and raising those eyebrows at me.
The kettle starts to whistle.
‘Why is it so dark in here?’ I ask, suddenly realizing it’s so gloomy I can’t see the oven gloves I need to pick up the kettle.
The only illumination is coming from the little night light Carl bought for Mr Jones, because he cries if you leave him alone in the dark.
‘Carl?’ I call again, suddenly feeling anxious. I walk back to the door to flick on the light switch. I turn back to face the kitchen, and that’s when I see it. ‘What the –?’
Mum’s Christmas cake is splattered all over the wall. It looks like something from a crime scene.
Carl’s phone buzzes, for the second time since I’ve got here. I follow the sound to the kitchen table, where I spot it lying next to three empty wine bottles, one of which has a stack of envelopes leaning up against it.
The phone lights up as someone leaves a message and as it does, I catch a glimpse of my name scrawled in Carl’s handwriting across the first envelope.
My stomach turns to water. Panic rushing through me, I sprint to the living room, but his chair is empty, and I know. I just know. I know what he’s done.
‘ CARL! ’ I scream.
I put Mr Jones down and rush to the door to get my phone out of my coat pocket. Then, my fingers jerking convulsively, I dial 999.
A female voice asks me what the nature of the problem is, and I don’t know how to respond. I feel so inadequate. Poleaxed by the horror that looms in front of me. I don’t know what to say.
I start up the stairs, two at a time, screaming Carl’s name, but when I get to his bedroom door I stop. I don’t want to open it, because I’m absolutely terrified of what I’ll find on the other side.
‘Help me, please help me,’ I beg the operator. ‘I don’t want to go in. I’m scared.’
She is calm and kind and efficient. She asks me what my name is but I can’t remember. In my panic, I can’t even remember what my name is.
‘Maggie,’ I eventually stammer.
She asks my address and I hear her tapping away into a keyboard as I tell her the address of Carl’s cottage. And then we’re back to her asking me what the nature of the problem is.
‘I need to know the nature of the problem so I can send the right help,’ she says. She is infuriatingly calm but insistent.
I push open the bedroom door. I see Elsa first. It’s the one and only time she hasn’t come running downstairs to greet me, and I realize now it’s because she doesn’t want to leave his side.
Downstairs the kettle is still whistling. It sounds angrier than ever.
‘Is he breathing?’ the operator asks.
I can’t speak. Giant waves of panic are crashing over me, and I daren’t step into the room. What if he’s dead?
‘I need you to find out if he’s breathing,’ she repeats firmly.
I force myself to walk towards the bed. I bend down so that my ear is over Carl’s mouth. ‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘I don’t think so.’ I start to cry.
‘It’s okay,’ she says. ‘The ambulance is on its way. It’s going to be with you soon, but right now I want you to check his airways. Can you do that for me?’
‘I don’t know how to do that,’ I say, panic rising in me again.
‘It’s okay,’ she says kindly. ‘I’m going to tell you exactly what to do, and I’m going to be right here with you.’
She asks me if Carl is on his back, and I answer that he is.
‘That’s good,’ she says. ‘Now I want you to take away any pillows so that he’s lying flat on the bed. Okay?’
‘Okay,’ I say.
I pull the pillow from under Carl’s head, and something falls to the floor with a crash, but I don’t look to see what it is because the light from the bedside lamp flickers over his face, and I see that his lips are blue.
‘Oh God, his lips, they’re blue!’ I tell her.
‘It’s okay,’ she repeats reassuringly. ‘I know this is really hard for you, but the ambulance is nearly there.’
‘But his lips!’ I’m screaming at her now.
‘I understand,’ she says, super calmly. ‘That’s why I’m going to ask you to work on his breathing for me. I want you to put the heel of your hand on his breastbone. Can you do that for me?’
I do exactly as she tells me. I put one hand on his breastbone, then I put my other hand on top of it and I push down, with only the heel of my lower hand touching Carl’s chest. I pump his chest, two times a second, precisely as she says to.
‘Keep doing it,’ she says. And again, ‘Keep doing it. Don’t stop.’
And I don’t. I keep pumping at Carl’s chest until my arms ache and the horror of what I’m actually doing no longer feels real. It’s as if I’m watching myself from above.
‘I know it’s really tiring, but you’re doing really well,’ she says. ‘Not much longer now.’
That’s the last thing I hear her say, because then the ambulance pulls up in the lane outside. I see the flashing lights first and then I hear the sound of heavy footsteps on the stairs and two men in green trousers and rustling, bright yellow jackets burst into Carl’s bedroom.
‘It’s all right, love, we’ve got this now,’ says the older-looking of the two men.
He gently pushes me out of the way and takes over the compressions while the other, younger-looking one, rummages in a bag, then pulls out a plastic mask that he puts over Carl’s face.
‘You’ve done a brilliant job, lass,’ the first paramedic adds before nodding at his partner.
I slide to the ground and pull my knees up to my chest. Next to me, Elsa has curled herself into a shivering, scared ball. ‘It’s okay, girl,’ I say, stroking her back and pulling her towards me. ‘It’s okay.’
The words sound like my mouth feels. Sour.
I put my arm around her neck, and as I sit with her I notice the framed picture that Carl keeps on his bedside table, lying now in a jumble of broken glass on the floor by my legs. That must have been what fell to the ground when I pulled the pillow away.
Outside, the lights from the ambulance blink in the evening sky, throwing an eerie blue shadow over Carl’s unlit bedroom. I’ve never felt fear like this. It’s a choking, black fear. My body shivers like Elsa’s, as if an unseen frost is closing around my heart.
