The mice scramble up on her shoulders, for they want to try and plait her hair; it doesn’t turn out badly, but they have nothing to secure the end and it unravels slowly as she dips and tips her head. Then, suddenly, they freeze; there’s a racket developing outside the door. It’s the slap and drip of cloth and pail and skirting board, as the mother washes it by sections, and the words of encouragement that she gives herself as she goes. The child edges forwards and pulls the door until it is on the latch. They wait. Then the door is scuffed right out again, and the mother looks inside, wet-handed and dirty, cuddling the bucket to her ribcage like a slopping plastic baby. Her eyes dart in a line along the floor, along the phantom skirting board that she wishes was there, but isn’t. Blind to anything that isn’t a skirting board, her face crumples a little, and she goes away.
That night, the market buzzes and squeaks as usual, and the fairy lights preside over everything with their enigmatic twinkle, and the disruption of earlier has been all but forgotten. Then there’s a crashing from the kitchen, a whollop and a scream that can only have come from the frizz-haired woman; they all cringe in horror. The mice crowd up to the window, and they see the childling coming round the side of the house, limping from an awkward fall out of the scullery window, whimpering among the ground elder and blackberry thorns.
Their poor hurt childling. She is outside, beyond Home. Beyond the back door is the end of the world. They creep to the door, as near to the outside as they dare. They peer beneath the door and plead with her to come inside. The other child, the white-haired one who does not belong to them, sees them as they whisper there. Her eyebrows move upwards, but she makes no noise.
14
Marie
WHEN I AMBLED into my room, it was late in the afternoon, on one of those half-awake days before September. I was six-years-old then, but nearly seven; as we hadn’t a calendar, my mother used to store the date in a book, just for safekeeping. Every day we lived was in there, written carefully in blue ink at breakfast time, to make sure that we all knew where we were up to. Unless my mother forgot a day or two here or there, which I suppose must have been possible.
The sun had made its way to the back of the house, and an oblong of golden light slanted along the wall, leaving a gorgeous puddle of warmth on the floor. I walked into its centre and then sat down on the floor with my eyes closed, feeling the summer dying against my face. The world, just then, became bloodish, wet and warm and deep, deep red. It was lovely.
My bedroom wallpaper was a stylised pattern of cabbage roses, alternating with what appeared to be vine leaves. If I chose to see it in a certain way, the pattern resembled a succession of eyes, repeated; an infinity between the carpet and the fractured ceiling. I sat in my sunlit oblong and squinted against the afternoon at them. The decades had faded the pattern on the wallpaper, turning the whites the colour of old men’s teeth, making the blues and the reds slide together to brown, as if the walls had been spread all over with weak tea. Even so, there was a point at the centre of each flower head, which must have been printed more firmly, or perhaps more thickly; anyhow, the heart of every rose was marked out with a coin-sized disc of blue, licked in with a broken circle of gold leaf.
I allowed my eyes to lose a little of their focus, so that a splashy rose became an iris, and the network of leaves around it melted into what was perhaps the arch of an eyebrow, or there again perhaps the start of another eyelid, formed around another drowned blue eye in the flower to the left. Ten dozen eyes dripped in and out of being, like things misunderstood, every one of them watering, ready to blink.
I blinked, and finally closed my eyes, as it hurt them to look that way. I could hear the rooks cursing in the garden; by degrees, the sun went in. I sat there for a whole long minute, and as I did, I became aware of staring, the sort of staring that could penetrate a mattress, keen as a leather-needle.
It turned out that there was a little girl standing over me, here in my own bedroom, curious and wary as a fox. She scanned my face as she leaned right towards me, until her head was all but touching mine. She stank like the corners of the scullery; she smelled of dust and mice and damp. The girl who was not me wiped her fingers across her cheeks, and then she smiled, waiting, as though she had made a statement that I was supposed to reply to. I smiled back, thoroughly unnerved.
