I opened my mouth to remind her about the apples but then I realized that she might be trying to sweeten me about the Bad Thing that happened with Clarence, and that lidos and ice creams could just be the beginning. Of course she could never buy my forgiveness but there was no harm in letting her try. I closed my mouth just in time.
She pulled the green bloomer costume from my face and dragged me to the pavilion, hurrying all the way, but when we got there she said that she needed a piddle and that I could get the ice creams all by myself, like a good girl. I could meet her by the railings when I was done. I started to grumble but she gave me a whole shilling so I shut up and joined the queue.
The people behind me stared as a big peak of ice cream passed into my hands. I made sure that they all got a good look, but when the man at the counter served cones and flakes to the lady behind me, I realized that the people were still looking at me and I suddenly remembered that the green bloomer hat wasn’t covering my face any more. When I got out, Maudy was gone and I had to wait for her by the railings all on my own, feeling stupid and looking it too.
I always hated moments like that, when people had time to stare. A little boy – the one on the blue tricycle – turned open-mouthed, his head swivelling to stare at me as his mother pulled him away like I was diseased. I pulled a monkey face at him and he started crying. An old woman stopped and stared, pity on her face as if I was a cripple. I saluted her with my two fingers – and I don’t mean like a girl guide.
That’s when I saw her – the woman, the lunatic; mouth open and eyes wide, ice cream cones crumpling in her fists. She was saying something but it was gibberish: ‘Violent! Violent!’
I looked behind me – maybe she was talking to someone else – but there was only the railings and the swimming pool. Then the ice creams slipped from her hands and splattered on the ground but she didn’t even notice, just scuttled forward until she was right up close. I wanted to look away but I was scared that she would lunge at me.
She reached out like she wanted to touch me, her hands on my shoulders, fingers dripping ice cream. ‘Thank you, God! Thank you!’
So I ran. Of course I did. I ran as fast as I could. But this only made the woman run too, and she ran right after me! But I was quicker, I was just in my summer dress and she was all tied up in her long skirts and fancy shoes, I dropped my ice cream and tucked my skirts into my drawers and I was away. I was scared, of course I was, but I could nip between people’s legs and be gone before they wanted an apology. So I ran into a big crowd, but when I heard whinges and whistles, I knew that she must be following. Then she fell and people were bending over her, trying to help, and I started to think that she might be out of breath or hurt but then she jumped right back to her feet and I saw her head above the crowd, swivelling this way and that. And then she saw me and we were both running again.
By then I was frantic. I ran back to the concrete but my towel was gone, and my bag, and so was Maudy and I charged through people’s picnics, their rugs catching on the buckles of my shoes. I kicked over someone’s lemonade. The dog started to chase after me and I ran into the boy on the tricycle, kicking him in the shin. Then everything was swirling around me – sunburnt faces, bathing costumes, deckchairs, hampers, towels, parasols – shouts and laughter ringing in my ears.
Then there was a loud beep from the road and, through the railings, I saw a bus slowing down for the stop. There was a big crowd by the turnstile so I shoved my way through. At last I was out of the lido. I was still scared, so I looked all around for the madwoman, but then I got trapped in a big jumble of people and couldn’t see anything but elbows and bags.
Then I heard her shout again: ‘Violent. Violent.’ I panicked and pushed my way through the queue and squeezed myself on to the back of the bus as it started to pull away. The conductor yelled at me for the fare. I only had the change from the ice cream so I gave him that, and all I had left of the ice cream was down my dress anyway. I started to bawl; where was Maudy? How would I get home? How much trouble would I be in? but I did not think these things for long because, even from the window of the bus, I could see the woman grabbing at the railings, her eyes following me until she shrank into the distance.
Well you probably guessed that I saw the mad woman again, otherwise I wouldn’t be telling this story, and you already know that the woman’s name was Emma Marks and that she was a doctor’s wife with a big house. And that she was a lady who liked to daydream and hide herself away, and I bet she has even prattled on about weeding her god-damn pansies by now. You see, you already know a bit about that woman, but back then I didn’t know anything. And I did not know that, no matter how much I ran, Emma Marks would catch me in the end.
