‘What you will do,’ Mama said, ‘is go round and apologise.’
‘I will not.’
Mama picked up the book and flicked back to the picture. ‘If you don’t,’ she said, ‘I’ll show this to Bob.’
‘I don’t think Bob would mind,’ I said. ‘He thinks the human body’s a beautiful thing.’
‘Beautiful!’ Mama scoffed, waving the crude childish pictures in front of my nose.
‘Oh all right then.’ I kept my voice even, but something was rushing within me. So much anger for such a small thing, so much anger directed at so dull a target, I was surprised at the force of it. And more surprised still by the way my face and my voice behaved themselves and gave nothing away.
‘Anyway,’ she said, ‘what’s happened to Bronwyn these days? I haven’t heard much about her lately.’
‘We’re not friends anymore,’ I said.
‘Oh don’t be so silly! You were such great friends at Christmas. It’s all Susan, Susan, Susan these days. Why not go round and see Bronwyn? Apologise to her mother. Get it out of the way. You’ve nothing else to do. Unless you want to mow the lawn?’
I went out and walked along the flat sunny streets. There was the sweet smell of flowering currant in the air, and raucous daffodils nodded beside the garden paths. My feet carried me to Bronwyn’s house. I was threaded through with rage, a cold controllable rage that had little to do with the stupid angels. It was to do with the past. It was to do with Bronwyn knowing things about us, reminding me, by being there, by hanging about looking so lost and lonely, hanging around like a warning, so that I had to keep glimpsing her, I had to keep remembering the things I wanted to forget. I wanted to do something, I did not know what. I wanted her exorcised.
But I did not mean to cause her any harm.
When I knocked at Bronwyn’s door there was at first no reply and I turned to go, half relieved, but then the door was opened by Mrs. Broom. She peered at me as if puzzled and then drew me inside the dim cabbage-smelling hall. ‘Jennifer,’ she said, gripping my wrist with her cold fingers and regarding me sadly.
‘I am sorry about the angels,’ I said. ‘We were only mucking about.’ I was pleased with the way my body behaved, my eyes serious, my face properly contrite.
I heard Bronwyn moving about upstairs and then her face appeared over the banisters at the top. ‘Hello,’ she said coolly.
‘All right,’ Mrs Broom said. ‘I was surprised at you. I wasn’t sure whether it was wise to let Bronwyn play with you again … but I’ve been praying for guidance and I think you deserve another chance.’
‘Thank you,’ I said, and my other hand squeezed her cold wrist in a play of affection. My lips made a smile. I wondered if she ever looked in her innocent daughter’s underwear drawer, if she’d ever seen the playing cards.
‘You can go up and see Bronwyn if you like,’ she said. ‘But please, girls. No lewd talk.’ She let me go and I climbed the dreary stairs. It was cold in the house, even on such a warm afternoon, and the landing light bulb glared weakly.
‘What do you want?’ Bronwyn asked as soon as she had shut the door behind us.
‘Nothing.’ I looked around. The dolls were grey with dust. Cats’ cradles of cobwebs linked their fingers. There was the lidless stub of my old lipstick on her dressing table and a grubby powder puff. I sat down on Bronwyn’s unmade bed. She stood and glowered down at me.
‘Where’s Susan?’ she demanded.
‘Don’t know,’ I lied.
‘Fallen out?’
‘No.’
‘Oh.’ She folded her arms across her chest. She looked dirty and tired and smelt of stale perfume and sweat. I felt the cold reptilian quickening of the anger in my belly.
‘Why did you tell on me?’ I asked.
‘Why not?’ she said.
‘Because it was sneaky.’
‘I had to say something,’ she said. ‘Mum was hys-ter-ic-al. I couldn’t say it was me. Anyway, I can’t draw.’
‘She seems all right now,’ I said.
‘She’s been praying,’ she explained. ‘That always calms her down.’
Mrs Broom came in with a tray of orange squash and biscuits. She put it on the floor, looked at us both searchingly and shook her head, before she went out.
‘What have you been doing then?’ I asked, biding my time.
‘In what way?’
‘Just generally. I haven’t seen you for ages.’
