'I've got that. I'm some use.'
'I'm sure nobody would say you weren't.' When his eyes remained guarded, little better than blank, Charlotte said 'I expect it's in the kitchen, is it?'
'It will be.'
Even this didn't move him until she made with some impatience for the stairs. As she reached the landing she felt his breath on her neck. At least it was Hugh, not some imaginary pursuer, but she said 'No need to get so close.'
'Sorry,' he gasped, which tousled her hair.
'I'll follow you down. I'm just going to the private room.'
She didn't glance back as she shut the door. The overcast sky blackened the window, which was already on the way to opaque with a rash of glass pimples. A greyish shower curtain sagging from immovable plastic hooks helped confine her in the token space between the bath and the opposite wall, where its reflection in the mirror failed to add even a pretence of spaciousness. The trickle of the cistern behind her might have been mocking her own activity, but she hadn't finished when she realised she had yet to hear Hugh go downstairs. Was he listening like a sly jailer outside the door? The room seemed shrunken by darkness, and the light cord was out of reach. She rose to her feet as soon as she could, because she felt watched too. What was twitching the shower curtain aside to peer around it? Her own hasty movement had stirred it, and the shrivelled clawlike hand consisted of wrinkles in the plastic. It was enough to put her in a fury at her rampant imagination, and when she stalked out of the room the sight of her cousin loitering in his bedroom doorway made her angrier still. 'What do you think you're doing now?' she demanded.
His face was reddening again, a process that her question accelerated. 'Waiting for you,' he mumbled.
'Don't you think I can find my way around your little house? I wouldn't mind if it was twice the size.'
She oughtn't to seem to be denigrating where he'd chosen to live, but he had to be the reason why she was on edge. She felt worse than guilty for wishing Ellen would arrive so that she wasn't alone with him. 'Come on, let's make that tea,' she said.
The instant she planted a foot on the top stair he came after her. 'Not so close,' she had to warn him again, and kept hold of the banister. Gaining the hall would have been a relief if it had been wider. She was heading for the at least slightly roomier kitchen before she noticed he had frozen three steps up. 'What's –' she cried as she turned to see what in the front room was appalling him. He was gazing across it and through the window, and in a moment she saw the figure outside the house.
TWENTY
As Ellen plodded into the station concourse a voice as large as the building finished an announcement, and she heard a tuneless humming behind her, which rose as if she'd aggravated its impatience. Nevertheless it was being emitted by an invalid tricycle, not its rider, who called 'Can you mind out, love? I can't see round you.'
She might have fled without looking at him, to a different exit and home – she'd already had children turning to stare at her once they'd sat ahead of her on the bus across Southport – but she mustn't care about anything more than Rory. As she moved aside the tricycle droned past her, laden with a pensioner whose pink scalp peeked through his grey hair and who bulged on both sides of the seat, not least his tweedy buttocks. At once he halted, blocking her progress. 'I still can't make it out,' he complained. 'When's the next train to Manchester?'
'In just a few minutes, and I'd like to be on it if you don't mind.'
'Can't stop you if there's room.'
She felt as though he were putting into words the image that had haunted her for days and equally sleepless nights, and so her retort was more of a plea. 'What do you mean?'
'The same as I say, love. It's an old-fashioned habit of mine.'
As the tricycle cruised forwards its humming grew more laboured. Perhaps Ellen should have saved her breath as she did her best to overtake, but a remnant of her old profession made her say 'You ought to have that serviced. It's under too much strain.'
His large already purplish face shook as he poked it up at her. 'What's it to you?'
'I'm only advising you. I used to care for people like you.'
'Given up now, have you?' he said and slitted his overflowing eyes as if to keep a thought in. 'Hold on a tick. Weren't you in the paper?'
She only had to run for the train, if her legs were up to running. She was stumbling away when he said 'It was you plain enough. No wonder you didn't want to show your face.'
The tricycle hummed alongside her, sounding unbearably smug, and she turned on him in the hope that some of the scattered commuters might come to her defence. 'Why shouldn't I?'
'Good God, woman, don't grimace at me. You're ugly enough.'
It must be a standard insult of his, Ellen tried to believe – perhaps one he'd levelled at any wife or wives he had – but it didn't tell her anything she didn't already know. Nobody was going to intervene on her behalf, since they could see the truth of his remark, if they could bear to look. Indeed, she had a sense that one of the spectators was delighting in her experience. Their glee seemed to pace her as she trudged ahead of the old man, her eyes so swollen that they felt like insomnia rendered solid, her lips too engorged to utter another word.
The first carriage on the train had a space for wheelchairs and the like at its near end. Ellen dumped her wheeled case in the luggage alcove of the only other carriage and plumped herself onto the closest pair of unoccupied seats. She was wearing her most voluminous clothes, but she couldn't tell whether they were clinging to her because they were no longer large enough or with her inelegant sweat. As the train filled up, more than one person thought better of sitting next to her. She was beginning to dread that someone might have to – that she would be trapped with their reaction or their attempts to conceal it all the way to Manchester – when the train jerked forwards.
She felt the vibration travel upwards from her feet, a quivering that passed through every inch of flesh. As she moved uneasily the seat seemed to yield too much, unless she did. She lifted a ponderous arm to open the meagre slat of the window, which brought her upper regions a humid breeze, although it also intensified the earthy stench that had become her companion, no doubt a symptom of her state. She was so enclosed in bloated flesh that she couldn't judge how hot she was. Whenever a shadow moulded itself to her she could have taken it for moisture welling up from her body. She tried gazing out of the window, but the headlong countryside occasionally halted by stations was eager to parade the sight of her face bulging like a fungus under bridges or being dragged like a fallen moon – an object as rotund and blotchy and porous – over fields and townscapes. Sometimes the spectacle compelled her to touch her face, but she was unable to determine how swollen if not rotten it might be – no less than her groping fingers. If she rested her hands in her lap she couldn't avoid noticing how much they resembled stranded sea creatures, bloated and pallid and ready to grow more discoloured. In the end she had to settle for staring at the back of the next seat, although it made her feel caged, like an exhibit but one so unsightly that spectators couldn't bear to look. She would be with her family soon, and surely they could stand whatever she'd become or at least show her a modicum of sympathy. The prospect went some way towards sustaining her as far as Manchester, and the thought of Rory did. In one sense he must be in worse shape than her.
The train wobbled to a halt at Manchester, and then she did. She kept her seat while the carriage emptied, not least because nearly everyone who passed her stared at her, unless they glanced at her and quickly looked away. She remained seated even once she was alone in the carriage; she didn't want another confrontation with the tricycling pensioner. Or was she alone? Perhaps if she peered into the dark under the seats she would find she wasn't quite. She would do nothing of the sort; she might be missing the next train to Huddersfield. She stumped along the aisle to grab her luggage and lower herself from the train.