by Lisa Blower
We had a war and numbers 33 and 53 were lost at sea. That was their story. They went to sea to see what lived beyond the street, liked it so much they never came back. That’s what mother said. Winifred Waters said they did it for us.
Our closest ocean was the bathtub. When our mother didn’t cry, we made boats for the kitchen sink. ‘Where’s your boat going?’ she’d ask.
‘Not where those men went,’ I’d say. ‘Our ocean’s got sides.’
‘Don’t listen to Winifred Waters,’ mother warned. ‘She’s always been a wet weekend.’
258 people, 258 names. They forget I know their stories. We all paddled in the same ocean. Just because the road’s changed doesn’t mean I’ve stopped remembering. The last of the 258 we are. Him gone from next door, her over there gone snooty: we all had boats that sunk in the kitchen sink. Never occurred to me I should jump over the side, jump ship. I like sides. Wouldn’t like to be seasick, and numbers 33 and 53 jumped over the side. Wouldn’t do it for us now. The ocean’s full of lonely old fish looking for a mate or to be hooked up for dinner.
A great tidal wave should come down our road. That’d startle them. Let the ocean do its cleaning of the front steps, nets and gutters, because 258 people once, 258 stories, and no one would come out of their front door and save me. No one wants to hear my story. Winifred Waters would. She’d say, ‘All motorways lead to the sea, duck. That’s where they’ve gone and they’re not coming back.’
Dirty Laundry
YOU’VE BEEN READING about the cuts and Icelandic banks but you only put two and two together when you’re given your cards and see the state of your pension. You go and see Beattie—a steamroller of social action—who tells you to sit and stop shaking. You are fifty-eight, she reminds you, and not cheap.
‘Alma,’ she says, putting on bifocals to read your statement, ‘you’re lucky you even got that.’
She makes you a cup of a tea and lets you weep on her settee.
A week passes.
You’re awarded a spray of tropical stalks to thank you for your forty-three years of service in the Town Laundry. There is no porcelain figurine, though you’ve dusted the hearth ready, and not everyone’s found the time to sign your card. Your manager, Colin Nicholson, for whom you’ve developed a soft spot, sees you out with an awkward back-patting that reminds you of how Clive pets next door’s Jack Russell before starting to sneeze for the rest of the day. He wishes you luck and calls you a stalwart, but you don’t give a monkey’s for being one of those. He smiles—like a hammock between palms on a tropical beach is that smile—and tells you again that retirement is all about you. Go be you. Do things for you. Enjoy being you.
You look at the pavement and say, ‘But that takes bravery, Colin. And I am not brave.’
You carry home two trays of food in a flimsy carrier bag along with the tropical stalks that keep nicking your skin. You then declare to your dumbstruck husband checking his watch that one of the things you’re going to do now you’ve retired is eat foreign food.
Clive tells you to try the new Asda and eats his rice with a knife and fork.
You, he calls you. What are you going to do?
You both take indigestion tablets before bed.
You dream of white bath towels billowing on the line like the old nappies, a grandchild burbling in a pram that has your eyes.
You have it all clear in your head. You’ll take a room a day, the kitchen will take two days as the pantry alone is a day’s work, and you’ll start at the top and work your way down, room by room, inch by inch, until you’re satisfied that each room can do without you. Then you rub in a little rouge and put on jewellery—a clasp bracelet with dim amethysts, a drop pendant your mother wore to church, wear shoes that give you a blister. Asda is further away than you thought but you must watch the pennies now, and you’ve not yet a bus pass. You ask at customer services when there’s no one else around. The lad looks barely out of school and his shirt needs an iron. He asks for a CV. You tell him you don’t have one. You’ve worked in the Town Laundry from fifteen years old until Friday. He says, ‘Tills are full of women just like you.’ But you don’t look at the tills because you’re thinking of what Clive will need and you head for the trolleys: stack up on cleaning products and have to take a taxi home.