She went to the mirror and bent to study her face for a moment. She licked her forefinger and smoothed her eyebrows. Then she picked the tray up and put it on the bed and sat down. She wore her school dress, although it wasn’t a school day, and she looked enormous and bloated, over-inflated in the childish dress and the big flat kippers of her sandals. I took a ginger biscuit.
‘Wouldn’t you like to know,’ she said. She swigged her orange squash and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. The smug look was back.
‘Not particularly,’ I said, ‘I was just wondering.’
She munched a biscuit and brushed the crumbs off her lap onto the floor. Her finger-ends were gnawed right down so that they were ragged and blood-flecked.
‘Well, I’d better go then,’ I said, and hesitated, waiting for her to crack.
‘Don’t,’ she said. ‘Not yet. Mum’s so pleased that you’re here. She thinks you’re worth praying for. She still thinks you’re my friend. I told her your granddad was ill, that’s why we hardly see you.’
‘He is,’ I said.
‘Really? That’s a co-in-ci-dence.’
There was a tense crunching quietness while we finished the biscuits.
‘Have you seen Johnny lately?’ she asked.
‘Have you?’
She tapped the side of her nose and smiled complacently. And I hated her in a pure quicksilver way as I remembered just what she was like, with all the little bits of secrets she hoarded, like bait. She was like a fisherwoman teasing a fish. And it wasn’t even true, it was another one of her lies. I thought she must have forgotten the difference, that her whole world was woven from untruth – ‘a tissue of lies,’ Bob would have said.
‘Well you probably already know then,’ I said, casting my own piece of bait.
‘What?’ the smugness dropped from her face so swiftly it was almost comical.
‘Nothing,’ I said, teasing her now. I could almost feel her bite, feel her tug.
‘Oh go on,’ she pleaded.
‘So you haven’t seen him?’ I asked. ‘You never went back to see him?’
‘I never dared,’ she admitted.
Only I know that this conversation took place. And only I will ever know. No one can wrench it from me. I told Bronwyn to go back. She had been unsure in the light of day, she said, whether it was wise. Even stupid Bronwyn who couldn’t say long words hesitated in the light of day. She asked me to go with her. But I said no.
‘It’s you he wants,’ I said.
‘Don’t you mind?’
‘There’s something he wants to tell you.’ She blinked at me with her pale eyes. ‘There’s nothing to be afraid of,’ I said. ‘I’ve been going there for months.’
‘All right then,’ she said. But I never thought she would. I never really thought she would.
Mrs Broom invited me, tried to persuade me, to stay for lunch but I explained that I had to get back to help Mama. I was sorry. She looked so disappointed. I might have stayed if it had only been Mrs Broom but I wanted to get away from Bronwyn with her smugness and her weakness and the blinking of her deceitful credulous eyes. I had finished with Bronwyn and all the gloominess of spirit I associated with her. I had to get back out into the sunshine and the fresh air. She called me back as I left the house and handed me a paper bag. ‘A present,’ she said, smiling oddly. I walked away from the house before putting my hand into the bag. It was full of hair. My own cold, dead, childish hair. I threw it in the gutter.
24
Bronwyn was missing. I knew even
before I knew. There was an uneasiness as if the world was holding its breath at my wickedness. A sort of waiting for the worst.
I am not an evil person, not wicked, nobody could call me wicked, I would never harm a fly. It was only wishful thinking that led me to tell Bronwyn to go to Johnny, when I was frightened of him myself. It was only wishful thinking. And is that a sin?
Bronwyn’s desk was empty and there were rumours, dark rustlings, and a police car parked outside the school. Miss Clarke was preoccupied and ignored the whispering and inattention.
Because I had gone missing myself, and because I was the only person to have been friendly with Bronwyn, I was seen as connected in some way. This time I didn’t enjoy the attention, didn’t need it. By lunchtime the school was stiff with rumour and speculation and I was clustered round by girls asking questions, or just wanting to be seen with me. Susan held my arm proudly, shielding me from the fray. I was so much the centre of attention I had to force my face not to grin but to look properly grave and concerned. I was concerned, and frightened, and the grin wasn’t real, it was just a reaction to the excitement, a sort of reflex. All around, girls who had never even spoken to Bronwyn brimmed with tears and muttered ‘What ifs’ to each other, thrilled with fear.
