Girl's Guide to Kissing Frogs

by Clayton, Victoria

  ‘What’ve you done cha leg?’ asked the small boy.

  ‘I’ve told you not to ask personal questions, Gary,’ said the woman with the magazine, not looking up. ‘It’s rude.’

  ‘Was you run over?’

  ‘I’ve broken my foot.’

  ‘Was there masses of blood?’

  ‘No.’ I stared out of the window, hoping to discourage further questions. As it was dark I could see nothing but smeary, shivering trickles, twinkling lights and my own reflection.

  ‘How’re they goin’ to get it off? With a hammer?’

  ‘A little saw, actually.’

  Gary seemed to cheer up a little. ‘They might saw your leg off too, by mistake. What’s in that box?’ He pointed to Siggy’s cage. ‘I thought I saw it move.’

  I put my hand on the basket to hold it still, for Siggy had decided he had had enough imprisonment and was trying to tunnel his way through the wicker with his teeth. ‘Nothing interesting.’

  ‘I wanna see.’

  It seemed a good moment to visit the lavatory. I stood up and took hold of the basket.

  The elderly woman’s eyes had closed. She sat with her knees apart and her feet rolled outwards. I tried to step over her but my cumbersome limb made manoeuvring difficult and I accidentally trod on her foot. She drew herself up with a little scream, kicking my good leg on which all my weight was resting so that I fell back on to the knees of the man with the astrakhan collar. He muttered something incomprehensible beneath his breath and put me back on my feet.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ I said to the woman. She looked furious.

  I apologized to the man but he was busy smoothing out his New Scientist which I had accidentally crushed and did not look up. I struggled down to the lavatory at the end of the corridor; it barely had room for me, my cast and Siggy’s cage all at once. Returning to the compartment I accidentally buffeted the man’s knees with Siggy’s cage. This time he met my profuse apology with a nod of his head and a fleeting glance in which I read exasperation.

  ‘So I should think!’ said the elderly lady waspishly, and unfairly; this time her person was unscathed.

  ‘C’n I see what’s in it now?’

  Gary was a maddeningly persistent child.

  ‘There’s nothing to see …’ As I teetered towards my seat, the shawl caught on the old woman’s knees and Siggy was momentarily revealed.

  ‘I saw it! I saw it!’ shouted Gary. ‘It’s a rat! A huge grey rat! With a long tail like a snake’s!’

  ‘No, it isn’t!’ I replied above the elderly woman’s screams. ‘It’s a rabbit. Look! You can see he has long ears. And a dear little fluffy tail.’

  I whisked away the shawl to show the company my beautiful Siegfried. Gary’s mother shot him a look of dislike before going back to her magazine, continuing to wrinkle her nose and pull down the corners of her mouth as though she could smell something unpleasant, though Siggy, for all his faults, was never malodorous.

  ‘Wassis name?’ demanded Gary.

  It was quite as bad as being accosted by a drunk.

  ‘Siggy.’

  ‘Issat short for cigarette?’

  I was reluctant to open channels for further conversation. ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m allergic to animals,’ said the elderly woman. ‘Perhaps,’ she addressed the man in the astrakhan collar, ‘you’d open the window. I must have fresh air or I can’t answer for my asthma.’

  The man stood up and made his way over to the window. As he fought with the little sliding pane at the top, the train careened round a bend and he lurched sideways, knocking the magazine from Gary’s mother’s hand and treading heavily on Gary. For a boy he was a disgraceful cry-baby. It was some time before calm was restored and the readers among us allowed to return to their literature in peace. The elderly woman sat sucking and staring angrily at the heathery mountain with one hand pressed to her chest. I tried to give my whole attention to The Pilgrim’s Progress. Snow blew in through the open window directly on to my lap, and the wind from the motion of the train parted my hair, but I did not dare to protest. Instead I concentrated on the Discourse between Mercy and Good Christiana.

  During the next half-hour, as I brushed the snowflakes from my increasingly sodden page, I conceived a great dislike for Mercy, who wept for her carnal relations sinning in ignorance of a better course. Good Christiana, a prig if ever there was one, comforted her, saying – I thought obscurely – bowels becometh pilgrims. I looked this up in the notes at the back. It referred of course to bowels of compassion, nothing to do with digestion, but the vision conjured by this maundering, complacent couple was unattractive, and when they reached the Slough of Despond, through which I had already waded earlier that day with Good Christiana’s husband, suddenly I could stand it no longer. I stood up and hurled The Pilgrim’s Progress through the open window into the whirling darkness. Because it was an ancient copy it fell into at least three hundred separate pages, of which a third blew back in through the window and distributed themselves about the compartment.

