by Jane Bailey
Mr Bearpark was the most famous cyclist in Woodside. He wore bicycle clips that displayed mustard-coloured socks, hand-knitted by Mrs Bearpark. Every day he could be seen pushing his bicycle. He pushed it down the hill to work in the sawmill and back up again at dinnertime and teatime. He pushed his bicycle to church on Sundays and to Libby’s grocery stores on Saturdays and even to Stroud and Gloucester and Cheltenham. He wasn’t afraid of hills, he had ‘a fine pair of lungs’, he said. On Sunday evenings he could always be seen on his front step with a piece of rag, tenderly rubbing the sacred machine and polishing the chrome handlebars, oiling the chain, adjusting the tyres. And when he passed the top year boys slouching on walls with their cigarette butts, he would always say something like ‘You need some exercise, you do. Wanna get a bike, you do. Work those limbs – that’s the trick!’ No one ever saw him astride his bicycle. But no one – not even the bad boys – ever pointed this out.
It wasn’t long before these people seemed perfectly normal to me as well, and they were always somewhere in the background, gently going about their oddball lives in a world that never changed.
* * *
Mo’s advantage over me came to an abrupt end three months later when Miss Prosser came to visit Gracie and announced that I was not mad but deaf. A little stay in hospital would sort it all out.
My ‘little stay’ was a shock to Gracie. I screamed at the nurses and spat at them and had to be held down. I spat at the nurses because no one understood that I didn’t want them near me. I didn’t want to be left in a place where women wore tight smiles, a determined look in their eyes and starched white veils clamped to their heads. I didn’t like the way they sported syringes and smelt of nursey chemicals probably designed to knock you out. I had a terror of the rows of iron bedsteads. I felt locked in. I felt alarm. In the end they let me out early, and the fact that Gracie came back for me, like she’d promised, made me love her more than ever.
I had had my adenoids out and my ears syringed, and the world transformed itself overnight. I no longer had any excuse not to speak, but at least now I knew the story I was supposed to tell.
Not that speaking was an easy business by any means. Now that I had a tongue in my mouth, people expected the worst language to come out of it. I remember going into Mr Tribbit’s, the grocer’s, to get something for Gracie. I had a sore throat and a cough and didn’t feel much like talking.
‘Aren’t we going to hear that lovely new voice of yours?’ said Mr Tribbit.
I looked at the soap I was holding out to him. ‘A cough,’ I mumbled.
He looked outraged. ‘I beg your pardon? What did you just say?’
‘What did she say?’ asked Mrs Tribbit, coming up from behind him.
‘I couldn’t possibly repeat it,’ said Mr Tribbit. ‘Told me where to go. And,’ he said, jabbing his finger at me, ‘you can go straight home to Miss Burrows, you can. No one speaks to me like that and buys my produce!’
Speaking was quite a dodgy business, then. You could offend people without knowing it and come home without any soap. Language was a dangerous thing.
4
Gracie and the Mustoes lived in two little stone houses in a row of four. Opposite was a spring and a field of sheep penned in by a lichen-covered stone wall. To the left was the church and graveyard and to the right was the pub. Further up the road in this direction – about half a mile – was Buckleigh House.
It was a fine-looking building, if you made the effort to get right up close and look through the iron gates and between the trees. There was a grand driveway leading up to a golden-pillared porch, and the tall windows were the same on both sides. Its symmetry was part of its beauty, but the way the drive approached almost from the side seemed to add to its mystery. There would be no full view of this house unless you were standing squarely in front of it, inside the grounds.
Mo and I could not leave this house alone. We were fascinated by it. As time went on we invented even more gruesome additions to the stories we had heard, and since I was no longer mute, Stinker became interested in our games too, and joined us in ever more daring feats of voyeurism.
We had a good excuse for playing up the road beyond the church, because that was where Mrs Emery lived.
