The Other Ida

by Amy Mason

  ‘I waited so long to have you, I wasn’t sure I should. Family scares me, really. I’ve been so long without one.’

  She shouldn’t have had children. She should have trusted her gut. Not because her own parents had died young or because she’d been an only child, but because she wasn’t made for it. She was selfish and bloody insane.

  ‘I’m jealous already. Will we be friends? God help you, dearest girl.’

  Ida circled that phrase. Talk about a warning.

  ‘You don’t look like her – or me really. Who are you, I wonder?’

  ‘Her.’ Ida knew that would be about her namesake, Ida Lupino. Or perhaps she was talking about the ‘Ida’ in the play. What was it she was meant to look like? Dark haired, beautiful?

  She turned to tell Elliot but remembered that she’d shouted at him and it would take a good deal of making up before he’d listen to anything she’d have to say. And who else was there to tell? Alice? Alice hated her, and it would make her father maudlin to talk about it. She stabbed herself in the arm with the biro and bit her lip to fight off the tears. It didn’t even bleed and it hurt so much. When she was younger she could cut herself, stub cigarettes out on her legs, and feel nothing at all. Elliot was right, she was turning into a real, normal person in her old age.

  She propped herself up and drew circles on the next page of the book. She would spend the rest of the night writing everything she could remember about her strange, horrible mother.

  There were footsteps, somewhere in the hall. She held her breath and listened. Alice? No, it was Tom.

  She scrambled to her feet, straightened her dress, and found him standing halfway out the front door. He looked at her nervously and smiled. He was smoking.

  “Rumbled,” he said.

  She laughed and reached for a drag.

  “I can’t sleep. It happens to me sometimes,” he said.

  “Me neither. Hey, you wouldn’t mind looking at something with me would you?”

  They sat next to each other on the sofa looking at the letter, a blanket over their knees.

  “Perhaps she was spaced out on painkillers,” Tom said. “Bet they gave women loads of weird shit when they gave birth back then.”

  She looked at him, properly. He was wearing a red hand-knitted jumper, the sleeves over his hands, and his Toni and Guy haircut was sticking up around his head. He had lovely eyes – brown with flecks of orange and green. She couldn’t tell him that. “I like your jumper,” she said. “Did my sister knit it? She seems like she might be a knitter.”

  “No, my mum,” he said. “She’s always knitted. Any excuse. If she hears anyone’s pregnant down the road she’ll knit about five thousand booties before the baby’s even born.”

  “You get on with her?”

  “Yeah. She’s great. There are four of us, and there was never much money, and my stepdad was a prick, but she’s alright. I was the first one of the family to go to uni and she was well proud of me.”

  “I bet,” said Ida, resisting the urge to stroke his head.

  Ida woke up with Alice standing over her, holding out a mug of tea. Light poured in through the window and her eyes hurt. As she struggled to sit up her Magical Days Book fell off her chest, and she saw the open pages were covered in a manic biro sprawl.

  “Here, I thought you might need this,” Alice said.

  “Thanks. Where’s Elliot. He hasn’t left?”

  “He went for a walk with Tom, said they wouldn’t be back until late. Did you have a fight or something?”

  “No, no. Nothing like that. He just likes going out if he has a hangover.”

  “I hope they’ll be okay. The wind’s picking up. Right. I’ve made some lentil soup for lunch. And I’ve got an appointment with the bank to close Mum’s accounts. Don’t get excited, think she had about five pence.”

  “Do you need me to do anything?”

  “You could wash? And buy some clothes for the funeral. Terri has given us fifty quid each for a new outfit – she slipped it to me yesterday when Dad wasn’t looking. I’ve got something to wear but she wanted to be fair. Please don’t spend it on something mad. Go straight to Beales.”

  Ida didn’t speak but sat blowing on her tea. She remembered the desperation she’d felt in the night, for it to stay her stupid birthday. She really wished it was still her birthday.

  “You look so miserable,” said Alice. “Post birthday come down eh?”

