The Museum of Cathy Read online

  “How are you?” he said.

  “Fine,” she said. “I’m okay.”

  They paused.

  “Aren’t you going to ask how I am?”

  “How are you?” She hoped her face was expressionless.

  “Depends. Did you like the amber beetle this morning?”

  “What girl doesn’t like being given an entombed, blood-sucking carrier of tropical disease on a Friday morning?” She tried to be glib. “Why are you here?”

  “I hoped you might spare me a minute of your evening?” He put his hand on her shoulder and she was rooted to the spot. Daniel’s hands were heavy driftwood objects, not the hollow webbed kind of flotsam or jetsam that bobbed on the sea but the gnarly kind that was cumbersome to drag home through the sand.

  He didn’t continue. He was carved into a complicated shape, a piece of history, and when his skin was on her shoulder in the darkness she felt the record of all their labyrinthine touches. People needed to be touched to be truly understood, just like objects. A polar bear claw or a toucan beak holds traces of the animal’s life boiled down into keratin and dust. You could get a glimpse of a seashell’s history only if you ran your thumb along every strange angle and opening on its body. You couldn’t understand a butterfly or moth until your fingers had spread its wings. He squeezed her shoulder.

  A Toy Soldier

  She’d wanted to know how everything worked, as a child: how a bird’s wing fanned out like it did and how big a fox heart might be; why eyeballs didn’t fall out of eye sockets and what butterfly wings were made out of. She found a dead jackdaw frozen in the mud the day she first met Daniel and his younger brother Jack. It was lying amongst frosty seaweed and slimy rope under the mouldy cladding of the chalet next to Cathy’s where the air smelt of methane and rot.

  She’d scooped the body up and laid it down in the light to study the frozen blood tangled in its whiskers. It was frigid and his head was tilted proudly upwards. She opened its beak to see a flat black tongue, wondering how it connected to the throat. She stretched the wings and let them fan back. A three-inch bloodless wound was hidden under the right wing and she pinched the edge, a white resin fanning out from muscle underneath. She picked up a stick to break the curtains of gluey stuff, pulling the skin back even further over the muscle-covered sternum until she could see it all, the colour of dried red wine and slimy to the touch. The skin had peeled right off like a glove.

  She was concentrating so deeply that she didn’t notice a boy of her own age step out of the derelict house next door and stand on the deck frowning at her. The boy had black curly hair and a beak-like nose. He was as pale as she was. It crossed her mind that he was a ghost, only he wore frail silver glasses. Ghosts don’t wear glasses.

  The other houses on Cathy’s street had been empty since last summer. People didn’t just wander into Lee-Over-Sands, particularly in winter. Its sewage plant and marsh held few attractions. A group of gypsies had settled on farmland behind the sea wall a while back and older boys occasionally came down to smoke and drink in the derelict houses. Those traveller kids smelt of sweat and wood burning stoves and they had cocky swaggers. This bespectacled boy didn’t look like a gypsy, though: his expression was timid and his clothes were clean. His green hoodie was from GAP.

  Hi, Cathy had said to the boy. The wind whipped her hair and when it brushed over her mouth it tasted of salt. When she moved her fingers up to brush her hair out of the way, her fingers smelt of dead bird.

  Morning, he replied. Do you live here?

  She nodded. Nobody had lived in the chalet next door during Cathy’s lifetime. The deck was almost kissing the estuary, sinking down as if the whole structure were about to dive right in. The house was clad with rotting white slats and surrounded by broken cinder blocks. Crisp packets and cigarette ends were frozen into the mud. The windows were mostly boarded up.

  Do you live here too? she said.

  My brother just bought this place, he said proudly. He’s going to fix it. I’m going to come stay whenever I want. Cathy turned sideways to note the older brother, who was standing at the window. He had broad shoulders and a bruise on his face like he’d been in a fight. He looked like an adult to her but in fact he was nineteen. He too had curly black hair and a big nose, the same grey eyes as his brother, set deep in his face.

