She bumped into someone. Sorry, she said, but only silently, to herself.
‘Idiot!’
Emily flinched. It was her fault. Everything was her fault.
A fat man in a maroon windcheater walked past. ‘Girls are sharks,’ he said. Emily turned to watch him. ‘Girls are sharks.’ She walked around the block and encountered him again. ‘Girls are sharks,’ he repeated, casting a furious glance in her direction. ‘Girls are sharks.’ He made her feel that she ought not exist.
Emily walked back towards Charlotte’s place and passed the house that she was sure (or almost sure) she’d seen the night before. The front door was open the way it had been last night before the little boy ran out and slammed it shut.
She went through the front gate, up the steps, and paused at the open doorway. The hall held two bicycles, one with a child’s seat at the back, pairs of boots in many sizes, and a hallstand full of hats and scarves. She knocked.
No one seemed to hear, but there must have been someone home. She could hear music coming from the back of the house. She was about to turn and leave when Martin appeared from a room at the far end of the hall with a tea-towel slung over his shoulder and an egg-slice in his hand. His face had an enquiring expression. ‘Hello?’ he said, and she could see that he didn’t recognise her. But then he smiled. ‘Emily, come in!’
‘We were just making pikelets,’ he said, leading her into a big old kitchen at the back of the house. ‘Pete – look who’s here. It’s Emily. You remember Emily?’
‘Yep!’ said Pete. He was kneeling on a chair at the kitchen table, watching a batch of pikelets in an electric frypan. ‘Dad,’ he said urgently. ‘I think these need to be flipped over now. Can you give me a hand?’
Emily found that she was afraid of this child. He was so sure of himself. And she wasn’t used to children; she had no brothers and sisters. She wanted to turn right round and walk out.
Martin smiled at her apologetically. ‘Pete’s too interested in the pikelets to be polite,’ he said, flipping them over. ‘They’ll be ready in a minute, and then we can eat.’
Sitting with Martin and Pete in the warm kitchen with the radio playing soft music in the background gave Emily an appetite. She smothered several pikelets with butter and honey and ate one after another, before stopping, suddenly full, with a burp.
‘Excuse me!’ said Pete. He had huge dark eyes, with feathered brown eyebrows, and a way of glaring at her.
‘Sorry . . .’
Martin smiled and took another pikelet.
There were photos on a pegboard on the kitchen wall. Emily looked at them surreptitiously while Martin washed the dishes and she wiped them. There was a young woman holding Pete’s hand.
‘That’s me!’ said Pete. ‘With Cat.’
‘Cath?’ Emily wasn’t sure she’d heard properly.
‘No. Not Cath. Cat! Like the animal!’ Pete yelled.
‘Pete . . . shoosh . . . not so loud. You don’t have to yell,’ said Martin.
‘She’s my mum. She’s at work today.’
There were other pictures. Of friends and relatives, at lunches, dinners and picnics. Of Cat holding a baby. The sight of it made Emily’s skin turn cold. Pete started to explain them all, but Emily wasn’t listening. She threw the teatowel onto the table and went out the back door, standing with her head pressed against the timber wall of the house. Her eyes were dry, but inside she was all turmoil.
‘Are you all right?’ said Martin, who had followed her out.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I just remembered I have to go.’ She fled down the side of the house without looking back.
When she arrived back at Charlotte’s place, it smelt strongly of carrot soup. The cat was curled up on a wooden chair in the kitchen, and the old glass bottles on the window ledge were coloured bright blue, or green, or clear.
‘You didn’t eat any breakfast,’ said Charlotte, with a frown. She had cleared everything from the cluttered table and seemed to be in the middle of a bout of house-cleaning.
‘I ate something out.’
Emily felt the world loom darkly around her, as if something terrible was about to happen at any moment. She leaned against the sink and closed her eyes to make the feeling go away. She felt Charlotte gently remove a dishcloth from her hands; she’d been wringing water all over the floor.
‘How about I run you a nice warm bath?’ said Charlotte.
