19th March 1960
There’s a skein of geese winging over when I spot the fella out the window. Beard like a crow’s nest clagged in hoar frost. It’s that wild and white. He opens Lorrie’s gate, drags something out of a sack under his arm and lays it on the step. It’s so early no one’s awake but me and the birds. The milk bottles are studded in dew and coal tits peck at the foil. The curtains are closed. Everyone’s in their beds but me and the old fella.
I got up because of this dream I had. I was kissing some lad I couldn’t see. I could feel hands all over me dragging me into the sea.
I watch, but can’t make out what the stranger’s leaving next door. It looks soft and flecked in the not-quite-morning light. He wipes his hands on his jeans, nicks a pint of milk off the step and scuttles up the path.
I’m all set to ask Lorrie about it, but I forget when she comes over. I forget about everything but Ma sniffing about in the hall. Cuddling a stack of laundry and pressing her ear to the door. Lorrie’s flicking through this catalogue. We’re playing this game we’ve been playing forever. The rule is we have to pick our future off whatever page we turn. Or else. We lay on our bellies with our chins on our fists. Laughing like philosophers who’ve been at the laughing gas.
‘I want that oven, but in that kitchen. I want that kettle. Dibs.’ Lorrie points at the page. And I’ve got to pick something fast. Or get stuck with the leftovers. I can’t choose the same stuff as Lorrie. It’s THE LAW. No self-respecting lassie would have the same sofa as the woman next door. Not even if it’s only in a house in her head.
Once our fictional houses are furnished, we start looking for a fella. It’s dead easy to find one. They’re all in menswear. Just hanging about in cardigans. Staring at their watches. Waiting to be picked. Some are wearing caps, and some have wallets. There’s a fair few looking into the distance like they can sorta see us getting off a boat and tottering into their arms. We’re so late. Some of them are so sick of waiting they’ll be off any minute. They’ll be skiving off to the pub to get plastered I reckon. They have that look.
‘Who would you marry off this page?’ Lorrie says. ‘This guy? He looks handy with a fishing rod. Look at that tackle.’
She flicks the page. It’s all vests and skids. Spidery-looking hair crawling out of their vests. Their undies look like they’ve got a bunch of keys in there, a Fry’s Chocolate Cream, a bag of marbles and a shitload of other stuff they’re storing for later. Maybe that’s why fellas don’t need handbags.
‘What’s that?’ My finger slides along the page. ‘This lad looks like he’s carrying a sack of tatties between his legs.’
Lorrie laughs. ‘He might be.’
It’s stotting down out. The rain pitter-patters all around the house and gives Ma the excuse to come in she’s been desperate for. Cocoa’s her ruse. She sets a cup down and hovers about like she wants to kick about in my room and remember being a young lass for a bit.
‘What are you girls up to?’ She peers over our shoulders.
‘Nothing,’ Lorrie says. ‘Sylvie was just saying she wants to marry a fisherman.’
‘No I wasn’t!’
I clout Lorrie with a cushion. We’ve both got the giggles. The giggles won’t stop. They feel like a ladder in a stocking, running away from the wee nick that set them off.
‘Don’t set your hearts on anything, girls. You don’t have to marry anyone if you don’t want to. Actually, I think Sylvie would suit being a nun,’ Ma says, casual as some women say their daughters should wear blue to match their eyes or something.
She beams and pops her head around the door before she goes. ‘Don’t let your cocoa go cold, girls. Look, it’s already getting a skin.’
‘Nun!’
Lorrie drags my cardigan over my head like a woolly wimple. I smile, but the giggles have scarpered. I suddenly remember who I am.
‘Hmm.’
Ma waves at Lorrie on her way out. She’s crossing the path with a borrowed umbrella and a skirt that makes her wiggle.
‘I’m not sure about your pal lately,’ Ma says as we turn to come in. ‘She’s a bad influence, I think.’
‘We were just mucking around. It didn’t mean anything.’
‘Hmm,’ she says again.
I wonder what the ‘hmm’ means. Hmm always means something. Hmm can mean ten thousand things when she says it. And none of them are good.
