‘Look,’ I said, standing up quickly, ‘this heat is getting a bit much for me, how about I go to the pavilion and get us all ice creams?’ That shut her up. Even though I had to buy her silence, and push my way through the crowds in front of the pavilion, just to get a moment away from her, it had to be worth the effort.
The pavilion was dark and cool inside, the chrome counter cold to the touch. I paid the money and stood in the doorway, four ice cream cones bunched in my hands like a bouquet. I tried to savour the last moments of shade, watching the reflections from the swimming pool dappling the whitewash.
It was then that I saw her – the little girl in a spotted dress. She stood in front of the swimming pool, her back to the railings, her mouth clamped round a dripping cone, trails of ice cream beading her dress. Her face was pale, an angry birthmark flaring red on her cheek and suddenly there was her and nothing but her as the world around her span away into a whirl of light and sound. She looked right at me, and I realized that I was stood, staring, molten ice cream cascading down my hands.
‘Violet?’ I whispered, the word catching in my throat. ‘Violet!’
The girl started and her eyes widened. She looked round desperately and then started to back away.
I ran forward, the ice creams exploding on the concrete, and grabbed her shoulders. ‘Thank you, God, thank you!’
The girl stared at me, shocked into stillness, our eyes locked together for the briefest moment, but it was a moment that connected us, a moment that told me that I had found her and the shock of seeing her faded as I became giddy with joy. But then she twisted her shoulders and ducked away, running along the pavement and into the crowd. I followed frantically. She was small and fast, slipping through the crowd like a knife as I barged and stumbled after her. An old woman tutted and put out her elbow and some youths whistled but my eyes were fixed on the girl – a little spotted dress flashing in and out of the crowd.
‘Please… please let me through,’ I gasped, but people were pushing all around me, the jostle of flesh getting tighter and tighter until I couldn’t breathe.
At last I wrestled my way out of the crowd and fell onto the grass. There were a few cries of ‘oh!’ and a hand patting my back. Then concerned faces loomed and hands were offered but I batted them away, springing up to look over the heads in the crowd.
‘The girl…’ I wheezed. ‘The girl in the spotted dress, with the birthmark?’ But heads were shaken. Then I glimpsed a flash of polka dots and I was running again, hurtling past the pool and the sunbathers.
Audrey stared at me in astonishment – ‘Emma what are you…’ but she was just another face sailing past me as I ran.
Then came the blast of a horn from the road. Through the railings, I could see a bus pulling up to the stop and the girl swerved and disappeared into the throng of people heading towards the exit. The church bell chimed two. I was caught in the crush at the turnstile, faces closing in and bodies pushing all around me.
‘Please, please. I have to—’ but the mass of bodies did not move and I had to step back on to the grass, my chest heaving. I watched through the railings as the bus slowed, easing its way through the crowd on the road.
Then she appeared on the pavement looking around her wildly; she had found her escape and I was left trapped behind the iron bars, I ran back and forth as I tried to catch a glimpse of her face. ‘Violet! Violet!’ but she was gone again, my cries were swept up by the chatter of passengers pushing their way onto the bus. The conductor rang the bell and the engine clattered as the bus started to pull away. I clutched the railings, pressing my forehead into the metal as I searched for her face. There were still a lot of people left on the pavement, some waved fists at the conductor’s shrugged shoulders, but the bus was already crammed with people hanging off the back deck or standing on the stairs. Bodies were jammed three to a seat and squeezed upright in the aisles.
Then I saw her face again. She was looking down from the top deck, the cheek with the birthmark pressed against the window and I was left standing helpless as the bus sped away down the road.
2
That was only the second time I had ever seen Violet. The first time had been nine years previously in the spring of 1926.
