The headmaster waved through the porthole in the classroom door. Miss Stone joined him in the corridor and I watched their faces through the small window. Miss Stone tugged her bottom lip, shaking her head. The headmaster placed his hand on her shoulder.
‘Blair Munro won’t be joining us today.’ Miss Stone cleared her throat, addressing the class. ‘We’ve been informed she was involved in an accident and is in hospital. Perhaps the class could embroider a card for her? It would be lovely for her to see we’re thinking of her.’
I raised my hand. ‘What sort of accident? When did it happen? Where?’
‘It was at the weekend. I’m afraid I don’t have all the details.’ Miss Stone strolled around the room, a waft of coffee and perfume passing over our shoulders as she inspected our sewing. I dug Blair’s nightdress out of my bag and laid it on the workbench. I hadn’t done the tacking she’d asked me to finish for her, claiming her nails were too long to hold a needle, but I would. Miss Stone lay a palm on the nightdress. Gauzy, cerise, light as a cancan dancer.
‘I want to finish it for her,’ I said. I waited for the teacher to suggest, ‘Perhaps she’d rather complete it herself when she comes back,’ but she didn’t.
‘That would be a kind thing to do,’ she said.
I pinned lace to the nightdress and stared at my fingers under the fabric. I pictured a girl falling into a loch, floating in moonlight brighter than smashed glass. I shouldn’t have left her on her own. Whatever happened was my fault. No, that was crazy. I wasn’t God, just a friend. When I was sixteen, the two felt the same.
It would just be a bump on the head, a scuff here, a graze there. I was sure. The hospital was a long Victorian building. I went in expecting the worst and found Blair in a room on her own. She lay in bed, her red hair making comma shapes on the pillow. Her eyes were closed and her face looked scrubbed clean. Without her make-up, she looked so young I’d have walked past her on the street. I searched the crisp sheets across her for any sign of broken bones and could see nothing wrong. The only mark on her was a dark bruise on her forehead, small as a thumbprint.
‘Hello.’ My voice echoed through the room. I lowered it. Blair didn’t move. ‘Well, you don’t have to sew that nightdress now anyway. Miss Stone said I can finish it for you. Honestly, the stuff you’ll pull to get out of sewing.’ I laughed to crack the silence wide open. I’d never seen her so still. I clawed through my bag, laid the nightdress on the bed and arranged it over her sleeping body. It looked ready for Blair to push off the covers, flounce into it and laugh. I stretched the measuring tape across her blanket-covered ankles and began pinning the hem to the correct length. I turned, alerted by the sound of someone trying to walk quietly on the tiled floor. Mrs Munro entered with a man struggling with the straightness of his tie.
‘Lorrie, isn’t it?’ she asked. ‘So sweet of you to come to see Blair.’ Mrs Munro was wearing a suit. Everything about her was crisp as a hospital corner. She bore no resemblance to the woman I’d seen dancing barefoot in her lounge.
‘Did you bring this?’ She touched the nightdress covering Blair.
‘I’m finishing it for her.’
‘She’d love that,’ Mrs Munro said. ‘She will love it when she wakes up. They’re not sure when, but…’ The man placed a hand on her shoulder. He’d never let her stumble, even for words. ‘Oh, I didn’t introduce you. This is Ned, a friend of mine. This is Lorrie, Blair’s friend.’
Ned shook my hand and folded a business card into it in the same gesture. The rectangle of paper had a picture of a vacuum cleaner with eyes and lips sucking up bubbles. Carpet cleaner guy. Mrs Munro’s date must have gone better than ours.
‘Really, Ned! What’s she going to do with carpet cleaning? She’s just a slip of a girl!’
‘Sorry, it’s a habit.’ Ned cleared his throat. ‘I shake so many hands all day. Hey, but if your parents need a carpet cleaning sometime let me know. Any friend of Blair’s…’
Mrs Munro patted his arm.
‘Ned’s been a rock during all this. I can’t wait for Blair to meet him.’ The three of us stared at the girl, united by her silence, each of us imagining she’d hear us talking about her and leap out of bed.
‘You were with her on Friday, weren’t you?’ Mrs Munro asked.
