by Ruth Hogan
On either side of the display stood a small side table. One acted as a pedestal for a large basket of plastic fruit: grapes, apples, oranges, lemons, cherries and an impressive-looking pineapple; and on the other was a very pretty wire-work birdcage containing two yellow canaries, both of which were dead. And stuffed, of course. Tilly was desperate to get a closer look at both the canaries and the photographs, but knew better than to leave the table before she had finished eating. So instead, she turned her attention to the other people in the room. On a table in one corner, a middle-aged man in a brown suit with a tired face and dull eyes sat alone eating bacon and eggs. He chewed his food wearily, as though it gave him no more joy than eating a pair of old socks. And he had his elbows on the table. It was a good job her mother had her back to him. As Tilly cut each of her soldiers in half and lined them up in two exactly straight rows, one with marmalade and one without, her gaze drifted to a couple eating toast and drinking tea. Both had beautiful table manners. The lady, who was very pretty, with blonde hair swept into a French pleat, was wearing a powder blue skirt suit and dabbed the corner of her mouth with her napkin after every sip of tea. Tilly would have bet her pocket money that she had a clean hanky in her pocket too. The man had neat, dark hair, parted at the side and shiny with hair cream. His eyes were bright blue and a neat moustache twitched jauntily on his top lip as he ate his toast with obvious pleasure. He was wearing a light grey jacket with dark trousers and a very white shirt, with a pale blue silk cravat at the neck. He caught Tilly’s gaze and winked at her. Tilly was happy to return the wink with a smile.
There was a family struggling to get through breakfast whilst waging domestic war in stage whispers. The chubby, red-faced boy, who looked a year or so younger than Tilly, was kicking the leg of the table and demanding chocolate spread for his toast. The mummy was hissing through gritted teeth that there wasn’t any, and he’d have to make do with jam. The girl, who was about Tilly’s age and had long blonde plaits tied with pink ribbons, was poking her tongue out at her brother whilst pushing her scrambled egg from one side of her plate to the other and squashing it with her spoon. The daddy was shovelling huge forkfuls of sausage, beans, black pudding and fried bread into his mouth as though someone was about to steal the plate from under his nose, only occasionally pausing for breath, and taking the opportunity to hiss at the mummy to ‘control those bloody children’. Queenie wouldn’t be pleased with that sort of language at the breakfast table, and Tilly didn’t like the way that bits of food sprayed out of his mouth when he was hissing at the mummy. She was sure a bit of black pudding landed on the mummy’s chin. Tilly couldn’t understand why they were bothering to whisper, because everyone could hear everything anyway. Just as the daddy was cramming the last forkful of food into his already over-stuffed mouth, Queenie sailed in and straight over to their table, where she gathered all their plates, including the uneaten toast and scrambled egg, with menacing speed, and swept out again flashing a smile that could chip granite. The family left without another word. Returning once more to the dining room, Queenie came to clear their table. She looked at Tilly’s egg cup and plate, and then at Tilly, clearly registering the peculiar absence not only of egg but also eggshell. Tilly willed her not to say anything. Queenie paused for a moment, hand on hip, one eyebrow raised in a question-mark arch, before soothing Tilly with a wry grin.
‘And where are you ladies off to today?’
26
Tilly
The lady in the blue suit with the blonde hair, and her husband with the neat moustache and the wink were Bert and Effie Perkins. Tilly was bitterly disappointed. They were too posh to be called Bert and Effie Perkins. It was like finding out that the Queen’s real name was Dolly, and that instead of living in a heavenly palace, God lived in a bungalow. But Bert and Effie were redeemed when Tilly learned that they were amateur ballroom dancing champions. That single fact put them right up there with Black Beauty, the Virgin Mary and Charlie’s Angels as far as Tilly was concerned. Effie had already promised to show Tilly her dresses and paint her fingernails for her. The man in the brown suit, who ate his food so joylessly with his elbows on the table, was called Mr Rubbing and sold encyclopaedias door to door. According to Queenie, he was a ‘just passing through’, and not a ‘regular’. Bert and Effie were very regular, and came every time there was a dancing competition in the ballroom on the pier. The family with the daddy who swore and stuffed his food had gone, and ‘Good riddance!’ Queenie had said. After they had paid the bill. Now there was a new family staying, with twin boys called Tom and Jerry. Tilly had laughed very loudly when they told her because she had thought it was a joke. But it wasn’t. In fact, she soon found out that the boys were very serious about most things, and especially about collecting tea and cigarette cards. They spent ages looking at the ones they’d already got and talking about the ones they needed. Tilly didn’t think that they were going to be friends.
