I read through my work and rip the page out of my notebook. Then I rip the pages into bits small as snowflakes, just to be sure. I swallow a deep breath and start all over again:
A Paper on Hobbies, Why I love Cross-Stitch
I love to cross-stitch. I love the silks and the feel of all the colours in my hands. I can’t do all the stitches, but I can unpick all my mistakes and start over with a shiny new thread.
It’s all a pile of shite. Every word I write is bollocks. Just like it should be. Ma would be proud.
Lorrie
There was sleet over Easter. Once it had cleared, we charged out of the house and ruined my parents’ marriage. Or perhaps we didn’t, and something had been wrong for a while and the only thing that really changed was me. I could suddenly see it.
It was an ordinary morning. Grumps shovelled a dead barn owl off the distillery steps and waved as we drove along the lane. It was rare for my father to be off work at the same time we weren’t at school. My mother packed a picnic and we crammed into the car, bored with being told to keep it down over the holidays: ‘Your father has a headache… Your father is reading the paper. Can’t you see he’s trying to concentrate? He needs to relax. You aren’t helping.’ Honestly, I don’t think we ever saw him completely relaxed. Relaxation was an alien concept. Even lounging in his favourite chair, he would run his thumb over his teeth constantly, never completely at ease, whittling a fingernail down to a stump.
Toby sat in the back seat next to me doing tricks with string. I sang ‘I Walk the Line’ to myself, though it wasn’t on the radio. My mother read all the road signs out loud.
‘I like the deer sign,’ she said. ‘It’s my favourite. It always cheers up the road even if you never see a deer.’
The sun was out, though the air was sharp. Families seized their chance to dip their toes in the lake and dragged out rowing boats. My mother rolled out a tartan blanket and set the picnic basket down. I stripped down to the bathing suit I’d snuck on under my clothes and stood on the shingle beach anticipating the shock of the cold, the shiver putting my feet in the water would ripple down my spine.
‘Cora,’ my father said, ‘we have to go. Now.’
He looked as if he’d been running, the colour flaring high in his cheeks. My mother looked confused. The bread was already buttered. The plates were all set out on the blanket. The ants were eyeing up the biscuits.
‘What are you talking about? We’ve just got here, we haven’t even had lunch.’
‘I’ve just seen Tony Fletcher.’
My father looked towards a lone orange dinghy drifting out over the water.
‘Whatever’s he doing here? He’s a long way from home.’
‘I don’t know, Cora. And I don’t care. Pack up our stuff. I’ll wait in the car.’
We trudged over the shale with beach towels rolled under our arms while my father waited with his keys in the ignition, fingers tapping the wheel.
An Evaluation of Tony Fletcher
Nose: Bread, baby powder, and the coal-tar soap his wife is convinced will help the eczema that flares up on one side of his face, baked by the shop window all summer. He is a man made of his work. Even on Sundays he smells of bread. If you cut him he’d bleed puffs of flour.
Palate: The sugar glaze he stirs in a cup for his famous sweet rolls, a dash of cinnamon sprinkled on top, he dips a wooden spoon in and sucks it before he washes his hands. There’s a splash of vinegar on his tongue from the salad his wife insists on bringing him at lunchtime, patting his belly, not as flat as it was, swollen with family life. What can he say? He must sample his wares. His wife can cook. He never saw a skinny guy who looked loved.
Finish: There’s a cloud of flour that follows him wherever he goes. Even in his Sunday clothes, he’d sometimes find patches of white on his sleeves. Unhooking a dry-cleaning bag from a shelf behind the bakery, he put on the black suit a week after the fire and sighed, brushing off flour, resigned to imperfect trousers as his mother-in-law’s coffin was lowered into the ground.