In the bathroom Emily turned on the tap to make the water even hotter and lay back and stared at the orange and green tiles through the steam. She closed her eyes. If she thought of nothing she could get through the next bit of the day before bedtime.
i ’ve been thinking about all the things that i’ll be able to show you. Like horses.
There is nothing quite like the smell of a horse. It’s all hay and sunshine and sweat. A horse’s skin is something else, too! There’s a sort of shiver it gives sometimes, when the muscles move under the surface, that’s like wind rippling the surface of water. It’s just so . . . sexy somehow!
i’ll be able to take you to the beach. The colour of waves is amazing – never the same two days in a row. i look for shells there – i always hope for a perfect, unblemished one. We’ll start a shell collection, and i’ll teach you all the names.
One day i rode a horse bareback on the beach. It was magic. Just me and the power of the horse galloping, and the smell of its sweat and the smell of the sea. i wanted to ride up the beach for ever, but i turned round and came back.
4
Emily went back to Martin’s place. The front door was again open, next time she turned up. The house had polished floorboards, and bright paint on the walls. Everything was clean and bare. Charlotte’s house was like a cave, but Martin’s was a broad plain, full of light and air. She glanced into rooms as Martin led her through to the kitchen. The bathroom had an old claw-foot bath and worn lino. In the living room there was no proper furniture, just beds for couches, and chairs that didn’t match. But they were covered with colourful throws, and the place was tidy. There were cane baskets on the floor filled with toys and children’s books.
The shabby, old-fashioned kitchen reminded her of her grandfather’s place. The cupboards had peeling green paint, and there was a chimney where a wood stove had once sat. A wobbly laminex table with plastic-covered chairs sat in the middle of the room.
Martin told her the house had been a deceased estate. Even in this shabby condition it had been expensive enough to buy, and it would be ages till they had the money to fix things up properly. He thought it was fine the way it was, anyway.
Pete was at pre-school that day. Martin walked about the kitchen with his bare feet poking out from the bottom of frayed jeans and a teatowel slung over his shoulder. He went out to the laundry and put on the washing, then pottered around the kitchen while she watched. He rinsed some seeds sprouting in a jar, and put some lentils to soak in a bowl.
That day, they started painting Pete’s room yellow. Martin had already moved all the furniture and covered the floor with newspaper. He found a big old shirt to protect Emily’s clothes, and a spare brush. She took off her shoes, and started to paint. Martin worked on one side of the room and she on the other; every so often she glanced over at him, and he smiled at her.
Because she said very little, Martin did all the talking.
He told her that he and Cat took it in turns to be the one with a full-time job, so that someone would always be there for Pete, even though he was at pre-school three days a week. Cat had been working since Pete was two – he had just turned five, and they thought he’d be ready for school next year. She was a theatre sister at the hospital; Martin was a teacher.
‘But I just do a bit of relief work now and then when Pete’s in pre-school. We can get by on less money.’
He went back to slapping yellow paint on the walls, and the only sound for a while was music from the radio in the kitchen.
The timber walls had gaps and Emily had to press th
e bristles into them to fill them with paint. Her wrists began to ache, and a blister formed on one of her fingers.
When they stopped for a cup of tea, the mist had lifted and the back yard was filled with sunshine. Emily took off her paint-shirt, pushed up her sleeves, and sat on the back step with the sun warming her bare feet.
Martin sat on the old brick path and sipped tea. He opened a tin of tobacco and rolled a narrow cigarette, but pinched it out after a few puffs.
‘Well, that’s me,’ he said. ‘What about you?’
Emily looked up.
‘You’ve let me do all the talking.’
‘There’s nothing much to tell,’ she said. ‘I’m staying up here with my godmother. Having a kind of holiday.’
That wasn’t exactly the truth but it wasn’t a lie, either.
Martin lit his cigarette again and squinted through the smoke. ‘Cat hates me doing this. It’s one of my bad habits. I only do it when Pete’s not home.’
