by Ruth Hogan
‘Oooh, look!’ shouted Tilly excitedly as they reached Auntie Wendy’s gate. ‘Auntie Wendy’s got a new bird. Isn’t he lovely?’
In pride of place, standing on an oval-shaped piece of mirrored glass that was held in place by a border of assorted stones, was a magnificent pink, plastic flamingo. Tilly loved Auntie Wendy’s front garden. It reminded her of one of those places at the seaside where you could play golf (except, perhaps, for the naked lady). Tilly’s mother didn’t seem quite so keen.
‘He’s certainly rather colourful.’
Auntie Wendy appeared from the side of the house before they were even halfway down the front path. She greeted them with a broad smile, open arms and asked, ‘What do you think of my Englebert?’ nodding towards the flamingo. ‘The kids got him for my birthday.’
‘I think he’s lovely,’ said Tilly firmly.
Her mother smiled and handed Auntie Wendy the flowers.
‘Happy birthday, Wendy.’
Auntie Wendy took the flowers, clearly delighted, and then looked at Tilly’s mother’s worried face, pale despite the warm sunshine.
‘What you need is a nice cup of tea and a piece of my birthday cake. But first, you have to let me try out my present from Bill.’
She ushered them into the back garden and made them stand together under the apple tree. She disappeared into the house and reappeared almost immediately holding a small, black rectangular object in her hand. She held it up to one eye, and pointed it towards them.
‘Say “cheese”!’
Click.
4
Tilda
The black dog is behind me as I struggle to make progress along the promenade. Eli is my wingman. The freezing wind has already lashed my face into a numb mask and slapped my cheeks cherry red. If I were to unbutton my coat and hold it wide open, I should be whisked up immediately into the pale blue skies like a human kite, and with nobody to hold my string I might be lost forever. But Eli is always there to hold my string. For a moment, I’m almost tempted, but instead, I turn up the collar of my coat and burrow myself deeper inside it. A sudden gust steals my hat and whips it into the air like an escaped balloon. It swoops and rolls into the path of a man walking a safe distance in front of me. He tries to recapture the fugitive hat with flailing grabs and snatches, and it teases him for a moment before flying skywards and then pitching defiantly into the sea. The man turns to face me, raising his shoulders in an exaggerated gesture of regret like a mime artist. I am too far away from him to see his face clearly, but I have a feeling that it would be a kind one. I could have taken a more sheltered route through the town, but I needed the sea. Watching it through a window is never enough. I had to smell its raw saltiness and hear it bang onto the beach and roar across the pebbles. I have left the flat to buy food. I brought enough with me to make a decent breakfast, but I’m planning to stay for a few days at least, and will therefore need more than toast and marmalade. Without my hat, my ears are beginning to ring and the wind is whipping icy tears down my cheeks. I turn away from the sea and head up towards the town while the muscles in my face can still move. Eli follows at a distance; watchful, respectful, guarding. I know that no one else can see him. For as long as I can remember, I have been able to see things that most other people can’t. It used to make life hard for me. It tainted me somehow; made me an oddity. But over the years I have learned that it is better to be the real me in secret, so I pretend to be like everyone else. It’s not how I want to live, but it makes for a life less complicated. And it’s made me stronger, tougher. I don’t need anyone’s company. I’m enough on my own.
I am in no hurry, and wander through the streets peering into shop windows that frame their goods like some wildly eclectic art gallery. My taste buds are being tempted by the warm scent of freshly baked bread and the sight of patisserie tarts and pastries, sitting in rows like little jewelled cushions. Finally, I begin the shopping that has been delayed long enough by my meanderings.
