The Other Ida

by Amy Mason

  Alice and Tom held hands as they walked and Tom did seem to be enjoying himself, poking at the ground with a stick and snake-watching as they went. Ida trailed behind, kicking the earth. “I’m cold,” she said. “Shall we turn round?”

  They stood for a moment on the top of the hill, the breeze stinging their cheeks, while Ida struggled to light her cigarette.

  “Look!” said Tom, pointing at a fox then running down the hill towards it. He was showing off, willing her, or both of the women, to laugh and follow him.

  They stayed where they were. “What’s he going to do? Catch it?” Alice asked, smiling.

  Ida didn’t laugh. “I need to ask you where the painting is, the one of Ma looking into the mirror.”

  “What?” asked Alice. She was still looking down at Tom, who was waving wildly, trying to get them to come down to look at something.

  “You know which painting, my painting.”

  “You mean the Jacob Collins painting? We sold it ages ago.”

  “But it was mine,” said Ida. “Where’s the money then? I need that money.”

  “Okay. Right. Well, I have no idea where the money is but I certainly don’t have it.”

  “That was mine. You knew that, Alice. That wasn’t yours to sell. Fuck. I want to go home.”

  “Are you joking?” Alice asked.

  Ida shrugged.

  “Oh God, I can’t believe this, as if things weren’t bad enough,” said Alice.

  “You know he’s with you because of me – my name and Ma’s. You do know that, don’t you?” Ida asked as Tom gave up and jogged back up the hill towards them. “I’ve got a boyfriend. Who loves me,” Ida whispered. “If you want to think I’m jealous then don’t. It’s not that.”

  Tom reached them, panting and wrapped his arms round Alice. “Jesus, I’m unfit,” he said, and then, leaning back to look at her, “is everything okay?”

  Chapter five

  ~ 1999 ~

  As she squished herself back into the car Ida realised she had no idea where they were going. The location of her father’s house was one of those things she was sure she should know, but the truth was she hadn’t a clue. There’d been the strange flat by the beach, but they’d have moved somewhere else by now, Ida was sure. For one thing, that stinking old Jack Russell Terri had loved so much could barely make it up all the stairs.

  Ida had a sudden, unwelcome memory of Bridie meeting that dog, and screwed up her face. It must have been just before she’d left home, and she and Bridie had been walking to the shop, to get cigarettes probably, when Terri had appeared from round the corner, listening to her new Walkman and pushing the dog in some odd type of pram. Terri had been so proud of the Walkman her nephew had bought for her that she’d listened to it constantly despite only owning a single Dolly Parton tape. To Terri’s credit she had taken off her headphones and extended her arms for a hug, while Bridie had frozen with her eyebrows raised.

  That dog must be dead now, Ida thought. She wanted to ask Alice if Terri had bought another one, but Alice wasn’t speaking very much. It was a shame as it would have been fun to make bets about the awful things Terri was bound to say, and ask, and give them for lunch.

  Tom was aware of the tension and tried his best to make conversation. When that failed he fiddled with the radio for five minutes, finding static and distant French voices, until Alice tapped his wrist and he turned it off.

  They drove past Ida’s very first bedsit and she pointed it out to Tom. “Look, there out the window,” she said as cheerfully as she could. “That’s where I lived when I left home first. With this mental slag called Tina who sold hash at the pub. God – look at it.”

  It was clear Tom didn’t know what to say as he looked at the gloomy building. The windows were all different, some brightly painted wood, some UPVC, and a broken child’s go-kart lay in the drive.

  “We had one room, to share. Alice came round once, didn’t you? With Terri – to pick up some of my stuff. She wouldn’t drink the tea I made. Said the cups were too dirty. You were what, Al, eleven?”

  Alice nodded.

  They passed the old-man pub where Ida had worked for a bit, and then it was the junk shop – where she’d worked when she’d first left home – still dark and empty with a badly hand-painted sign. It gave her the creeps. Both places brought back horrible memories, and she made a secret sign of the cross on her knee.