And there’s not much more to say really. Of course, they did tell me not to talk about it, said that it would be bad for my nerves if I did. Let’s be British about it and not get all sentimental, as George would say. Sentimentality was counterproductive and only for the feeble-minded and silly women. After all, having fought in the Great War, his generation had been through far worse and, as he liked to remind me, a stiff upper lip was the best way to get through these things. The thing is, I have to agree with him because, when all is said and done, it was a terribly brief meeting and I don’t remember very much of it, only the odd snippet that I can bring to mind.
The location of the meeting is something that I do remember very well. It was a small sterile room in Oxworth General Hospital. The floor and walls were scrubbed a glaring white, electric globes of light mirrored in steel and glass, an unpleasant scour of carbolic in one’s nostrils and the electrical hum of the incubator.
In 1926 the incubator was a new addition to the hospital. There had been a big to-do in the Missensham Herald about it; I remember that much. As a doctor seconded to the maternity ward and a prominent member of the hospital committee, George even had his picture on page seven, stood with a group of medical staff around the shiny new arrival. George had said that the contraption was particularly advanced for being electric. And I can remember thinking that he was right; it did look modern, but only because it was so clean and shiny. To me it looked more like a kitchen implement than something to nurture a baby, like something one would use to steam a ham, although I would not dare tell him this.
George had been on the ward when I had telephoned with crippling pain and blood loss. He had been at the birth, both as a doctor and a father, but neither of these obligations had endured after he saw Violet and, following the birth, he had swiftly left for other duties. No – when I met Violet, it was just her and me and, oh yes, a midwife – a moon-faced middle-aged woman. And I recall that she had her cape on, odd for indoors, I thought. Yes, I can see it now, for she must have been about to leave because she had her bag in her hand and was tapping her foot impatiently as she leant over the incubator, placing a small posy of blooms beside the steel box.
Of course Violet was just a baby back then – a newborn, though some might not even call her that - I’m not sure exactly how old, for she had been born five weeks before she was expected in this world; a terrible accident of nature which put her in that metal box. Forgive me but, as I said, I really don’t remember her all that well. I will blame the fug in my head brought on by the morphine. After all, one cannot be expected to remember all of the fleeting minutes from their past. I seem to only recall a tiny little creature, shrunk by the swaddling that bound her. Her eyelids were still fused together, pulling a crease across her dome of a forehead. I don’t remember much more about her. But for the marks on her face; she could have been any other baby but for those; birthmarks like tears of blood, an angry red against the greyness of her cheek.
And there was me, of course, Emma Marks. But Emma Marks was not the same person then as she is now. I was a twenty-five-year-old back then and practically still a newly-wed. And what was a person so young to do or say at such a meeting? Well, I’m sure that I was more concerned by the midwife’s presence than Violet’s. What would such a woman so neat and crisp in her starched uniform make of me hunched over in a wheelchair, my face pale and my hair dishevelled? I could sense her beside me as I stared into the incubator, her eyes on me and mine on Violet as I watched the irregular heave of the baby’s tiny chest.
I do not recall how long I watched the infant but it cannot have been long, the midwife must have had her rounds to do, she would not have permitted any lingering. I remember that she seemed an impatient type. Eager to get to another ap
pointment, I expect.
The next thing I remember is her kneeling next to me, her bag open on the floor as she rummaged around in it, frantically I thought, as if whatever she was looking for could not wait another minute. But then she stopped and looked up. Her mouth was moving and I could hear the drone of her words but I could not focus on what she was saying. Her breath was stale and a single strand of hair had come loose from her cap, but it was her expression that I remember the most. The muscles of her face were tensed into a mask of blankness, her eyebrows raised slightly and her mouth pulled tight. Her eyes seemed distant as if she was staring at something far beyond me. It is a face that I have been unable to forget, if only for the fact that it wore that curious expression; one that I could not quite read.
Then her words came together in my head, something at last I could understand: ‘Time to say goodbye to Violet.’ Yes, that was it: ‘Time to say goodbye to Violet,’ is what she said.
