by Joanna Nadin
He moves his mouth down the curve of my neck.
“Billie,” he breathes, as a hand traces my spine, the fingers finding their way under the thin jersey of my T-shirt.
I feel my heart quickening. And I shudder with want.
But something’s wrong.
“Wait.” I pull away, breathing hard and fast.
“What is it?”
“Mum. I can’t. Not here.”
He pauses, looking at me, in me. And then he kisses me again, slowly, softly, on the lips.
“Tomorrow,” he says. “Meet me after work.”
And I nod. Let his mouth brush the top of my head before he stands. Then I lie back and listen. Listen to his Converse tread on the stairs, his “Bye” to Finn, the slam of the front door. And to my own heart, singing inside me.
HET LIES back in the chair and listens. She cannot believe he has never told her, never shown her this before.
Underneath the music she can hear the soft tap of his fingertips on the ivory as they fly up and down the keyboard, seeking out their targets, true every time. Their touch so far from the thud of her and Will practicing scales they will never remember or use.
“But how . . . ?” she asks when he’s finished.
“What? Because I’m too poor to own a piano? Too stupid?”
“No . . . I didn’t mean . . .”
But he’s laughing. “My dad played. Still does. Only it’s in the back room of the Red Lion now, not the front of the Majestic.”
“I . . . I had no idea.”
“Why should you?” He shrugs.
She is entranced, overwhelmed by a sudden conviction.
“You should apply to college,” she says. “To the Royal Academy.”
“I can’t read music.”
“Then learn,” she insists.
But he’s shaking his head. “What for? So I can end up down the pub, too, banging out Beatles tunes every night? Why can’t this be enough?”
“Because it can’t be,” she says. “It just can’t.”
He strikes up again. Softer this time. A tune Het recognizes as the theme to a TV program, though she knows it’s a classical piece. Bach, maybe, she thinks. Or Brahms.
She’s absorbed by it and by her new idea. So much so that she doesn’t hear Will and Jonty come into the room. Doesn’t see them until it’s too late. Until Will has crooked a finger behind the lid of the piano and pulled it like a trigger, letting the polished mahogany slam down on Tom’s fingertips.
“Jesus effing Christ,” Tom gasps. His mouth hanging open, hands held out in pain. Het can see the white bar across his knuckles where the wood has hit, can see it turning redder by the second.
“Oh, I am sorry,” Will says, his voice dripping with sarcasm. Then he turns to Het. “You know what Father would say, though. He’ll ruin it playing like that.”
And he saunters out, grabbing a handful of peanuts from a cut-glass bowl on the way. Jonty follows, his eyes on Het, his crotch pushing into her as he passes.
“Slumming it,” he whispers.
“Go to hell,” she says quietly back.
Tom’s fingers are fine. No lasting damage, the doctor says. But Tom knows it’s a lie. And it’s the last time he plays the piano. For Het. For anyone.
MUM IS back to the clattering, a whirl of black-eyed anger around the kitchen. I sit at the table nursing a cup of tea, watching as she smears jam on a cream cracker, then throws the sticky knife in the Belfast sink. It misses and hits a half-full glass of red wine, which teeters for a second, then topples, splintering on the hard porcelain, red slopping over the white like a bad scene from Casualty.
“Shit,” she laments. And then she throws out half the cleaning cupboard looking for a dustpan and brush. I should help her, I think. Should do what I always do, enter stage right, the heroine, and clear it up, make it go away, make it better. But I’m distracted. Caught in my own chaos. My own world.
All I can think about is him. The smell of him, the taste of him. The curve of his jaw, his eyelashes long, too long for a boy, but beautiful all the same. The line of his neck; his fingers, deft, taut, as they flicker across ivory. I sketch him in my head, seeing the light and shadows, then on paper, his hair a dark charcoal, his eyes softer, lighter, while I hum to an invisible piano, the tune stuck on REPEAT in my memory.
