Solace of the Road

by Siobhan Dowd

  Miko was beside me like he used to be at the Home when I’d had an almighty smash-up. Cry all you like, Holly. Because when you stop crying the world will be a different place. A better place. Promise, Holly.

  But this time Miko was wrong. If I stopped crying, nothing would change. The light in the toilet would still be sick-green, and the girl in the mirror sick-green too. She looked at me, and suddenly I saw little Holly again, way back when in the sky house with the falling-down socks and the gold stars from school. A whistle blew and the train swerved and I hung onto the sink edge to stop from falling. Help, the girl in the mirror called to me. Help me. Somebody. Please. I put a hand out and touched her, and it was as if together we were being dragged back into the sky house, for real this time.

  The paint’s peeling. A bad smell is coming off the walls. I’m creeping along the hall towards the voices. Mammy and Denny, arguing again. I can hear Mam wailing, ‘You spent all our winnings, what more do you want?’ Up a level, then down, like the sound of the lifts, but coming from the kitchen. I stand at the doorway. Mam has egg and bacon going in the pan, shaking it round, perched up on the bar stool Denny’s got us from a skip. It’s like she’s too tired to stand. She has her see-through drink in one hand and the spatula in the other, and she’s wearing her black dressing gown and her salmon-pink slip and she’s scowling.

  ‘I’d rather a liquid dinner,’ Denny grumbles, knocking her arm.

  ‘Gerroff,’ Mam snaps. ‘I’ve gone and broken the yolk.’

  ‘Can’t stand it when the yolk’s broke, Bridge.’ Denny turns and looks at me. He raises his eyes to heaven. ‘She’s the worst cook ever to come out of County Cork. Isn’t she, H?’ That’s what he calls me now. Not Doll or Troll, just H. He pronounces it ‘Haitch’, the Irish way.

  ‘Go brush your teeth, Holl. Scram.’ That’s Mam speaking. She hands Denny a plate. ‘Get away, the pair of you. I’ve got to iron my blouse.’

  Iron my blouse. Iron my blouse. The train speeds up and Mam’s words whirl around with the wheels. Then Denny’s shouting. Money. Bitch. Liar. Out. A clapping sound, a chair falling. I’m in the sky-house bathroom now, hunched up over the sink, and I’m scared. The voices have never been this loud before. Never. I squeeze out the toothpaste but the tube’s gone flat and none comes out. So I take it through to Mam again, back up the hall. She’s in the lounge now, at the ironing, tottering on her high heels, doing the blouse, the one I like. It’s red with yellow embroidery on the collar and cuffs, and on the back there’s a dragon and at the front tiny buttons sweep from left to right. She’s jabbing the iron round and ignoring Denny, who’s still yelling. He stands with the plate askew and the chair’s fallen over with its legs in the air and the egg yolk on his plate oozes to the edge.

  ‘Mammy.’ They turn and stare at me. ‘The toothpaste’s gone.’ I hold out the tube.

  ‘Go squeeze it some more,’ Mam snaps. Then she laughs like a madwoman. ‘Straighten the old thinga-majig out. Go to the bottom, Holl, and work slowly up. Get to it.’

  She doubles over and Denny roars like we’re in a pantomime.

  ‘Jeez, Bridge,’ he wheezes. ‘Social services will get you, talking smut to your daughter like that.’

  They’re shrieking with laughter and I don’t know why.

  ‘Get lost, Holl. Bed now,’ Mam snorts.

  She’s telling me to go, so I do. I’m staggering out of the train toilet, back into the corridor. I’m at the open window, breathing the cold air, but I can still hear the voices from the sky house, rising and rising. The train loops and then another one comes bang up against us, flying lines of bright metal, and am I dead? No, I’m not. The lights of the other train whisk by, nearer, then further – we’re lurching like drunks, and there’s Mam’s face across the rails in a compartment in the other train. I can see her plainly now. She’s looking over my shoulder to something else she’s wanting more. And Denny’s beside her and they’re pointing, wavering, splitting their sides laughing, and the yolk’s dripping off the plate and I’m gripping the wig and then the last of the other train goes swoosh, and gone, they’re all gone.

  Forty

  Hurry, Hurry, Holly Hogan

  The train slowed and the sky house vanished. From somewhere down the corridor a guard’s voice called, ‘Have your tickets ready, please.’ I bolted back into the toilet. I stared in the mirror and the face I saw was chalk-white. I ran some hot water and dabbed it on. The reflection misted over and drops of water scuttled down the glass.

