Chapter 3 One Hundred Iron Men and One Black Cloud
September, eighteen years later
“So,” I say to Bill as he sprawls next to me on the concrete steps that lead down to the beach, “how did my life get so messy? I’ve been here for over a year now. I only meant to stay for a few months. I meant to keep it simple. I blame you.”
Bill gazes at me with unreadable brown eyes, thuds his skinny tail once, and lets out a fragrant fart.
“Ha. Well, that told me.”
I reach out and scratch behind his ears. He’s a weird mix, Bill—some lurcher maybe, some collie, perhaps a bit of Lab. He’s multicolored, shades of yellow and brown and gray, and has fur that’s so long on his back he has a center parting, and so short on his head that he looks almost bald, apart from his massive and super-expressive eyebrows.
He has come from Hungary and probably doesn’t understand a word I’m saying. As opposed to British dogs, I think, smiling at how silly this internal conversation is. British dogs would be quick to pick up on the subtleties of my emotional turmoil, wouldn’t they? Not.
We have just finished our run, and we are sitting for a moment to gather our wits about us. I am, at least—I’m not so sure about Bill. He’s the strong, silent type and doesn’t say much.
It is 7:30 a.m., and the beach is already busy with dog walkers. Dog walkers, I have come to learn, are a friendly bunch. I know none of their names, and I have never shared mine, but we know each other by our beasts. There is a man with a small pack of corgis, and a lovely lady with a chatty springer spaniel, and a woman with labradoodles called Bugsy and Ronny, and one with an enormous Old English sheepdog called Marvin. I have no idea how they refer to me in their minds: Bill’s mum, maybe, or the Ginger One with the Mixed-up Mongrel.
I have made up stories for them all, of course. I have assigned them fictional lives, complete with fictional partners and fictional children and fictional jobs. It comes as quite a shock when I see one of them out of context, and their actual lives don’t match up to the ones I’ve amused myself with. I mean, who’d have thought that I’d see Mr. Smiley Staffy in town one day, and he’d be wearing a policeman’s uniform, and be an actual policeman? In my version of events he was a landscape gardener who took his dog to work with him. Weird.
A small border terrier runs over to us and sniffs Bill’s bits. Bill doesn’t budge, or respond, or give any indication that he is alive. He is utterly inscrutable. It is a ploy that works, and we are soon left alone again.
It’s the first week of September, and the sky is a pure pastel blue, cloudless and serene, colliding with sea and sand in lines of perfect color. It is clear enough to see the Welsh hills in the distance across from me, to see the curve of coastline that becomes Lancashire to my right, and the towers and spires of Liverpool to my left.
It is a strange stretch of land, sand dunes and sea creatures and skylarks singing, thistledown and sea holly and marsh orchids and big horizons and ever-shifting views. All this in a marriage of convenience with giant wind turbines and the cranes and gantries of the docks, container ships and cruise liners ghosting past on mist-laden mornings. A perfect point of balance between nature and the city.
It is also home to an art installation called Another Place, a hundred cast-iron figures of naked men, by the artist Antony Gormley. Because we all need more naked men in our eyes, right?
The iron men stretch out into the sea, submerged by the tide, sunk into sand, often dressed up in football shirts or given Christmas hats or sunglasses. It’s another strange thing about this place, which I like. I have amused myself many times, walking from statue to statue, counting them, never quite managing them all for fear of getting lost at sea or sinking into mud, never to be seen again.
Today, this early, the tide is out, and the men are exposed, pitted and gritted and looking out at the edge of the world, unmoved and calm.
Me, not so much. I am not calm, and I am not unmoved, and I feel as though a cartoon version of me would feature a giant black rain cloud hovering above my head.
I have done everything I usually do to prepare myself for the day that lies in front of me. I have run my usual distance—three miles—which, for me, is just under six thousand steps. I have walked another mile at a slower pace. I have sipped my water. I have played with the dog. I have sat here and watched the world go by, for as long as I can manage. As an extra treat, I have even done some of that 4-7-8 breathing, with Bill looking on in amusement as I huffed and puffed.
None of it has worked. I still feel wired, and tense, and overadrenalized. It makes me want to start running again, and just keep going until I leave everything, especially myself, behind.
Maybe it’s because it’s the first full day back at the school where I teach after the long summer break. Maybe it’s because I’ll be meeting new students, probably new colleagues, and greeting old ones. Maybe it’s because Margie, the lady who lives in the flat beneath mine and actually owns Bill, keeps trying to find out my whole life story, and I just don’t do life-story swapping. Maybe it’s because Karim, the admittedly pretty gorgeous head of PE, has asked me out for a drink and I don’t feel ready to have a man in my life just now, even on a casual basis. Maybe it’s because I’ve agreed to a longer contract, adding another year on to the length of time I usually spend anywhere. Maybe it’s because I am starting to feel settled here, and I find feeling settled very . . . unsettling.
