Chapter 7
Arthur
Sleep doesn’t come. I’m unsure if it’s the starchy sheets that sit like boards against my shivering skin, or the repetitive thoughts of all I’ve done in my first day in New York but though my lids are heavy, I can’t bring myself to close them.
With each toss and turn, the bed moans as though it too is uncomfortable with my being here.
So after a while of staring at the ceiling, trying my hardest not to move, I sit up and accept that if I’m not going to sleep, I’ll at least busy my mind to fend off all of the dread I feel about everything else.
Looking about the room, it’s clear that my grandmother rarely hosts any sleepovers.
Everything feels stiff, as though the rug, the desk, the armoire, have all rusted, or rotted into one another and twisted together so tightly that it would be impossible to move one thing without moving it all.
Though it seems untouched, it isn’t dusty or unkempt.
It’s cared for, preserved, as though it’s an exhibit from a museum, never meant to be disturbed.
A series of old film cameras in differing states of deconstruction line the chest of drawers and one digital camera sits out of place behind them all.
Pulling out a discarded strip of film, I hold it up to the moonlight to try and make out its tiny sepia contents.
The first few are landscapes – a lonely tree in the middle of a field, a discoloured barn in the distance – then there are people, smiles, frowns, and every expression in between.
I see my mum in a few of them, grinning and wide-eyed, as though these were taken at a time where her life was full of all of the wonder of what she could do, what she could be.
These must have been my dad’s cameras. And this must have been his room.
I shiver as though he’s right here watching me.
But then as I look again at the peeling posters on the wall, the Post-it Notes of random ideas scrawled and plastered across the wallpaper, I realise this room feels nothing like the man I know.
I couldn’t imagine my dad even stepping foot in this house let alone decorating it, or kicking his shoes off in the corner and lounging across the bed listening to his cassettes.
Picking up the digital camera, I toy with it in my hands for a moment, passing it back and forth, eyeing it up, working it out.
I don’t know what makes me so nervous about it, but my finger hovers over the power button, as if to press it would set off some sort of grenade, send some alarm blaring in my grandmother’s room, or self-destruct into tiny pieces.
Or worse, show me something about my dad that I don’t want to see.
Setting it down, I sit back on the edge of the bed and try to forget about it.
But that lasts approximately thirty seconds before I return to my feet with the camera in my hands and the power button under my thumb.
I watch the tiny screen for any signs of life, but alas, nothing.
Probably should have known that a battery-operated camera that has sat in my father’s childhood bedroom for at least twenty-five years wouldn’t have any charge but crazier things have happened.
And I always thought that old stuff had enough battery life to survive a nuclear apocalypse, but I guess that only applies to Nokia phones.
Unable to shake my curiosity, and even less tired than before, I slide on a pair of slippers that I find tucked beneath the small bed and make for the door.
Moonlight is blurred through the netted curtains of the hallway and the contents of the house are silhouetted in its glow.
My grandmother didn’t bother to give me a tour, only showed me to my bedroom with a sigh before heading two doors down to what I assume is her own room.
So, doing my best to navigate the shadowy staircase, I trace my fingers along the tactile wallpaper and skim them over old nails that must have once held frames and photos.
Each step creaks loudly as if they’re the keys of a weathered typewriter, and I cringe with every motion of my descent.
The floorboards downstairs are no better; they groan as though talking to me, warning me to go back to bed.
Or calling to my grandmother like her spies.
She looks like the kind of woman who would have the trees and birds talk to her, like the White Witch of Narnia with her ivory hair and stern brow.
The house looks as though once upon a time it was a place of grandeur, with high ceilings, sash windows with panes too many to count, and corridors that seem to stretch so far that the distance between each room felt like an adventure, but now each step forward feels more claustrophobic than the last. Trinkets line the walls with porcelain and brass, and various farm tools prop up the sideboard.
At least I’m hoping they’re farm tools because looking a little closer, they do somewhat resemble medieval torture devices.
With a shiver, I remind myself of why exactly it is that I am creeping around a stranger’s house who just so happened to tell me she is my grandmother, and I just so happened to believe her.
Where would an elderly woman keep batteries?
Stopping at the cupboard under the stairs, I pull the tiny handle to no avail.
When I tug it a little harder, it unsticks from the frame and the double barrel of a shotgun falls into my hands.