4
Emma
‘Emma? Emma?’ It was Audrey. She handed me a dainty cup. I tried to hold it but the china tinkled against the saucer and I put it down quickly and stared out the window. The throng of colourful people had dissolved with the daylight and I was left sitting on the window seat in my dim front room. Down the road a lone lamplighter raced to keep up with the retreating line of daylight, the war memorial at the junction throwing the long shadow of a cross on the road.
Ethel and Alan sat rigid on the sofa, shouted into silence as they pretended to read George’s encyclopaedia, splayed open on their knees. The pram was wedged next to them, the quiet baby blunted from existence by the large black hood, the tick of the clock on the mantelpiece the only reminder that time was not frozen.
Audrey sighed deeply then hurried into the hallway, hushed voices as she spoke with George. I could imagine the scene: Audrey’s head would be bowed, her hand on George’s arm. The weak light from the yellow glass in the door would be mottling the floor tiles as it so often did at this time of day. The draught from under the door would be catching at the hem of Audrey’s skirt. George would be nodding in silent agreement.
I couldn’t remember how I had got home. I was told later that Audrey had dragged me through the crowds in the lido and out onto the street. I had been dumbstruck, following but not speaking, all the time Audrey hurrying, scared that I would pass out at any minute. But I don’t remember any of that, only the face of the girl in the polka dot dress as she looked down at me from the window of the bus and the colour draining from George’s face when he saw us.
‘It’s not something you get over easily,’ I heard Audrey whisper.
Then a lower mumble from George: ‘It’s been over nine years.’
Audrey paused for a moment and I imagined her hand tighten round George’s arm. ‘Now and then there are going to be moments like this. It’s to be expected. You should know that, you’re a doctor after all.’ Then silence – time for meaningful looks, pitying glances and shrugged shoulders.
Audrey’s silhouette appeared in the doorway and she crossed the room quickly, as if returning to an abandoned child. She knelt by the chair and stared into my face as if I had been blinded and could not see her, stroking my hair and sighing dramatically.
‘You can look after her, can’t you, George?’
‘Of course I can,’ he snapped, ‘as you keep saying, I am a doctor.’
Audrey hesitated, she opened her mouth – I thought she would start on the rant that I had heard so many a time before, something about how years poring over textbooks and slicing through cadavers taught one little about real life and empathy and just made one soulless – but she closed it quickly and focused back on me. For a moment, I thought she might stay.
But then Ethel let out a yelp. Her plait was stretched taught in Alan’s fingers, her head craned towards him as he wound it round his fist.
Audrey stood up quickly. ‘I have to go, George,’ she whispered, bowing her head quickly as if offering condolences at a wake.
He nodded. ‘Of course.’
She left hastily, with just a quick pat on my shoulder as a goodbye. I watched through the window as Audrey walked up the drive, pushing the big black pram, Ethel and Alan trailing behind her. T
hey turned on to the pavement and the pram bucked on the curb, its wheels hissing on the tarmac. I watched them as they shrank into the distance, their footsteps fading into silence. The hood of the pram was the last thing that I could see: a big black sail; a signal to all about the passenger inside; a reminder of what I had for such a short time nine years ago; a reminder of what I had lost.
5
George left for work early the next morning, without saying goodbye. I told myself that he had wanted to let me sleep but deep down I knew that it was easier for him just to leave without waking me. I rolled onto my back and shielded my eyes from the chink of light between the curtains. George’s side of the bed was cold, the dip in the mattress and the dent on the pillow outlining where he was not.