  Across the road was the phone box where she’d reversed the charges every week to Terri and Da.

  She tried to imagine the house they were heading to as they turned towards Poole. Square and modern, with a neat paved driveway, net curtains and a pond. There’d be an extension that Terri would have spent years planning. Ida stopped herself, realising that she was thinking in the same snobby way that her mother would have done, the way she’d always sworn not to.

  They passed the green where she’d once snogged Ben Palmer, then all the way along Sandbanks Road, the houses getting bigger the further they went.

  Of course they were heading to Sandbanks, the narrow spit of land jutting out into the sea, beloved by football players and eighties one-hit wonders. Their father had been born to live somewhere like this.

  The huge curve of the sea took Ida by surprise. She had made this place twee in her mind, written it off as shabby and fake, but the view across the water was still wild and past a few brave windsurfers lay the dense green of Brownsea Island.

  They turned off into a tree-lined road, and through black electric gates into a wide, paved drive.

  “So, we’re here,” said Tom as the car came to a halt. He sounded relieved.

  Terri stood in front of a pebble-dashed chalet bungalow, her arms held out towards them and a tea towel dangling from one hand. Her hair was still ash blonde and blow-dried into a stiff ball, and she was wearing the same kind of thing she’d always worn – smart, pressed pale blue trousers and a polyester-satin blouse.

  Ida took a deep breath and got out.

  “Baby, it’s been too, too long,” said Terri, wiping away tears.

  Ida walked over, leant down, and let herself be hugged. She was much the same as Ida remembered, thin and neat but the smell of her gave Ida a shock. She had forgotten the strong tinned-fruit sweetness of the perfume Terri wore – one of the only things in the whole wide world that truly hadn’t changed.

  Terri pulled away and turned towards the others. “And you must be Tom. Goodness, what long hair you’ve got. Couldn’t you have given some to Ida? She seems to have lost hers. Come in, come in, I’ve made a quiche.” She summoned them into the hall and locked the door behind them. “You can’t be too careful these days. Some Asians moved in, on Salter Road,” she told them in a loud whisper.

  “Terri doesn’t mean it, do you?” Alice said to Tom while looking at her stepmother’s back.

  “No, well, I’m sure they’re perfectly nice,” Terri said gazing earnestly up at Tom. “It’s just when different people move in, different races and classes, it signals something about an area. What?” she asked, noticing Alice’s furious face.

  Ida recognised the stubborn toddler she’d known as a child. She grinned involuntarily and Terri laughed, mistakenly believing that Ida’s smile signalled support.

  “Oh, come on Ida, let’s go and find your dad before your sister shops me to the PC police,” she said.

  It was extremely warm in the house and Ida took off her jacket as they walked through the hall. The wall had a floral strip halfway up; above it were pastel stripes, below it pale pink paint. On the stripy part there were framed photos, and Ida slowed down as she recognised Terri’s gormless blonde nieces and nephews, remembering how terribly she’d teased them when they were young. There were other pictures too, prints mainly, and a cross-stitched sampler that read I like hugs and I like kisses but what I love is help with the dishes. It was initialled T.I. in bright
pink thread.

  From the room they were heading to Ida could hear the muffled sound of the TV and then a gravelly voice. “Is that my girl here to see me?”

  “Yes it is,” said Tom affectionately, poking Alice in the small of the back as Terri led them into the room.

  “He doesn’t mean me,” Alice replied crossly as Ida pushed past her to hug their da.

  He was sitting in a beige chair facing an enormous television. On his lap was a cushioned tray strewn with biscuit crumbs and a glass of milk. The room was a startling mauve, filled with porcelain ornaments, and in it her father seemed terribly out of place. Against the back wall were shelves packed with his ‘archive’ – thousands of copies of The Daily Mail, Radio Times and Readers Digest, each containing one of the polite reviews or sycophantic interviews that were, as Bridie so often and cruelly pointed out, his hallmark.

  It had been four years since Ida had seen him, but in that time he’d aged a lot.

