‘She was only four when she died.’ I hated myself for talking about my sister like this, as though she was some part of a game, and if only I knew how to use her properly, how to say the right things about her, I’d win. ‘She drowned. It was an accident.’
Mally sniffed. ‘I know,’ he said.
‘Why didn’t you say?’
‘I needed to see how much you would tell me. To see if you trusted me with your secrets. Do you trust me, Nif?’
I took the gin bottle from him and put it down on the plinth. I was starting to feel the effects of the drink. I picked up his hand and turned it palm up, and with the tip of my finger I traced the lines, deep and cracked with dirt. The life line, curving around the bulge at the base of his thumb; the head line, long and deep and arcing across the expanse of his hand; the heart line, shorter and fainter. And the fate line, a barely-there indentation at the base of his palm.
‘Perhaps,’ I said. ‘Perhaps I trust you.’
He laughed softly and rubbed his hand on his jeans and picked up the bottle again.
‘Go on,’ he said. ‘Tell me about Petra.’
I tried my hardest to remember what Petra had looked like, to remember any detail about her that I could tell Mally. Instead of memories, there was a just a vacuum, as though my mind had wiped all the information it had held about her. I felt numb.
‘I can’t. I can’t remember. I know there’s something there, something I should be feeling, something I should be able to remember, but there’s nothing there.’
Mally looked at me sideways, quizzical. I went on.
‘You know when you go to the dentist to have a tooth out, right? And he gives you an injection? And for a while you can’t feel it, but you keep on chewing away at your lip, because it’s weird and you can’t feel anything. It’s a bit like that. I can’t feel anything at the moment, can’t remember anything. But I think that if I keep trying to remember, keep picking away at my memories, it’ll be like the anaesthetic has worn off and I’ll get the feeling back again.’
Mally looked thoughtful. He lifted the bottle to his mouth and took an enormous slug.
‘Enjoyin’ that are you?’
The voice was harsh in the twilight and carried easily over the twenty feet or so from where Tracy Powell stood, her feet planted squarely apart, hands on hips. She had her gang with her: Fat Denise and the other girls I’d seen her with on that first night. It seemed like weeks ago, rather than just a few days.
She was walking towards us, a swagger in her step that she hadn’t had that night at the pub. Her hair was up in its greasy ponytail and as she got closer I could see the ring of pimples that sprouted around her hairline. She blew out a huge pink bubble, and the gum popped and splatted against her nose. She sucked it back into her mouth and her friends giggled.
‘Well, if it isn’t Beelzebub’s nephew.’ Again, the girls laughed. Mally was looking straight down at the ground, his head hanging down, hair hiding both sides of his face. I didn’t know what Tracy was talking about, but I felt Mally tense next to me. Tracy turned round to the girls and said something in Welsh. It was just a collection of sounds to me, none of them intelligible. It wasn’t like when Father Declan used to say the Mass in Latin. Even though I couldn’t understand it, that would be a warm, reassuring mumble. This was harsh, the consonants clacking out of Tracy’s mouth causing her cronies to hoot with laughter.
She turned back to Mally. ‘It’s the Prince of Darkness ’imself. Our own little Lucifer.’ Tracy was enjoying herself now, and it wasn’t until she got closer to us and noticed me that she did a double take. ‘I know you,’ she said, her mouth pursing round the vowels. ‘You were in the pub the other night. New folks. Tried to listen in on old Lyndon Vaughan’s meetin’.’ She blew out another bubble and let it splat against her face.
Mally looked up and brushed his hair away from his face.
‘What meeting?’
‘Never you mind.’ She smirked and her features sank even further into her doughy face. ‘Just your new friend here and her family, sniffin’ around where they’re not wanted. A bit like you and your mother.’
‘Fuck off Tracy.’ His voice was small, quiet, indistinct in the stale air.
‘But it’s true. Nobody likes you around here. I know the chapel lot think you’re bad, that your ancestors brought some bad shit to the village, but I just think you’re a twat. Nobody asked you to move here. Why don’t you just fuck off back to whatever shithole it was you came from and leave us alone.’