  “I wish.”

  “I was going to keep it as a surprise but it might get you out of bed – Peter’s coming tomorrow.”

  “Really?” Ida felt such an enormous burst of joy she irrationally suspected it was some kind of trick.

  “Yep, he was going to come for Tuesday but managed to change his plans – had some radio ad he was meant to be doing. He said he wants to help us. There’s always stuff to do the day before.”

  “It will be brilliant to see him, it’s been years.” The last time he’d rescued her from hospital but Alice didn’t know about that.

  “Well, get to Beales, get some clothes. You could even buy some make-up. You’ll need to make a bit of an effort or he’ll do you up like a drag queen.”

  Ida ignored her sister’s annoying remark and looked out of the window. Pine needles were blowing everywhere, like weird spiky rain and in the distance the sea looked furious.

  “He always comes with the wind, like Mary Poppins,” Ida said.

  Alice didn’t ask what she meant.

  “Beales, not the pub. Alright?”

  Chapter seventeen

  ~ 1987 ~

  There was a loud creak, then a second or so of silence before the huge, juddering thud of something falling into the square outside.

  The wind was whipping its way round the house, rattling the broken sash windows while the other women screamed with delight. It seemed as though they’d been awake for a while, giggling and gasping, while Ida had stayed fast asleep.

  She lay as still as she could, her eyes closed while she concentrated on her breathing. The wind quietened slightly and the women walked back across the room chatting or laughing, some pacing and swearing, one of them uselessly clicking the light switch over and over again.

  This was it then – the culmination of all Ida’s dreams and fears – the thing she supposed she’d always been waiting for.

  “Fuck me, fuck me,” Nikki repeated from the near corner in her smoker’s voice.

  “We’re all going to die,” Adelaide said contentedly to herself in the next bed.

  Ida opened her eyes and looked at her. She looked back and winked, her wrinkled hands in her lap, her white cotton nightie done up to her chin, her little walnut face totally serene.

  “We’re the ones who understand,” she whispered, leaning towards Ida, “that this is our time to go. This is Jesus’ doing and there’s no point working yourself up into a frenzy about it.”

  It was almost totally dark, the streetlights had gone out as well, but Ida could see the shapes of the eight other women who shared the dorm. Three of them had huddled together, their arms round each other’s backs as though about to play some American sport. A few of the less popular ones lay alone on their beds, and Nikki was attempting to listen to her Walkman.

  “Is it everywhere or just here?” Ida said loudly to Judy, the massive know-it-all woman who slept in the opposite bed.

  “Everywhere I think,” said Judy. “Though the phone in the hall’s not working so I can’t check. Can’t find the warden anywhere – reckon she’s crapped herself.”

  Ida reached under her pillow for her fags and lit one. Then she pulled off her blankets, stood up, and walked across to the window wearing her grey knickers, t-shirt and socks.

  Outside was pitch black, the usually bright windows of the houses around Soho Square dark and lifeless. Branches and leaves were blow
ing everywhere, leaping and swooping violently, occasionally hitting the glass and making Ida jump, while on the grass opposite the house lay the old tree that Ida had tried to climb last week when she was pissed. She thought of all the trees in the garden in Bournemouth and wondered if the rickety house had been squashed or blown away.

  “It’s a twister,” she said to herself, wondering if at any moment she’d see her mother flying past on a broomstick. “Please look after Alice,” she whispered, closing her eyes.

  “Oi, come here.”

  It was Judy shouting for her, beckoning Ida back over. She had opened a bottle of Scotch and would share with anyone if they’d listen to her gossip and moan. Ida sat on the edge of the bed next to her fat, dimpled leg and took a swig. Perhaps Judy’s constant talking would stop Ida worrying. During the week – Terri had told her – Alice stayed in their father’s ordered, solid house. It was the early hours of Friday morning and she’d probably still be there.

  “Wait, it’s not the holidays is it? Half-term or something?” Ida asked.

  “No. Are you even listening?” asked Judy.

