Kate Hamer - The Girl in the Red Coat

Grandad and Dorothy’s voices are coming from their apartment downstairs and they sound like insects chatting away — up and down, up and down. Dorothy’s a little grasshopper — rrrupp, rrrupp, rrrupp. Grandad’s bigger and deeper. I think ‘cockroach’ at first but that doesn’t seem a very nice insect to be. So I change that to one of those big black beetles with pincers. I listen again to check if I’ve got it right: beeep, beeep, beeep. I hear one of them moving towards the door and I don’t want them to find me listening so I start to come down the stairs. Then my grandad is standing at the bottom.

‘Ah, there she is — little Carmel. I’ve spoken to the hospital. Come down and have some breakfast and be welcomed properly to our humble abode.’ Humble rhymes with bumble and I think it means small but I can’t see what’s small about living here.

I rush the rest of the way downstairs then because I want to find out about Mum. Dorothy’s at the cooker.

‘Come, sit down.’ Grandpa walks over to the table with his funny limp and Dorothy puts a pancake in front of me and sprinkles some sugar on it.

‘Blueberry,’ she says and winks and for some reason the way her eyelid rolls ever so slowly over her eyeball reminds me of an animal. She sits next to me and folds her hands in the lap of her black skirt.

The blueberries pop as I chew but it starts making me feel sick that I’m gobbling lovely pancakes when Mum’s in hospital, so I put my spoon down. Grandad sits at the top of the table.

‘Carmel, there’s good news and bad I’m afraid. Which would you like first, dear?’

They’ve both gone quite still and they’re looking at me carefully.

‘Bad. No, good.’ I hang onto the sides of my chair so hard it hurts my hands.

‘Well, your mother had a very long operation. It went right through the night because she was so terribly injured. Oh dear, my poor daughter.’

He gets a white hanky out of his pocket and wipes his face with it and I have the funny feeling he’s trying to hide his eyes and I wonder if he’s starting to cry behind the hanky. I know I am, I can feel my eyes filling up again even though I cried so much yesterday I didn’t think there’d be any water left in my head.

After a while he puts his hanky back in his pocket.

‘What about the good news?’ I ask. My voice comes out tiny. I’m an insect too now — but a quiet little baby one that’s crept under my plate to hide.

‘The good news is that she’s finally out. The wonderful skills of the surgeons have put her back together as best they can.’

Put her back together as best they can. I don’t like the sound of that. It makes me think of a doll or a puppet that’s been taken to pieces and put back all wrong so they’ve got legs coming out of their head and an eye looking out of their bottom. But I tell myself that’s silly and that’s not what he means. I tell myself I need to pull myself together.

‘When can I see her?’ I say, still in the baby insect’s voice. ‘Can we go now?’

Grandad looks worried and lifts up his hands from the table and holds them in the air in front of him so I can see their insides.

‘Oh no, no, Carmel. She’s very sick, she’s …’

‘I won’t bother her. I’ll let her sleep …’ I’m sounding more like myself now, more like Carmel.

‘No, no. That’s just not possible, not possible at all.’ I can see he’s getting upset and fidgety now.

But so am I. ‘Why? Why isn’t it possible?’ I stand up with my fists squeezed like I’m going to hit something.

‘Well, you see, she’s in a place called intensive care. It’s a very quiet place for people who are really sick. And it needs to be quiet so the people can get better.’

‘But I won’t be noisy. I won’t, I won’t.’

‘Maybe not, Carmel. But you see the doctors say there are no visitors allowed, especially not children.’

‘So I’ll creep up and peep round the door.’ I’m shouting at him. ‘Or if there’s a window in the door I’ll only peep through that. And if it’s too high you could hold me up to look …’

‘ No, Carmel.’ The shout from him is so big and frightening the tears that have stayed in my eyes come popping out and I put my hands up to my face. I fall back to sitting on the chair and Dorothy reaches out her arms and pulls me towards her. She smells of pancakes and her clothes feel very soft as if they’ve been washed a lot and I push my face into her and sob.

Her voice goes sharp. ‘Now, Dennis, that’s enough. Leave us alone and the child will be fine.’

After a while I hear my grandfather leave the room and the door shut behind him. I don’t want to move from Dorothy’s lap so I put my arms around her and cling on like a monkey. She starts stroking my hair.

‘There, there, Carmel. Everything will be A-OK. It’s all A-OK. We’re here to look after you, that’s all. As soon as your mommy starts to get a little bit well again you can see her.’

It seems much more normal and makes more sense when Dorothy explains. I start to feel better and even take my arms from round her so I can blow my nose on the pink tissues she’s given me out of her skirt pocket.

She smiles at me. When I see her eyes the word ‘amber’ comes into my head. The colour of them makes me think of a necklace Mum’s got with big yellow-brown stones and when I was little I used to like to put one big bead in my mouth when no one was looking because they looked like sweets. No sweet taste ever came off it, but I liked the feel of it in my mouth and Dorothy’s eyes look exactly the same as those beads — even the little brown bits in them.

She makes me another pancake. Then she tells me to go outside and get some fresh air while she does the dishes, and she gives me my coat which she hung up with theirs last night.

I stand at the top of the big stone steps for a moment and sniff at the air like a fox. I want to see where we are but the gates are still chained with a shiny padlock. I look through the gap and my face goes cold from the metal and all I can see is blurry green. Around the house in a circle is a high wall made of stones bigger than my head and in one place there’s a tree growing straight out of it, its roots clawing into the stones. I sit underneath the tree and the shadows make nodding shapes on my coat.

I start feeling like I’m a picture or in a film, flat and made of the same stuff as the people on TV. My hands start feeling sticky and I open them up and look at them. Dirt’s got into the cracks and I sniff my palms. They smell salty-sweet like peanut clusters only there’s just dirt and sweat.

I walk some more. I don’t think anyone’s lived here for a long time before Dorothy and Grandad. There’s broken tiles and stuff at the back that crunch under my feet. There’s even some rusted farm machines.

I stop feeling real again. There’s nothing I know here except the clothes I’m standing up in. This time, I feel like I’m about to be switched off — like I really am on the TV. I sway from the feeling and I almost go back inside to try and make it stop.

After a while I decide the best thing to do is to put my brain to work to try and get to know Grandad and Dorothy better before I see them again, so they’ll be more familiar. Grandad’s energy was still around the gates when I went past. It was hanging about there like the fog from last night. Dorothy’s different. Hers is folded up tight and neat inside of her. I think about Grandad’s limp and how it was gone and now back again. That makes my leg hurt and I nearly fall over. So I stop thinking about it. I don’t think about Mum in hospital either. I’m keeping it in a snow globe.

*

I sleep in the same bed for another night. I really want to go home now. I say that and they say, ‘Not quite yet.’