by Ruth Hogan
‘They’re napkins really, I’m afraid, but they’re not too scratchy.’
I peer up through my hair into Daniel’s green eyes. His kindness threatens to undo me completely, and I blow my nose as though my life depends on it, which is such an attractive thing to witness for the man you are trying to seduce. He hastily retreats to his place behind the counter. Oh God, am I really trying to seduce him? In the midst of this emotional Armageddon, am I seriously contemplating romance? In spite of everything I have just read, I’m still worried about him seeing that I have a red, snotty nose and smudged mascara. I really like him. I have been trying to keep this a secret, even from myself. But now I know. I am ridiculous. When I have finally finished my impersonation of Nellie the elephant, Daniel returns with a glass of cherry brandy.
‘I know it’s a bit early, but it’ll be good for your cold.’
This time I am just about able to meet his smile with one of my own. He returns to the counter and his conversation with Joseph Geronimo. After a swig of brandy, I return to the diary.
13 August
I am worried about Tilly. She is such a funny little thing; so singular and stubborn, so determined to follow her own path. But I am worried that she will end up like me. Or worse. She already has her own strange little ways. She cuts up her food into squares and counts her forkfuls. She insists on using the same plate, the same beaker and the same knife and fork for every meal. She’s always listening at doors and sometimes I catch her looking at things that I can’t see. Things a little girl shouldn’t be able to see. With Stevie, she was learning things she shouldn’t know, and meeting people she shouldn’t meet. Ungodly things and ungodly people. I know he takes her to see Rory and Rose. He denies it, but I know when he’s lying. He will ruin Tilly like he’s ruined me. Unless I can stop him. Tilly is too young to be afraid. She seems to welcome them and acts as though it’s a game. Or even worse, normal. She doesn’t understand how much trouble and pain it will bring her. I haven’t said anything to her. She won’t hear a word against her daddy. God won’t listen to me any more, but if he did, my one prayer would be ‘don’t let Tilly be punished for her father’s sins’.
I have started smoking. I don’t really care for it, but I shall persevere. It is an act of rebellion. Stevie hates to see a woman smoking. Of course, it’s fine for him to smoke his roll-ups in that damn shed of his. Wendy came round today and caught me. She thought it was hilarious. But she is a good friend to me, even though we have practically nothing in common. The other women talk about me behind my back. I can see the disapproval on their sneering faces. Sometimes I envy Wendy for her cheerful, straightforward, sensible life; her satisfaction in the mundane, her contentment with routine. But more often, it sickens me and I feel trapped. Is this really all there is? Is this what I needed a grammar school education for? Perhaps it is my illness that makes me want something else for me and Tilly, and perhaps it is wrong. But I need more. I need a bigger life than this. Wendy says that I shouldn’t worry about Tilly; that she’s as bright as a shiny shilling and will find her own way. I hope she’s right. The tablets the doctor gave me make me muddled and so tired. Sometimes I sleep for hours in the middle of the day, and then I can’t sleep at night, so I drink to help me sleep, and then I can’t wake up the next day and mostly I don’t want to. I’m living in a fuzzy-felt world. My head is never clear. I’m trying so hard to be a good mother to Tilly, to prove to her how much I love her, but it’s not as easy as I thought it would be. She keeps asking about him. I’ve told her that he’s had to go away to find work, but I get the feeling that she thinks it’s my fault. I just wish that she would forget about him for a while and try to love me. Why can’t I be enough?
27 August
I miss him. God, how I miss him. I never thought that having whatever scraps of love from him that were left over from Tilly would be better than nothing at all. I hate myself for having no pride and self-respect, but if he were to walk through the door right now I would go down on my knees and beg him to stay. I would do anything to make him love me again. But I am stupid and unlovable. My husband, God, my parents. Even my own child does not love me. She prefers to go to church with some fat, Irish Catholic housewife who already has too many children of her own than spend time with me.
