You are not allowed to bring anybody here with you.
You must daydream when you are here.
If I break a cardinal Rule, I have to smash one of my bottles when I get home. Not one of my ordinary bottles from the cardboard boxes in the shed, but one of the special bottles from the glass shelf in the Bottle Exhibition Area of my bedroom.
My bottle collection contains tiny blue poison bottles which are as delicate as spiders’ webs, no bigger than my thumb. I also have two intact smoking pipes made of clay. They have brittle stems which look like slender bones, and you can still see yellow marks where the man sucked and puffed. I’ve got heavy earthenware beer bottles and flasks, too, like the one our mother borrowed to prop open the kitchen door, and disinfectant bottles, and countless translucent ink bottles with ridges on their shoulders to support the nibs of pens.
The fourth rule is the most difficult to follow, especially at the moment. The thing is, I can’t stop thinking about why my dad went away, and whether I should have tried harder to stop him. I try to force myself to continue my daydream, where he returns home loaded with presents.
I’ve been concentrating so hard on digging that when I look up, my vision is blurred. Number eleven slowly comes into focus on the other side of the creek. As my eyes adjust, I catch sight of a figure gazing out of my bedroom window.
I grab my fork and carrier bags, and race home. My bedroom has a sign on the door, on the outside, saying ‘No Entry.’ It’s the Golden Rule.
‘Boots off! Outside!’ my mother says the minute I come in. She waves an orange cloth in my face.
‘Who’s been in my room? Where’s Helen?’
To my surprise, while I’ve been out our mother has vacuum-cleaned the whole house, washed the dirt off the skirting boards in the hall, and scrubbed the paintwork of all the downstairs doors and windows. She hasn’t done this since before Dad went away.
‘Who’s been in my room?’ I demand.
‘I poked the vacuum cleaner through your door, darling, but it was so tidy in there I didn’t need to spend more than a minute inside.’ She’s really happy for once.
‘You’re not allowed in there! Where’s Helen?’ I demand, eyeing the stairs.
‘Gone to see friends or something. Down the road, I think.’
My mother’s cheeks are pink. She takes a swipe at the study door with her cloth. I’m suspicious. All the brass handles gleam in the light. She makes me carry the muddy bags in one hand and the wellington boots in the other hand through to our back garden, where I am instructed to wait until she’s filled a bucket with hot water and Fairy Liquid.
I sit on the back doorstep with the bucket, a nailbrush, a cloth, and an old crochet hook which I use for digging the mud out of the neck and body of each bottle. But I’m not in the mood to clean up my treasures now. Normally I can stay in my daydream all the way back from the dump until the last bottle is out of the bag and cleaned up. But now all I can think of is my mother snooping around in my bedroom, picking up my things. Or Helen.
The water is so hot that my fingers turn scarlet in the bucket.
My mother is in a good mood for once. She pops out every five minutes to ask what I’ve found, and if I need anything, but I can’t be bothered to talk to her. Why’s she so happy?
‘Nothing. Just the usual stuff,’ I mutter when she asks if I’ve uncovered any good specimens today. She pretends really hard to be interested in my finds: a Bovril bottle with a fat belly from the 1930s and some chipped Victorian ink bottles.
When she’s out, I use the kitchen sink. It’s far more comfortable to clean the bottles inside the house, even though I’m forbidden from doing so because the mud blocks our drains like glue.
The best things turn out to be broken when I dig out the mud.
Inside me, I know they’ll be broken. That’s why I’m not allowed to inspect them on site. But if a bottle is whole, I can’t throw it away, no matter how many of the same type I have in my collection. That’s because I’ve rescued it from burial in the mud. They’ve been thrown away once already. They survived. You can’t reject something twice. It’s bad luck.
I can imagine what it feels like to be buried alive like a bottle.
