‘You’re better off practising long division, son,’ my father said. ‘Something useful. One day you’ll wake up an adult and won’t even remember whatever it was you used to want to be.’
‘It’s a wonderful trick,’ Mum said. ‘Let him dream while he can.’
The silence resumed and my parents returned to reminding me of performers in a play, wandering through rooms, shuffling props, knowing they were supposed to be man and wife. Their politeness was a mask, underneath no one was smiling. The string was about to snap. I did the dishes, left them on the drying rack and ducked out to Sylvie’s before the water had drained from the sink.
‘What a jolly-looking skirt! It’s so snug! Well, I suppose a windy day won’t bother it!’
Bunny commented on my outfit as soon as she saw me. I smiled and complimented her apron, willing to swallow more of her gingerbread than I could stand rather than be in the house at the same time as my parents.
22nd April 1960
I can kinda feel it coming like you can feel snow before a single flake falls. That crackling in the air brittle with cold. The lad’s staring at us and I just keep guzzling water slow as a cow. But inside I’m screaming. God, please don’t come over. Please don’t like me, especially in front of Lorrie. Jesus, she’ll never understand.
I press the knob on the fountain and fill my gob with lukewarm water. Then, he’s right here. And I all I can think of is callipers and orange ice lollies melting in his ma’s sticky hands. I look at the parquet floor and spot a button on the floor someone must have fidgeted off their coat. It’s shiny red. And bigger than a farthing. I picture some lassie shivering in a coat that’ll never fasten all the way up ever again.
Joe starts blethering. And I picture a wee lad. Big lads racing past him with a ball. I see him clutching the guitar his ma got him for Christmas. I gobble more water, wanting to wash the memory out of my gob.
I reject him like pulling off a plaster. Zap! Quick as I can. I rush away from the sting. I swear not to look back. I won’t look. I won’t meet his eye. I just won’t. I won’t start blubbering in front of him.
The satchel honks of leather when I take out the note. How Joe gave me it goes like this: I’m just minding my own business in Biology. The frogs are all laid out on the desks. And Joe wanders by, drops the note and scurries off to his stool. I pick it up before anyone sees it. Quick, if I’m fast enough it never happened and I won’t have to look at it. Joe picks up a frog at his workbench and lets its legs jiggle, dancing a funny wee dead dance. I unfold the note. Do you want to go to out with me some time, Sylvie? x
Bollocks. What did he have to go and ask me that for? I shake my head. No, and I’m pretty sure ‘sometime’ is one word. I scrumple the note in my satchel and stare at my frog, gripping the scalpel. I’ll not look at the lad. I have a frog to deal with. It died just for me to learn something. The skin makes a zipping sound under my blade. I dissect it like cutting off the bit of me that stings to have caused the look on Joe’s face when he saw me crumple the note.
I stroke the inky kiss scratched after my name. There’s a wee scribbly sketch of a scraggly flower on the corner of the paper. It’s not drawn well enough for me to know what sort of flower it is, but if I hold it close to my face I can almost smell it. It smells of hope. Joe’s hope I’ll like him and we’ll go see puffins and the sun will get out. And if it goes in, there’ll be a flask of cocoa and I’ll borrow his coat, if I’m cold. I’ll snuggle into it like it’s the lad’s arms. I flatten the paper between the pages of a book and slip it onto the shelf alongside a pressed violet. I reckon it won’t hurt. I like knowing it’s there, I suppose.
Lorrie
The church hall groaned with the middle-aged men dragging the frame out of storage. Bunny followed everyone out and watched Seth screw wooden batons to the legs of a table.
‘I’m still not sure we should have the stall this year,’ she said.
Seth scratched his head, a fleck of coral paint sticking to his face.
‘It’s just a bit of fun! You never had a problem with it before. Besides, like you keep telling me about the swear box, it’s all for a worthy cause.’
The fair was an annual event to raise funds for the Christmas lights fund, and the village flower displays (always, but always, overpopulated with marigolds and the foxgloves that popped up everywhere). People flocked to the field opposite the church to show off their chutney-making skills, sell bread and smoked fish, or to kiss someone on the lips. All for charity, of course.
