So Pretty, page 2
‘London?’
‘No, Hastings.’
‘Anyway, one day, they turned up. Mr Berry and Mr Vincent.’ She gestures to the shop. ‘Opened the place two weeks later. Antiques and curios. The town was interested, naturally. It seemed like a good sort of place for the tourists, you know. The kids took a shine to it. All those toys tucked away in there.’
I think, And now he has photographs of dead children on the wall.
‘What about Mr Berry? I haven’t met him yet.’
‘And you won’t,’ she says. ‘He’s long gone. He was here about a year, Berry, before he left.’
‘He wasn’t like the other one. Good man, Berry, good man.’ We turn to see an elderly man shuffling his chair closer. ‘He cared about us lot, he did. Every Saturday, he’d organise a treasure hunt for the kiddies. Hide toys round that shop and get them all involved.’
‘Why did he leave?’
‘No one knows. Not really.’ Molly now. ‘But we suspected that he was bought out—’
‘Pushed out, more like.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Vincent. He did it. Been infecting this place ever since. It was better before.’ The elderly man’s voice needles in my ears.
‘Now, we’ve talked enough about that place. You’re scaring the poor boy.’ Molly, silencing the others with a look. ‘Stop.’
I sit back, realising that the café is oddly still, the hum of voices has fallen away. Eyes watch me with sadness, fear … pity. I shrink back from it, stumbling as I rise from the chair. ‘I should probably go and explore the village. I’ve only seen a bit of it. It was nice to meet you all.’ I laugh. Why am I laughing?
‘If you need anything, anything at all, even if you just need someone to talk to, come to me. I’ll help you.’ Molly reaches for my hand, the salt on her fingers pressing deep into my skin.
With what?
‘With him.’
I had not realised I’d spoken.
‘Thanks.’ I close the door behind me, but I feel these people looking at me as if there is a sickness already inside me.
ADA
Rotten and Pretty Things
‘How long, do you think?’
‘How long until what?’
‘Until he runs.’ The men walk by my living-room window, greasy chins thrust out. Their feet, thump, thump across the ground, as if they have heartbeats in their saggy boots. I watch them, Albie sleeping in my arms.
‘A month, I’d say.’
‘Won’t be long. Poor lad. He’ll turn. Like milk gone sour, stinking up the kitchen. It’ll get him. That shop will get him.’ There is sadness in his voice, and his words droop his shoulders a little further down his body.
‘The wife’s going to take him one of her lasagnes this evening.’
‘Hmm.’
They are quiet then, pausing by my window, trying to look at each other without moving their heads. Eventually, the smaller one speaks, and it is a boy’s voice from a man’s mouth. I think how fear makes people small precisely when they need to be tall.
‘I saw him standing outside Berry & Vincent the other day, you know. Just standing there, watching it. Like a lost thing.’
‘He didn’t go in?’
‘No. When I asked, he told me it was his day off. But he went there anyway…’
‘Why?’
‘He said, the place was inside his head. And he couldn’t find a way to get it out.’
I think of the shop then. Buttons, black, silken rolls of red ribbon. Hearts of hummingbirds in beaded purses; music boxes lined with whales’ lung tissue; black and blue feathers from birds shivering above. The shop is asunder, a tangle of things, and you must watch your step, keep your breath in your body so you don’t break anything and nothing breaks you.
When we arrived in Rye, the townspeople would not speak of the place.
‘It’s a curious box and a box of curiosities. We don’t go inside Berry & Vincent,’ they said.
‘Why?’
‘Don’t go inside Berry & Vincent,’ they said. ‘There’s a devil inside that place.’
Their lips pinched and they shook their heads. My questions about this strange shop, the strange shadow it poured across the street, went unanswered.
‘It’s an unkind place. Leave it be. And it will leave you be,’ they said.
‘But—’
‘Leave Berry & Vincent be.’
TEDDY
Superstition and Suspicion
I can’t remember what first drew me to Rye. Perhaps it was the Tudor cottages leaning like drunks down the slope of cobbled street, or a sense that here things could be hidden, forgotten.
The Mermaid Inn sits to my right, half-timbered with a sloping slate roof and mullioned windows. The place smells of chips and ale, a heady combination that makes my stomach roar. I find the bar and order lunch. ‘This place is impressive.’
The elderly landlady grins. ‘Thanks. We like it. We don’t get many tourists in February so I’m going to take a punt and say you’re that newcomer?’
‘I am. I’m Teddy.’
‘Charlotte. Heard there was fresh meat in town. How are you settling in?’
‘It’s … a challenge. I’ve just started work at the antiques shop. Molly doesn’t seem too keen on the place.’
‘You won’t find many who are.’ She takes up a tea towel and picks at the thread. ‘That place casts its own sort of shadow.’
‘What do you mean?’
She shakes her head. ‘Nothing. Ignore me, son.’
‘Please.’
