The Liar

by Jennifer Wells

  I lay on the bed and pressed my hands over my ears; it was what I did at home when Clarence and Maudy were fighting. I could see them so clearly in my head, yelling at each other across the kitchen. Maudy’s hands were on her hips, her eyes popping with fury, her teeth pointed like fangs. Clarence’s face was terrible, his arms flailing like windmills.

  It was the day that Fatkins had visited, the day that Maudy had conned money from him for a stove that would never be fixed. It was also the day that the farmer had discovered Clarence stealing eggs, the day that he had been sacked with no wages and came home looking for a fight, the day the Red Lion gave him no credit, the day the rent was overdue and the day that Maudy had money and Clarence didn’t.

  The next morning Maudy had stood at the sink crying, her eye all puffy and black.

  I didn’t care. She could wipe her own tears. I stopped caring about her the day she stopped caring about me, the day the stove got broken. She saw what happened on that day; she didn’t stop him. It was Clarence that broke the stove. That’s all I want to say.

  I took my hands off my ears. There were no shouts in this house, no screams no bad-mouthing or curses. Rich people shout with silence.

  36

  Emma

  ‘It’s dead,’ said Ruby.

  I put the sherry glass with the wilted violet on the windowsill and sat down next to her on the bed. ‘I know that,’ I said. ‘It is now. But it wasn’t dead when it was put on the mantelpiece.’

  ‘It’s dead now. Now it’s dead.’

  ‘Did you pick it, Ruby? Did you put it in the glass on the mantelpiece?’

  ‘No,’ she said quickly. I looked at her face, she was blinking quickly like she didn’t understand. ‘And I never did it. I didn’t kill it.’

  ‘Have you ever put any of these flowers in the house?’

  ‘No, I never have.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure. Maudy says they mean death if they’re brought inside.’

  I sighed. ‘You don’t still believe that too, do you?

  ‘Yes, but you told me that it was rubbish.’ She looked at me for reassurance. ‘So it is, isn’t it? Rubbish. And I never did it.’ She opened her mouth again, then shut it.

  ‘Well?’ I put my hands on my hips, waiting for further explanation.

  ‘It’s just that…’

  I nodded in encouragement.

  ‘It’s just that they don’t grow in the garden here, not those ones. And there’s just a few small ones in the copse by the cottage. But those ones, those ones are all big and purple –there’s lots of them in those fields on the way to the station. That’s the only place they grow.’

  I couldn’t help but feel embarrassed – those fields where I had lain with Peter all those years ago mentioned in such innocence. I thought that no one else knew about that place, that it existed only for me.

  ‘Are you hot?’ said Ruby.

  I couldn’t answer her, so I just sat down on the bed and opened the window. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I just thought that because the silver rattle was yours, you might have been leaving these flowers too…’

  Her face was blank.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I’m not making sense.’ Then I put my hand out and patted her knee. ‘It’s all right,’ I whispered, lowering my head to hers. ‘I believe you.’

  I looked out into the garden. Drifts of fallen leaves had gathered in the flower beds and there was a musty smell on the breeze. The pansies had browned and curled and the blooms of the wisteria were creeping with rust. She was right. There were no violets in the garden, no colour or life. I got up and went to the door.

  ‘Emma?’

  ‘What, darling?’

  ‘You were going to tell me something. You said you would tell me it when we got back from the zoo. Something about Maudy’s mouth ulcer, about it making her ill and what would happen.’ She looked so small sat on the bed, her eyes cast up at me. Small and fragile, the birthmark tracing the pattern of tears I imagined would come.

  ‘Well…’ I was about to begin the speech I had been rehearsing, the speech about the chickens, about Snowflake or Snowdrop or whatever it was called, about how they died because they were weak and sick. The speech about how George couldn’t always help people, about how some of them never got better. The speech about why I didn’t have any parents of my own.

  She stared up at me, her face blank.

  I opened my mouth but the only noise was a burst from the doorbell. I jumped, then smiled, trying to ignore it. But still it rang, the buzz of the metal echoing up the stairs. Ruby turned away to stroke the ears of the knitted rabbit. I hurried to the doorway, then smiled apologetically and left her.

