Lily's House

by Cassandra Parkin

  The ferry is the only practical way to get between the towns that stare at each other across the harbour and it’s filled, locals making room for the well-off tourists with their Mini-Bodened children. I sit beside Marianne in the prow, and think about the subtle signals that tell me who lives here and who’s on holiday. The newness and the brightness of the waterproof coats. The endless performance of putting on and taking off layers. The elaborate choosing of where to sit, while the locals simply grab a corner, dogs and shopping bags lodged between their feet. Tourists and residents. I never belonged in either category. Instead I was a visitor, which doesn’t sound too different from tourist but in fact made all the difference in the world.

  “What are you staring at?” Marianne asks.

  “Just the people.”

  “Which people? Those really loud ones in the corner with the bright yellow matching macs and the stupid dog that keeps trying to jump overboard?” I touch her hands warningly. “It’s all right, Mum. They can’t understand us.”

  “You never know.”

  “Your yellow macs look so stupid even your dog is trying to escape,” Marianne says very slowly and deliberately. The father, oblivious, pulls his daughter’s thick blonde plait and she jerks it away from him. “See?”

  “It’s still not very nice. Oh, all right then, yes, I was looking at them. I was thinking—”

  “What?”

  That Lily would have laughed at them too, and called them Hooray Henrys or Weekend Sailors. She’d have said they’d end up drowned by the end of the season. She’d have hated their dog, too. She couldn’t bear dogs that climbed all around people and jumped up with scratchy muddy paws. “They look like they’d be annoying to listen to.”

  “They are,” says Marianne. “The big sister’s mad because the little sister got a new outfit for her Bratz doll and the boy keeps standing on the dog and making it yelp. It’s quite funny really. What do you think they’re called?”

  I glance discreetly over at the family and consider.

  “The older daughter’s called Incontinentia.”

  I don’t think this is all that funny, but Marianne’s face crumples with laughter. “Incontinentia? Is that even a name?”

  “Course it’s a real name, it’s in a film. She was named after her great-great aunt who was the King’s second cousin by marriage.”

  “Which king?”

  “Any king. Don’t interrupt. And you can’t laugh either, you need to listen.” Marianne straightens her face and looks at me expectantly. “And the second daughter, she’s called Dalmatia, because when her mother was pregnant she had a pet Dalmatian that she was very, very fond of and when it died she had its pelt made into a little teeny small spotty baby outfit for her newborn baby, and the head was made into a baby hat. And the son’s called—”

  “Horsefly,” says Marianne.

  “Horsefly?”

  “Yes, Horsefly. Because he’s annoying and whiny and they don’t like him but somehow they can’t get rid of him.”

  I’m laughing too now. The father glances over at us, then away again, and I feel mean for laughing simply because they look rich and have matching yellow macs. Then he taps his son on the shoulder, pointing us out as an Interesting Spectacle, and suddenly I’m not sorry after all.

  “The father,” I say, “is called Bumface.” Marianne is helpless with mirth, leaning against me for support. “Of course he tells everyone he’s called Boom-Far-Say, but everyone knows really that it’s Bumface. And his wife’s called Stinkerbell.”

  “What about the dog?” Marianne manages between gulps of laughter.

  “Oh, the dog’s called Rover. A moment of clarity.” Marianne collapses into my lap and lies there, twitching and gasping. “And… my work is done.”

  I try to remember when I last saw Marianne laugh with this kind of abandon. The older daughter’s holding her sister’s Bratz doll over the side. She’s getting away with it because the mother’s showing her little son the man in the wheelhouse, and the father’s lost in his phone.

  “You made me snort like a pig,” Marianne says at last. “What’s a moment of clarity?”

  “When you suddenly realise how daft you’ve been and make a good decision for once.”

  “Did you come on this ferry when you were little?”

  “Yes,” I say, caught by surprise, and then lay my hands back down in my lap.

  “And what’s at the other side?” She looks at me anxiously, worried that she’s ruined the moment. “I only want to know.”