The kissing booth was an institution. No one could remember how it began, but it had been going so long not even Bunny could stand in its way.
Bunny wandered away from her husband and set up her own stall, an arrangement of biscuits and cakes, fudge and tablet, wonder whisks, nesting bowls and the measuring scoops she used to bake. Everything was for sale. Wives wandered in with children in band uniforms cuddling bagpipes. The music billowed over laughter and chatter, flapping bunting fighting the wind. The fair was in full swing by lunchtime. The cake stall was open for business, and so was the Kissing Booth.
It was mostly husbands who gave the stall their patronage. One by one, they would pay their wives for a kiss they could get for taking out the rubbish or changing a light bulb. They’d stride up, clanking their coins into the pot, and make a song and dance about the amount. ‘It was worth every penny,’ one man would say, the same as the man before him. The women made how much their men paid a source of shy pride and dispute. ‘That’s all you gave me? You make me look a right woofer!’ Husbands learnt to pay all they could, after years when the complaints of their wives had steamed up the car windows all the way home.
I saw my mother make her way to the stall. The pharmacist’s wife was still in situ. Her husband fumbled for change as she bit into a pickled onion and lunged at him to kiss him with vinegar streaming down her chin. Everyone cheered. It had become a ritual with the pair, following a year they’d had a fight and she’d stuffed a fistful of wild garlic in her mouth out of spite. The laughter surrounding the couple made them forget they’d been arguing somehow. They couldn’t help but join in. It had been pickled onion, anchovy and slippery garlic butter kisses all the way ever since. The worse the pickle, the greater the applause, the stronger their marriage.
‘See you next year!’
The pharmacist’s wife laughed and stepped around the stall, making way for her successor. My mother slipped behind the counter and waited for my father, who was showing Toby the proper way to Hook a Duck and taking his time to arrive. Rook Cutler wandered along with his hands in his pockets, uncertain what to do without a toolbox in his grip. It appeared he was considering giving the stall his business, but thought better of it. The rules weren’t written down, but everyone knew:
1. No man could approach anyone else’s wife. It simply wasn’t done
2. No woman could be persuaded to man the booth, or rather, woman it, if she didn’t want to
3. Anyone could take a break whenever they wanted, to dodge the horror of a forgotten sweetheart looming out of the past, or to avoid speaking to a husband who was in the doghouse for coming in off his face just last night
4. No girl under eighteen could work the stall, and no one with a cold or a split lip
5. The liberal use of mints and humbugs was encouraged
Rook wasn’t a man to challenge the rules. He sidled over, keeping my mother company with small talk about the weather and some hiker who’d slipped on the hills.
‘Lovely day, Lucky.’
The sun hung over them.
‘It certainly is, Rook.’ She looked up. ‘It’s a bonnie blue one.’
‘OK, I’m here, I’m here.’ My father nudged between them with his wallet. ‘Let’s get this over with, I haven’t got all day…’
He placed down his money – not the most anyone had given their wives that day, and not the least. One hand on the counter, and one in his pocket,
he leant towards his wife. She kissed him with her eyes open. Over his shoulder, I saw her gaze meet Rook Cutler’s. He looked at her and looked down at his hands. It was a surrogate kiss. The first time my mother ever kissed her childhood sweetheart, she did so with her eyes while her husband’s lips bore the weight. It didn’t last long. The crowd shuffled in front of them, a large woman elbowing through it, complaining about the humidity, the midgies feasting on her arms, and everyone in her damn way. She waddled up to the booth, lifted her handbag upside down and let it rain coins all over the counter. They rattled and rolled everywhere.
‘Count it, all of it,’ she said, ‘for your church, or whatever it is you do with it. It’s all yours, if Sylvie Johnson will kiss my son.’
30th April 1960
If you could travel anywhere in time, where would you go and who would you meet?
