by Fiona Gibson
‘I only helped her along. She’s a very talented girl.’
His eyebrows shoot up in delight, as if this is the first time anyone’s said something positive about his daughter.
Jojo and I head upstairs to tissue wrap her fairies (one fractured a leg during the previous move, and she’s keen to avoid further casualties). Midge’s weaponry, craft supplies and most of the girls’ toys have already been loaded into the van. Their clothes have been stuffed into clear plastic sacks, which Diane brought home from the bedding factory, and has piled up in the front garden like sandbags awaiting a flood.
Jojo places the fairies in a cardboard box, which we carry between us downstairs to the living room. Diane is rolling up the hand-tufted rug on the floor. Its randomly chosen colors are jarring; the purple patch, which I contributed, butts against crocus-yellow. There’s even a streak of burnt-orange. ‘Like it?’ she asks.
‘It’s lovely,’ I say, and in a bewildering way, it is.
‘Have it. Something to remember us by.’
‘No, I couldn’t. It’s taken you weeks to finish.’
‘It’s yours,’ she says firmly, tying it up with a pair of burgundy tights. ‘I always said your place could do with cheering up.’
‘Thanks, that’s so kind.’
‘It’s nothing,’ she blusters.
Outside George is trying to direct operations by telling the sprightlier of the brothers how to pack the van correctly. He keeps sighing and asking, ‘How did so much stuff fit into that tiny house? It’s like a bloody Tardis.’
‘Midge,’ Diane yells through to the kitchen, ‘have you peeled that tape off your bedroom carpet yet?’
No reply. I find her hunched at the kitchen table with the hamster cage on her lap. Her face is shining with tears. ‘Oh, Midge,’ I say, ‘it’s going to be okay. You’ll love being back with your dad. And you’ll have your dog back.’
‘Yeah,’ she whispers. ‘I’ll be great.’
I lift the cage onto the table, take her hand and lead her through to the living room. ‘Come and see your presents,’ I say.
For Jojo I’ve bought a sinister-looking fairy from the hardware shop. ‘She’s lovely,’ she gushes, planting a noisy kiss on splodgily painted lips.
Midge rips the tissue paper from her gift, exposing buff plastic, then the pull-down handle and numbered keys. ‘What is it?’ she asks.
‘It’s an adding machine. You tap out your numbers, pull the down the handle and your answer comes out on this roll of paper.’
‘Wow, how does it know?’
‘It just does.’
The girls jump into the van and sit next to George, who’s driving. Diane clambers in last and blows a kiss through the open window. Her other hand clasps Hamburger’s cage, which sits on her lap.
George’s brothers will follow in a battered Ford Siesta. ‘I’ll send you letters,’ Jojo shouts. ‘I said I’d write to Toby, too. He’s moving away to Liverpool with his mum. We’ve swapped our new addresses.’
Then the engine splutters, choked and uncertain, and I’m hoping it behaves like my temperamental car and they’ll have to unpack everything again. George turns the key over and over. There are yelled goodbyes, and I’m batting away hot tears as their hands flap like sycamore leaves.
The van rouses itself, and they’re gone.
30
Improved Surf
The Crook Inn stands alone and stranded on Bodmin Moor. Delphie, its owner, glides back and forth behind the polished front desk, as if on castors, with her golden hair tied back with a chiffon scarf. ‘Single room, isn’t it, Miss Moon?’ she says, checking the reservations book while Surf laps at the water bowl in the foyer.
‘Yes, that’s right.’ The Crook Inn welcomes dogs—it’s a ‘dog hotel,’ the Web site said, which made me wonder at first if it wasn’t a place where people could stay, but upmarket boarding kennels. Delphie hands me a photocopied map showing dog-friendly walks that start from the hotel grounds.
‘Would you like a table for dinner?’ she asks.
‘Yes please, at around eight.’
‘You were lucky to get the last room,’ she adds, ‘with the schools breaking up last week. Are you on holiday or traveling through?’
‘Just a short break.’
She glances at Surf who has settled himself on the rug by the water bowl. ‘Lovely dog,’ she says. ‘Nice to see one so well behaved.’