Our garden shed is packed to the ceiling with cardboard boxes containing all the bottles I’ve collected over the last year and a half. The boxes sag sadly, with damp bottoms and corners sucked by slugs. But inside each one, all my bottles are wrapped tenderly in newspaper and placed snugly side by side. I don’t care if they’re the same as each other.
But as I see each crack and chip emerge through the froth in the bucket, I try to call my daydream back, but I can’t. It’s gone.
****
Wed 17th August
From now on, I have decided to call our mother by her forename, Rebecca, because she has forfeited the right to be called Mum by letting my dad disappear like that.
Rebecca didn’t try hard enough to make him stay. She is guilty on several counts, but I’m thinking especially of the occasion when we tried to eat the meal he cooked, but couldn’t. Of course, Helen made the situation a whole lot worse, sitting there at the table howling with all her lung-power, huge-mouthed, shoulders sagging, tears heaving down her face like runaway tadpoles.
I tried to concentrate on keeping my neck stiff because a lot of air was trying to get out of my mouth all at once. My chin twitched and puckered uncontrollably because I was trying not to cry.
We all should have tried harder, but most especially Rebecca because she’s a grownup.
Usually the meals he cooked were delicious.
But this time he’d served lukewarm tinned tomatoes on white sliced-bread toast, with a wet lump of luncheon meat on the side of each plate. The tinned tomatoes looked like skinned animals floating in a watery pink pool on the toast.
I have to confess that I felt very disappointed in him. He knew I hated luncheon meat.
Rebecca kept pleading with him to come away from the table and discuss things in the study. When he refused, she insisted that Helen and I should be allowed to leave the table instead, as if we were babies.
He told us to stay right where we were and finish our meal.
Hannah said he was being deliberately provocative.
I could see that Helen wanted to leave the table. I started to feel that I might want to leave the table too, maybe in the next ten minutes or so, but nobody asked us and we weren’t allowed to interrupt.
Our mother should have left it to me.
The thing is, I knew how to handle him when he was acting like this. But because she made everything worse, he started to bang the palm of his hand on the table and insist that we put every last morsel of the food in our mouths.
When he threatened to give us second helpings, I laughed with relief and looked at his face to confirm that his eyes were joking, but he kept thrashing his head from side to side, making it impossible for me to see what was going on.
Our mother wasn’t trying to calm him down any more. She was being deliberately provocative in order to make the situation worse. She said she couldn’t decide whether he was a talentless chef or a talentless show-off, but either way, he should start to act more like an adult and less like one of the kids in his drama class. With his culinary skills, she observed, he should go to work for Wimpy and give her some peace and quiet to finish writing her book.
But finishing her book was the funniest thing he’d heard for years. He couldn’t stop laughing.
That’s when Helen and I slipped off our chairs. We didn’t even consult each other. We crept out of the kitchen and retreated to the staircase. I sat on the seventh stair. She sat somewhere underneath, but the main thing was we debated the merits and flaws in each side’s case until the noise calmed down in the kitchen. We were the staircase referees, ensuring fair play inside the ring.
Ever since Dad went away, Rebecca keeps asking me to brush her hair in the evenings. I don’t like doing it because I don’t like touching any part
of her body, but I’ve decided to humour her for the time being. She stops crying in the evenings if I brush her hair.
‘Mmm!’ she says as the bristles tug down. Her hair is thick and brown, with wiry strands of grey.
I lift the brush towards her head in preparation for the next stroke. All the hair rises up in waves of static, following my hands and making me laugh to myself. She sits upright in her chair. She doesn’t mind how firmly I wrench down on the strands.
But when I stare at her hair for too long, I start to feel really sick at the thick mass of fibre. It looks alive at the roots, clinging to her white scalp like millions of tiny claws. And when I tug too hard on the brush, strands of hair snap off in my hands. Then I hear a roaring noise in my head, and large spots roll across my eyes.
‘Mmm!’ she says in anticipation if I pause for too long, so I have to continue.
With each stroke, she drifts farther away from me. I stare blankly at her shoulders and continue to brush.