Lorrie
Sylvie dropped Johnny Cash on the portable record player Seth gave her for her birthday. It had belonged to a customer struggling to pay his bills. Though he hadn’t been considering buying one, the man brought it into the store and Seth thought of Sylvie. It resembled a vanity case. Pretty. Ivory leatherette. Gold dials. He shook the farmer’s hand and promised to wipe his slate clean. Sure, he’d be happy to take it; his daughter would love it. The farmer wiped his face, trying not to think of the faces of his children when he took it away.
I stared at the door. Zach’s room was across the landing. No more than a door, a hall, and another door separated me from him lying on his bed, listening to the woodpecker outside Sylvie kept talking about, combing Brylcreem into his hair, and unbuttoning his work shirt with his name embroidered on his chest. I dawdled my way to the bathroom and pictured bumping into him. He’d see me in angora. I’d bump into him so hard he’d almost fall. It would change everything. I’d smile in one of a hundred ways I’d practised in the mirror. He’d look at me and realise he’d never really seen me before. He wouldn’t see me as some kid his stepsister knew. He’d finally see me as a girl and fall for me. I lingered by his door for as long possible, but nothing stirred.
‘What’s Zach like when he’s not at work?’ I asked.
Sylvie flicked shut a magazine and crumpled something she’d ripped out of it up the sleeve of her cardigan. I recalled her outside in her pyjamas, scrabbling through paper, looking so ashamed my mother felt it would be cruel for me to mention it and embarrass her.
‘What’s that?’ I tugged her cardigan and the bit of paper fell to the floor. It was a photo of a man and a woman kissing in the rain. There were puddles of street light everywhere.
‘Nothing.’ Sylvie snatched the picture away. ‘You’re always going on about Zach!’ she said. ‘Change the record. He’s not that interesting.’
The boy was furniture to her, a stepbrother there at dinner alongside the pepper, a figure in front of the TV with a foot on the pouf blocking her view. Every now and then, they swapped the furniture in their bedrooms or traded a watch for a mechanical pencil, but they never killed time together.
‘What’s he really like?’ I wanted to know.
‘I don’t know. He’s not exactly a chatterbox. He doesn’t haver on. He can stay in the bath so long I had to wee in a bucket once. Oh, and he eats cereal without getting out a bowl.’
When I got married, I decided I’d want it to be to someone who ate his cereal without dirtying a bowl. It was thoughtful. Fewer dishes to wash, more time to love.
‘What does he talk about?’
‘Fishing. Paint. The importance of undercoat.’
It was frustrating, chatting to Sylvie about the opposite sex. Not just Zach, anyone. I was only a month older than her, but it seemed a decade. Poring through my magazine full of singers and actors with doe eyes, she nibbled a Tunnock’s wafer without a glance.
‘Who do you fancy?’ I asked.
‘No one.’
‘Come on, you must like someone.’
‘Why do I have to?’
I didn’t answer, I supposed she had to have a crush on someone because I did. I wanted the company.
‘What about Frank Sinatra?’ I asked. ‘Do you like him?’
Sylvie folded the biscuit wrapper, thinking.
‘I don’t mind his songs. I like his eyes, there’s something mean about him though. He looks like he can smell something bad. Look at him’ – she held up a magazine – ‘he looks like he’s staring at you and accusi
ng you of farting.’
‘What about Elvis then? Don’t you think he’s handsome?’
‘Yeah, but’ – Sylvie got up to get her satchel off the hook – ‘I dunno, his mouth has a look to it like someone just whispered something dead sad to him and he’s trying not to bawl his eyes out. Have you done your English assignment?’ she asked. ‘Do you want to start?’
‘Not particularly. There’s plenty of time.’
Sylvie sharpened a pencil. She wouldn’t just do one assignment, she’d start more than one if she could. It was the way she’d always been. Even in the juniors, when she was off school sick, the teacher sometimes sent her strange topics to write essays about ‘just for fun’. I’d never understand it.
I slipped on my shoes. If Sylvie was going to be boring, I’d rather go. My father was at work, and if I caught my mother at the right time, I could ask for a raise in my pocket money. I wanted it so much I’d even do ironing. I saw Rook Cutler’s van outside and grinned. I wouldn’t need to make any promises I didn’t intend to keep. Everything would be fine. When Rook was around, it was always the right time.