‘We met some friends for a bit, then I had to go,’ I said. ‘What happened?’
‘I’m not sure. The lad driving her hit a deer and came off the road. He’s fine, so was Blair, just a wee bump on her head. She came in, drank some water and went straight to bed. In the morning, I couldn’t wake her up.’
I wondered if it was the same deer I had seen and why it mattered, why I felt I had to know.
‘There’s just one thing I have to ask, Lorrie, was anyone drinking or anything? Was that why it happened? Blair never introduced me to the lad she was out with, so I can’t ask.’
‘I don’t think so. I didn’t see anything like that.’ I stuffed the nightdress into my bag and swung it over my shoulder. ‘I have to be going, my parents are expecting me.’ I rushed to the door.
I didn’t know if Blair would want me to tell her mother what we’d been doing. She was nothing like the woman I’d seen draped over the jukebox. That was the sort of woman I might have told, not this one. This one reminded me of my parents and their I’m not angry, I just expected more from you look. It was better to say nothing while Blair was sleeping, I decided. I didn’t want her to wake up and be furious at me for me for getting her boyfriend in trouble. Nor did I want where I was getting back to my mother. She had enough to worry about with my father. That morning, Toby and I had left for school with apples, a peck on our cheeks and instructions to have a lovely day while she went to the police station to report a missing person.
26th May 1960
I’m wandering along carrying the milk when I bump into the lad. Ma’s making rice pudding, so she makes me pop down to the honesty box down the lane for goat’s milk. The sign over the box says Farm Fresh Eggs, Milk, & Potatoes. It’s my favourite sign on the island because underneath they’ve wrote: Come, help yourself! The writing has rounded happy looking letters like the farmer still remembers being a wee lad learning his ABCs. I pop my coins in the slot and spot the lad outside the gate, right near our own box full of our eggs. He’s shuffling around with his hands in his pockets, a bear in a cage. Pacing.
‘Where’s Lorrie?’ he says. ‘She lives here, right?’
‘She went off somewhere after school,’ I say. ‘Said she had something to do.’
I haven’t got a clue what she’s up to. All she told me was to tell her mother she had to go to the library or something. And then she was off, flitting towards town.
Just looking at the lad, I know who he is. This is him. The date. The one I saw kiss her. He kinda looks like he’s got a pocket full of centipedes. Wriggly jiggly. He bites his lip and scrapes his thumbnail on his sharp little teeth. He looks way too fidgety to stand still and put his arms around anyone.
‘You’re her pal, right? I’ve seen you kicking around with her. When will she be back?’
I shrug. He steps closer. I step back. The milk wobbles in the bottle.
‘Tell her I’m looking for her. It’s urgent,’ he says.
I spin around and call after him wandering away. I can hear his pockets jangling.
‘Who should I say was asking after her?’ I yell.
‘Cal. Tell her Cal has to see her. Big time. She’ll know who you mean.’
I’m making my way into the house, then I turn back. I lift the lid of our honesty box. There’s not one coin in there, though the eggs have all sold. I knew there was something fishy about him. Twitchy. I wonder why Lorrie went out with him and why he’s gagging to see her. It must have been a hell of a date.
Lorrie
I lay on my bed wishing I had a radio to drown out the hush of the house. It was so quiet, I could hear the voice of my mother telling Toby everythi
ng would be fine. There must be a reason Dad hadn’t come home. He’d never stayed out a single night before, let alone four. There had to be an explanation. Knowing him it would be so mundane we wouldn’t be able to stop ourselves yawning.
I rubbed my temples in circles, picturing Blair lying in bed, the silvery blue of her eyelids clenched, a flicker of movement beneath. Grumps knocked on my door, poked his head around it and came in with a shot glass of whisky and honey.
‘This will help your cold,’ he said. ‘Just a bit, drink it slowly.’
I’d told everyone I thought I was getting a cold as an excuse to get away. I sniffed to prove I was sick and accepted the whisky. Grumps narrowed his eyes, discerning I was putting it on. He always knew more than he let on.
‘You’ll drift off in no time. Everything may not be alright tomorrow, but it always looks better when you’ve had your sleep.’