  ‘Tickets, please.’ A uniformed man had slid back the door. His eyes took in the mess. ‘What the bloomin’ heck’s going on in here?’ The elderly lady was brushing off the pages that had landed on her with as much shuddering abhorrence as though they had been cockroaches. ‘There’s a ten-pound fine for littering of railway property.’ His stare roamed round the compartment to rest on each of us in turn.

  ‘It was the wind,’ I explained. ‘I’ll clear it all up before I get off.’

  ‘I hope so, young lady.’ The ticket inspector’s already extensive frame seemed to swell with menace. ‘I’ll just have a look at your ticket.’

  ‘She’s got a rabbit,’ shrilled Gary, pointing at Siggy. ‘In that cage.’

  The little swine! I would have liked to have chucked Gary after Bunyan.

  ‘Ho!’ The ticket inspector advanced into the compartment, trampling on several feet. The elderly woman gave a screech of pain and the man with the astrakhan collar winced and closed his eyes. ‘No Livestock Allowed In Passenger Accommodation,’ the ticket inspector said impressively. ‘You’ll have to put it in the luggage van.’

  I summoned all my powers to charm. ‘I’m getting off in half an hour at Haltwhistle,’ I pleaded. ‘And,’ I put extra pathos into my voice, ‘I’ve just had an operation on my foot. It’ll be difficult – almost impossible – for me to fetch him from the van as well as get my luggage off the train. Couldn’t you please, just this once, out of the kindness of your heart, overlook the rules?’ I gave him my ecstatically happy Giselle smile from the beginning of the first act. ‘I’d be eternally grateful.’

  ‘No,’ said the inspector.

  The man was an ass, a lackey in the pay of a hygiene-obsessed bureaucracy. I gave him my furious Titania scowl.

  ‘I’m sure I’ve caught a flea already,’ complained the old lady petulantly.

  ‘We done the plague at school,’ said Gary. ‘Teacher said it was fleas that killed everyone. Proberly you’re goin’ to come out in black boils. It looks like a plague rabbit.’ Before I could stop him he had darted forward and stuck his finger into Siggy’s cage. Siggy struck like a cobra. Gary screamed until my hair practically stood on end and his finger became a fountain gushing blood.

  His mother lifted her eyes from her magazine long enough to say, ‘Shut it, you little tyke,’ and to give him a hard clout on his ear.

  Gary howled and knuckled his eyes with a grubby fist. I saw the man in the astrakhan collar take out his wallet and discreetly press something into the ticket inspector’s hand. It looked like a ten-pound note. All the bluster and bullying went out of the ticket inspector. He grinned sycophantically and touched his cap as the note disappeared into his pocket.

  ‘Well, sir. Seeing as the young lady’s getting off soon it might be as well to make an exception, bearing in mind as she is a disabled person.’

  ‘That would be most sensible,’ said the astrakhan collar in a lordly way. Ther
e was a trace of something foreign in his accent.

  Deferentially the ticket inspector withdrew his paunch and slid the door shut with an air of respectful solicitude.

  I examined my benefactor. His hair was very dark and his skin was what people misleadingly call olive, though it was neither green nor black nor in the least oily but a sort of yellow to gold colour. Though he was much better looking than Alex, there was a similarity in the colouring and the long thin nose. Alex’s family were Lithuanian Jews. They lived in a poor but jolly community in Bethnal Green and a group of them always came to cheer his performances. Afterwards they got plastered and homesick together. I wondered if this man was a Lithuanian. Perhaps he was a refugee, as Alex’s father had been. He might be travelling north to find work so he could send money back to his starving family in Sovetsk. Perhaps he did not know the value of a ten-pound note. I imagined him sitting in a grim bedsitter in Carlisle, tears rolling down his face as he counted his remaining change and thought of the feast his hungry children could have enjoyed if only he had known … this flight of fancy was checked when I remembered that astrakhan was exorbitantly expensive.

