So Pretty, page 7
A bell rings below my feet and I quickly throw the box back under the desk, return to the shop floor. Ada.
She is smiling at Mr Vincent. I shout a hello, then she is smiling at me. His knees bang together, anger inside his bones. He thinks I have taken something from him, a thief of her smiles. I am. I shoot them down, like birds. She is kind to me. She is my friend. She does not know him like I do. I hope she never has to.
‘Hello, Teddy. How are you?’
‘Good, good.’
‘How about you, Mr Vincent?’
I ruffle Albie’s hair, bring her eyes back to me. Back to me now. And some fearless thing inside me rises.
‘I was thinking today we could go to the beach? What do you think to that, fella?’ I say.
‘Yes. Yes. Yes!’
‘Yes?’
‘Yes!’
‘Well, alright then. That OK, Ada? I don’t think I’ve even been down there yet. I’d like to see it.’
‘Sure. That would be nice.’
Mr Vincent tries to reclaim her attention, pulling trinkets from his pocket like a cheap magician. A golden cotton reel, a golden watch face, a golden necklace. Bright as honey. She does not care for fancy things. He tries the boy. But he isn’t interested. He wants the beach.
As we leave, I hear the ring of the bell and imagine the bang of his angry kneecaps snapping together.
I insert the tape into the VCR. The image is peppered with black marks like cigarette burns. The machine is old, rusted in places, but it functions, moaning the longer I ask it to play the tape. I discern Berry’s face. Mags’. Mr Vincent’s. More importantly, I see Gilly.
The four of them stand outside the shop. A banner is tacked over the window, and scrawled in a youthful hand, are the words:
OPENING DAY
Berry & Vincent
welcomes you
There is paper confetti in the air. Paper rain. It sticks to licked lips and oily noses. Gilly is throwing fistfuls from a sack at her hip, smiling, smiling. As innocent as a babe. Townspeople flood through the shop door, a stream of bell-bottomed jeans and bubble sleeves, hair high and unmoving. It is strange to see bodies in there. There is no sound, but I imagine the voices, the children calling for toys to be bought.
Gilly remains outside, talking to a girl. Mr Vincent watches them. He is younger, he has a little more hair on his head, a few less wrinkles, but for the most part, he is the same. The same predatory stillness, the same coal-blackness in his eyes. The same sense that he is not a man like other men.
He watches Gilly. Where did he hide the camera to tape this? I want to reach through the colourless image, withdraw her so he cannot hurt her. Mr Vincent moves toward Gilly, picks confetti from her hair.
Her lips move, Thank you, Mr Vincent. I think the shop has had a good turnout, don’t you?
He does not speak. Continues to pick at her hair.
The people seem nice here, don’t they?
She yelps as he pulls a few strands from her scalp. He makes no apology, only tucks them into his collar.
That hurt. I think you’d better stop.
His hand is up again, digging into her hair. She bats him away, and I want to tell her to move. MOVE! Go to your father. But this was fifty years ago. It happened already.
Mr Vincent, I don’t like that. Stop please.
There it is.
I see it in her eyes. Fear. The grainy image cannot hide it. She is wondering about him, about the things inside his head.
This is the beginning of it. I wish someone had noticed them. Had taken Gilly clear from this town, which was already turning, like a tooth to rot. All that she had coming. What did she have coming?
ADA
Bruised and Smudged
I glimpse Teddy inside Berry & Vincent as we pass on the way to the grocery shop. His head is bent, back too, shadows under his eyes like ink thumbed onto his skin. Mr Vincent is nowhere to be seen.
Albie tugs on my hand, impatient for the sweets I’ve promised him. ‘Just a minute. Just a minute.’
Something in Teddy’s face stops my feet, holds me where I am. He has a cloth in his hand. He is dragging it over the dolls, the dust and grit on their faces.
‘A minute, Albie.’
Teddy looks over his shoulder, furtive, then his hand shoots out and violently grates over the dolls. They are bruised now, ruined now. Mr Vincent will be angry.
