Somebody's Voice Page 9

  Her handshake feels like a contest for strength, and he hopes the firmness of his grip communicates enthusiasm for the discussion that’s ahead. She steers him towards the corridor beyond the lobby before relinquishing his hand. He’s following her when the receptionist jumps out of the wheelchair to add a new brochure to the array on the table. Once he’s well along the corridor he can’t help asking “Isn’t that girl disabled?”

  “Nobody’s disabled if they don’t let themselves be told they are.”

  “She looks as fit as I am.”

  “We want everyone to feel welcomed as soon as they look in the door.”

  As Alex refrains from saying how he was made to feel, Maggie Rotheram leads him to a room at the far end of the corridor. “We’re all here now,” she says. “I believe you know one another.”

  “I think we should by now,” Alex says, having caught sight of Carl crouched forward on a nominally upholstered straight chair. They exchange terse token grins as Alex steps into the room, and then he sees that a similar chair is thoroughly occupied by ToM from TransMission. “I don’t think that,” ToM wants it to be known.

  “I meant Carl and me.”

  “Shouldn’t that be Carl and I? You’re supposed to be a writer.”

  “Someone must have thought I am or I wouldn’t be here.”

  “That’s me as well,” Carl says.

  “Shall we keep the disagreements for the studio?” Maggie intervenes. “As lively as you like. If everybody’s ready we’ll go in.”

  ToM pulls the lowest plastic cup off a stack dangling beside a watercooler and fills it to the brim before taking an unexpectedly dainty sip. When Alex takes a cup he finds ToM’s tug has dislodged half a dozen of them, all of which come away in his hand. “Leave some for the rest of us,” ToM says with not much of a laugh.

  Alex attempts to return all the cups except one to the stack, only to displace several more. He piles cups on top of the cooler and fills his while Maggie and the men watch his performance as if they’re barely tolerating an incompetent entertainer. His first gulp of water turns into a cough he has to swallow, which leaves him needing more than three syllables to pronounce “Ready now.”

  The studio is next door. Maggie takes a seat at a control desk while ToM sits opposite, in front of the first of a trio of microphones, and Carl manoeuvres Alex into sitting in the middle. “Hope you aren’t feeling too outnumbered,” ToM hardly bothers to sound as though he means.

  “I imagine you must do,” Alex says, “most of the time.”

  “I don’t let myself.”

  “I get it sometimes,” Carl admits.

  “Then you should examine who’s responsible,” ToM says and stares at him or Alex if not both.

  “Thank you all for that,” Maggie says, and as Alex wonders why she’s grateful “I’ve taken everybody’s levels and we’re ready to record. I’m sure I don’t need to tell any of you, but just the standard warning – no racist language, no misgendering, no transgender slurs.”

  “Are we allowed to criticise religion?” Alex finds it relevant to ask.

  “I can’t see why you’d think otherwise when you go after it in your book. You weren’t attacking Islam.”

  “Whose book are you saying it is?” ToM wants to hear.

  “That’s one of the issues I want to discuss,” Maggie says and finds a file on her computer screen, which produces a Bach prelude played on an instrument not much like a harpsichord. After a few bars she fades the electronic clangour down and out. “Welcome to Literary Natters,” she says. “Tonight we’ll be looking at When I Was Carla, the new memoir of surviving child abuse. With Carl Batchelor we have Alex Grand. How would you like to be styled, Alex?”

  “Writer, do you think, Carl?”

  “You can’t claim it’s your book,” ToM objects. “You haven’t had the experience.”

  “That’s our third guest,” Maggie tells her microphone. “ToM Lincoln, spokesperson for TransMission.”

  “I wonder how much it’s Carl’s book either.” ToM barely waits for her to finish before he addresses Carl. “Don’t you feel your memories were stolen?”

  “There’s some I don’t mind someone else having.”

  “To what extent do you feel,” Maggie says, “that your memories aren’t yours any longer?”

  “I don’t. They’re still mine, all of them.”

  “Then I’d like to explore how they were composed for the book. Can you choose one you’re comfortable with discussing?”

  “I don’t mind talking about any of them now I have.” As Maggie starts to speak he says “When he made me feel what the hoses felt like.”

  Alex thinks this sounds disconcertingly like the child whose voice he tried intermittently to capture in the book, but Maggie says “Can you talk us through that?”

  “When he was checking the tyre pressures he got me to hold the air hose so I’d feel it throbbing. And then he said if I thought that was exciting I should try the petrol pump. So I held that hose while he filled up, and I felt the petrol pumping through it. My mother was in the car, but she acted as if there couldn’t be anything wrong.”

  “Did you think there was?”

  “Didn’t then. I do now I remember.”

  ToM tilts his head towards Carl, which puts Alex in mind of a joker being eased into sight from a hand of cards. “What do you think he was doing?” ToM says.

  “Getting me ready to feel something worse.”

  “You’re talking about your stepfather.”

  Carl jerks his head away from ToM. “Who else am I going to be?”

  “You could just as well have meant Mr Grand.” Before Alex can deal with this, since it appears to have confounded Carl, ToM says “That memory sounded just like your book. Whose words were you using?”