  Apricot, a stray cat, padded daintily across the deck rail behind the curly-haired boys, dipping its spine through an assault course of rusty patio umbrella bases and rolls of roofing felt. Apricot was always staring at the sky and being taunted by birds. Cathy wiped her nose with the back of her hand and forgot about the frozen jackdaw’s amazing tongue because she was so excited to see a human being of her age. She dropped the bird. It seemed like magic that he’d appeared and even more magic that he had piles of pebbles, shark teeth, plastic cars and toy soldiers at his feet in a red Oxo Cube box. He held a bright red toy soldier in his hand.

  My name’s Cathy, she said and then, as an afterthought, held out a mouse skull she’d found on the marsh that morning. And this is my best mouse skull.

  The delicacy of the skull reminded her of the dumb spiders who made webs in the thistle under the decks – castles, almost, with turrets and ballrooms. The spider webs washed away every day while the spiders survived by pulling themselves up to safety on the decking’s wood, but a mouse skull was stronger than a spider web.

  Cool, Jack had said. My name’s Jack and this is my best toy soldier. He held the red toy soldier out in his hand for her to look at and got down on his knees so they could see each other’s objects better, but once he was down there he wrinkled his nose and said to Cathy: Your breath’s rank.

  Cathy stepped back, hurt, feeling her hopes crumble. Instead of covering her mouth she pursed her lips together and lifted her chin, then spat a gob of saliva the size of a penny right into Jack’s face.

  Now you smell rank! She’d said, taking a step back and grinning.

  Jack took his glasses off to carefully wipe the spit off them. He didn’t reply. Jack’s brother came out of the chalet doors and Cathy took off, running full speed down the marsh. She kept the mouse skull in her hand but wanted to get as far away from her humiliation as she could.

  Get the fuck back here! The brother shouted after her. Cathy’s spindly body disappeared off into the bird sanctuary. Apologise! Daniel shouted, but she didn’t look back. Cathy was not a careful child, not until later.

  Tom smoked another cigarette as the police left the scene and curious guests, who’d popped their heads out of the party to watch the police action, filtered away with a good story to tell over more champagne.

  Tom headed towards the car park around the side to watch a petite blonde teenager wiping sticky black muck off her body in the dark. She was only wearing a bikini and was shivering, maybe because she was cold, maybe because she was shocked. She was about five foot two and curvy, trying to wipe molasses off her thighs and tummy in the shadows. As he stepped forward the girl stepped back towards the far wall as if she thought he might attack her. They stood a few metres away from each other in the badly lit, empty car park.

  “I come in peace,” he held up his hands, a cigarette between his fingers.

  “It’s just treacle,” the girl said. “It won’t cause any damage, we’re strictly anti-violence.” She had earnest eyes that made Tom laugh.

  “My grandmother lives in Canada on the same street as a molasses factory where a tank once collapsed and a wave 25 feet high killed 21 people and injured 150 people,” Tom said.

  “You made that up,” The protester frowned. Tom adjusted his glasses and inhaled his cigarette.

  “It’s true. She insists her neighbourhood still stinks of molasses in the summer. Do you want to use my phone to call someone?”

  “Thanks. This is really embarrassing. The police took my bag and I’m kind of stuck, you know. Without clothes.”
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br />   “Sure. It’s obviously a problem.” He held out his cell phone and the protester stepped towards him. She took the phone and turned away to dial a number, leaving sticky black footprints on the tarmac. Tom reluctantly realised he was going to have to give the girl his suit jacket. She was doing this weird movement with her hands, trying to swat insects off her arms and ants off her feet in the dark while she whispered into his phone. It sounded as if she was leaving an answering machine message. Tom stamped on his cigarette then took his cigarette packet, phone and keys out of his jacket pocket and arranged them in his trouser pockets. He wondered where Cathy was.

  “My boyfriend will be here in fifteen minutes,” she said with a quick smile as she walked back towards Tom, handing him the phone and brushing hair off her face, streaking it with the sticky black molasses. He held out his jacket for her.

  “It doesn’t really fit me anyway,” he said.

  “I can’t take your jacket,” she said.

  “But my arms are too long for it. Honestly. I have ridiculous limbs.” She didn’t put out her hands to take it, keeping them firmly by her side. He held out his arms to show her.