I was so stupid to think that Stevie ever really loved me. He only wanted me to have a child, but he is a child himself. I used to feel like a stranger in my own home, while the two of them would sit together giggling and laughing, keeping their secrets. He was her hero, she was his princess and I was the wicked witch. I used to watch them in the garden. Part of me was desperate to join them, but they would not have wanted me to. She would cling on to his hand and listen to his every word. He would show her how to grow the fruit and vegetables and flowers, and she would copy his every move. They would take raspberries into the shed and eat them, and then bring in barely a handful in a bowl. They were laughing at me. So why do I miss him so much? I want to sit and cry and rock and cry and rock until the world disappears. Until I disappear. I am pathetic. What kind of monster is jealous of her own child? I hate them both, but not as much as I hate myself. And most of all, I just want him to come home.
28 August
I hope he rots in hell.
I am not crying now. I’m dumbfounded by her desperate words. I sit staring at the page in front of me, whilst scrabbling frantically through the memories of my distant past to see if any of it can be true. Certainly, her feelings must have been true. Her pain and loneliness scream out from the pages as real now as it was then. But so does her illness. She loved us, she hated us. She wanted him gone, she wanted him back. But most of all, she just wanted to be loved. I don’t think that I ever once told her that I loved her. I just assumed she knew.
I am done. I cannot read any more today. My body feels as stiff and frozen as my mind. Eli shuffles into a sitting position at the sound of my chair scraping along the floor. I stand up slowly, stretching my arms in front of me. The café is almost full of people eating their lunches. I didn’t notice any of them coming in, sitting down or placing their orders. I have been locked in my own little world, or rather my mother’s. I need to get outside and stoke myself into life again. I need to walk by the sea. I take my glass back up to the counter where Daniel is busy preparing orders. There is no sign of Joseph Geronimo Heathcliff O’Shea or Queenie. I thank Daniel and ask for my bill.
‘Oh, this one’s on the house.’ And as I open my mouth to protest, he continues, ‘As long as you promise to come back soon.’
It is an easy promise to make.
14
Tilly
Tilly thought that the baby Jesus looked more like a garden gnome than the son of God. She had opened the last door on her Advent calendar and was rather surprised to see that the baby in the manger had a very red face, big ears and what looked like a rather pointy head. The Mary and Joseph looked a bit more normal, with the usual tea towel hats, accompanied by a very fat lying-down cow and a fluffy white sheep.
‘Is that the lamb of God?’ Tilly asked her mother, pointing to the sheep.
‘I expect so,’ her mother answered without much conviction. She was heating a pan of milk for Tilly’s breakfast. As it was Christmas Eve, Tilly was allowed her cornflakes with warm milk as a special treat.
‘How can Jesus be the son of God, when Joseph was Mary’s husband and Jesus’s daddy?’
‘Why don’t you ask Mrs O’Flaherty? I’m sure she’ll be able to explain it much better than I can.’
Tilly’s mother smiled to herself, glad to be off the hook whilst hanging Mrs O’Flaherty firmly on it. She was grateful for her kindness to Tilly, but the woman was filling Tilly’s head with all sorts of religious mumbo jumbo. Tilly had insisted that she was going to church with Mrs O’Flaherty and her family later that afternoon because ‘Christmas without God and Jesus was like an angel without any wings’. Tilly’s mother had almost laughed, but Tilly was more serious than a seven-year-old should
know how to be. She had tried to persuade her mother to come with them, but was secretly glad when she refused. She might do the wrong sort of curtsey or not pray at the right time and upset God. Tilly was trying really hard to keep in God’s good books at the moment so that he would look after her daddy and not send him to Bermondsey. At least she thought it was Bermondsey, but it was sometimes tricky to understand Mrs O’Flaherty’s way of speaking. Mrs O’Flaherty had told her all about how when people die before all their sins are forgiven, they must stay in Bermondsey until their friends and family have done enough praying and lit enough candles to get them out and up to heaven. If the sins were really big, like killing someone or calling God a rude word, it could sometimes take years to get out. Tilly always lit a candle and said a prayer for her daddy when she went to church, just in case. She would have loved to talk to Mrs O’Flaherty about her daddy, but she had made a promise and she couldn’t break it. But perhaps Mrs O’Flaherty had guessed that he was dead anyway because of all the candles that Tilly lit, and she always said a prayer with Tilly to keep him safe.