Overall: A man who knows how to shrug and say, ‘These things happen, we’re lucky, we’re still here’ as he sets up a foldaway bed in the stockroom behind the bakery. The night following the accident, he began dreaming of dough rising and would wake up with a hankering to add rosemary, cheese, or onions to various loaves he’d call Loaf of the Day. He’d display these in the shop window and put out a chalkboard. Writing the name of the bread in green chalk, he’d smile, certain he’d be back on his feet in no time at all.
It was a beautiful day, the last time we ever bought a loaf from Fletcher’s. We weren’t even considering moving to the island then. My mother was loving the sun. She put down the paring knife, let the apples brown and leapt on my father as soon as he came in. The summer brought out another side of her. She was hankering for one of her spontaneous hours. Right now.
‘Let’s go for a stroll by the pier. I’ve been chained to the kitchen all day. We’ll axe dinner and pick up something while we’re out.’
‘I have to go to the office for some documents,’ my father replied. ‘Can you believe Tony Fletcher has no insurance on his house? Never has done. He hates forms, that was his excuse! The papers are ready. I just have to get his signature.’
She sighed, interested in listening to nothing but penny slot machines and the waves washing up mussel shells.
‘Come on, it’s lovely out! You can do it tomorrow. He won’t mind.’
‘Pleeeeease come with us,’ Toby whined. He hadn’t been in school long and considered it an affront to his free time. ‘You’re never here while it’s still light.’
My father didn’t have the energy to argue with us all. We bought ice cream and strolled by the sun-bleached pier watching women in blustery skirts drop coins into telescopes to stare at the gulls coasting in. I flicked an insect away from my raspberry ripple and saw Toby raise a slow hand to his ear. The wasp hovered and flew on.
‘What the… ?’
Mum stared at Toby, wide-eyed, his ear going purple, swelling faster than a finger jammed in a door. He didn’t cry. The look on his face reminded me of a boxer who didn’t know he’d been knocked out yet, but it couldn’t be long until he’d fall to the floor.
‘He’s been stung! Do something.’
At around the time the baker would have been inviting my father in and offering him a bag of Eccles cakes to give to the kids, we were driving to Casualty, filling in forms about allergies and gripping Toby’s knuckles as the needle loomed towards him to bring the swelling down.
‘It’s too late to do anything now.’ My mother leant against my father’s shoulder, exhausted. Toby leant against her leg, rubbing one bandaged ear, a strip of gauze surrounding his chubby face to hold it in place.
‘The baby will be asleep,’ my father said. ‘I’ll go in the morning.’
The fire started after midnight. One of the cigarettes the baker’s mother-in-law couldn’t light without saying ‘I really should quit’ had smouldered in an ashtray in the attic. The woman always hated that bedroom. It was draughty. The ceiling sloped. But she claimed she’d rather crouch than suffer her son-in-law’s snoring she insisted she could hear in every other inch of the house.
The house didn’t burn to the ground. It might have been better for my father if it had. Every day we had to walk past the blackened walls and absent roof, its charcoal trusses framing the clouds. ‘Look on the bright side, at least Tony and his wife got out with the baby,’ my mother had said, ‘and he still has the bakery.’ ‘He should have been insured. He should have done it years ago!’ My father called Tony a fool, but blamed himself. He believed if he hadn’t gone for a stroll, if his wife hadn’t suggested it, if it wasn’t for ice cream and wasps, if, if, if… Tony and his family wouldn’t be resting their heads on bags of flour. ‘That’s the last time I’m listening to you and your flights of fancy,’ he’d said.
I never saw my mother attempt to include him in one
of her spontaneous moments after that. She kept them reserved for giving sudden choc ices to me and my brother, letting me cut her fringe in the kitchen because she fancied a change, sitting in a deckchair at noon for ten minutes, and for Rook Cutler, doing nothing with him but being herself.
The silence stifled us on the journey from the lake. I suddenly missed the coast where we used to live, the swirl of the roller coaster, the bustling crowds on the pier. It was always loud enough to lose yourself in. Here, the irritation of the adults pressed in closer than the storm we could see gathering over the hills.
