by Jackie Kay
The rain has started down again. It has another voice. It is coming through the window, running along the edge of the window sill, blindly trying to find a river. I shut the window as tight as I can. The street is dark even though it can’t be too late. The rain has changed the colour of the street and the time of the street. Everything outside looks dated, old-fashioned. I could go out and bump into somebody from the past, hurrying along with a hood up. On days like this when I was a girl, we could always bake, my mother and I. Light sponge. Shortcrust pastry, apple pie. Gooseberry crumble. Fairy cakes. Scones, plain and fruit. Fudge. Tablet.
I remember rubbing the butter into the flour for ages between my fingers and thumb. Let in as much air as you can. Dropping the flour through the sieve from a very great height. The rules of baking to my mother were more cherished than morals. There was something comforting about them. What advice would she give me now? I can imagine her: floury hands, pinnie tied behind her waist, hair tied back. But I can’t imagine what she would say to me now. I can’t hear a word.
At first, when I married Joss I became less close to my mother. I didn’t want her to get too near. I visited her, took Colman up. She hardly saw Joss. He was on the road, I’d explain, always doing gigs to make ends meet. My mother didn’t approve. Why can’t he get a proper job? she’d say. This is no life for you. One time, out of the blue, my mother announced to us that she wanted to come down to London to visit us for a change. Colman was eight or so. I was so tense I couldn’t sit down. I cleaned everywhere: behind the bathroom pipes, skirting boards, underneath things. I washed doors and walls. I polished until my battered wood weakly smiled. I laid out a high tea: a cured ham, glistening with honey, waiting to be sliced, cheese, fresh soft bread, firm tomatoes, cakes. All ready and waiting. Then I paced the living room staring out into my street, waiting to see the dark green bonnet of Joss’s Austin turn the corner. Colman paced with me, all excited.
Years of living in Scotland had made my mother believe she was Scottish. She spoke with a weird accent, quaint and unauthentic, the way you might expect a woman on a tin of shortbread to speak if she came to life. She said Aye a lot. And dinny. And tatties. Only she pronounced tatties ‘tauties’. Put the tauties on to boil, she’d say.
She pats Colman’s hair and says, ‘My, my, what a thick head of hair. I think this hair could do with shearing.’ Which immediately makes me irritated. Joss looks strange standing next to my mother. I hadn’t realized I felt at all nervous about Joss till now. She is standing at too close a range. Firing range. I can have no privacy with my mother in my house. I feel as if the doors are open and the wind is coming in. Joss goes and puts the kettle on for tea. ‘Lovely to have you here,’ I say, putting my arm round her shoulder and squeezing her in an attempt to reassure myself. I look into her hair. She’s had it fresh done to come to see us. Blow dried. She doesn’t bother with rinses or dyes any more. Her hair is a light blonde grey.
When I was a teenager my mother got alopecia. It was a nightmare. We’d walk down the street and my mother would say, ‘Millicent, is my bald patch showing?’ holding her hand anxiously up to the side of her head on a windy day. She’d carefully comb her hair to cover her pale bald patch, but the wind could threaten everything. Then it would suddenly appear, flat, white flesh, vulnerable, standing out in amongst all that thick brown hair. It made me love her intensely and despise her. Alopecia. It is a strange word; a dreaded word and a beautiful one. Like the name of a rare flower, alopecia. No signs of it now. It must have affected me deeply because I still have sly peeps despite the distance of all the years. The terrible intimacy of mothers and daughters. I notice dandruff on her shoulders and brush it off. The flakes of dandruff look quite unnaturally large.
Joss shows me a side to my mother I never knew existed. New people can do that. People outside your family can reveal another person, brightly lit, gleaming underneath all the tweed she’s worn for years. I would never have dreamt that my mother would dance round my living room with my husband, that she would have a go on his trumpet, that she’d stay up late talking about how jealous a man my father was. My weak placid father. I actually found my mother interesting when listening to her conversations with Joss. I heard stories I’d never heard before; or I heard stories I’d heard many times, but now suddenly they were entertaining, fascinating. I couldn’t understand it. Had I done her a disservice all these years? Or do all children do that to their parents?