  ‘Mr Tuttle!’ I cried, trying to hide my annoyance. ‘I thought you were all finished in the living room. It’s really not a good time at the moment.’

  ‘The kitchen, Mrs Marks?’ Mr Tuttle scraped his feet on the doormat, bag in hand, pencil behind ear.

  My thoughts turned back to the hammer left in the sink and the fence that was now three different shades of green. I breathed deeply to see if I could smell alcohol – yes, there was the trace of an odour, but he seemed sober enough.

  Mr Tuttle placed his feet squarely on the doormat. ‘We have an appointment, Mrs Marks?’

  Then I remembered a hurried word on his last visit, a handshake with George and a note that I was supposed to write on the calendar. ‘Of course we do,’ I snapped. ‘Come through.’

  Mr Tuttle stretched a tape measure over the oven and then rested his elbows on the work surface as he jotted in his notebook. He drummed his foot and shook his head, then drew a line through his calculations and then jotted some more. ‘Silly old Tuttle,’ he muttered to himself. ‘Stupid old bugger.’

  The smell of alcohol seemed stronger now. I glanced at the clock – the Red Lion must have already been open for some time. He’d certainly had time to get drunk before he came. The faint chink of the xylophone floated down the stairs, the first bars of ‘Frère Jacques’ repeated over and over.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mr Tuttle,’ I said. ‘I know that we had an appointment, but I really don’t have time.’

  He didn’t look up, just kept tapping his foot and scribbling with his pencil. ‘Don’t worry, Mrs Marks, you can go off and see to your business, just leave me here. I’ll be fine.’

  ‘I would rather…’ I was about to put a hand on his shoulder but drew my arm back quickly. There was something poking from his breast pocket, something small and fragile and the deepest purple. ‘You!’ I gasped. ‘It’s you whose been leaving the violets!’

  The back of his neck flushed red. ‘I don’t know what you mean, Mrs Marks, why this is just—’

  I stepped back. ‘It was only you all along, Mr Tuttle, only you.’ I laughed, relieved. ‘Really, they are lovely, but you shouldn’t—’

  Mr Tuttle turned round slowly, holding his hand aloft as the violet quivered between his fingers. Then his eyes widened as if in surprise to see it. ‘Oh you’re here as well are you?’ He stared at the flower, flicking the petals absent-mindedly with his finger. ‘Here again!’

  ‘Mr Tuttle?’

  ‘Oh!’ He flinched. ‘Mrs Marks, I’m so sorry. It’s just that I always take flowers to my son, I usually drop by to see him on my way to your house. But these little purple ones seem to find their way back here with me, always to this house.’ He looked at me and smiled, as if he wanted reassurance that such things did not just happen to him and that others too could be absent-minded. ‘I don’t know if you can understand this, Mrs Marks, but it’s as if they follow me, they do.’

  ‘Mr Tuttle, I’m not sure I understand you, there’s—’

  ‘To be honest, Mrs Marks, I never remember giving these little purple ones to Mr. Tuttle Junior, but they are always here when I come. I expect he is giving them back to me, he’s a kind soul like that. His way of following me after my visit, you see, something to remember him by once I have left the mem
orial.’

  At last, here was the reason for the absence of Mr Tuttle Junior. There was no way he could have painted a fence or lifted a hammer or papered a wall and now I knew that that he never would. ‘I’m so sorry,’ I whispered.

  ‘Not to worry, Mrs Marks. Terribly bad luck indoors though, these purple ones,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘Terribly bad luck!’

  ‘Oh no, don’t say—’

  ‘You are right, Mrs Marks. I don’t expect that he means it that way. It’s nice to remember the dead, they are everywhere.’ He raised his head, his eyes suddenly clear and his gaze steady, ‘And these flowers, well they are rather like the dead, don’t you think? Following us where we go, just like they do.’