I reckon I’m probably supposed to say something about history and show what I’ve learnt or something. I should tell you I want to go and advise Queen Victoria on how to get her head around grief. Or maybe go and be Hitler’s babysitter or something, but I don’t want to. The person I’d visit, if I could go anywhere, is Ma when I was a wee dot of a thing.
She’d be standing in the kitchen in a black dress. Chopping the crusts off sandwiches left over from my father’s wake. She’d be worrying if we could get through all the leftovers before they went stale. Thinking of the waste. That crinkle on her brow getting worse and no face cream in the pot. Everyone would have gone. It would be just me and her. And I’d be too small to say anything to cheer her up.
I’d be nothing but a nuisance. Toddling about the place and picking up bits of dropped food. Stuffing it into my squishy gob. I’d be too wee to be useful for a long time, but I’d tell her I will be one day. I’d tell her stuff will get better in a few years and she won’t need to wring the necks of chickens for Christmas Day. Everything will be OK one day, I’d say. I’d feed her one days like wee morsels held out to a woman who’s starving.
One day, I’d say, you’ll sell a thousand kitchen gadgets, and meet a man with his own business. And he’ll be kind, and sort of funny and daft. He’ll be the sort of man who never buys jewellery for your anniversary, but surprises you with a fridge and fills it with jam. You’ll love it so much you’ll keep peeking inside at your preserves in a line. Shiny as rubies, the jars all lit up like stained glass. You’ll be able to stop cuddling baby bunnies, loving the softness while still waiting for them to grow up into pies. You’ll only keep one rabbit, I’d say. Really, that’s how much better stuff will be. You’ll keep him to stroke when your hands are cold and you want to touch something furry and warm. That’s all.
Mostly, I’d want to tell her not to get fearty the time she caught me just outside the back door. Three years old. Wobbly on my feet. I was staring at a scrawny sparrow fallen from a branch, stroking its crooked wing, its spindly legs, all wonky and wrong. I was lifting it off the floor and holding it to my skinny chest, wanting to beat my heartbeat into it, but I couldn’t. I could do nothing but hold it in my fingers. Lift it and rub its stone-cool beak against my spitty mouth. Ma caught me like this. With the bird suddenly lifting its wings and flap, flapping out of my hands. She snatched me indoors, wiped my mouth with a tissue and smacked my hands. Hard. ‘Dirty! That’s dirty! Don’t do that ever again. That thing’s full of fleas,’ she said. But even though I could still feel the slap stinging, I didn’t cry. I was staring at the plain brown bird, perching on the fence.
That’s the moment I’d go back for if I could. I’d try to do something to let Ma know she doesn’t have to worry about me so much. That, as wee I was, even if I couldn’t say it right, I loved seeing that bird fly. I didn’t love the dizziness, my fuzzy-feeling mouth, or her spitty tissue scrubbing off the germs. I loved this feeling I didn’t have words for. I wanted to clap my chubby hands and giggle. It was like a baby realising she doesn’t have to crawl. She can stand up, wobble, and walk.
Ma’s clacking about the kitchen in her slippers with the fluffy pom-poms on the front. The cupboards swing open and groan. She’s dragging out the Tupperware for scones to sell at the fair. God, the fair, so many mouths everywhere. I scrunch up my assignment and start all over again.
If I could go back in time, I’d visit England and have a cuppa with Henry the Eighth’s wives… Listen, lass, I’d tell each of them, I don’t think you’re going to like being Queen. It’s not all it’s cracked up to be. There are plenty more fish to fry, and fellas for that matter. Not all of them have beards or funny hats. Quite a few of them do, mind…
Lorrie
The crowd gasped at the money on the counter. Joe Clark stood behind his mother scratching his plaster cast and shuffling his feet.
‘No, Ma. Come on, let’s go. She’s just kidding.’
His fingers on her arm were flies on ham. She folded her arms. Joe fidgeted. Tall, broad, and about as handsome as a girl can stand. I had no idea why he’d want to kiss Sylvie, of all people. I’d do it for free.
