Kate Hamer: The Girl in the Red Coat

‘To persuade them to move on.’

*

Tonight, everything stirs. I go to the window but I can’t see out. The light’s on and inside the glass there’s just my reflection.

‘It’s alright, darling,’ I say fiercely. ‘I know you’re there.’

The dress is laid out on the stage. Gramps must have done it when I went to the toilet. It makes me feel funny looking at the dress all empty. It’s in a spotlight, blue on white. Round the neck and the bust there’s the silver nylon lace and it glitters in the light. For a moment it’s like it’s me lying down on the stage flat and empty and the real me, the one that’s looking, isn’t there.

I guess I’ll have to put it on. The forces saying I have to are too much again. They are Munroe and Gramps. They are the waiting chairs. They are every Bible for sale and every believer in this field. But if I do that right now I’m worried I’m going to disappear and the dress will be everything.

I go outside to get away from it all. What I’d like to do is tear the dress to shreds but I’d get into so much trouble I hardly want to think about it. I realise I’m still frightened of Munroe and remember Mum saying if you’re frightened of someone then you should think of them in a silly situation — like in their pyjamas brushing their teeth — and they stop being frightening. When I was little I’d think of people with poo on their faces, that seemed the silliest thing you could think. But the picture of Munroe with shit over his face somehow just makes him scarier so I blank the thought out and shove my hands into the pockets of my red jacket and wander down the path kicking small stones.

Then I hear this lovely voice and for a second I can’t see who it is and I really think the archangel Gabriel has come down from on high and is speaking to me directly.

‘Carmel.’

There’s no one in front of me.

‘Carmel, Carmel. Is it you?’

I look round and it’s Nico. I’m sure it is. It looks like him only taller, and real handsome. He’s leaning against one of the entrances to the tents, so tall and good-looking he’s better than the archangel Gabriel.

My breathing goes all funny when I see him. I’ve waited years for this to happen.

He comes right up to me and he’s so tall I have to bend my neck to look at him. ‘Hey,’ he says, ‘haven’t seen you since we were little kids.’

For some reason while I speak my hands waggle either side like I’m trying to swim because I feel I need to balance or I might fall over. ‘Nico. You sound like a proper American now.’

‘So do you.’

‘Do I?’ It’s funny but you don’t really know how you sound to your own ears.

I remember about his sister, I’m not sure if I should ask — in case. But I do anyway. ‘Is your sister, is she … here?’

He smiles and it runs over me, nice prickles. ‘No, but she’s still surviving.’ He wants to change the subject, he’s thinking of something to say. ‘Look at you — all your buttons are done up the wrong way.’

Then slowly, slowly he undoes the shiny brass buttons on my jacket and does them up the right way. All the time he’s doing this I’m shaking and I hope he doesn’t notice.

‘Carmel?’ Gramps’s voice comes floating out of the tent towards us. I do so wish he’d go away.

‘The old man and Dorothy still taking you on the road?’

‘Dorothy’s gone now.’

‘Carmel …’ Gramps is sounding twitchy now.

‘Bye then.’ Nico reaches over and flicks one of my buttons and makes a pinging sound. ‘Catch you around.’

‘Carmel …’

I watch Nico walk away with his hands in his pockets. I want to call him back or run after him but I stand there watching. And I feel so sad to see him walking away, so deep-down sad, like he really is an archangel and he’s the only one that could ever save me.

‘Carmel, we need you here …’

Now Nico is small in the distance and it’s the sky taking my attention away from him and from Gramps. What strange light. Is it only me that can see it? There’s quiet over the camp for a minute. Over the tent selling alarms that remind you to pray and T-shirts that say ‘SAVED’ across the chest. Crucifixes to dangle in your car. Tiny white Bibles to bury with dead babies. The big tent at the entrance to the field where a prayer service is held every hour, on the hour. Even hush from there. Then floating down on the wind. A voice. It sounds like it doesn’t belong to anyone. It sounds like it’s leaking from a radio.

‘The doctors who took away Chandler’s bandages could not believe their eyes. Where there were third-degree burns only two days before, the skin was completely clear. They were astonished …’ It’s Munroe rehearsing, I realise. The voice floats and twists down the path like a plastic bag in the wind.

There’s the dress again. Waiting.

‘Where have you been, girl? Folk’ll be here soon.’ Gramps has taken his coat off and rolled his shirt sleeves up like a workman.

‘You look worried today, Gramps.’

His forehead’s crinkled up into a frown and it’s shining with sweat under the lights. Because of where he’s standing on the stage there’s a green spotlight on his face. A little explosion of a giggle escapes me.

He looks up, sharp. ‘What’s so funny, Carmel?’

I wish I hadn’t of laughed. Now I’ll have to explain.

‘You remind me of something. That’s all.’

‘What thing?’

I don’t want to say. He doesn’t like me talking about before. ’Course he never says this, I just know, and before gets blurry for me now even if I did want to talk about it.

‘Mum took me to a pantomime …’

‘Pardon?’

‘It’s like a play. There’s a princess and a prince. And two funny women that might be men …’ I’m trying to remember now. ‘But the thing I liked most was the genie. He came out of nowhere in a puff of smoke and the light on him was green and so were his clothes. But I can’t remember if he was supposed to be bad or good …’

He cuts in. ‘Sounds like a pile of Godless fakery to me.’

I knew it would make him cross.

‘Time to get changed, Carmel.’

Then he’s gone but his face seems to flicker still in the green light. I walk up to the dress and Gramps’s face is there too in the folds — where a tummy should be. I sweep it off the stage with one hand and give it a good shake. It’s only a stupid old dress, I tell myself, far too small for me now.

A waft of icy air drifts through the open flaps of the tent. I unbutton my jacket but I’m not going to take anything else off, not today. Anyway, I don’t want to feel the dress against my skin — to feel all the summers, all the people that have grabbed onto my hands. I don’t want to feel Dorothy right next to me. So I slip it over my jeans and my T-shirt that says ‘Frank’s Chicken Shed’ on it that we got free one time for eating chicken wings.

‘There, there she is. My girl, my girl.’ Gramps’s voice is almost a wail coming from the back of the tent. ‘Come, child, do it up. It’s half falling off you.’ And he comes over and starts buttoning me up at the back and nearly choking me.

‘You’ve got your other clothes on underneath.’

‘I’m cold, Gramps. Can’t you feel the cold sneaking around?’

He shakes his head and wipes the sweat away from his forehead to show he doesn’t know what I’m talking about.

‘She’s trussed up in that dress like a killed deer. ’Bout time you took her shopping, Dennis,’ Munroe grumbles and Gramps wants to answer him back, I know he does, but Munroe’s turned away already and he’s slotting a CD into the player and cheesy music fills the tent. We face each other in a triangle with things unsaid in each of our mouths and it’s almost a relief that a family arrives, pushing a girl about my age in a wheelchair up the aisle.