  Blackberries. You walk out to the point and pick blackberries, bags and bags of them, and you bring them home and boil them up and strain them and make jelly. I can’t tell her about this, it hurts too much. James Moon is a predator and I never want to see him again, but he’s right about one thing. The past is a creature best left alone. Like the poor little dog who’s crept away from the boy’s oblivious feet and found damp, chilly sanctuary beneath a lifebuoy.

  “A fishing town,” I say. “Quite pretty.”

  “I like the colours of those macs,” Marianne says. “Just not the people inside them. Do you think you could own a bright yellow mac and not be annoying? Your phone’s going.”

  “Is it?” I’d thought the trembling against my leg was the vibration of the engine. “Thanks. Oh, it’s your dad again.”

  Marianne sits up and takes herself discreetly off to the stern of the boat to watch the churning water. I straighten out my coat, take a deep breath and take out my phone.

  I forgot to tell you, Jaz says Mel’s coming to the festival and bringing the boys

  That sounds nice

  They’re hiring a luxury yurt. I know it sounds a bit wanky but it looks great, you get your own toilet and a hot tub and real beds and a fridge for your beer

  Glamping in action

  If we get in quick we could book one too. Fifteen hundred for four days, what do you think?

  I sigh and count to five, slowly.

  You still there?????

  It’s just quite a lot of money for four days in a field

  Oh come on, it’s not four days in a field, it’s four days in a yurt! It’ll be fun. You need to learn to relax a bit, we’re rich now

  But we won’t be for long at this rate, and if I rent Lily’s place instead of selling it we won’t be rich at all. Do I even dare to carry out the threat I made to James this morning? Daniel’s instincts are razor-sharp. All it would take is one letter, one photograph, for him to see the truth. Would James do that to me? Of course he would. If I pushed him enough, he would.

  Well we’ll see, okay? Let me look at some figures and see what I can work out. Tell me about the festival. How long’s your set? What time?

  Not sure yet. We’ll see. I’ll text Jaz and Mel now, okay? Let them know we’ll be camping out with them

  Can we PLEASE hang on until tonight so I can check we’ve got the money?

  Not a chance, the yurts’ll sell out if we’re not quick. Stop worrying so much!

  Okay I’ve got to go out so I’ll talk to you later okay? Give M a massive sloppy kiss from her dad xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

  I join Marianne at the stern of the boat and stare down into the churning indigo, the white froth around the propeller. A cloud is crossing the sun and there’s a chill coming off the water.

  “Was that Dad?” Marianne asks. “What did he want?”

  “He was just checking in. Oh, and Storm Interference have been booked for a festival next year, isn’t that cool?”

  “Are we going to see him play?”

  “Course we are.”

  “Camping?”

  I make myself smile.

  “Yep. Maybe a posh yurt. How does that sound?”

  “Did you tell Dad what we’re doing right now? The boat trip, I mean?”

  I hesitate.

  “I was thinking,” she says. “Maybe we shouldn’t tell Dad about going on the ferry. I don’t mean lie to him or anything,” she says, seeing the expression
on my face. “I only mean maybe not mention it.”

  “Let’s see how it goes,” I say ambiguously.

  “Well, I won’t tell him anyway,” says Marianne, and bends to stroke the little dog, which has crept out from beneath the lifebuoy and come to lean against her legs.

  Hi gorgeous. Yurt all booked. They wanted a 20% deposit so I put it on the card.

  Are you all right?

  Okay I guess you’re with the estate agent. Hope it’s the bald fat ugly one, I don’t want him stealing you away :) And hope you’re getting a good price! Love you xxx

  Marianne and I stand on a pebbly beach and throw stones into the water. A swan glides around the shallows, elegant and disapproving. Its wings make the perfect shape to hold flowers. I can picture it perfectly. Forget-me-nots and freesias, armloads of gypsophila, a scattering of long-stemmed roses bowed over by their own weight. I say this to Marianne, and she looks at the swan, then takes out her phone and snaps a picture, before kneeling to pick up a tiny yellow periwinkle. I prop myself against a hunk of rock and lose myself in the sight of my daughter, unselfconscious and forgetful, pottering quietly among the shingle.