That child was identical to me, in a sort of opposite way. Her hair was all rats’ tails, held off the brow with twists of wire, the way that mine was pinned back with metal slides. She wore a torn-pink dress that seemed to be one of my own, one that had gone missing from the bathroom airer weeks before. On her wrist there was a mosquito bite, just like mine. I shook my head slowly, and so did she. Then the toilet flushed in the bathroom, and my mother could be heard, complaining gently, pulling the light-cord on and off, unhappy about something. The other child started at that, flinched as if at a slap, and she raised her hands and swayed to her feet. The child slunk out of the door, just as if she had not been there at all.
I waited, I don’t know why; I waited for ages, sitting paralysed among the cabbage roses, thumb in mouth. Suddenly, decisively, I leapt to my feet and crept out into the hallway. By then there was nothing to stalk, except my mother, still tugging on the light cord. In the end, I concluded that I must have made the whole thing up. Later, though, much later, my mother and I were sitting in front of the parlour fire; my mother was terribly upset, as her dishcloth was only two-thirds done, and she was running out of string. She sighed and tutted among the slip and tut of her knitting needles, fretting and muttering under her breath.
My mother was wearing her housecoat, a shapeless padded thing, with crisscross stitching like a too-thin quilt. She dropped her knitting into the cup of her lap, and picked her spectacles off her nose to polish them, opening her eyes extra-wide as she did so, even though I knew she could not see a thing. She always did that. Then, on a sudden spur, I said to my mother that I had seen somebody in my room. My mother stiffened, arched her foot so that it all but came out of its slipper. She left off wiping her glasses, face still towards the fire, the muscle in her jaw loosening then tightening in patterns, as though she were doing exercises for teeth.
At last, she told me that it must have been my grandmother. But, I was young then, still desperate to be heard, and I persisted, saying that no, it had been a child, like me, but not. My mother laughed, carelessly; she said that I had surely seen a ghost then! She replaced her glasses in triumph, pushed them to the very root of her nose, brushing her eyelashes, smiling like a light bulb.
I nodded, uncertainly, frightened now as well. Somehow I didn’t dare to leave the parlour that evening; I stayed up with my mother until my eyes gravelled with tiredness, and then I climbed the stairs to bed with my head low, seeing nothing.
15
The Mother
THE SKIRTING BOARDS dirtied, slowly overnight; by ten o’clock the next day, they were worse than always. The sofa cushions sank; the carpets grew blacker, soaked and sad and ruining. All night, the mother sat in her chair and fretted, as the parlour wrecked around her, patiently, the way that paper decays. She chewed on the inside of her cheek and thought, and unravelled a dishcloth so that she could knit a better one. Before the moon sank past the window again, she had formed an idea. She was ecstatic.
The mother had been badly shaken the day before when Marie had seen that other child. But the mother’s reply, and her nerve-edged little giggle, had clearly been a masterstroke. For, she reasoned, if Marie had found a child and then discovered her to be a ghost, why then, she would be so frightened at glimpsing her that she would work very hard in order not to see anything ever again. The mother stroked the back of her own neck. For sure, if she ever found a thing that was a ghost after all, she would make certain she did not find it a second time.
A brown stain developed gently on the ceiling, easing through the plaster like a picture photograph, flowering to life in a developing
tray. She caught it in the act, scowled at it; it waited until the mother stopped looking, and then it carried on, blooming flatly, running into the corner.
Now, if that wretched child would not hide herself any longer, and it was a matter of obvious fact that she was growing more brazen, then it must fall upon the mother’s shoulders to hide the creature herself. The question was only Marie, really: how to keep her out of the way whilst things were taken in hand. Perhaps she could have a nice long nap, but Marie was a dreadfully light sleeper. The mother considered administering a little blow to the head, but it didn’t seem to be quite moral. She spent a long time pondering, until the grandmother came home from her nightly doings, whatever those might be. Her cardigan was torn, and a little bloody.
