by Rosie Chard
I often felt worn out by the thoughts in my head. Yet lately I’d felt different. Almost imperceptible surges of happiness had started springing up from nowhere, pushing other feelings aside and rippling pleasure through my arms. But then they’d leave just as abruptly and the worry would return, lying across my shoulders like a heavy coat. I worried about my father, I worried about my aunt, and I worried about the tea stain that wouldn’t come off. But most of all I was disturbed by the worry that I couldn’t identify, the one that was yet to come.
I spent every spare second in the back garden; I loved the damp smell of earth and the crinkled signs of life down there on the ground. I also adored the plants as they prepared for winter, their sugars withdrawn, their leaves hugging the ground. I was looking at a doily of frost draped across a dead flower when the sound of a distant voice entered the garden.
“M-i-ss.”
I hurried back to the house before anyone could be stirred up and opened the front door. “Mr. . . Johnny.”
“Good morning,” the postman replied, grinning.
“This is a late delivery.”
“Oh no, I heard you were planting a new garden and I wondered if you needed any help?”
“Where did you hear that?”
“We posties hear everything. . .” He looked superior. “. . . about everything.”
“I don’t need any help, thank you.”
His smile slumped, then re-formed. “Could I come in and use your loo?”
I edged back. “I suppose so.”
He placed a toe onto the doormat. “Cor, is this your granny’s place?”
“I don’t have a granny.”
“Not one?”
“No grandparents at all.”
“Sorry. Shoes off?”
“No, it’s all right. The loo’s up the stairs and straight on.”
“Thanks, I’ll find it.”
I went into the kitchen and sat at the table. Heard you were planting
a garden. How had he ‘heard’? I pulled my sleeve further down my wrist; my skin felt naked inside my clothes. A constipated toilet broke the quiet of the room so I ran up the stairs and tapped on the bathroom door. “Please, can you try and flush it more quietly, my aunt is staying here and she’s asleep.”
“Sorry.”
“The chain likes to be pulled gently.”
“Got it,” he called over a roar of fluid. He flung open the door. “Phew, it’s stuffy in there. You need to get yourself a window that opens. Chuck out that frosted glass and get a proper look at that garden of yours.” He smiled. “I could do that.”
“My father wouldn’t allow it.”
“Bit of a stickler, is he?”
“He’s not interested in the garden.”
Johnny opened his mouth but did not reply, he just gazed round the landing as if gauging it for repairs. The upstairs hall looked different with a postman standing within its walls. His suit intensified the maroon of the wallpaper and the shine on his shoes emphasized the tiredness of the carpet. He seemed larger.
“That your bedroom?” He jerked his head in the direction of my door.
“Please. . . let’s just go down.”
“What’s the rush?”
“Edith!”
Vivian’s voice had burst through a nearby doorway. Johnny stiffened. “Yes,” I replied in a voice not like mine.
“Who’s out there?”
I folded my arms across my chest. “No one.” I edged the bewildered postman into my bedroom and closed the door.
“I heard voices,” Vivian said, emerging from her bedroom pulling at her eyelashes.
“I was singing.”
She released an eyelash and stared. “Singing? Are you so happy then?”
“I. . .”
But Vivian had stopped listening. She shuffled towards the bathroom, paused to sniff the air then went inside and closed the door.
Johnny was sitting on my bed by the time I returned to my room, gently bouncing.
“We need to go downstairs,” I whispered.
“Shame. I was enjoying your springs.”
Nausea pricked my throat. “My aunt wouldn’t approve of you being up here.”
“But you would?”
“No. . . Please, can we just go downstairs. Quietly.”
He launched into a childish tip-toe as we creaked down the stairs and returned to the front door.
“You can’t come into the house again,” I said.
He looked hurt, then rallied. “What about the garden? I’m brilliant at digging.”
“No, I can do it. You have to go now. I have to go.”
“You’re as bad as him next door,” he said sulkily.
“Next door?”
“Well, he doesn’t exactly invite me in for tea.”
“Doesn’t he?”
Johnny stopped fiddling with his badge. “No. That time I met him he wouldn’t look me straight in the eye. I don’t like that, do you?”
I focused on the bridge of his nose; a pimple lay there. “No.”
“Anyway, I better get going before that dog at number ten gets back from its walk. See you next time.”
“Yes, next time.”
I prayed the letterbox wouldn’t open again. My stomach flipped when the metal flap trembled but then footsteps drifted out of earshot and I breathed again. Spotting something on the floor, I bent down and picked up an elastic band. I slid it over my wrist and sat down on the bottom stair mulling over the last few minutes of my life. A postman had been inside my room. Trousers had rubbed against my sheets. Then a question dropped into my head. What colour were the eyes that looked away?
31
November, November, November.
A lull replaced the final days of weeding and tidying the garden before winter set in, tempered only by Archie’s promise of river boulders. ‘Beauties,’ he’d assured me after spending an afternoon at the nursery thumbing through the spring seed catalogues. He’d even arranged delivery while my father was at work and on a raw morning on the last day of the month five pumpkin-sized rocks arrived on the back of a truck and were hauled into my back garden by ‘Sam,’ a thick-waisted labourer who groaned like a pregnant horse every time he lifted one up. The smallness of his feet shocked me as he tottered across the garden with the boulders in his arms. My concern for his limbs was justified when he wrenched a muscle in his thigh and was last seen limping across to Archie’s kitchen on a promise of tea and biscuits.
