My mother wasn’t listening. Everything had to get back to normal around here. There were no hotels on her husband’s bank statements. No flowers, or fish suppers, and that meant no woman. He’d slept in his car until the car was gone (that’s the word he used, ‘gone’, as if giving it away had been out of his hands). Seth Johnson knew someone who could get him a deal on a Ford identical to the one he’d given away. He could put on the same jacket and return to work the same as always.
Mum placed rock cakes on a chopping board after dinner. The kitchen filled with the aroma. We discussed the dessert, none of us knowing what else to say.
‘One of your favourites.’ She set about salvaging the buns, scraping a burnt strip from one of the edges. She’d never be a great cook, but she served her failures as treats. We pretended they were.
Dad picked up a currant and chewed. He didn’t say much, but then he never had. It was a different sort of silence to the one we were used to. Sylvie was right. Once, when Bunny was annoyed with her, she told me there are a hundred different sorts of silence. Sometimes when she wasn’t speaking she was fine, and just looking at things, and sometimes she wasn’t. Sylvie said silence has more shades than there are colours on a chart. I listened to the sounds she was making at the time, but not the words. I only understood after my father went missing. There were so many different silences in the house I couldn’t bear it.
One silence belonged to my father, looking beyond us as we sat around the table. He stood and, without saying a word, carried a fistful of rock cake outside. We stayed where we were sitting, aware of him ripping it into pieces for the birds.
The silence of my mother was the sound of water. She got up and washed the dishes slowly, wondering what separated her husband from us all.
Then there was my grandfather’s silence. His was a container holding everything he could only let out once his son-in-law had left the room.
‘Now a woman would make sense,’ he said. ‘If he’d left for some floozy. Or even drink, but this…’
He understood those men who grabbed whatever they could to lose a part of themselves. Men like that lived in the country and the city alike – the only thing that changed was the sheen of their shoes and the roughness of their hands grabbing a glass. Ambition was a dangerous thing. The one thing every broken man he’d ever met had in common was they’d all wanted more than they had, and felt they should have amounted to more.
‘He needed a holiday, that’s all.’ My mother scraped the scorched baking tray. ‘Who doesn’t want to disappear sometimes? He’s fine now.’
The sparrows hopped close to my father outside, pecked a crumb, and hopped back. The word in the village shop was the man was crazy, she knew that. Crazy, not in a raving sort of way, but the quiet sort of crazy you can’t trust. There could be no other reason a man would give up his vehicle.
I saw her defend him as much as she could, but it didn’t convince anyone.
‘Why is it crazy for him to want to give someone something?’ she said. ‘Bunny Johnson’s constantly donating to the church, Seth too, and the church gives to the poor. No one calls that crazy.’
Grumps didn’t reply. Over the years, he’d often wished his son-in-law would vanish. When it finally happened, it was another thing he couldn’t get right. He could have gone wild with drink, screamed at his wife, or run off with a girl half his age. It would have been better than this. His daughter would scream, kick him out and get it over and done with. This wasn’t so simple. The man was still here, though only his body. His thoughts were elsewhere. We all noticed but we went along with it. There didn’t seem to be any other option than pretending nothing had changed.
17th June 1960
Ma’s perching on the balls of her feet like she’s searching for someone lost in a crowd. That tiny hat she loves is pinned to her head. The ivory suitcase waits in the hall with her gloves all folded up and lying on the clasp. We’re supposed to be off, setting out to my nan’s as soon as I get in. And here I am, dead late. Wobblier than Bambi on my feet, Joe’s arm around my waist. With baby steps, we walk up the path.
I whisper, ‘I’ll be fine from here.’ I pull away and sag.
‘I’ve got you.’ His arm stays around me. Firm. I can smell the washing powder on his shirt. And soap, and that boy smell I sorta wish they sold in a bottle so I could dab it on my pillow and breathe it in.
‘Where do you think you’ve been, missy? What’s this?’ Ma’s dragging me off Joe.
‘She came over faint, Mrs Johnson. I wanted to make sure she got home alright,’ Joe says.