Maybe, I admit to myself as I stand and stretch and start the walk home, it is all of those things and none of those things.
Maybe it is because she is almost eighteen, and might be doing her A-level exams, like most eighteen-year-olds in England. Maybe it is because this year, I could have been her teacher. Maybe it is because after her A levels, if they go well, she might be choosing universities and courses, standing at a crossroads in her life as she looks at careers and maybe even a gap year. She might have a part-time job, and be planning a big party and her first legal drink, and she will be surrounded by friends and love and choices. She is looking at the future, and it is bright.
Of course, I have no clue if any of this is even remotely true—but I like to imagine it is. I imagine it, because I have no other option. I am not a part of her life, and never will be. I acknowledge this, and let the familiar tug of pain have its way with me, and know that I cannot chase it away before it is ready to go. It is a tenacious creature, this particular pain, made up of tentacles and hooks and talons that plunge deep and hold on tight.
I have missed her every single day since she was born. I have dreamed of her, and yearned for her, and never stopped thinking about her. But still, I know that I did the right thing. I repeat this to myself over and over again, until I feel its familiar truth, sad but consoling.
I reach the house by the beach where I live. It is at the end of a small terraced row, tucked between grand Victorian seaside homes with pastel-colored paint jobs and fancy wrought-iron verandas, and more modern mansions made of sheets of glass and sleek wood. Our terrace is homely, small but perfectly formed, gardens and patios edging out onto the marram grass and sand, within hearing of the waves and within sight of the sea. As I approach, I see Margie pottering around her terrace garden in a bright-pink quilted dressing gown, and watch as Bill gambols toward her.
I see the balcony of my own home, above hers, with the small table and just the one chair and the blanket I’ve left out there so I can sit, alone, in the now-cool nights, looking out to sea and along to the lit-up wonderland of the port.
I know there are fourteen steps to go up, and that I need to shower, and eat, and try to coax myself into a back-to-school state of mind.
I open the glossy white gate at the end of Margie’s terrace, and Bill runs to her, nuzzling her gnarled hands as she tries to hoist a full watering can around. Without asking, I take it from her and start to sprinkle the patio pots, the mystery tubs, the fuchsias, the California lilac in terra-cotta. Every corner of her small space is filled with flowers and plants, with life and color, reaching upward and tumbling down and spreading into every nook and cranny.
Margie sinks down onto her cushioned chair and sighs. “Thanks, babe,” she says, massaging fingers that are curled with rheumatoid arthritis. She is only in her midsixties, but she suffers in ways I don’t even like to think about. “For that, and for walking the hellhound.”
“My pleasure,” I reply, trying to sound jaunty. Margie doesn’t like to need me, and I don’t blame her. “It’s good for me. What are you up to today?”
Some of the pain she experiences in the morning will ease as the day wears on—some will not. As well as her hands, she suffers from inflammation in her hips, knees, and feet. Her activities are not likely to take her far from home, which is perhaps why she has made her home so extremely welcoming. Inside as well as outside, it is awash with nature, cozy and bright and filled with softness, warmth, and comfort. I normally do not make friends with my neighbors, but Margie has seduced me.
“Oh, Daniel Craig’s due round at ten,” she says, grinning as Bill settles at her feet. “He’s coming by speedboat. I’ll be the talk of the town. What’s up with you, anyway? You don’t look yourself this morning. Something on your mind?”
Yes, I think. The impending adulthood of the daughter I have never known. The low-level anxiety of feeling trapped in my own skin. The ongoing need to present a normal face to the world when I am anything but normal inside. The persistent, nagging, unnamed worry that all of my well-managed eccentricities might not be so well managed one day, and that I will emerge from my chrysalis of coping and become my own mother.
“Nope, not especially!” I singsong back at her. She narrows her eyes in a way that implies she is not convinced, and I back away from her, out of the gate, saying my goodbyes as I jog down the path that leads to my own front door. It takes Margie a good few minutes to get out of her chair, so I am safe as long as I keep moving.
“You forgot my fact for the day!” she shouts, her voice following me and stopping me in my tracks. I dash back, pop my head around the side of the wall, and reply: “The Great Fire of London. Started this day in 1666. Be careful if you bake today, Margie!”
She cackles in delight, and her laughter is enough to bring a smile to my face. I have been reluctant to become a part of Margie’s life, a part of anyone’s, in fact—but I cannot deny the pleasure it brings me, this simple connection, this straightforward sharing of words and routine and affection.
I try to keep that Margie-inspired smile alive as I run up my fourteen stairs and into my flat. Today is the first day of class at the school where I teach. Some of my new students will only be sixteen years old—babies who think they’re all grown up. The same age I was when I gave birth.
