Mark Haddon - The Pier Falls - And Other Stories

This is the room where she and Robyn ate tomato soup and toast fingers in front of Magpie and Ace of Wands . This was where they played Mousetrap and threw a sheet over the coffee table to make a cave. “What happened?”

“I was asleep.”

“To the house. To you.”

“Your father died.”

“And then what?”

There was a lime tree just beyond the back fence. It filled the side window and when the wind gusted all the leaves flipped and changed colour like a shoal of fish. The window is now covered with a sheet of plywood.

“How did you get in?” says her mother.

“Mum, when did you last have a bath?”

“I spent forty-three years looking after your father.”

“I can actually smell you.”

“Enough housework to last a lifetime.”

“Does Robyn know about all this?”

“Then I no longer had to keep him happy. Not that I ever succeeded in keeping your father happy.”

“She never said anything.”

“I prefer not to go out. Everyone is so fat. They have electric signs that tell you when the next bus is coming. I should make you a cup of tea.” And with that she is gone, off to make God alone knows what bacterial concoction.

Carol picks the papier-mâché giraffe from the windowsill and blows the dust off. She can still feel the dry warmth of Miss Calloway’s hands wrapped around her own as they shaped the coat-hanger skeleton with the red pliers, coffee and biscuits on her breath from the staffroom at break. “Come on, squeeze.”

She asks the woman behind the till in the Nisa for the number of a local taxi firm and rings from a call box. Sitting on a bench waiting for the cab she remembers the street party they held to celebrate the wedding of Charles and Diana in July of 1981, everyone getting drunk and dancing to Kim Wilde and the Specials on a crappy PA in the bus shelter. This town…is coming like a ghost town .

There were trestle tables down the centre of Maillard Road but no timetable beyond a rendition of “God Save the Queen” and a half-hearted speech by a local councillor which was rapidly drowned out by catcalls. The atmosphere became rowdier as the day went on, the older people dispersing around nightfall when the air of carnival turned sinister. She remembers a woman sitting on the grass and weeping openly. She remembers Yamin’s terrifying older brother having sex with Tracey Hollywood on the roundabout while his mates whooped and spun it as fast as they could. She remembers the Sheehan twins firing rockets across the field until the police arrived, then starting up again when they left. For months afterwards you would find little plastic Union Jacks and lager cans and serviettes bearing pictures of the royal couple wedged into the nettles at the edge of the football pitch and stuck behind the chicken-wire fence around Leadbitter’s Bakery.

She remembers how Helen Weller’s brother jumped from a seventh-floor balcony in Cavendish Tower one Christmas while high on mushrooms, equipped only with a Spider-Man bedsheet. She remembers Cacharel and strawberry Nesquik and Boney M singing “Ra Ra Rasputin.” She remembers how her father would stand at the front window staring out on all of this and say, Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair . Only many years later did she realise that he hadn’t made the phrase up himself, though whether he was pretending to be Shelley or Ozymandias she still doesn’t know.

Robyn is taking wet washing from the machine. The dryer churns and rumbles. Through the half-opened concertina doors Carol can see the children watching Futurama . Fergal, Clare and Libby. She can never remember which girl is which. There are crayon pictures in cheap clip frames. There are five tennis rackets and a space hopper and a dead rubber plant and two cats. The clutter makes Carol feel ill. “Jesus, Robyn, how did you let it happen?”

“I didn’t let anything happen.”

“I’m pretty certain she’d wet herself.”

“So you got her undressed and put her into the bath and helped her into some clean clothes?”

Robyn has put on two stone at least. She seems fuzzier, less distinct.

“Six years. Shit, Carol. Why didn’t you tell us you were coming?”

“She’s my mother, too.”

“Christmas cards, the odd email.” Robyn slams the washing-machine door and hefts the laundry basket onto a chair.

“Let’s not do this.”

“Do what? Draw attention to the fact that you waltzed off into the sunset?”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“You never asked.”

“Asked what? ‘Has Mum gone crazy?’ ”

“She’s not crazy and you never asked about anything.”

The argument is unexpectedly satisfying, like getting a ruler under a plaster and scratching the itchy, unwashed flesh. “This is not about scoring points. This is about our mother who is sleeping on the floor in a house full of shit.”

“You didn’t come back when Dad was dying.”

“We were in Minnesota. We were in the middle of nowhere. I didn’t get your message till we got back to Boston. You know that.”

“You didn’t come to his funeral.”

Carol knows she should let it go. Her life has exceeded Robyn’s in so many ways that her sister deserves this small moral victory, but it niggles, because the story is true. She remembers it so clearly. There were eagles above the lake and chipmunks skittering over the roof of the cabin. Every room smelt of cedar. Down at the lakeside a red boat was roped to a wooden quay. She can still hear the putter of the outboard and the slap of waves against the aluminium hull. “How often does she get out?”

“I pop in on Tuesdays and Thursdays after work and do her a Sainsbury’s shop on Saturday morning.”

“So she never goes out?”

“I make sure she doesn’t starve to death.” Robyn looks at her for a long moment. “How’s Aysha, Carol?”

How can Robyn tell? This X-ray vision, her ability to home in on a weakness. Is it being a mother, spending your life servicing other people’s needs? “Aysha’s fine. As far as I know.”

Robyn nods but doesn’t offer any sisterly consolation. “Secondaries in his lungs and bone marrow. They sewed him up and sent him to the hospice.”

“I know.”

“No, Carol. You don’t know.” Robyn picks out three pairs of socks and drapes them over the radiator below the window. “He collapsed in the bathroom, his trousers round his ankles.”

“You don’t need to do this.”

“The doctor was amazed he’d managed to keep it hidden for so long.” She takes a deep breath. “I’ve always pictured you sitting in the corner of the kitchen with your hands over your ears while the phone rings and rings and rings.” The dining table is covered in half-made Christmas cards, glitter glue and safety scissors and cardboard Santas. “Sometimes people need you,” says Robyn. “It might be inconvenient and unpleasant but you just do it.”

She books into the Premier Inn and eats a sub-standard lasagne. Her body is still on Eastern Standard Time so she sits in her tiny room and tries to read the Sarah Waters she bought at the airport but finds herself thinking instead about her father’s last days, that short steep slope from diagnosis to death.