‘All right,’ I said. ‘Goodbye.’ I could not have known how weak Violet really was and what would become of her after we parted, so I said Goodbye to her and just that. I did not know that I would not see her the next day, or the day or week after that and, over the months that I mourned her, I did not know that one day, nine years later, I would glimpse her face again.
3
Ruby
My name is Ruby Brown and I am the girl from the lido. Yes, I am the girl in the spotted dress that Emma saw standing by the railings and I am the girl that she chased through the crowds. But I expect you thought that my name was going to be Violet – Violet Marks even – but it is not Violet and this is not one of those stories. This is something different and I will tell it my way. I will start my story from the same day that Emma did; the day we met at the lido. It was the day that things began for me and Emma Marks…
The first thing I remember about that day is that it was hot, so hot that the sunshine stung my face like a slap and I had to shelter inside the cottage watching Maudy as she knelt half naked on the floor kneading cloth in a bucket, her arms dyed green up to the elbow.
‘Done!’ She sat back on her haunches and flicked the dye from her fingers, wiping a green smudge across her cheek. Just look at me: panting like an old woman,’ she wheezed, but she was just fibbing because it didn’t take her long to catch her breath: ‘We need to get these ones hung on the line, Ruby. At least all this sun will mean that they dry by the time your cousin comes for them. I’m not losing my wages this week!’
I got up and trailed after her as she heaved the bucket into the yard and started draping the cloth over the washing line, trickles of green splattering the dust.
‘We need to get out of here, you and me, don’t matter about your brothers. Nor Clarence as it happens – your good-for-nothing father will be in the Red Lion until sundown – we ain’t waiting for him.’ She pegged out the last of the cloth and wiped her hands on her petticoat.
‘Go and put on your best dress, Ruby, the one that you got for your birthday with the little spots. We’re going on a trip to the lido, just my special girl and me.’ She looked at me with her big gappy grin, like she was expecting me to be pleased but I just shrugged. I was only her special girl when she was going through one of her guilty moments. You see, something had happened to me a few months before – a Bad Thing. But I don’t want to talk about that part of the story – I don’t want to tell and, trust me; you don’t want to know. All I will say is that there was a big to-do and the stove got broken. Nobody could fix it and months later the door was still hanging from just one hinge. Clarence blamed me, of course. Maudy knew that it wasn’t my fault but she would never admit such a thing in front of Clarence, so instead I had become her ‘special girl’.
Of course I should have been happy about a trip to the lido, but things were never straightforward with Maudy, so I bit my tongue and reminded her coolly that I had no bathing costume.
‘Ain’t you, Flower?’ Maudy disappeared into the back room and I heard the grind of wood as she rummaged in the dresser. She reappeared holding up a pair of my old bloomers and a woollen vest stitched together and dyed green. ‘Ta-da!’ She held it against me, rubbing it flat over the curve of my belly. ‘Your first swimming costume, Ruby. Now you won’t feel out of place with those posh kids from the Sunningdale Estate. It looks the part, don’t it? So who’s to know?’ She winked and pulled a pair of drawers with the legs stitched together on to my head. ‘A bathing cap too, and look – green – it matches!’
I yanked the drawers off my head. I had been wondering what she had done with the leftover dye and just then I wished I had never found out.
Maudy stuffed the bloomer costume into a bag, together with a towel that was fluffy and white, with ‘Property of the Grand Union Hotel’ embroidered on it. Now, the towel I liked, it even had a crest on it, something that the king would have on his towels, and so I started to think that Maudy could be right – we wouldn’t look out of place after all.
So a fluffy towel was all that it took to sweeten me and soon Maudy was striding off down the lane, with me trotting behind her, sweating in my spotty dress. Maudy shouted over her shoulder – I wasn’t to dawdle, she said, or we would be late. I don’t know what she thought we would be late for but I had the feeling that we already were. It was nearly lunchtime and we had left the house with no food. I thought about all those rich families sitting down together and sweating over a full roast and my mouth started to water just thinking about it. I felt a scouring in my stomach and started to drag the bag with the green bloomer costume, bouncing it over the wheel ruts in the hope it would fray.
