by Fiona Gibson
‘Was that your boyfriend?’
‘No, Midge, he’s just…someone I know.’ She’s dragged an enormous terra-cotta plant pot across her back lawn. Balancing on it enables her to quiz me over the fence.
‘He looked cross,’ she adds.
‘He wasn’t cross. He’s just a bit serious.’
‘Serious boyfriend,’ she cries triumphantly.
‘He’s my pupil, Midge.’
‘I saw you kissing him.’
‘I didn’t! Well, I might have, but only on the cheek.’
‘That’s still kissing,’ she retorts.
‘Yes, the kind of kiss mums give to show they love you. Doesn’t your mum kiss you?’
Midge blows away the wisp of hair that’s drifting across her face. ‘Of course,’ she says firmly. ‘All mums do that.’
Mum was a kisser, a holder of hands, a warm arm around my shoulders that felt as light as chiffon. Occasionally, though, there would be no kiss, no ‘How was your day?’ when I came home from school. The house would feel cooler and smell slightly stale, the way it does when you come back from holiday.
I’d head upstairs to find Mum in bed, the rumple of blankets suggesting that she’d lain there all day. She looked lazy, disheveled. She’d flick through women’s magazines—the kind filled with patterns for crocheted shoulder bags, or little bonnets to keep boiled eggs warm—and glance up at me as if I were a hospital visitor who showed up too often.
Dad once roared, ‘She’s not as perfect as you think!’ which confused me because a person either was perfect or they weren’t. I knew she took tablets—pale yellow pellets—although I couldn’t figure out what for, and she wouldn’t tell me. ‘They’re for when I’m not feeling good,’ was all she would say.
I once heard her sobbing fervently upstairs. I crept into her bedroom, terrified of what I might find. I didn’t want her to be like this. I wanted my warm, capable mum back—the mum who took me to Dino’s and let me choose new sheet music at Grieves and Aitken.
She was perched on the edge of the bed, trembling and glossy with sweat. No one cooked dinner that night. Charlie and I went out for chips and hung about at the end of our road, wondering when it might be safe to come home. ‘What’s wrong with her?’ I asked him.
‘I think it’s some nerve thing women get.’
‘Will I get it?’ I asked anxiously.
‘Bound to. You’re just like her. That’s why you’re her favorite.’
‘I’m not!’ I protested.
‘Don’t deny it,’ he said, screwing up his chip wrapper and kicking it into the path of an oncoming car. His handsome face looked twisted, not like my brother at all. And he was wrong about Mum, I just knew it; Dad was the problem, not some mysterious fault with her nerves. If she’d married an ordinary man—with an office job, and family photos cluttering his desk—she’d be happy now. She wouldn’t be shivering on an unmade bed.
‘It’s okay,’ Charlie said airily. ‘I know it’s not your fault.’
‘You’re talking crap,’ I snapped.
‘And you’re full of it.’ He flicked a strand of damp hair out of my eyes.
I managed a smile. ‘Think it’s safe to go home now?’
‘It had better be,’ he said. ‘I’m still famished.’
‘Mum’s come off her tablets,’ Dad told us later. I didn’t understand why this would make her sweaty and shaky and not want us near her. I thought tablets were supposed to make people better.
Mostly, though, Mum took her pills obediently and seemed to like being around me. After my flute lesson on Saturdays we’d often go shopping to the covered arcade, spinning out our time together. Elders’ perfume hall had a bigger makeup selection but Mum preferred the arcade’s old-fashioned chemists filled with sparkling bottles of scent. ‘Let’s have some girl time,’ she’d say, and I’d begun to realize what Charlie had meant. It wasn’t that she preferred me; just that we got along. We shared jokes, secrets, a liking for lounging in cafés and testing lipsticks on the backs of our hands. I felt lucky, as we strolled around town, just being her daughter—being me.
One Saturday morning Mum and Dad had an argument about how much she’d been spending, even though she only seemed to buy herself the occasional lipstick or pair of tights. ‘You need to face up to reality,’ Dad bellowed. ‘You can’t have everything you want.’
‘I don’t want everything,’ she protested, her voice wavering as if caught in a gale.
‘Why was Dad cross?’ I asked as we hurried through town to Mrs Bones’s flat. The argument had made us late for my lesson.