I wonder how such a soft voice doesn’t get lost in the size of him, just get swallowed up.
‘You! I know what you’ve been doing. I know all about it. Believe me, mister.’ Ma turns to me. ‘And now you’re too poorly to visit your nan. Are you satisfied?’
I am. Ma pulls me inside, unbuckles my shoes and leaves them on the mat.
‘What have I told you about that boy? He used you,’ she says.
‘No, he didn’t.’ I say. I’m smiling even though I’m giddy. I reckon I used him to feel good about myself.
I crawl under the blankets and bury myself, dormouse style. Joe’s happy. He can play his guitar again just like he’s supposed to. And Ma can do nowt about it. She’s drawing the curtains and saying something about being grounded until I’m twenty-one. I don’t care. I close my eyes and drift off to a land where girls kiss boys who feel they could throw a ball all the way to the moon. Ma can nag for a month of Sundays. And it won’t change a thing. For once, she didn’t get her way. Today, we won’t be going to Nan’s or anywhere else. I win.
Lorrie
Bunny’s knock on the door was as crisp as her outfit. My mother let her in with a sigh.
The Singer stood on the dining table surrounded by cut fabric – a breast here, a collar there. It was difficult to imagine they could ever be made into anything that could dance.
‘That dance is coming up. And we haven’t even discussed it, we’ve been so busy,’ Mum said, taking pains not to add ‘with waiting for your father to be found’.
‘I don’t know if I want to go,’ I said.
Blair was done with me. Sylvie was off school again and Bunny wouldn’t let me in to see her. The dance was a lonely place, but I was going, my mother was adamant. I was starting to think sometimes there are dances daughters go to in frilly dresses simply to prove life is rosy.
Bunny picked up an offcut of satin, fingernails clicking on the pins. ‘I bet there’s not a kitchen for miles that doesn’t resemble a dress factory right now. So many pins and spools of cotton everywhere. There’s a solution, you know. I have the perfect item…’ She opened the sturdy box she was carrying under her arm and placed a pin inside it. ‘See! There are compartments for anything: cotton, needles, pins…’
‘The cushion I keep the pins in works fine,’ my mother said. She looked tired. Pretending everything was perfect had become a full-time job that was harder than it looked.
‘You know, the church is having a pie and pea fundraiser. It would be lovely if you could help. We could always use another hand,’ Bunny said.
‘I don’t have time.’
‘You know, people say that. It’s so sad. There’s never time to help others. Everyone’s so busy, busy, busy! Yet if everybody did a little, how different everything would be.’ Bunny picked up a spool of cotton and reeled in the loose end. ‘They get all over don’t they? So difficult to store, always rolling off somewhere.’
My mother pulled her chequebook out of the sideboard. Whether it was buying the Greatest Sewing Caddy in the World, or dolloping mushy peas out at bingo night in the village, she had to give the woman something. It took so much energy to say no.
‘Can Sylvie come to the dance?’ I asked. ‘Will she be better soon?’
‘I doubt it,’ Bunny said. ‘You know Sylvie. Dances aren’t her style. Besides, she’s still ill.’ There was
a magazine on the sideboard. Bunny picked it up, flicked through and closed it. Now that she had a fridge, there was no need to clip contests to win one out of every magazine she saw lying around.
Mum looked up, pen perched on the cheque. I knew we both wanted to say the same thing – that perhaps Sylvie would be the sort of person who enjoyed dances, if Bunny let her be and gave it a chance.
‘What’s wrong with her, exactly?’ she asked.
‘Nothing to be concerned about. Sylvie suffers from allergies.’
‘I thought you said she had chickenpox?’
Bunny folded the cheque and made the crease crisp with her fingernails.
‘How is your husband, anyway? Did he enjoy his little holiday? It’s funny he didn’t tell anyone he was going anywhere…’
‘He’s right as rain. It’s all my fault. He told me he was planning to visit friends months ago, I forgot to write it down,’ my mother said.