‘Mm.’
‘What, Mummy?
‘I don’t like the dolls either.’
Albie and I move on, but my thoughts stay with Teddy. Inevitably, attention follows him wherever he goes in Rye. The townspeople watch him, lips puckered, as if there is a bad taste there. They wonder why he is still here. They wonder how long it will be before the shop sours in his belly and he runs from this place. If something inside him hasn’t already begun to turn.
I hope he does not leave.
We meet every day now. It is mechanical, a new routine of sorts. There is much he keeps to himself, but I do not mind because I enjoy his voice, the break in the silence. It is a balm to me, even if it is coarse, flayed with a sadness I cannot identify.
‘Albie, what do you think of Teddy?’
‘He’s nice.’
‘Do … do you think he’s upset about something?’
A shrug. ‘He doesn’t like Mr Vincent.’
Not many people do.
‘What about us? Do you think he likes us?’
He nods, smiles to himself. ‘Yes.’
I want to ask Teddy what is wrong, what is putting this sadness and fury in his body. At times, I worry he’ll draw away from us like Margot, rubbing his cuff as if we’ve left a stain there. Because we are different. But he doesn’t.
Later on, we do call in, and he lets out a deep breath. ‘When’s your break? Fancy lunch in the park?’ I lift a bag of homemade sandwiches but they have gone soft so I quickly tuck them behind my leg.
‘The park sounds good.’
His nails tear at his hairline. Fresh blood beads along the previous crusted shore. I get a faint whiff of blood, and something else too. It is rough, sharp, like a pin in my throat. I breathe his sadness. His body is stiff, cold, even though the day is fine and the sun is warm velvet on our backs.
‘Are you OK?’ I ask.
‘Yes. I’m fine.’
‘You seem … I don’t know, anxious, upset. Do you have something on your mind?’
‘I was thinking about Mr Vincent.’
‘Oh?’
‘And Berry, his wife. Their daughter,’ Teddy says.
‘What about them?’
‘The reason they left Rye. You told me about a photograph in The Mermaid, but there were more that Charlotte showed me. One was taken a few weeks before they left. They did not look like people, they looked hollow. As if someone had stripped them clean.’
‘Of what?’
‘Of life.’
‘Do you know what happened to them?’ Is this really what is bothering him, some old town mystery?
He does not respond. I do not force him to.
‘You don’t have long left. We’d better start walking back?’
‘Not yet. Let’s have a few more minutes.’
The iron tang of blood is sour in my nose. I take his hand – fingernails red and sticky – hold it still. He looks at me, smiles, grateful, and I smile too.
TEDDY
Birds and Paint
Hello?
She looks different now. Gilly. In the second tape, there is darkness under her eyes, smudges of shadow, her cheeks are pale, sagged. Her lips move, and I move closer to the image, I don’t want to drop even one word.
Hello? Dad, is that you?
Gilly is in the shop. The blinds are drawn. There are no customers. She stands by the counter, and from the angle of the camera, I suspect it is hidden amongst the shelf of dolls. She does not know it’s there. She does not know he’s filming her.
She looks ahead, searching. I want to tell her to leave. Her father is not there. Four steps from where she stands to the door. Take them. Those steps. They are not many. Just leave. But she does not. Continues, calling, Dad? Dad?
I have stood where she stood, I have breathed down the stink of this shop. It hurt her. It has hurt me too. I have stood in its stomach and wanted to rip it down, I have lit a match in my mind, held it to the eaves.
She knew then what I have come to know now.
He and the shop. They are the same. He is its breath, its lungs. He needs that match. To his heart I would touch it.
I see him, his strange, curled-up figure at the edge of the frame. He goes to her, a beast with a bird, his slow lips are moving, stretching. What is he saying?
Gilly steps back. Three more, I think. Just three.
Where’s my dad?
He paws at her waist, lower. Lips moving, slow, slower.
Stop. Stop it. Leave me alone!