‘Thinking about it, his wife had family on the island. Cousins, I think. I was chatting to her about it once,’ my mother said. ‘I suppose that’s why they’re here. It’s a small world.’
‘I don’t care.’ My father kept his eyes on the road.
‘It wasn’t your fault, you know. You did all you could to help them. You put your job on the line. Things happen. You can’t be responsible for everything.’
‘It beats not being responsible for anything.’
They didn’t speak after that. She twisted in her seat, focusing on Toby and his illusion of ‘unsnapped’ string.
‘Well done. You’re getting better. You’ll be like Houdini one day.’
‘I don’t want to be like Houdini. I want to be like me,’ Toby said.
I stared at the back of my father’s head, the knots in his neck. No day out with him was ever much fun. Wherever he took us, he was constantly reminding us to keep our voices down, watch where we were standing, and mind our manners. He seemed to shoulder the responsibility for anything his life happened to brush by. It made it difficult to show him any sort of affection – caution held us back. Yet I almost wanted to hug him when we piled into the car. He stared out of the window, chewing his lip, watching a plump man splashing his wife and son on the shore. I had never seen anyone look so alone. Even when my mother slammed the picnic hamper into the boot, and Toby dangled a yo-yo out of the window, scraping the passenger door, my father didn’t seem to hear it. Whatever he was thinking was louder than us all.
21st April 1960
It’s crazy when I’m bored I’m sorta off my head. It can happen in a flash. Boom! This itchiness creeps over my hands and I can’t stop them fiddling and being daft. I’ll do something pointless, like stick my lip in a pop bottle and suck it just to feel it latch on like a leech. Or I’ll grab a wee bit of string and wind it around my finger. Round and round, just to see how blue my pinkie can get. I’ll shove a flower in my mouth even though Lorrie’s there.
I have these daffodils in the blue jug by my bed. Just a few, hanging their heads and feeling sorry for themselves. I pick one up while Lorrie’s raking through my wardrobe. Fidgety, I dust the petals over my chin and pop the whole thing in my mouth. Just like that. I stick it in the water again.
‘How did you do that?’
Lorrie’s holding a coat hanger. There’s nothing I’ve got she wants to borrow.
‘I didn’t do nowt,’ I say.
Shite. I didn’t know she was looking. I wasn’t thinking, at least my fidgety fingers weren’t.
Lorrie comes closer, eyeing the rose. My least favourite dress hangs in her hand. Swaying like it fancies a dance.
‘You did! You swapped the flower for a fresh one. It looks different. Show me how you did it! I’d love to know a trick Toby doesn’t know. It’ll drive him up the wall.’
‘That would be telling.’
I’m trying to sound mysterious, like a magician who never reveals his tricks. I’m not sure I pull it off though. I’m going beetroot. Panicking a bit. It’s alright. Lorrie’s already returned to the wardrobe. It’s a lost cause.
‘It’s hopeless. You officially have no clothes that don’t belong on a Sunday-school teacher.’
She clatters her bag onto the patchwork bedspread and comes at me with the eye pencil.
‘Let me do something to bring your eyes out at least. Look, like this.’
I let her ‘bring my eyes out’, even though it sounds like a crazy scientist collecting body parts to make Frankenstein a missus. Ma might come in any second. I can hear her downstairs chopping potatoes, clunking them into the pan. The knife stops chopping. I freeze.
‘That’s enough now, Ma might come in,’ I say.
‘Come on! It’s fun.’ Lorrie’s voice dips. ‘It’s not like your mother doesn’t doll herself up. That make-up isn’t as invisible as she thinks.’
I smack away Lorrie’s hand before the eyeliner touches my face.
‘Don’t you want to look pretty?’ she asks.
‘Not really,’ I say. ‘What good would it do anyone?’
‘You could catch someone’s eye, someone nice, if you tried. Someone might even ask you to the dance.’
