When Daddy had come to her at night, Ellie would turn her face away as he had forced himself into her—he loves me, he hates me—and had tried to make herself smaller, so small she would vanish. She had felt herself shrivel away. She had lost her self. The self that belonged to a little girl who had sought the light despite living in a house shadowed with pain.
Ellie dipped her rag into the water and kept wiping. The scum of years had built up on the skirting boards. Had her father’s eyesight or his standards slipped? How had he not noticed that the ferocity of her cleaning had slackened? It had been far too long since she had scrubbed until her hands bled. She had gotten away with it too, gradually spending more and more time during the days sitting, losing herself in memories, and trying to forget. Had she let him down? She squeezed out the cloth into the now-greyish-black water and grunted as she shifted her knees on the hallway floor. Wash and rinse and wring and hang. She would show him she hadn’t forgotten her lessons. She would show him that she could be good.
She would clean now for Daddy.
Jack. Why thoughts of him had kept coming back, Arthur hadn’t understood. That part of his life was over. They’d been mates, so he’d thought, until… The memories had kept on returning. It was all so long ago.
Perhaps the memories had been a precursor. Losing himself in the past so he wouldn’t see the missing future. Images of his childhood, his parents, Miriam, and always, Jack. Bloody Jack.
Jack’s father had bred canaries. He had built an aviary out the back of Jack’s house that the boys would wander into if they were bored. If Mr Fordham was home, they would hear the same lecture they had heard time and again.
‘Be careful now, boys. Don’t let any of the birds out. Make sure you keep the cage secure; I don’t want any foxes or feral cats getting in.’ Jack’s dad would enter the aviary with them, afraid to leave his treasured birds unprotected. An oversized man in a shrunken space, he would warm to the boys in the presence of his birds, shifting from his typical taciturn disposition to a man happy to ramble on about his favourites and his dreams of winning ribbons and trophies. Mr Fordham worked down at the docks and was one of the biggest men Arthur had ever seen. But when he was with his birds, he seemed different. Gentle. Arthur found it hard to reconcile the brute strength needed to work on the wharves with this man who tenderly cradled birds in his calloused paws.
‘Why are these ones in a different section?’
‘They’re the young ones. These here are the nesting boxes.’ Mr Fordham deftly handled a small chick as he spoke to the boys. ‘They haven’t had their pinions clipped yet.’
‘What’s a pinion?’ Arthur was curious, but Jack was bored; he had heard it all before.
‘He chops off part of their wings so they can’t fly.’ Jack looked at his father with unconcealed disgust.
‘That’s not right.’ Jack’s father was in his element. ‘The pinion is the outer section of the wing, the flight wing. Clipping it, not chopping it, prevents them flying away.’
‘I was right,’ Jack muttered as he scuffed his feet in the mix of dirt, feathers, seed, and droppings that was the floor of the aviary.
‘So you can keep them with you? They can’t escape?’ Arthur’s interest flared.
‘It keeps them safe.’
‘Does it hurt them?’
‘Yes,’ Jack said.
‘No,’ his father retorted. ‘Animals don’t feel things the way people do.’ Mr Fordham placed the chick back in the nesting box and knelt before a section of wire near the ground, either not seeing or ignoring his son’s rolled eyes. ‘Looks like something’s tried to get in. Jack, fix it up before you do anything else.’
Jack pulled another face, but headed out to his father’s tool shed. Mr Fordham followed, holding forth about the right length of chicken wire to reinforce the perimeter, making sure Jack used the right cutters, and cursing those bloody foxes. Arthur reached into the closest nesting box and pulled out the chick Mr Fordham had been handling.
‘Fly, little bird, fly.’ He tossed it up into the air and laughed as it fell to the ground, cheeping. ‘Stupid bird.’ He flung it back into the box, smirking at the soft thump its body made against the wood. Jack reappeared, awkwardly carrying a pair of wire clippers, pliers, and a small roll of wire.
Arthur stood back and watched as Jack tried to cut a piece of wire off, laughing as Jack cursed and the wire sprung away from him.
‘Why isn’t your Dad doing it?’
‘He’ll check it later and tell me what I’ve done wrong, don’t worry.’
