By the Shore

by Galaxy Craze

  “I didn’t like French either.” He opened a packet of chocolate cream biscuits. I took one.

  “Is Patricia your girlfriend?” It just came out. That happened to me when I felt safe with someone, I would say anything.

  It stopped him for a moment. Everything got slow; his hand rested on top of the cereal box. I hoped he wouldn’t suddenly turn into a serious man. I didn’t like them, they said things to me like: “Now that was a stupid question, wasn’t it?” or “Curiosity killed the cat.” He might say, “It’s really none of your business.” I stood still for a moment, waiting.

  “She’s not my girlfriend,” he said. “She worked at my publisher’s, and that’s how we met and dated a bit. You can have many different types of relationships in your life. We had fun together, but I don’t think either of us took this one very seriously.”

  I thought about her voice on the phone and how it was like an arrow. I wanted to tell him that she had asked if my mother was committing adultery, but it embarrassed me to say it. A week had gone by since that night, and she hadn’t phoned again. That conversation seemed like it might not really have happened. I was thinking of Patricia at the office.

  “She’s pretty.” I don’t know why I said it. I think I was trying to compliment him.

  We made mint tea with milk. It was warm in the kitchen. We sat across from each other at the square table next to the window.

  “Do you like living here?” he asked me.

  “Sometimes,” I said, but I wasn’t really sure. I liked it now. This was fun, sitting at the table drinking tea, eating chocolate biscuits. Outside the window everything was black—there was no moon that night; it had disappeared like my mother—but if you looked up you could see the stars and know there was still a sky.

  …

  At school the next day Barbara Whitmore had a stack of pink sealed envelopes in her hand. They were birthday party invitations, I could tell. I looked away, pretending I didn’t care.

  Once, I overheard two women talking; they were part of the ladies’ group in town that made marmalade and knitted babies’ bonnets. They sold them every other Sunday in the church cellar. One of the women was Emma’s mother, a girl in my form. I thought the other one was a bad witch; she had a mole and a squinty eye. Next to them sat Barbara Whitmore’s mother. She had a long thin back and ash-blond hair that curled neatly under. She was reading a paperback book, not talking to them, but she could hear what they were saying and she was listening; I could tell.

  I was standing at the table behind them, looking at tiny porcelain animals that cost £1.75 each. There were lambs, horses and skunks, and they were small and shiny. I touched each one carefully, trying to decide. Then I heard Emma’s mother say “The single woman from London.” I froze with my finger on the porcelain spaniel.

  “The one what come up from London and bought the old schoolhouse? That one?” That was the woman I thought was a witch. She had a thick voice. I thought she wanted to put a spell on me, and suddenly I felt a pain in my ribs.

  Mrs Whitmore looked up from her book and over at them.

  “Well, Emma’s new coloured pencils went missing right from her cubby.” That was Emma’s mother, I recognized her prickly voice. I didn’t take the pencils.

  “Oh,” said the witch. “I’ve seen the girl, a haunting little thing she is.”

  I waited for more, I would listen to anything, I never closed my eyes at the films, I never covered my ears.

  “The corgy’s sweet too, the Queen’s favourite dog,” said the woman selling the miniature animals. She smiled at me, and the room filled up with chatter again. I put my hand in my pocket and handed her a pound; it was all I had plus some change. I wanted the spaniel. I counted the change slowly, waiting to hear if the women behind me would start talking again, but someone else was asking them the price of jam.

  I handed her the rest of the money and she put the spaniel in a small brown paper bag. I said, “Thank you,” but my voice sounded as though it were coming from somewhere else. I wanted to find a mirror. The two women were still talking to the man who had asked about the jam. He wanted to know how much sugar was in it, because the dentist had told him his teeth were falling out.

  “That’s a shame,” Emma’s mother said, sounding sorry. They would talk about him next, so I moved on. There was a small toilet in the back with a mirror in it. I walked towards it with my head down so no one would see me. There was a queue. I stood behind a woman and her son who was holding himself.