The question about who was really the father of Jesus probably wasn’t that difficult to answer. Tilly thought that perhaps Mary had just forgotten who the real daddy was, and so had told them both that they were so that no one was disappointed.
After breakfast, they were going to decorate the Christmas tree. Uncle Bill had dropped it round yesterday after work. It wasn’t very big, and its branches were a bit crooked, but Tilly thought it was beautiful. It smelled of Christmas. She had been a bit worried that her mother might not bother with a tree at all, but she had been surprisingly enthusiastic when Auntie Wendy had suggested that Uncle Bill get one for them. Before, it had always been her daddy who was the one who got excited about Christmas; ‘like an overgrown child’, her mother had said. Once, he had come home with a bunch of mistletoe and chased her mother round the kitchen holding it over his head and demanding a kiss. It was one of the few times Tilly remembered seeing them laugh together. They had seemed happy for once, and her daddy got his kiss. It must have been a long time ago.
While Tilly was spooning the mush that was cornflakes and warm milk into her mouth, her mother fetched the battered cardboard box from the cupboard underneath the stairs. The box contained the tree decorations wrapped in crumpled newspaper, and strands of silver tinsel, and the coloured fairy lights. Tilly climbed down from her chair at the kitchen table, put her breakfast bowl and mug into the sink, and followed her mother into the sitting room, Eli trotting along behind her. Tilly’s jumper was beginning to make her itch. It was bright red with a row of reindeers galloping round the middle of it. Tilly’s mother had laid it out ready for her that morning, thinking that she would love to wear reindeers on Christmas Eve. It was one from a generous bundle of clothes that Karen had outgrown, and that Auntie Wendy had passed on for Tilly. Karen was very pleased to see the back of it. Tilly’s mother wasn’t very keen on the idea of Tilly wearing hand-me-downs, and had picked out only a few items that she could wear in order not to seem ungrateful. Tilly put the jumper on to please her mother, but thought it looked a bit scratchy. And she was right; it was. She stood pulling at its neck and cuffs as her mother unpacked the decorations, first from the box, and then from their newspaper wrappings. Each delicate bauble was a familiar treasure, a beloved part of Tilly’s Christmas; the goldfish and the fat robin, each with silky tails; the three little white birds with silver glitter sparkles; the apple, the orange and the pineapple; the silver moon and the golden star; and finally, the rather tired and tatty-looking fairy for the top of the tree. Her white lace dress was grubby and torn, her golden hair was missing in places and what remained was full of tangles, and her silver wand was bent. She was missing a slipper, and her tinsel crown had lost its sparkle. Last year, Tilly had said that she looked like Cinderella with her missing slipper, and her daddy had laughed and said that she looked more like the barmaid at The White Horse the morning after the night before.
‘The night before what?’ Tilly had asked, but her mother had said that he was just being silly and not to pay any attention to him. This year, as the fairy emerged from her newspaper shroud, Tilly’s mother looked at her disapprovingly.
‘We shall have to get a new fairy, or perhaps an angel this time.’
Tilly was horrified.
‘We can’t. She’s our fairy.’
‘She’s too old and scruffy now. She doesn’t even look like a fairy any more.’
‘I can brush her hair, and we can get her a new dress.’
‘Honestly Tilly, there’s no point. We’ll just get a new one.’
Tilly was desperate.
‘But she’s not ready to go to heaven yet.’
‘Old fairies don’t go to heaven. They go in the bin.’
Tears pricked the back of Tilly’s eyes. She knew that the fairy was really just a shabby little doll, but she was one of the many single bits and pieces that made the whole that was their Christmas. And every single thing that was left was precious and had to stay the same, because the most important thing had already gone. Her daddy.