Bunny and Sylvie stood with their hands on their mouths. Men whistled through their teeth. Women whispered. It was the most anyone had ever offered for a kiss that anyone could recall. The closest to it was Fraser and Bonnie Campbell, who everyone was sure would die an old maid. Quiet, and cleverer than was good for her, her head was always buried too deep into a book to look for a man. That is, until the kissing booth. Fraser had strode up and laid a note on the counter, barely able to look her in the eye. Bonnie was a librarian. He didn’t own a library card. He was a fisherman. Her hands were as smooth as his were raw from rope. They were both lonely and keeping so busy most wouldn’t recognise it. It was a story people still told to this day. The couple were married a year later, though they’d never spoke until that day at the fair. The story was a reminder of the advantages of the booth. Though no one admitted it, for single men and women it provided an opportunity to try someone out without suffering a dull date, or your parents starting to plan your wedding after a few matinees.
The crowd assessed Sylvie, fiddling with a doily not dissimilar to the collar of her dress, shoulders hunched, unfashionably tall. They looked at her, then at Joe. ‘Oh, why not?’ ‘There’s no harm.’ ‘The girl can do a lot worse.’
Bunny believed in sprinkling sugar over any pill you wanted someone to swallow. Whether it was a signature on a payment plan for kitchenware, or saying no. She walked around the cake stall to address Joe’s mother with a smile and her sweetest saleswoman voice.
‘Ha ha ha.’ Bunny laughed. ‘That’s a very generous donation you have, Mrs Clark, but my daughter can’t kiss anyone, I’m afraid. She’s only sixteen.’
‘So what? Joe’s sixteen. I know plenty of folks here did a whole lot more at that age.’
The crowd shifted. Men inspected the knots on their shoelaces, hoping their teenage sweethearts wouldn’t be dug up in the presence of the wife. Women herded their kids away for ice cream and bags of honeycomb. On the island, no one forgot anything about anyone, they simply stopped talking about certain things.
Mrs Clark was the sort of customer Bunny had encountered before, a woman who wasn’t afraid to thrust an airtight plastic pot back in her face, grab a rusty tin from the kitchen and say, ‘I was raised storing stuff in old biscuit tins, I’ll die with biscuit tins. I don’t need your swanky crap.’
Bunny would always offer such customers another product to peruse, an egg whisk, or perhaps something to core an apple. She searched the faces of the crowd.
‘Perhaps another girl would be happy to oblige, someone less shy…’
I clutched the lip balm in my pocket, ready to say, ‘Well, it is for charity, I suppose.’ If I could kiss anyone it would be Zach, but, since he barely looked in my direction, Joe Clark would do. I was ready to kiss someone, and he was pretty. I could step up and be his consolation prize. It could change our lives. Joe would step back with the look of a man who went out to buy a bicycle and
drove off in a Rolls-Royce. It was the sort of story couples dine out on for years. A decade from now, Joe could say, ‘To think, if I’d got the girl I thought I wanted, we wouldn’t be so happy today.’
‘One kiss. Sylvie Johnson, or I take my money home.’ Mrs Clark folded her arms and her chest doubled in size. She straightened up and stood still, a monument to the lengths a woman will go to for her son.
An Evaluation of Aileen Clark
Nose: The beetroots she pulls out on her land leave her hands blushing, her fingers have the aroma of coins she drops into a pickle jar after selling the vegetables and eggs to the grocer. On a good day, you can smell only soap on her, but on a day with a breeze there’s no escaping the chicken shit ground into the soles of her shoes after she cleans out the coop, yet again.
Palate: If a voice could tell people what someone’s been eating, the woman ate only chicory, radishes and sour cream. This is a woman who was promised the moon and wound up with windows so grubby she couldn’t see out. It is difficult to believe there was ever a man in her life. ‘The fairies got him one night’ is as much as anyone says about him. No one in the village speaks his name in her presence. They wouldn’t dare. It wasn’t wise to make the woman angry. Once, years ago, Seth Johnson’s son overcharged her for paint. Whenever the hardware store comes up in conversation, she still brings this up, certain the owner is a crook, instructing the boy to dish out the wrong change all the time, to make a few more pennies each day.
Something Like Breathing Page 9