She studies my eyes, my lips, my nose. Panic threads itself though my chest, but finally she speaks and I breathe. ‘It looks different now, feels different now. Parents warn their kiddies off going in there. We steer clear of it.’ She pauses, eyes as wide as plates. ‘No one knows much about Mr Vincent. He and Berry just arrived one day. Arrived with the rain. I remember because it was one of the driest summers on record. But that day it was like God was trying to drown the town.’
‘Were they friends or just business partners?’
‘Vincent used Berry, tricked him. He needed his money to get the shop. It was all calculated. They weren’t friends. Barely business partners. Vincent hated him and Berry left a year later. Just disappeared. Haven’t heard from him since. Came and went with the rain.’
‘You have an idea why?’
‘No. No one knows really. Vincent changed this place. We don’t usually talk about him. Or Berry. It’s best to leave it be, son.’
I detect a warning there, a glint of steel in her old eyes that bothers me. A pile of loose thread sits on the counter, a hole in the tea towel.
‘I don’t know why you want to work there. I don’t know why he wanted you, he hasn’t had an “assistant” the whole time he’s been here. But can you do me a favour?’
I nod.
‘Don’t stir this up. There is a reason we keep from talking ’bout this.’
‘What reason?’
She shrugs. ‘Like I said, there’s a rot in that man, like an infection that spreads from his body. But this is still our town and we choose to ignore it. It’s the best way. Look, there are things you don’t know. Don’t stir it up. Please.’
Berry left only a year after the shop opened. But why? Why so suddenly abandon his business, all that he had built? And how has an entire village come to avoid one shop? One man?
But then must I really ask that? Don’t I already know?
Charlotte keeps her eyes down. ‘You’re working there so you’ll notice this soon enough. Don’t think it’s about you.’
‘What?’
‘Kids hold their breath when they pass the shop. As if they might catch something or as if it might take something from them.’
‘Why though?’
‘Watch, you’ll see the children hold their breath when they pass by Berry & Vincent.’
ADA
Day and Night
I was in Sainsbury’s toilets when I discovered I was pregnant. The lights were flickering over my head, and the smell of perfume and urine put a sickness in my throat. I remember hearing the woman in the next cubicle cursing as she tried to pull up her trousers.
I was twenty years old. The father, my first and last one-night stand, I have no name for. He was a quick distraction, one my three closest friends encouraged me to enjoy at a party. The next morning I left, thinking it wasn’t worth the eleven pounds fifty I had to pay for a taxi to his place.
‘Boy or girl?’ A librarian asked once when I was in my first trimester, seeing the books I carried. ‘I’ve always wanted a boy but I got four girls.’ Like it was some snub from fate, dealing her duds.
‘I – I – I don’t know.’
‘Have you thought of any names?’
I hadn’t. ‘No yet,’ I said. In all honesty, I had forgotten about that part.
My body stretched, reaching new contours as I sprayed bottle after bottle of cheap perfume in the bathroom every morning to mask the smell of sickness. The skin on my stomach grew thin, scarred, I could follow the veins with my little finger, like some strange game of snakes and ladders.
I told everyone eventually, when my blister of a bump became too difficult to disguise. My mother’s reaction was as I expected it to be. Her fury lasted a whole week – the air in the house was bursting with it and I took small breaths so I didn’t choke.
‘Get rid of it. You disgust me. Get rid of it!’
‘No.’
‘I shan’t have it in my house. Your mistake, your problem. You’re a fool, Ada Belling.’
‘I’m not getting rid of it.’
‘Disgusting!’
The word flew like spittle, smacked my cheek. I lifted my finger, pressed it to my face, but, of course, there was nothing there.
She packed my things, throwing the bags outside, the value of my life less than the empty bottles and balled-up wrappers she took such care to recycle.
Father was no help. I went to my aunt’s after that, waited out my final trimester in the company of my three boisterous young cousins, who poked my bump until my aunt threatened them.
‘I mean it, Andrew, stop poking her. Jesus. She’s not your hamster.’
‘God. Look. Her stomach just moved!’
‘That’s the baby kicking.’
‘Sick!’ said Andrew.
‘That’s just nasty,’ said Patrick.
I did not see my mother again after that. She is cutting, nails always risen to harm. Even her bones have sharp edges. I recall standing at the bus stop, six years old. A boy my age was clinging to his mother like a monkey, soft young paws. But when I did the same, mother pinched my fingers. ‘Don’t do that.’
I sucked the redness, looked at the boy looking at me. I realised then I could not take love from a body.
TEDDY
Boy and Man
I see them. The children who hold their breath when they pass. Cheeks tomato bright. Feet quickening. I hold my own sometimes. Or have I just stopped breathing?
I have few responsibilities within the shop; these include cleaning and wiping down, pricing, occasionally helping Mr Vincent adjust some of the larger articles on display. I must not change the order of things, I must not rearrange or tamper without permission. If I should move a pen but an inch, he will move it back. I am not allowed to open the till although I am allowed to stand behind the counter.
I keep to these duties, I do not overstep.
‘It’s quiet. Almost wish it would rain. Something to listen to.’ I am talking to myself because silence is a strange thing, it turns the mind in on itself. And he will not allow me to switch on the radio. ‘Grim today. Always loved the sound of rain. My mum used to say God was in the rain. Never did understand that. Don’t think she did either, really.’