Arthur snorted. ‘For God’s sake, give it to me, and then we can get out of here.’
Jack thrust the wire clippers at Arthur in relief. ‘Hey, I got ya something for your birthday.’ Arthur quickly snipped off a piece of wire mesh and, using the pliers, twisted the ends, and wove it over the loose segment at the bottom.
‘Well, c’mon then, let’s see it.’ He pocketed the pliers. Jack hadn’t noticed a thing.
Ellie dropped her rag into the now muddied water and tried to stand, her knees creaking and protesting, stiff after kneeling for so long. The bathroom was closer than the laundry and she tipped the dirty water down the bathtub drain. Refilling her bucket, she looked at the blank, tiled walls. In the Before, there had been mirrors.
She remembered the hospital. One of the nurses had helped her to the bathroom. It was the first time she had been allowed up to use the toilet, instead of that horrible pan or oversized nappies in the bed. Ellie had felt oddly unsteady on her feet, her legs wobbly and weak after days pinned down by tubes and bandages and hovering faces.
‘C’mon, love, you can do it. You’re a big girl,’ the young nurse had said, supporting her with one arm. Ellie had tried to smile, but the corners of her mouth were twisted and tight. Her naked scalp felt particularly light. The doctor had been in earlier to remove the heavy bandages on her cheek and scalp and Ellie had discovered that her head had been shaved. The doctor had tilted her face this way and that, making comments and prodding as if she weren’t a girl but a curiosity.
‘A lighter dressing this time, Sister.’ The nurse had nodded, but before she could begin, Ellie had begged to use the bathroom.
‘Please.’
‘Can’t you wait?’
‘No.’ It wasn’t a complete lie. She wanted to escape the fingers and the bandages, wanted to experience this lightness for a little longer.
‘Well, up you get then.’
Ellie and the nurse made their reeling way down the corridor.
‘A bit unsteady on your legs, aren’t you?’
‘Uh huh.’ Ellie concentrated, her legs feeling stronger with each step. A whistling man with a mop stopped his cleaning and stared, open mouthed, as Ellie and the young nurse tottered past.
‘Gawd almighty, what happened to her?’
The nurse had let go of Ellie’s arm and pointed to a door with a sign of a woman attached. ‘You’ll be all right, love. Be with you in a minute.’ The nurse moved over to the man as Ellie had kept walking. I’m a big girl.
She had entered the bathroom and used the toilet, remembering to wipe just like Mummy had taught her. She had stood on tiptoes to reach the taps to wash her hands and glimpsed the mirror over the sink. A monster stared back at her. Ellie screamed. The stitched and mutilated patchwork vision screamed back before hands had grabbed and pulled at her and another needle had made everything go dark.
Ellie had lost track of the days quickly once she stopped going to school. She knew Daddy stayed home some days and other days he went to work, but those were his days, the days of the outside world. They belonged to the people who got to go to school or to work or taken on trips down to the beach. Absence from the world had merged her days and stripped them of meaning. Ellie had wanted a way to tell the inside days apart. She decided
to colour them. Some days were yellow, green, purple, or blue. Those days were the colour of the bruises. There were red (spelt crimson in her pencil box) days. Those were the days the blood came. Crimson was the colour of fresh blood. Some days were black. On those days, there was no life, no colour. Black days came after hate-filled nights.
When the bleeding had started, the bleeding down there, she had panicked. The pain, the cruel cramping, hinted that something was wrong, deeply and deathly wrong inside of her. When the bleeding didn’t stop, only got heavier and more painful, Ellie knew. She was bad and broken. Her body was as damaged on the inside as it was on the outside. Her body was crying out these bright red globules and clotted spasms. She was rotten in her core.
That first day she had spent trying to hide the blood that stained her pants, but she couldn’t make it stop. There was too much; it was too heavy. With toilet paper wadded up in her pants, she’d felt like she was wearing a nappy. She had gone to the toilet again and again—she was a bloody, leaking tap—until in the early evening, she had taken one of the folded swabs of paper with its bright red smear painting the surface and went to show him. She had edged towards her father, the white squares with the crimson streak centred and bold, held behind her back in one trembling hand.