  “I’m so sticky, though,” she said. “Your suit will be so sticky after.”

  “Just leave it by the tree when your boyfriend comes,” Tom shrugged. “It’s not a big deal. I need a new one.” She hesitantly reached for the jacket.

  Down the stairs there was a scrape followed by footsteps and Cathy froze on the landing. She thought it would be Tom coming up from the party to look for her.

  “Who’s up there?” came a voice from below. It was only Jonas. She leant over the banister while Daniel slunk back into the dark, out of sight. Cathy paused, considered her options, and then called back:

  “It’s just me, Cathy. I forgot something. I’ll be back in ten minutes.”

  “Sure,” said Jonas without coming up any further. “Come down soon, though. Aren’t you getting a prize tonight?”

  “Thanks Jonas, yes,” she said down the stairs and then turned to Daniel as Jonas’s footsteps disappeared. The tinny lilt of jazz music drifted up the stairs along with the click of stilettos on wood and glasses clinking.

  “You’re getting a prize?” Daniel said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Congratulations.” He paused. “I went back to Lee-Over-Sands last week,” Daniel said. “Your old chalet has been torn down completely.”

  He still hadn’t mentioned what she’d done to him. Maybe he didn’t know it was she who called the police.

  “Are they building something in its place?” It was eerie to think of her little chalet finally expiring, its dirty cladded walls peeling off each other at last, the rotting window ledges cracking, the flat roof wriggling away from the thousands of staples and nails her father and Daniel had forced down into it each winter. The sodden wooden deck, the cinder block stilts, the ugly furniture that had come with the place and had never been replaced. The chalet had been constantly on the brink of collapse throughout her childhood, yet she couldn’t imagine it not existing.

  “They’ve been building this two floor, glass-ceilinged monster beach house for a year now. If I’d kept the chalets I’d have finally made some money from it, with people like that turning up. They’re using bits of your old house for firewood.”

  “Firewood?”

  “Burning your bedroom walls. Mr Gregg – he’s still there on the other side of the sea wall although his wife died – he told me they’ve not done the foundations right and it keeps flooding.”

  “Probably not the sort of swimming pool they’re used to.”

  “More a swamp,” Daniel smiled. “Mr Gregg still has the swans’ nest in his garden.”

  ‘How did Mrs Gregg die?” Cathy said.

  “Cancer,” he said. “Last year.”

  “She always gave me Hob Nobs.”

  Cathy and Daniel fell silent, watched by the emus and swans behind the glass door. The swans on Lee-Over-Sands would bite everyone but Mr Greg.

  “I missed the North Sea these last years. I missed the sounds,” said Daniel. One of the things she had loved about Lee-Over-Sands was how it was a new world every morning, strangest down on the beach where bars of pebbles reached towards the horizon, constantly making fresh patterns. You blinked and everything changed.

  “I think it’s a relief not to be near the sea,” she said.

  Cathy wondered if he still had arthritis in his fingers. Maybe Daniel’s hands ached right now, from years of boxing and manual labour. He used to have eczema, too. She used to make Daniel wear oven gloves to bed when they were together, otherwise he’d scratch his skin at night until it bled. It was funny and dismal to remember him like that, a great big man waking up in the morning wearing her mother’s pink floral oven gloves. Cathy adjusted the toy soldier in her fist.

  He paused, watched her in the dark office, and said:

  “What do you have in your hand?”

  “Nothing,” Cathy replied. She’d always slightly feared he could read her mind, or see inside her. She had obviously been fidgeting with the soldier without realising it.

  “Show it to me, I can see there’s something there.”

  She did what she was told, without exactly meaning to, an instinct from the past. The landing felt odd and intimate and she wished it were still yesterday. She opened her fist and took out the toy soldier. If he saw the snake ring with its big ruby eye winding around her finger he didn’t mention it. They both stared at the soldier’s sloped red shoulders and worn jacket, the shiny black shoes and scuffed face.

  “That’s Jack’s.”