My room is pale lemon and filled with a soupy smell that filters up from the kitchens. A wicker dog basket inhabits one corner, and tentative pastel drawings—of a spaniel, a dachshund, and some breed I don’t know with a sleek black coat and speckled white snout—are not quite aligned on one wall. On the scratched dressing table lies the dog artist’s card: Capture Your Dog’s Beauty and Personality with a Unique Portrait. Head Studies, Group Portraits, Also Cats, Rabbits, Hamsters and Any Domestic Animal. Prices on Request. I leave Surf in the room, dozing in the basket, and head down to dinner.
A sharp-nosed waitress shows me to the small table by the window so I’ll have something to watch, to occupy myself. Clouds stir anxiously above undulating moorland. To emphasize my single status, the waitress scoops up the other place setting and carries away the other chair. She lifts a small vase of white carnations from another table and places it in the space where my companion’s plate should be. ‘There,’ she announces. ‘That’s better.’
Each evening I bring things to read—a newspaper or the Visitor’s Guide to Bodmin and Around from my room—but more often gaze out at the shifting sky with its startling colors.
I write in the lemon room.
Dear Charlie,
Decided to come to Cornwall—not sure for how long.
Tried to visit the Eden project but dogs aren’t allowed, and Surf started going crazy when he thought he was being left alone in the car. We’ve visited some botanical gardens, but he seems happier out on the moors. It’s magical, Charlie—just endless space and these massive skies.
We, he: I’m talking about Surf as if he’s a person. Dog as boyfriend substitute. I finish with,
Hope you’re taking good care of yourself, will call as soon as I get back. Love, Stella.
There’s a scuffle of paws as I click off the light. Surf leaps onto the bed—strictly Not Allowed at Crook Inn—and settles around my feet.
On the fourth day, I call her. Maggie says, ‘You’re on Bodmin Moor? You must come and see my new house. Do you have the address?’
‘Yes, you sent it.’
‘Stay with me,’ she says. ‘Make it a holiday.’
I tell her, ‘I’m just passing through.’
Maggie’s cheeks are powdered, her mouth freshly lipsticked and eyes shining determinedly. Her brave face. She hugs me, then ruffles surf’s neck and says, ‘Is this really the same dog?’
He no longer jumps up, or zooms away when let off the lead. ‘He’s been obedience trained,’ I tell her, as if it were that simple. Diane put hours into working with Surf. She said, ‘Look at all the time you put into my kids,’ making it sound as if Surf is my child, and this was her way of repaying me.
Maggie’s new bungalow is sparsely furnished with plain, modern furniture in creams and pale grays and none of the old things from Silverdawn Cottage. I don’t recognize one single thing. ‘New people have already moved in,’ she says cheerfully. ‘The outside’s been painted—looks so much fresher—but the garden’s not what it was. Would you like to see it?’
‘We could walk over, I suppose. Surf needs to run off some steam.’ Turf ambles into the living room and sniffs around Surf, showing no sign of recognition.
We head out, with Maggie telling me, ‘It’s to be expected, of course. Those herbaceous borders—they’ll never be the same now. You see, Stella, no one’s digging your dad’s soil improver into the ground anymore. They’re probably using chemicals and whatnot.’
‘What did Dad use?’ I ask, unhooking surf’s lead as we turn down the narrow lane that leads to Pe
njoy Point.
‘Don’t you know?’ Maggie says with a small laugh. ‘All those vegetable casseroles—don’t think I hadn’t cottoned on.’
I still don’t get it.
‘His little game,’ she continues. ‘Thought I had no idea. I’d go up to bed—I always needed more sleep than your father—and by morning, the leftover casserole would always be gone.’
‘You mean he dug it into the ground, like fertilizer?’
She smiles, but her jaw is set firm. ‘I never minded,’ she says. ‘It made me chuckle. And it showed that your dad wasn’t quite as clever as he thought he was.’
Silverdawn Cottage looks too white—too new—although the garden doesn’t seem any different. I wonder if Maggie is seeing things clearly. We walk on, taking the path that runs close to the cliff ‘s edge. Neither of us speaks as we stop at the place where it happened.
I look down at the rocks and the splashes of surf far below. ‘Maggie,’ I say, ‘what was Dad like, when he was younger?’