‘Just silly grown-up stuff,’ Mum said, squeezing my hand. I wanted to ask, ‘Are you getting divorced?’ but didn’t have the nerve. I’d heard that Lynette’s mum was going to divorce her dad when he came out of prison. She’d started going out with the man who’d fixed loose bits of wood in her garden fence.
Dad didn’t love Mum, I was certain of that. For one thing, he never looked at her, at least not properly, the way I did. He must have been the only man alive who hadn’t noticed how lovely she was. It would be embarrassing, if they got divorced—Lynette had been teased at school about the fence man—but I was confident that I’d cope admirably. I imagined overhearing her talking on the phone, saying, ‘Stella’s been a pillar of strength. I don’t know how I’d have got through this without her.’
Mum tugged me by the arm as we hurried along the path and into Mrs Bones’s building. She ran up the stairs ahead of me and rapped on the door. ‘Must hurry back,’ she said. ‘I’ve promised to help Dad with his accounts.’ During their squabble I’d heard Dad mention some scary-sounding person called the Tax Man, and imagined a person with fierce-looking eyebrows and a sharp-cornered briefcase.
Mrs Bones was standing there, waiting for me to come in. I glanced at Mum. Her eyes, I noticed, were pink-rimmed and sore looking. She was wearing Jean Patou perfume, which Dad bought her every Christmas and birthday, and an aging shift dress in a color she called ocher (Mum never used ordinary words for colors). Mrs Bones cleared her throat and as I started to follow her inside, Mum clasped my hand. ‘Bye, darling,’ she said. She kissed my forehead, then turned and ran, her sling-backs smacking against the cold stone stairs and the smell of Jean Patou hanging in the air.
Toward the end of my lesson Mrs Bones said, ‘I think you have a future in music, Stella. You should discuss it with your mother, when you’re older. You’re what, twelve now?’
I nodded. She told me the name of the college in London where she’d studied. She described its courtyard—a leafy oasis in the middle of the city—and said, ‘You’d have a wonderful time there. You have the talent to make it happen.’
I still wore a Snoopy vest and spent my pocket money on Black Jacks and Fruit Salad Chews but the thought of being grown up, and living in London, made my insides fizzle like sherbet. I didn’t want to wait until I was older to talk it over with Mum. I kept glancing at Mrs Bones’s clock on the mantelpiece—a gold-rimmed face trapped in a glass dome—desperate for the hour to be over and Mum to collect me so I could tell her what Mrs Bones had said. I was an ordinary-looking kid with teeth that looked too big for my mouth. But I didn’t feel ordinary that day.
‘It’s not like your mum to be late,’ Mrs Bones said as I packed away my flute. ‘Perhaps she’s caught up in traffic.’
‘Mum doesn’t drive,’ I reminded her.
Mrs Bones frowned, then checked her watch and the clock, as if one of them might be tricking her. ‘I have another pupil in twenty minutes,’ she added.
‘I’ll wait for Mum outside.’
‘Don’t be silly,’ Mrs Bones said gently. ‘I’ll make us some tea.’
We couldn’t call Mum as our phone had been cut off. Mum had explained, ‘It’s just a fault on the line, a man will soon come to fix it,’ but I knew phones stopped working when you didn’t pay bills. That had happened to Lynette’s when her dad went to prison. I nibbled Mrs Bones’s shortbread and drank her salmon-
colored tea, watching the carriage clock’s rotating gold balls.
‘Perhaps she’s forgotten,’ Mrs Bones said, peering out of the window that overlooked the flats’ communal garden.
‘Maybe,’ I replied, although I knew she wouldn’t forget. I stared out at the lazily shifting clouds, willing her to come.
There was a rap at the door. I leaped up from the chair, slopping hot tea onto my knee. I reached the front door ahead of Mrs Bones.
Elona stood there. She lived in the upstairs part of the house next to ours, and came from Czechoslovakia. I was wary of her clipped accent and startling green eyes. ‘I’m taking you home,’ she announced, grabbing my hand and gripping it firmly. Hers was chilled, on a warm summer’s morning.
‘Why?’ I asked. ‘Where’s Mum? What’s happened?’
‘Just come with me,’ she murmured. Mrs Bones handed me my flute case, which I tucked under my arm. I could feel tea trickling down my legs. Elona was wearing a brown crocheted sweater that was starting to unravel at the neck.