I am going to show him, I think. He played for me, so I will show him this. My sketchbook. My secret. And so, as I leave for work, I stash the battered pad in my pocket.
But it’s not him I tell first. In the end, I blurt it out before. To another man. A stranger.
Alexander Shaw watches me as I spray polish on the mantelpiece, dust around the stacked canvases and cut-out prints that take the place of the endless china dogs and photos of beaming grandchildren that fill every other room, to make up for absences. He is here today. Found. Back from wherever he goes inside himself.
My fingers linger on a reproduction of Botticelli’s Venus and Mars, a shrunken postcard version of the original in the National Gallery. I turn it over automatically. “With love,” it reads. “E.”
“Stunning, isn’t it?” he says.
I jump. “Oh, sorry.” I prop it back on the shelf, only succeeding in knocking a Picasso to the floor.
“Sorry,” I repeat.
“No matter,” he says. “Really. I’m glad someone else appreciates them.”
“Were you — are you — a painter?” I correct myself.
“Were. Was.” He corrects me back. “I had a gallery. Camborne Hill.”
“The Blue Gallery?” I say.
“You know it?”
“Yes.” Kind of. I have seen it. Locked up now. A FOR LEASE sign hanging in the window instead of oil and watercolor.
And then I get this idea. This need. To show him. Because he’ll understand. He’ll get it, get me. And maybe it’s like talking to someone in a coma, keeping them aware; maybe it will keep him here and now. And so I say, “Wait a minute,” and then run out of the door, his “What for?” following me down the corridor, hanging over the faded lino, unanswered.
“Yours?” he asks.
I nod as he turns the pages, his fingers tracing the charcoal and pencil lines.
“They’re just family,” I say.
He turns another page.
“That’s Finn,” I say. “My little brother.” And he nods as if he can see this, though there’s barely any resemblance at all.
Then I show him Danny. The strong, sure lines of his jaw. The full mouth. The eyes that are looking at me. In me.
And maybe he sees it, too. Or maybe he is seeing something else from another time. Because he starts, and the book slips on the worn material of his trousers, and I lean forward to grab it before it falls. As I do, the locket slips forward from under my T-shirt, dangles in front of me, its edges catching the light.
“My God,” he says, and he reaches to clasp it. Then before I can stop him he clicks it open.
“My uncle,” I say, as he stares at the tiny portrait. “Will. He died.”
He nods again. “But where’s the other one?”
“What other one?” I ask.
“The girl.” He is frantic now. I am losing him. “What was her name?” he demands. “What was it? What was her name?” He searches the air in front of him vainly. Looking for a memory, a ghost.
“I — I don’t know. Eleanor?” I try.
Then his eyes fix on mine, and I can see he has grasped it, for a second, an insubstantial thing, a ghost.
“Not Eleanor,” he says. “Het.”
HE GIVES her the parcel after work. Upstairs in the studio, among the stacked canvases and jars of brushes and smell of oil paint and gouache. Upstairs, where no one can see them: their anticipation, their trepidation.
She opens it with trembling fingers. The brown paper cut with his scalpel and fastened with masking tape; sheep’s clothing, disguising the wolf inside.
Eleanor feels her heart beating in her chest. For it is a
wolf. A jeweler’s box. She holds it still for a second, scared of what it might reveal. And when she looks up and meets his eyes, she sees the same fear and hope reflected back at her. He nods at her to open it. To step into the unknown.
She steels herself and lifts the tautly hinged lid. There, nestled on claret-colored velvet, is a fat, flat lozenge of silver. A locket.
She feels herself gasp and turns to him again. “I —”
But he knows what she is going to say. That she can’t. That they can’t. And he cuts her off. “Take it,” he says. “It’s yours. Say you bought it. Say you found it. Say anything. But, please, keep it.”
“What do I put in it?” she asks. “Who do I put in it?”
“Children,” he says. “When they come.”
“Will they come?”
But she knows the answer before he says it. “Of course they will.”
She starts to speak again but cannot find the words.