‘You know,’ she says quietly.
‘I mean, from your point of view. What was he like, when I was a little girl?’
She watches the gulls circling and weaving, yellow-beaked and fearless. ‘I think your dad did what he could,’ she says, ‘for his family.’ Her voice is gentle, as if she’s reading the sensitive part of a children’s story: Hansel and Gretel lost in the woods, holding each other.
‘Do you remember his allotment?’ I ask.
‘Yes, I do.’
‘I saw you once. Me and Charlie spied over the wall.’
She bends to fuss over Surf for something to do. Turf has curled up at her feet. ‘Your mother had someone, too,’ she says suddenly.
‘What do you mean?’
‘A man. A boyfriend, I suppose.’
I stare at her, at the tiny gold earrings she always wears. They’re shaped like hearts. I’d never noticed that before. And her necklace, too, is a gold heart—the one I found in Dad’s desk drawer when I was fiddling about with his pens and adding machine. ‘Who?’ I ask, aware of the blood rushing in my ears.
‘Some man in Somerset. It had been going on for years, your dad told me. Devastated him at first. Eleanor was his life, you do know that?’
I shake my head, unable to speak. No, I didn’t know that.
‘I’m sorry, Stella.’
‘Does Charlie know?’
‘No, only you.’
‘So when—’
‘She was seeing him before your father and I met.’
Your father and I. Her words sound so formal as they cut through the breeze. I turn away and start walking along the narrow path toward the village, holding surf’s lead as he trots obediently beside me. I don’t want to hear any more. I want to leave things just as they are, undisturbed. ‘I never met your mother,’ Maggie continues, some way behind me, ‘but saw pictures, of course—do you know how like her you are?’
‘People say that,’ I murmur.
‘It was painful for him, having you in the house.’
‘But I’m his daughter!’ I cry, turning to face her. We both stop on the path.
‘He tried, you know, to get closer to you. That time he took you to France…’
‘And banned me from playing my flute!’
‘And the TV show, Stella—Frankie’s Girl, was it called? He did his best, don’t you realize that? But you pushed him away, just like your mother did. He said that being left with you, after Charlie had gone, was like having Eleanor around. Then you left him.’
‘Of course I did! I went to college—what was I supposed to do? Spend my life looking after him?’
‘He wouldn’t have wanted that,’ she says.
‘And that man, Mum’s boyfriend…’
‘Patrick someone.’
Patrick Lowey, the Christmas tree man. He had flinty eyes and a solid jaw and his dark, cozy kitchen smelled of mulled wine. I felt uncomfortable being there, as if both he and Mum didn’t really want me and Charlie around. He’d hardly speak to us. I was too nervous to ask where his toilet was. Charlie would offer to help him to load the tree into the back of the car, but Patrick never let him. We’d wait in the car—me, Charlie and an outsized pine—while Mum went back into the farmhouse to pay Patrick.
As soon as we arrived home she would vacuum the pine needles out of the car, erasing any evidence of our excursion. She said we weren’t to bother Dad by telling him about our outing. He had more important stuff on his mind, like the Tax Man.
Even as a kid, I used to wonder why Mum had taken us to choose a Christmas tree—all the way up in Somerset, for God’s sake—when we were old enough to have stayed at home by ourselves. I felt as if we were being used as some kind of protection. ‘Why didn’t she leave Dad?’ I ask Maggie.
‘Because of you, of course.’
‘And Charlie.’
‘Well, yes, Charlie too…’
‘Maggie, what was it with me? Why did she treat me differently?’
‘She was proud of you. Of your music.’
‘Lots of parents are proud.’
‘I think it’s what she wanted for herself,’ Maggie says, walking briskly beside me. ‘Did you know she played the harp when your father met her?’
‘No, I didn’t.’ It strikes me that there was a lot I didn’t know. ‘He asked her to stop. It wasn’t the lessons—they weren’t the problem—but the practicing for hours on end.’
‘He objected to that?’
She sighs, as if I haven’t a hope of understanding. ‘His career was at its peak then. Do you know how successful he was, how that drained him? He needed her support.’
