So Pretty, page 4
‘The girl…’
‘We do not go inside Berry & Vincent. We leave it alone now. We do not speak about it.’ She looks at me, and I want to look away. ‘The next day, her shoe appeared in his shop window, all red and crusted. He put her little shoe in his shop window.’
ADA
Missing and Found
‘You’ve had it, then?’ The first words my mother said to me.
‘Yes – yes, this – this is Albie.’
She inched forward, eyes skimming over him. This was the first time I had been invited back to my childhood home. But I was already wishing I’d refused. I tried to catch my father’s eye.
Look at me, I wanted to say. Look at me! But he wouldn’t. We stood in silence. And then:
‘What’s wrong with him?’
These four words were delivered calmly, without a trace of hesitation yet they smacked me in the chest, four swift blows.
‘What did you do? Did you sit on him? Did you drop him?’
‘Stop it!’
‘You must have done something. Look at him. His ear. He’s broken.’
Tears gathered on my cheeks, but I couldn’t feel them. My father put a hand on her shoulder, hesitant, but it was an attempt to help all the same. She shrugged him off.
‘He looks like a little monster.’
‘Stop it!’ It was louder than I intended, and Albie woke, began to cry. I left, struggling to get the pushchair through the door, tripping, smacking my knees on the ground.
The street is empty. Regardless of their cutting words, I wish the townspeople would come, speak with me. In the beginning, I used to call out:
‘Nice weather we’re having!’
‘Horrible weather!’
‘Hope the weather cheers up soon.’
‘Glad the weather has cheered up.’
‘Well, we were lucky for a while, weren’t we?’
In the beginning, they would come to me with light, curious voices. Then they stopped, they saw a single mother, a poor and lonely mother, and that’s all they saw. They would purse their lips, nod, they did not speak, they moved on. And the days moved on too.
The kettle is boiled. I pour myself a cup of tea, milk, two sugars. I go to the window. There is no one. I take a sip, look. Look! Is that someone? No. It is a paper bag, not a brown shoe. I sip. I check on Albie. I return to the window, look again. No one. My bones are humming with silence. I look. I return to the kitchen. I pour my still hot tea away. I boil the kettle. I make another.
TEDDY
Devils and Hanging Men
‘You’ll get scars, scratching like that,’ she says.
There is a bloody corona round my thumbnail, the skin split into strips. I rub, rub, until they are threads.
‘Your dad used to do the same.’ But what she is really saying is, You are like him and it is hurting me.
I suck in a breath, blow out my cheeks.
‘He did that too.’
You are hurting me. You are hurting me.
‘You have your dad’s hands. Fine-boned, feminine. You’d never think hands like his could do what they did.’ I know who he is, all that he did, so I wear gloves, day and night, to ease her.
‘I used to wonder why he got through so many shirts.’ She sighs, decades of weary in one breath. ‘Then I knew and I wished I didn’t. I wished I could get rid of those thoughts, bleach them from my mind. It works on grease you know, bleach. Not much good on anything else.
‘No one told your daddy it’s cold water that gets blood out. Breaks down the proteins. All those good shirts gone. Wonder if he buried them with the girls. Wonder if when they dug them up, there was any white left in them.’
I could drink gallons.
‘What gets the blood out, Mum?’
I could fill my body up.
‘Water.’
But will it get it out of me?
She hid my father’s crimes, protected my childhood, but then her mind went and it flooded out. ‘Those girls, those girls, those girls.’ Again and again until the words stuck to my skin. ‘Teddy, those girls. Those poor girls.’
‘Mum, it’s not your fault.’
‘They were just little girls. Why did he have to hurt them? And they are just the ones we are aware of. What about when he was young? What he had in him must have been there all along.’
‘Maybe.’
‘Secrets belong to God, the Devil and the dead.’ She patted my chest. ‘Well, your daddy is the Devil and the dead. God isn’t going to tell us now, is he, Ted?
