by Ruth Hogan
‘Oh, Tilly. My darling, darling Tilly, Daddy’s dead.’
10
Tilda
The tiny, tatty teddy wearing a child’s rosary beads stands beside the lead horse who has lost his soldier. Next comes the Edwardian glass eye, the wooden walking stick top in the form of a terrier, whose mouth opens when you press a lever, followed by the sheep with three legs and the brooch in the shape of the Eiffel Tower. The line-up is completed by the postcard of Jesus whose eyes move, and the china angel with a broken wing. I have given them all names. Except Jesus, who already had one. Now they are with me and standing in the right order I feel much better. I left the diaries – unread – in the flat, and went home to my small terraced house, in its quiet, unremarkable town to get some of my belongings. The house seemed cold and strange, and somehow less of a home; less my home. I feel as though I am in some sort of limbo, hovering and uncertain where to land. I collected some more clothes, my laptop so that I can work, and my special things that are now lined up on the mantle shelf alongside several boxes of matches. These are the lucky charms that protect me. I can manage without them for a while – a week, a holiday – but any longer and I feel exposed. I wish I didn’t need them – the charms and the rituals. I could get help to banish them from my life; maybe try cognitive behavioural therapy. But I daren’t. The voice inside my head that says something bad will happen without them also tells me that if I deliberately try to get rid of them (and it) – something equally bad will happen and it will be my fault. It’s a consummate catch-22. That voice is such a smartarse. The whole thing is ridiculous and embarrassing, I know, but I’m stuck with it. I need ritual and order in some things, and chaos in others. It seems as though my life has evolved into a random pattern of regimen and free-fall, like a military two-step crossed with St Vitus’ dance. Take the diaries; I am desperate to know what’s in them but as yet, I haven’t actually read a single page. I have never been one of those people who rips the wrapping paper from presents. I always unwrap them slowly and carefully, like a bomb disposal expert dealing with a dangerous device; and so it must be with the diaries. I have a horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach that they need to be handled with care. This is not just me having a touch of the vapours, like a delicate young lady in a Jane Austen novel faced with an unexpected naked male torso. This is about the card. I took all the diaries out of the box when I found them, to see how many there were, and lying in the bottom of the box was a small white envelope with the word ‘Tilly’ written on it in black ink. It was my mother’s handwriting again. My mother hasn’t called me ‘Tilly’ since I was a child; in fact, since the summer she sent me away. Inside the envelope was a plain white card; a thick, good-quality, deckle-edged card from an expensive stationer’s. It was inscribed with just two words: ‘Forgive me’.
She had obviously intended me to find it, but presumably, from where she had placed it, after I had read the diaries. Once again, I shall have disappointed her. But why is it addressed to ‘Tilly’, and what in God’s name does it mean?
I came back to the flat last night. Eli accompanied me on my trip home and is now asleep on the green sofa looking very comfortable. Chivvied along by Queenie, I have packed in boxes some of the things that I think the charity shops in town could sell; unworn nighties still in their cellophane wrappings, kept for best or hospital stays, but kept too long as it turned out. New towels and bed linen kept for guests who never came, and starched linen tablecloths and napkins kept for tea parties that were never given. It’s only a token gesture so far, but it’s a beginning. I am going to use the best cutlery, the best crockery and the best glasses every day. I am not going to die with my best party dress still unworn on its hanger. I have cleaned and dusted the flat and moved things around; random things to random places, but with a purpose, a sort of ‘fuck you’ feng shui. It’s my place now, not hers.
My laptop is sitting on the kitchen table ready for action. I’m a proofreader. I read for a living. But today I’m going to start reading about my mother’s life, and maybe mine too, in the diaries. But not here. The box is still in the bedroom, kept closed like a box of fireworks, to keep the contents from catching a stray spark and exploding. ‘Remove one firework from the box at a time, and replace the lid.’ I remember the safety code. I take the small blue book from the box and shut the lid. Eli stirs from his cosy nest on the sofa and trots into the hallway where Queenie is already waiting impatiently. She has decided that the man in the café might be an ideal ‘gentleman friend’ for me.