Mrs Emery had a reliably short temper and a husband who worked nights. We didn’t know where he worked, only that in the daytime he was sure to be sleeping. We took a shameful delight in trying to wake him, not because we wished him any harm, but because our attempts drew out Mrs Emery like rain drew out the lady with the umbrella on Gracie’s hall barometer. And Mrs Emery’s temper thrilled us. We never stayed around long enough to hear a word she said, but the sight of her standing beetroot at her gate and gabbling furiously sent us flying up the road to hide, breathless with exhilaration.
It was always up the road we ran, because of the slight bend. Down the road we would be seen, but up was all hedges and trees and, if we ran far enough, the imposing gateway to Buckleigh House, totally invisible from the village.
The road was good here, and the yellow gravel of the drive entrance so impacted by car wheels that you could bounce a ball on it. The boys liked it because from time to time you got to see a car drive in and out, and we girls liked it because we very occasionally got to see the beautiful Mrs Buckleigh with her incredible changing outfits. If there were too many of us or if we came too close she told us to clear off, but mostly she allowed us to admire her. This she did by ignoring us completely while the driver opened the gates. She tantalized us with her matching coats and hats and feathers and her long trail of dead babies that had come out bleeding.
Once, loitering by the iron gates, we saw a man striding across the lawn, and we squealed and scattered in all directions. He came right out of the gates and told us to clear off, but Mo said it was only Mr Rollins the gardener. Another time we saw a face at an upstairs window, and Stinker said for certain it was Mr Buckleigh, but no sooner had we seen it than it was gone. The next time we saw the face we all looked much more carefully, but it was a long way off and we couldn’t see for certain the heart on his sleeve or any blood or anything.
Our interest never waned though, fuelled as it was by the little bits of information we all contributed to keep it alive. Spit Palmer said her mother had said he was a philanthropist. Stinker said he’d thought as much and we’d better watch out, because they did terrible things to children. George said he had a room full of guns, which was most likely true. I said I’d heard he had a hook for a hand, which wasn’t true at all but seemed to fit in with the general picture.
Often Mo and I would play on our own, and then I had to be Buster Keaton and she would be Mo grown up. I think she somehow knew I’d come from the woods, because we always had to be lost in the woods which she found terribly romantic, and I just knew it was cold and damp so I tried to make us find a cottage. Mo insisted the cottage was always deserted, although it miraculously had plenty of fresh food and a warm fire blazing.
‘Look! A cottage!’ I would say, as soon as I’d had enough of the woods.
‘It’s deserted!’ she would discover, the instant she stepped into some bushes. ‘Let’s warm up!’
‘I’ll light a fire.’
‘Oh, Buster! There’s already a fire – but I need warming up.’
I would go and rub her skin and she would fall limp in my arms. ‘I’m so tired.’
Then I would have to find a bed, and there would strangely only be one in the whole house. We would button up our coats to make a blanket and snuggle up underneath. I had no idea who Buster Keaton was, and so found it hard to stay in character. Fortunately, before we progressed any further, we were usually bogged down with details: how big the room was, what sort of food was in the pantry and how long it would last, what she was wearing and so on.
Sometimes George would wander over and want to join in. Usually he would be a doctor called out to examine some injury or other which required the lifting of my dress or jersey. I was quite happy wit
h this turn of events, but Mo wasn’t. She would throw him a stick and say ‘Go fetch’ and usually he would.
5
Just before Christmas a gentleman came to our door. I knew he was a gentleman because he wore a tweed suit and removed a very fine hat when he came in. He didn’t smell of the sawmills or sheep fields. He smelt of woodsmoke – beech with a little sappy hint of pine. He wafted in like a breeze, and spread his manliness to every corner of the room. I hid behind Gracie and clung on to a chunk of her skirt. She offered him a seat, and I could feel her fluster, although she spoke calmly enough. He looked about him at the room, and then at me and Gracie in equal measure, but intently.
He had a gentle face: eyes brown and glistening as if they might be half full of tears.
After the greetings and the kettle going on, he fumbled his way through some sentences. He had a deep, tender, almost apologetic voice.
‘I heard about the girl …’
I felt Gracie go rigid under her clothes. ‘Run along out the back, now, Joy. Fetch some wood, will you, my love?’
