‘Listen to your mother,’ said the rocking chair. Clarence didn’t stir, his eyes stayed shut but he was speaking to us all right, his voice all deep and slurry. ‘She’s right. You should always ignore me when I’m drunk or you’ll be banned from the Red Lion and from all over town, just like I am. Is that what you want for yourselves?’
The boys didn’t answer. Andy’s face was red like he’d been slapped and his mouth hung open.
Maudy beamed; hands on her hips like a trophy and a little nod towards Andy. He answered by flicking up two fingers but he knew he’d lost that one. Maudy plunged her hands in the bucket of carmine, squeezed the fabric and then brought them out again. Her fingers dripped with blood.
15
Emma
The morning after the party I woke suddenly and wished immediately that I had not. A red hot pain drilled my temple and my stomach fizzed with heat. I peeped through the curtains and screwed my eyes up against the light. The stain of a pale sun hung high in the sky and I realized that it must be nearly midday. The house was deadly silent. Next to me was a dip in the mattress – the indent of an invisible man, as if George had been vaporized. I stood up slowly and shuffled across the landing.
The door of the nursery was ajar and I realized that George must have been inside while I slept. I wondered how much he had seen the previous evening as he peered through the gap in our bedroom curtains. The road had been dark but, if he had not seen the Browns or Ruby’s face, he had at least seen the rocking horse leaving and, once in the nursery, he had seen the indents in the carpet where it had once stood. Since finding Ruby, I had thought about going into the nursery a lot but now, in my fragile state, I found that I could not face it, although I walked past the door without shutting it.
I went into the back bedroom, drew back the curtains and looked out of the small window. In the garden one of the table coverings had blown into the fir trees and was snagged on the branches, billowing in the breeze. The other table was still set, plates and glasses half full as if phantom guests were still enjoying the party.
In the kitchen was a note from George. He had gone to visit his brother in Oxworth. The note was a brief one for George, and oddly lacking in complaint. It did not even mention the rocking horse or the nursery, which made me think that he had said all that he needed to by leaving the door open for me to see.
I stared at the plates piled in the sink, the mosaic of servers on the table and the assortment of half-empty glasses clustered on the draining board. The tang of stale wine rose from a bouquet of upended bottles in the bin and I clasped my hand over my mouth as my stomach rose in my chest.
Then I saw George’s sherry glass on the counter, the crystal misted by the light from the window. A small posy of flowers wilted over the rim; violets, their blooms already drooping and their stems curled like tendrils. I twisted the glass in my hand. Sticky fingerprints smudged the crystal and I realized that one of the children must have brought the flowers to the party; I immediately thought of Ruby. The violets were in my home – Maud believed that violets indoors brought bad luck but I had told Ruby not to believe her old country superstitions. I did not know what the Violets meant but, I was sure that they were some kind of message from Ruby and that filled me with hope. I held the glass to my chest, and then sat back on the kitchen chair, letting the sun warm my forehead. The violets had brought back memories and I shut my eyes and let my mind wander…
*
It was the summer of 1925; a day of celebration. For months Missensham had been under siege from the railway company. The green fields had been flayed open and iron sleepers driven through the cutting as a tangle of electric cables fizzed and sparked all the way to London. Lorries had rumbled through the lanes of the old town, mud spilling out behind them and throngs of workmen left trails of sandy footprints to the Red Lion. In the middle of a field near the old town, hoardings had been put up, orange mud seeping from under the planks and the din of hammers and saws behind it. Yet on this summer day the noise had stopped, the last lorry rumbled off and the dew cleansed the roads of the footprints and tyre tracks. The hoardings came down and people flocked to the new Metropolitan Line station.
Audrey had bought us special advance tickets for the first train. We spent the morning chatting cheerily in the crammed carriage, whistling past the stations where people stood waiting to get to work in factories or offices. Audrey had planned cocktails at the Savoy – a way to celebrate the railway and what she saw as her return to the ‘society’ she missed in London, and besides, she said, she wanted to hear all about my honeymoon.
