Kit de Waal - My Name Is Leon

“Here goes,” she says.

She starts slowly, stopping every few steps and holding on to gates and grasping at hedges because she can’t breathe. She tells Leon to carry her shopping bag and she shuffles along the pavement with one hand on her chest and the other swinging in the air. She has the same face as when she cries and Leon hopes she won’t start until she gets where they’re going. They take ages to get to the top and walk down the path to the bungalow.

Sylvia gasps when she opens the door.

“What on earth? Maureen! Get in here.”

She helps Maureen inside.

Maureen can’t speak and tell anyone what’s wrong, so Sylvia gets her a glass of water.

“What happened?” she says again, lodging a cigarette in the corner of her mouth and feeling Maureen’s forehead. Leon has seen Sylvia once before, when she came for Christmas dinner. She smoked all the time and didn’t say one word to Leon. She didn’t even bring him or Jake a present. She doesn’t look like Maureen. She’s very skinny and she has dark purple hair that looks like it’s leaked onto her skin. She has long nails that match her lipstick and black tights with little holes all over them. She’s wearing the same shoes that Carol wore once when she went out at Christmas with Tina. But if you added Tina’s age and Carol’s age together they still wouldn’t be as old as Sylvia. She turns suddenly to Leon and points the cigarette at him.

“Did you see what happened?”

Leon shakes his head and sits next to Maureen, who pats him on his back.

“It’s all right, Leon, love,” she whispers. “She’s not blaming you.”

“Have you had a turn, Mo?” Sylvia asks.

“Got a tight chest, that’s all. Got a sort of wheezing rattle or something every time I try and do anything.”

Maureen sips the water and makes an ugly face.

“Coffee, Sylvia, if you don’t mind. Three sugars.”

“It’ll be that sugar that’s got you wheezing, if you ask me.”

Sylvia goes to the kitchen and Maureen winks at Leon.

“She’s all right, is Sylvie. Once you’ve known her fifty years.”

Leon plays on the floor with his Action Man while the horse racing is on the TV. Maureen and Sylvia spend the day laughing and sometimes Maureen can’t breathe because she thinks the joke is so funny.

“Remember Janet? Janet Blythe? Curvature of the spine with that funny nose?” says Sylvia.

“Yeah.”

“She’s got married to Gordon.”

“Gordon Gordon? We talking about the same Gordon?”

“Yeah, Gordon. Goldfish Gordon with the lips.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“No. I can’t believe it.”

“Imagine their kids.”

“They’re too old for kids, Sylvia.”

“I know but imagine.”

Then Sylvia makes an ugly face, pulling her lips down and shoving her bottom teeth out, and Maureen has to lie on the sofa and keeps saying “Don’t. Don’t.”

Even though Leon takes his Action Man, it’s very boring at Sylvia’s house. All they do is talk about the olden days when they were young and about all Sylvia’s boyfriends and different people they know and who is married and who is separated and who is playing around.

Sylvia takes a photo album out and tells Leon to sit between her and Maureen.

“Wait till you see our Mo in some of these,” she says.

The album is heavy on his legs and he has to put his feet up on tiptoe to stop it falling to the floor.

Sylvia turns the pages while Maureen wheezes next to him.

“There she is.”

Sylvia points to a black-and-white picture of two girls in tight polka-dot dresses and funny hair. He can’t see their faces because it’s all blurred.

“That’s her. What do you think?”

Sylvia keeps nudging him but he doesn’t know what to say because it doesn’t look like Maureen. It just looks like an old film from the Second World War.

“Look at this one,” Sylvia says, turning another page, and Maureen gasps.

“God, I haven’t seen that before. Where did you find that? Where was it taken? Southend?”

“Not Southend, Mo. That was when we went to the beach with Percy and Bob.”

“It’s Southend, Sylv.”

Sylvia takes the photograph out and points at the back.

“What does that say? Morton’s Holiday Park, Hastings, June 1949.”

“Bloody hell. I’m skinny there.”

“And look at me!” Sylvia is laughing. “I look like a bloody tart with my tits out like that.”

Maureen frowns at Sylvia and looks at Leon.

“She needs a swear box, doesn’t she, Leon?”

But Sylvia is turning pages and paying no attention and this goes on for ages, taking the photographs out and reading the address on the back and talking about where they were taken and where they lived and who is thin and who is fat and who is still alive and who is dead and who was handsome and who’s got no teeth now. It goes on and on until they tell Leon he can put the TV on and see if there’s a soccer match to watch.

Then, when they think he isn’t listening, they start whispering. Maureen talks about Carol and tells Sylvia all over again what she’s already told her on the phone. She tells her about Jake leaving and how upset she was and how Leon was grinding his teeth and she tells Sylvia about Carol not coming for them and Sylvia smokes and nods and shakes her head, saying things like “You wouldn’t believe it” or “Never” like she hasn’t heard it before.

Leon asks if he can go to the toilet.

“It’s down the hallway, love,” says Maureen. In Sylvia’s bungalow there are no stairs, just a long corridor with bedrooms and a bathroom. Leon opens all the doors one by one. One bedroom is decorated in pale blue with a frilly bedspread and matching curtains like a princess lives there. Sylvia’s too old to be a princess but it smells of her fusty, old perfume. The other bedrooms have single beds with pink carpet, then right by the bathroom there is a tall cupboard with sheets and pillowcases and towels and cardboard boxes. On the way back from the toilet he passes a door that leads to the garden. The key’s in the lock, so he turns it and goes outside, walking slowly, looking right and left. Some people have dogs in their garden.

But there’s no dog, just a square patch of grass and a green plastic tub of yellow flowers. Sylvia’s underwear is on the line and it’s the same color as her bedspread.

Maureen and Sylvia are talking; they chirp like birds when they’re together. He goes quietly up to the sitting-room window but he can’t see anything through the net curtains.

“Social workers are a waste of space if you ask me, Mo.”

“Some of them.”

“I can’t stand them. Had my fill of that bunch when I worked in that home. Going out and looking after people is one thing. Having them in your own house is another, Mo. You’ve got social workers in and out with all them bloody visits, checking up on you, trying to catch you out. They come in for coffee and spend half the day talking about themselves. If I want friends, I’ll make my own. And I don’t know why you’re still bothering at your age.”

“I’m good at it. Anyway, it’s for the kids.”

“That one will get adopted, won’t he, what’s his name again?”

“Leon. Not a chance. That’s what they say.”

“Well, all right, it’s a shame for him, but you’re still running yourself ragged, that’s all I know.”

Leon drops down by the window ledge and goes back inside. He locks the door and puts the key in his pocket. When he goes back into Sylvia’s living room, they both shut up.

“Washed your hands?” says Maureen.

Leon nods.

Maureen struggles up onto her feet.

Sylvia hugs her and grips her shoulders.

“Promise me, Mo. The doctor.”