‘Tracy, just leave it, right, it’s not worth it.’ Mally was still speaking quietly, but he had his hands clenched in his lap, the knuckles white.
‘Oh, it’s fuckin’ worth it, alright. I’d like to see the back of you. We’d all like to see the back of you and that whore of a mother of yours.’
As Tracy turned to acknowledge the wave of laughter from her cronies, she didn’t see Mally spring up and land a solid punch straight to her face.
It connected with the side of her chin, knocking her head round with a loud click. He went for her again, this time a blow to her nose, which made a delicious crunching sound. She fell onto the ground, blood seeping from her face, both hands held up in defence. Her gang gathered around her, twittering and shushing, aghast and outraged.
‘Don’t push it, Tracy, alright?’ Mally stood back and wiped his hand on his jeans. Then he grabbed my hand and pulled me to my feet.
We left them there and we walked back along the lane. As if we both knew what was going to happen, we stopped on the bridge and Mally put his hands on my shoulders. Gently, he turned me to face the stream, the hills now dark, the sun long gone. I could make out the looming shape of the oak tree, the spot where he’d seen me naked. I felt the bulk of him behind me, his breath warm on my neck, but his hand was cool as it snaked down the front of my shorts, and I tensed, waiting for the inevitable. His fingers found me quickly and eased their way down, rubbing softly at first then harder, rougher.
When it was over we walked back along the lane and the night was finally starting to cool. All the time neither of us had said a word.
Fourteen.
Thursday 5th August 1976
I was washing the dishes after lunch when there was a knock at the door. My first thought was that it was Mally, and I left the brown-clouded water and the smeared plates and, drying my hands on a tea-towel, went into the hall. Standing next to the open door, blonde hair glowing in the sunlight, stood Mally’s mother. She pulled a smile onto her face.
‘Hi. It’s Nif isn’t it? I’m Janet. I’m told we met the other night at the pub.’ She looked slightly shame-faced, but her smile stayed in place. ‘I have to admit I don’t remember much about that night.’
‘I’ll call my dad,’ I said, and I turned around to fetch him from his studio. Janet spoke quickly.
‘No, no, it’s fine. It’s your mum I wanted to see.’
‘My mother?’ I pictured her, lying in bed, gazing at the wall.
‘I wanted to…apologise for my behaviour. I’d had a couple of drinks, you see, and I didn’t know what I was doing.’
‘I’ll see if she’s awake,’ I said and turned to start up the stairs. Then I stopped. ‘You’d better come in,’ I said, and stood back to let her into the hall. I stepped round her and she followed me into the kitchen. I could see her looking around, taking in the stained sink and the vast old range cooker. That was when I noticed that she was holding a bunch of flowers, pinks and purples that could have come from a meadow if it hadn’t been for the heatwave, so I guessed it was more likely that they had come from her own garden. It occurred to me that she was a bit like one of her flowers, lighting up the gloom of the kitchen with her blonde curls and eyeshadow and her bright red vest. She saw me looking and shrugged.
‘Just a little something for your mum. I’m trying to make amends.’
‘I’ll go and get her.’
My mother wasn’t lying in bed as I’d expected, but was sitting at t
he dressing table. She had her back to the door, but even though I could see my own reflection in the dressing table mirror when I walked in, she didn’t appear to notice me. She was brushing her hair in long, smooth strokes, and smiling that placid, contented smile she seemed to have found in the last few days. She didn’t start as I walked up to her, but her eyes met mine in the mirror.
‘Janet’s downstairs,’ I said. ‘You know, the woman from the pub the other night?’ I wanted to say ‘Mally’s mother’ but I didn’t think my mother would remember Mally and I didn’t want to say his name to her. ‘She’s come to say sorry, and she’s brought you some flowers.’
My mother put the hairbrush down, gently and deliberately, onto the dressing table. It was only when she stood up that I noticed she was wearing proper clothes again and not her dressing gown: a flowery dress that I hadn’t seen her wearing for months. It was too big for her, and its strange familiarity was both reassuring and unnerving.