  ‘Mammy?’ I whispered. ‘That wasn’t you, was it?’

  The train swerved and braked.

  My face appeared through the mist, crooked in the water drops.

  I got a paper towel and cleaned the mirror. The breeze from the open window had skewed the wig so I put it straight. I saw the amber ring glinting as I smoothed the ash-blonde locks. Wrong. Mam’s face. She’s not like that. Not. Cross it out. I tried to scratch a cross on the mirror with the ring. But it didn’t work. Nothing I could do would send that memory-picture of Denny and Mam away to the place where forgotten things belong. I sat on the toilet seat and kneaded the ring.

  Take it, Holly. Keep it safe.

  My heart slowed down and I breathed. That was my mam’s voice. Not the other, mocking one. Safe. Safe. Somebody fiddled with the toilet door, but I didn’t care. Then the train stopped. It was silent. No doors slammed so I knew it wasn’t a station, just a stop in the middle of nowhere. I took the amber ring off and stared at the mark it left on my finger. They’d chop your finger off for a ring like that. I dropped it back into the front lizard pocket, safe. ‘There, Mam,’ I whispered, zipping it in. ‘It’s safe again.’

  A voice came over a speaker: ‘We will shortly be arriving at Fishguard Harbour. Please ensure you have all your belongings when leaving the train.’ With a groan the train started again. I picked up the lizard, opened the toilet door and looked out. People had gathered in the corridor, standing with cases and backpacks strewn around their feet. I stepped over a holdall to find a free bit of space and put the lizard down. The train speeded up, then slowed, and finally we jerked to a stop on a silent platform.

  A man put his arm out the window and released the outside handle. One by one we shuffled out. I was last. The air was cool to the cheek. Somewhere above my head came a mournful cry – a seagull who’d forgotten to go to sleep.

  You could smell the sea but you couldn’t hear it.

  Fishguard, I thought. Is this real? I drifted down the platform and nobody stopped me. Along a ramp. Around a corner. Down a corridor. I came to a queue to board the boat. That’s where every last one of us was heading. The boat. Every step brought us closer. Soon, I thought. We’ll be sailing away into a dream. Soon.

  Then I came bang up against a guard checking the tickets. I froze. Point to a woman with kids ahead of you, Trim’s voice told me. Say you’re with her. But there wasn’t any woman. The woman I’d seen with the small boy sleeping earlier was nowhere. Anyway, I didn’t look like a kid myself, not with the wig on. I was too grown up for that trick.

  ‘Ticket?’ said the guard.

  I looked at him like I didn’t understand.

  ‘Your ticket? Where is it?’

  I stared at him staring at me and thought, That’s it.

  ‘Your ticket, love. I – need – to – see – it,’ the guard said like I was stupid.

  Slowly I went to get the lizard off my shoulder. Maybe I could just open up all the compartments and pretend how I’d lost the ticket. Maybe – my hand groped my shoulder and the familiar strap wasn’t there. The lizard had gone. It wasn’t on the ground by my feet. It was nowhere.

  ‘My bag!’ I gasped. ‘It’s gone.’

  The guard sighed like he’d seen it all before. ‘Did you leave it on the train? Up on the rack, maybe?’

  ‘Must have.’ I was shaking.

  ‘Go on. Hurry back, love, before the train pulls out. Quick. We’re due to sail.’

  I nodded in a frenzy
, then turned round and ran back towards the station platform. Hurry, hurry, Holly Hogan. I was running, running, and I could see the lizard dangling from the stall on the Broadway and Fiona smiling. Before the road disappears. I reached the platform. The train still sat there like a sleeping dragon.

  I ran down past the carriages. Which one had I been in? I got to the last but one. That’s it, I thought. That’s the corridor where I left the lizard. That’s it—

  Then the lights in the carriages went out. Before you end up falling, falling …

  I didn’t want to get back on that dark train but I knew I had to. I stepped forward to open the door. But just as I did, the train shuddered, began to move and pulled out of the station, back into the night.

  I watched it go, lizard and all. My iPod, my pink-fur purse, my mobile with the charge gone, my SIM card, my lipstick and mirror, my toothbrush, my hairbrush. And in the special zip-up pocket at the front, Mam’s amber ring. I was Jane Eyre for sure now. My trunk had gone off with the carriage. I’d lost the jewels. Just like her, I had nothing and nobody left.