When I have bought enough food to sustain my body and enough wine to fortify my spirit, I head back towards the seafront. Despite the loss of my hat, the sea pulls me back like the seductive endearments of a cruel lover. The little shops along the promenade are opening up now, but there are few customers. This was once my playground for a short but blissful time; my childhood kingdom where I was happy, free and safe. I knew all the shopkeepers and stallholders by name. The fish man was called Walter, and every now and then he used to give me a free punnet of cockles, soused in pungent brown vinegar, and a little wooden fork with which to eat them. Madame Petulengro would let me gaze into her crystal ball and play Snap with her tarot cards, and Ralph and Ena, who sold postcards and rock and all sorts of seaside souvenirs, used to sing songs with rude words in like ‘bum’ and ‘bugger’. Well, Ralph did, and Ena used to tell me not to sing them when I got home. Conrad, who was foreign (probably Polish, I think now, but as a child, ‘foreign’ was as much as I could tell), would sit on an upturned rowing boat on the beach outside Walter’s shack mending fishing nets. He always had a cigarette between his lips that remained in place even when he was eating, drinking or speaking. I was fascinated by his extraordinary proficiency in smoking, but his impenetrable accent coupled with his permanent cigarette meant that I never understood a word he said to me. But I remember that he had a kind smile. It didn’t last, though, that golden syrup, ‘sun has got his hat on’ happiness. It was so long ago, but even now with the memory of it comes the feeling that my stomach is full of clay. Queenie’s was the only place where I have ever felt that I truly belonged, and it was the only time in my life when I felt completely safe. My mother must have known this. She must have realised that Queenie’s was the happiest home I ever had, where I was surrounded by people I loved; people who loved me back. But still my mother sent me away. That it happened so soon after I came out of hospital and she offered no satisfactory explanation for my exile made it worse. I remember sitting on my bed next to the suitcase she had packed for me, begging her to let me stay. But she ignored my tears and led me downstairs to where the taxi was waiting. All she would say was that it was for my own good. It was a callous and undeserved punishment that I never understood, and she never attempted to justify any further. I don’t recall anything about my accident, but I do remember with agonising clarity that my mother snatched from me my childhood paradise of seaside, pier and ballroom, and condemned me to a prison of polished corridors, draughty classrooms and stuffy dormitories. The tang of the sea, vinegar on hot chips and fresh doughnuts was driven away by the stench of boiled cabbage and damp games kit. I was a fish out of water until I left, ten years later, with an excellent education and an irreparable sense of grievance. I came back for the school holidays, but it was never the same. I hardly saw my mother, and life at my beloved Queenie’s and on the pier moved on without me. The subtle shifts and changes of everyday life were lost to me, and I became little more than a tourist. Even at Queenie’s I was a guest in the place that used to be my home. The one consolation was that she always loved me just the same. Queenie was a second mother to me then, and there have been many times in my life when I have wished that she was my first.
I walk briskly, heavily shrouded in my thick coat, my shoulders hunched against the wind. I know without looking that Eli will have broken into a leisurely trot to keep up with my stride, and that his tail will be gently wagging. As I climb the steps to the front door of the flat, someone calls my name.
‘Tilda, how are you my dear? Sorting through your mother’s things, I expect.’
It is Miss Dane. Penelope Dane; my mother’s neighbour from the ground-floor flat. She is at least as old as Winnie the Pooh, and stands as upright as a Girl Guide at a church parade. She is a lifelong exponent of the A-line tweed skirt, twinset and silk scarf brigade, and doesn’t hold with teabags, daytime television or whinging of any sort. Or euphemisms.
‘I’m really awfully sorry she’s dead. I used to enjoy our little chats over a cup of tea. S
he was an extraordinary woman, your mother. Still, perhaps you’d like to join me for tea one day while you’re here? Tomorrow. Around four?’
No, I wouldn’t really.
‘Yes, of course.’
I had no idea that my mother and Penelope Dane used to have tea together. I had always assumed that they were simply neighbours on little more than nodding acquaintance.
I set down my shopping bags and reach into the depths of my pocket for the key. I look down at the street below. Eli is gone. He will be inside the flat already, waiting patiently for me.
It is almost lunchtime, and the wind and walking has made me hungry. I hang my coat on the coat stand in the hallway and take my bags through to the kitchen. The flat is warm, and light floods in through the large sash windows and French doors. The warmth is supplied by the excellent central heating system that was barely troubled during Mother’s residence. She had it installed several years ago and then treated it like a front parlour; she only used it for best. It wasn’t as though she couldn’t afford the bills – it was simply that she regarded it as unnecessary for everyday use. I always packed extra sweaters when I came to stay with her, and woolly socks to wear in bed. When I arrived last night, I cranked up the thermostat, fully expecting a subsequent plumbing catastrophe. But the machine clicked obligingly, and somewhere, in the heart of the boiler, a flame had gently blown into life. It felt like a small act of rebellion against my mother to be so profligate with the pilot light.