****
Sat 20th August
‘Shoo! Haven’t you got homes to go to? Don’t touch that box!’ The really fat woman swats us like bluebottles and tries to usher us out, but every time she manages to bat one child out of the door, another slips past and flies erratically along the corridor to explore the living quarters at the back of the shop.
The whole place is alive with children, rushing about. They’re running, upstairs and down, shouting, banging doors, looking for hidden treasure in all the dusty nooks and crannies. The thing is, word leaks out whenever people move house in the village and all the local children run over to scamper through the empty buildings. But we are more excited than usual this time because the village shop has been vacant for years.
The fat woman lumbers around, pregnant belly as tight as an elephant’s. Sweat gathers on her freckly forehead in translucent beads. She keeps grabbing the hand of a toddler, shouting, ‘Stop it, Sammy!’ when he tries to join the other children’s games.
‘Don’t lift anything heavy,’ he warns when he sees her fidgeting with the corners of boxes.
‘Can’t you get these kids out of here?’ she complains, massaging the small of her back. ‘They’re getting in the way.’
She adjusts her ponytail. Her hair looks like a rusty Brillo Pad and her ankles are swollen.
‘I doubt it,’ he says, that man, and his laugh is so infectious that I can’t help smiling too, and looking at my shoes.
I’m not running around any more because I can’t stop staring at the man. He’s tall and thin with bright blue eyes, hair the colour of straw and a turned-up nose. He skips through the empty spaces, light as air, calling to the removal men with a voice like a flute. It’s as if somebody has taken a boy my age and stretched him into grownup size, but far nicer.
Seeing me standing quietly by the empty shelves watching him, he walks over and ruffles my hair. I feel a tugging sensation inside my stomach.
‘Good afternoon. I’m delighted to make your acquaintance, mademoiselle,’ he says, bowing low before me and flourishing an invisible hat.
‘The honour is all mine,’ I say, curtseying, and he looks at me in great surprise. Maggie Tulliver would be okay in this situation. I think of her. Clearly he’s impressed by me. I can tell by the way he addresses me next.
‘And what might be the name of this uncommonly delectable and cultured young lady?’
‘You may address me as Miss Elizabeth Osborne. I’m thirteen,’ I inform him. Like a sprinkle of water, my words tickle him all over.
‘Well, Miss Osborne the Thirteenth, my name is Lord Phillips the Younger, if you would care to write it on your card for the next dance.’
‘Peter!’ the Elephant Woman snaps. ‘Stop messing about!’
Trunks, boxes and dustbin sacks sprout in every corner. The Elephant Woman waves her hands around, issuing instructions.
The removal lorry blocks the road, casting a black shadow through the window.
My sister appears in the corridor behind the counter, clutching a handful of rusty keys, tripping on the lino as she dives into the shop.
‘Whoops!’ The man catches her arm. ‘What have you got there?’
Helen looks at him, rolling her little-girl eyes, and says in her most irritating, wheedling voice, ‘I found these upstairs.’
‘Well, you can keep them if you like,’ the man says, peering at her hands in amusement. ‘What’s your name?’
‘She’s called the Vilest Creature in the Village,’ I say.
This causes two unwelcome responses in the man. First, he staggers back in alarm. Second, he takes a Milky Way out of a box, leans forward, touches my sister’s shoulder with it like a magic wand, and tells her that it contains a secret potion to protect her from big sisters. I know now I must never introduce her as Whore, because this lovely man will definitely stop liking me if I use dirty words like that.
He winks at me, and disappears in a flash through the door.
****
Tues 30th August
My sister has been wandering out of the house on her own. Sometimes she returns clutching an open bag of Monster Munch, or a packet of Opal Fruits. I reckon she’s visiting a poor old lady in the village in order to plunder her reserves of snacks, carefully collected over the last few months to give to her grandchildren at Christmas. Old people plan ahead like that. Anyway, I’m going to discover where my sister goes and protect this old lady from further child abuse from Helen.