I reach for the photograph, shake off the broken pieces of glass, and rest it on my knees. Then I stare and stare at the picture. I stare so that I don’t have to look at what the paramedics are doing to Carl.
It’s a photograph of him and a group of others, all in running gear. They look suntanned and hot and happy.
There are three women. The one in the middle looks like one of those old-fashioned women in the war, who used to work on the farms. Her hair is dyed an orangey-red and it’s been set in rollers, giving her big, sausage-shaped curls – like my nan’s hair in the pictures of her when she was young. She’s wearing red lipstick, which doesn’t look very army-like, and terrible foundation, and she’s a bit plump. But she looks really smiley and kind, not at all like a soldier – I bet she’d be rubbish at fighting.
The other two girls are much slimmer, and neither of them are wearing any make-up. One has long, dark brown, shiny hair braided neatly and pinned on top of her head. She’s leaning back into a man who has his arms around her, pulling her protectively towards him. They look like they’ve just started dating and want everyone to know they’re a couple.
There’s a massively tall guy with a big goofy grin and very small T-shirt, and in front of him a man in robes with a beard. And Kath and Michael’s son, who Carl calls ‘Fridge’ and always refuses to tell me why.
Then there’s some other soldier dude who has his arm around the third woman, a blonde beauty, with long, thick, straight hair and teeth so perfect she looks like an American.
Everyone is staring at the camera, apart from her. She has her head tilted to the side, and when I follow her gaze I realize she is staring at Carl. And there’s something in her gaze that I can’t figure out. But then I get it.
Whenever we watch a film with Cary Grant, or Steve McQueen, or Paul Newman and, lately, Brad Pitt, my mum sighs and says, ‘Oooh, he has such presence.’ And we all laugh. She says it means that some people just shine more brightly than others.
I never understood what she meant, but now I get it, because that’s exactly what Carl has. A powerful presence. It’s not something you can put your finger on or articulate. It’s not even about his looks. He’s just one of those magnetic people who draw you in. He’s like a sugar fix.
She gets it. The woman staring at him in the picture. I can tell by the way she’s looking at him. I wonder if he felt the same about her?
Next to Fridge is another tall and hefty bloke. He’s smiling, too, but he looks a bit more menacing, like he’s left unfinished business on the battlefield and is going back any minute. As my nan used to say, he looks like he wouldn’t take any prisoners. He’s standing behind the friendly-looking woman with the red lipstick, and they look like they might be a couple too.
I stare at Carl, who is standing on the edge, his hair buzzed short, the same length as his stubble. Suddenly I feel angry. Why? Why would he do this? The dogs need him! I need him!
Is it because of something that happened when he was out there?
Or maybe it’s to do with these mysterious appointments he’s been disappearing off to, over the last couple of months. When he gets back, hours later, he seems dazed, as if he’s in pain.
And the cake? What could have made him so angry that he would hurl it against the wall? Mum spent hours making that cake. She dug out my old copy of The Nutcracker that Granny gave me, so she could do an exact iced copy of the soldier. I used to love that story – Mum used to read it to me over and over again.
Mum. How I wish she was here with me now.
I think of her staying up late, lovingly icing this cake, painstakingly piping on the eyes and the buttons and the hair, because she thought it would make Carl happy.
It did make him happy though. The cake. Mum said he was over the moon when she gave it to him. She told me he actually swept her off her feet and kissed her on the cheek.
So what happened? None of it makes any sense.
He’s been so happy since he got back from the wedding. All skippy and perky – so different to how he used to be when I first met him. Back then, he had a permanent faraway expression on his face, as if what he was seeing was totally different to what everyone else was seeing. His body stayed in the room, but his mind was far away. And wherever it went, well, I don’t think it was a very happy place.
Mum told me not to push him. She says he’s seen things that no amount of positive thinking can rescue him from. Stuff from when he was a soldier that he’s not ready to talk about. That he might never be ready to talk about.
Grandad was a soldier, too, and I can imagine him being a soldier, because he was always dead stern and strict, and a bit mean sometimes. But Carl? I still find it hard to imagine Carl fighting in a war.
I mean he looks like a soldier, all right – he’s built like an armoured tank – dead broad and fit, with these super-muscly arms. But I just can’t see him deliberately hurting someone. The Carl I know won’t even kill spiders. He carefully catches them in a glass and then takes them outside to stop the dogs tormenting them.
Sometimes, when he doesn’t know I’m looking, I watch him playing with the dogs in the garden, lying on the ground and letting them roll all over him and lick his face, or chasing after them like a little kid.
He’s so nice to Hatty, and all the other dogs, and to Mum, and to the old farmer’s wife. I know he does chores for her around the farm, chopping wood for her and that. He spent ages fixing her fence in the pouring rain last week.
He never, ever tells me what to do, and he draws silly, smiley stick pictures of me and the dogs on the envelopes he gives me my wages in every week. And he always puts too much money in and when I tell him, he pretends he can’t count very well. But I know he can, because sometimes we watch Countdown together and he is totally amazing with numbers.
But I don’t care. I don’t care how good or nice he is, because how could he do this? I don’t understand.
‘On my count,’ I hear one of the paramedics say.
‘One, two, three.’
I wipe away the tears from the corners of my eyes and look up as, with a huge effort, they hoist him on to the stretcher.
They must have cut his T-shirt off to treat him, because his back is bare.
Totally bare but for the most shocking, stunning, beautiful tattoo.