‘So he made her stop playing.’ I remember it now: Mum and me, standing outside Grieves and Aitken, the day we bought my special flute. Her admiring the harp in the window, trying to keep her face in order.
‘Not stop,’ Maggie continues, ‘but tone it down. Keep it as a little hobby.’
I could laugh, almost, if I didn’t feel so angry for her.
‘Your mum wouldn’t have that,’ Maggie continues. ‘She sold her harp, and I don’t think she ever played again.’
‘I can’t believe he did that to her.’
‘His career was very—’
‘Important. Yes, I know.’
‘Especially when she was expecting Charlie. He had a family to support. And of course, your mum threw herself into bringing up you two. She got over it, your father said. Music wasn’t important to her anymore.’ Yes, it was. That’s why she carried on taking me for lessons with Mrs Bones, even when we could no longer afford them. And bought me the special flute. No wonder she’d never told Dad.
Back at the bungalow, Maggie makes tea that remains transparent, even with milk in. ‘That man Mum was seeing,’ I tell her, ‘it makes me feel as if I never really knew her. I had no idea.’
‘Why would you, dear? You were only a child.’ Her cup makes a tinkling noise as she places it on its saucer on her lap.
‘I blamed Dad for everything, Maggie. Did he try to stop her seeing that man?’
‘Of course, dear.’
‘How could she—’
‘Shhh.’ Maggie pats my hand.
‘She was a wonderful Mum, you know that? I thought she could do nothing wrong.’
The smile warms Maggie’s face, smoothing away the years. ‘No one’s perfect, dear,’ she says, ruffling Turf ‘s neck as he settles at her feet.
The new tenants’ things are carried into next door by efficient men who don’t dump everything on the pink gravel. They bring in the tables and chairs, which might have come from Habitat, and cardboard boxes (each is labeled Bathroom, Kitchen, or whichever room is its final destination). It’s a very smooth, organized house move.
Luisa, my new neighbor, is beautiful in a fragile-vase kind of way, and pregnant. She and Mark are planning to set up a therapy center toward the end of the seafront—near the Orange Tree. ‘The rents are still reasonable,’ she says over coffee in my kitchen, ‘but y
ou feel it’s an up-and-coming area.’
‘The café’s doing really well,’ I tell her, as Surf charges in from the garden.
Luisa flinches. ‘I’ve been scared of dogs since a Labrador bit my finger on the way to school.’ She shows me her left hand. The tip of her little finger bears a tiny comma-shaped scar.
‘He has his mad moments,’ I say, ‘but he’s never bitten anyone.’ I don’t mention the scratching incident.
Luisa tells me her ex, the baby’s dad, nagged for a dog, but she knew it was just a phase he was going through. ‘I thought Mark—’ I begin.
‘Mark’s just a friend. Known each other since we were kids. The baby’s dad and I broke up—the prospect of being a father scared the wits out of him.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry.’ I think of Alex, not ready for fatherhood.
‘He’s no loss,’ Luisa says, smiling bravely.
‘Hope you don’t mind me calling,’ Mr Grieves says, ‘but I spotted your card in the newsagent’s window, made a note of your number. Something’s come into the shop. It’s not a replacement, dear—nothing could replace your original flute—but I’ve put it aside for you. No obligation, of course.’
I head over to the shop after school. The window is filled by a fluorescent orange sign that reads Closing Down Sale.
‘Are you really closing?’ I ask.
‘Finishing up,’ Mr Grieves says, as if the shop has been a meal he’s been slowly consuming for twenty-five years.
‘I’m sorry. I’ll really miss you.’
He clears his throat and pulls out a case from a drawer behind the counter. ‘It needs work,’ he says, fitting the sections together, ‘but there’s nothing here which an MOT wouldn’t put right. Here, why don’t you try it?’
The flute feels heavy and cold in my hands. ‘It’s lovely,’ I say.
‘The head joint’s solid silver, which accounts for the price, but I can offer a substantial discount, Stella, seeing as it’s you.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Really,’ he adds, ‘it just needs the right home.’
I bring the flute to my lips and hold a note until my breath’s all gone, and I’m empty and eleven years old. Mum’s writing the check and saying, ‘Remember, it’s our secret.’