  Forty-one

  The Harbour

  I stood for a long time on that platform, with Miko’s road-dust song crooning in my head. Hurry, hurry … but it was too late.

  Dark, alone, no lizard.

  Minutes passed, then half an hour. I don’t know. Eventually I slipped away, back down the ramp. The guard had gone. I saw a big boat, lit up with tiers of decks, pulling out without me. I might as well have been a ghost, thin and dark and quiet in my trainers. I edged along the walls so nobody would see me. But it was deserted. I didn’t know where I was going in the dark. I passed a checkpoint with nobody in it and then lanes with no cars. I followed a path by a roadside and sat on a bit of smooth ground that faced out to sea. Overhead, a half-moon came out, all crooked, like it was ready to tumble out of the sky.

  Time went by.

  Light crept in.

  The sea had no waves. Colours came. Pink, green, red and orange footballs were bobbing in the water. I was back down in Devon with Miko by the harbour front.

  ‘What are they, Miko?’ I was asking. ‘The things like balls, floating?’

  ‘They’re buoys.’

  ‘Boys? Like Trim?’

  ‘No. Buoys. B-U-O-Y-S. They’re to tie up your boat.’

  I frowned. ‘Why don’t they float out to sea?’

  Miko laughed. ‘They’re tied down with chains. And an anchor, I guess.’

  ‘A bit like me, Miko.’

  ‘Yeah. A bit like you, a bit like me. Maybe we need those chains, people like us, Holly.’

  ‘Nah, we don’t, Miko. We don’t need chains. We need freedom.’

  The buoys bobbed like mirages on the dark, quiet water. They reminded me of the blood-orange sun hovering over the Welsh hill that I’d seen on the motorbike. Then Grace walked towards me, her hips swinging, turning the pier into a catwalk. I smiled but the picture faded. I stared down at my knees and hugged them because they were warm and real. I drifted.

  Daylight got stronger. There were houses on a green cliff and sheds and engine noise. I looked at the ground beneath me. I was sitting on the edge of a mosaic which was labelled:

  THE FRENCH INVASION AT FISHGUARD 1797

  It showed men and boats and muddled arms, and I was staring at one man hauling another from a boat with a pole. Then I realized he wasn’t hauling the man in, but skewering him with a spear.

  I stood up, dizzy. In my mind, the spear dripped not with blood, but egg yolk. Can’t stand it when the yolk’s broke, Bridge. I staggered away down the thin strip of causeway like I was drunk.

  Holly Hogan, I said to myself. Get a grip.

  I pinched the skin on my wrist hard.

  I got to the end of the causeway and looked out at the sea. Morning came on strong and the sun came up from behind and the sea sparkled.

  Holly, keep your nose pointed forward.

  Then I saw a dark blob out to sea. And as it got closer, it turned into the boat, returning like an old friend. Gulls wheeled around it. It docked. The harbour came alive. Cars drove off from the hold of the boat. Then new cars arrived, waiting to board. They drove into six long lanes. Most were for cars, but one was for lorries. I stood to the side, watching.

  You are off to Ireland under your own steam.

  I walked nearer the cars. Seabirds were hopping on the rocks and seaweed. The light was dazzling. Car radios played, posh classical stuff all mixed up with easy listening. Some people got out and picnicked on the harbour-side, or bought drinks, chatted, walked around. Some went to the toilet block. Some stayed in their cars, waiting.

  A sign said the boat was sailing again at 9.00.

  By 8.15 the lanes were nearly full. Car doors opened and shut. People kept coming and going.

  And that’s when I had my plan.

  Forty-two

  The Hold

  So now I’m back to where we started.

  I’m breezing down the line of cars so nobody can guess I’m looking for a way to board the boat. I don’t care any more if they catch me or not. I’m Miss Devil-Take-a-Running-Jump herself. That’s when you’re most dangerous, and that was me that morning. Mad, bad Solace. Trim Trouble was nothing compared with me.

  Solace whispered in my ear. Go, Holl. You can do it.