‘I promised your mother that I would keep an eye on you,’ she said, ‘and it’s about time you found yourself a good man.’
But I’m not quite ready to leave yet. First, I light three matches from one of the boxes on the mantle shelf. Only when the smoke has completely cleared do I join Queenie and Eli and shrug myself into my big coat, cursing when I realise that I have not brought from home a replacement for my hat that was stolen by the wind. Outside, the sky is dirty grey, the colour of old men’s underpants, but it’s dry and the half-hearted wind barely troubles the naked treetops. Even the sea looks weary, its waves too tired to crawl up the stony beach. But I am completely at odds with all this lethargy, like a Tigger in a townful of tortoises. Excitement tinged with trepidation is pumping my blood faster and driving me on, and I arrive at the café before I am ready to be here. There are a few people inside, chatting and drinking coffee, and the man behind the bar is drying cups with a tea towel. As soon as he sees me, he stops what he’s doing and comes to the door where he finds me shuffling uncertainly from foot to foot.
‘Get in here now, before you wear a hole in the pavement. I can’t have strange women loitering outside a respectable establishment such as this.’
He shoos me inside with a flapping tea towel, quickly checking my face to make sure I know that he is teasing me. Queenie slips in behind me and seats herself at a table far enough away to be discreet, but close enough for her to hear what’s being said. He offers to take my coat, but I refuse, remembering that the diary is in the pocket.
‘I’m not going to steal it, you know, like the wind stole your hat. Although it looks as though it would fit me a lot better than it does you.’
I take the book from my pocket and meekly hand over my coat. So, this was the man who tried to rescue my hat. I was right about his face. It’s handsome too, in a comfortable way, as well as kind. He seats me at a table on my own and asks me what I should like.
‘Tea and toast, please.’
‘Coming right up. Now you sit there and behave yourself. I don’t want any trouble from you.’
I can’t help but smile as he wags his finger at me in mock severity. I’m trying hard not to like this man too much, in spite of Queenie’s encouragement, but I’m not doing very well. I place the blue diary carefully in front of me on the table. I brought it to the café to read because here, no matter what it says, I will restrain myself. Here, in public, I will rein myself in. I will not abandon myself to extreme emotions, succumb to hysterical behaviour and make like a mad lady. And if I do, at least there will be someone to call the men in white coats to take me away. The man I am trying, but failing, not to like brings my tea and toast and goes back to his cup-drying. But he is still watching me as I perform my toast ritual, carefully spreading the butter and dividing the square into four neat triangles before placing the knife to attention, like a soldier. A puzzled frown flits across his face, but thankfully, he says nothing. The bell above the door clangs, heralding the arrival of another customer, and the broad, welcoming smile of the cup-dryer prompts me to turn to see the new arrival. He is a sight worth seeing: a man who is dangerously handsome, despite being comfortably past his sixtieth birthday. His skin is deeply tanned, and his charcoal grey hair is thick and shiny and hangs loosely down his back, well past his shoulders. He is wearing an ancient leather jacket, cracked and battered like rhino skin, dark jeans and a pale blue shirt. On his wrist is a heavy silver bangle, on his head a black
trilby, and on his face a smile like Father Christmas with a Casanova chaser. He strides through the café in his fancy cowboy boots, and slaps both hands down on the counter.
‘How are you, Danny boy?’
He addresses the cup-dryer with a voice as rich and rough as Guinness laced with gravel.
‘I’m grand, thanks. And yourself? What can I get you?’
Without replying, and much to my horror, excitement and bewilderment, he turns and heads straight towards me. By the time he reaches my table, I feel like an awkward teenage girl hugging the wall at her first school disco, desperate and terrified in equal measure to be asked to dance. My cheeks are the colour of pomegranates, and there’s not even a glimpse of his naked torso in sight.
‘By the way, I let your dog in. It’s starting to rain.’
‘Dog, what dog?’
Now it’s Daniel’s turn to be bewildered as he glances round the café, his brow once again crumpled with a puzzled frown.