All the way downstairs she wouldn’t talk or even look at me. I felt sick, filled with shortbread and fear. Elona grasped my hand with her papery fingers. ‘Something terrible’s happened, my darling,’ she said as we stepped outside. I was really scared then. Elona usually called me Stilla, not my darling.
‘What?’ I whispered.
‘Your mother has been knocked over.’
I’d known something like that would happen. Her skinny legs weren’t built for rushing about. She’d been so worried about the Tax Man that she’d tripped over and broken something. ‘Is she in hospital?’ I asked as dread flooded over my stomach and chest. I pictured Mum’s beautiful face, pallid without its customary makeup, on a white hospital pillow.
Elona stopped on Mrs Bones’s path and pulled me to her bony chest. Her necklace of cloudy glass beads pressed into my cheek.
Ordinary things went on around us. Dogs barked, cars pulled into driveways, a yellow bus stopped at the bus stop. ‘No,’ I screamed, ‘no, you’re lying!’
I pushed Elona away and started to run. Kids hurtled along the pavement on bikes, madly ringing their bells. The clouds were shifting too quickly, swilling above my head. Elona caught up with me at the gate, and I dissolved into the scratchy wool of her sweater.
I never got the chance to tell Mum about the exciting things Mrs Bones had said.
7
Goulash
Brown mutton in a casserole and remove from dish. Soften onions and peppers, add 1 oz flour and cook for a minute. Put mutton back into dish with 1 tin tomatoes, 1 pint beef stock and bouquet garni. Cook in moderate oven for two and a half hours. Garnish with chopped parsley and a swirl of sour cream.
Silverdawn Cottage is perched at the farthest tip of Penjoy Point. It looks stranded out there, with its drooping roof and precarious chimneys, as if a particularly violent gust might send it toppling over the cliff. ‘How long are we staying?’ Charlie asks from the passenger seat, as he always does.
The potholed lane twists its way down to the point. ‘Only a night,’ I say, although he knows this. Charlie mimes winding a noose around his neck. I’m glad I cajoled him into coming, relieved that I’m not on my own here.
The Silverdawn Cottage sign is peeling so badly it’s barely legible. Beneath it, on another hastily constructed wooden sign, Dad has painted: NO CALLERS NO TRESPASSERS DANGEROUS DOGS. While he’s made no visible improvements to the house, Dad has created a lush garden from the battered ground on which there once lurked just an ancient cracked bath and decaying hut. Turf, the more docile of Dad’s dogs, lies on the cobbled path, lapping at a hind paw.
It’s Dad’s partner, Maggie, who bustles out to greet us. ‘Here you are,’ she says, dispensing kisses on cheeks as if we’re terribly late and she’s been fearing for our safety. She leads us into the kitchen, patting her loosely curled auburn hair. Dad is sniffing the contents of a pot on the stove. ‘Lunch is nearly ready,’ he announces.
I think, Yes, Dad, we had a good journey, thanks.
‘Aren’t they looking well, Frankie?’ Maggie prompts him. ‘So good of you both to come.’
‘Happy birthday, Dad,’ I say.
‘Well, thank you,’ he says with a small chuckle. He seems truly astounded that anyone’s remembered the occasion, let alone made the effort to visit.
‘What’s cooking?’ Charlie asks.
‘Goulash. Not still vegetarian, are you?’
‘No, Dad,’ Charlie says. ‘I love goulash. It’s my favorite thing in the world.’
‘That’s good—can’t be doing with faddy eaters,’ Dad says, as if we’re seven years old and prone to spitting out peas. Surf, Turf ’s wayward brother, biffs hopefully around Dad’s ankles. The kitchen smells of gravy and wet fur. ‘Maggie was threatening to make her famous vegetable casserole,’ Dad adds.
‘I only offered, dear,’ Maggie says pleasantly.
‘Ah, Maggie’s vegetable casseroles,’ he teases. ‘One of the great mysteries of the modern world. What goes into them, dear?’
‘You know,’ she says, stacking the Café Crème tins on the kitchen table into a tidy pile. Dad still trims his recipes with an old-fashioned guillotine so they fit into the tins. Each tin is labeled with a white rectangular sticker on which he’s written a food category: Soufflés, Cold Desserts or, mysteriously, Sauces/Rescuing.
Maggie places his stack of tins on the top shelf of the dresser. Neither Charlie nor I is sure how they met. She just seemed to sneak into his life soon after he moved to Penjoy Point, to sort onionskin squares into orderly piles, ready for filing. He’s cared for—loved, I suppose—which makes me feel marginally less guilty about the unfavorable feelings that swill around in my head.