I could not get Bronwyn out of my head. Bronwyn and the flying man. I could almost hear the beating of the wings.
‘Do you know anything?’ Susan said. ‘You can tell me, I wouldn’t pass it on. Honest.’
I shook my head.
If I screw up my eyes I can see Bronwyn crouching in the church and Johnny holding the candle out so that he can see her, the light glinting in his clear eyes. Johnny wouldn’t have hurt her. But if he had … I cannot allow that because it was me that sent her. Nobody knows. I lied to her, sweetly, confidingly. I said I had done it with Johnny. But inside I am still sealed. I imagine a closed pink flower. A clean nub. Intact. I said he’d done it with me and he’d like to do it with her. But she may not have gone to Johnny. Probably not. Surely she wouldn’t have been so stupid? So stupid and believing. And he may not still have been there. The whistling I heard may not have been him. Someone else might have been there. It might even have been a bird. Or perhaps it was nothing at all.
‘What if she is dead?’ I whispered to Susan on the way home.
Susan frowned at me. ‘She’s probably just run off with a boy,’ she said.
‘Yes,’ I said, and I felt relieved. ‘Yes, that’s probably right.’ Susan smiled, her little nose wrinkling up. We linked arms. ‘She was sex mad,’ I said, ‘that’s what she told me.’
‘Really?’
‘And her dad’s in prison.’
‘He isn’t.’
‘He is.’ There was something wedged in my throat. Something that was close to painful. Something that made me try and hurt Bronwyn, even now. Although I didn’t really mean her any harm. Something that made me try and hurt her memory. And, of course, Susan was probably right. Bronwyn had run off with a boy, and it was nothing to do with me, nothing at all.
‘Shall we ask if I can move desks and sit next to you?’ Susan suggested. ‘Just until Bronwyn gets back, of course.’
When I got home, Mama was sitting at the kitchen table with her head in her hands. I began to tell her about Bronwyn but she already knew. Mrs Broom had been round, and the police, and they were coming back to interview me. ‘Poor woman, poor poor woman,’ she kept saying. ‘I can’t take much more of this myself, I can’t stand the strain.’
‘It’s all right,’ I said, uselessly, ‘I’m sure she’ll be all right.’
‘Are you?’ she looked at me hopefully, as if she really thought I knew, but then the hopelessness closed over her face again, like a skin of water. ‘And it’s not just that, it’s Bob too. We’ve had the doctor in again. He’s failing. She didn’t say as much but I know. He won’t eat, he won’t drink. He doesn’t care. He’s got that look. He’s given up.’ She began to sob and it was an awful dry wrenching sound, but there were no tears in her eyes. ‘Stupid man,’ she gasped. ‘Can’t he see what he’s doing? Doesn’t he care about me? About us? Selfish old bugger.’
I had never heard Mama swear before. I didn’t even know she knew how. It was awful. I lurked uselessly behind her. There was no comfort I could think of to give. No cup of tea was going to make this better. She made a terrible roaring, teeth-gritting sound and then got herself back under control. I could see her; literally, pulling herself – her face, her limbs, her voice – together, like a puppet I thought, like a puppeteer gathering the strings, but that only made me think of Johnny and something he’d said about bodies being puppets. Borrowed puppets. And I knew there was no way out of it. I’d have to tell them about Johnny.
I went upstairs and peeped round Bob’s door. Someone had taken away most of the pillows, so that he lay almost flat, his face a dreadful mustard colour against the white pillowcase. He may have been asleep. His eyes were sealed and his breath was shallow and rattling. There was a frightful smell like that of a dirty animal cage. I closed the door softly and went into my own room. I sat on my bed and composed myself so that I would be ready for Mrs Broom and the police when they arrived.
I told them about Johnny. I told them I had taken Bronwyn to the church, once, a long time ago. I said that I had never been back. And I had no idea whether Bronwyn had. I had no reason to think so. They listened gravely, but the policeman smirked at the policewoman when I had told them about Johnny’s wings, and she pressed her lips together to flatten her smile. They thought I had been spun a yarn, and perhaps they were right. But when I told them about the church they said there’d be a search. The land beside the church was due for clearance they said, overdue. They were clearing it to make a park with a lake and trees and swings. A place for children to play.