When I was two years old, she found pictures and tufts of their hair balled up in my father’s socks. She held the phone with shaking fingers, dropped it twice as she dialled. As police picked our home apart, the family liaison officer said, ‘Where is he? Your little boy?’
‘He’s safe. He’s safe.’
‘But where is he?’
My mother pulled back the blanket draped round her shoulders, revealed a boy no bigger than a loaf. She held me for another three hours.
‘I have him. I have him. I have him.’
My father was found on his second morning in prison, just a pint of blood left in his veins. The news of his death filled the papers for weeks. His was the name on everyone’s lips. The Devil! The Devil is dead. As for my mother, she blamed herself for not having discovered it all sooner. Hers was a mind too heavy with guilt to be lifted.
I stand outside the shop. I look at the window, the man inside, and cold curls between my bones. I must enter, begin my shift, but I am afraid to. At night, all I have heard sits in my head, heavy, so much so I cannot lift it from my pillow. I am standing in the same place I stood when I arrived in Rye, drawn to this strange shop. How different I feel now.
‘You OK, Teddy?’ Molly stops beside me, worry in her face.
‘Fine. I … Fine … I’m…’
She pats my arm. ‘I know.’
We do not speak. We watch the shop window. He has not noticed us. What will happen when he does?
‘Does it get better?’ I ask quietly, and I do not think she has heard.
‘No,’ she says finally. ‘No. I’ve lived here all my life. I remember when he came fifty years ago. And in those fifty years, it hasn’t gotten any better.
‘I’d like to take the ears off that man. Cut them clean from his head. Like a butcher with a pig. He’d hear nothing then, know nothing. And wouldn’t we be better for it?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Three years back one of our older residents died. I wish I could say it was natural causes, but he had something weighing on him, you see. His son was killed by thugs in Hastings about two months before. Dick was broken, lost, back bent so low so you could see his spine poking through his coat. Three years ago, he hung himself with his son’s belt.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘He was a good man, Dick. My friend. His burial was sad, subdued. We returned home, passing Berry & Vincent as we must every day. And I’ll never forget what I saw. There in that window, hung these figures, ’bout the size of your thumb. Some made of wax, others of felt and wool, all of them with a piece of brown twine tied round their slim little necks. Belts … Belts.’
‘Jesus.’
‘We stood there, rows of us, breath misting up the window. Suppose that’s what he wanted. Charlotte was sick; her husband had to clean it up. I screamed at him to take them down. But he wouldn’t. They hung there for a whole month. And every time I passed, he’d tap, tap, and make one of those poor figures swing.’
‘That’s … that’s…’
She shakes her head. ‘He’s the devil, that man. I hope he dies. I hope he does.’ She pats me on the arm, shakes her head again. ‘Be mindful of your devil, boy.’
TEDDY
Rare Books and Oddities
I am in the shop and he is upstairs again, fingers flying over his typewriter. The ringing. Oh, the ringing, it bounces off the porcelain dolls’ faces, the brass pots and glass vases. I clamp my hands over my ears, but I can still hear it. When will it stop? Does he know how it hurts me? This noise.
I imagine screaming at him through the ceiling. I have worked in the shop less than two weeks yet the place keeps me awake at night, tapping at the corners of my mind, trying to get in.
Or is it already in?
‘Please stop, please stop!’
I think of the girl who died outside the shop, of her shoe in his window. I shake my head, move cracked pens and odds scraps of paper round the counter, move them back. Move them. Move them back.
Where is he? Where is he?
The shop is silent, and I think it curious how that silence can make such a racket.
Where has he gone?
I take the closest thing, rub a cloth over it, all the while I am looking.
He’s here. He must be.
I am holding a glass jar. Inside, a heart, a human heart. Real and rubbery thing. A heart upside down.
Thump, thump, thump.
It beats again. It moves.
No it isn’t this heart, it is my heart.
No.
It is not.
Thump. Thump, thump.