‘Daddy?’ The word had come out in a choked muffled breath. If he had heard her at all, he’d ignored her.
‘Daddy.’ Louder now, but still barely audible. She was bleeding to death and she was still afraid to speak to him. She did and she did not want to die. She had to show him.
‘What?’
‘Daddy, help.’ She had held out her hand with its pathetic offering. He had looked down and grimaced, his body recoiling as he registered her gift. She had seen the truth in his eyes. She was revolting. She was bad from the inside out.
He had come to her later that night, his breath sour. ‘You’re my woman now, Ellie. You’re not a little girl anymore.’ He had grunted as he slid in and out of her scarlet wetness, slick on her thighs. ‘You’re my woman now.’
One crimson day, Ellie had sat down next to the window in the laundry, her legs tucked beneath her. She had come in to see if the clothes were dry, and her attention had been caught by a narrow trail of ants that had somehow made their way inside. Rain, she thought, lifting her head towards the ceiling, pretending she could feel rain drops on her face. She remembered years ago, when Daddy had grudgingly allowed her to venture outside, ever so briefly, after the Tilletts had left. She had been permitted to sit and watch as Daddy mowed the lawn. She had been desperate to extend every second of her time outside. She had tilted her head, rested it against the back of the house, and stared at the sky until her eyes had watered. She had blinked and turned her head. Up close, the white walls looked shoddy and discoloured, speckled with dirt and mould and even particles of sand carried from the shore. She had been able to see the fence palings near the left side of the house. The struts were dappled shades of grey. The lighter tones resembled the distant gums. The wooden palings wore cobwebs that moved in the breeze and a steady line of ants that bustled along the lower beam.
‘Rain’s coming.’ The deep, gravelly voice had made her jump. In her fascination, she hadn’t even noticed that the sound of the lawn mower had ceased.
Ellie had looked sideways at her father, expecting him to tell her to go in, expecting him to have changed his mind. Her father’s eyes were focused on the fence.
‘How can you tell?’ she’d whispered. His hands were deep in his pockets and his face was impassive. She had dared to speak again. ‘The sky is blue, the clouds,’ she had craned her neck upwards and pointed, ‘are white.’
‘The ants. Look how busy they are. Means rain’s coming.’
‘Huh.’ Ellie had tried not to sound doubtful. Grandmother Clements had told her that Ellie’s grandfather had been able to find water underground; she supposed it wasn’t impossible that her father could tell when it was going to fall from the sky.
‘I’m putting the mower away. Time for you to go back in now.’
‘Yes, Daddy.’
How old had she been then? It was after Maisie had gone, after Maisie’s parents and brother had moved away. Her Daddy had let her out into the yard where there were no more neighbours to see. Ellie looked at her fingers. More than ten and less than fifteen, more than two hands old. She had been a little girl and then she had become a big girl. She had always been Daddy’s girl. She remembered another day, years later, fitfully sleeping the daylight away. The cruel girdle of pain that had encircled her cried out for the oblivion that sleep brought.
That Ellie had opened her eyes and gazed at the sketches on the walls. The figures moved, the lines running together. She blinked, yawned, and with her growing consciousness, the drawings returned to normal.
‘I want to have a birthday, Beadie; I think I’m sixteen now. Maybe. I could be.’ On the radio last night, the announcer had talked about the upcoming Olympic Games. Daddy had switched the radio off, telling her it was time to get ready for bed. Ellie had walked to the bathroom, counting. Sometimes she knew her numbers and sometimes she forgot. But if the year really was 1988… She counted on her fingers, distracted by the vibration of his purr against her spine. Beadie hadn’t known the time or the date either. He didn’t seem to care. Time was made up of days and nights and meals and ticks of the clock and words like a-go, a-gain, and a-while. ‘Grandmother Clements, when is Daddy coming home?’
‘In a-while.’
‘Daddy, when is Mummy coming home?’
‘Never.’
There was a calendar pinned inside Ellie’s closet that had once been pinned to the wall of the kitchen. It still showed the same page and picture it had since Grandmother Clements had left. December 1985. That was time gone. A-while? A year? Three, she supposed, she would have to pay more attention to the radio. Ellie had tried marking her own days on the calendar but there were too many lines. It had just been her and Daddy for so long.