Her mother was completely oblivious to Tilly’s distress as she retrieved the fairy lights from the bottom of the box and was trying to unravel them.
‘Goodness me, it looks like the mice have been doing their knitting with these. Tilly, come and help me with this muddle. Here, you hold this end, and I’ll try and untangle the rest.’
Tilly rubbed her tears away with the back of her hand, and sniffed more loudly than she meant to.
‘Tilly, don’t sniff; use your hanky. What’s the matter?’
Her mother looked up from the fairy lights to see a lost and miserable-looking little girl. Tilly didn’t want to talk about her daddy with her mother, so she told a different truth.
‘This jumper’s scratchy.’
She yanked at the neck to underline the point.
‘I thought you’d like it. The reindeers are very Christmassy.’
‘I do like it. It’s just too scratchy. It feels like spiders crawling with spiky feet.’
Her mother shook her head dismissively and handed Tilly the plug end of the lights to hold. She worked through the green flex, untying and untwisting, until the lights were tangle-free. Tilly’s mother took the plug from Tilly and pushed it into the socket. Nothing.
‘Damn and blast!’
It was exactly what Tilly had expected. If her daddy had been here, at least he would have known how to fix them.
Tilly’s mother once again looked at her daughter’s disconsolate face and her mood seemed to soften.
‘Don’t worry, Tilly. It’s probably only a loose bulb.’
She then began checking each one to make sure it was screwed in properly. Tilly’s hope, as fragile as one of the glass baubles waiting to go on the tree, was almost gone by the time her mother reached the last bulb, but then suddenly the room was washed with coloured light and a smile finally broke across Tilly’s face. She was astonished and impressed that her mother had been able to perform such a small but significant miracle. Together, they wound the lights round the tree, followed by the tinsel, and then carefully hung the decorations on the tips of the branches. Even the fairy earned a reprieve, and was allowed to take her usual place, on the grounds that it was too late to get a replacement for her this year. Tilly began to feel a bit more cheerful. Perhaps Christmas wasn’t going to be as bad as she had thought. By the time they finished, Tilly couldn’t stop fiddling with the neck of her jumper. Her skin felt as though it was on fire.
‘Tilly, for heaven’s sake, leave that jumper alone!’
‘But it really hurts.’
Tilly was usually a stoic child, not given to whinging when it came to minor aches and pains and childhood ailments. When she had had measles, she still wanted to go to school because she didn’t want to miss sports day. She rarely cried when she fell off her bike, and only a little when she had been stung by a wasp last summer. Her mother finally paid attenti
on to what she was saying and inspected Tilly’s neck. Tilly was delighted to see the look of concern that immediately clouded her mother’s face.
‘Quickly, Tilly, take it off!’
Her mother grabbed the hem of the dreadful scratchy jumper and began yanking it up over Tilly’s wriggling torso. The neck was tight, and Tilly’s head stuck fast until one final desperate tug from her mother released her from the evil jumper’s stranglehold, and Tilly staggered backwards across the room, landing hard on her bottom. Tilly’s pain was considerably lessened by the look on her mother’s face. She knew she could risk it.
‘I told you it was too scratchy,’ she said, with just the right amount of petulant insistence. She followed her mother through to the kitchen where she began searching in the cupboard for the bottle of calamine lotion and some cotton wool. Tilly trotted into the hall to inspect herself in the mirror.
‘I look like I’m wearing a red necklace and two bracelets.’
She continued admiring her wounds for a moment.
‘Or people might think that you keep me tied up with a lead and handcuffs.’
Tilly thought that this was a very good joke, but for some reason, her mother didn’t seem to think that it was funny.
‘Tilly, come here and stand still while I put this lotion on you.’
Tilly did as she was told, and was immediately grateful for the coolness of the soothing lotion on her burning skin. Her mother gently dabbed her neck and wrists with cotton wool dipped in the chalky white liquid, until all the livid red patches were covered. Eli sat on the kitchen floor, watching, with a quizzical expression on his face.