  “Be careful,” I say automatically, even though the water’s only a few inches deep. Across the harbour, the ferry powers through the water, making its way back to us. We should leave now, before I say or do something I’ll regret.

  The blackberries are ripe. Lily’s face, smiling at me over the breakfast plates. Shall we go and pick some? Or do you want to go to the beach instead? As if there was ever any doubt about the answer. Jelly-making was like witchcraft to me. Each summer I would return with six jars of bramble jelly in my suitcase, which somehow always had more room in it when packed by Lily, despite the extras. While my mother fretted about whether we might have accidentally picked something poisonous, every morning until far into the autumn I would savour the sharp-sweet taste of brambles on my toast. Before I know what I’m doing I’m beside Marianne at the tideline, urging her to put her shoes back on.

  “Where are we going?” She’s confused but willing, hopping along beside me as she struggles to cram her foot back into her shoe.

  “To the supermarket to buy carrier bags. And then you’ll see.”

  “What about the ferry? Won’t it go without us?”

  “It runs twice an hour until late. We’ve got time.”

  “But what are we doing?”

  “You’ll see in a few minutes. What?”

  “I like it when you’re like this,” Marianne says.

  The blackberry bushes rear up like giants, blocking out the sea. The sun is baking hot on our heads and the scent of the ripening berries is lushly seductive, rich with sugar, its subtle smokiness conjuring the bonfires of the coming autumn. Armed with our clutch of plastic bags for life, we begin our harvest.

  Blackberry-picking is addictive. The more you look, the more you see. First you pick off the easiest ones, and think, right, that’s this bit cleared out. Then as you press forward into the yielding vines – prickly and resistant, but willing to let you in as long as you take it slowly – you find more and more berries within your reach. You want to go on and on and on, reaching for the highest, heaviest fruits, regretting each one that tumbles from your fingers. Marianne has never picked blackberries before but she takes to it instantly.

  Working in a dreamy trance, oblivious to scratches, I pluck berry after berry and think that must be how it was for the prince who came for Briar Rose, facing the wall of tangled roses. Perhaps the heart of these bramble bushes holds their own sleeping princess. Suddenly the bushes shake and tremble, and when I look around I see Marianne tearing herself recklessly from the tangle, followed by a phalanx of wasps.

  “They’re chasing me,” she says. “I think one of them stung me. Come away quick, they’re chasing you too.”

  We make an undignified retreat across the grass. The wasps chase us for a few yards, then turn and disappear, their work apparently done. Marianne’s finger is swelling, but she manages a heroic watery smile.

  “I’m sorry.” I cradle her hand remorsefully.

  “No, it’s fine, I don’t mind.” She wipes her nose absent-mindedly on the back of her hand. “They were just telling me those were their blackberries.”

  “You poor thing. We can walk back down and find a chemist, get some cream or something. What are you doing?”

  “I saw the nest,” she says. “It looked like a lampshade. How can insects build something like that? Come and look. They won’t mind as long as we don’t get too close.”

  I’m not sure I trust Marianne’s assessment of the wasps’ good nature, but I follow her back to the bushes and wait nervously, ready to drag her away if necessary, as she gently moves aside the heavy woody briars. And there it is, impossibly suspended from a heavy branch; an elegant creamy pendant, a city of busy workers, ruled not by a sleeping princess but a queen.

  “It’s beautiful,” Marianne says. “I thought it would be ugly but it’s lovely. How can something that lives in bins and stings people make something like that?”

  “I don’t know, but it’s a good question. What are you doing?”

  “Picking more blackberries. We don’t have to go home yet, do we?”

  “But doesn’t your finger hurt?”

  “I’m fine,” says Marianne. “Let’s get more.”

  We work our way along the rambling curve of the point, hardly feeling the weight of our bags. It’s only when I reach a spot where the cliff has fallen and the bushes have not yet grown in to fill the newly exposed earth that I see the harbour and remember we have a ferry to catch.