On one of my mother’s visits, Joss had a terrible flu and was quite feverish with it. My mother kept insisting on calling the doctor. She believed in illness like some people believe in God. She was fervent, righteous, informed. He’ll need antibiotics. It could be one of those killer foreign flus. You’ve heard about them. The China flu. They come in on the winds from abroad. There was a programme about it on the television. Unless you see your doctor straight away, Millicent, it goes for you. It can take your life. Why in heaven’s name won’t you call a doctor in? I wanted her to go, just leave me to tend him. Joss would never see a doctor. One doctor’s visit could ruin our lives. Even when he was dying Joss didn’t want a doctor.
My mother wanted to go into our room, to turn it into one of the dark sweet rooms of childhood illness. Close the curtains. Change the sheets. Wipe his brow every little while with a cold flannel. Hold his hand. Listen to his fever talk. But I wouldn’t let her in. I kept telling her Joss is a very private person. ‘He doesn’t seem that private to me,’ she’d say, back to her old ways of contradicting everything I say.
My mother was always saying, ‘You never know what goes on behind those four walls. Families have their own dark secrets. You just don’t know.’ Or she’d say, ‘Each to their own. Who am I to judge?’ Or, ‘It’s their private business. Keep your nose out of it.’ Would she say that now, if she were alive? Would she come to my defence and stand up for me? Would she push them aside and say, ‘Leave her alone.’ Or would she too have talked to the press, along with the old school friends, the boys in the bands, our neighbours, our neighbours’ neighbours. The newsagent. The barber. The funeral director. Our own son. No, she wouldn’t. My mother would have stood firm. Wouldn’t she? She would. She would have stood firm.
When I look up I find I am in Colman’s room. I don’t remember coming in here. But I’m sitting on his low single bed with an old bottle in my hand. An old green glass bottle. Colman used to enjoy digging these up by the sea. There’s a photograph of Colman and Pickles on his sideboard. Colman’s fifteen or so, wearing an Afghan coat with his hair big and wild looking. I can’t remember that girl’s real name. She was just Pickles because she loved everything pickled. Gherkins, onions, beetroot, cabbage. I wonder where Pickles is now. I liked her. She was good for Colman. If Pickles were around now, Colman wouldn’t be doing this book. I start packing all the stuff in his room away. I’ve been meaning to do it for years. The old comics, books, rocks, shells, bottles, boots, photos, records. Dark side of the moon. He played that every day for one whole summer up here. I pack it all away. It feels as if he has died as well.
When I’m done packing the small room is so bare it hurts. The bare bulb is a single tear. The bare bed needs someone from a fairytale to come and fall deeply asleep for years. I go outside and look back at the old cottage. It is crouched slightly to one side, defensive, waiting. I am going to the village to stock up. The air is crisp and has a bite at the back of its long throat. The sky is bloodless and pale. Drained of all pity. Drained of all passion. The sky cannot weep today. The sea is dark and wild. It is so loud I can hear it inside my own head. One thrashing after another like an interrogation. I go into Bruce Savage’s butcher shop. I ask for four square sausage. Two slices of black pudding. Half a pound of mince. Two lamb chops. One beef steak. I will freeze some of the meat. The butcher has heard the news. He tells me he is sorry as his big hands place the square sausages in tracing paper and wraps them carefully. His fat sausage fingers are all soft.
He wants to know what Joss died of
. Butchers do not shy away from grisly details. He wants the meat. He hopes it wasn’t painful. This is a question not a statement. His voice goes up at the end and he is waiting. He sharpens his big butcher’s knife. His eyes blink with sympathy; his face red as raw steak. ‘Yes,’ I tell him. ‘It was so painful I am now afraid of death. I don’t believe in painless deaths now,’ I tell him. ‘People lie about death, just like they lie about birth. They know it’s the two things we’ve all got to go through, so they lie. They say Fell Asleep. It’s not like that.’ I am about to go on, but I feel Bruce’s eyes on me. I look deep into them and they are appalled. It seems as if his very soul is quaking. ‘Could be any of us at any moment,’ Bruce the son says. I ask after his father. He tells me his father is poorly and has become a vegetarian. ‘What about you?’ I say. ‘Are you a vegetarian?’ ‘No, I like my meat,’ Bruce the son tells me. ‘I mean, come on,’ he says with great bravado, ‘I’m a meat man.’ I like my meat too, I tell him, taking the bag from over the counter. But in moderation. You have to watch your heart. Bruce nods and laughs, he thumps his bloodstained apron with his fist, ‘Oh, aye,’ he says, ‘you’ve got to watch the old heart. You’ve only got the one ticker.’
