The Last Lost Girl

by Maria Hoey

  She’s turning me away, thought Jacqueline, she’s decided she doesn’t like the look of me. Perversely, it had the effect of making her want to stay. She stood for a moment looking at the lamb’s ear, which felt so fragile, but could withstand gales and storms, then she turned and walked back to the house.

  Dot Candy was rinsing the glasses at the sink.

  “I’d like a room, if that’s alright with you,” said Jacqueline.

  Dot Candy turned and looked at her, then picked up a tea towel and wiped her hands on it. “Bring your bag,” she said, and walked away.

  Jacqueline picked up her holdall and followed her back through the long cool hall to where a low counter cordoned off an area beneath the stairs.

  Dot Candy raised the hinged counter-flap and slipped in behind. With her back to Jacqueline, she surveyed a row of hooks on the wall, from which keys were hanging. “Now where will I put you?”

  While she waited, Jacqueline’s eyes fell on a faded leather-covered book with one single word picked out in gilt: GUESTS.

  “This one, I think.” Dot Candy reached up and unhooked a key, then let herself out and lowered the counter-flap once more. “If you’ll come with me,” she said, her tone suddenly and disconcertingly that of the professional host.

  Jacqueline followed her again through the hall.

  Dot pointed to a doorway. “This is the dining room. Breakfast is served here between eight and ten. If you’d rather not stand on ceremony, you’ll find me in the kitchen.”

  She led the way upstairs. On the second landing, she unlocked a door and stood aside so Jacqueline could pass.

  The room was spacious and bright with sunshine. It was also exquisitely clean and smelled of fresh polish. A faded rug almost entirely covered the gleaming dark-wood floor. The fireplace had a mahogany mantelpiece and an old-fashioned steel fender, its twin knobs polished until they shone. A big cracked blue jug filled with dried flowers replaced the grate. There was a king-size bed and a gargantuan mahogany wardrobe, a chest of drawers and a washstand with an old-fashioned jug and basin. On a small three-legged table by the window, a silver tray was set with a silver teapot, jug and bowl; the bowl was stuffed with sachets of sugar and pods of UHT milk. There were also two glass bottles of mineral water, one still, one sparkling, and a single blue-and-gold fine-china cup and saucer – almost, thought Jacqueline, as though she had been expecting me.

  “No bath,” said Dot Candy, as she opened a door on a small en-suite with shower. “There’s another room I could give you – it has a bath, but the views are not so good – your choice.”

  Jacqueline had crossed to the big bay window and was staring down at the distant sea. “No, thank you,” she said, “I’ll have this one, please. This is my room.”

  Chapter 15

  1976

  The old man with the screwed-up face and the hump on his back has gone. A new boy is in charge of the swing boats and the bumpers are no longer Lilly’s favourites. The boy wears a black leather bag across his chest for the money he collects. He has long curly black hair and dark eyes that gleam in the lights from the carnival. The six red-and-white boats are full of girls and Jacqueline watches them showing off. They stand up while the boats are still moving, they laugh loudly and pull hard on the thick blue ropes, sending the boats flying high in one direction and higher still in the other. Back and forth, back and forth they fly so that their hair flies out behind them, red and gold and brown, and Lilly’s is the darkest of them all. Their eyes are on the boy as he moves about below them. His name is Luca. He is the boy from the garden, the one who came to play his guitar and sing to Lilly in the middle of the night. Jacqueline thinks he looks a little bit wicked.

  Lilly is wearing a white halter-neck top, her brown back is bare, and when she climbs into the boat for the third time, she stumbles on the shaky little wooden ladder. Goretti Quinn laughs so much that the boat begins to rock, but Luca smiles and holds it steady for Lilly.

  When the ride is over, Jacqueline hears Lilly and Goretti Quinn talking about him.

  “Do you like him, Lilly?”

  “Who?”

  “Luke.”

  “Not Luke – Luca,” says Lilly. “He’s alright.”

  “Because I think he likes you, Lilly.”

  “Yeah? Big thrill!” says Lilly, laughing.