‘I’m only joking,’ says the newcomer, laughing softly to himself.
But he isn’t. Although Daniel clearly can’t see him, Eli is now sitting next to the jukebox looking very pleased with himself. The man winks at me and smiles, and I’m thrilled that already we share a secret. His handsome face tells the tale of a full life, lit by joy and adventure, and shadowed by hardship and loss. His eyes are kind, but there is defiance there too. He offers me his hand.
‘Joseph Geronimo Heathcliff O’Shea; my mammy liked the films. I’m very pleased to meet you.’
‘I’m Tilda.’
His hand is warm and strong, and the skin is rough. He smiles at me again and, pausing briefly to tip his hat to Queenie, goes back to the bar where a large mug of steaming dark brown tea is waiting for him. My concentration has scattered like a bowlful of marbles tipped onto a polished floor. I have finished my tea and toast before I have gathered myself sufficiently to concentrate on what I came here for in the first place. I pull the diary towards me and tap my fingers across its pale blue cover. A thin band of gold sits loosely on the ring finger of my right hand. My mother’s wedding ring. She gave it to me just before she died and it was the first time that she had taken it off since her wedding day.
‘Whatever’s written in there won’t change however long you sit there.’
Daniel has brought me another cup of tea. He’s right. And anyway, I’ve waited long enough. I want to know the truth.
11
Tilly
‘The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.’ Tilly had heard them say it on the television when a bad man was taken to court, and lots of people came to stand in a little box and tell tales about him.
It sounded perfectly simple, but now Tilly was beginning to think that the truth was a bit like cat’s cradle; it was easy enough at the start, but lose your grip for a second and soon there would be knots and tangles all over the place. Tilly was sure that her mother was telling the truth when she had said that her daddy was dead. She might be a bit mad, but even she wouldn’t lie about a thing like that. A lie like that would definitely make your tongue turn black and fall out, and your eyeballs bleed as though they had been stabbed by a million needles. God and his angels would drop a thunderbolt on you, and your head would splatter open like a squashed melon. Tilly didn’t know exactly what a thunderbolt was, but she knew God dropped them on people who did a really big sin, and that sort of lie would definitely count. Even if you did a confession in church, your rosary beads would break before you could say ‘sorry’ enough times to make things right. You could never make it right.
But when it came to the whole truth, that was a slightly different matter. Tilly had learned that telling only some of the truth could be a good way of avoiding trouble. A big truth told could often distract from the little truths kept secret, and sometimes it was the little truths that made all the difference. It was like drawing a picture of a zebra and leaving out the stripes; it ended up looking like a horse. Her daddy used to take her to the pub called The White Horse and she would sit and drink lemonade through a straw and eat salt and vinegar crisps while her daddy drank beer and talked to people who had died. Sometimes he used cards, but mainly he just looked at someone’s hand, or held something like a piece of jewellery or a letter. On the way home they would buy a present for her mother, sweets or cherries in a brown paper bag, or sometimes a bunch of flowers. Her daddy would always tell her mother that they had been for a walk to the shops. He never mentioned the bit about the pub.
When her mother had first told her that her daddy was dead, Tilly could only think of how much it hurt. The pain roared through her again and again until she was sick. And she was sick until there was nothing left but spit, and then she slept. But later, only days later, Tilly wanted to know the whole truth. She wanted to know the ‘how’, ‘when’ and ‘where’. But her mother did not want to tell. She said he had drowned in the place where he was away working. He had been walking back to the pub at night along the promenade and had got too close to the edge and slipped. The sea had carried him away. Tilly wanted to know why she hadn’t been to his funeral, and her mother said that he had never been found and so there hadn’t been a funeral. Her voice was choked with anger or sorrow, but Tilly didn’t know which. Then her mother had started to cry and said that she didn’t want to talk about it any more. But Tilly couldn’t leave it there. Her mother’s tears didn’t seem real. They were ‘get out of trouble’ tears. Rosemary Watson was always doing them at school. Rosemary Watson was a very pretty, neat little girl with long blonde plaits and big blue eyes. She had a new pencil case at the beginning of every term and her socks were always very white and pulled up straight. She was also what Auntie Wendy called ‘a right little madam’. She was always causing trouble and blaming someone else, and if she was ever caught, she would produce the most convincing tears as soon as the first harsh word was fired in her direction. Tilly hated her, but really wished that she could do the crying thing half as well, as she could see that it might come in very handy. She had tried it once at school when Mrs Mould had caught her flicking little balls of chewed-up paper at Billy Ellis, who had pulled her hair in the playground. Her melodramatic performance of sobs and shudders had been seriously weakened by frequent hiccups and giggles, and had quickly reduced the rest of the class to helpless laughter. Tilly had to stand in the corner for the rest of the lesson, and wash the paintbrushes and pots after school for a week. Her mother’s tears were more convincing, but Tilly still thought that she was hiding something.