But I could not fetch wood. I ran as far as the back kitchen, and stood with my cheek on the cold stone wall, listening by the door. They were speaking in low voices, and the kettle was rumbling, and I only heard fragments.
His voice:
‘She’s my responsibility … I promised I would take care of her … I assumed … it seemed …’
Then Gracie:
‘… my second cousin’s child … a coincidence … mistaken … understandable …’
The kettle began to whistle and the voices muddled and died and I was dizzy with fear. Then Gracie shouted for me, ‘Joy?’ and I came in, and it was obvious I’d been nowhere but the back kitchen, and he said, ‘Joy, is that her name? What a lovely name,’ and Gracie smiled and poured tea, and I sat by her feet.
They sat looking at each other for a long time, sipping tea and saying nothing in particular, except he said he was sorry a lot for the intrusion, and she said it was no bother at all.
She breathed in and out very deeply once, and he stared into his tea leaves as if holding his face in place to stop it wobbling. I looked at his socks. They were dark green and shop-bought. That was another reason I knew he was a gentleman.
When he left there were lots more apologies, and when the door closed Gracie held me very, very tight, and almost suffocated me.
‘Am I going to be taken away?’
‘No. You’re going nowhere, my darling. You’ll stop here safe with me, if that’s all the same with you.’
‘Yes.’
Then she sat like a stunned rabbit, and gazed at the windowsill for a very long time.
When the gentleman left there was a doll. I remember it in particular because, although it was second-hand, it was an exceptional toy for anyone to give away. It was an articulated doll with real hair. When I say real, it wasn’t painted on, but made of some substance that looked like hair. And apart from a slight frizz on one side where it had become matted, the little cap of ginger locks was in perfect condition. Her eyes, unlike the modern ones which opened and closed, were painted on. This gave her a slightly unnerving fixed stare, but since the look was wide-eyed and innocent there was nothing sinister about it, and everyone who saw her exclaimed what a darling, happy face she had. And it was happy, too. Her lips were shaped into a beautiful cupid’s bow which turned up at the edges with what seemed genuine pleasure. She had a blue dress with daisies on it and a slight tear in one sleeve.
I called the doll Conceptua. I didn’t know why I chose that name: it seemed to choose itself. If I had told her, Gracie would have said it was a beautiful name, but no one knew her name except me.
I took Conceptua everywhere with me when I first had her. I sat her next to me when I did colouring with some newly acquired crayons, and I looked at her watching me. She watched me with that beatific smile, happy with everything I drew. And when I sat down to eat, Conceptua would sit at the table too. Sometimes I would try to feed her cabbage, but she simply smiled and wouldn’t take it. Gracie thought this was amusing, and used to say, ‘It’s no use, she’s just not hungry.’ Or sometimes I would tuck the corner of a hankie into her neckband and pretend it was a bib, and Gracie would smile. But once, I remember, Conceptua wasn’t interested in my lentil soup. She showed no interest as I put the spoon of khaki liquid to her lips – just sat there smiling her candid little smile. I pushed the spoon into the groove of her lips more forcefully, trying to make her take it.
‘Eat up!’ I said in my head. ‘Eat it up, or else!’
But Conceptua stared ahead, helplessly smiling her stupid smile, so I rammed the spoon in hard and, since there was no mouth to enter, the contents spilled over on to her spotless blue dress.
I could see Gracie was upset by this, but I couldn’t help it. It was because I wasn’t very nice. I was bad, but I wasn’t sorry.
My ambiguous relationship with the doll lasted for a few weeks – maybe more. I wanted her with me at all times, enjoyed her hopelessness, but at the same time there was an unease about the little thrill I always felt when I considered how easy it would be for me to hurt her. Gracie forgave me, convinced that my impromptu cruelties were mistakes, sheer moments of clumsiness she somehow linked with my having been largely mute.
In so many ways I loved that doll. I adored her angel face – truly I did. Those wide blue eyes meant no harm to anyone, and even though the smile did seem slightly too contented, she did look, at times, almost lost.