  When my turn came I turned the latch. There was a small square mirror with rust spots on it, so high up I couldn’t see my mouth. I was scared to stare too long. I ran the water and washed my hands with the bar of soap on the sink. I thought I should cut a fringe. There was a knock on the door so I dried my hands on my shirt and left. The queue had grown longer, more parents and children standing cross-legged. It was the beginning of spring and everyone was out.

  Outside was bright, the sky blue and clear above, but I had rocks in me. I could only look at the ground. My hair fell over my face. I tied my cardigan around my waist and walked home. That word “haunting” was everywhere: in the cracks of the road, in my maroon sandals, in my hands; it was in the little brown paper bag with the porcelain spaniel that I held tightly.

  This is how things happen on a spring day: a young bird sitting on the grass gets caught by a dog, a car drives too fast into another one, someone says one word that you hear. Just one word. Birds bleed too. The clocks are all wrong.

  At home, in front of the full-length mirror in my mother’s bathroom, I took the scissors out and cut a fringe. Then I realized it was my clothes, the colour of my clothes. I needed bright colours and some pastels.

  When my mother came in, I said, “I don’t want to live here any more.” I thought it was the house; the dead schoolgirls who disappeared in the rocks had come back to haunt the house, and now I was haunted too. It was the house’s fault.

  My mother put her arms around me, and my shoulders started to shake and then I was crying. It was loud in the bathroom. “What happened? What happened?” she kept asking, holding me close. There was a wet patch on her shoulder. I didn’t answer, I couldn’t. I didn’t want anyone else to know what that woman had said about me, not even my mother. Especially not my mother.

  She took me into the kitchen and gave me a glass of Ribena. I was thirsty, my face was hot. She watched me drink; then she said, “If you don’t tell me what’s wrong, I can’t help you.”

  “I need new clothes,” I told her. I thought she would say I had enough, but we got into the car and went to the big children’s clothes store. It took twenty minutes to get there. They only sold new clothes, there was no second-hand rack in the back. She bought me a pink button-down shirt, and ankle socks with ruffled cuffs, and fuzzy hair clips with fish on them. Eden didn’t get anything. I could tell she thought they were ugly—“hideous” is the word she would have used. The clothes she chose for me were from other countries, India and Romania, but she pretended she liked the new ones. “Is this what everyone’s wearing here?” she asked, and I nodded. She didn’t complain about how much they cost. Not ever, not even when the bills came that month.

  Still, nothing changed, not even when I wore all of them at the same time. Courtney, one of Barbara’s friends, asked what were on my clips. “Are those fishies?”

  That day, Jolene and I pretended we didn’t notice when Barbara handed out her party invitations in class.

  …

  I was in our sitting room reading for my English class, ten pages a night, when the phone rang. I picked it up and heard my mother say hello.

  “Darling!” It was Annabel. “I’m back in London. How are you? Guess who I had lunch with?”

  “Who?”

  “Patricia. The writer’s girlfriend.”

  “Oh. I don’t think she’s his girlfriend, Annabel.” My mother sounded annoyed.

  I covered the mouthpiece with my hand and sat on the floor by the
phone. “Anyway.” Annabel took a deep exaggerated breath. “How are you? And the children? Is it cold there?”

  “Fine . . . . It’s not too bad yet. It’s very quiet. No one else is here. I haven’t had to do much work.”

  “How’s he?”

  “Eden?”

  “No, him.” Then, in a whisper, “The old fusspot writer.”

  “Rufus? Fine, fine. He turned out to be very nice . . . . He’s not a fusspot at all, actually. We’ve become quite good friends.”

  Every time I heard her say “friends” I relaxed. Friends are just friends: they don’t kiss, they don’t have sex, they don’t commit adultery. Friends: a safe thing to be.

  “You have?” I heard Annabel light a cigarette.

  “It’s nice for me to have someone to talk to here besides the children and the ceiling.” It was true; all her friends lived in London.