So much had happened in just a week. Tilly and her mother should have been going home tomorrow, but now they weren’t. They might not be going home at all. That morning her mother had told her that Queenie needed some more help to run The Paradise Hotel, and had offered Grace a job. Her mother had asked Tilly what she thought about staying on. She said that it would mean changing schools and leaving some friends behind, but reminded her how much she loved Queenie and living so close to the pier, and reassured Tilly that she would soon make some new friends. It would be a fresh start for them both, she had said. Tilly pretended to think about it for a bit, because she thought that was what her mother wanted. She already felt released from the painful knots and tangles of their old life, but most importantly of all, in Queenie’s house she felt safe. It was true that she would miss going to church with Mrs O’Flaherty. But there must be a nice church here too, and perhaps Mrs O’Flaherty could come and visit. She was sure that Mrs O’Flaherty and Queenie would get on like a house on fire. It was also true that she would miss Auntie Wendy and Karen, but she still wasn’t convinced that Auntie Wendy was their friend any more anyway. Eli had already made himself quite at home. Her mother looked happier than Tilly had seen her in a long time. Here, nobody nudged and whispered about them in the street, or looked down their noses at them when they went into a shop. But more importantly, here they had Queenie. Tilly couldn’t believe that all this time her mother had had a friend that she had never even heard about. But now they both had her, Tilly never wanted to let her go. In the end, she decided it was a choice between boiled cabbage with half a fish finger, or a great big plate of chips. Tilly chose chips. Queenie said that they could keep their lovely room at the top of the house, but after tomorrow, they were to eat with the others in the back dining room. Tilly couldn’t wait. She had never been in a back dining room and she was very keen to meet the others.
She didn’t have to wait very long to meet one of them. It was later that afternoon when her mother was having one of her little lie-downs and Tilly was exploring the house. She thought that if she was going to be living there, it was important that she should get to know the whole house. She also wanted to see the garden. Perhaps Queenie grew her own fruit and vegetables too, although it didn’t seem very likely. Maybe she had garden gnomes instead, like Auntie Wendy. Tilly headed towards the back of the house down a long corridor past the kitchen. She was looking for a back door into the garden, but before she found one she came across a funny little staircase not at all like the grand, sweeping affair with all the ferns and brass pots at the front of the house. This one only had four steps to the first landing before it turned and continued up. On the landing was a door, and it was the door, or rather the music coming from behind it, that caught Tilly’s attention. It was dancing music, soft and floating at first like feathers on a pond, but growing faster and wilder, like the wind whorling the leaves into autumn skies.
Tilly stood at the door, rapt. The crackle of a needle skimming across the old record broke the spell.
‘Who’s there?’
<
br /> The voice came from behind the door and caught Tilly completely off guard.
‘No one.’
‘Well, there must be someone there to say “no one”.’
It was a woman’s voice, scrattled with old age, but with the tone of a proper lady and not at all cross.
‘I only meant no one you know,’ Tilly floundered.
‘How do you know that I don’t know you?’
‘Because I don’t know who you are.’
‘But that doesn’t mean that I don’t know who you are.’
The voice from behind the door didn’t answer back like a normal grown-up; it was much craftier and almost as good at answering back as her. Tilly thought for a moment and then replied.
‘Who am I, then?’
‘Well, if you come in here, I’ll tell you.’
Tilly was well versed in children’s fairy-tales. She knew that talking to strangers usually led to trouble of one sort or another. Look what had happened to Hansel and Gretel and Snow White. But this was Queenie’s house, and Tilly couldn’t see her renting rooms to people who ate small children, or wicked stepmothers. Besides, Tilly was curious. She couldn’t help herself. She turned the brass knob slowly and gently pushed open the door. The woman sitting up in the huge bed looked to Tilly as if she were at least a hundred years old. Her long, grey, wispy hair stuck out from her head like an explosion of cobwebs, and her face was as wrinkled as the pushed-back skin on top of a rice pudding. Her lips were shiny red with lipstick and a slick of sky blue covered each of her eyelids. Her cheeks were over-ripe wrinkly apples of rouge and she was wearing a black satin evening gown that was cut to display a generous amount of the crack between her bosoms. She wore long white gloves that stretched over her elbows, and a white feather boa. She might be old, Tilly thought, but she certainly hadn’t let herself go as Auntie Wendy would have said. But why was she still in bed at gone three o’clock in the afternoon? Tilly looked round the room for the tell-tale signs of illness, a bottle of Lucozade and a new comic, but saw none.
‘Are you poorly?’ she asked.
‘No. What makes you ask?’
‘Because you’re still in bed and it’s the afternoon.’
‘Yes. But it’s Friday.’
As an explanation, it meant nothing to Tilly, but her thoughts had already moved on.
‘Well,’ she said, hands on hips, ‘who am I then?’
The woman studied her carefully for a moment through a pair of spectacles with a long handle on one side.
‘You’re a little girl.’
‘Yes, but which little girl?’
‘Well, for heaven’s sake, child, if you don’t know who you are, then you can hardly expect me to know.’
‘But I do know. I’m Tilly.’
The woman nodded her head as if to acknowledge that Tilly had answered correctly.
‘And what precisely are you doing here, Tilly?’
‘I’m looking for the garden.’
‘Well, you won’t find it in here, and anyway, that’s not what I meant. What are you doing here, in this house?’
‘Today I’m on holiday, but tomorrow I start living here.’
‘In the garden?’