One night after tea, Tilly began her questions again. Even though she was afraid of what her mother might say, she was more afraid of never finding out the truth.
‘How do you know that my daddy drowned if you weren’t there?’
Tilly’s mother, steadied by half a bottle of Scotch, was teetering on the tightrope between mellow and monster. She twisted the gold wedding ring on her finger round and round and sighed.
‘Because, Tilly love, there were other people there who did see it happen.’
The tears were already shining in Tilly’s eyes and threatening to spill down her pale cheeks.
‘What people? Who were they?’
Her mother didn’t answer, but stroked the rim of her glass lovingly.
Tilly was tumbling downhill fast now and couldn’t stop.
‘Who were they?’ she shouted. ‘And why didn’t they try to help him?’
Her mother’s grip tightened on her glass. Her balance was beginning to tip.
‘They did. Of course they bloody did! But it was dark, and the sea was rough. God, Tilly, do you honestly think that people just stood around and did nothing?’
Tilly shuddered at the thought of her daddy alone in the dark, struggling to keep his head above the waves.
‘I don’t know,’ she sobbed, ‘and you don’t know either, do you? Why don’t you know? Why didn’t you ask someone?’
Her mother didn’t reply. She topped up her glass and drained it ang
rily before slamming it back down on the table.
‘Do you think I really want to talk about this? Don’t you think that I miss him? You’re not the only one who’s hurting. I lost him too! I loved him too!’
Tilly’s tongue was too quick for her own good.
‘No, you didn’t. You were always shouting at him.’
‘And for good reason, my girl! You think he was so perfect, but you don’t know the half of it!’
Her mother refilled her glass. The bottle was almost empty.
‘Go to bed.’
It was said quietly, but the threat was loud and clear. Tilly knew that she was about to push too far and that she only had to go to bed to be safe. But she couldn’t. She needed to know if it was a zebra or a horse. It turned out to be the Kraken.
‘But how do you know he’s really, really dead?’ unleashed a maelstrom of such dark fury from her mother that it left Tilly cowering on the floor as slaps and threats and curses rained down on her. Crouched frozen in terror, Tilly did something that she hadn’t done since she was three years old. While her mother raged herself dry, a hot, wet stream coursed down Tilly’s leg and soaked into her sock. Her mother’s final words were spat so closely into her face that Tilly could feel the warmth of her sour breath.
‘You’ll be the death of me too when you break my heart and then what will you do?’
Her mother’s tears this time were real, but whether of sadness or madness it was impossible to tell, and while she sobbed as she spilled herself another drink, Tilly crept upstairs to clean herself up as best she could. She lay in bed in the darkness, terrified and ashamed, trying to breathe as quietly as she could, thinking about what her mother had said. Even the constant guard of Eli could not comfort her. If her mother died as well, what would happen to Tilly? She wasn’t the soap powder mummy that Tilly wanted, but she was all she had. If she died too, Tilly would probably end up in a children’s home where she would have to sleep in a dormitory and eat porridge for every meal like Oliver Twist. She made a promise in her head never to talk about her daddy again and her heart broke. But if it kept her mother alive, it would be worth it. Her last thought before she fell asleep was Please God, don’t let me kill my mummy.