  “Here she is, Bry,” Terri said with enthusiasm as Ida leant towards him. He reached awkwardly for her face and Ida was shocked to see that his arms were shaking.

  “You gorgeous girl, stand back and let me look at you,” he said.

  Ida could hear Alice muttering to Tom in the background, trying hard to ignore their father’s delight at seeing his oldest child.

  Ida stepped back and flung her arms out.

  “Ta da!” she said, attempting a wide smile to hide the shock on her face. He was very thin.

  “Oh dear, darling, you’re not a lesbian?” Bryan asked, looking her up and down from her boots to her shorn hair. Alice groaned with annoyance in the background, but Ida just laughed, walked back towards him and kissed him on the cheek.

  “Would you mind if I was?” she asked.

  “Not really, I suppose. The theatre was full of them.”

  There was a loud laugh from the telly and he grimaced, fumbling for the mute on the remote control. “Oh bugger, this noise. There we are.” He took Ida’s hand in his. “I’m so sorry about your ma, it’s hit us hard.” Ida noticed tears in his eyes.

  “I’ll go and make the tea,” said Terri, taking the tray from his lap. As she lifted it, Ida noticed that under the milk glass and crumbs was a large photograph of a fat Jack Russell.

  “Pull up a chair sweetheart, tell me everything,” he said, brushing down his cardigan which looked, to Ida, as though it would have fitted a child.

  “There’s someone else to meet you Dad, Alice’s boyfriend, Tom?” she beckoned to him from behind her and Tom stepped forwards, extending his hand.

  Bryan held it weakly and craned his neck backwards to look up at Tom’s face.

  “What is he? Some kind of hippy?” he asked happily, pointing at Tom’s hair and shirt.

  Tom laughed.

  “Fucking hell,” said Alice wearily, to Ida’s astonishment. Bryan didn’t appear to hear.

  “It’s lovely to meet you Mr Irons, can I sit down?” Tom asked, reaching for a chair.

  “Eee by gum,” said Bryan, noticing Tom’s accent, and Tom laughed again, politely.

  They chatted about the theatre and TV while Ida sat near them and watched, letting her father roughly knead her knuckles in the way she’d hated as a child. Tom agreed with most things her father said, however controversial, and only occasionally muttered his disagreement, giving a delighted Bryan the false impression that they were having a lively debate.

  Alice sat in the far corner of the room and hardly spoke, while Ida tried to laugh and join in when she could. She was pleased to have the time to look at her father properly, to get over the shock of his sudden old age.

  From the waist upwards Bryan was dressed more or less as he always had been, in a pale pink shirt that had definitely cost more than all of Ida’s clothes put together. Over it he wore a yellow cardigan of fine, soft wool, and round his wrist hung his gold watch. He had always worn scarves, but now a loose piece of fabric hung pathetically round his scraggy neck. It was covered in orange stains which Ida guessed had come from his breakfast eggs. At the bottom of the blanket that covered his lap Ida was surprised to see he was wearing sheepskin moccasins and above them the elastic cuff of a pair of jogging bottoms.

  And his face! Bryan had been known for his pretty, small face, with its pointed girlish features and pale blue eyes. His eyes were greyer now, and the delicacy of his features was less obvious among the wrinkles and age spots that covered his skin. He had always looked like Alice, and Ida wondered whether her sister felt like she was looking, horribly, into her future. Ida realised for the first time that she would never see how her own likeness, their mother, would age.

  Ida remembered the last time she had seen her father. He’d come to London for work and taken her for dinner and Ida had been so hungover she couldn’t eat her salad and her fingers shook when she tried to drink her wine. Bryan, luckily, was unaware of her plight and rattled on about people he worked with who Ida couldn’t remember. As he had left her at Euston he had slipped fifty pounds into her pocket and winked at her and Ida had almost cried with gratitude. What had she spent it on, she wondered? All the fifty quids she must have spent in her life – almost thirty years’ worth. What a bloody waste.