I had worn my new white dress – it had a big bow at the neckline and a scalloped hem that just brushed my kneecaps. I had thought it quite risqué for Missensham but, as Audrey had told me, it would be just the thing for London – and a small white hat with a folded brim.
The journey took two hours. I had to keep a hold of my little hat so I didn’t lose it to the subterranean winds in the underground stations and the hem of my white dress became blackened with the grime of London. We arrived at the Savoy smelling of grease and sweat and having missed lunch, the alcohol in our cocktails just adding to the scour in our stomachs. Tired and grimy, we stood glumly in a haze of cigarette smoke, watching the bright young London women posing with champagne bowls and blowing smoke rings in the faces of fresh-faced noblemen. Their bodies were sinuous and tanned, naked but for little dresses which draped from their collarbones, the silk that clung to the jut of their breasts shimmering when they moved. We only had time for one cocktail before the afternoon train.
There was no ceremony on the return journey; the shiny new carriages had suddenly become just another part of the commuter line and the train rattled through the tunnel like all the others that had gone before it. The sight of bunting and the sound of a brass band as we pulled into Missensham lifted our spirits. We had missed the mayor and dignitaries but there was still some cake and champagne left for anyone who could produce a ticket. The champagne refreshed the alcohol already festering in my stomach and my mind melted into a haze of drunkenness.
Walter had turned up at the station to meet Audrey. They embraced excitedly and suddenly Audrey was telling him about all the young lords that had winked at her and how her outfit had been the talk of the Savoy. I tailed behind them, excusing myself when I saw a big bunch of roses on the back seat of their Bentley, and mumbled something about the weather being lovely for a walk on my own. They didn’t object.
I stood outside the station alone, stepping back to look at the building. It was long and low, made of wide brick columns, inset with ladders of little glass panes. There were green tiles up to waist height and above them bright posters with scenes of Tower Bridge and the golden beaches of Brighton and Southend, garishly coloured as if by a child. I put a hand on my hat to keep it from falling as I looked up to the flat roof and the halo of the underground sign. Then I heard a noise behind me; a strange ‘click-click’.
A man stood on the pavement, shoulders rounded and hands held high as he supported a box camera in front of his face, the lens pointing squarely at me. Then his face emerged from behind the camera, his eyes blinking in the sun and we stared at each other.
‘Were you photographing me?’ I demanded.
The man shook his head quickly and then his gaze fell to his shoes. ‘No, Miss,’ he said awkwardly. ‘The tiling.’
‘The tiling?’
He nodded. ‘I tiled the outer wall, you see, I just wanted to keep a record of my work.’
‘Oh,’ I said.
We both smiled, sharing the embarrassment. He was a tall man, well built and, without the camera covering his face, his features looked large and clumsy.
‘Sorry,’ he said, his voice was deep and he spoke awkwardly as if his tongue was too large for his mouth.
I wondered what he thought he was apologizing for.
‘I’m just a workman at the moment you see, but I need a record of what I have done to start up my own busine
ss. Building and a bit of tiling and the like. It’s what I want to do. So I need to, well…’ he held up the camera by way of explanation.
I smiled. Had I been sober, I would have excused myself and continued home, but the alcohol had made me carefree and instead I said: ‘I’m sure the tiles look lovely, but I don’t know much about construction.’
‘Me neither, Miss,’ he said. ‘I just did what the foreman told me and put in the hard work.’ He shrugged his shoulders – that same awkwardness again, but now he was looking directly at me and smiling. His eyes were a piercing blue and, as a smile grew on his lips, I could no longer be sure how much of his awkwardness was feigned.
‘Well, I don’t see many of the workmen still around. I thought you would have all left by now,’ I said, ‘and you’re certainly the only one taking photos.’
‘No, the rest of us common navvies are in the Red Lion—’ he said, then stopped himself suddenly. ‘Forgive my insolence, Miss, I was in there myself a while back but I needed a break.’