“Here,” he says. And from her shaking hands he lifts out the pendant on its gossamer thread, undoes the clasp.
“Turn around,” he says.
And she does, and sees the fine chain in his calloused fingers, sees the locket catch the sunlight from the wide studio windows, a sudden flash of white in her eyes, feels his hands at the back of her neck, his warm breath as deep and fast as her heartbeats, the cold metallic hardness of the pendant against her rib cage.
“There.”
She turns and he takes her in his arms. And, for the first time, they kiss.
The locket is the start of it all, and the end.
She tells Roger she bought it with her wages. That it is a treat to herself.
He nods, says nothing. But later, when he checks the account, he can find no receipt. And then snatches of gossip make their way to the hospital.
That Carol Lister admired the locket on Eleanor, asked her where she had gotten it. That Harry White, the jeweler, told Carol he had only ever had one as she described, and he sold it not to Eleanor but to that artist, what was his name? Shaw, that was it. Shaw. That Carol told her husband, said she was certain it was only a mix-up, and that she wasn’t one to cast aspersions, but that it did seem, well, odd.
Three weeks later it is over. They are over.
Roger is consumed with anger. His eyes black with it, his words sharp. He orders her to leave her job. To say she wants to concentrate on a family now. Because appearances must be kept up, no matter what the Listers know.
She does as he tells her. Though it breaks her heart. She gives it up, gives him up. Lets the door close, and walks up the hill, breathing her last gasps of freedom, of hope, before shutting herself into the stifling binds of Cliff House.
She will see him in town, on the beach, say hello. But nothing more. Not now.
But the locket she keeps. Shut away in a drawer in her dresser. A thing of secrets. Of hopes.
When he is out, she sits, takes it from its keeping place, and holds its flat smoothness in her palm.
One day, she thinks. And she places it against her gently swelling belly. One day.
I GO to Danny’s flat from work. Tell him what Alexander has said. Ask him what it means.
But Danny says it’s nothing, that Alex is just confused. That he’s seen it with his nan. That once she thought he was his dead uncle, once his grandad.
And I nod, believe him, because I want the words to stop, want our lips to cut them off. And they do. He kisses me and I feel the questions dissolve, because all that matters, all that I need to be sure about, is here. And I am sure. I am so sure.
It’s late now. Dark. We’re at the door. My face stinging from his stubble, my stomach empty. So lost in each other we forgot to eat.
“I’ll walk you home,” he says, reaching for his coat.
Part of me wants to say yes, wants to keep him close for as long as I can, wants to feed off this feeling. But it’s what’s at the other end I’m scared of. And I want this to be ours for as long as possible. Our secret.
“No, you’re all right,” I say. “This isn’t Peckham.” Thank God.
“Are you sure?”
“Sure I’m sure.”
“Can I see you tomorrow?”
“I’m working.”
“Playing hard to get?”
I laugh. “No, really, I am.” I make a face, then he pulls me to him, kisses me hard.
“I’ll call you,” he breathes when I break away.
“Yeah. No — wait. You can’t. The phone’s broken.” Bloody Mum.
“So find me, then,” he says.
“I will,” I say. I will. And I kiss him one last time before I go.
I walk home slowly, taking the long route along the seafront, delaying the inevitable. The banging and the whirling. Finn’s had it all day. He just ignores her. Takes his chance to watch what he likes and eat what he likes.
When I reach the pier I stop. Something’s different. There’s a smell of petrol, of oil generators mixing with salt and burgers. It is a smell of hope. Of life.
The fair is coming alive.
And suddenly I see that picture postcard, see the promise of everything this place could be, fulfilled. Sun, sand, the fairground. And Danny. And I laugh. Because in that instant my world is perfect. I have everything. Even without my father. I have it all.
But I’ve forgotten about Mum.
