V for Violet

by Alison Rattle

  Mum pokes her head around my bedroom door. ‘You all right, Violet? Me and your dad are off to bed now.’

  I’ve got the blankets pulled up to my chin, so it’s easy to pretend to be asleep. I just keep still and make sure my breathing is deep and regular. I can feel Mum hovering for a moment, probably trying to work out if she should come and stick her hand on my forehead to check if I’m properly ill or not. She obviously decides against it, because I hear the door close and a short while later the water pipes banging as she begins the nightly rinse out of her stockings.

  I close my eyes and try to ignore the knot that’s growing tighter and tighter in my tummy. I wonder what Jackie is doing right this minute. Is she out at another dance without me? Why didn’t she ask me if I’d like to go to the cinema tomorrow? Have I even crossed her mind at all tonight? The noise of Dad thumping up the stairs interrupts my thoughts. There’s the creak of bedsprings as he sits down to take off his boots. Mum says something to him and he grunts in reply. There’s the chink of Mum’s pot of cold cream as she puts it back on her dressing table. Then the usual groans and murmurs as they settle themselves down to sleep. It’s the same sounds every night. Nothing ever changes. They’re the sounds which have always comforted me and sent me to sleep. But they don’t help tonight.

  Instead, after it’s all gone quiet, I’m filled with a horrible empty feeling. I think of the room next to Mum and Dad’s. The room which used to be Joseph’s. It’s horrible and empty in there too, even though it’s still full of his stuff. Mum’s never been able to bring herself to change a thing in there. His bed is still made up, the blankets smoothed and pulled tight. His old feather pillow is still dented in the middle where his head used to rest. I bet if I could bring myself to look, there’d even be a stray hair or two. There’s a small wardrobe in the corner of the room, and all his clothes are still inside; there’s woollens folded on the shelves and some shirts and a couple of pairs of trousers hanging, all neat and pressed. It’s stupid and ghoulish and a waste of a room. Even Mum only goes in there to dust these days.

  I used to sneak in when I was younger, just out of curiosity. I’d rearrange the tin soldiers on the windowsill and look through the pile of dusty comics under the bed. There was a razor and a piece of mirror on top of his chest of drawers. And inside the drawers there were a few yellowed vests and a couple of balls of socks. I suppose he must have taken all his pants to war with him, cos there’s none in there. The room smells funny too, like sweaty feet and mothballs. And I always felt like I had to be quiet, in case I woke someone up. I took Jackie in there once, after she’d nagged me for an age.

  ‘Oh, Violet,’ she whispered. ‘I can feel him, can’t you?’ She walked slowly around the room with her head cocked to one side. She ran her hands across the bed. ‘I think he’s watching us, Vi,’ she said. She picked up the razor from the chest of drawers and turned it around in her fingers. When she put it down I had to move it slightly, back to exactly where it had been before she touched it. I remember feeling irritated with her, but I didn’t know why. Then she walked up to the wardrobe. ‘Shush,’ she said. ‘He’s trying to tell us something. Can you hear?’

  Even though I knew she was only mucking about, the hairs on the back of my neck prickled. She reached out her hand towards the wardrobe door. ‘Shush,’ she said, again. And for some reason we both held our breaths. I could hear the clock ticking, from all the way down in the front room. And suddenly, I felt my brother. Like really felt him. He was in the room with us. He was watching us, making sure we didn’t mess anything up. He didn’t want us in there. The feeling was terrible. It started in the pit of my stomach and spread all through my body, until my fingers and toes were tingling.

  Suddenly, Jackie pulled open the wardrobe door. ‘Boo!’ she yelled. ‘He’s in here, Violet! He’s in here!’

  I screamed loudly. And the shirts and trousers swayed on their hangers. I thumped Jackie on the arm. ‘Idiot! You nearly gave me a heart attack!’

  ‘Your face!’ Jackie spluttered. ‘So funny. So funny!’

  I never went into Joseph’s bedroom again. But sometimes in the quiet of the night, the thought of that graveyard in the middle of the house knocks on my brain like an unwanted visitor.