He perched on a wicker chair, unable to bring himself to sit on a pink bedspread. It wasn’t often I was alone with my grandfather. Our conversations usually involved appraisals of the weather and my mother’s porridge-making skills, but I was glad he was here. It was a relief to have the sort of company that didn’t require much of me.
‘Tell me a story. It will help me get to sleep,’ I said. I realised I was too old for stories, but I’d pretend I wasn’t, just once. Tonight, I’d have some time off from being an adult.
‘I don’t know any stories,’ Grumps said. This was the beginning of the story, always. I don’t know any stories was his Once Upon a Time.
‘Tell me how you met Grandma.’
‘You already know.’
‘I don’t know how you’ll tell it tonight,’ I replied.
Grumps picked a toothpick out of his pocket and poked around his mouth for leftover lunch and scraps of memory.
‘She worked at the bakery. Seventeen, shy, and prettier than a piglet in April, but she was the most serious girl I ever saw.’
I settled into my pillow and waited. This was the only story he ever told me. He was always happy to tell it, so long as I coaxed it out of him.
‘Every day, I’d see her through the window kneading bread, concentrating, biting her lip, but I never asked her out. I just kept going in, buying loaves. I had so many loaves I would toss chunks of bread out the window every night. It looked like it had snowed. The grass outside would be covered in birds.’
‘You could have asked her to go out with you,’ I said.
‘I couldn’t. Some things are out of a person’s league. It’s best to recognise what they are and avoid disappointment. I wasn’t always as handsome as I am now, you know.’ Grumps grinned a flash of grey tooth and bunched his lips.
‘One night, nature was on my side, a storm hit the island. The wind was fearsome. Thunder and lightning clattered like a cutlery drawer. There were so many trees in the road the passing places became unpassable. One tree crashed through her aunt’s roof. I was working as a roofer for Ed Campbell that year, to tide myself over until my father said I was old enough to work at the distillery. I had a head for heights, but talking to the ladies made me dizzy. That’s the only thing that made me feel I might fall. I suppose Ed saw I was shy, so he stuck his oar in. “If you’ll go out with Joseph this Saturday,” he said to your grandmother, “I’ll give your aunt a few quid off fixing her slates.” Cheeky swine. Maisy folded her arms and stared at me for a long time. “Make it five,” she said, “then we’ll talk.” That was it, a fiver for a lifetime. I was working at the distillery a year later, soon as I turned eighteen. We got married not long after that.’
In silence, we separately recalled my grandmother – a bolster of a woman stuffed with phrases such as: wash your hands before you dig in; well, if wishes were fishes; there’s no point crying about it now. My parents had visited every New Year before we moved to the island. I always found her in the kitchen waiting for the first foot in, just where she had been when I had left. She gave the impression she hadn’t moved since, holding the kettle in her hands or moving her knife between a pie and tin, sliding out pastry without making a break. The repertoire of her conversations consisted of: there’s plenty more if you want it… ; you look like your mother, but thicker; you look like your father. She’d glance at Toby and cut him more cake to compensate. Grumps never took his eyes off her. He would sit quietly as his daughter and wife chatted about the journey, who’d died on the island, who married who and who was still single. Grandma would stop talking and turn to him suddenly, aware of him looking at her.
‘Soppy old fool,’ she would say, though we couldn’t spot him smiling. It seemed as though they’d been having a conversation no one else in the room could hear. They had been. It was conversation of eyes and years only they could understand.
I closed my eyes as Grumps left, whispering, ‘Sleep tight, don’t let the bedbugs…’
I heard no more, out for the night.
1st June 1960
It’s not like Ma suddenly trusts me, or Lorrie’s become some kinda saint overnight. It’s Lorrie’s father that’s stopping her keeping me grounded. Being missing changes everything. Ma says I can pop over and keep Lorrie company. It’s the Christian thing to do. I carry a bannock on her behalf.
Lorrie’s ma is a rhubarb jelly machine. Steam’s crying down the windows. She’s darting about the kitchen sticking labels to squeaky-clean jars like she’s bottling bits of her heart.
‘Hey there, Sylvie,’ she says. ‘How you doing? It’s been a while.’