You wear your best apron and rip open a packet of yellow dusters with your teeth. That’s when it catches your eye: you’re not wearing your wedding ring and you don’t know where your wedding ring is. You do remember the day you accepted it. August 30th 1973. Clive Bunny’s just told your father his first lie: he loves you and wants to protect you. Then he drops to his knees and sings as much as he can remember of Roy Orbison’s ‘Oh, Pretty Woman’, which was, to your father’s tuneless mind, wholly unnecessary when you’re hardly a lass enjoying stacks of offers.
Because you’re one of two daughters bookending a much-wanted son whose heart pumped anti-clockwise and then stopped. You’re the younger: a plain and daily Jane with a bowl-shaped face and a squint never corrected, and not long after your brother died you obliged Clive Bunny under army blankets: partly out of curiosity, mostly because your sister told you to—Clive Bunny is as good a catch as you’ll get. You’d felt filthy after. Bathed until the water gave you a chill. You said no more until you were married: the dress pink, the darts unpicked, you’d felt blessed and soiled in one go.
You and him and her.
A year straggled past. Then two. The phone rings. A woman called June who suspects you’re the wife. You tell her not to call again. You’re decent people, working folk and besides, you’ve a little girl. She says, ‘So have we, duck,’ and slams down the phone. To this day you’ve never asked Clive if she’s his.
You think about the wedding band Colin Nicholson is never without.
Some girls get all the luck.
You wear an old washing frock and set about your poky little bathroom with its avocado suite and postwar cherry tiles. There are fifteen toilet rolls stashed to the side of the cabinet, four towels on the radiator, six bars of soap under the sink, and your wedding photograph, hung on the back of the bathroom door to remind Clive who you are. You’re also still waiting for a microwave, still hankering after a dishwasher, still hoping that your daughter will one day buy you an oven big enough to roast a 20lb turkey crown.
The weeping overcomes you. You sit down on the toilet and wonder what you’re crying about. You realise it’s the towels: the way Clive crams them onto the radiator after his shower so they stay all damp in the middle. You’ll see these things all the time now. You’ll know when he goes out and when he comes in, when it is he changes his underwear for you wash up to fifteen pairs each week. You cry for another ten minutes then pull yourself together. You go downstairs and fry liver and onions for Clive’s tea.
You and him. And this is how it is.
You are cleaning your daughter’s bedroom. A 4ft square with an ill-fitting blind and terracotta walls that give the room a dirty glow. If you get down on all fours, which Clive once asked you to do, you see, in the right hand corner, Julia’s height chart: faded pencil lines showing her growth spurts from eighteen months until you forgot all about it once she’d turned four. You wonder how tall she is now. If she dyes her hair pillar-box red like she always wanted to do. You know she lives in Manchester where she went to study law. You know that she’s a divorce lawyer, a partner in a firm, quite rich is what you hear, and that she hasn’t set foot in this bedroom since Christmas 1992: the argument like yesterday, the things said still raw. You clean the room so furiously it gives you sores. Then you go through the usual motions, return it to the state in which she had left it: unmade bed, cocked-up blind, stone-cold mugs of tea idling on the desk, jaded posters of Debra Winger curled up at the sides. You’ve never understood your daughter’s life, Clive even less so, and yet you lie back on her bed and take the phone out of your pocket to call her, like you do, once a week, letting the phone ring until the answer machine clicks in and you�
�re forced to tell the ether it’s just Mum.
You go downstairs and defrost the fridge.
It’s cold in Iceland, you think. Life is frigid.
Clive is up early. Thursdays are a work day for Clive. Though he’s nudging seventy, he’s still part of a gang of ageing trackmen who tend to a particular stretch of railway where old and broken and vandalised trains are sent to convalesce. He’s not paid to do this. It’s just somewhere to go. And after the incident, or the accident, or the moment, as Clive calls it, when life, for whomever he was, could no longer be lived; after he’d watched it happen, right in front of him, near enough to call out to him, as he did, most nights, the nightmare living on, he’d been cajoled by an old doctor friend who’d thought a little tinkering about the tracks would do him good. And so he sups his tea early at the bedroom window and tells you, ‘It’s gone dark over Bill’s mother’s, Alma. I’d get your washing done this morning if I were you. Cats and dogs out there by four.’