Left alone, I sat down on the largest boulder and imagined another me inside the stone circle. Clouds were achingly high in the sky when I looked up, little bits of fluff that made the garden feel bigger than it really was. And the ground felt damp, probably as damp as the ground on the other side of the wall. It was then that I noticed the brick. Shadows had accentuated the face of the high wall and a lone yellow brick I had never noticed before stood out from the rest. I liked it, the way it held its own among the orange bricks around it. It seemed to goad me, not in a way I understood but in a way that made me stand up and step onto the boulder. I was taller here, a greater distance from the ground, a new distance from the sky. I stretched up my neck and looked at the high wall. Here I saw a whole new piece of the garden next door. I saw the top of a small tree holding onto leaves. I saw upside-down trouser legs pegged to the peak of the washing line and I saw the tip of a ladder leaning against the other side of the wall. I turned to my ladder leaning against the side of the house. Anyone could climb a ladder. Just grip the sides and climb.
“Edith! Where’s my change?” A blue handbag waved at me through the kitchen window. My blue handbag. I stepped off the boulder. “It’s in the inside pocket,” I called back. “I’ll come and get it.”
“Can’t hear you.”
I hurried up to the house. Vivian sat at the kitchen table, her hands deep in my bag.
“It’s in the inner pocket,” I said.
“Where, for God’s sake?” She pulled out a handful of objects.
I could hardly bear it. The exposure. “I can find it.”
“No, I’ll do it,” snapped Vivian, “What is all this rubbish?”
Plant labels followed a ball of string onto the table. Then a handkerchief, unraveling in slow motion.
“Could I look? I know where it is,” I said.
My handbag skimmed the table. “Hurry up,” she snapped.
I delved inside, slipped my hand into the inner pocket, and pulled out two coins.
“About time.”
I continued to hold my bag, cradling it in my arms. Suddenly, inexplicably, thrillingly, I felt courageous. “I left my purse at the nursery.”
“What?”
“I left it at the nursery. Nancy found it.”
Vivian stared. “Who did you say found it?”
“Nancy Pit. The woman who works at the nursery. She found it and brought it round.”
“Nancy Pit came here?” Gaps had sprung between Vivian’s words; cheek muscles bunched.
“Yes. She said she knows you.”
“She came here?” Vivian repeated.
“She said you used to be friends.”
Vivian gazed down at the pound coin in her palm. Her roots showed grey. “Did she come inside?”
“She wanted to see the garden.”
“The garden? You showed her the garden!” Vivian slammed her hand down hard; coins thrummed sound out on the table.
“She wanted to see it,” I stammered.
Vivian’s face veered towards me. “I don’t want her coming here again, do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“You do not go to the nursery. You do not let her inside the house. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
I remained still until she had left the room. But that did not quell movement in my head, a thought. Vivian had a friend. Once.
The sun had left a shadow beneath the yellow brick when I returned to the garden. I walked towards it, slowly, and touched the edge. It was loose. Snatching back my hand, I checked the top of the wall. A sparrow gazed back, its feet crooked over the edge. I looked again at the yellow brick and then folded my fingers around its edges and eased it out. It fitted perfectly into the palm of my hand. I looked back and studied the opening that had been left behind. I saw a strange, crooked route inside the wall but as I moved forward a wealth of detail began to pour between its newly exposed edges. Hardly daring to breathe, I pressed my face against the wall and looked. Through.
It felt cold in bed. Even with an extra blanket, I’d pulled my knees up to my chest and encased my hands between my thighs. The whole room felt cold: the clock beside the bed, the teeth of my comb, the insides of my shoes. Stretching the sheet over my head I thought about the hole in the wall.
A small tree had been framed in the hole like a botanical print. I had counted every single yellow fruit that clung to the branches but had stopped when I noticed a different sort of fruit, not yellow, but brown and hollow and hairy. A half coconut had been tied to a gap in the branches. I’d studied it for a while, noting the shreds of pecked flesh hanging off the shell, memorizing every curl, every black blemish, until the angle of the sun reminded me that Vivian would soon be home, so I pushed the loose fragment back into the wall and covered it over with a piece of moss, as if it had never been.
I turned over, feeling a plume of chilly air rush into my bed. But my goose-pimpled skin masked a warmer layer inside my body. I had glimpsed a slice of his garden; the real now overlaid the imagined. And the imagined could barely be recalled. But as I wrestled to untangle the knot of thoughts, something rose above the others, something strange, something inexplicable. Edward Black. The mean, the frightening, the invisible Edward Black — fed birds.
32
“She says she’s doing her homework.”
I wanted to hug Una’s father when he opened the front door. I almost did, but instead I smiled and then skipped up the stairs. Una’s feet were waving in the air behind her when I entered her room, a book tucked between her elbows. “Edith!” She jumped off the bed and hugged me.