  Jack died before his tenth birthday, the summer he and Cathy met. Daniel never used to mention his brother, except as a weapon. He used the word to make her shrink and make her stay. He used the word to be forgiven for almost anything he did, to make her feel guilty, and so that word from his mouth still made her flinch. That name connected them with an invisible thread. She knew that if she reached forward and touched Daniel’s chest she would feel his heart beating hard, but she didn’t do it. She swallowed saliva.

  “Your hands are shaking,” Daniel said.

  “Are you surprised?” she said. “You don’t look calm either.”

  “Did you keep all the objects I sent you?”

  Cathy hesitated. “Yes.”

  “May I see them?” he said.

  The two-inch toy was making both their nostrils flare, as if they could smell seawater. He didn’t reach out to touch the soldier. The smart little man with his rusty patches and stiff posture hauled Cathy and Daniel back to the marshes.

  When Daniel got into bed the last night they spent together in Essex, Cathy had been fast asleep with her face in a pillow and breathing deeply. He hadn’t guessed. He’d been working late and was exhausted, so didn’t even remember falling unconscious next to her. When he woke up her pillow had a smudge of mascara in the shape of a bird silhouette on it and the sheets were still tangled to her body shape. He said her name, figured she’d be boiling the kettle in their pokey little kitchen, but she didn’t reply. He saw that a green seashell was missing from the window ledge and a first shiver of unease passed through him. It was usually under the stuffed canary with the big eyes, which he’d bought her the year before from a junk shop in Brighton. She was particular about where she kept her objects.

  She used to walk around with the green shell cupped in her hand sometimes, because she said its shape was comforting. Perhaps she was somewhere in the chalet or the marsh with the shell in her hand. Her father had died three months before and she’d been jumpier since, spending longer in the library even after she’d finished her exams, her eyes following him around the room if he was there. He’d had to work harder to make her smile and keep her still. Daniel lay in bed hearing the wheeling and hysterical giggles of seagulls that morning, and felt a white heat rising
in his mind. People say losing your temper is ‘seeing red’ but Daniel always used to see white when it happened, a disorientating white that his mind would be cast far adrift in. It happened more often than he would like, particularly when Cathy was nearby. Before he even noticed that her passport was gone from her underwear drawer and before he tore up their bedroom, his skin had crawled and white light filled his head. He ripped the chalet apart. He shattered the windows and the glass muddled with dried Sea Roses and Yellow Horned Poppies that she’d kept in little bottles on the windowsills. He smashed her Polaroid Camera. He broke the dining room table that he’d made for her and then used pieces of that to break the light bulbs.

  When he was done he couldn’t breathe, but the white heat in his head was dissipating. Already he missed the colour of her thighs and the smell of her neck. He was out of breath and his hands were shaking. He called taxi firms that might have picked her up. The taxi drivers knew not to lie to him. Nobody had come down to Lee-Over-Sands, but someone had been picked up from town at 3 am that morning and driven to Gatwick. He’d called Essex University and they eventually told him that a last minute work placement had been offered at the Los Angeles Natural History Museum, which was where she’d be spending the year. He’d checked the times of flights to Los Angeles, but it was nearly 10 am by the time he’d worked out where she was going and if she’d been picked up at three, she’d be long gone. The university registrar wouldn’t say where she would be staying in California, or how long she’d known that she would be going, but he’d find out easily enough. Marcus had friends all over the world. There must have been visas, credit cards, details, all of which she’d organised behind his back while pretending everything was fine. He lit the barbecue and filled it with bits of his dining room table, watching Cathy’s Polaroid photographs and handwriting burn down to ash. Daniel enjoyed watching Cathy’s things disintegrate that morning she left him. The blaze smelt revolting, mixing with a gust of wind that had blown over the sewage plant. Yet the strange thing was that after she had been gone a few hours and her things were burning, he’d felt oddly elated. He’d looked out on the sea and for a moment felt an extraordinary sense of potential. He’d been untethered. The morning she left him he slowly, watchfully, set everything alight in the bonfire. He had no idea that the following afternoon the police would come to search the chalet. He hadn’t for a second thought she would do that to him, yet they knew exactly where to look and this could only have been because of Cathy.