I do not know where he is, where this peculiar person ends and the shop begins. They are bound together, as if with a crude row of stitches. Perhaps they really are one thing.
A book slips from my hand, and the binding cracks. Suddenly there is wool in my throat because I cannot breathe or speak. The shop has quietened, as if even it is alarmed by what I have done.
I bend, take it up, rise and, he is here.
A gasp slips from my lips. He snatches the book, his arm swinging back, and I think he is going to beat me with it. As my hands come up to my head, he turns, blends into the chaos. But the chaos in my chest will not calm.
It is quiet at home. Quiet there, quiet here. I like to press my fingers to my ears sometimes, until they throb, then I speak and I do not sound like myself. I sound like someone else. I unplug my ears, I plug them, and I am two people.
I have done this since I was a boy. It is a comfort to me. Because the radio and television do not listen, they do not respond. I close my eyes and I am back in my old flat, the first place I had of my own.
The carpet has a constellation of holes – moths, mice, I still do not know from which. There is a black fur on the wall, with each breath of mine it grows. And there is the quiet. I thrust a ready meal into the microwave. I own only one fork, one knife, one spoon. I do not need more. But tomorrow I might buy a new set. I might set the table, cook for two. The food will go cold, but I can tell myself it goes cold because someone is running late and not because there is no one coming at all.
I plug my ears:
‘How was your day?’
‘Rubbish. Yours?’
Yours?
I like how it sounds, someone asking after me.
Tomorrow I will pour wine, rub some red over the rim. There look! A woman has been here. Her lipstick, see … see?
‘I see,’ I say. ‘I really do.’
I am not a boy anymore. My skin is baggy, my hair thin, arthritis swells my knees, makes me walk with a tilt, as if I am always about to fall over. But now I am adept at becoming unknowable. I can pack up my homes in twenty minutes, I can fill my car, begin the run, to the next place, the next, leave those blinking faces in my rear-view.
They looked for it inside me – that rot. Sometimes it can take months, sometimes only a day, but in the end, I am recognised as his son. ‘Don’t watch his lips,’ folk said of him. ‘Watch his eyes. His eyes can’t tell a lie.’ And now they say it about me.
‘There’s a rust on you, boy. Red as the Devil’s skin. I’m not letting any of that rust get on me. I might not get it off.’
He liked children. Little girls. Their innocence, their purity. He took them between the ages of six and twelve. Only they would do. My young foster ‘brothers’ used to call me Killer’s Boy. They’d take their fork, stab it into my hand and the ‘parents’ would bluster at the blood on the tablecloth. I have no memories of my father, I did not know him, yet I am condemned for all he has done. Because, somehow, it is all that I have done too.
TEDDY
Birds and Bottles
My mother’s mind wandered and it did not come back. When I was a child, her voice was always so clear and loud.
‘Loud as a bell, Mum.’
‘If you shake me, I’ll ring,’ she joked.
‘I’m shaking you, Mum. I’m shaking.’ My arms round her middle, moving us back and forth.
‘Ring, ring.’
We laughed because it was funny. We could not imagine a time when it would not be.
But the years passed, folded in on us. Shame and guilt for my father’s crimes quietened that bell. As a boy I did not know what tormented her, why she would go still during the day, like a wind-up toy stuttering to a stop. Or why she would run to me suddenly, faster than I had ever seen her run, gather me in her arms. So I kept still, breathing hard against the itchy wool of her jumper, tighter, tighter, but not wanting to ask her to stop.
There is a bird in a bell jar. With needle-thin feathers and a beak just a grain of rice. It’s a blue tit; I know because my mother used to love watching the birds outside our home. As a boy I’d pad downstairs, find her hovering in the doorway, and she’d let me sip from her mug.
I run my finger over the domed glass. Let him out, Teddy. He can’t even stretch his wings. How would you feel? You’d feel trapped. Let the bird go.
I can’t, Mum. The bird doesn’t belong to me.
The bird belongs to no one. Birds are free.
I do not know how long I have worked here. Days are months in Berry & Vincent. Time is an unfamiliar thing, it does not behave as it should. Mr Vincent. He is there when a moment ago he was not. I feel as if he’d like to take me apart, put my bones in neat piles, polish my skin, see my thoughts, like a cloth to a gritted window.
Who is he? And who am I to him?
I recall a conversation this morning with my neighbour:
‘How are you settling in?’
‘Very well, thanks.’
‘Where are you from? I don’t recognise your accent.’
‘Reading.’ A lie. I never tell anyone where I’m really from.
‘I have a grandson who lives there. And how are you settling in Rye? How are you finding Berry & Vincent?’ She spat its name.
I wiped my chin. ‘It’s … it’s taking some getting used to.’ What else could I say?
‘I remember when he came to this town. I saw him once, you know, it must have been about five years ago now, through the shop window. He was talking. But he never talks, I said to myself. So I went for a close look. You know what I saw?’