  “I’m the first one to tell you to come back to London during the winter.” Annabel was full of good ideas. “All right, darling, I’ll let you go, I just wanted to—”

  “What did she say?” my mother asked in one breath.

  “What? Oh, Patricia.”

  “Mmm.” That was my mother trying to sound like she could take it or leave it.

  “Well, she works at his publishing company. Did you know that? Apparently she’s very clever. That’s how they met and started dating.”

  “According to him they had a casual fling and that was it. He never talks about her.” That was my mother talking quickly, a typewriter.

  “You know how men are, they don’t talk, especially to other women. They like to seem cool. She makes it sound as if he’s absolutely mad about her . . . . Anyway, she’s very sweet. We had lunch at that little place off the Kings Road, the Italian place. She had one of those bags I saw in American Vogue. I have to find one. She thought you were so nice. She was asking all about you . . . . She said she knew someone who would be perfect for you . . . . I told her you were single.”

  “I’m not interested, and you can tell her. I have to give Eden his bath.”

  “Darling, did you get up on the wrong side of the bed this morning? Anyway, I’ve found the curtain fabric for your sitting room.”

  “Oh. What colour is it?” my mother asked.

  “A beautiful lavender colour. My lady in Edgware is making them. Patricia and I were talking about coming up sometime next week.”

  “Patricia’s coming? Rufus hasn’t said anything.” She sounded like she was biting something.

  “Lucy, calm down to a panic.”

  “No, it’s just that I would like to know for sure because I have to fix up a room. You know.”

  I put the phone down slowly. Patricia was coming. I ran my finger over the table; it was dusty. Patricia was coming. We’d have to clean.

  Eleven

  I never gave the note to my mother. The one from my French teacher, Madame Monet. She was supposed to sign it, and I was supposed to give it back to Madame Monet. But I didn’t. It was still in my satchel with a packet of half-eaten crisps. I always sat in the back, looking down at the top of my desk, hoping she wouldn’t see me.

  Madame Monet hadn’t asked for the note, I thought she had forgotten. There was a black-and-white clock on the classroom wall, and the second hand ticked and ticked. One day, as I was pushing books into my bag and walking towards the door, I heard her call my name. I ignored it and kept walking, until I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was her, Madame Monet. I turned around to get her hand off me.

  “I would like to speak with you a moment, May.”

  “Now?” I asked.

  “Yes.” She looked at me as though she had just tasted something sour.

  “Okay.” The other girls turned their heads as they left the classroom.

  “Come over to my desk.”

  I looked at Jolene, who was standing by the door, and rolled my eyes. She was bad at French too, but not as bad as me. That was only because her mother sat her down at the dining-room table and made her do the homework. Then she checked, every page, through the glasses at the end of her nose.

  “Wait for me.”

  “I have to go to the horrible dentist,” Jolene said, making a face.

  “I’ll phone you later.” I wanted Madame Monet to know that we were going to talk about her. I walked over to her desk and looked up at the map of France on the wall.

  “Do you have the note?” She was a tall, thin woman. Every day she ate an apple and cheese for lunch.

  “I forgot to bring it, Mrs Monet.” This is how I pronounced her name: Mon-ate.

  “Madame Monet.” She said it very slowly. “Now repeat after me.”

  “Madame Mo-net,” I said, following her lips.

  “Monet! It is a silent t. Encore!” She held one finger out like a conductor’s stick.

  “Madame Monet.”

  “Bien!” She was smiling, waving her finger in the air. She liked the sound of her own name. “See, that was much better. You just need to try harder. This will be where you sit from now on.” She pointed to the middle desk in the front row.

  “Okay,” I said, but she stood in front of me shaking her head.

  “What do you say?” she asked, holding her lips tightly together.

  “Oui, Madame Monet.”

  She clapped her hands together, then patted me on the forehead. “If you start doing your lessons, I won’t ask you to give the note to your mother.”

  “Okay.” I bent down to pick my satchel up from the floor. I wanted to say thank you but I felt shy. It’s hard to be nice. But then I said it. “Thank you. I will try to do my lessons every night. I promise.” I meant it. I really wanted to.