  For the first time ever he looked me right in the eye and I felt a trickle of ice water deep in my stomach. ‘That’s a nice thought, Mr. Tuttle,’ I said, my voice cracking, ‘but-’

  ‘They follow you too don’t they, Mrs. Marks?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I said, my voice catching.

  His speech was more lucid now, as if somewhere deep inside him the thousands of severed neurons that had George had described had found each other and reconnected, and for a brief and random moment, intellect, consciousness and memory were fully restored.

  ‘I’ve been working in this house a while now, Mrs Marks, got to know it, if you like. Houses speak to you, give away their secrets. And when the nursery was opened and Dr Marks spoke to me about redecorating it, well… I found things in there, old-fashioned, musty things, things for a baby that would now be grown. Her name was Violet, wasn’t it? It was stitched on to the counterpane.’

  ‘Yes,’ I whispered. ‘Violet.’

  He turned away and nodded to himself. ‘After I had found all that, well, I wasn’t sure it would be right to redecorate the room, not rip it all out and start again like Dr Marks had said. That is why I was slow in coming to that particular room. It should stay untouched, I thought, for the memory.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘Thank you for understanding.’

  He turned and put a hand on my arm. ‘It’s quite all right, Mrs Marks, we can all take consolation from the things around us. These tiny purple flowers from the meadows for instance. The flower will die off in the winter but the next summer there will be a new bloom, it will not be the same as the original, but a copy of it, like a memory returning. The new blooms will always remind us of the original, just like memories remind us of the ones we have lost.’ He paused for just a moment as if to recover from the effort of his speech. ‘It’s just that these blooms sometimes follow us.’

  I shuddered and just then, as I looked into his eyes, I saw that they had changed again and were brighter still, as if it was not just consciousness that had returned but also his humanity.

  ‘Do you really think that, Mr. Tuttle?’ I said. ‘That they follow us? You see, recently things have been happening to me, things I don’t understand – things with the dead, the one I lost, and always there are these flowers. And these flowers had meaning to the person I lost. I feel like the dead follow me too… you see, these flowers’ – I took his hand in mine and raised the violet so it was in front of his face – ‘these were our flowers, hers and mine, and they are very special to me.’

  ‘Flowers?’ Mr. Tuttle cocked his head to one side, his mouth slackened and he frowned as if seeing the violet for the first time. His pupils widened and I realized that the millions of microscopic neurons that George had described had strayed from their pathways once more and the brief moment of lucidity was gone and with it the connection between us.

  ‘Oh, that’s a very pretty flower, Mrs Marks,’ he said. ‘What is it? A snapdragon?’

  ‘A violet, Mr. Tuttle,’ I said sadly.

  ‘Oh!’ He nodded. ‘A violet, of course, violet. Silly old bugger.’

  He turned and picked up his tape measure, tucking the pencil back behind his ear. ‘Well,’ he said brightly, ‘I’d better be finishing up here, Mrs Marks, flowers are all well and good, but I will need to be out before the end of the week.’

  ‘It might be a while before you finish, Mr Tuttle.’ I sighed. ‘There’s still the skirting boards and picture rails to be done, even if you don’t go into the nursery.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. He was silent for a moment then started speaking slowly, as if he had to concentrate hard to form each word. ‘I don’t feel that I can finish things here, not the way I would want to.’ He waved his hand round the kitchen. ‘I can take some measurements, leave some designs but, as for the rest… I’m getting old, my hands are shaky, words don’t make sense. I’m not as strong as I was, I get muddled. I thought I could manage one more job but I am just too old and with Mr. Tuttle Junior… with Mr. Tuttle Junior unable to help—’

  ‘I see,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry.’

  He cast his eyes down, adjusted the pencil behind his ear and put his notebook in his pocket. Then he rubbed his head and replaced his cap.

  ‘Why don’t you go home early, Mr. Tuttle, put your feet up, go and visit your family. I expect they will be glad of your company. I’m sure we can manage without the measurements for now.’

  He nodded. ‘Very good, Mrs Marks.’

  We went into the hallway and I took his hand and shook it, I lead him to the door and opened it.