In the kitchen, I begin preparing my lunch. Eli is lying under the table, keeping me locked in his steady gaze. I break some of the fresh, crusty bread onto a plate, and press some creamy butter onto its soft and still slightly warm insides. I add a couple of thin slices of cheese to the plate, a dollop of pickle, and a small bunch of grapes. I’m also going to have a glass of wine; or two. I feel half as though I’m on holiday. I fetch a glass from the cabinet in the sitting room and rinse it under the tap. It is etched glass with a large, delicate bowl and a tall, slender stem twisted like barley sugar. It is clearly also ‘for best’; a precious confection spun out of fragile, glistening glass. But what good is its beauty if it is never seen and never used? It might just as well be a plastic tumbler. What was my mother saving it for? She could hardly have been expecting a chance call from a local dignitary, or a random visit from a passing celebrity or minor member of the royal family. My mother seems to have lived her whole life buttoned up in a stiff, starchy suit of ‘what ifs’, ‘keep for bests’ and ‘what will people thinks’. A bright summer dress of ‘chase the stars’, ‘seize the days’ and ‘hang the consequences’ might have fitted her so much better if only she had dared to try it on. I think that may have been who she was inside, but I never got to see her. Her caution was stultifying, and she passed her days permanently under its sedation. And now I am beginning to be just a little afraid that I might be a bit like her. I am certainly hiding who I really am. It’s not a legacy I welcome. I don’t want to be that woman who wastes her whole life wearing the wrong dress. I fetch another glass from the cabinet and fill it with sparkling mineral water; and then another one, just for the hell of it.
After a leisurely lunch, which has dirtied three of the best wine glasses (I put the grape pips in the third), I am ready to resume the task of sorting through my mother’s things. After the wine, I don’t want to do anything sensible like tackling the post that is mounting in an unsteady pile on the bamboo table in the hallway. I wander through to her bedroom with the intention of emptying the drawers of her dressing table. I sit down heavily on the bed and, as I do so, my boot catches something heavy and solid underneath it. My mother was not a woman who shoved things under the bed as a matter of course. She was a woman who dusted under the bed as a matter of decency. It’s a box; a polished, walnut box with an intricate brass lock. Its mottled lid glows and gleams with the rich colours of caramel, honey and lemon curd. And it’s locked. There are only two things that I can think of that someone would keep locked in a box under a bed: treasures and secrets. Either way, I need to find the key. I pick up the framed photograph from the dressing table and stare at the child I used to be next to the woman who so spectacularly failed to be the mother I wanted. What were her secrets and where was the key?
5
Tilly
The key was kept on the top shelf of the kitchen dresser, in a blue and white striped china pot with a lid. Tilly had to climb up onto a chair so that she could reach it, and even then, her fingertips could only just clutch at the bottom of the pot, making it judder perilously close to the edge of the shelf. Tilly’s heart thudded inside her ribs and she held her breath as the pot teetered between the clammy, fumbling grasp of her six-year-old hands, and a straight, hard smash onto the kitchen floor.
‘Dear God, Jesus, Noah and Moses, please don’t let it fall,’ she prayed.
Tilly didn’t know any proper prayers except ‘Our Father’, which didn’t seem appropriate in this case, and was too long anyway. The fate of the pot would have been decided before she got past ‘Hello be thy name’. Tilly had been to Sunday school, but most of the time had been spent sitting cross-legged on a cold floor listening to stories about Noah’s ark, Moses in the bulldozer, and the adventures of Jesus and his tricycles. Tilly hadn’t paid that much attention. Whether it was God, Jesus, Noah, Moses or simply the laws of physics, Tilly would never know or care, but the pot toppled into her nervously waiting hands. She cradled it closely to her chest and climbed down from the chair. She took the long, slightly rusty key from its hiding place and slipped it into her pocket. She was going to leave the pot behind the breadbin, almost out of sight, until she got back, to save on the amount of climbing up and down, and the chances of dropping it. But then the thought struck her that maybe she could keep the key and hide it somewhere else. Her mother was unlikely to miss it, and then Tilly could use it whenever she wanted without first having to go through such heart-stopping furniture mountaineering and crockery juggling. This meant replacing the pot onto the high shelf immediately. Tilly clambered back on the chair and repeated her prayer, this time including ‘Mary, Mother of God’, for good measure. It worked. The pot was returned safely to its place on the dresser, and Tilly smiled to herself as her fingers traced the outline of the key in her pocket. They had stayed at Auntie Wendy’s long enough for a piece of birthday cake and a cup of tea for her mother and a glass of pop for Tilly. Tilly had taken her cake and pop outside into the garden to play with Karen, while her mother stayed inside talking to Auntie Wendy. Tilly knew that they were talking about grown-up things because she had stood behind the door for a minute and listened after she had closed it. She couldn’t hear exactly what they were saying, but it was clear from their quiet, serious voices that their conversation was not about Englebert the flamingo, or whether ‘hands that do dishes can feel soft as your face with mild green Fairy Liquid’. She heard her mother say her daddy’s name, and then she thought she heard her crying. Tilly was good at listening, and she did it a lot to try and get some clues on how the world worked. She knew from experience that grown-ups were very good at not telling children things, particularly things that they needed to know. For example, where was her daddy? Gone away to work, her mother had told her, but where? And more importantly, why? And when was he coming back? Her mother’s answers were always vague, but Tilly really needed to know the facts, and so she would keep listening and hoping for clues.