  “It’s not that hard. You’re a smart girl.”

  That made me want to cry. This is what happens when people are nice: It makes me want to cry.

  …

  The schoolyard was empty. Everyone had been picked up, everyone had gone home. It was past four. The sky was grey and looked like it might storm. I was going home, straight to my room, to do my French homework. That was the first thing I would do every day after school.

  As I walked towards the gates I saw a group of girls on the bench, gathered around someone, someone taller than them. An older girl, someone’s older sister, a girl from the college. I would have to pass them, but the path was wide. I put my head down, pretending to kick something, a pebble. I was scared of groups of girls. I thought they were always talking about me. If I heard them laugh, I thought it was me they were laughing at.

  “May! May! Come here.” One of the girls was standing up, waving at me. I took a few steps forward and so did the girl. It was Barbara Whitmore. She had never shouted my name or waved to me before, so I wasn’t sure what she wanted. I walked towards her and smiled, acting like this was normal. I buttoned my coat. She had never been mean, she just ignored me. When we were younger and it was important to be good at games, she never picked me to be on her team. I would stand in the middle of the gym with Jolene and the three other girls like us, waiting, pretending not to care, hoping I was the next one chosen so I wouldn’t be left standing in the middle of the gym.

  Barbara’s two best friends, Courtney and Polly, were sitting on the bench next to a tall girl with short blond hair. I always overheard them talking about clubs and boys and cigarettes and being drunk. I thought, When do they do their French lessons? They looked at me, but it was a different kind of look. As I walked closer, the tall girl in the middle stood up. It was Patricia.

  “May, sweetie, give me a hug!” She rushed towards me and wrapped her arms around me. Everyone watched. I thought, What is she doing here?

  “I came to pick you up from school,” she said loudly. “Why were you so late? I thought I’d missed you, but these girls told me you were still here.”

  “I had to talk to a teacher.” I took a small step back. I thought I would fall.

  “Did you get into trouble?” Polly asked.

  “You know Jet Jones!” Barbar
a said, pushing Polly out of the way. Jet Jones was the man who sang that song that was always on the radio. I didn’t know him, but I had seen him on Top of the Pops. All the girls were looking at me. I hadn’t said anything yet. I didn’t know what they were talking about.

  “Jet loves May!” Patricia told them. “He always said if she was just a little older she would be the perfect girl for him!”

  “He did?” They all turned to look at me again, studying me, trying to figure it out. Patricia nodded, smiling.

  “Did he ever touch you?” That was Courtney. She was the first girl in our form to French-kiss a boy. “Did he? Or did he ever kiss you on the cheek or something?”

  I stood there, I didn’t know what to say. I kept thinking that this must be a joke they were playing on me. It was a trick. I thought I should walk away.

  “What do you think of my new do? You haven’t even mentioned it,” Patricia said, holding her hands out around her head. She had cut her hair short, just below her ears, a bob; everyone was getting them. She walked over to me and put her arm around my shoulders.

  “It looks nice,” I said.

  “It’s very French,” Polly told her. She was sitting on the bench smoking a cigarette.

  “What kind of shampoo do you use?” Barbara asked. “It’s so shiny.” The girls lifted their faces up to look at her. I looked too. She looked older with her hair short.

  “Vidal Sassoon,” she told them, and they nodded, slowly, the way you do when something’s really interesting. We were quiet for a moment staring at Patricia. She was wearing a little baby-blue shirt and black pedal-pusher trousers, black flat shoes. Her stomach was flat. She had a thin, short, beige rain jacket on top and a matching baby-blue suede handbag with a fringe. I think it was the one Annabel said she saw in American Vogue.

  “So tell us. Did he?” Suddenly Courtney was staring right at me.

  I nodded slowly, imagining him kissing me.

  “I would have died! I can’t believe it, I would have died!” Courtney and Barbara had their hands over their mouths, screaming; their faces turned red. But Polly just sat on the bench, one leg crossed over the other, swinging the top one back and forth, like a bell.