  ‘I’m sorry to leave things unfinished. But I’m sure Dr Marks is a strong and upright man. He could surely help…’

  I nodded.

  Then something strange happened. Afterwards I kept telling myself that it was just a mistake made by a drunk, confused old man. That it didn’t mean anything. I could explain it, of course I could. I could see why it happened; how the mistake could have been made, I mean. But inside me I sensed… I don’t know, something that gave me the strangest of feelings.

  There was a creak of floorboard at the top of the stairs and we turned to see Ruby sitting high on the staircase. Mr Tuttle stopped in the doorway and I looked from one to the other but neither moved nor spoke.

  I laughed awkwardly. ‘This is Mr Tuttle, darling,’ I said. ‘He’s the… he’s the decorator. Say hello to Mr Tuttle.’

  ‘Hello, Mr Tuttle,’ she said.’

  ‘Hello, Violet,’ he said and shut the door behind him.

  37

  ‘Maudy!’ cried Ruby. She dropped the sugar cane I had bought her and flung herself at Maud, the basket chair creaking under their weight.

  I stood alone, staring at the fragments of colourful sugar on the flagstones. I had become a stranger again – the madwoman from the lido with ice cream melting all over her hands. I opened my mouth to warn about the risk of infection but then saw Maud’s face crumpled over Ruby’s shoulder, a tear squeezing from her eye.

  I shuffled my feet and cleared my throat. Then I opened my bag and took out three more bottles of chlorodyne, the glass clanking noisily on the table, but still they held the embrace and I realized that I had been forgotten. Why didn’t Ruby prefer me? I had not left her side for a whole month. I had taught her to write properly and cooked her favourite meals, kept her safe and warm. Yes, things had been a little strange recently and George and I had been arguing and maybe I had been a little short-tempered and quick to scold her, but I had spent such a lot of money on food and gifts and I was sure that this had made Ruby fond of me, made it obvious what Maud could not give her. But now as I watched the pair of them together, I realized how naïve I had been.

  At last Ruby wriggled free and I signalled to her to cover her mouth.

  She ignored me and turned back to Maud. ‘I miss the chickens,’ she said breathlessly. And only then did I realize that it wasn’t the chickens she had been missing.

  Maud sat mummified in an old grey blanket, her legs stretched out in front of a blazing fire. Her cheeks were pale and hollowed but her eyes were still bright.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ is all she said to Ruby, ‘I’m so sorry.’

  The kitchen looked a bit tidier and the boys seemed to be behaving themselves: Andy was bent
over the draining board scrubbing plates and cups; Jim, John and Henry were sat quietly in front of the fire, three oily rags and bottle of Brasso resting on the hearth. Even Smokey seemed content, stretched out on the patch of sun from the kitchen window. The perfectly stitched gloves had been removed from the table and the old Singer replaced with a chipped vase of teasel heads. Only one of the rusty buckets remained, a trickle of red dye dried solid where it had escaped over the rim. It was full of cotton handkerchiefs, flecked with brown. I shuddered, thinking that I would throw them on the fire when I got a chance.

  ‘Well, look at you!’ said, Maud. She waved her hand in a circle and Ruby twirled round obligingly. Maud looked her up and down. ‘A proper little lady,’ she said, and then nodded to herself. ‘A proper little lady.’

  I thought of my conversation with Maud all those weeks ago, the one which Ruby had overhead as she squatted in the henhouse. Maud had said that Ruby’s face was a curse in Evesbridge but that she would have more opportunities in Missensham; become a typist or secretary, maybe marry. And here she was now, just as Maud said – a proper little lady.

  Ruby crossed her legs, dropping herself onto the floor next to her brothers. Jim and John reached for her new pinafore but she sat up straight pulling it away from their blackened fingers. Only Henry was allowed to stroke her shoes and then very gently. They asked Ruby about Little Willow: How many rooms there were; whether she had one to herself; how long it took to run round the garden; whether hot water came from just flicking a switch; whether she ate blancmange every day. I watched Ruby as she answered, nodding her head and laughing, swinging her arms as she spoke about the monkeys at the zoo.