  “Mine. You heard me.”

  “But when did they become yours?” Maggie says. “Can you remember the process?”

  “Alex helped me get the memories back. He was with me every day for weeks.”

  “Did he make you live through all those experiences?” ToM is determined to establish.

  “He helped bring them back. Some things I’d forgotten till we found the words.”

  “I wonder how that must have felt. I’d call it a kind of rape.”

  “I’m sure you’d like to tell us what kind,” Alex says.

  “The abuser wants to get into his victim, and you have.”

  “Don’t know if he’s done that,” Carl protests.

  “Then what would you say he’s done?”

  “Like he says, it’s a collaboration.”

  “Listen to yourself. You’ve just admitted you’re using his words.”

  ToM sits back so triumphantly that Alex feels as though the winning card has been hidden in the hand again. “How did you approach collaborating?” Maggie says.

  “Carl told me his story and I turned it into what you’ve read. I made changes where he didn’t think it sounded like him.”

  “Now it all does,” Carl says.

  “I’m sure Mr Grand’s lady friend had her say as well,” ToM comments.

  “My partner edits all my books. Carl saw what she did and he approved it. I hope you don’t have any problem with her gender.”

  “No, my problem is a cis man occupying space that could have empowered a transgender person. Mr Grand has colonised your memories even if neither of you will admit it, Carl. He appropriated them to make his book.”

  “It’s both our book.” Carl revises his grammar by adding “It’s both of ours.”

  “You’ve just proved my point. That isn’t how you talk in it.” Before Carl can argue, unless he’s waiting for Alex to object on his behalf, ToM says “Are you sure you aren’t using him to separate yourself from your past?”

  “It’s all mine. It just
feels like a story now it’s a book.”

  “You need to embrace the whole of yourself. Remember each of us has to for us all.”

  “Here’s me,” Carl says and hugs himself.

  ToM plainly finds this flippant, and shuts his mouth as tight as the fists he plants in front of him. “So you’re saying the book conveys your authentic experience,” Maggie prompts Carl.

  “It’s all me.”

  “I’ll confirm that,” Alex says.

  “Thank you, Alex Grand.” As he wonders why she has grown so formal she adds “And thank you, Carl Batchelor and ToM Lincoln. We’ve been talking about ghostwriting with reference to When I Was Carla, now available in shops as well as online.”

  Carl barely waits for her to stop recording before he says “I thought we were the whole show.”

  “You’re the opening segment,” Maggie says as if this should placate him more than it does. Having ushered everyone out of the studio, she murmurs to ToM “Stay for a word.”

  “I’ll just have one with our friend here.” To Carl he says “Remember there’s a community who’ve had your sort of experience. You don’t need to depend on anyone who hasn’t. Just be true to yourself and the rest of us you stand for, and that includes taking a name that’s yours, not just snipping a bit off your old one.”

  “I’m keeping as much as I can of it. It’s all I’ve still got that my real dad gave me.”

  Night has fallen outside the windowless studio. As the exit doors part they admit an eager chill. The receptionist bids Carl and Alex goodnight from her wheelchair, and as the doors glide shut behind them Carl mutters “Sorry if it was my fault.”

  “I don’t know why you should be sorry. What do you think you did?”

  “Got us cut short for arguing with him. I’m who I am, and I know who I used to be and everything that happened to them.”

  “I’m certain everyone who reads your book will see that, Carl.”

  At the entrance to the nearest Underground station they shake hands. Carl’s feels friendlier than the first time they met: softened by acquaintance, almost reverting to a female state. As Carl makes for his hotel, Alex clatters down the chipped stone stairs. He was heartened by Carl’s answer to his question, which is why he let the book sound like a solo effort. By the time he reaches the platform ToM’s comments have ceased to disturb him, and he can’t even remember why one did, or which.

  CARLA

  “Mummy, I need to go to confession. I haven’t been for months.”

  “You’re a good girl, Carla. She’s a good girl, isn’t she, Malcolm?”

  “I don’t know a better one. Just make sure your mother never has to think any different, Carla.”

  I wasn’t listening to him. My mother’s reaction had left me afraid she might think I’d no reason to go to the church, and grow suspicious if I insisted. Then she said “You ought to go now while there won’t be many people. Just wash up the breakfast things first.”

  I did that as fast as I could for fear of her changing her mind. I was putting on my shoes by the front door – she made us all wear slippers in the house “to keep the muck out” as she used to say – when she said “Could you take her, Malcolm? You know I don’t want to impose, but I don’t like her walking so far by herself when you don’t know what kind of people may be about these days.”

  “She won’t be any trouble, so don’t give it another thought. You’re never any trouble to me, are you, Carla?”

  My mother widened her eyes at me till I mumbled “Don’t suppose.”

  “Just thank your father anyway for putting himself out for you.”

  I had to choke down an urge to laugh or react some other way to her choice of words. “Thanks,” I said to get it over with.

  “Don’t strain yourself,” she said and closed her eyes as if she didn’t want to see me. “Sometimes I don’t know what to do with her, Malcolm.”