  I rose from my seat and leaned forward to tap him on the knee. He looked at me with black eyes like Alex’s, but unlike Alex’s, his were hostile.

  ‘I saw you give that man money. You must let me pay you back. I’m afraid I haven’t got enough cash but I could give you a post-dated cheque.’

  He held up his hand. ‘Please. The bribe was offered in an entirely selfish spirit. I have already been interrupted in my reading more times than I could count. I have been sat on, trodden on, blown by the wind, snowed upon, had my ears tortured by screams and cryings. I would consider it a sufficient return if you could contrive not to excite any more disturbances.’

  He returned his gaze to the printed page. I sat down, feeling thoroughly snubbed.

  Gary was still snivelling. Though he was a repulsive child I couldn’t help feeling a little sorry for him.

  ‘Tell you what, Gary. If you help me pick up all this paper, I’ll give you fifty pee.’

  When Gary had collected them we put them in my picnic carrier bag with the sandwich wrappers and other rubbish. I gave him fifty pence.

  ‘You said a pound.’

  ‘I didn’t!’

  ‘You did, you did, you did! A pound!’ Gary began to jump up and down with excitement.

  ‘I said fifty pee. It only took you five minutes. Anyway I haven’t got a pound.’

  This was true. I only had twenty-six pence and an overdraft in the entire world.

  ‘Listen,’ said Astrakhan Collar to Gary. ‘If you do not sniff, cry, speak or move until I get off the train, I will give you two pounds. He raised a finger as Gary opened his mouth to say something. ‘Not one syllable more.’

  Gary sat as though entranced for the remainder of the journey. When we were within five minutes of arriving at Haltwhistle, I stood up and began feebly to pluck at my case.

  ‘Sit down,’ said Astrakhan Collar. ‘I will assist you when we reach the station.’

  There was a hint of something almost like violence in his voice, so I did as I was told. When we drew alongside the platform, he went to the window and shouted for a porter. So peremptory was his tone that the stationmaster himself came running up.

  ‘Take this lady and her belongings off the train,’ said Astrakhan. I could not be sure but I thought another note changed hands. The stationmaster appeared in our compartment faster than a genie after a hasty rub of the lamp. My suitcase, Siggy’s cage, the bag of rubbish and I were manhandled off the train. I had no time to express my gratitude.

  I heard a scream of joy. ‘Marigold! My angel!’

  My mother was skipping towards me down the platform.

  7

  I put my arms round my mother and hugged her, registering the familiar maternal scent of orange blossom, joss sticks and damp from the hall where our coats hung.

  ‘Hello, Dimpsie darling.’

  She did not like to be called Mother, Mum or Ma because it made her feel old. She was forty-six, which is certainly not ancient.

  Her eyes glistened with happiness. ‘It’s been such ages.’

  I acknowledged to my shame that it had been. Who can put their hand on their heart and say with absolute truth that they have fulfilled the expectations of a fond parent? She examined me by the dim lights of the platform.

  ‘You look wonderful, poppet, so beautiful and glamorous. But you’re shivering. Let’s run to the car. It’s right outside.’

  ‘Sorry but I can’t. Run, that is. My leg.’

  ‘Oh yes, poor sweet! Is it agony?’

  ‘Not at all.’

  She embraced me again. ‘Well, let’s hop then.’

  She hopped all the way to the exit, laughing gaily, while the stationmaster brought my case and I followed at a more sedate pace with Siggy. The car, a Mini, painted purple and stencilled with flowers in primary colours, was, as she had said, parked at the station entrance, much to the annoyance of the taxis and the local bus. We jerked away. The car was old, the road was slippery with snow and Dimpsie was a bad driver.

  ‘I barely slept a wink last night I was so excited you were coming! You’re looking so gorgeous, sweetheart. I can hardly believe you’re my daughter. You take after your father, of course.’

  ‘Only superficially – look out!’

  The car mounted a kerb and rolled off it with a suddenness that made the chassis judder on its springs.

  ‘Sorry, I can’t see where I’m going. Your case is weighing down the back so the headlights are up in the air. Headlight, I should say. I meant to ask the garage to put in a new bulb.’

  I closed my eyes, envying Siggy’s ignorance of the danger he was in. We headed west to Gilsland and then turned north on the snaking road that climbed to Black Knowe and Reeker Pike.