I can hear it before I even get to the gate: the muffled distortion of a stereo on at full volume. When I open the door I am deafened by it. The sound of late-night radio, of the obscure blues and soul that Mum loves. I slam the door behind me and race to the drawing room, thanking God, or my grandparents, that the house is detached, that there’s no Mrs. Hooton standing on the doorstep complaining that Mum won’t answer, that it’s been like this for hours, that she’s going to call the police if it doesn’t stop.
I flick off the power and look around for someone to shout at. But there’s no one. Finn has somehow slept through it all. And Mum? She’s in the kitchen. Asleep, too. A glass of something pale and alcoholic in front of her. I sniff it and gag. It’s strong. Strong enough to block out the sound of Etta James, and whatever it is that’s haunting her. The ghosts that are beginning to haunt me.
I rinse the glass under the tap, put it away. But Mum I can’t move. She’s too heavy, the drink seems to add stones to her. I decide to leave her. Switch off the lights.
But as I turn to go I hear the swish of paper skimming across the floor. Something has fallen from Mum’s lap. I stoop to pick it up and see the familiar red ink. Bills. Not just one. A whole pile of them. I gather them up and put them in the cupboard, next to the coffee jar. They can wait until morning, too.
HET IS in the bath, her ten-year-old legs rippling in a ruler-deep pool, like they’re made of aspic, not flesh. She pokes a big toe inside the tap. To see if it still fits. It does. And she leaves it there, the metal gripping it, her head pushed hard back against the white enamel. Until the water is cold, until her body shrivels and the toe drops out of the tap, back into the water.
Then, eyes still staring at the gloss-painted ceiling, Het lets her knees rise up and her head slide down and under.
She holds her breath. Until the faint, blurred dripping becomes a whooshing banging of blood in her ears. Until the forty-watt lightbulb becomes a thousand-kilowatt sun, bursting into fireworks across her retinas. Until she feels two hands grasp her arms and yank her up into the air, shake her like a doll, and hears someone crying her name.
“Hetty! Hetty!”
It is her mother.
Het’s eyes pull into focus.
“Hello,” she says.
Her mother lets her drop, and Het’s bottom hits the bath with a thud, bruising her and sending a tidal wave over the rim.
Her mother is shaking. “You silly girl. What in God’s name do you think you were doing?”
“Practicing,” she replies.
“What for?”
Het looks at her mother as if she is the one who is mad. �
��For being dead, of course.”
WHEN I go downstairs the next morning Mum is still at the kitchen table, but awake now, the radio back on and a cup of black coffee in her hand.
I open the plate cupboard, check the top shelf. They’re still there: the sheets of red-inked paper, shouting our last-chance warnings.
It’s worse than I imagined. The gas alone is more than five hundred pounds. That’s more than we got through in a year in London. But then we weren’t living in some five-bedroomed fairy-tale palace.
“When did these come?” I ask her.
She shrugs. “I don’t know.”
“Are there others?”
She doesn’t even bother to lie or argue. She’s too tired. “In the knife drawer.”
I pull at the chrome handle and slide the drawer out. There should be ominous music, I think. Like one of those shlock horror films where you want to scream at the TV, “Don’t open the door!” But instead some song on the radio keeps telling me to smile. Yeah, right.
We owe more three thousand pounds. Gas, electricity, some credit card that I didn’t even know she had, a tab from Aladdin’s Cave, which explains how she’s been getting the drink and the cigarettes and the olives and cake. And a letter from some solicitors chasing two thousand pounds in back rent for Mr. Garroway.
My stomach beats alive with wings as I remember the postcard I sent Luka. No envelope. Just our address in inky capitals, shouting our hiding place.
I am an idiot. And we are screwed. We can never find that kind of money. Not without selling the house. Unless . . .
I remember what Mum said. That my grandparents must have had other money, not just the house. And somewhere there must be records of that. I don’t remember Mum throwing out any papers or getting rid of any box files, so they must still be here.
I start in the kitchen, going through all the drawers and cupboards. But there’s nothing. Just apple corers and tin openers and other metal objects that look like instruments of torture.