It is him. I listen to his footsteps, close my eyes, pretend I am not holding a heart in my hands, pretend he is not here and Berry & Vincent is a shop like any other.
ADA
Rumour and Rope
The woman has butter-blonde hair and eyes like blue marble. Her smile is even, bright, and I wonder, does she look in the mirror at that smile and feel pleased to have it? Mine is askew, slipping, as if it is being tugged by a string. One day it might even be halfway down my chin. I wonder what it is like to have a smile like hers.
She is new to this area, or so I’ve overheard. Sometimes she comes here to let her son stamp his feet into the spongy sand and laugh at the gulls. I’ve wanted to talk to her but words are strange, slippery, right when you don’t want them to be.
I tuck Albie’s hand in mine, the warm, sweaty shell of it, and go to her.
‘Hello. My name’s Ada. I live in town, thought I’d come say hello.’ I’ve said that word twice now, and I bite my tongue. The iron taste of blood slinks down my throat and I feel as if I’ve just swallowed a penny. It’s cold and hard in my stomach.
The woman smiles. ‘Oh! Oh, hello. Nice to meet you. I’m Margot. This is my son, Charlie.’
‘This is Albie. Bean, can you say hello to Charlie and Margot?’
He burrows into me, fear striping down his face, and Charlie runs off, bored, shells crunching under his feet. ‘You’ve a shy one?’
I nod. ‘You?’
She shakes her head, and that buttery mane swings. ‘No. I wish I did have sometimes, though. Charlie can be a beast.’ Her laugh is high, crunching, like she has a Scrabble piece stuck in her throat.
‘How old?’
‘Six. How old is this big guy?’ She kneels, and Albie runs off in the opposite direction. I sigh, deep, and I feel it at the bottom of my spine. ‘Sorry. He’s four.’
‘That’s OK. I get it. So you live in Rye?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’m in the next town. Still getting used to it – we only moved in a few weeks ago. Charlie loves this beach, demands we come every day. Even if it’s raining. Even if I’ve just sat down with my carafe of wine and my book in the evening. I think he saves the question up all day, for that exact moment.’ She is laughing again. Hock-hock-hocking at that Scrabble piece. ‘He fixes me with those little eyes, and I can’t say no. Of course he knows that.’
‘Albie loves it here too. Gets a kick out of rolling round in the sand. I’m brushing it off him for hours afterward.’
‘I just stick Charlie under a hose. Gets the job done.’
‘I’ll try that.’ I am laughing, then I’m thinking, We are talking, she is talking to me. I hope she does not stop.
‘How long have you lived in Rye?’
‘Two years. Where did you move from?’
‘London.’
Albie is fishing through the flotsam and jetsam, bottle caps, tampon wrappers, curls of seaweed and cigars of driftwood. He looks up, thieving glimpses of Charlie.
Margot follows my eyes. ‘Is he shy because of his ear? I hope you don’t think I’m prying. I couldn’t help but notice.’
‘He’s self-conscious. Kids can be pretty blunt, can’t they?’
‘Yep. I wish they had a stop button sometimes. Wouldn’t that be nice? Charlie could do with one. He says the first thing that comes into his head.’
I look at her son. He is swinging his fingers through the sand, pink stub of a tongue stuck between his teeth. ‘Life with kids.’
‘Life with kids. God help us.’
‘Gives the days some colour though, doesn’t it?’
She nods. ‘Got that right. Can’t remember the last time I wore a white shirt. Little life-ruiners.’
‘I miss white shirts.’
‘I miss my drawer full of chocolate.’
‘You don’t let him have chocolate?’
‘No. He has all of it. All my bloody chocolate. Thieving bugger.’
We walk, watching our sons. ‘Do you think you’ll go back to London when Charlie’s older?’
She shrugs, and her hair drips down her shoulders in perfect blonde rivers. I pull my lumpen hat down my head, cover my oily scalp. There is a delicate shard of crisp above my ear. Why is there a crisp above my ear?