Rook lay on the floor gazing at the pipes under the sink. He had come to replace every pipe in the house not long after we moved in. Ever since, my mother called him whenever something needed to be fixed.
‘The sink’s blocked again,’ she said.
Rook looked up, his dark hair in his eyes. There was a custom in his family of naming babies after wild things, Roses, Violets, Heathers and Ferns. His mother was surrounded by so many flowers as a child she vowed to be different when the time came. Wren, Robin, Dove and Rook, she named all her children after birds. Rook was the last. He suited his name.
‘Pass me the wrench. No, that one there,’ he said.
She held out the silver metal. His fingers curled around the handle. She let go. They didn’t touch, but it gave the impression they did. It created the same impression as when I would come in and she’d bustle off to wash the coffee cups, or brush crumbs off a plate, clearing away their laughter before anyone saw.
‘There you go.’ Rook pulled a wad of butter out of the bend. It had melted and set into a U shape. The pair laughed. It was a different laugh to the one she usually had. It made it seem a laugh is a wild thing that becomes tamed by years. Every year, my mother’s laugh took up less space in the room, other than when Rook was around. This was the laugh she’d had when she was young, or as near to it as she could find.
An Evaluation of Rook Cutler
Nose: A rub of rust from the handle of his ancient toolbox freckles his fingers, hints of the leaves he lets blow into his open car window catch in his hair. He never closes it, not even in winter. He always smells of work and bits of woodland caught in his pockets. He allows it to stay there for as long as it will.
Palate: Coffee, the trout he catches every season, oak and treacle from the whisky he sniffs on bottling days. My grandfather has been hiring him on a casual basis for years, the rest of the time he’s a plumber, fixing cisterns in windy outhouses, and fitting aspirational bathrooms indoors. When business is good, he closes his eyes and lifts a glass in the distillery doorway, allowing the sun to linger on his face as the amber slides down.
Finish: There’s a glow to his skin. It’s more olive than most people on the island, who are so pale it’s possible to the see the veins in their arms, the colour of Stilton. He glows with a sheen of work, the heat of the distillery and the graft of fitting pipes. On fine days, sitting with my mother outside, his hazel eyes are fires that won’t die. His is a neck that has never graced a tie, something about this small fact seems to show on his face.
Overall: The man my mother knew as a child playing Cowboys and Indians. The pair of them still occasionally look like they remember those days, and, that if they weren’t supposed to be adults, they could both start playing again at any time.
Rook refused to call my mother by her Christian name, unlike my father: ‘Cora, will you be careful with your chequebook next time?… I don’t know, Cora, I shouldn’t have listened to you. I should have been doing my job… I don’t think we should fit a bathroom yet, Cora. I know it’s Baltic in the outhouse, but I’m sick of having workmen around. I’m sorely tempted to have a go myself.’
Rook addressed my mother with the nickname she’d had as a child, born of a narrow escape from a wild goat and her talent for finding pennies on the ground. I’d never heard her speak of him before we came to the island and I found their photo under the floor in my room. On the back, she had written Cora & Rook, drawn a heart, then scribbled it out. It seemed he simply walked into our lives one day with a wrench, wiped his feet at the door, and made my mother someone else.
‘Lucky?’ he said.
‘Rook, long time no…’
The smile she gave him was a hundred miles away from her Yes Dear and That’s Nice smiles. It shone sharper than flint skimming water. It splashed light into her eyes.
Rook wiped his hands on a cloth, closed the cupboard under the sink, and took the beer she’d now handed him. It was still light outside, an unusually warm breeze shivered across the island, supper was already prepared, her work was done.
‘Let’s sit outside and watch the sun come around,’ she said.
There was an hour when the sun hit the tin roof of the barn and made it an object of beauty. Rook and my mother sat on adjacent deckchairs sipping beers. I listened to their voices rise and fall through the open window, fascinated. They never spoke about anything but the weather, Grumps, whisky and plumbing, not that I’d heard, yet somehow their voices found a way to make the mundane sound fragile and personal.
‘I try to have one spontaneous moment a day,’ she said. ‘A minute or so just for me: a beer, a slither of a sunset, a moment doing absolutely nothing but watching the grass grow.’
‘It’s not spontaneous if you plan it,’ said Rook.
‘You’re right there.’ She laughed. ‘I don’t get to be spontaneous these days unless I put it on my list of Things to Do Today.’