  “I think it’s time to stop,” I say out loud, tugging on Marianne’s shirt. She emerges slowly and reluctantly, stopping to gather a last handful to drop into her brimming bag. She’s a mess, her face and fingers stained purple, her arms and legs scratched and streaked with juice. From the expression on her face, I look even worse.

  “We have to get the ferry,” I tell her.

  She looks longingly at the blackberries.

  “Let’s get a few more.”

  “No, no more. Look, we’re already got pounds and pounds.”

  “Have we?” Marianne blinks. “So what do we do with them now?”

  “We boil them, then strain them, then boil up the juice with sugar, and then we’ll have bramble jelly.”

  “How much will it make? A whole jar?”

  “Oh, loads more than that.” I take the bags from her hands and weigh them. “Say about fifteen, twenty jars maybe?”

  “Twenty jars? How long will that take?”

  “We’ll strain them overnight and make the jelly tomorrow morning.”

  “But how will we get it back home?”

  “We’ll take a few jars in our suitcase.”

  “But what about the rest?”

  “I… oh.”

  Marianne’s looking at me with an expression I can’t quite read. Is she sad because all our hard work will be wasted?

  “Maybe the people who buy Lily’s house might like it,” she says, and takes one of the bags from me to carry.

  “Maybe they will,” I say.

  The blackberries drop thick juice from the corners of the bags. From a distance it must look as if we’ve killed and butchered something. Marianne raises one of the bags above her head and lets it drip into her mouth, grimacing because it’s not as sweet she expected, and across the road a man stops to watch her in shock. She looks like a wild warrior child, savouring the sweetness of her first kill. My chest aches with love.

  You should see yourself, Lily says to me as we wait for the ferry. With clever, gentle fingers she teases a fragment of bramble from my hair.

  Why? What do I look like?

  You look beautiful, she says, with such gravity and firmness that when I shut myself in her bathroom and stare in bewilderment at the suntanned, purple-streaked, wild-eyed girl waiting for me in the mirror, for a second, I almost believe her.

  “What?” Mar
ianne asks me, licking juice from her lips and smiling. She has a blackberry seed trapped between her two front teeth. Perhaps this is her Happiest Day, the one I should preserve for ever and use to make a charm that will secure her a hundred happy days to come. I wish I’d found Lily’s camera.

  “You look beautiful,” I tell her, and mean it.

  Hand in hand, we run back to the end of the quay, where the ferryman is tying the boat up with a thick rope that trails acid-green weed from its lower reaches. On the way back, Marianne leans against my shoulder and unexpectedly falls asleep for a few minutes. Her eyelashes are so long they cast shadows on her cheeks. I think for a minute what it would be like if it was Daniel here and me back at home, a lost soul haunting a temporarily discarded shell. And we’ve spent the afternoon picking blackberries.

  When we get off the ferry, I buy a postcard and a stamp from the souvenir shop and, holding my hand away from the pristine white surface to avoid smearing it with blackberry juice, scribble a message to Daniel. Perhaps we’ll beat it home. Or perhaps not.

  Darling husband,

  We love you and we miss you and we can’t wait to come home to you

  Jen xxx

  I pass the pen to Marianne and she draws a fat arrow, then adds her own boisterous message:

  This is true Dad! We want to be back with you! Lots of love Marianne

  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

  We drop it in the postbox on the way back to Lily’s house. I have to stop myself from calling it ‘home’.

  From the bottom shelf of the pantry I take out the marmalade pan, huge and heavy like a cauldron. As Marianne soaks in the bath, the smoky scent of gently stewing blackberries fills the kitchen. It’s a melancholy smell, because it reminds me of the end of the holidays and the train that waits at the bottom of the hill to take me back to reality. Sometimes, watching the rich black juice dripping from the jelly bag, I would feel weighed down by sadness, knowing the summer was nearly over. I’m a grown woman now, I have my own home to go to, and this time the journey will be filled with the excitement of knowing our future’s finally beginning. The sadness is only because I’m tired and my head is full of memories. Or perhaps they’re because I feel guilty, about taking a whole precious day to run away and pick blackberries, preserving fruit for a future that will never come because we’ll be elsewhere.