‘I think so, yeah, when he’s older. We love it here though. We’re getting used to everyone, trying to fit in, you know.’
I know.
‘It’s not always easy in places like this.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘It can be quite insular. There are no other people our age here. And … well, they can be old-fashioned. Cliquey. If you don’t fit in, you don’t belong.’
She nods. I look at my son, and then I look at hers.
‘Will you have more kids?’ I ask.
‘Oh, God, no. One will do me just fine. I’m still trying to get rid of this muffin top. What about you? Second helpings?’
I shake my head, hold my stomach. ‘No. Not for me.’
She laughs. I laugh. Then I laugh because we are laughing together.
‘Listen, I’d better run. But it was nice to meet you.’ She touches my arm. ‘Maybe I’ll see you again?’
‘Sure.’
She collects her son and his bounty of driftwood, hair flapping like coattails as she marches into Rye.
Two townswomen walk on the opposite side of the street, tucked into each other as if they are one person not two. I listen from my doorstep, rubbing sand from between my fingers, stamping my shoes clean.
‘He can’t know what Mr Vincent is like.’
‘He wouldn’t stay if he did.’
‘Why would he want that boy?’
‘Nothing good. Nothing good. I’ve got that feeling again.’
‘What feeling?’
She sucks in a breath, suck, suck. ‘Fifty years ago, there was a shaking in my bones. Then those men came to Rye, and Berry & Vincent opened its doors. It’s happening again now. My bones are shaking so it’s like they’re coming loose.’
‘Dear, oh dear, that boy better watch his back. Those who get close to Vincent risk a bad end.’
I am looking without looking like I’m looking. I wish they would come over. I savoured those words shared with Margot on the beach, but now the silence is back. And I feel emptied.
If these passers-by would just come over, we could discuss the shop together, I could offer tea and we could wonder about this man Teddy over steaming cups cradled in chill fingers.
TEDDY
Sirens and Spent Hearts
My mother’s mind wandered, and I would rest my head in the warm hollow between her neck and shoulder, know that just a few fingers down was her heart, this thing that still moved but was slower, different now.
She died one evening without noise or fight. Just a breath. One. Quietly. Before the life left her aged face and the fear arrived in mine. For an hour I sat with her, tapped her chest with my finger, put movement back where there was none.
When I called 999, I said, ‘She’s not here. She’s not here.’ And I wondered if I could not be here too.
They took my mother, put a blanket over her body, but it was frayed and too small so I could still see her eyes. The social worker, Nina, put a stiff hand on my shoulder and asked: ‘Is this OK? Are you alright with this? I think this would be best, don’t you? Let’s do this, shall we? Hmm?’
But those questions sounded like they already had answers, so I didn’t say a word. It was decided I would be put into the care system even though I was seventeen, technically an adult. ‘Special circumstances.’ There I met my first set of foster-siblings. I didn’t react to their salted words because I had her voice, always her voice, in my head, willing me to be better.
She died young, my mother. Her bones were dry and loose, so when she moved, you could almost hear them rattle. And then there was the rattle in her lungs too. I remember the weight and shape of her in my arms. She did not feel like a young woman, she felt emptied. Her body bared of life. If a body could be, while it was still living. She was my father’s final victim. He didn’t mean for her to be. But he killed her all the same.
My mind is full of her today, busy. But this room is empty. And I wish it was not so. My clothes are piled on the settee, lumpen and still. I arrange the shirts above the trousers, shoes lined up on the floor. I imagine they belong to friends, who come over, kicking back with beers. Three sets, three people. My people.
The coat I bought before the move is smart. If I were to wear it, I would look sharp. But it is not for me. I hang it by the front door, and I will look at it tonight, think for a moment there is someone else in this house. I will close my eyes, see a figure rushing about, keys, phone, ah! coat. They will snatch it up, swing out the door. And this silence, it will last only as long as it takes for them to return.