Astoundingly, when the problem was outlined, together with a proposed solution, the grandmother agreed to assist. All that day, the mother was like a little girl ticking off the days until a holiday, peeling off every hour, writing it down in her little book. Five, four, three hours until the Plan.
Marie was narrow-eyed, confused and wary, until suppertime, when the grandmother pressed her weight onto either of her shoulders and told her that tonight was the Watchnight. They propped her up at the parlour window on a hard chair with a milk bottle of water, and they gave her a notebook and pencil to record when it happened. Any queries were met with sly glances, and shadow smiles. She would know it when she saw it. It would be the making of her.
Darkness floated up into the air like fat in water; Marie’s face grew glazed with eagerness and then fatigue. They opened the window to keep her awake and gave her mathematical riddles to solve in her head. They made her memorise the ingredients on a packet of raspberry jelly and chant them into the night, forwards and then in reverse. They made her count the stars that uglied the skies like dandruff, they made her strain her little ears to pick out the voices of foxes that were not there. And finally, when it was day again, they left her to keep watch, taking care to leave a blanket on the sofa, temptation to weakness. They watched her through a chink in the door, they watched her curiosity fade out of her with yawning, and when she was asleep, they nodded to one another and pulled on Wellington boots.
It took them hours to dig the hole, long and narrow and deep. When it was done, they spread the dirt that they had thrown up around the feet of the cherry tree. It was black, and rich as fruitcake, and it oozed with naked worms. The mother found yards of tarpaulin sheet from somewhere or other and, using a stool for a stepladder, they faced the hole’s inside with it, stitching it into place with tent pegs, until they ran out of those, and pinning it with biro pens after that. Then they made the bottom comfy with an eiderdown, and an empty mop-bucket, and they hung a little paraffin lamp on a nail.
The mother had been ordered to make a little seat with cushions, though she thought the bother unnecessary, and then she found the rotten old door that had been propped against the scullery wall for decades. She lugged it over and leaned it against the mouth of the trap, with sticks to hold it open. The grandmother came out with a packet of sandwiches and a jar of jam, and she dropped them into the hole whilst the kettle was boiling.
By the time she came out again, this time with a flask of cocoa, the mother was laying out a trail of bait: a finger-roll of bread, an apple, three wine gums, a lump of cheddar and a fried slice of bacon. One or another was bound to do the trick. Finally, they tied the biggest stick with button thread and trailed the end to a bush, where they sat in the wet and waited.
The child, of course, had seen all this; by nature, a child is almost as curious as a mouse at the best of times, and a childling mouseling child is as curious as a whole boxful of them. And though they pled with her and spoke to her sternly and warned and warned her besides, that child could simply not help but investigate.
The mother bit her lip and egged her on, with urgent little bobs of her head. If it had not been for the grandmother pinching her from time to time, the suspense would have ruined the plan without doubt. But, she held her tongue, and each of her hands in her other hand, and she managed not to scream out loud.
Marie fidgeted, fast asleep in the parlour, neck ricked at a painful angle. The mice watched from underneath the back door and the child crept along the line of little things, sniffing, tasting every one.
The bang of the trap door falling was a hollow noise, airful like a bursting paper bag. The child leapt at it, but however much she jumped and clawed and panicked, she could not heave her way out of the house her mother had built for her.
In half an hour, she was calm again, resigned and hopeless, gazing up through the air holes at the blinding sky. There were the small sounds of scattering as the mother covered up the door with earth.
Marie threw her hands in front of her face, crying in her sleep like a dog, dreaming of small places and graves. The mother had a very nice bath, and scrubbed herself all over with Vim powder. When she was dry and clean as a skinned hare, the mother put on her dressing gown, as it seemed a waste of effort to don any more day clothes. As she towelled her hair, she smiled like a Buddha, for wasn’t her life gaining more control by the day? Another problem was hereby resolved, another thing ticked off her list, like the skirting boards which were now so shining . . . the mother looked along the floor line at the scuffed, filthy paintwork, and she lost her train of thought. Oh, yes. The grandmother had made her promise to feed the other child, but at least the smelly little sod would cease her incessant creeping about the place, giving the mother frights, letting Marie discover her.