  There are red X’s on the kitchen calendar. Lilly is marking off the days until the Festival Queen Dance in the marquee.

  “Why is she doing that, when she’s not allowed go to the dance?” asks Jacqueline.

  “Don’t ask me,” says Gayle.

  Jacqueline goes into the sitting room. The television is on but Daddy is not watching the racing. He is combing his hair and looking at himself in the door of the china cabinet. On the top of the china cabinet there is a photograph in a brown wooden frame. Jacqueline, her mother, Daddy, Lilly and Gayle are sitting together on a blanket with the sea behind them. No matter how hard she tries, Jacqueline can never quite remember that particular day. When she tries, all the trips to the estuary and all the picnics mix themselves up in her head in a jumble of sunshine and buckets and spades, red lemonade, tea in the blue flask and sandwiches packed in bread-wrappers, so that she cannot tell one day from the other. Was the photograph taken on the day Gayle fell off the jetty into the sea and had to walk home in Lilly’s petticoat, or was it another day altogether?

  Jacqueline picks up the frame and peers at herself closely. In the photograph, she is much younger than she is now. There is an apple in her hand and her face is screwed up as though she has just tasted something nasty.

  “Daddy,” she says, “why am I pulling a face?”

  Daddy puts his comb back into his pocket. “I’ve told you a million times, Jacqueline.”

  “Tell me again.”

  Daddy takes the frame from Jacqueline’s hand and looks at the photograph. “You were eating your apple and talking at the same time when the photo was taken and this is you with a mouthful of pips …”

  “So I spat them out …”

  “All over the blanket …”

  “And I knocked over the flask …”

  “And the tea spilled …”

  “And Mam gave out to me …”

  “And Mam gave out to you …”

  “And you gave me a piggy-back …”

  “To the end of the jetty.”

  There is the sound of a car outside and Daddy puts the photograph back on top of the china cabinet.

  “I’m getting out of here,” he says. “The flower women are coming.”

  Jacqueline follows Daddy into the hall.

  He calls up the stairs. “Stella, your flower women are here!” and he pulls a face at Jacqueline.

  Jacqueline laughs. Daddy doesn’t like the flower women. They hold their meetings in each other’s houses and, when it’s her mother’s turn, they take over the whole sitting room and do things to flowers with bits of wire and little green sponges. Sometimes Jacqueline listens but they talk about stupid things like form and texture and “repeating your lines” and say things that don’t make sense, like “never cut on a nodule”.

  Daddy says her mother is wasting her time with all this flower-arranging nonsense. He told her she should give it up like she gave up everything else she started: the crochet and the smocking and the basket-weaving and the bloody lampshade-making. He said: why can’t she try her hand at cookery lessons instead?

  But Jacqueline’s mother told him not to be so smart. “And if you must know, I’ve discovered I have a flair for flowers so you’d better get used to it, because I’m keeping it up.”

  Now, Jacqueline’s mother comes down the stairs.

  “Frank,” she says, “please don’t make a show of me. It’s only once every two months that they come here, so please make an effort to be civil.”

  Daddy pulls a face behind her back and Jacqueline laughs. She doesn’t like them either, the flower women: Kay and Olive and Heather and Mona and, last but not l
east, Florence McNally. Florence is rich and posh and, according to Lilly, thinks she is the Queen of England. She lives in a big house all by herself. Daddy says it’s because no-one would have her, but Jacqueline’s mother says that’s all he knows. Florence had a husband once but he died tragically when Florence was just a bride. Jacqueline cannot imagine Florence McNally as a bride – Florence has short grey hair and wears tight checked skirts even though she has the biggest bum Jacqueline has ever seen. Daddy says she’s nothing but an oul’ snob, but Jacqueline’s mother says Florence is a real lady who knows more about flower-arranging than anyone else in the flower club.

  “Right, I’ll be off down the town so,” says Daddy, “because God forbid I’d make a show of anyone.”

  “Don’t try to make out that it’s because of my friends you’re going out,” says Jacqueline’s mother. “You were going out whether they came or not.”