I attempted to return her embrace. “You smell different.”
“You don’t,” she said smiling and ushering me to sit down beside her on the bed.
Una’s hair was longer than I remembered, her nails long too, but her skirt was shorter and she tugged at it repeatedly as she talked, attempting to manage the hemline as it skitted round her thighs.
“What’s it like? I said.
Una’s cheeks pinked. “What’s what like?”
“At University?”
“Hard work, but we have a lot of fun — but first tell me, how’s the job?”
“It’s alright. Jean’s nice, she’s kind.”
Una laid her hand on my arm. “You know, actually you do look a bit different.”
“New laces,” I said lifting up my feet and pointing at my toes.
Her fingers squeezed tighter. “I mean it. There’s something that’s changed about you. Has something happened?”
“No.”
Una tipped her head. “I was so pleased when you told me about the job.”
“It’s just a shop.”
“I know, but a shop is full of people and —”
“Not too many.”
“No, not too many but. . . isn’t it nice seeing some different faces?”
I thought of the boys at the foot of the ladder. “Yes. That’s nice.”
She leaned towards me. “How is he?”
Something beat at the bottom of my neck. “I. . . he. . .”
“Is he still making you do all the work?”
“My father? Yes, he does.”
Una looked quizzical. “You seem alright about that.”
I wiped a moist hand across my skirt. “I’m used to it.”
“Edith, is there something you’re not telling me?”
“No.” We sat in silence; I could hear the kettle whistling in the kitchen below. “Well, actually, yes.”
Una looked at me, expectant.
“I met this man.”
“What man?”
“He works in the bookshop on Adlington Street. I went in there one day and I found out he used to work with my mother and we became. . . sort of friends.”
Una’s eyebrows twitched. “What do you mean, sort of friends?”
“Like us.”
“You mean sitting together on the bed?”
My cheeks felt warm, “Oh, no, I. . . we just talk and look at his books.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
Una’s shoulder’s relaxed. “Edith, you know how this looks.”
“I know how it looks and I don’t care.”
She gazed at me in admiration.
“Una, he knew my mother and he’s willing to talk about her. No-one else is.”
She smiled. “You had me worried there. I’m just relieved to hear that you’re not having fantasies about strange older men.”
33
RINSE HANDS AFTER USE
DO NOT INHALE
MAY RELEASE DANGEROUS GASES
Black water filled the saucepan as Vivian’s prunes simmered on the stove. My aunt came to stay two times a week now. Two taxis, two suitcases, two stressful cycles of arrival and departure. The announcement of an additional visiting day had been unexpected, a curt sentence thrown into the kitchen the previous week as she left the house and now I was organizing a twice-weekly breakfast regime of cereal soaked in hot milk, stewed fruit and boiled eggs. Eggs had always fascinated me. I’d been a small child when I tried to incubate my first chicken. The eggs lining the fridge door had always bothered me and a deep sense of worry gnawed at my five-year-old heart every time I went in to search for leftovers. I pitied them, the poor abandoned things. Where were their mothers? What had happened to their nests? One had a stamp on its side that looked like a face, so I had picked it up, sneaked upstairs and held it in my hands until the fridge chill was gone. But it nev
er really warmed up. All I felt was a dead heat, not the live heat of a living thing. Then I’d made a nest in the corner of my bedroom. Not from twigs or spit or handfuls of moss but from underwear lifted from the chest of drawers, schoolgirl socks threaded with vests then gathered inside a towel. But the face egg still exuded a dead heat when I laid it in the centre and covered it up with a small pair of knickers.
I placed three bowls on the kitchen table and lay a spoon beside each one. What was Vivian doing here, I wondered? What could explain the growing number of night cream bottles crowding the bathroom shelf? How could I ask? I was poking a teaspoon into the puckered fruit skin, turning the question over in my mind, when someone knocked on the door.
“Edith, get that,” said Vivian.
I dropped my napkin onto my chair, darted into the hall and opened the door.
“Good morning. Is your aunt at home?” Nancy Pit looked dressed for work; the strap of a green overall showed beneath her collar.
I tightened my grip on the door handle. “She’s having her breakfast.” “May I come in? I would like to talk to her.”
“I. . .”
The hall reeked suddenly of warm prunes. “Nancy Pit,” said Vivian, joining me on the doormat.
The woman gave a short nod. “Vivian.”
I took a small step back; I wished the print on my dress matched the wallpaper more closely.
“It’s been a long time,” said Vivian.
“It has,” replied Nancy Pit. She glanced towards the kitchen door. “I’d like to talk to you, Vivian, if I may. Can I. . . come in?”
I edged further back, breaking out the smallest of steps.
“I don’t think we have anything to talk about.”
The tiny steps ceased.
“This won’t take long.” Nancy Pit’s overall straps shifted.
“I’m busy,” replied Vivian.
I thought of the waiting cereal, sucking up milk.
“Are you really not going to let me in?” Nancy Pit’s mole had turned fierce, resting atop pursed lips.
“No.”
Vivian lifted her arm, stepped back and slammed the door. A hard, loud sound. Upsetting. She turned towards me. “If that woman comes round again, you know what to do.”