  “So long as I do,” he said and opened the front door. “Come with me and we’ll see to your soul, Carla.”

  He spoke only once on the way to the church. “I shouldn’t think you have much to confess at your age,” he said, which sounded like a warning to keep quiet about him. People in the street glanced at me as if they’d seen a jailer escorting a criminal to a cell. Perhaps that was how I looked and he did, because I felt as if I would never escape the trap that was Mr Randal.

  The church smelled of candles someone had just blown out, which put me in mind of the birthday dinner he’d bought to show my mother how generous he was. Rather than remember that, I tried to recall birthdays with my real father. Every year my mother told him off for being too extravagant, but he always made me feel I deserved it, and eventually she would give in on my behalf. She used to bring out a lopsided cake scattered with tottering candles, and my father would say “The chef’s excelled herself again.” I’d liked those cakes better than the one Mr Randal must have paid a lot for at the restaurant, and now the waxy smell of the church was making me feel a little sick.

  “You pray while we’re waiting,” he said and stayed seated on the pew while I went down on my knees. Though the kneeler was padded with leather, before long they began to ache. I prayed that he wouldn’t be able to overhear my confession and that I would be able to say all the things I’d rehearsed in my head. I pressed my lips together as hard as I was clasping my hands, because I was afraid that if my lips moved he would read them. I kept my eyes open just enough to watch people going to confess. Every time someone came out of the booth and knelt to pray, my hands grew sweatier, and my armpits were prickling as well. The last person before me reappeared, and I crouched lower, hoping whoever was next in line would take my turn while I tried to be ready to talk to the priest. “Hurry up, Carla,” Mr Randal said so close that I felt his wet breath in my ear. “Your mother needs you at home.”

  I stumbled to my feet and almost ran to the confession box to get away from him, though I felt as if I was leaving my ability to speak behind as well. I let myself into the sinner’s half of the box and bruised my knees on the unyielding kneeler. Ahead of me was a mesh with gaps so small that I could barely see the outline of a head. I supposed that was meant to make you feel you were talking to God, but it put me in mind of a cage you might keep insects in. “Bless me, father, for I have sinned,” I said. “It is about mumble months since my last confession.”

  “Speak clearly, my child. How long has it been?”

  Recognising Father Brendan’s voice didn’t help me speak. I’d been hoping whoever was there wouldn’t know me. “Four months, father,” I said.

  “Why has it been so long?”

  This could have been my cue to reveal how Mr Randal had silenced me, but I failed to seize it. “Don’t know, father.”

  “In future you must not leave it so long. Now make a full confession of your sins.”

  “I have sworn twice.” I felt hindered by the formal language we’d been taught to use in confession, but I struggled on towards the words I had to speak. “I have lost my temper three times,” I said. “I have fought at school. I have answered my mother back twice.…”

  “Ask Our Lord Jesus Christ to help you control your emotions,” Father Brendan said as I trailed off. “Remember He has set your parents in authority over you, so you must always respect them and never resent them. For your penance say three Our Fathers and—”

  He was dismissing me, which made me desperate enough to blurt “Wait, father.”

  “Had you not finished?” As I prayed I hadn’t wearied him he said “Go on, my child.”

  I was sure this was my last and only chance to speak, but knowing how close Mr Randal was obstructed my tongue. I clasped my hands so tight that every finger felt like a separate set of aches, which only made my mouth feel clenched as well. I couldn’t utter so much as a word about Mr Randal – the years of staying secretive had grown into a gag that
was jammed into my mouth – and then I managed to remember that confession was supposed to be about myself. “I let someone see me when they shouldn’t,” I mumbled.

  “Speak up, my child. Only God can hear.”

  I was terrified that Mr Randal might. “Letting someone see me when they oughtn’t to,” I said not much louder.

  “What occasion is that? You must tell me all the truth.”

  “When I’ve got nothing on.”

  “Are you saying you flaunt yourself? That is a very grave sin. It’s provocation and may lead others into evil.”

  My sense that this was painfully unfair let me liberate a few words. “He makes me.”

  “Who does?”

  I couldn’t say the name, not least because I was afraid it would bring him to listen outside the booth. “He lives in our house.”

  “Is he related to you?”

  “No.” This felt like an obstacle I couldn’t struggle past, but somehow I succeeded in adding “He married my mum.”

  “You must be very careful about making accusations, my child. Is he of our faith?”

  I didn’t see how this could be relevant. “You married them.”

  “Then God has made him your father. What are you trying to tell me about him? Remember that bearing false witness is a very serious sin.”

  I seemed to have almost no words left. “What I said.”

  “My child, we are all of us born naked. It was the sin of Eve that took away our innocence. I believe I hear how she has stolen yours. Would you have made this accusation about the father who sired you?”

  “He was my dad.”

  “And now God has blessed you with a new one. Pray to Him for guidance and examine your conscience. Consider very carefully whether your new father has really done anything wrong in the eyes of God before you accuse him.”

  My mouth felt so clogged I was afraid of spitting out more than words, but I succeeded in dislodging a lump of them. “He touches me.”

  “How does he do so?”

  Every word felt like a blockage I had to eject. “With himself.”