Dad dollops rice and goulash onto plates and pours on cream in a decorative spiral. He has already opened our present, dumping the barometer on the kitchen dresser without comment. He never changes. I don’t know why I keep expecting him to say, ‘I love this!’ or even, ‘Thanks.’ There’s a murky splash on the front of his navy-blue polo-necked sweater. He’s wearing rust-colored cords, which hang loosely like aging curtains, and a cygnet ring that pinches his middle finger.
Charlie pours the wine, looking like some long-limbed circus performer in the low-ceilinged room. We all take our places. Maggie has fixed herself a slice of withered quiche. ‘Your Dad’s always wanted a barometer,’ she says.
‘Have I?’ he asks through a mouthful of meat. He is impossible to buy for. He reckons he has everything he needs, and no room for things he doesn’t. And he’s right: the kitchen feels too full, like the parts of my house that are still cluttered with Alex’s possessions. The dresser’s shelves sag beneath chipped earthenware bowls and storage jars. The top shelf is strewn with cookbooks, all shedding their spines.
‘I thought you’d like an old-fashioned radio,’ I tell him, ‘but I found the barometer in the antiques market—’
‘Radios are distracting,’ Dad says, stirring more cream into his goulash, turning it beige.
‘And barometers aren’t,’ Maggie says brightly.
‘Because they don’t do anything,’ Dad adds. ‘Sure it’s working, Stella? It’s still pointing to stormy. It doesn’t look very stormy from where I’m sitting.’
‘It predicts the weather,’ I explain, ‘for the next twenty-four hours. It’s all to do with pressure.’
‘I see,’ Dad says.
I turn to Maggie so I don’t have to look at his face. He wants us to visit—complains that we don’t come to Cornwall often enough—then acts as if he wants us to leave. ‘Finished working for the year?’ I ask Maggie.
‘Yes, thankfully.’ Several years ago she bought the field behind Saltwinds Bay—a sweeping arc of ivory sand—and put up a sign inviting tourists to park on the grass. Dad assembled a hut in which she sits for eight hours a day, May until the end of September, nibbling quiche and taking the money. On Sundays she pays the local surfies to man the car park because, as she once poi
nted out, ‘Spending the whole summer in a shed can get a bit much.’
The kitchen table feels too big, even with me and Charlie helping to fill space. Maybe Dad intended to do lots of entertaining, to cram Silverdawn Cottage with the friends he’d make when he moved to the North Cornish coast. But Dad only has one friend that I know of—Harry Sowerbutt, the vet—and they meet for drinks at the Smuggle Inn.
After lunch we arrange ourselves in the cramped living room. It’s furnished with mismatched easy chairs, their floral patterns faded by the sun, and a towering bookshelf that dwarfs the room. Perched on top are the binoculars I bought for Dad’s last birthday. It’s a gusty afternoon, just tipped into October. The Monet calendar above the fireplace is still open at February. I have never seen a fire in the grate here, although occasionally Dad plugs in a small fan heater that sends out a stench of burning dust.
‘Charlie told me about Friday Zoo,’ I say. ‘That’s great news, Dad.’
‘Just a five-minute slot. One day’s filming a week.’ He talks as if this is quite ordinary.
‘That’s better than nothing.’
‘It’s live,’ Maggie says, handing out squares of peppery dark chocolate. ‘Never done live, have you, dear?’
‘Of course I have,’ Dad says quickly. ‘I had my own show—two shows—for nearly a decade, remember?’
‘Yes, dear,’ Maggie murmurs.
Frankie’s Favorites was taped, but I don’t remind him of that. ‘What will you be doing on the show?’ I ask, determined to make an effort. It’s quite exhausting. Charlie seems happy to sit mutely, sipping tea. ‘I’ll be cooking, of course,’ Dad says, as if there hasn’t been so much as a blip in his brilliant career.
Unshakable confidence. Sometimes I wish I could siphon off a little for myself. I’d demand that Alex come round to pick up the rest of his things, shock Robert with a kiss on the lips.
‘Take it, dear, you need feeding up,’ Maggie says, pressing the last square of chocolate into my palm. Detecting illicit foodstuff, Surf lunges for my lap, a scramble of barking and drool.