For now, I tell my sister that I’ve finished the delicious chocolate caramel doughnut Rebecca bought us as a reward for keeping out of her way this week, and I watch as my sister gobbles up her doughnut to catch up with me. She looks a bit sick at the end of her feast, but you can see she’s pleased that we’re equal again.
‘Not really,’ I say, and show her the pristine doughnut which I’ve been holding in a pincer grip behind my back. Voila! I haven’t taken a single bite out of it yet.
Helen’s face is completely blank.
I am always several steps ahead of her. Partly this is a consequence of our age difference, but mostly it’s because Helen is flawed and impaired and mentally retarded. However hard she tries, she’ll never catch up with me. Every time she changes her strategy or tries to outwit me, I catch up with her and pin her down like a Cabbage White butterfly.
****
Wed 31st August
Helen must have told somebody outside about my nickname for her, and somebody must have laughed and told her what it really means, because this evening she tells me categorically that I mustn’t call her Whore any more. She doesn’t like that name. So now, whenever she walks past me in the corridor, fingers picking at her hair, I whisper ‘Whore’ under my breath. My voice sounds like the sigh of a ghost. It’s filled with inconsolable H’s. I think I’ll shorten her nickname to a simple ‘H’ and use it publicly when addressing her. Other people will think this is my affectionate abbreviation of Helen, but she’ll know what the letter really stands for. She’ll know what it really means.
****
II. September
Sat 3rd September
I dawdle by the fridge in Finefare and ask if we can buy some processed cheese.
‘Don’t insult cheese,’ Rebecca replies.
She also refuses to buy any type of crisps because she once worked out what a pound of potatoes would cost if you multiplied the weight and price of a packet of crisps.
My mother has no imagination. She’s incapable of trying new things. She really needs to relax a lot. She needs to learn to take risks.
****
Fri 9th September
I am invisible. Invincible. I creep into the cloakroom to pilfer things from people’s bags. The subtle odours of people’s homes mingle with the smell of their plimsolls. I open the zips, strings, buttons and press-studs. All this week I’ve been sneaking in at break-times to pull out fountain pens, scented felt-tipped pens, glitter pens, pencils in rainbow colours. I store the hoard in my own gym bag, which I m
ade out of denim in our Domestic Science class last year. It hangs on my peg with my Blue Peter badge pinned to the front. It feels good to deprive people of their treasures.
****
Sat 10th September
Today, when we run back to Katie Nelson’s house and tell Mrs Nelson how the ambulance men hurried into the shop, strapped an oxygen mask over Mrs Phillips’s mouth, bundled her into the back and sped off while she cried and screamed and clutched her stomach, Mrs Nelson remarks that it’s unusual these days for pregnant women to be taken to hospital like that. What women are supposed to do is pack a middle-sized holdall bag with essential products and their husbands take them to hospital by car.
‘She must be mad. Once was enough for me,’ Mrs Nelson wraps her arms around her middle, frowns, hunches over, grimaces. She’s so funny when she says this. ‘It was like being ripped open down there. “That’s it! No more babies,” that’s what I told him when we got home.’
‘But, when an ambulance comes, does it mean something has gone wrong?’ I try very hard not to sound too hopeful.
Until today, the only time I’ve seen an ambulance close-up was when the old man with the zimmer-frame tripped over his doorstep at number thirty-two. All his carrier bags burst on the road as he fell, and he landed on top of the glass bottles. The woman who lives next-door to him phoned for an ambulance and placed the old man on his side, head propped on a coat. Then she said he was a filthy drunk who encouraged rats into the house.
The road stank of beer and his front-door was wide open. We all came out to watch.
Me, Helen and Katie Nelson stared at his body on the road, feeling strange to be towering over a grownup, especially a man, and we peered into his house. But we couldn’t see any rats, only stacks of yellowed newspapers on the stairs and a pile of unopened letters on the floor.
The Third Person Page 2