Tilly and Karen were just in the middle of a game of hairdressers, when her mother came into the garden to fetch Tilly and take her home. Her mother looked tired and her eyes were red, but Tilly was reluctant to leave their game just when she was hearing about Karen’s ‘lazy, good-for-nothing husband making a pass at that bottle-blonde trollop of a barmaid down the pub while her hair was being given a pretend shampoo and set. She had no idea why Karen’s pretend husband was playing football with a barmaid, and why it made her a trollop. She had no idea what a trollop was. But she might have found out, had her mother not come
and fetched her at that very moment. She was particularly cross because her mother’s expression of disapproval when she heard what Karen was saying meant that it must have been something that Tilly would have very much liked to have understood, and that this would definitely be one of the things that her mother would not be telling her.
When they got home, Tilly’s mother had gone for ‘a little lie-down’. She had one of her mysterious headaches, which Tilly knew meant that she could be in bed for hours. She had told Tilly to be a good girl and play quietly, but that was it; no specific details. That left plenty of options open, and Tilly knew exactly what she was going to do.
Once the key was in her pocket, and the pot back on the shelf, Tilly opened the back door and went out into the garden. It seemed hotter than ever, and the heat shimmered in a haze above the concrete path. The tomato plants were wilting in their pots, like frail little old ladies in need of lemonade. Tilly would water them later, but first she was going to the shed. She took the key in both hands and wiggled it into the keyhole. It was a loose fit and rattled around making it difficult for her to unlock, but Tilly jiggled the key patiently as she had watched her daddy do many times, and her persistence eventually paid off. She stepped into the cool, quiet darkness and took a deep breath, filling her nostrils with the smell of old hessian sacks, potting compost, and, of course, creosote. It was familiar and comforting, like an old favourite blanket. But the gardening tools hung idle and somehow forlorn in their tidy rows along the wall. Tilly had wanted to be inside the shed to feel close to her daddy, but now she was here, and surrounded by his things, she missed him even more. Her eyes brimmed with hot tears that trickled down her cheeks in salty rivulets. She sniffed loudly and wiped her nose and face across the arm of her cardigan. Tilly didn’t know exactly how long her daddy had been gone. It had only been a few days, but already it felt like a very long time. She reached up and took down the hand fork from its hook on the wall. She stroked the smooth, wooden handle, putting her hands where her daddy’s had been last, as though she might be able to catch the faintest touch of him and hold it with her until he came back. Tilly reluctantly hung the fork back in its place and turned her attention to the wooden chest where her daddy kept packets of seeds, string, plant tags and old newspaper cuttings about gardening. She poked around in the drawers, admiring the pretty pictures of flowers on the front of some of the seed packets and fiddling with the big ball of hairy, brown string that was beginning to unravel. Underneath the newspaper cuttings she found some things that she hadn’t known were there: a spare pouch of tobacco, a packet of rolling papers and a box of matches. Tilly was not allowed to play with matches. This was one of the definite rules, right up there with no swearing, no lying and no giving Chinese burns, even as a joke. Tilly really liked matches. They were like little sticks of magic. She took the box and slid the cover off. She emptied the matches onto the top of the chest of drawers, and began replacing them in the box, one by one. This was not playing with matches; it was counting them. There were twenty-three. But what were the chances that anyone else in the world knew that? And what would it matter, if someone else did count them, and there were only twenty-two? Tilly carefully chose one match and closed the box. She gripped the match firmly between her finger and thumb, and holding the box still with her other hand, she struck it along the rough strip of sandpaper. The smell was lovely, and the flash and flame punched a small hole in the gloom just for a second, before Tilly blew it out like a birthday candle. She was thrilled by her own daring and untroubled by her conscience. She hadn’t played with the matches. She had counted them, and lit one. Where was the harm in that? Even so, she didn’t plan on mentioning it to her mother. Tilly put the matches back in the chest and closed the drawer. She dropped the spent match into an empty flower pot, and took one last deep breath of shed smell, which now included an acrid tang of smoke. She would go and water the drooping plants and check the sweet peas, and then see if her mother was awake. She stepped outside into the sun-baked garden and closed the door softly behind her. She locked it and slipped the long, heavy key back inside her pocket. It would be her secret.