I laughed, happy to have a comrade in my drunkenness. I watched in amazement as my hand reached out to him and patted his arm. ‘I’ve had a bit too much myself!’ I whispered loudly.
‘Really, Miss…’ he raised his arm slightly to steady me. ‘Well, I suppose a lady doesn’t get many chances these days.’ He spoke the words carefully as if he was trying to disguise his voice; the flat vowels that were so common just a few stops down the Metropolitan Line, the wrong side of Oxworth. It was how I had spoken in my youth and the smell of his skin reminded me of my father. I smiled up at him as I wobbled on his arm. He glanced down at me; a streak of blue from beneath his lashes.
I stepped back and steadied myself. ‘I’m sorry to be trouble,’ I said. ‘You were just taking photographs of tiles but when I thought you were photographing me, for one moment, I felt like Greta Garbo. But really I’m second to a bit of grouting…’ I felt my cheeks warm. It was a silly thing to say. The kind of thing that Audrey would say in the middle of a party and everybody would laugh, but from my own lips it was ridiculous.
But he was smiling. ‘Well, Greta, I am sorry to have disappointed you,’ he answered quickly, but then looked away again, as if he was somehow embarrassed by the mismatch between his quick wit and his clumsy body.
‘I have to go home.’ I laughed and then touched his arm again. ‘I’ve had too much to drink.’
I set off down the pavement, my feet stumbling over perfectly flat concrete, his footsteps heavy behind me.
I turned and laughed, waving him away: ‘No more photographs!’ but his camera was tucked down in his bag. ‘Where are you going?’ I said. ‘First you take my photo and then you follow me.’
‘I didn’t take your photograph and I’m not following you either,’ he said. ‘The real celebration is back in the Red Lion.’ He pointed down the hedge-lined road in the direction of the green – we were heading in the same direction. ‘Will you let me walk with you to there?’ he said. ‘Think of me as a movie star’s bodyguard – if I may be permitted to use the same pavement as a movie star.’
‘You have permission all right.’ I laughed, surprised to hear the flat vowels returning to my own voice.
He dipped into a bow and tugged his forelock – a comic gesture coming from his huge body.
We walked together, side by side, mumbled apologies as I steadied myself on his shoulder. I glanced up at him but his eyes darted away and he swallowed slowly, the movement deep in his throat. Then I felt the brush of his hand on my hip and my blood warmed. He looked at me again and this time I smiled.
So that’s how we began, my man and I. We did not know it then, but further along the pavement was an opening in the hedgerow, where the road bent slightly and ivy clung to an old tree stump. Beyond the opening was a field, a rough triangle edged by woodland, where the earth sloped into the sunlight, where the grasses were long and the hollows pooled with violets. With just a few more paces we would be there, with just a turn of the head and a quick glance over the brambles, our haven would be discovered. We never made it to the Red Lion.
*
A week after I met him an envelope, addressed to me, landed on the doormat. Inside was a photograph of a single figure, a woman dressed in white, her body turned to the side as she put her hand on her hat and tilted her head back, her chin lifted and her eyes gazing skyward. I didn’t recognize myself at first. The white dress and the glare of the sun made the woman almost classical, as if she were carved from marble. But there was some abandon about it, the drunken confidence of the pose and the wisps of hair escaping from the hat making it seem alive. The station in the background was blurred, too distant to be recognized, and there was not a tile in sight. The photograph had been of me after all.
I turned it over and read the back: ‘My Greta, all my love, P.’
P? I did not even know his name then, but he knew mine. He knew my full name, knew where I lived, and knew that I was married.
A week passed before another envelope arrived. I recognized the writing on the envelope as soon as it stared up at me from the doormat; writing that I had pondered over for seven whole days, wondering what the hooks on the ‘g’s and the slant of the ‘t’s symbolized in the man who wrote them – the man who dared to address it to Mrs Marks in her marital home. There was no writing inside this time, no message, just a fold of clean white blotting paper enclosing a single pressed violet.