Janet was sitting at the kitchen table when we went down. The flowers were lying on the table in front of her, and when she saw my mother she picked them up. I held my breath, unsure of what my mother’s reaction would be. I wondered who was going to speak first.
‘I came to say sorry.’ It was Janet. ‘About the other night in the pub. I think I must have made a fool of myself. I wanted to come sooner, but I felt a bit embarrassed.’ She held the flowers out to my mother. ‘Anyway, these are for you. A kind of peace offering, I suppose.’
She was still holding the flowers out in front of her, the bright colours vivid in the gloomy kitchen. I held my breath, silently daring my mother to do something dramatic. Instead, she reached out her hand and took them. She didn’t look at them, but passed them to me, all the while looking at Janet. Most people would have looked away then, or would have said something to clear the silence, but Janet gazed back at my mother, and there was something powerful about the silence, some sort of energy that pulsed between the two women.
I rummaged in the cupboard and found an old green jug, a bit chipped around the rim. I tipped in water from a bottle and placed the flowers in, the stems already starting to wilt in the heat, the heads drooping slightly.
I don’t know what happened to my mother to make her thaw. Perhaps she thought she needed a friend, a companion for the time we were going to be staying in the village, or maybe she just felt better about everything, now that she thought Petra had forgiven her, but she suddenly looked softer, less angular.
‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ she said, and Janet took a couple of seconds before she nodded her head. Then my mother did something even more unexpected. She picked up the kettle and filled it from the water bottle. She placed it on the camping stove and lit a match. She held it to the gas ring and the blue flare hissed into life in the silence of the kitchen. It was the first time I had seen her do anything for herself for ages, and she seemed a bit self-conscious of her actions. When she reached for the teapot, her fingers gripped the handle deliberately, as if unsure whether she could take the weight of it. She picked up the cork-topped pot we kept the teabags in, and very briefly she faltered as the lid failed to shift. Then her hand twisted again and the cork came loose. She reached her fingers inside and pinched out two teabags.
All this time, Janet and I had been watching her intently, but we both turned around as the door to the back hall opened and my dad came in, wiping his hands on his trousers. At first, he looked surprised to see Janet, then he looked worried, and then he adjusted his face and smiled.
‘Making tea, Linda?’ He sounded overly-casual, like he was forcing himself to say something mundane.
‘I just came round to say sorry for the other night.’ Janet was quick to speak, as if to explain her presence to my dad before he asked.
‘That’s good of you,’ he said, ‘but really, there’s no need.’
‘I was apologising to Linda.’ Janet’s voice was louder than it should have been, and sounded petulant in the silence of the kitchen. My dad looked at the floor and sniffed.
‘Of course. Well, that’s good of you.’
All this time, my mother had been standing with her hands clasped together, looking at the kettle, waiting for it to boil. As the steam started rising from the spout, and the tell-tale bubbling sound became louder, she looked at my dad and Janet in turn, then she spoke.
‘Thank you for the flowers, Janet. They’re lovely. Now let’s all have a cup of tea, shall we?’
That afternoon, my mother and Janet stayed talking for hours. My dad soon realised that he wasn’t welcome to join in their conversation, and took himself back to his studio. I hung around in the kitchen for a bit, forcing myself to drink the weak tea my mother had made, and looking at Janet out of the corner of my eye, as she and my mother chatted about recipes and gardening.
It was hard to believe that she was Mally’s mother. She was all blonde curls and pink lipstick and tanned flesh that bulged around the straps of her vest. She was wearing flip flops, and even her toenails were painted a frosty pink. As she sat there at the kitchen table talking to my mother, their conversation at first stilted and strange, and then lapsing into a more comfortable exchange, I saw how different they were: Janet was fair and tanned and plump, my mother dark, pale-skinned and painfully thin, and yet there seemed to be an instant bond forged between them.