‘I know. I’ve had a lot of schoolwork.’
Honestly, I’ve had no more than Lorrie, but I can’t exactly tell her about the note off Joe and Ma raging. What goes on within these walls is private, Ma says. Tell nothing to no one. It’s the law.
The tree outside Lorrie’s room is making crazy shadows like wallpaper that won’t stay still. Lorrie puts the radio on instead of blethering. There’s nothing anyone’s saying about her pa we want to repeat. Folks in the village have stopped saying he must have a flat tyre or something. They’ve given him a fancy woman instead. They reckon he’s shacked up with some floozy he’s had on the side for years. They’re so convinced it’s true they can practically see her standing around in a silk slip. Looking over his shoulder, just outside of the picture Rook Cutler’s been posting all over telephone poles on the mainland.
‘I can’t stand the waiting,’ Lorrie says. ‘Not knowing.’
Toby bursts into the room clutching a rope in his hand. ‘Tie me up as tight you can,’ he says. ‘I want to see if I can escape.’
‘Toby! What have I told you about knocking?’ Lorrie snaps.
‘If I knock you’ll tell me to get knotted.’ He’s all pimples and hair like a duck’s arse and an energy that won’t let him sit still. ‘Go on, tie me up,’ he says. ‘Tight.’
‘Piss off and bug someone else.’
‘I can’t. Mum’s gone jam crazy and Grumps has gone fishing.’
He holds his fists out in front of him, dangling the rope. I grab it and wind it around his wrists. Toby sits on the floor, knees bent. ‘Now do my ankles,’ he says. I wind the rope because Lorrie won’t. It’s always been this way with Toby and me. When Lorrie’s not bothering with either of us, he’ll catch me in the garden sometimes and get me to pick a card. Or I’ll stand over him with a stopwatch, timing how long it takes him to get out of a barrel with his hands tied.
‘Tighter.’ He wriggles and writhes and gets nowhere. ‘Now watch me get out.’
The knot remains firm.
‘I don’t have time for this,’ Lorrie says. ‘Get out. Now. Hop it!’ She hurls the pin cushion at him and he squirms out the door fast as a wee caterpillar, still on the floor.
‘You didn’t have to shout at him,’ I say. I reckon all he’s after is escaping wondering where his pa is, but I don’t say. Lorrie’s got her head in her hands.
‘I have to finish this for Blair,’ she says. And she picks up the nightdress sprawled on the chair. Sh
e lays it across her lap like a lassie who turned into air. Pouf! I kinda want to put my arm around her and say something comforting, but I can’t get the words out. I start picking dropped pins off the floor.
‘Your collar’s all wonky,’ I say.
‘Eh?’
‘On your nightdress. Look at the trim. It’s wobbly as fuck.’ I snatch the scissors and set about unpicking stitches. I don’t know if Lorrie’s father will come home. Or when Blair will wake up. I can’t tell her nothing, but I can sew. I’ll sew a lace frill for a bonnie lassie I hate. And I’ll do it for Lorrie. I don’t want to do more, but I could, if I have to, for my pal.
Part III
Lorrie
There was a quiet spot Sylvie loved to go for the puffins. We spotted them congregating out near the lighthouse and she’d drag me to see the birds. Oddly, she never had a problem speaking when we were sitting on those rocks, looking out at flashes of red across the waves. It was possible for her to spend an hour quite happily doing nothing but looking. It was the site of one of our favourite childhood conversations on days where nothing happened but the weather. Who do you wish would show up now? If anything could happen, what would you pick? I’d always opt for Dean Martin arriving in a sports car. Sylvie looked up and wondered about it raining frogs. Or, out of nowhere, she’d say, ‘Imagine if a squid crawled out of the water over there, a giant one, that would liven things up a bit.’ Her eyes would sparkle with thoughts of fishermen battling a kraken. She would grin, certain the beady-eyed woman from the newsagent would rush out to wrestle the monster, convinced it was coming to nick her liquorice. Today, Sylvie wondered what would happen if the puffins suddenly started talking, not just the puffins but every bird on the island. They’d have plenty to say.
Something Like Breathing Page 14