  Breakfast at Tiffany’s

  ‘You’d best be back by four, or I’ll have yer guts for garters!’ Dad shouts across the shop as I jangle the door open and step outside. It’s Saturday morning and it’s freezing. Crisped-up leaves are hurtling along the pavements and the wind is swirling up the dust from the old bombsite opposite. I hold my coat tight around my throat as I hurry up the High Street towards Ruby’s Café. I keep my head down and watch my feet scuffing the pavement. Jackie won’t be on her own. They’ll all be with her; her new friends. The Sugar Girls. I don’t want to meet them, I feel sick at the thought. But it would be worse not to see Jackie at all. I’m like a pet dog, I think; hanging around patiently, waiting to be thrown any old leftover scraps.

  It’s been three months now since we left school. It wasn’t too bad to begin with. I’d still run round to Jackie’s most nights, after my shift in the shop had finished. We’d sit round the kitchen table drinking tea, while Brenda clattered about in the sink, and Jackie would tell me all about her day.‘It’s the early mornings that are killing me, Vi,’ she’d say, yawning loudly. ‘And only two toilet breaks all day! Can you imagine?’

  I nodded solemnly. I felt sorry for her. But inside, I was glad she wasn’t having a good time without me. She looked different already. She’d changed her hair without telling me. It was backcombed and stiff on the top of her head.

  ‘What’ve you done to your hair?’ I asked.

  She smiled, all pleased with herself. ‘Nice, isn’t it?’ she said, patting it carefully. ‘You should try doing something different with yours, Vi.’

  ‘Makes you look older,’ I mumbled.

  ‘Yeah?’ she said, smiling again as though looking older was a good thing.

  Soon, she started talking about other girls at the factory. Sharon said this and Pauline said that. ‘Sharon reckons you can get pregnant if you let a fella touch your boobs. And Mary! Oh, Vi, you’d like Mary. She’s a right laugh. She says she’s done it already. But standing up against a wall, cos it’s safer that way.’

  I didn’t think I’d like Mary at all. She sounded like what Mum called a fast piece. A girl who’d come to no good at all. I didn’t like the sound of any of them, and every time Jackie mentioned a new name it was like she was stabbing me in the heart.

  ‘I wish your dad would let you leave the chippie and come to Garton’s,’ Jackie would say. ‘You’d love being a Sugar Girl, Vi. I know you would. I miss you.’

  That was the first time she lied to me. The curtains came down in her eyes. I saw them, as clear as anything. She didn’t really miss me. She just thought she should say she did.

  Now, Jackie lines her eyes with black kohl. She looks like she’s been in a fight and lost. She wears hip-huggers and skinny rib jumpers (while I still dress like Mum.) She’s been going out to dances too, and this morning she went to the Granada without me.

  As I weave my way around the Saturday morning shoppers on the High Street and dodge the prams and a gang of boys carrying a broken go-cart, I picture Jackie and her new friends piling out of the Granada. I bet they all linked arms and giggled and oohed and aahhed over beautiful Audrey Hepburn, the star of the film. But I bet they don’t know any of the things that I know about her.

  1. For a start, Audrey Hepburn is far too skinny and could do with eating a few bags of chips.

  2. And even though she’s that skinny, she’s got huge feet. Size ten.

  3. She can speak five different languages.

  4. She had to stand by and watch some of her family being shot by the Nazis.

  I lift my eyes from the pavement. I can see Ruby’s Café in the distance now. The windows are steamed up, which is annoying because I want to see where everybody is sitting before I go in
side. I want to prepare my face, to arrange my features so that I look like I don’t care if they are all in there or not.

  But I can’t do that now. I’ll have to open the café door and look around the room first. And one of them is bound to see me come in and there’ll be nudging and winking and then they’ll go all quiet when I walk over to their table. I know I’ll go red. I know I will. I can feel my cheeks burning already.

  I put my hand up to check my hair. It feels a lumpy mess where the wind has stirred it up, like a bowl of porridge. I pull my fingers through it uselessly. I open the café door. A rush of warm dampness hits me in the face, and the smell of fried eggs, burnt toast and cigarette smoke curl around my nostrils.

  I hear them before I see them. Jackie’s lemon-sharp giggle cuts through the grease in the air, and there’s another sound of hoarse, confident laughter that makes the palms of my hands sweat.

  They’re over in the corner, squashed around a red Formica table that’s covered in mugs and crumb-scattered plates and a glass ashtray balancing a tower of fag ends. There’s four of them, including Jackie.

  None of them look round. They’re too interested in each other. I have to walk right up to the table and tap Jackie on the shoulder.