At the end of the lane the trees stopped and we came out onto the crossing with the war memorial, where the dirt track joined the proper roads of Missensham town. There were grand houses lining the other side of the road. One even had a motorcar parked in a driveway, cherry-red paint winking in the sun and big round headlights like the eyes of an owl. I pointed at it and opened my mouth but Maudy already had other ideas.
‘Oooh,’ she cried, ‘apples!’ She was right; opposite the houses was an orchard, apple-laden branches hanging low over the road. She started picking the fruit, climbing up the bank and stretching over the fence, all the time looking round to see if anyone was watching, but there was nobody in the street so she kept on glancing over her shoulder to the grand houses, chuckling to herself.
‘Now we will have a treat!’ she said. The farmer wouldn’t miss the apples of course, but I was still worried about looking like a thief if anyone saw her. The houses opposite the memorial had smart red bricks and big painted doors with four windows all neat around them, just how we had been shown to draw houses at school. The houses looked nice, like they would have nice people inside them, wearing nice clothes and sitting on nice chairs. I felt ashamed. The boughs hung ever so low over the road but none of the rich people from the houses had stolen the apples.
Then there was a rumbling sound and Maudy pocketed the apples quickly and stood up straight. There was a woman coming from town, a big woman pushing a pram, and little twin kids running behind her. She was tall and wide, like a farmhand in a posh dress, and there was a stupid hat on her head that flapped up and down like a big yellow pigeon caught under the wheels of a bus.
Maudy looked round like she was doing anything but picking apples. ‘Good afternoon,’ she said in her poshest voice. But the woman just gave a rude little nod, like she needn’t bother talking to us, and passed right by. We watched her until she went into one of the houses across the road, the one with the red car and the owl eyes. Maudy turned back to the apples. ‘Holler if anyone else comes,’ she said. She managed to get a few more but suddenly there were people everywhere because the lido was about to open up again for afternoon tickets and she had to stop. We followed the crowds and I saw the farmhand lady with the yellow pigeon hat again, striding some way in front of us. I started to worry that someone had seen us picking the apples and I tried to dawdle, but Maudy was having none of it and kept pul
ling me along.
I had to lie about my age at the turnstiles, knock off a couple of years for a cheap ticket. I’m small for a girl of nine and Maudy always felt short-changed by this, as if God owed her free entry just because she had a scrawny child like me.
Inside the lido, lots of people were sunbathing on a lovely green hill, towels spread out on the grass. I pointed to them but Maudy said that the nice part of the lido was full and I had to put my Grand Hotel towel on the concrete, the white down getting all dusty.
Maudy told me to put on my bloomer costume but I was embarrassed to, so I lay back and pretended to sunbathe instead. She said that I would do no such thing and she quickly covered up my face with the bloomer hat, scolding that I mustn’t get too much sun. I have a problem with my face, you see, with my skin. It’s no good asking me about it though, because I won’t talk about it, not with anybody. So I lay on the hard concrete in my sweaty dress with my drawers on my face, wondering why I was stupid enough to come.
My breath was hot under the woollen drawers, but I could watch the grassy bank of sunbathers through a crack of light out of the leg hole. The pigeon hat woman was there in the middle, bending over her pram, her bum like two medicine balls squeezed up inside her bright red costume. There was an old man coughing up into a hanky and a dog getting slapped with a newspaper as he tried to cock his leg up against a picnic basket. There was a little boy on a blue tricycle. It didn’t matter to him that he could hardly ride it because of all the people. He was too busy showing it off – staring at the other kids, stopping by each of them and then riding off again, fast.
Maudy was watching people too. I fancied that she was scared of meeting someone who knew us and that Clarence would hear that she had been at the lido and not stayed at home dying cloth.
Then she sat up suddenly. ‘How’s about an ice cream for my special girl?’
The Liar Page 2