  “What if I was?” says Daddy. “Since when was it a sin for a man to go out for a pint?”

  “If it was only one pint,” says Jacqueline’s mother.

  Jacqueline thinks they’re going to have another row. But, instead, they go together to open the door and Daddy shakes hands with the flower women and says something that makes everyone laugh – even Florence McNally.

  Jacqueline walks with Daddy to the gate. “Can I have some money for the carnival, Daddy?”

  “What, are you off to the carnival again?”

  “Lilly said she’d take me this evening if I want to go.”

  “Did she now? I hope she looks after you when you’re there.”

  “Yes, Daddy,” Jacqueline lies, because it is better to go to the carnival with Lilly and be ignored by her, than not to go at all.

  As she walks back to the house, Jacqueline can hear the murmur of the flower women’s voices coming through the open sitting-room window. She imagines how warm the sitting room must be, and how full of the smell of women’s perfumes and the fat sweet smell of the flowers. She wonders how they can bear to be inside when the sun is shining and the sky is blue, listening to one another saying the same things over and over again. But she is bored and there is nothing to do, so she crosses the grass and stands at the window and peers in. Florence McNally has her back to the window and is bent over the table. Her skirt is stretched tight across her big huge bum and Jacqueline has to put her hands over her mouth to stop herself laughing out loud. At times like this, she almost wishes Regina Quinn was here to share the joke.

  “Now remember, ladies,” Florence says in her loud deep voice, “leaves should be a healthy green with no loose pollen on the petals, because that means the flowers are nearing the end of their lifespan.”

  Compared to Florence, Jacqueline’s mother’s voice is soft and high. “What do you think, Florence, should I use the pedestal or the vase?”

  And Florence says, “Oh, the vase, Stella, without doubt, the vase – exquisite, absolutely exquisite. Isn’t it exquisite, ladies?”

  Then everyone says something about the vase.

  “Stunning,” says Kay, and “Lead crystal, of course,” says Olive, and “It must be sixteen inches high at the very least,” says Mona, and “An heirloom, I think you said?” says Heather.

  And Jacqueline’s mother, sounding pleased and happy, says, “Fifteen inches actually and it is lead crystal. My mother got it as a wedding gift and passed it on to me before she died.”

  And Jacqueline wonders again how they can bear it. She turns away from the window and that is when she notices the evergreen bush. For a moment she thinks it has blossomed overnight but, going closer, she can see that what look like red-and-black flowers are really hundreds of ladybirds. When she is tired of looking at them, she wanders down to the orchard.

  There is someone in the field behind the hedge – Jacqueline can hear talking and laughing.

  Lilly comes through the gap in the hedge.

  She is smiling but when she sees Jacqueline she stops. “How long have you been standing there?”

  “Not long.”

  Lilly looks over her shoulder then back at Jacqueline. “Is Daddy here?”

  “No, he’s gone down the town – the flower women are here.”

  “Oh God, not the flower women!” says Lilly and Jacqueline smiles because Lilly sounds just like Daddy.

  When Lilly has gone, Jacqueline walks to the gap in the hedge. In the distance she can see a boy walking through the meadow, but he is too far away for her to be sure who he is and she stands and watches the dark head bob up and down as he moves away fast, towards the river.

  Chapter 16

  Afterwards

  Jacqueline took off her shoes and unzipped her bag. She rummaged through her clothes until she found his cardigan. She sniffed it. She wondered if it was her imagination or if it smelled just slightly less of him. Someday she would have to wash it. She pulled it on quickly, then lay down on top of the bed. When she closed her eyes, she could hear the distant hum of the hoover. Somehow it soothed her and she fell into a doze. She was startled awake by the phone – Gayle again. She put it on silent and checked the time and found to her surprise that she had been asleep for more than two hours. Her mouth felt dry as an overbaked meringue and she drank the bottle of still water. In the bathroom, she looked at her face in the mirror. She was pale and heavy-eyed and her skin looked like the cheese on which she had primarily been existing. A staggering amount of grey was coming through at her roots and temples now and her hair needed a cut. The thought triggered a memory of her father, draped in the fluorescent pink gown and eyeing her reproachfully in the salon mirror, and she turned away from her own reflection quickly. When she flushed the toilet, the pipes made a sound like a violently gargling giant. A second giant joined in when she turned on the taps to wash her hands.