You pad obediently to the laundry basket, begin to sort colours from whites, socks from pants, his from hers. You find them just after you hear the back door click shut: a crotchless pair of red rubber pants emblazoned with the words ‘come in’ which could be ripped on and off with a not-very-sticky Velcro.
It’s never been just you and him.
There’s a friend. Sort of. Pauline Roper. She pops in with news and brandishing photographs. Her daughter is pregnant again. Her other daughter’s just delivered her fifth. Nine grandchildren, Alma. It’s a ruddy good job I’ve retired, and you chew the fat like two old dears on a coach trip, spending a penny together at a service station and passing toilet roll under the door. Pauline asks you, ‘What you doing with yourself now you’ve got all this time on your hands?’
You look down at your hands.
‘Look at my hands, Alma.’ It’s your mother’s voice, pert and squeaky clean. ‘My hands have been ruined by work, but at least they kept us out of the poorhouse.’
Yes mother. I’d be nothing without your hands.
Your mother had taken in other people’s laundry when your father had failed to turn up his wages. ‘A creased man is no man,’ your mother would say. ‘And his wife the last thing on his mind.’
It gives you an idea.
You’ve never suspected Pauline Roper but today, you do.
As Pauline talks you through the photos you think of your own. Many moons ago, you’d your own gallery lining the stairs. You’ve long put them from your mind, as there were many you threw away, and you think about what you have left, bubble-wrapped under the bed. You wonder when you stopped taking photographs, then wonder if you still own a camera. Perhaps you threw it out after Julia left, fearing there’d be no more stories to tell.
You realise that Pauline is telling you everyone else’s stories: never any of her own as that would be telling. And then—THUNK!
You both rush upstairs to find a landing full of tumbled books and a warped set of shelves. Books that’d got Julia through her A levels—Maths, German, Law—what you’d paid for by squirrelling away money in an old tea caddy you’d kept quiet from Clive who distrusts banks as much as he distrusts saving when every day in his world is rainy. You and Pauline start to stack the books. That’s when you find them. Not many, just some, and stuck to the pages of old and heavy law books.
The pictures are only mildly erotic, the women, despite the positions, often very pretty, and, though you’re not entirely disgusted by them, Pauline reminds you that you must never forget what a clever daughter you’d brought into the world.
After Pauline leaves, you put the red rubber crotchless underpants on the kitchen table. You spend a long time staring down at the rubber circle with the words ‘come in’ printed sideways, then spend even longer ripping it on and off until its not-very-sticky Velcro completely loses its stick.
You think about the women. If any of them are still alive. You go into the lounge and shift the furniture around. Clean up old age and make room for grandchildren that’ll never come—I’m not dirty, Mum, is what Julia had said. And neither are you. She had one suitcase at her feet. A rucksack on her back. You’d switched on the Hoover so you couldn’t hear any more. By the time you switched it off she had gone.
But your house was clean as a pin. It was clean and everything put away.
You’ve been retired a week and have decided to go into business. Beat them Creases. You’ll take in other people’s ironing. You’ll put postcards up in the newsagent’s, maybe pop some through certain letterboxes up and down the street. You soap and scrub the hallway tiles as you think it all through then prise open the small hatch under the stairs which Clive had nailed up after you’d found that mouse. You use pliers and pull out the nails one by one. They are shiny nails. New nails. You prise the hatch aside and there it still is.
Clive’s suitcase.