What motivated me most, though, was her inability to respond to my cruelty. I wanted her to feel it, to show it by crying or howling. Even just a little wince would have done. But no matter how hard I tried, Conceptua just grinned her hapless grin: angelic, harmless and utterly, dangerously, provocative.
One morning I took her down the garden and into the shed. I removed her clothes and laid her on a small, gritty shelf alongside some empty flowerpots. I took a small mallet from a rusty metal grip on the shed wall, and I examined it. I thought Conceptua would be feeling frightened by now: so exposed and uncertain. But she didn’t bat an eyelid. Just went on smiling. So I raised the mallet and hit her on the head with it. More smiles. I hit her very hard indeed, raised the mallet high above my head and smashed it down on hers. I didn’t stop until the face was broken up, and the smile in so many tiny fragments it no longer smiled. I thought I heard the faintest scream – I wasn’t sure. It just showed how far you had to go to get a reaction.
I wasn’t pleased with my experiment. In fact, it had been something of a failure, for now the doll was gone. Gracie couldn’t believe what I’d done, and kept suggesting other possible reasons for the doll’s demise, but I made it clear it was me. After that she must have thought I really was mad, but she didn’t ever tell a soul. Just kept on loving me.
6
The Mustoes were intriguing neighbours. Mr Mustoe worked at the manor house, and when his hours dropped with the recession, rather than help around the house, he took to trying to learn the piano. He did this because he thought he might become a pianist and earn lots of money. When he gave up, a few months later, with ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’, he sold the piano and bought an old harp (much to Mrs Mustoe’s disgust, who had hoped to see some benefit from the sale of their family piano). Strings were the thing. He would be all right if he could pluck. It was the black and white keys that were holding him back.
When he gave up the harp after a few weeks, he sold it and bought a trombone. Wind was the thing. He had always wanted to be in the Woodside Brass Band, and it had a social side to it as well, which was good for a man’s soul when his hours were cut. And so as the months and years went by, we heard an entire orchestra of second-hand instruments honk and wheeze and wail through our parlour wall.
Mrs Mustoe seemed a haphazard housewife. She was forever finding things to do in the middle of doing something else. Her washing line was always full, her laundry never done, her children wild and unkempt. She was forever runnin
g out of sugar or bacon or milk and having to borrow, yet her cakes were flawless and her pies mouth-watering. She may have appeared careless as she slapped the ingredients together and into the oven, but they always came out as small masterpieces. She called her children by the wrong names and forgot their ages, but for all that she brought up five happy children who adored her. If George thought he was a dog, that was fine by her. She got him to eat his greens by throwing him scraps. And if Tilly thought she was a boy for the whole of one summer, that was fine too. She gave her shorts to wear, and let it pass. (And it did, soon enough, for Tilly was only trying to get the same privileges as Stinker who stayed out late and smoked, and it didn’t work.) To the outside world Mrs Mustoe looked a clumsy, incompetent, irredeemable mother. To me she was a perfect one.
Gracie, by contrast, had had no practice in motherhood. She had no confidence in the simplest of tasks. She forgot what she was preparing for supper, burned cakes, left the iron on white sheets until it scorched brown marks. Her vegetable growing was a disaster: the beans she trained beautifully up poles turned out to be bindweed; her Brussels sprouts didn’t sprout; her seedlings withered and keeled over. Her pies were too dry, her carrots too soggy, her tea always stewed, and her nooks and crannies laced with fine cobwebs.
She had but one vanity which, when she wasn’t knitting, she pandered to in the evenings by the fire: embroidery. Gracie Burrows was the finest embroiderer in Woodside – if not in Gloucestershire. Every year the church ran a competition for the best embroidered prayer cushion (an unchristian idea to boost prayer cushions) and every year it seemed you could knock Miss Burrows over with a feather, so shocked was she that she had won it yet again. Even though she spent every free moment perfecting ‘Faith, Hope and Charity’ in pinks and reds and greens with the most intricate interwoven floral decoration, even though she knew she would self-destruct if anyone else came first, she would always declare, ‘Me? What, me? Again? Good Lord above!’