  In the bedroom, she stood at the window and looked at the cloudless sky and the distant jittery silver sea. Closer at hand, something else caught her eye. In the garden below her, a blue-and-silver bicycle was leaning against a wall, glittering and winking in the sun.

  She pulled on her shoes, then picked up her shoulder bag and went downstairs. The front door was still wide open and she walked to the gate and made her way down the hill, enjoying the warmth of the sun. Halfway down, at a turn in the road, she stopped and looked at a signpost saying “Cliff Walk”. Before leaving her to settle in, Dot Candy had given Jacqueline a potted guide to the town. “There are two beaches, north and south. The North Beach has the promenade and the fair – all that jazz. The South Beach is smaller and more private. There’s a path leading from the beach that goes all the way to the clifftop. There’s a signpost for the cliffs off Shore Road – you’ll have passed it on your way up here today.”

  Jacqueline kept on walking; exploring would keep. Right now, she was thirsty and hungry in a way she could not remember feeling for some time.

  On the promenade she bought fish and chips and two bottles of water, then walked down the slipway to the North Beach. She found a spot where she could rest her back against a rock, sat down, took off her shoes and ate her food. The tide was in and there were still a lot of people about. She watched a man go by in long shorts, sandals and socks; his shins were bright pink from the sun. A woman was trying to lay a towel flat but the wind kept snatching it from her grasp. Jacqueline finished her food and poured the remains of a bottle of water over her greasy fingers and dried them with a paper tissue. She checked her phone. She had six texts and two missed calls from Gayle now. She typed a reply: Sorry. Battery died. All OK. Will call tomorrow.

  She checked the time – if she were in Blackberry Lane she would be opening her first bottle of wine right about now. She picked up her shoes and carried her rubbish to a bin, then walked to the edge of the sea. She let the water swirl around her toes. It was very cold but it felt good and so bracing that she rolled up her linen trousers and waded out until the water was over her knees.

  Her phone beeped again as she was crossing the beach toward the promenade. Walking
with her head down, reading Gayle’s texts, she glanced up and stopped abruptly. An armchair had been abandoned in the middle of the slipway. Jacqueline put her phone in her pocket and surveyed the chair. It was tub-shaped and very faded. Horsehair gaped through a rent in the green velvet and the headrest was festooned with seaweed. It was not his chair, it did not even resemble his chair, but nonetheless an image rose up in Jacqueline’s mind, of her father as she had found him, with his dinner on his lap. A wave of grief and fatigue washed over her and she made her way slowly up the slipway and started the long walk back to the house.

  The door to Sea Holly Villa was still wide open. Jacqueline wondered if it was ever shut – perhaps it stood open all night long.

  Her eyes went to the counter that cordoned off Dot Candy’s small triangle of office. She stood for a moment and listened, then made up her mind. She moved quietly and quickly to the counter. When Dot Candy arrived, barefoot and silent from the direction of the kitchen, Jacqueline had the guestbook open in her hands.

  Dot Candy stopped and looked at her, her face devoid of any expression.

  “I was just thinking that I should have signed in,” said Jacqueline.

  “Please yourself,” said Dot Candy.

  “Right, I’m not sure if I have a …” Jacqueline rustled about in her bag and pulled out a pen. “Here it is.”

  When she looked up, Dot Candy was still watching her. I’m fooling no one here, she thought. But she owed it to the lie now to make it a good one, so she made a performance of signing the book. She noticed that only a handful of pages had been used and the last time a guest had signed in was three years ago.

  “Don’t you keep a record of all your guests?” she asked.

  “Not anymore,” said Dot Candy. She held out a hand and Jacqueline handed over the book. “In the early years we were sticklers for it – it was one of the first things I bought when we went into business – a guestbook and lemon soap.”