He takes a coil of red hair between his fingers. She throws herself forward, bites his thumb. He stumbles back, then launches his body at hers, gathering her hair into a rope, holding her as a child would a doll. She hits at him, but her fists are coins bouncing off a wall. He shakes, and her head wriggles on her thin neck.
The film is running out. I do not want to leave her. Mr Vincent holds her head to his chest, his lips still moving. What is he saying?
I try to hear his words even though there are no words to be heard. Gilly is crying, her bony, bird-like legs quivering. Her arms are up, between their bodies, to keep his heart from touching hers.
I cover my face but I can still see them, ghosts inside my eyes. Then my hands slip away and I look at Mr Vincent and realise.
He is singing to her.
The diary is crumbling, pages coming away in my hands. It was pink once. Now it has lost its colour, like a body rotted inside the shop. I open it, carefully, as if its insides might dribble out, hurt me. My heart bangs when I see a messy scrawl, innocence in every curl and strike. I breathe in the damp of the pages, steady myself, begin to read.
Diary of Gilly Berry
Thoughts, observations and random things.
PRIVATE!!!!
Something strange happened to me today. I don’t know if there are words to describe it. If there are, I certainly don’t know them. All I’ve got is Bad. Something Bad happened to me today. Bad Bad Bad.
It’s not the shop. The opening was good. The kids roared, flooded the place like water. Berry & Vincent is part of their childhood now, and he hopes they’ll look back on it with a smile.
I haven’t told Dad about what happened. I don’t know what to say. Perhaps there is nothing to say. He was in the shop at the time, so was Mum, they did not see Mr Vincent come to me and start pulling at the confetti in my hair.
I thought he was helping. But then it started hurting.
When I asked him to stop, he wouldn’t. Mum’s said that if a boy is ever bothering me, I should kick his ‘pieces’. Is it different with grown-ups? I don’t know. Perhaps I didn’t say stop loud enough. His face was strange. His lips were smiling plenty but his eyes weren’t. His eyes made my stomach sore.
My scalp is sore too. And it hurts to touch it.
I can’t have said it loud enough.
He’s started following me round. I tried to kick him in his ‘pieces’ yesterday, but he moved and I fell. Dad didn’t see. He was busy with the customers.
I will try again tomorrow. Perhaps then he will leave me alone. I’ll be louder, clearer. I’ll make him stop.
It’s getting worse. He’s getting worse. I kicked him when he tried to touch me this time. It was a definite ‘clear off’ message, but it was one I don’t think he understood. He got angry. That smile turned into something else. I could see his teeth still, but it looked different. Animal.
He likes my hair. He grabs it in fistfuls so I can’t move. Sometimes he brushes it with his fingers, and I feel like there are mice inside my skin. I put it up today, brushed it tight to my scalp. He ripped the red ribbon out, my head spun, and I worried for a moment it would spin off my neck. My mind went blurry, like the corner of a window when your breath mists it over. All I could think was, Please don’t let my head spin away from me.
He’s moving my things. My lunchbox, my rucksack, vanish, and I look and look but I can’t find them. He sees me looking. Smiles. And I wish I could take that smile from him like he takes my things.
I’m careful in the shop now, to keep my distance from him. But sometimes I have to go into the store room and he follows me. Yesterday, I threw a pocket watch at his face. He pinched my arm. Hard. Because I hurt him. But I wasn’t having that, so I pinched him back. He didn’t like that.
Today he is different. Sharp. At least that’s how it feels in my stomach. Like it is full of screws. The hairs on my arms rise, I press them back down with my fingers. I am not scared. I’m not. He should be scared of me.
I wondered how the birds had got inside.
There were so many, swinging, twirling, above my head. Their eyes were like chips of coal. The sunlight filled their feathers with colours I only wished I could paint with. I heard hums in their little throats, and I thought to myself, Did they come through the window? Through the door? How did all these songbirds find their way inside Berry & Vincent?
Then I realised something.