I had grown used to his little rituals and I knew exactly what he would have done that morning while I slept. He would have woken and reset the alarm clock, then sat on the edge of the bed and sighed, rubbing his eyes. Then he would have dressed quickly and put on his little round spectacles. Then to the kitchen – two slices of toast with marmalade and a cup of tea, milk first – the same every morning. Then he would return to the bedroom and stare at the hunch of my body under the blankets. He would stoop over me, silent for a few minutes, perhaps clearing his throat, as he wondered whether to wake me. Sometimes, long ago, I would have pretended to wake, perhaps kissed him on the cheek, but I hadn’t done that for many years and now, as with every other morning, I lay still, not stirring until I heard the click of the front door closing behind him.
George had left a note in the study; he would be back the usual time, the hyacinths needed watering and could I write to the tailors in Bond Street and request the buttons that his dress suit was missing? I was to make it very clear that he would need them by October for the Hospital Ball. I was to watch that I didn’t catch my skirts – the front gate had come off its hinges, ‘miraculously’ he had written, and then followed this with an exclamation mark which he obviously thought was all that was needed to convey his dissatisfaction with the hot weather and the hordes of undesirable gate-breakers that it brought into the road. I tore the page off the notepad, dipped the pen and started to write:
Mssrs Crooke of Bond Street,
Dear Sirs
but then I stopped and crossed it out, a blot of ink swelling onto the paper.
Outside, the hooves of the milkman’s horse struck slowly down the road, the same way they always did at this time of day. Then came the predictable rumble of the morning bus. A blackbird sang from the orchard and there was the faint chatter of people going about their business in the road. George was determined for this to be a normal day but it was not – I could not forget what had happened at the lido. I tried to steady my shaking hand by gripping the pen and taking slow breaths as George always advised, but when I closed my eyes to contain the tears, I saw the girl again, the girl in the spotted dress, standing by the railings, the ice cream round her mouth and the sun-caught halo. She was the right age and had the same mark on her face – the red tears under the crimson smear on the cheekbone. She was Violet, my Violet, the girl that I had lost.
I took out my handkerchief and dabbed my eyes. Then I tore George’s letter from the notepad and looked at the furred circle of ink which had bled through to the next sheet. I traced another circle next to it, elongating it and then peaking the ink at the top – a teardrop, then another two, staggered as if falling, then above them, a smear of ink. I encircled the marks with a large oval, adding eyes, nose and mouth so that the tear shapes rested on the left cheek. Then I added tresses of hair and shoulders, just enough to show the collar and some spotted fabric.
HAVE YOU SEEN THIS GIRL?
I printed at the top of the page. Then I stopped – Have you, Emma?
‘Have I?’ I said out loud. For the first time I hesitated. Maybe George was right; George, and Audrey too, and those people who pointed and laughed when I ran through the crowds at the lido. Maybe I was mad, seeing only what I wanted to see. Then the sunlight came through the blinds and the memory of yesterday became clearer. I saw the girl’s face again, the brightness of the eyes and the expression of fear when I had startled her and I knew for certain that the girl I had seen was Violet.
I had used all the pages in the notepad by the time the hands on the desk clock said ten o’clock, and I had stuffed the papers into my bag and shut the door before the distant church bells had finished chiming the hour.
There was already a heat haze on the road as I turned out of Little Willow and struck out on to the street. I turned left, back to the lido, the road now empty but the sun still low enough for the apple trees to shade the road.
The main gates of the lido were closed, the signs covered over and a padlock on the turnstiles. I looked through the railings. The pool was deserted, the grass left pitted by the hurry of hundreds of shoes. A man in overalls stabbed at pieces of litter blowing all over the grass like chicken feathers after a fox attack. The pavilion shone cold with the first rays of sun, the walls of glass empty but for the blue light of morning. A child’s sunhat was spiked on a railing.
‘Can’t you read? We’re closed Monday mornings. You’ll have to come back after twelve.’ In the dark ticket office, eyes peered out from beneath a watchman’s cap.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I just wondered if you had seen a little girl yesterday. If anybody had?’
‘Were busiest day of the season yesterday. Seen hundreds of little girls.’ Then he saw my face and softened: ‘What like?’
I leant up against the turnstile and pushed one of my leaflets through the bars.