He stubbed out the cigarette and put it into the tin, then went inside and came out with a notebook. He scribbled something into it, paused to think, and scribbled again.
‘What are you writing?’
‘It’s a kind of journal. It’s where I hang out. I’ve just written: Mist has lifted – beautiful spring day. Who is here with us: a small brown bird perching on the lemon tree. There’s a trail of ants along the path. A girl with brown hair (Emily) sits on the back doorstep, a smudge of yellow paint on her foot.
‘Staying home all the time sucks something out of me. So I try to stay in touch with the world by noticing things and writing them down. I record who is here with us. Who is sharing this world. With us humans, I mean.’
Even with the sun on her head and feet, Emily felt dark and cramped. She thought that Martin had a largeness to him – a big airy space inside. His chest must never be constricted by sorrow. Inside, he was all rolling hills and gentle breezes.
They did an entire first coat of the room by the time Martin had to pick Pete up from pre-school. As Emily washed yellow paint from her hands at the garden tap, Martin said, ‘Want to come for the walk?’
In the hallway, he put on a hat and coat. He looked at Emily’s thin polar fleece jacket, and reached out for a long wool scarf, which he handed her. ‘You need a hat,’ he said. ‘Pick a hat, any hat.’
Emily chose a knitted one with rainbow stripes. Martin straightened it for her, turning up the brim so he could see her face. She felt like his child; at any moment he might lean forward and pat her on the head.
He took long strides, and Emily had to hurry to keep up with him. They were late arriving at the pre-school, and almost all the children had gone. ‘Dad!’ called Pete, running to the fence. When he saw Emily, he stopped. ‘You’re wearing Cat’s hat,’ he said.
‘Pete, it’s all right,’ said Martin. ‘Emily didn’t have a hat. I said she could wear it.’
‘But Dad – she can’t keep it! It’s Cat’s.’ He shoved ahead of them and walked quickly along the footpath, so that all Emily could see was the severity of his back, with a small black backpack bouncing along on top of it.
Back at their house, Emily unwound the scarf from her neck and draped it over a peg. She removed the rainbow hat and placed it next to the scarf. She wondered if she ought to go now, but followed Martin and Pete to the yellow room where Pete was standing in the middle of the floor saying, ‘Wowee! Wowee!’, his hands on his hips.
‘It needs another coat tomorrow,’ said Martin. ‘Since you’ll be at home you can help if you want.’
Pete looked at Emily. ‘But not her,’ he said quickly. ‘We can do it by ourselves.’
‘Pete, that’s not nice.’ But Pete had already run out of the room, and Martin looked at Emily and grinned ruefully.
The days were lengthening, and it was still warm. Emily knew she should go back to Charlotte’s place, but she hadn’t the energy for it. Martin and Pete sat out on the grass sharing a plate of cut-up oranges; she lay under the lemon tree close by and closed her eyes. The dread that she had lived with for months settled even more insistently into her chest, so that she felt that she would soon stop breathing.
Then she noticed the sweet, sharp smell of skin, and opened her eyes. It was Pete. He stared down at her and held out a section of orange, asking if she would like some.
She didn’t reply, and he pressed the wedge of fruit onto her opened mouth and squeezed. Juice ran into her mouth. She closed her eyes and swallowed, and lay there with her mouth filled by the skin of the orange.
‘Is it nice, Emmy? Is it?’
Pete patted her face. His hand was soft. She felt she hadn’t been touched tenderly like that for a long time. She kept her eyes tight shut, but tears came from under her eyelids.
And then Pete asked her why she was sad, and it seemed to her that no one had ever before noticed that simple fact, but she couldn’t speak.
‘Dad . . . why is she sad?’
Martin said, ‘She just is, Pete. Everyone gets sad sometimes.’
And they both sat there with her for a long time, and didn’t press her to say anything, and after a while she got up and said goodbye to them and left.
Today i told Matt about you. i watched him closely for his reaction, for any sign that you might not be welcome to him.
You can’t count his initial hesitation. Then – Are you sure, he said.