  She turns round. ‘Oh. Hi, Violet,’ she says.

  The others stop talking. For a long, awkward moment all I can feel are their eyes, sliding up and down me, judging the scruffy pumps on my feet and the blue cotton slacks that Norma passed on to me when she got bored with them. Suddenly, I can’t imagine why I ever thought they’d look good with my old white blouse and the lemon cardie that Jackie’s nan knitted for me last Christmas. I pull down the hem of the cardie, as if it will make it look any better.

  ‘You going to sit down?’ says Jackie. ‘Here.’ She shuffles across her seat and pats the small space left beside her. I balance myself on the edge of her chair and nod to the three girls who are still watching me.

  ‘Oh,’ says Jackie, suddenly remembering her manners. She flicks her hand at the other girls. ‘This is Pauline, Sharon and Mary.’ She turns to me. ‘And girls … this is Violet.’

  They all smile quick, stiff little smiles and I notice how they are all wearing the same shade of lipstick, like strawberry jam smeared thickly across their mouths. ‘Anyway,’ says the one called Sharon. ‘Like I was saying. Do you think if I pinned my hair back like this …’ She grabs the ends of her dark shoulder-length hair and pulls it back from her face. ‘… And if I flick my eyeliner out at the edges …’ She widens her eyes and blinks slowly. ‘… Do you think I might get mistaken for Audrey Hepburn?’

  ‘In your dreams!’ The one called Mary hoots with laughter. She has pale, down-to-her-bum hair and a dainty nose that twitches like a rabbit’s. She’s the one that has already done it, I remember. I scrutinise her face, looking for any tell-tale signs. She’s got lovely skin. Really white and clear and pearly-looking. Her eyes are huge and when she blinks her lashes touch the tops of her cheeks. But there’s no obvious sign that she’s done it.

  I laugh to myself. What did I expect? A big badge pinned to her chest that says, Warning. Spoiled goods. Keep clear ?

  ‘You all right?’ says Jackie, nudging me. ‘What’s so funny?’

  ‘Nothing.’ I say brightly. Everybody’s staring at me now. Expecting me to say something. ‘Erm … Did you know,’ I mutter, ‘that Audrey Hepburn had to watch as some of her family was shot by the Nazis?’

  Jackie frowns. ‘And you think that’s funny?’ she says.

  I’ve embarrassed her. I didn’t mean to, but I have. And the stupid thing is, it’s me that’s blushing. It’s my face that’s burning up and it’s my stomach that’s gone all sick and fidgety.

  Jackie turns away from me and takes a big swallow of tea. The other girl, Pauline, pulls a face at her as if to say, who’s your friend?

  She’s got mean eyes. Like a blackbird. I have no idea why Jackie would want to be friends with her. She seems like a right stuck-up cow. I imagine Pauline flat on her back in the middle of the café floor, with me sitting on top of her, pinning her down. I grab handfuls of her perfect beehive and pull it all apart until she looks like she’s been dragged through a hedge backwards. ‘I’m sorry, Violet,’ she sobs. ‘I’m sorry for being such a horrible person. I’ll try harder from now on, I promise.’

  Of course, I’d never do anything like that, but it helps to imagine that I might. It’s like when you think about a teacher or a policeman sitting on the toilet with their underwear rumpled around their ankles. It makes them less scary somehow.

  They’re all talking about a dance now. A ‘work do’ next Saturday night at Garton’s. ‘You going to be wearing your red dress?’ Sharon asks Mary. ‘Cos if you are, I won’t wear mine. I’ll wear my green.’

  ‘But I was going to wear my green!’ says Jackie. ‘You know I bought it specially.’ Her voice is pretend cross.

  A layer of sadness washes over me. She likes these girls well enough to use her pretend cross voice. I’ve never heard her use it with anyone else but me and her nan. And worse than that, I don’t know anything about her new green dress.

  ‘Why don’t you all come round to mine next week?’ says Pauline. ‘Bring all your clobber with you and we’ll have a try-on session.’

  They all coo like a flight of happy pigeons. I’m obviously not included in the invitation. They chatter on and there’s nothing I can say to join in. So instead, I think about all the words I know for groups of birds: a murder of crows, a parliament of owls, a kettle of nighthawks, a company of parrots, a watch of nightingales, a pitying of turtle doves, and my favourite: an unkindness of ravens.