A week later another envelope arrived, enclosing another pressed violet. I put the violets between the pages of my mother’s copy of Mrs Beeton’s Guide to Household Management – the only book on the shelf which George was unlikely to read. Now and then when the housework got monotonous or the days seemed long and lonely I would find an excuse to go into the lounge, to open the book and stare at my violets, touch their frail petals and marvel at how they never lost their colour. Sometimes I would return to the station, retracing the walk along the hedge-lined road, pushing through the brambles on the path and gazing over the triangular field, memories flooding back to me as I smelt the grass underfoot. I would walk the lanes, hoping to meet him again, but hoping not to, scared of his power over me.
The envelopes kept arriving long into August, long after the violets in the field had died, and I realized that this was something that would not fade away. I remembered what my mother had always said about violets, that it was unlucky to bring them into the house, especially a single violet, which could bring death. And that summer did bring death for the yellowing grasses in the fields, the wilting pansies in the garden, the fallen blossoms, the spent mayflies and drowsy wasps. Yet among all this decay, I could not have felt more alive.
I did not see my man again until the fifth envelope arrived. Another pressed violet was inside, but this time the blotting paper was marked with the same slanting hand:
The war memorial, three o’clock on Wednesday.
Six weeks had passed, the days were becoming long and hot, and by that time I was aching for him.
16
Thursday broke with a rumble of thunder, the dull glow of the morning blunting all memories of sunshine, bunting and party frocks. The hedgerows in the Evesbridge Lane gave little protection from the rain, the muddied wheel ruts guiding me as I returned to work, to an aching back and fingers numbed by the press of a needle. Rose Cottage seemed small and dark as I approached, the fat heads of fallen roses dissolving into mud.
I scraped my boots on the iron mat, the swing of the door wafting mustiness out into the rain-soaked air. The kitchen windows were choked with stacks of scarlet linen, pale light struggling through the gaps. Somewhere water seeped through the ceiling with a hollow drip. My special dress was pegged up over the basin, dripping with shiny redness, the sleeves hanging limp like a fox in a snare.
Mrs Brown was sat hunched over the table, coughing into her handkerchief. She did not get up when the door opened, just nodded when she saw me, her mouth puckering into a little blister.
‘I’ve brought some f
airy cakes,’ I said, squeezing my basket on to the corner of the table. ‘There were just so many left over from Saturday and I must have used so much sugar that they are not yet stale!’
She did not answer, just nodded again.
I looked round at all the linen – the heaps on the windowsills and the laden table – and smiled, rolling my eyes dramatically, but still she was silent.
I laughed self-consciously. ‘I am sorry if I did anything foolish at the party. I had rather too much to drink. It’s not something that I usually do.’
‘You left your wages on Thursday,’ she said at last. ‘They’ve been sat there on the side all weekend.’
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘It was so good of you to keep them back for me. Thank you.’
She leant forward and grabbed an armful of linen, ramming it through the Singer, the handle spinning furiously. I opened my mouth but the noise was deafening, so I sat down on my usual chair, taking a frayed napkin onto my lap.
‘Where are the children?’ I shouted over the noise.
She stopped abruptly. ‘Blackberrying.’
‘Oh,’ I said, glancing at the rain through the window. ‘And are they… well?’
She nodded.
‘That’s good,’ I said quietly. I picked up my needle and started to jab at the material. Her silence was not something I had expected. ‘And have the children been playing with the rocking horse?’ I asked.
‘Yes,’ she said, then added: ‘all of them have, even the boys.’
‘That’s good,’ I said again, trying not to take my eyes off my work. I thought about the horse, how it had stayed locked up in the dark, quiet nursery for all those years. It had been there all alone, its runners denting the carpet, dust gathering on its bare saddle. Suddenly I felt that I needed to see it again, see it somewhere happier – where there were children, somewhere where it could finally be played with and loved. ‘Can I see it?’ I said.
The Liar Page 10