I leave the Savage shop with my meat in a plastic bag. I feel it, all soft and squidgy, against my leg. I walk up the main street with the sea behind me. The Lair bus stops and a man gets off who looks the double of Joss. I feel myself go weak. For a split second, I tell myself my nightmare is over. Joss is back. Joss is alive. I follow him round the corner. He turns for a moment and looks through me. He has the wrong nose. I feel sick with disappointment. I sit down at the bus stop seat and stare at the hills in the distance. If Joss hadn’t died. If I had died first. The bus for Kepper arrives and I consider getting on it, then getting on another bus, and another till I am finally someplace I have never heard of. I summon up every bit of strength in me and make myself go and get my vegetables. I don’t know how I am managing to do this. I don’t know why I am still alive. If I had died first I wouldn’t be going through all this. What does Joss care? The dead don’t care, do they? I hate Joss.
Jean, in the fruit and vegetable shop, has one of those faces that understands everything. Nothing could shock her. She has never had an enemy. I could sit and tell my whole life to those great grey eyes of hers. I’m sure they would fill. When she smiles, wrinkles crease and dance around her grey eyes. She packs my messages carefully, as if she is tending to me. Heavy things at the bottom. Light at the top. The grapes are delicately placed on last. Even her hands look kind. She rearranges a few brown paper bags carefully. ‘There you are, Mrs Moody.’ That is the most she ever says. On days like these, I could die for that one sentence. There is something about the way she says it. Something intimate and fine. ‘There you are, Mrs Moody.’
I walk back up the hill to Torr slowly, one bag in each hand to balance me. Everything is moving in the wind. The hedges, the trees, the roses. Everything is battling to stay steady, to keep balanced. The wind is in front of me pushing me back all the time. I could be walking through treacle for all the progress I am making. I stop by Rose Cottage and take a break. Not far to go now. When I get in I’ll have a cup of tea and wait for the locksmith to come.
Mr Barton Todd arrives at 3.30. I have looked at the strange face of the clock often today. He is punctual, as I knew he would be. You can tell punctual people by just looking at their punctual faces. They are usually sharper featured, punctual people. Joss was never punctual. He liked people waiting for him. When we were courting he kept me waiting outside Boots for thirty minutes. I thought he’d given me a dizzy. I was close to tears when he finally arrived claiming the bus driver had had an epileptic fit.
Mr Barton Todd is a tall lanky man, with stooping shoulders and a grey work coat. His hair is grey too and falls down over his face. He keeps pushing it backwards. His hands are locksmith’s hands – solid brass knuckles. Nails short and well filed. Old. Right now he is cutting a hole in my wooden door, knocking one out with his tools. I feel safe for the first time in weeks. I feel like asking him to stay on and tend to me, my doors and my garden. Make me shutters. Fit a chain on the front lock. I tell myself I am better already. I have food for days. I have a new lock and key. I have window locks. I have always felt perfectly ordinary, but now asking Mr Barton Todd how much shutters would cost, I feel different. Window locks, shutters. Chains. This is Torr. Torr is still a relatively safe fishing village. Some people still leave their doors open. But Mr Barton Todd says, ‘Better safe than sorry,’ which seems a fitting maxim for a locksmith. ‘There’s more crime here now than there used to be,’ he tells me. ‘You never know the minute.’
Torr is not the same Torr any more. Since the letters came. It is a new place, with a new Chubb and Yale. It is familiar the way a memory is familiar, and changed each time like a memory too. Utterly changed. The size of the rooms are different today. Much smaller. The kitchen shelves are higher. The kettle’s whistle is much shriller. The flush in the bathroom is so loud it makes me jump every time I flush it. The mirrors in the cottage make me look different too. I barely recognize myself. I am thinner. Most people either take off weight or put it on after a death. I am definitely a lot thinner. All that dieting and now here I am, suddenly gaunt on grief. The tall lamp in the living room looks fragile with its long fringes. Joss’s armchair still imitates the shape of Joss’s body, waiting for him to return, like Greyfriars Bobby. There’s an empty vase on the table by the window. We’d usually fill it with scabious, cornflowers, campions. I should have brought some flowers.