‘You’re an amazing woman,’ he said.
‘You’re an amazing… you’re not so bad yourself.’
‘An amazing what?’
Rook slicked a hand over his fringe without caring that it never stayed put. I saw why someone might want to sit with him for a while. Some people are so comfortable in their own skin, it rubs off.
‘I’m still deciding what you are,’ she laughed. ‘I don’t think I’ll ever know. I’ll go with friend.’
‘I’ll take that.’ They chinked their bottles and swigged.
‘Do you remember that crow we found? Right over there…’
Rook pointed to the whisky sheds, the site of their childhood hide-and-seek games.
‘That fledgling! Mr Bollocks. That’s what Pa called him. He was so loud. Talking bollocks from dusk till dawn, Pa said. Oh, yes! I loved that bird. I wanted it to learn to say my name!’ She laughed, a girl with a crow on her shoulder he watched fly away.
The gravel further along the lane crunched softly, dust and small stones being disturbed. She recognised my father’s footsteps before he turned past the rosehips and came into sight. His walk always gave the impression he was carrying along something heavy.
‘Well, I’d better get moving…’
She swigged the last of her drink and clinked the bottles into the box to take back to the shop. Lucky no more, at least not until Rook returned.
30th March 1960
The Collector of Kisses – a Paper on Hobbies
There’s not a name for my hobby, like crochet, quilting or knitting. It’s not useful. Loads of hobbies are better than mine. Some lassies cross-stitch cases for their grandmas’ specs, some knit their brothers a scarf that trails on the ground. Others carry sketch books wherever they go. I’ve seen lassies like that fall over, stand up and look for somewhere to sit. They flip open a page and sketch a bird with feathers so fine it could fly off the page and carry all their clumsi
ness away. I’m dead jealous of folks like that. Lassies who make pictures that can be put on a wall. I keep my hobby a secret, even from Ma. Especially from her. She must never know.
I carry a scalpel in my pocket wherever I go kinda like an artist clutches a pencil to feel whole. I stroke its steel handle and wait for a chance to slice my hobby into my day. I offer to carry out the rubbish. And when I’m outside, I kneel on the floor and flick, flick, flick through papers and old magazines. I’m on the lookout for stuff for my scrapbook. When I find the right picture, I cut it out. I keep my eyes peeled at the dentists and doctors, on buses and on benches. I look out for the magazines the lady next door is done with. Lately, since this one time she caught me going through her magazines, she never puts them in the bin any more. Instead, she leaves them stacked next to it like someone leaving a bowl of milk out for a cat. I’m glad. It saves me riffling through leftovers and soggy tea leaves for a photo of Scarlett O’Hara bending over backwards. Or Marilyn Monroe blowing a soft dove-grey kiss.
I don’t care that much about the films they were in. Films never seem to have much to do with me. They’re all in places where it’s always July and all the folks have shiny teeth so flat I bet they never ate meat, or had to bite anyone, their whole life. What I care about is what they’re doing with their lips. I collect pictures of kisses like stamps. They are stamps, I think, a kiss is a stamp of approval folks stick all over.
I study the pictures like wee lads pick up insects, because I want to understand how they work. The photos make kissing look dead easy. Simple as learning to swim. Step One: Close your eyes. Step Two: Lean in. Step Three: Pucker up. Give in. Let go of the daylight, the stars, the moon.
The kisses in my book are bonnie things. None of them make me fearty. In my scrapbook a kiss is just a kiss.
Each night, I’ve got to wait until Ma stops clickety-clicking about in her slippers. Then I climb out of bed and drag my collection out from under the dresser. I flick on a torch and stare at the pictures like a lesson I can learn. I snuggle up under the covers counting kisses instead of sheep. There’s not a day I don’t look for more pictures. Some hobbies are that way, I reckon. Even when you want to be away they won’t let you be. They follow you about the place, watching and waiting. Wanting a wee bit more of your day. I don’t know when a hobby becomes an obsession. I reckon when it feels so normal it’s like breathing. That’s what my hobby is, something like breathing. When I see lassies my age kissing their boyfriends without a care in the world I look around for dropped magazines with something inside I can take away. This way I can breathe.
Something Like Breathing Page 7