  And when I saw the navy four-by-four, with the mogit coat-flappers yattering down the line and the doors wide open, it was like Fate calling my name. I was in and under the coats before you could say Christmas. When the mogit owners came back they didn’t see me. They were too busy arguing about con-ten-gin-seas. Even when the wig slipped off, my luck held and the man at the ticket booth saw nothing either. And then it was clatter-bang up the ramp, and voices, bells, doors slamming, and even though I was under the coats I could feel the low-slung pipes and somewhere hot and deep an engine turning.

  But then the owners got out and locked me in. All doors at once. It was like mean steel fingers around my neck, cutting off the air. And soon the boat lurched and we were sailing. Sailing into a bad, dark dream. And the white dividers of the road flew off in all directions and the road dust hit my eyes and the journey went in on itself so that the beginning met the end with the long road falling out from in between, disappearing like Miko warned it would. And the wig had fallen off and I was plain old Holly Hogan and it was the bowels of hell.

  Penned in, trapped.

  I pounded the window but nobody came.

  Let.

  Me.

  Out.

  I was back in the secure unit, the first time they locked me in. I pounded the door then and nobody came. Cry all you like, sunshine. The door stays shut till morning. I tore my blankets off the bed, I turned the bed upside down, I lay on the floor and kicked the wall and screamed like my skull would burst. And drawers started opening in my brain, drawers I hadn’t opened in years, and I was slamming them shut again but bits of memory kept coming, a voice here, a scream there. I was so scared I was pulling out my own hair. Please. Let me out.

  The engine rumbled like a beast snarling in its sleep.

  Now I gave up the pounding. I was flat out, my cheek against the window, staring at the dim lighting, car on car, lines of bumpers, empty glass, drab colours. I lay back and stared at the green and cream flecks on the ceiling and a big blank hole opened in my head. Darkness rushed in.

  Mammy. Where did you go, Mammy? Why did you leave me?

  The boat rolled. All around drawers slid open, spilling what was inside, and I couldn’t stop them. I didn’t want to see, but it was too late, I had. There they were. The three little figurines, Mammy, Denny and little Holly Hogan. We were locked together in the sky house, caught in that moment for all time, like the insect in the amber resin of the ring.

  Forty-three

  In the Sky House

  Sweet dreams are made of this …. the woman’s voice comes from the stereo speakers. Mam’s laughing, clamping down the iron on her red embroidered blouse. Denny’s laughi
ng too and I’m staring, blinking, wondering why they’re mocking me.

  ‘Jeez, Bridge,’ Denny yodels. ‘Priceless.’

  ‘Scoot, Holl,’ Mam says. She brandishes the iron. ‘Before I melt your face. Scram.’

  I creep out to the bathroom, holding the scrunched-up toothpaste tube. I’ve got my bottom teeth up over my top lip, biting. I wait. It’s silent.

  Then.

  ‘Give me the bloody money, Bridge. Give it over.’ Denny, roaring. A plate clatters, a knife and fork. I don’t want to move but Mammy needs me. My feet are taking me back through to the lounge. The plate’s face up on the floor. The egg yolk’s set like plastic. The ironing board is over on its side, its steel leg prodding the air. Who am I to disagree? goes the song.

  ‘The whore money,’ Denny raves. ‘I know you’ve it hidden somewhere.’

  It’s the money Mam and I are saving to go to Ireland he’s talking about. Sometimes Mam puts it in the breakfast cereal. Or in a saucepan in the cupboard. Or down her tall leather boots.

  ‘I’ve none left,’ she snaps. ‘None.’

  ‘Liar.’

  Now Denny’s got her up against the wall, pinned by the shoulders.

  ‘Let Mammy go,’ I shout.

  Mam’s wriggling and shoving. She has the hot iron in her hand and lands it on his arm. Denny howls. ‘Liar yourself,’ she shouts. ‘Thief!’

  ‘Bitch.’ He wrenches the iron from her hand and slaps her cheek. ‘It’s your face I’ll melt,’ he says. He puts the iron surface up close to her cheek.

  They are still. Everybody’s looking for something.

  ‘Please, Denny. Stop,’ Mam whispers.

  ‘I’ll melt it, Bridge,’ he hisses. ‘I’ll turn your face to broken yolk. I will.’

  ‘Denny. Please.’

  ‘It’s in the boot, Denny,’ I squeak.

  But I don’t exist. He’s eyeball to eyeball with her, his hip jutted into her stomach like she’s plasticine.

  ‘The money’s in Mam’s boot,’ I yell.