This morning before I opened that second letter, I found an old note in Joss’s handwriting. Lots of little jobs. Ring Harry. Chase accountant. Ring Big Red. Car. Each job done had one of Joss’s daft little left-handed ticks by it. The little ticks moved me. One instruction puzzled me. Write EM. I can’t think who EM is. All day, I’ve been trying to think who EM can be. It has an asterisk beside it but no tick. I fold the little list away and put it in my purse. It could be a lock of hair. I would like to have a lock of Joss’s black curly hair. Joss had beautiful thick black hair. I wonder if it was always that thick, his hair.
I realize there is so much I don’t know about Joss. She asks me to tell her all about his childhood. I don’t know anything about his childhood. I know that his name was Josephine Moore. It took him a long time to tell me even that. It came out one day quite casually when we were watching a programme on Josephine Baker adopting a ‘rainbow tribe’ of children. ‘That was my name,’ Joss said quietly. What was? I said. I didn’t have a clue what he was talking about. ‘Josephine. My mother called me Josephine after her sister.’ I was so surprised that time, I couldn’t say much. I remember finding it slightly distasteful, the idea of Joss having another name. If I am honest, perhaps I found it frightening too. It unsettled me, the idea that Joss had not always been Joss, that Joss Moody had once been Josephine Moore. Sometimes, later on, I’d ask him what it was like. But whenever the name Josephine Moore came up, he’d say, ‘Leave her alone,’ as if she was somebody else. He always spoke about her in the third person. She was his third person. But I don’t really know anything about Josephine Moore. I don’t really know anything at all. I can’t properly imagine even what she looked like. I can’t imagine her hair, how she would have worn her hair. I don’t want to.
It is getting dark now outside. Solemn and deep and secretive. When I come here the quality of the dark takes a bit of getting used to. The weight and the depth of the country dark. It is so absolute, so uncompromising. When I go outside to stare into the dark, it feels almost final. Even the stars don’t change the deep dark of the hedges, the small lanes, the sudden corners. I close the curtains. The sea is out there getting up to no good. I light a fire, then put a newspaper over the front of it, holding on tightly to each side of the wall till I see the newspaper dip.
Death even for the dead is slow. I can feel Joss around this room with the fire going strong. He pulls and then lets
go, pulls and lets go. Slack one minute, tight the next. I see his whole stomach suck in all the air then let it out again. When his stomach dips in like that, when he goes hollow, I rub the back of his hand until he lets his breath out again. I can see the dead Joss quite clearly now. He is quite different to the living one. He looked unlike himself when he was dying. Unlike the man I married. I don’t know who he looked like. Maybe he looked more like her in the end. More like Josephine Moore.
What was she like, Josephine? Did she play hopscotch, marbles? Did she have friends? Was she close to her mother? Did she buy a 78 and rush home to play it? Did she climb trees? Did she play with dolls? Did she stand outside pubs playing jazz in the rain, tilting her head to listen? Did a stray dog pass by her and howl in the strange light of a paper moon? Was that the night she decided to change her whole life? I don’t want to think about her. Why am I thinking about her?
If he comes with her I will say one thing and that will be all. I didn’t think about it at all. Her letter says, with hindsight would you have done anything different? You don’t live in hindsight though, do you? Hindsight is a different light. It makes everything change shape. When Colman goes through our house, pointing hindsight’s big torch everywhere, he will find things in our garden that we never planted … One of the newspaper articles had the headline Living a lie. They found people who claimed to be Joss’s friends who said things like, ‘He fooled us completely.’ But it didn’t feel like that. I didn’t feel like I was living a lie. I felt like I was living a life. Hindsight is a lie.
The cherry blossom tree we planted for Colman’s first birthday waves behind the curtains. I noticed the roots of it today, clawing their way towards the house. The roots like long arthritic fingers, crooked and damaged. I might have to get it dug up before it topples the house. I check my brand new locks. Who would have ever thought that I’d be changing the locks to keep out my son?