Over the next few days, my mother and Janet grew closer. They spent hours together, huddled over our kitchen table or theirs, their heads close together, blonde and brunette almost mingling. They would smoke and drink tea and gooseberry wine, and they would whisper and laugh and cry and hug each other. They would walk along the lane, arm in arm, in companionable silence, and all the time my dad would shut himself in his studio, working on the bust. Sometimes he would emerge and do a few half-hearted things to the house: scraping the paint from the windows or weeding in between the flagstones of the path, but mostly he would just sculpt.
Fifteen.
Saturday 7th August 1976
When I was younger, I used to see if I could make myself cry by imagining myself dead. I would picture my dad and my mother at my graveside. He would have his arm around her shoulders and she would be engulfed in grief, shaking, hands over her face, as they lowered my coffin into the ground. It would be a drizzly autumn day, and the trees that ringed the cemetery would be empty except for the rooks that roosted there. Father Declan would be there in his cassock, the hem damp and muddied, an open bible in his hands as he read the words of committal in his lugubrious tone. My mother would scatter a handful of dirt onto my coffin, and then a handful of rose petals, and then she’d collapse into my dad’s arms, the grief too much for her.
I tried to do this now, lying on my back with my arms behind my head, watching the swallows that darted and swooped against the cloudless sky. I used to be able to summon up a few tears just by thinking about it, by thinking about how sorry they’d be if I died. This time it didn’t work. I tried again, thinking about how sad I’d be if Lorry died, and there was a bit of a prickle behind my eyes, but no real tears.
I hadn’t seen Mally since the day he punched Tracy Powell. The memory of the bridge was still with me though, and when I hadn’t been able to sleep I’d lain in bed and thought about those long fingers and touched myself.
The heatwave wore on, oppressive, endless, and Lorry and I had taken to lying on the concrete patch at the front of the cottage, dozing, listening for grasshoppers and watching for the rabbits that were even less cautious now, hopping down the stone steps and into the garden, desperate for water.
Lorry seemed happier, and had started talking more. The sores on his legs were clearing up and seemed to be healing. Janet had given my mother a poultice to put on them, something she made with the herbs and flowers in her garden, and each evening my mother would tend to Lorry’s legs, washing them and applying the creamy ointment. He didn’t need the bandages anymore, and he’d begun to get a tan on his legs too, matching that on his chest and shoulders. I was
still mostly white, the pink patches where I’d got burnt and my freckles starting to join up across my nose the only visible signs that we were in the middle of a heatwave. I didn’t know where I’d got my ginger hair and pale skin from. My dad was tawny and tanned easily. My mother, with her dark brown hair and deep eyes, like a raven. I was the odd one out. A cuckoo.
Lorry had picked up a stone and was scratching in the dust with it. I watched as he drew a triangle, and then a circle at the top, and when he scratched four lines jutting from the sides and bottom of the triangle, it suddenly took on the shape of a crudely depicted girl.
‘Who’s that?’ I asked, thinking it was probably meant to be my mother.
‘It’s Petra,’ he said, dragging the stone through the dust to carve two eyes and a straight line for a mouth. Lorry had never mentioned his twin sister before, and I hadn’t spoken of her to him, thinking that it was kinder if he was allowed to forget about her.
‘Mummy talks to her. At night.’ He was adding hair now, long straight hair on either side of the circle.
‘How do you know? Did you hear her?’
‘In the night. If I get up. She’s asleep but her eyes are open.’
‘Asleep with her eyes open? Are you sure she’s not awake?’
‘No. She can’t see me. She’s talking to Petra. She says, “Love you, Petra” and then she smiles. Then I go back to bed.’
I took a deep breath. ‘What do you remember about Petra?’
Lorry shook his head, but didn’t look at me. ‘Not much,’ he said.
‘Petra was our sister,’ I said. ‘Like I’m your sister as well. She was born at the same time as you, which means that she was your twin.’ Lorry frowned, and I could tell he was working hard to process this information. He opened his mouth as if to ask another question, but his face froze as a loud jangling came from the house. He looked alarmed and put his hands over his ears and then he started rocking.
Water Shall Refuse Them Page 11