His lips moved slowly as he read. ‘Poor little bleeder!’ Then he checked himself. ‘Well maybe something will come of having a face like that; should be easy to remember.’
‘Please,’ I said, thrusting more leaflets through the bars. ‘Please could you hand these round to people coming in?’
‘Well I ain’t supposed to.’ But then he wiped the sweat from beneath his cap and gave a brief nod. ‘Will be difficult if it gets too busy.’
‘I understand,’ I said, my voice cracking, ‘but—’
‘I wouldn’t worry yourself, Madam. I’m sure the police will do a good job.’
‘I’m sure they will,’ I said weakly.
There were no buses into town that morning so I walked down Willow Street and back past Little Willow. At the war memorial I took the route into town, following the road around the edge of the Sunningdale Estate. George always said that we were lucky – they had built the grandest houses on the edge of the estate, he said, the ones that could be seen from the road, the ones to be admired. I thought that it did not matter. It was true, Little Willow had three bedrooms instead of two, a garage and a study but, give or take the odd French windows, box rooms, weathervanes and potting sheds, all the houses on the estate were the same – pitched roofs and bay windows, porches and coloured glass. And while people moved out and new ones moved in, and children grew up and flowers bloomed and died, the houses always stayed the same year in, year out; I thought, just like me and George.
As I reached St Cuthbert’s, I pinned one of my leaflets to the noticeboard on the gate. George and I had been married in that church. We had chosen it because of the honey-coloured sandstone and graceful spire and because we could hear the bells from Little Willow – bells that, whenever they chimed, would remind us of our marriage. I still thought of that when I heard them in the garden or indoors on a still day. But these days hearing their dull clank did not make me happy – each chime a reminder that time had stolen another hour of my life. Sometimes I wondered if George still heard the bells at all.
The sun was now high in the sky and children in school uniform were running down the road, eager to get home for lunch, their satchels flapping at their hips like wings. They took some of my leaflets as they passed, but I heard them chuckling in the distance, the discarded sheets fluttering away on the breeze.
At the old village green I saw George�
�s car parked outside the doctor’s surgery. After Violet’s loss, George had resigned his place at the hospital – the humdrum life of general practice had suddenly become appealing to him and he said that driving that short distance to work every morning was the only excitement that he needed.
The green itself was deserted, the Red Lion and the general store all dark and lifeless. Shopkeepers hovered behind plate glass, peering longingly out onto the yellowed grass of the cricket pitch and the shady bench under the old oak tree.
When I came to the police station, I hesitated, my hand clutching a leaflet. I thought about what the watchman at the lido had said, that he was sure the police would do a good job of finding the little girl. But how could grown men look for a ghost? How could I explain what I had seen to a policeman? How could I explain it to anyone? I couldn’t cause a fuss like that in Missensham! I dropped the leaflet back into my bag and walked on.
The teashop was closed for the morning, the chairs that usually accommodated the derrières of townsfolk as they sipped tea and nibbled scones now stood empty, a sign with opening hours hanging apologetically from the doorknob. My maiden name – Flanagan – was still faded into the brickwork on the wall. This building had been where my parents had served the ladies of the town with the latest fashions and fine tailoring, flattering them with the grandest silks and brocades, then working like drudges to get their alterations and creations finished on time. They had worked tirelessly in that shop and lived as well as died in the tiny flat above it. And I had spent half my life with them sewing seams and patching elbows.
But that was the old me and this was the old Missensham, the town as it once was. Even before my parents moved in with just a packing case between them, the town had started to grow, with each new development bringing more and more inhabitants. The canal came first, bringing navvies and workers’ cottages. Then the main roads came, competing with the canal for the flat ground, the tarmac criss-crossing the water with humpbacked bridges. Then the Metropolitan Line had extended out of London, the track cutting deep into the earth and a new station had been built on the edge of town. The trains brought money and commuters, who moved into the new Sunningdale Estate. With each day the town was getting newer, but I was getting older.
The Liar Page 3