  Ida felt relieved. “Sorry, carry on.”

  Judy began again, ranting about the staff and the food and the police.

  Ida looked towards Adelaide who was muttering to herself as always, laughing and chattering throughout the night. She was alright, not as nuts as they said, just confused sometimes. Who wasn’t?

  “One sec,” Ida said, as she handed Judy the bottle and stood up. She walked over and knelt next to Adelaide. There was a gust and Ida screwed her eyes shut as something cracked above them and someone, somewhere else in the house, screamed. Judy muttered behind them, annoyed that Ida had left her.

  “Don’t you worry, sweetie,” said Adelaide, patting Ida on the top of the head with her firm hands.

  “You think this is it?” Ida asked.

  “Undoubtedly. You’ve had the visions, yes?” She twisted Ida’s hair and pushed it behind her ear.

  Ida nodded. She had been having visions, and although the doctor said they were booze induced, Ida wasn’t sure. People did have visions – not only nutters and druggies – they were always having them in the Bible and in things on TV.

  “You shouldn’t be drinking at a time like this,” Adelaide said. “Lie down and pray.”

  Ida got into bed and lay back, pleased to be told what to do. She felt woozy and it was nice to be in the warm room while chaos reigned outside.

  Adelaide began to pray under her breath as the whole house shuddered. Somewhere in the building a window smashed.

  Ida shut her eyes. She would tell Jesus what she was grateful for.

  Her bed was first – her clean bed – and the house they were in was truly beautiful.

  Ida had arrived at the hostel with a note from her doctor, and stood gazing up at the ceiling in the hallway, with its fancy curled plaster, until someone fetched the woman in charge.

  Around her the other girls argued and laughed, and even the warden who was showing her round didn’t seem that bothered about the plasterwork. Ida knew she sounded manic as she shouted about it enthusiastically into her doughy face.

  “Most of the girls who come here, well, they have serious problems. They’re not interested in the bloody ceiling,” she said, leading Ida up the marble steps to the dorms.

  Ida wanted to pull her back down them. “Whatever my circumstances I always try to appreciate nice things,” she said. “It’s one of my gifts. That and nicking stuff.”

  There was a garden there as well – a secret garden – the nicest Ida had seen since she’d been living in London. She heard an owl cooing there at night, though the others didn’t believe her. Bridie had been able to talk to owls, or at least coo at them until they cooed back, and Ida wished she’d paid more attention to how she’d done it.

  In the garden there was a chapel too and Ida liked it best of all, with its gold crucifix and stained glass. Her favourite window was the one with St Barnabas on it, the saint of encouragement and consolation. There were stone seats around the edges of the chapel, originally put there for residents to sit on while other people – clean, normal people – could sit on the pews.

  The few of them who went to the chapel sat on the pews too these days, but Ida wouldn’t. She liked the cold stone, and the way that she felt hidden, as a big, fragile saint stood above her like her very own patron. She prayed a lot when she was there, shutting her eyes as hard as she could and digging her bitten nails into her knees.

  Everything meant something these days. When Bridie had been drunk once – properly drunk, the kind where she started affecting an Irish accent and saying she was a terrible writer – she had told Ida she had once lived in a tiny flat on Greek Street, next door to a fortune teller and above a Chinese launderette.

  And now Ida was practically living on Greek Street, and she could see where her mother had lived, the swirly letters that said launderette were still painted onto the building, even though it was a butcher’s shop now.

  There was the sound of something smashing outside and Ida wished they could make it to the chapel, just her and Adelaide, to sit and pray together, listening to all the destruction without the other women distracting them.

  The window shook, harder this time, and Adelaide reached across the gap between their beds for Ida’s hand. Ida really hoped the owl was alright.

  “Let’s pray for forgiveness,” she said. “You first darling girl. I’ve made my peace.”

  “I’m sorry for all my drinking and drugs and for leaving my family and for sleeping around,” Ida said.

  “Jesus save her. Jesus save her.”