Taking a moment to realise what exactly it is pointing directly at my face, I place it back where it came from, very gently, before clicking the cupboard closed.
‘Utterly, utterly insane,’ I mutter to myself, and the reminder of Beatrice and her insistence on washing me down with a garden hose at seven p.m. in February comes tumbling back through my memory and I subconsciously shiver.
Shame clambers through me, thudding up and down my ribs and clattering through my stomach.
Her face sticks so clearly in my mind that every time I blink, I see her pink and freckled cheeks and the frazzled wisps of dark hair standing up almost in shock when I embarrassed her so mercilessly.
Which was entirely out of character, or at least I’d like to hope so.
Stepping out of that car, I was a person I didn’t recognise, bound by the impulses of an arrogant man believing himself better than the people of this village.
Every day I get further and further from the person I once recognised as me, as I morph into the man the papers have told me I am for the last decade.
I’ve grown more paranoid that the whole world is out to get me and even just the thought of stepping out into somewhere new makes me feel sick.
I’ve lost control of myself, or given up, I’m not sure which.
It was always Lizzie who kept me grounded, reminded me who I am, taught me who I should be.
But I’ve lost her. I’m grieving her though she’s still very much alive, and now it just all feels pointless without her.
That sick feeling, though always there in the background, starts to throb more aggressively in my stomach so I try to draw my mind back to the task at hand: batteries.
Creeping into the kitchen, it’s another death trap.
Old farmhouse furniture that has seen decades of wear and varying levels of repair takes up every free bit of space and I bash my hip bones into every corner there can possibly be in this place.
Trying my best not to swear, whilst also trying to rub the pain from my pelvis, I scour for the place most likely to be the junk drawer.
Everyone has one; even in my show home there’s a junk drawer filled with all the miscellaneous items you can’t find a place for.
Considering the number of random items already on display, like the old telephone perched on top of the microwave that definitely hasn’t worked since the Fifties, I know for certain that my grandmother will have one.
After wading through countless chargers and cables and feeling a little too much like Indiana Jones in a snake pit, I finally find what I’m looking for. Sneaking back upstairs, my heart thumps faster still as I replace the batteries in the camera and wait for its lights to glow.
Just as I am about to give up hope, a photo pops up on the screen.
It’s of my mother, grinning, glowing, and very pregnant.
She’s stood beside a green tractor in the very same yard I was introduced to tonight and she holds her bump as though it is her most prized possession.
The next photo is of the two of them: my dad in his muddied farm jeans and my mum in a set of dungarees, and I picture my grandmother behind the camera, asking how it works.
They seem happy, free. I know from the time stamp on the photo that it’s Lizzie she’s pregnant with, in the years before they found fame.
I’ve never seen those smiles on either one of them, those kinds of unreserved grins, as though not worried about how many teeth to show or which newspaper might take these photos and spin some messed-up story.
They look like my parents, and yet I don’t recognise the people who raised me in those clear eyes.
I wonder if my mother was as excited to be pregnant with me, knowing that she’d have to miss out on a year of work at the height of success, knowing she’d have to turn down a role that her replacement won an Oscar for, knowing that it would take years to get back to the place where she started, with her contacts, her figure, her energy, knowing that my very existence would knock her back from her dream. Dad’s career was fine, of course.
Lying down in the bed with the camera still in my hands, I fall asleep sliding through the photos of my parents in their happier days.
‘Been snooping, have we?’ a stern voice calls to me from the end of the bed as I stir from my restless sleep.
My grandmother looms over me. The sun is yet to rise and she’s only illuminated by the dim lamp in the corner of the room. I try and speak but my reply comes out as a throaty grunt.
‘Come on, up you get.’ She rips the quilt from my legs and I shiver in the morning air.
‘What time is it?’
My grandmother checks her watch with a smirk. ‘Five on the dot.’ She’s already dressed head to toe in her tweed and looks far too well rested for this time of the day. ‘Come on, chop, chop, you’ve got work to do.’
‘Work?’ I grumble but she’s already strutted from the room before I can get a response.
‘You didn’t expect to stay here and have me feed you for free, did you?’ She chuckles though there’s no humour in her voice. ‘Beatrice will meet you in the yard at half past to tell you what to do.’
Why is it always Beatrice?