But, thought the mother as she snagged a comb through her hair, the child had only really posed a difficulty because of the mice. They had stuck their pointed noses into everything, interfered. They had not minded their own business. They had taken the side of the other child, the wrong child, as if the nasty thing had been any of their concern. They had made the mother guilty; they pointed nose to tail, six-odd years and down the hall, all the way to the red-black stain on the dining room floor.
At this instant, the mother had a beautiful inspiration, and she jumped off the toilet pedestal, her hair half-tamed and half-mad. The mice were crowded outside the bathroom like fans at a football match, lurking on the stairs as if they were waiting to ask a question. The mother ran to the landing bookcase and grabbed a book at random, to use as a broom, for sweeping mice.
So it was that the mother, roaring with rage, drove a sea of mice down the stairs, waving a Motorists’ Encyclopaedia of the British Isles, shoving them off their paws and down the stairs. The mice, as ever, surged up and down and out of reach, streaming at last beneath the dining room door, to where it should have been safe. Only eight were left behind; slower moving or out of luck; seven of them had perished underneath her rampaging slippers, crunched and squashed, abandoned by their skins. They were, as things turned out, the lucky ones. The mother caught her breath, and then she plugged the gap beneath the door. She stopped it up with wooden dowel and Polyfilla and Sellotape and masking tape and duct tape and tin sheeting and rags soaked in glue and rags soaked in poison and copper wire and staples and six inch nails and she did try sewing, but it didn’t work.
And then, the mother hauled on her lungs and laughed like a big bad wolf, with her hands all hurt and blistered. When it was all done, the mother was so happy and so tired, that she fell into a blissful sleep in the hallway. This was how Marie discovered her, when she staggered from the parlour, tired and disoriented and wondering how it could possibly be night time again.
16
Mice
THAT DOOR WILL stay shut for two and a half years. For the moment, the mice are relieved, escaped to their carpeted homeland. Their little hearts are pounding terribly; they are tense and fragile as rusted springs. For a few minutes they pant, as their fear cools, and they cling to one another as they listen to the scrapes and thudding and muttered curses as the mother barricades the motorway beneath the door. Once, she catches her hand w
ith the swing of a hammer, and three times, she laughs out loud, mean as a crow.
The mice understand, by slow degrees; by seven o’clock, they know that they are entombed. For a minute, the barricading noises pause and the mice all creep forwards on the claws of their feet, retching at the reeks of woodfiller and glue, but then the mother returns, dumping a sewing basket on the floor. The mice all scatter backwards like spilt pins as the mother tries to stitch the door shut with cotton and embroidery thread. She can’t poke the holes through, not even with a big curved bodkin, but she tries and tries, with her fingers pricked and spreading blood on the woodwork. Eventually, she concedes defeat, and it all goes quiet.
The door has become a wall. The mice stare at it as though it might melt beneath their staring, thick with painty drips and dirty in the panelled corners. The door looks back at them, the house looks back at them, affronted already by the layers that block its swing-gap, that stuff it like a nose.
Marie comes past outside, grizzling like a toddler. She is wide awake and confused; wanting her breakfast, thinking it must be morning as she slept so long.
But the worst disaster is this: they have lost their childling, lost their only beautiful giant, the one they were raised from their nests to revere. The mice troop to the Christmas tree and they climb the branches to look out of the window at the sweating garden, nauseous with the heat. From the lawn it would have made a pretty sight, a treeful of mice and tiny coloured lights, but the childling is beneath the soil, and the only thing to see is the cherry tree, and heaven knows what that understands of the world.
The Knife Drawer Page 6