The same age I was when I first met Geoff with a G, the hospital social worker. The same age I was when I said goodbye on the same day I promised I was forever hers.
I go over to my phone, put my Get Up and Go playlist on shuffle, hoping to knock myself out of the bittersweet mood that is haranguing me. No such luck—it hits on The Clash with “Should I Stay or Should I Go.” The story of my life, and yet another random reminder of the past. I only started listening to The Clash because of Geoff—the first time I met him, I noticed he was wearing a band badge on his jacket lapel, as if he was trying to cling to the interesting life he had outside the confines of his work.
I’d been sent to the emergency room by my school after fainting and coming to on the classroom floor, the teacher looking concerned and one of the boys whispering that he could see my knickers.
I still vividly remember it now, that entire day. Telling the nurse who was assessing me that there was absolutely positively no way I could be pregnant, outraged that she was making this assumption based on prejudice—that because I was a foster kid, I’d become yet another statistic. That I would be too dumb to even realize if I was pregnant. The sense of horror when it turned out that her assumptions were based on years of medical experience, not on prejudice. That she was right, that I was predictable as well as stupid.
I’d had the urge to tell her that I’d only done it once, that we’d used what was clearly the world’s crappiest condom, that my periods were always unreliable, that I thought I was putting on weight because I was eating too many packs of Wotsits to cope with exam stress . . . I said nothing, of course. I’d already learned by that point in life that staying quiet was usually the best course of action.
I was already past the date when “other options” would be available, so I was sent to Geoff. I remember sitting there in front of him, counting the tiles of linoleum on the floor, noting how many pencils and pens he had on his desk. The first thing I asked was whether I’d be able to do my history exams, which I immediately regretted, as it implied I wasn’t taking in the full gravity of the situation.
I knew I was under scrutiny—I always was, and I hated it, the way my life was laid bare for the alphabet soup of concerned professionals to poke and prod at. I’d had people ticking boxes about my welfare for a long time, and as my mother was not a woman who was on intimate terms with the real world, I was more aware than other kids of how easy it was to be judged and found wanting.
He was kind, though, Geoff; he promised me he’d do his best to make sure I managed all my exams. He made me a mug of tea, and talked to me about specialist accommodation, and asked whether my mother would be able to help. I snapped at him that she was “off her head,” and was washed with a sense of shame for saying that.
She wasn’t off her head. Technically, she suffered from rapid-cycling bipolar disorder. I can look back on it more clearly now as an adult—but then it was hard. Impossibly hard. She spun from being hyper and happy to being paralyzed by depression, combined with drug use and a whole lot of drinking, which started when she was much younger and had no idea about bipolar and just needed something to make all the bad stuff go away. Sometimes I felt sorry for her; sometimes I just detested her. But, pretty much, I always avoided being around her when I needed help, because I was scared of stressing her out. Stressing her out never ended well. She’d done her best, but I was in care because everyone thought it was better for me—including her, and including me.
Geoff didn’t react to the anger—he was always good like that. Now, as an adult, sitting here on the edge of my bed and getting ready to head out into a fresh day of doing a job I love, I can calm myself. I can surround myself with a sense of security, with privacy, with protection. Back then, I was one enormous exposed nerve. I sat there in his cubbyhole office, my hands against my belly, still shocked by the idea of there being another living creature in there. I didn’t know if I saw it as a parasite, or a cool and beautiful thing I’d done by accident. Part of me wanted to imagine that I’d create my own little family, that I could love it so much that nothing else would matter—that I would never feel alone again.
Part of me thought it’d be a disaster, that I’d pass on all my own messed-up genes and I’d end up resenting us both, and she’d end up hating me.
It was when Geoff started talking about mother-and-baby placements and family support teams and doing a pre-birth assessment that reality started to take hold. I was so sick of being defined by other people back then, by their assessments and acronyms: I was a “looked after child,” I had an “independent reviewing officer,” and I was surrounded by jargon—at risk, safeguarding issues, lack of suitable care within the parental environment. I felt like I was nothing but a giant file, and I didn’t want that for any child of mine.
I felt everything closing in on me, my whole life mapped out and swallowed up by this one mistake. I knew I could love a baby—but I also knew that my mother loved me, and in the real world, babies need more than love.
I look around at my lovely little flat, with its pretty balcony, and views across the sea, and nice schools nearby. I think about my job, and my perfectly adequate bank balance, and the sense of stability I’ve worked hard to build. If I’d had any of this back then, things would have been different—but, of course, I didn’t, and as I haven’t yet invented a time machine, there is little point imagining that alternate universe.
I close down my thoughts and, instead, open my sock drawer. I have almost an hour before I need to be at work, and nothing calms my mind more than counting socks.
This is a new academic year. It is the year when I could be her teacher. It is the year when I need to start letting go.