  Jackie used to love it when I told her things like this. ‘You’re so clever, Violet,’ she would say. ‘I don’t know how you have room in your head for things like that!’ Another layer of sadness washes over me. I’m thick with it now, like the grease from the chip fryers.

  ‘I’ve seen him making eyes at you!’ Pauline is saying to Jackie.

  ‘He doesn’t!’ Jackie protests. She wriggles her bum around and pushes me right to the edge of the chair. I have to hold on to the table now, to keep my balance.

  ‘I bet he’ll ask you to dance again!’ says Pauline. ‘I bet you’ll get off with him!’ Her voice rises to an excited squeal.

  ‘I will not be getting off with Colin Trindle,’ says Jackie, firmly. ‘I’m a good girl, I am.’ She giggles, and the sound of her happiness turns my stomach.

  I don’t know her any more.

  The old Jackie was never bothered about dresses and dances. The old Jackie was never bothered about fellas. We were going to do all those things one day, of course. But we were going to do them together; one day in the future. But somehow, and I don’t know how, Jackie’s future has arrived before mine.

  I stare at each of the Sugar Girls in turn. I can see Mary’s future already. Before too long she’ll be pushing a pram up the High Street, her stomach all fat and swollen with another baby and there’ll be old lady varicose veins winding up the back of her legs. And Sharon’s never going to look like Audrey Hepburn, no matter how much make-up she slaps on her face. And Pauline’s too mean to ever amount to much. She’ll probably end up as the type who has affairs with married men because no man will actually want to marry her. I thought Jackie was better than all this.

  ‘What you looking at?’ says Pauline. She brushes at her face with her fingers. ‘Have I got something on me or what?’

  I quickly look away. I don’t know what I’m still doing here. Jackie hasn’t said two words to me. I listen to them all giggling and talking over each other, like they all belong together. Like they’re all part of the same pack. I try to remember what a group of girls is called. A gaggle? A giggle? A huddle? I don’t think it’s any of those. But I know what it should be. If it was my job to come up with collective nouns, I know what I’d call this lot.

  A bitch of girls.

  A bloody bitch of girls. I wish I could tell Jackie.

/>   I stand up suddenly and in my rush I knock the table and a splash of tea slops from Mary’s cup. She tuts and scowls at me.

  ‘I’ve … I’ve got to go,’ I say. I look down at Jackie. ‘I’ve just remembered I’ve got to meet someone.’ I don’t want her to think she’s the only one with a life.

  Jackie looks up at me. ‘But Vi, you’ve only just got here,’ she says. ‘You haven’t even had a cuppa.’ She narrows her eyes. ‘And anyway, who are you meeting?’

  I shrug. ‘No one you know.’ I turn to go. I need air. I can’t breathe in here.

  ‘Come round one night,’ Jackie shouts after me. ‘I haven’t seen you properly for ages.’

  But before I can answer, her attention drifts away. She doesn’t want to miss what Pauline is saying. She raises her hand towards me as though she is shooing away an annoying wasp and then she leans back towards the bitch of girls. Pauline doesn’t bother to lower her voice. ‘She’s weird. All that staring. What’s that about …?’

  I shut the café door behind me, harder than I mean to, and as I stumble out onto the street I crash into a man wearing a buttoned-up overcoat. One of the buttons digs into my cheek. ‘Watch where you’re going!’ he barks. I swing around and a cold blast of wind slaps me in the face, bringing with it the burnt toast stink of the sugar factory. The stink is always worse in the cold.

  I hurry back down the High Street, pretending I have somewhere important to be. Someone important to meet. But I have nowhere to go and no one to meet. I didn’t know you could be lost in a place you knew so well. And I didn’t know how hard it was to breathe with a broken heart.

  Battersea Park is quiet. I don’t know how I’ve ended up here. There’s a few dog walkers, huddled inside thick coats, striding along the pathway in front of me. There’s two dogs tugging on a stick. One of them has long, floppy ears like a spaniel, and the wind keeps blowing them into the dog’s eyes. But it doesn’t care. It just shakes his head and carries on tugging at the stick. I find my way to the old pump house and walk around the crumbling walls. Thick stems of ivy have twisted their way through gaps in the bricks and covered the old windows. I think of Sleeping Beauty locked away in her castle. I breathe in the cold air. It smells a bit like Joseph’s old room, of dust and damp and sadness. I don’t like it here. It feels all wrong.