– i’m sure.
– We’ll keep it, yeah? was the first thing he said.
And then he hugged us close.
– Yeah, i said.
It was such a relief to tell someone.
5
Emily lay in bed and listened to the sounds of Charlotte’s house. Even if Emily hadn’t been there, it would still have sounded exactly the same. Sometimes she felt that she didn’t exist, that she somehow filled no space in the world.
A door opened and closed with a hollow sound. The toilet flushed. There were footsteps down the hallway.
The sounds were remote and peaceful, and Emily, who had spent what felt like most of the night awake, turned over and closed her eyes again.
The cat had deserted her; it yowled in the kitchen. The refrigerator door opened and closed. A dish rattled.
She stayed in bed until well after Charlotte had gone out to her shed, and after dressing she just had to get out for a walk. She didn’t enjoy walking, but it helped her not to think. She trudged to the lookout, stayed for as long as it took to glance down into the valley, and then went back. Something took her to Martin’s place.
It was a week since her last visit, and on the way up the hall Martin showed her Pete’s room, where the painting had been completed. It was a bright, glorious yellow.
‘It’s beautiful,’ she said flatly.
Emily knew that the room, so optimistically bright and still smelling of fresh paint, should be admired. But she didn’t feel it was beautiful. Its freshness and hopefulness rather oppressed her. She lay down on Pete’s bed and closed her eyes, and when she looked up, Martin was standing there with two cups in his hands. Not tea this time, but hot chocolate.
They drank it in the back yard. For a little while he allowed her to sit hunched with her hands pressing the sides of the warm cup, and he didn’t try to rush in with words; he waited for her to speak, and when she didn’t, he squeezed her shoulder softly and said, ‘I was planning to replace some rotten boards in the bathroom. Want to help?’
They worked quietly. He asked her to hand him the tools, and got her to measure the length of the new lining boards. ‘I try to get stuff done while Pete’s not here,’ he told her. She said nothing, just watched him. He bashed his thumb with the hammer and laughed. ‘Shit!’ He sang a song while he worked: ‘Eagle Rock’. But without any backing music it sounded thin and wistful.
After a while she drifted away, back to Pete’s room, where she lay on the bed listening to the sounds of hammering and sawing. The rhythmical sounds, and the way the timber house moved in response to the hammeri
ng, lulled her to sleep. She felt someone come into the room and drop a soft rug over her feet.
When she woke it was a different time of day, and the whole quality of the light had changed. Pete was standing next to her, saying, ‘That’s my bed, Emmy! It’s mine!’
‘I’m sorry.’
But he forgave her quickly.
‘Draw with me, Emmy! Draw with me!’ A piece of paper was thrust at her, and soon she was crouching on the floor beside him. She was astonished at how physically she felt his presence – he had a ripe, yeasty odour, and when he leaned against her he was surprisingly heavy.
He scrawled over the paper, making a random pattern, and Emily filled in the spaces that were formed with squiggles, spots and stripes of various colours.
‘What are you drawing?’ said Martin, coming into the room with a plate of cheese on toast, which he placed on the floor next to her.
‘It’s a map,’ said Pete. ‘A map of where you’re going when you don’t know where you are.’
‘Write that,’ he ordered Emily. So she wrote at the top: A Map Of Where You’re Going When You Don’t Know Where You Are.
She’d slept through lunch and was starving hungry. She crammed cheese on toast into her mouth while she wrote, and spots of grease appeared on the paper.
That night she switched on the lamp beside her bed and found a piece of paper. For a while her pen hovered and was unable to make a mark. She struggled for words. In the end she wrote:
Dear Matt,
i hope you are well. i think about Mahalia all the time. i think about both of you, and i’m so grateful that you are there for her. i know you’ll be looking after her really well.
i can’t come back just yet
i’m sorry
Emmy
i want everything for you. The moon and the stars and the sea and the entire universe. i want everything for me too. i want you and Matt and me 4 ever and ever.
Little Wing Page 2