That long-ago Ellie had closed her eyes and reclaimed the dark. She had vaguely registered the warmth of Beadie as he had settled himself against the small of her back, cushioning himself into the natural curve. Blood had come and still leaked between her legs. She could feel it seeping onto the wadded up face cloth she’d placed in her underpants. There had been pain; there had been a birth, a birthday. A tiny, tiny baby.
It wasn’t a proper baby. Daddy had said it was too early, there was something wrong with it, with her, and he would put an end to it. He had wrapped everything, even what came out after, in a sodden towel and told her to clean herself up. Having the not-proper-baby had hurt so much, but not as much as Daddy taking it away. She hadn’t known what it had meant when she had not bled for a while, but Daddy had. He had hit her and hit her in her belly and she’d screamed, forgetting the neighbours might hear; she’d cried until his bunched fists had taken her breath away, and then she’d gasped with the pain and still he’d hit her. Hit her until the bleeding had started.
Tears had run unbidden, unheeded down her cheeks. She’d hated him. Hated him. Loved him. Hated him. She had craved rest, craved the escape of sleep, had been desperate to forget what had happened that night, what Daddy had done. She had crawled into her own bed, whimpering as she had hugged her pillow tighter, her body, her breasts aching. With one hand, she had clutched Ever and tucked her under her chin. ‘My baby.’ He would never take her away.
‘Miriam.’ He had said that name when he had hit her. ‘Just like fucking Miriam.’ Thump. ‘Should have…’ thump, ‘done this…’ thump, ‘to her.’
Ellie knew that name, she’d heard that name before. She even had a photo. It had fallen out of one of Daddy’s
books, but the torn black-and-white image had been snatched away by her grandmother with the words, ‘Where did you get this?’
Ellie pointed to the book she had been flicking through, The Champion Annual for Boys.
It was Daddy’s, but he rarely looked at it. Her grandmother had grabbed it and rummaged through its pages. There were no other pictures. Head bowed, her grandmother had stared at the photograph in her hand.
‘Miriam.’ Her grandmother had sighed the name. ‘The trouble she caused.’
‘Grandmother?’
‘This is not for you.’ Grandmother Clements tore the photograph in two and threw it in the bin. Ellie watched in silence. There was never anything for her. Washing the dishes that night, Ellie had wondered: if nobody else wanted the photo, then maybe it could be for her? Her secret. She had rescued the pieces from the bin, and had hidden them away in her tin of treasures where she could look at them when she was alone. The little girl held a doll, a pretty doll with a porcelain face. She liked to imagine that this girl, Miriam, this stranger, would have been a friend.
‘Sleep, Beadie, I have to sleep.’ Lying in bed, she had heard the freight trains rumble their way along the mountain, carrying their cargo from the coke mill, groaning and weaving their way along the cliff. The sounds of the trains were mournful, the sounds of movement she was denied. She had wondered if anyone had ever clambered aboard one of the south coast trains and jumped off somewhere else, anywhere else, far away from Coalcliff, from Daddy, and from this stagnant, little house on the edge of the world.
That would have been brave. Too brave for the likes of her, but if she were brave, if she were someone else, she would travel far from here, across the mountain and the cliffs, or across the seas. She would find out if those places on the globe were real. She would ride one of the trains. She would pack a bag with food for her and for Beadie: a few cans of tuna that they could share… Perhaps if she hid one of the tins every now and then, Daddy wouldn’t notice, and then she would have enough for her escape… No, he would notice. Of course he would notice… She had fallen asleep with pain and plans in mind.
The musty hardcover book on the shelf—The Champion Annual for Boys—had the words Happy Birthday Artie, Your friend, Jack inscribed in a hand she didn’t recognise. She didn’t recognise the name either. Daddy never mentioned anyone called Jack. She supposed the book must have been Daddy’s when he was little, and that little Daddy, Arthur—Artie, — had had a friend, just like she had had a friend when she was little. It was hard to picture Daddy being little, or having a friend, but she guessed he must have had one to have kept the book so long. Perhaps he had wanted to pass it on to his son.
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