After they’d left, Mama would not at first speak to me, or even look at me. ‘How could you?’ she squeezed out eventually. She’d made some sort of food for tea, and we made some sort of pretence of eating it. ‘How could you be so deceitful? All those secrets? All those lies?’ She raised her eyes from her plate and they met mine, but they were not as I had expected, full of rage. They were like gone-out fires. There was nothing I could say. I thought of her lies, of Jacqueline, of my November birthday, but there was no point in speaking of that. I scraped our tea into the bin and washed the dishes while Mama went upstairs to be with Bob.
The evening paper was still on the mat. I carried it into the kitchen and unfolded it on the table. And there was Bronwyn. The picture was taken when she was younger, before I knew her, when she still wore her hair dragged to the side and tied with a bow. Otherwise she looked just the same, with her dark thick brows and her pale lips pursed upon some secret. The photograph was a blown-up section of a snapshot, enlarged so that the gaps between the tiny dots showed through, giving her the look of someone dispersed, already part of the past. The newspaper report gave her full name. Bronwyn Margaret Rose Broom. I hadn’t known she had middle names, and such dignified names too. They made her sound like someone else. Somehow that made it worse.
Later, I looked into Mama and Bob’s room. I think Mama was asleep in the chair. At least, her eyes were closed. Bob had stopped breathing. His cold yellow toes with their curved ivory nails stuck out from the end of the bed. I covered them up, and then I crept to my room and shut the door.
That night I dreamed of the church, empty of wings. The bricks had been knocked from the windows and the light flooded in and lay in swaths on the floor, like silk. It was silk. I lifted the edge and flapped it so that it floated and rippled. Under the silk, in the place where I had seen the bones, lay Bronwyn. The silk fluttered down and covered her. I flapped the silk again to see her, to be sure that it was her. She was solidly white and naked in the sun’s glare, whiter than the silk. Her nipples were like orange flowers. Her head was to one side and she was dead. I flapped the silk again and again in order to catch quick rippling glimpses. And then all at once she was gone and the silk lay
flat on the earthen floor, and it was only light, after all, and impossible to lift.
When I woke I was relieved for an instant that it had been nothing but a dream. I lay basking for an ignorant moment, the real sunshine spilling onto my bed, and then the horror caught up with me. It may have been only a dream, but Bronwyn had really gone, and might really be dead, as white and still as the dream Bronwyn. And Bob was dead. He had not been breathing last night, and Mama had screwed her eyes tightly shut against the truth. But it would still be there this morning.
PART THREE
25
Susan and I slumped in front of the television. We had the curtains drawn against the afternoon sun that otherwise blotted the picture from the screen. It was midsummer’s day. Last year it had been my birthday. There was a box of chocolates on the sofa between Susan and me, Mama’s gift, though she hadn’t said why. The significance of the day was unspoken. Mama came in and sat down. I held out the box and she chose a Montelimar. It was hot in the room, the people on the screen flickered like shadows. Susan’s mouth was open. I offered her a chocolate but she didn’t see. She leant forward, absorbed. I was proud that she could be so content in my house. We were watching Crackerjack, which I thought a stupid programme. Susan liked it though and I liked to watch her watching. Someone was hit by a custard pie and Susan giggled. She sat back and took a chocolate. Mama reached for her knitting. She was making me a school cardigan, perfectly plain, no cable or fancy stitches, just like Susan’s. A sunbeam inveigled its way through a gap in the curtains and lit the points of her needles, so they flashed like sparks. My mouth was full of sweet and melting chocolate. I’d been showing Susan my first set of photographs, and they remained spread out all over the floor in front of us. Most of them were unsuccessful, subjects were blurred or missed altogether, several of them showed nothing but the bloated smudge of my thumb in front of the lens – but there was one that was perfect. It was a picture of Mama on the back doorstep. She was wearing her apron, and her hair was all windblown wisps, and her hand was a fuzzy streak on its way to her mouth, for I had caught her by surprise and her mouth was open in protest. It was a good picture, a real picture, better than the one Mama had taken of me, perfectly in focus, posed in front of a rose bush, with a stiff smile on my face.
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