As you and Clive sit down for your tea, you think about the contents of the suitcase and how some genes aren’t meant to be mixed. There was only a few days’ worth of clothes in there. A train timetable. His mother’s wristwatch stopped at half past four. Clive had never been able to pack properly if he’d ever packed a suitcase before, so you’ve repacked it with a few extras because you don’t want people talking or for Clive to think that you hadn’t looked after him right until the very end. Then after you’d repacked the suitcase, you’d got out your sewing kit and set about replacing the Velcro on those red rubber crotchless pants with four little black press-studs sewn on so tight that it’d test the patience of anyone who desired to ever come in again. You’d then put them in the suitcase and put it back where you’d found it, even hammered in the nails.
The weekend is long. You go to the chemist and buy painkillers, good ones, indigestion tablets, olive oil and cotton buds. You ask the chemist for an ear syringe. She asks if it’s for you and you lie and say yes because your world is not falling apart. She shows you how to use it but you’re not really watching. You’re looking at how many different condoms the chemist sells.
You go to the newsagent’s to cancel your evening paper. The newsagent says not you as well, and blames the paper-girl. It’s not the paper-girl. You just don’t like reading all that bad news every day. As you leave, you see your postcard in the window:
Beat them Creases.
Let Alma Bunny Reduce Your Wrinkles for a Tenner!
You ask, ‘Has anyone noticed my ad?’
The newsagent tells you it’s only been up five minutes. ‘But you can do mine if you like,’ she says.
She takes you upstairs. You didn’t know the newsagent had a life above the shop. You follow her into a kitchen with yellow walls and she asks you to wait. You hear an ironing board clanking. She shouts at someone, where’ve you left the iron? A teenage girl dumps an iron on the table for you. Neither of you speak. The girl’s hair is pillar-box red and her eyelids are scuffed with black. The newsagent arrives with a basket heaving with clothes. She plugs in the iron and says, ‘Tenner, right?’ You have to agree because that’s what you said, though you know Clive will scold you for not charging by the weight.
You iron for three hours with a view from the kitchen window. You’re not offered a cup of tea and the iron leaks. You iron a uniform that is the same as Julia’s was. Burgundy pleats. White shirt and burgundy V-neck. You remember how Julia would lose her tie. How you’d buy her another only for her to lose it again. You remember ink on the shirt cuffs. Blood once. Her jumper stretched by yanking—someone’s yanked this, you’d said. Like you’ve been in a fight. You can see the look on her face. You have no idea what it’s like being me. She was tall enough for Goal Shooter. Clever enough for a scholarship. And yet the teachers called her quiet. You’d frown and say, ‘She never shuts up at home’—which wasn’t true. She’d asked for a lock on her door at sixteen. You’d refused. You liked doors ajar. You used to sit in the kitchen below and think how quiet she was with her friend upstairs in her room. You’d go up with mugs of tea and no small talk. You�
�d find them the next day idling on the desk stone cold.
Homework. Studious. Debra Winger on her walls: the teachers had called her quiet, which she was. That was all.
You go back downstairs to tell the newsagent that you’ve finished. She goes up to check before she comes back to hand you a tenner from the till. But she doesn’t get round to thanking you because she’s got a customer who wants a lucky dip.
You go home. Clive is out. You do something silly: you swig from the sherry bottle and call Pauline. She’s not in either. You could put two and two together but Pauline will have nine grandchildren soon and because you’ve had a sherry you tell her answer-machine that isn’t fair.
Homework. Studious. Debra Winger. She was just quiet, that was all.
You check if the suitcase is still there. You count the times when you’ve packed a suitcase and wondered where to take it. You wonder what you’ve done with your wedding ring. You go upstairs to sort out your own laundry but you can’t be bothered. When Clive comes home he finds you dismantling the deep-fat fryer. You tell him, ‘Homemade chips. You can’t beat homemade chips,’ and you carry on: sorting through the parts, cleaning this, dusting that, wondering why it all won’t go back together and fit into place until eventually, you tip the whole lot into a bin-bag and leave it on the street for the rag and bone.