  They ate at a bamboo table. The chairs were hard, with plastic seat covers and the quiche was full of eggshell, but nobody minded, and Tom ate four slices and two bits of arctic roll. In the corner was an electric waterfall lit by a flickering blue lamp and Tom managed to talk about it with Terri for a good fifteen minutes. Ida was genuinely impressed.

  “I’ve got a boyfriend, too,” said Ida to the table, not that anyone had asked.

  “Really? Lovely. What’s he called?” asked Terri.

  “Yes, what is he called?” asked Alice, looking down at her plate.

  Ida couldn’t tell if she was making some subtle point.

  “Elliot. He’s an artist and an art dealer. He lives in the East End. The East End’s not like it used to be, Da, before you say anything. It’s very up-and-coming now – there are loads of galleries and things. He’s collected some brilliant painters.”

  “Well he can’t make any money, not with you in that God-awful suit,” said Bryan.

  “I like this suit,” said Ida.

  “Well, it doesn’t seem to like you,” said Alice, looking up, and everyone, except Ida, laughed.

  Even Tom was laughing and he hardly knew Ida – perhaps he wasn’t as nice as she’d thought he was after all.

  “Look, have you got any port, or sherry or something, I’m really thirsty,” she said, cutting them off and rubbing her eyes.

  Terri half stood up from the table and looked to Bryan for approval.

  “Get it for her, Terri, what are you waiting for? I think we could all do with a drink,” he said.

  By the way she turned the wheel it was obvious that Alice was furious, and Tom knew better than to try to help.

  Ida had drunk most of the bottle of port and was feeling better, whereas Alice, who had simply watched her drink, seemed to be feeling considerably worse.

  By the time they reached Ashley Cross Ida couldn’t bear it any more.

  “Alice, if you want to say something to me, can you come out and say it? I’m sick of all this passive aggressive shit,” she said.

  “If there’s anything passive about it it’s unintentional. You’re a total dick. A total, selfish dick.”

  Tom took a loud breath.

  “Fuck this, I’m a grown woman. Can you let me out somewhere? I want to get out.”

  Alice carried on driving.

  “Let me the fuck out of this fucking car!” Ida shouted.

  “We’re on a main road, I’ll let you out by the snooker hall – you can walk home or go to the park. Or do whatever,” said Alice, calmly.

  She pulled over to the side of the road, and Tom got out, so Ida co
uld squeeze past.

  “Thank you,” she said to him.

  “Don’t be too long,” he said, bravely attempting a smile. “I’m making chilli for dinner.”

  “This is the last day of fucking around, by the way, we’ve got the flowers and all the calling to do tomorrow, and to organise the whole bloody thing,” shouted Alice across the passenger seat.

  Tom got in and Ida slammed shut the car door.

  Ida had not had a clear aim in mind when she’d asked to leave the car, just a desire to be free of her sister and all the bad things she made her feel.

  Now as she walked past the snooker hall where she’d gone so often when she was young she prayed that she wouldn’t bump into anyone from school or any frumpy acquaintance of her mother’s who would want to express their condolences. Why was not mentioning things frowned upon? Children and teenagers had it right. Death was embarrassing for all involved.

  She knew she looked unusual in her airing-cupboard suit and people noticed her as she walked, a group of teenage boys shouting something she couldn’t understand as they overtook her on their BMXs. She smiled, reassured that she didn’t fit in, and aware that this was childish.

  She walked through the gate and into Poole Park. Next to the cricket pavilion, an old man sat reading the paper, and ahead of her a little blond boy was cycling his trike towards his mum. On the other side of the pitch was a boggy pond, filled with reeds and throaty, squawking Canada geese, and around its edge curved a tiny train track which Ida walked along, taking careful steps in between the metal girders.

  Hearing the train coming Ida watched as it headed straight for her. It was slow and very small but the children at the front were shouting for her to get out of the way and waving their hands about in hopeful horror. What would happen, she wondered, if she lay down right here? She supposed the driver would brake, but she would like to know what would happen if he didn’t. Could her body stop a whole train? She had a feeling that it probably could.