  ‘How lovely that you’ve got a little holiday, darling. Everyone will be so thrilled to see you. Evelyn rang this morning to ask you to dinner tomorrow night. I don’t suppose you can drive with that leg. I’ll run you across.’

  ‘With or without the leg. I’ve never taken a driving test.’

  ‘Goodness, Marigold, haven’t you? Never mind, I’ll take you about whenever I can. The only trouble is I’m standing in at reception for the moment. The last girl had some sort of breakdown, poor lamb. I tried to get her to do some yoga breathing, but if you’re always in tears you can’t control your diaphragm. Boyfriend trouble I think, but she didn’t confide. Tom was furious.’

  Tom was my father. I felt the car slithering on bends, imagined it plunging over the precipice, turning over and over before crashing into the river and bursting into flames.

  ‘How is Evelyn?’

  ‘Marvellous, as always.’ My mother worshipped Evelyn Preston with the same devotion she had once given to Laetitia Pickford-Norton. ‘She hasn’t changed a bit. I’ve put on weight, my jaw line’s saggy and my neck’s beginning to go, but Evelyn looks marvellous, she hasn’t changed a bit! And she’s ten years older than me.’

  I had noticed that my mother was a slightly more generous armful. I felt mean for noticing but I couldn’t help it.

  ‘She certainly doesn’t look her age. She came to see me in The Firebird. Did you know?’

  Several months ago, Evelyn had nobly taken a cab from Brown’s Hotel where she usually stayed when in London, all the way to Hammersmith, to watch me dance in an absurd costume that shed feathers so fast that by the time Prince Ivan had destroyed the egg containing the soul of the magician Kashchei and set the princesses free I was practically naked, but for a tissue-thin flesh-coloured body suit. Evelyn and I had exchanged kisses and congratulations briefly in my dressing room afterwards before she had rushed to catch a plane back to Newcastle.

  ‘So she did. I’d forgotten. That’s so like her, she’s so loyal to her friends.’

  ‘What did she say about it?’

  ‘She said you were brilliant, far better than anyo
ne else.’ This was both kind and untrue. But what Evelyn knew about ballet could be written on a grain of rosin.

  ‘I suppose Shottestone looks just the same?’

  ‘It’s looking wonderful. How she does it with only a cook and a butler and two daily helps, I can’t imagine!’

  Dimpsie intended no irony. For one thing she was too loyal to be critical of Evelyn, and for another Shottestone Manor was large and ancient and you would have needed a fairy godmother with an inexhaustible wand to run it without staff. One of my earliest memories was of Evelyn’s commanding features bending over my pram. Apparently she had been my first visitor at Gaythwaite Cottage Hospital, my father having been called away elsewhere. She had looked into my cot and said, ‘That baby’s hair is remarkable. You must call her Marigold.’

  Dimpsie had at once agreed, though my father, who liked plain names, had intended that I should be called either Jack or Jill. My father’s personality was essentially combative, but I guessed he had given in because Evelyn’s patronage was extremely useful. As well as being chairwoman of the hospital board and a governor of the little school to which they intended to send Kate, she had a finger in all the local pies. Besides, Evelyn was good-looking, and in those days he probably had designs on her.

  In the days of my youth I had spent almost every day of the school holidays at Shottestone Manor and Evelyn had treated me like a second daughter, something she was fond of pointing out. There was no denying her generosity – not that I wished to, nor that she had been influential in the course my life had taken. Luckily Dimpsie’s nature was not competitive. She had humbly accepted that Evelyn’s rule was absolute.

  ‘It will be lovely to see Shottestone again. And I’m dying to see Dumbola Lodge, too, of course.’

  ‘I’m afraid it’s looking awfully shabby. Tom says we can’t afford to have it redecorated. You’ve got a treat in store, darling. Rafe’s home. You used to admire him so much, remember?’

  ‘Is he?’ I felt a quickening of interest. Admiration was too temperate a description for the violent infatuation I had entertained for Evelyn’s son. He must have been about seventeen years old and I a passionate child of eight when he had patted me on the head to thank me for fetching his jersey after a tennis match. This insignificant act had been enough to light the fire. The top of my head had tingled for months afterwards whenever I thought of it. He had gone up to Cambridge shortly after that and then into the army. I had not seen him for – I did a quick calculation – nine years. ‘Just for the weekend, you mean?’