  Ida didn’t need to speak for a while. Adelaide was off on a tangent, talking to at least three people who Ida couldn’t see, smiling and laughing, happy that her misery was going to end.

  But Ida didn’t feel so happy. She would pray for Alice not to get squashed by a tree. She prayed to St Barnabas for encouragement and consolation, to be rescued, for the money that Bridie had stolen from her savings – a badly forged signature was all that it had taken – to be magically restored so she could go to America after all.

  She must have slept because it was light when she opened her eyes and Judy was stumbling to her feet and pulling up her weird green too-short trousers. Adelaide was sitting by the window and reading, not in the least concerned that she hadn’t been whisked off to heaven.

  “What time is it?” Ida asked. Then, “Did anyone die, down in Bournemouth do you know? Any children?”

  “Oh, so you want to talk to me now, now that you need something,” said Judy. She hesitated and Ida knew she’d answer anyway. “A couple of people. No children. It’s 9.30. Some of us are off down the Square – going to cut up the tree and have a bonfire.”

  “We allowed to do that?” Ida asked.

  “Fuck it, it’s Armageddon. We’ll do whatever we want. And hardly any of the staff have bothered coming in – they’re saying the roads are jammed and the buses aren’t running.”

  They stepped out into Soho Square, the door flying out of Ida’s grasp and banging hard behind her, the wind slapping her in the face. Despite the weather there were people everywhere, and roof tiles, branches and rubbish littered the road. Many of the parked cars had been crushed, their windows smashed, and car alarms were going off all over the place. People were cheerful though, talking and laughing as they surveyed the damage.

  “Takes a disaster, takes a disaster, a disaster, a disaster, a diiiiis-aster,” Judy muttered under her breath. She looked properly mad, ranting to herself, her eyes wandering and her arm jerking strangely as she walked. Ida wondered if she looked like that too. She didn’t think she did – not quite – but was pretty sure she could do soon.

  They walked through the cast-iron gate and towards the fallen tree. The pain-in-the-arse warden, Lisa, was there with Nikki and some of the
others. Someone had spray painted the trunk ‘For charity use. KEEP OFF’. Nikki was wielding an axe. God knew where she’d got it.

  “Come back inside, girls,” Lisa was saying, automatically. “It’s not the weather to be out here. Let’s go inside, have a coffee and get warm. Nikki, put that axe down.”

  None of them moved. Ida looked across the square and saw another tree had fallen on top of a house. Part of the roof and top floor was squished and nearly all the front wall missing.

  “Fine, fuck it, was trying to do you a favour. Pub?” Nikki asked the crowd and they all laughed.

  “You do know that if you return smelling of alcohol we won’t be able to admit you?” Lisa said, sounding relieved that without them there she could do her word-search book in peace.

  No one answered and some of them began to walk off, as Nikki held the axe in the air and led them like some kind of crazed tour guide before throwing it on the grass and laughing, knowing that she’d get arrested again if she took it into the pub.

  Lisa jogged limply to pick it up.

  Ida had spent enough time with that lot. There were things to explore. She walked across the square, jumping over branches and scrabbling over some of the bigger trunks, before stepping through the swinging wooden gate outside the destroyed house.

  It was an oak tree that had fallen, its roots ripped out of the ground and its leaves and branches sticking out of the roof.

  Through a jagged hole on the first floor she could see band posters and an unmade cabin bed and in the bathroom a still-dripping shower, wide open to the street. Downstairs, through a dusty sitting room, was a telly. She should nick it really, but part of her didn’t want to change anything. It was like a wonderful set at the theatre. She imagined the family who lived there making their entrances and doing a show just for her. Normal People, it could be called.

  The wind was starting to pick up again and she turned to see a middle aged woman frantically pulling a black Labrador inside her house while it barked at thousands of flying leaves. The tall pine trees around the square had been swaying before but now they were starting to bend right over, almost down to the ground. She thought of the woods back at home. Perhaps she’d summon up the courage to call Alice later.