I pick up another daffodil, hold it to my nose and sniff. Just to stop myself running it over my lips. There’s no way I’m going to admit I’ve already caught someone’s eye. Someone nice. Lorrie doesn’t know squat about the note I got in class. If I tell her, I’ll never hear the last of it. Sylvie & Joe, sitting in a tree, K I S S I N G… I won’t be telling her nothing. She’d go doolally.
Lorrie
Joe Clark was staring at me. He had to be. Sylvie was the only other person around, and she’d never worn anything uglier. Bunny had waved us on our way that morning and I’d handed Sylvie my lipstick as soon as we were out of sight: ‘I don’t want it.’ Sylvie had stormed along the lane, plain as day. Plainer. It was spring. The air buzzed with the rumour of summer on its way. Sylvie shuffled along in a long skirt and cardigan Bunny had knitted, browner than the path under our feet.
Joe stood opposite the water fountain. I lowered my head and whispered to Sylvie, ‘Is it just me, or is he looking over?’
Sylvie bent to the water.
‘He’s looking at you!’ I said.
I may have sounded jealous, because I was. Of all the people for the boy to notice, it shouldn’t have been Sylvie. I didn’t think of it as being catty. It was a fact as simple to me as people maths: Shy girl without lipstick + dress sized up from the pattern of a pinafore she wore when she was seven + cute boy ÷ the sort of girls who do gymnastics after school, dancing around him all day, dragging him into any conversation, queuing to sign their name on the cast on his arm = This Boy can do Better than this Girl.
Joe’s arm was covered in a cast to his elbow. The plaster was covered in doodles of stickmen and the names of girls he had to carry around for six weeks. He came towards us scratching it with a pencil. Sylvie wiped her chin with her sleeve.
‘I was wondering if you fancy going out sometime, Sylvie?’ he asked. ‘Maybe up to the lighthouse to see the puffins or something?’
He sounded afraid to make a sound that might scare a wild bird away. I waited for Sylvie to clam up or stutter, the way she did when she had to read aloud in class. But she didn’t.
‘What for?’ she said. ‘Why would you want me to go?’
‘I dunno, just for the company.’
‘I don’t think so.’ Sylvie charged down the corridor and turned back, calling, ‘Learn to love your own company.’
I chased after her.
‘That was so rude. Joe Clark! He’s so sweet,’ I said. ‘Why would you turn him down?’
I recalled one of my grandfather’s favourite expressions: ‘If someone gives you the moon on a stick, you have to be bright enough to lick it.’
‘You have the moon,’ Sylvie said. ‘I don’t give a shite.’
I gasped. Sylvie never swore. She licked her lips after she spoke, tasting something she’d never tried before but could get used to.
‘You should go out with him. Just look at him,’ I said.
‘I’ve seen him. I’ve seen more than I want.’
It never occurred to me Sylvie could get angry. I saw her be shy, mumble and stare into space sometimes, but she didn’t get angry. It occurred to me that perhaps she did, but didn
’t really know how to show it. She popped a sour plum in her mouth and bit it with a crack. I reeled off a list of girls who’d kill to go out with Joe, selling him to her.
‘You don’t know how lucky you are,’ I said.
‘I’m not lucky. You go out with him, if you like him so much. I don’t want to. I’m not you. Stop telling me I have to be.’
She stormed into the Domestic Science room without looking back.
We didn’t speak on the way home, but it couldn’t last. The silence between my parents was palpable over dinner. There had been a stiff-lipped sort of courtesy between them ever since the lake. I overheard the odd word, and understood my father had lost his job in insurance after altering the date on a form, but I never heard my mother blame him. Rather, the whole incident confirmed they were so different that each day together was a chore. They refused to argue in our presence, instead they were painfully polite.
My mother placed a drink on a coaster and my father said thanks. He stacked the plates for her, and she expressed her gratitude. Other than that, their only conversations involved Toby showing us card tricks.
Something Like Breathing Page 8