The birds were dead.
I thought I might fall, top over bottom. I saw the strings, trapping their little bodies to the ceiling, the stitching too, the shoots of wool. I heard their wings, their voices, but they’d only been inside my head.
Hummingbirds, lovebirds, birds I could fit in my fist they were so small. I wanted to call for Dad, but I knew he wouldn’t be able to hear me from the café across the street. Did he know they were here? They shouldn’t be. Dad didn’t like stuffed things. I didn’t either.
Something fluttered to my right. I thought, One is still alive, maybe I could free it, maybe I could save it. But it wasn’t a bird. I saw him and then my own insides felt woollen. He smiled at me. That smile, that smile. Opened the store-room door, back and forth, back and forth. Cool air wafted across my face, then something hit me. A drop on my cheek. I touched it, it was red.
The birds were moving now. They were flying, the wind putting life back inside their bodies. Wind and rain. Red rain. I felt it on my skin, my hair. And when I looked up again, I screamed. Their wings were dripping.
The birds were bleeding.
I ran then. I ran with my woollen legs, fast as I could make them go. I did not stop until I was home. My heart hurt. It was like there was thunder in my chest. Tears were on my cheeks, they’d run into the red, and it looked like my eyes were bleeding. I pushed my finger through, sniffed it. It was paint. Only paint.
Paint, paint, paint.
I wiped it off, the tears too. I did not go back to the shop for three days, and when I returned, the birds were gone. I looked for them. I looked all over the shop. It was as if they’d flown away again. I knew they had not. I knew he must have taken them down. I know it was real because of the red-stained tissue bubbling over the sink. But also because of the shake in my fingers. They’re shaking now. They won’t stop.
Why won’t they stop?
The birds are here. I stand in the shop and wait for their wings to start dripping red. He must have put them back up when the Berry family left Rye. He likes his birds, Mr Vincent. Perhaps this is why.
I think of Gilly, wet-faced, red-faced, of Mr Vincent swinging that door to make them fly. He must have known the nickname Berry had for his daughter. He must have heard him call to her: Gilly Bird, Gilly Bird, where are you?
I feel cold rivers inside my body. I want Ada, my friend, my only friend, to come into the shop, calm me, warm me.
As I step onto a rickety old chair, I catch a bird, a robin, in my hand, run my finger along its back. Dried paint. Red paint.
Poor Gilly.
ADA
Love and Duty
‘Ada, darling!’
‘Jerry? Oh my God. What are you doing here?’
‘We’ll get to that. Now, don’t just stand there. Give me a hug, I need it. I’ve just sat next to an old man with onion breath for three hours.’ My aunt stands outside my door, fanning her face. ‘Three hours! Of him talking about his misshapen bollock, his divorce with a “fat old grub” – his words not mine – and his bowel movements. Irregular, in case you were wondering, and I know you must have been, because it’s pretty thrilling shit.’
I laugh, throw my arms around her. Her hair is neatly pressed, swirling up to her crown, yellow like old paper. My cousins say it looks like she has a swan sat on her head.
‘Woah, woah. Steady on, girl. Don’t break me. I love you too.’
‘I – I can’t believe you’re here. Are you alright? Are the boys OK?’
‘Of course they are.’ She closes the door behind her, sniffs the air, scrunches her nose and heads to the kitchen. ‘Smells of damp. Fancy a cup of tea? I’ll make them. You’re a very talented person, Ada, darling, but you’re terrible at tea.’ She winks, and I hug her again.
‘Why are you here?’
‘I’ve come to see you. I’ve come to talk about a few things.’
‘Things?’ I ask.
‘Don’t look so worried. We’ll get to that. Where’s Albie?’
‘He’s upstairs.’ I leave her in the kitchen, call him down.
Albie rockets himself into her arms.
‘Hello, hello.’ My aunt swings him up, kisses his cheeks, his head, his fingers. ‘Oh my goodness me, I’ve missed you. You’ve gotten so big. So big!’