‘No . . .’ Tilly began to answer but realised from the woman’s smile that she was teasing her. Her gaze moved away from the woman’s face to explore her surroundings. It was a pretty room, full of light from a large window. Next to the bed, on a small cabinet, was a wind-up gramophone, and by the window was a button-back chair strewn with fringed silk shawls and dressing gowns. A dressing table with a trio of mirrors was littered with beauty creams and potions, make-up and sparkling glass bottles of perfume. On the floor were several drunken towers of old magazines: The Lady, Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar. And then there were the boxes. Every available space and surface were taken up by music boxes of all shapes, colours and sizes. Tilly was fascinated. The old woman saw Tilly staring at the boxes and suddenly her mood changed.
‘Off you go now. I’m very busy.’
It seemed Tilly’s visit was over. She desperately wanted to play with the boxes, but she was clearly being dismissed. Reluctantly she turned to leave, but with her hand still on the cold brass doorknob, she turned back for a moment.
‘Excuse me, lady, but what’s your name?’
‘Anita Ekberg.’
27
Tilly
‘Are you sure it was Anita Iceberg?’
Tilly’s mother was brushing her hair and putting on her lipstick, guided by the reflection in the bathroom mirror.
‘Well, it sounded like “Iceberg”, and it was definitely “Anita”.’
Tilly was watching her mother deftly colouring her mouth; two arcs on the top lip and a single sweep across the bottom. She pressed her lips together and kissed the air with a soft ‘puck’ sound. Tilly had tried this once herself with a red felt-tip pen. The result hadn’t been quite what she was hoping for. Tilly’s mother was wondering exactly who it was that her daughter had encountered during her exploration of the house. Anita Iceberg was only a slip of the tongue away from the film star who had frolicked seductively in the Trevi Fountain in Fellini’s celebrated La Dolce Vita, but it was hardly likely that Queenie was harbouring a famous Swedish sexpot in her very respectable and very British establishment. Tilly’s mother smiled to herself at the absurdity of such a notion.
‘Come along, Tilly, let’s go down for dinner.’
The next morning, Tilly was wide awake long before the first feeble light had trickled through the crack between the bedroom curtains. Today was the start of their new life. Today they began living at the seaside, and from today they belonged to The Paradise Hotel, and Queenie became truly their Queenie. Today they would have breakfast in the back dining room with the others. Tilly lay on her back staring up at the ceiling, where she could just make out the faint mark that looked like a penguin riding a bicycle. She wondered who ‘the others’ might be. There would be Queenie, of course, and the old lady with the mad hair called Anita, but who else? Perhaps Queenie had a husband hidden away at the back of the house, who worked in an office all day. Tilly was pretty sure that Queenie didn’t have any children, although she couldn’t really explain why, but perhaps she had a couple of servants. She looked the sort of person who might have servants. And there was definitely a cook, because Tilly had heard Queenie talking about her with one of the guests at dinner last night. The guest had said that his pork chop was ‘a bit tough’ and Queenie had said that she would ‘advise cook of your opinion’, but Tilly wasn’t convinced. Queenie had looked more likely to whack him round the chops with his chop. Eli was sitting at the bottom of Tilly’s bed with his chin resting on the edge of the eiderdown, watching her. It was as though he, too, knew that there was something different about today. Queenie had never mentioned him. Even though he followed Tilly just about everywhere, including into the dining room, she had never said a word. It was as though she couldn’t see him. Tilly knew that it was sometimes better not to draw attention to certain things. She didn’t always get it right, but she was pretty sure that Eli was one of them. Besides, he seemed happy enough to be living here, and as far as Tilly was concerned, that was the main thing.
After what seemed like a week, she heard her mother stirring. In five minutes Tilly was up and dressed, having washed and cleaned her teeth in record time, and sat fidgeting on her bed while her mother got ready at a more leisurely pace. Each stage of her mother’s early morning routine seemed to be taking place in slow motion, as though she was under water. Her hairbrush wafted through the air like the Queen of England waving on a day when she was very tired, instead of at its usual brisk and efficient pace. The decision between a dark green woollen dress and a navy skirt with a camel-coloured jumper took longer than Tilly would have taken to choose between chocolate and strawberry ice cream. And they were her favourites. This was worse than waiting to open presents on Christmas morning.
‘Come on!’ she pleaded, her impatience f
inally bubbling over like a pan of boiling milk.
‘Tilly, Queenie said that breakfast was at six thirty and it’s still only quarter past.’
‘Yes, which means that if we’re not there in fifteen minutes we’ll be late and make a bad expression on our first day.’
Her mother smiled to herself, hearing her own words, or rather a version of them, spoken back to her by her daughter.
‘It doesn’t take fifteen minutes to walk downstairs to the dining room.’
‘Yes, but we’re not going to the dining room, we’re going to the back dining room, which is further away. And anyway, someone may have fallen halfway down the stairs and broken a leg and be blocking the way, and then we’ll have to wait for an ambulance.’
Tilly paused to assess the effect of her pronouncement of doom.
‘They might have broken both legs. And an arm.’
Fortunately, the staircase proved to be casualty free, and they arrived at the door of the back dining room with one minute to spare. Before going in, her mother turned to Tilly as though she were going to say something, but instead knocked softly on the door, which immediately flew open to reveal a small, sturdy-looking woman wearing a long apron with large pockets and a pair of black boots that would have looked more at home on a navvy.