The women’s smiles were a wall. Bunny refused to reveal what was going on with Sylvie, and my mother refused to fuel gossip about my father. The truth was, none of us knew why he’d left, or whether he’d have come back on his own if he hadn’t been found. It took all our energy not to ask. He was well in the sense that he got up, went to work, and came home on time. It would do. We no longer felt we knew him, but, thinking about it, we weren’t sure we ever had.
It was foggy in the morning. We woke to find another owl on the step. My father saw it before anyone else. This one was small, a barn owl with a hundred eyes on its back. He put down his keys, cradled the bird and stared at it for a long time before striding across the lawn.
He took a spade from the shed and started to dig. When the hole was finished, he dropped to his knees and buried the owl, scooping the soil with his hands. There was a shudder to his shoulders, but I didn’t go out to him. I’d never seen a man cry. I wouldn’t know what to do. I didn’t think I should see it. I didn’t want my father to be human, I wanted him to be strong. I wanted him to be identical to the men I saw in the movies.
Once the owl had a grave, he brushed the dirt off his hands and left for work, the same as always. Mum came downstairs smelling of toothpaste, followed by Toby, bed hair sticking up everywhere. I didn’t report what I saw. I pretended it hadn’t happened. I looked above the patch of dirt where my father had been digging, determined not to look down until the grass grew again.
22nd June 1960
There’s a whiff of cucumber when I open my eyes. Ma’s sitting there like a salad, a minty looking face mask slapped all over, slices of cucumber laid on her eyelids. It’s something she started doing in my bedroom as soon she got married, as if her beauty regime was some sort of deadly secret no man should see in case it killed him on sight.
‘You’re awake,’ she says, and then wham! She dives into laying down the law.
‘No cosmetics. No boys. No school. No sneaking through the fence to see Lorrie. I want you where I can see you, missy.’
Shite. She hasn’t calmed down while I was sleeping. She’s had the chance to plan my whole life.
‘I don’t want you going anywhere near Joe Clark. I’ve written to your Nan. You can go and stay with her until the whole Blair debacle blows over and tongues stop wagging.’
‘I don’t want to go,’ I say. ‘I was thinking of applying for a job at the launderette in the village when school’s finished.’ I reckon I’d be good at that. I love the shush of the machines and seeing all the clothes chasing each other around. I’d die before I let a purple sock slip in with the whites.
‘You’ll do what I say. The damage is done, Sylvie. People talk. Everyone has long memories here.’
It’s true. Rumours linger in the village longer than the sound of the ocean stays inside a shell. If I’m not here to remind anyone, Ma hopes folk will stop yacking about what kinda lassie they think I am.
‘It won’t change anything,’ I say. ‘Wherever I go, I’ll still be me.’
Ma peels off bits of face mask like a zombie with sunburn. She doesn’t get it. The problem isn’t one pal being a bad influence. Or one girl. Or one boy. It’s not TV. Or rock and roll. Or books. It’s being young. And being me.
‘I only want what’s best for you.’ She gets up to scrub off the face mask before Seth sees. ‘Tea will be ready soon. It’s your favourite for pudding. Raspberry ripple.’ She waits for me to say something to make her feel I realise she’s on my side, in a suffocating sorta way.
‘I’m not hungry,’ I say.
‘Have it your way.’
Ma closes the door. It won’t stay closed forever. I could get out of my bed soon and walk through it. I could go to the village and get a job doing laundry. Or learn shorthand, and wear glasses, and get a wiggle skirt and hop over to the mainland to turn into a secretary. I could do whatever I want, as soon as I know what it is, anyway.
Lorrie
There was a smashed window at the distillery. The clouds looked into the glass on the ground, so did our faces and hands picking up the broken pieces. Grumps circled a patch of charred grass and entered the building to assess the damage. Several smashed bottles littered the slate floor, whisky pooled by the door. At his feet lay a dropped strip of damp matches.
‘Could have been worse.’ He picked up the matches. ‘I think someone just wants me to know they could have burnt the place to the ground if they’d wanted to.’
The police officer scribbled on a notepad too small for his hands. He wanted to know who would do this. ‘Perhaps you’ve had a falling-out with someone? Do you have any enemies?’
‘No more than anyone.’ Grumps showed the officer out. The cellar door remained locked. The barrels untouched. There were footsteps on the grass outside the shed where the finest malts were kept. Someone had stopped at the door and turned back, changing their mind, not bearing to go in.
Grumps breathed in the spilled liquid: ‘Notes of syrup and spice. A decent batch.’
‘We can claim for the window on the insurance,’ my mother said, mopping up whisky. She looked around for my father to reassure her on the claim, but he’d already left us. Insurance was no longer his favourite subject. He was outside stroking the blackened grass, slipping off his shoes and socks and wiggling his toes in the unspoilt grass to recall how it felt. Mum turned to Rook, pouring her bucket of whisky suds down the drain.
‘There’s a lot to do around here. Rook, you’d better get on the phone and find a glazier.’
‘I already did, Lucky,’ he said. ‘We’ll have someone here before the day’s out.’
Grumps shovelled glass into a sack. I held it open for him. We worked together outside in the late afternoon. Him shovelling, me clutching the hessian, bending to pick up shards. I didn’t see the bearded man until Grumps did. He was standing across the lane, eyes narrowed, watching us work.
‘I’ll be damned…’ Grumps chased after him faster than I knew an old man could move. He ran with the shovel still in his hand, dropping it halfway down the lane.
‘Where you going? You shouldn’t run. You’ll have a cardiac!’
I ran after him, half limping, half running towards Abel West hobbling away. I slowed my pace before I caught up, eager to avoid meeting him again, wanting no one to realise we’d already met.
Grumps grabbed Abel’s shirt and dragged him around to face him. There was a sound of ripping cotton as he shoved him against the hedge, a flurry of sparrows taking to the air. Grumps pushed Abel. Abel pushed back. The pair scuffled, rolling in the dirt lane. Without warning, they broke free in agreement, both placing a hand on their chests, catching their breath.
‘It was you who tried to burn the place down,’ Grumps said. ‘I knew it.’
Abel grinned and flashed a colour chart of teeth, a progression of yellows and browns.
‘What do you want?’ Grumps asked. ‘Lurking about the place with your owls. Well, spit it out. You’ve got my attention now. Now’s your chance…’
> Abel straightened his shirt and brushed down the ruffled fabric. He’d been sure his cousin owed him something all his life. Now he was being asked what he wanted, he was unsure what it was. He hadn’t planned on getting the opportunity to present his opinion. No one ever asked him anything. In his derelict cottage, all winter he would imagine his cousin in a large house surrounded by women. He would picture a distillery full of bottles the colour of gold, and money piled high under a bed filled with feathers. The person facing him was an old man just like him, alone, charcoal on his fingers and smashed glass crushed into his soles.
‘We knew whisky too,’ he said. His voice was filled with spit. ‘I coulda done good as you, if I’d got the chance.’ Abel wiped spit off his beard. What he wanted sounded so foolish he felt small.
‘I don’t deny it.’ Grumps picked grit out of his palm. ‘Our old men both knew a thing or two. But what could mine do? Just hand over half a business his father worked all his life for? Would your da come to work for us for a decent wage? Course not. He was stubborn. We’re all stubborn. Life isn’t fair. I admit it.’ Grumps shrugged. ‘That what you wanted to hear? Will you leave me alone now?’
‘Dunno,’ Abel grunted. ‘Got used to pissing on your doorknobs. Looked forward to it.’
Grumps nodded. If someone had seen them at a distance, the pair would have resembled two men discussing a hobby. They agreed being angry was as good a hobby as any.
‘I get it, some things just get to be habit.’ Grumps wiped his hand on his trousers, the hand that opened his door every morning. The men leant on a fence. One nodded. One shrugged. One offered his hand to be shaken. The other almost shook it, then waved it away. One lit the cigarette of the other and they shuffled off their separate ways. They might have smiled – no one could tell beneath their beards.
Something Like Breathing Page 18
