23
AS WELL AS cakes, the bakery nearby sells milk and eggs and custard and digestive biscuits and packet soups and tinned goods. I buy a dozen eggs and a coffee cake for Penelope’s visit. When I get home, I put the cake on a plate on the table, and lay out cups and saucers. Then I take the biggest pot from the cupboard, a huge stainless-steel pot that I set on the hob. I put the eggs in a bowl beside the cooker. The doorbell rings, and I hear Penelope’s voice shriek “Yoo-hoo!” through the letterbox. I would like to write a story called “Through the Letterbox,” but it might be a very short, dull story, with only envelopes for characters. I open the door and Penelope swoops in in a gabble of words about a neighbour she met.
“She just never stops talking, I can’t get a word in edgeways.”
I look at Penelope. I can’t get a syllable in edgeways or any other which ways when she starts talking, but maybe in a friendship you can’t have two people who talk all the time. I bring her through to the kitchen and set the kettle to boil while Penelope stares about her.
“Doing some cooking, Viv? Some kind of egg stew is it?” She laughs.
“When you call me Viv, could you either whisper the ‘viv’ in lower case or shout it in capitals, please?”
“Okay, VIV,” she bellows. “Why?”
“It’s more symmetrical that way.”
“A truer palindrome.”
“Yes.”
She takes out her phone, fiddles with it and reads: “The longest palindrome in everyday use is the Finnish word ‘Saippuakivikauppias’ for soapstone vendor.”
When I try to wrap my lips around the word, it comes out sounding like a disease and its cure in one. I’m not sure of an occasion in which I could foist the words “soapstone vendor” into the conversation, but I must think further. I make tea in the teapot, bring it over to the table and start cutting the cake. There is a deep, finger-sized hole in the buttercream icing at the top. I look at Penelope but she is staring straight ahead with her hands on her lap. I cut the cake into quarters and push the fingered quarter onto Penelope’s plate and an untouched quarter onto mine. We eat and drink in silence until Penelope speaks.
“What are you making with the eggs?”
“I need you to brew some eggshells.”
She leans forward and stares at me. Shards of her breath dart my way, stale and wretched. I lean back in my chair.
“What do you mean?” she asks.
“You crack the eggs and put the shells in a pot of boiling water while I watch.”
“Why?”
“If I’m a changeling, I’m supposed to say something like ‘I’m as old as the forest but I’ve never seen an eggshell stew before’ and then disappear up the chimney.”
Penelope’s forehead corrugates.
“But if you already know the words to say, how does this prove anything?”
“Oh. I don’t know.”
Penelope looks at the cooker.
“And there’s no chimney.”
“I might disappear up the extractor fan.”
We look at the fan. It’s covered in brown grease and the holes are so small, I would have to be pencil-thin to fit through.
“Maybe.”
She gets up and switches on the cooker. The swwssh of the gas flame is very soothing, like a gentle breeze or a low brook. She sits again and we eat our cake.
“Is this a companionable silence?” I ask. “I’ve read about these in books.”
“I suppose it was.”
She smiles. I smile too.
“Have we just exchanged a grin? I’ve also read about exchanging grins in books, but you’re not wearing my smile and I’m not wearing yours.”
Penelope squawks out a laugh the size of India. I walk over to the cooker and dip my finger in the water, it’s lukewarm.
“Penelope,” I say, “picture a small boy called Luke who’s just learning to speak.”
“Okay.”
“Now imagine it’s hot and he wants to take off his jumper, do you know what he’d say?”
“No.”
“Luke warm!! Like lukewarm!”
“Is that water boiled yet?” she asks.
“No, it’s only lukewarm.”
I stir the water with a wooden spoon. Why didn’t Penelope laugh at my joke? I may have spent too long setting the scene, or I might have put in too many exclamation marks. I will study books of jokes and learn how to tell them; I will learn some of the lesser-known ones and pass them off as my own. I imagine a situation in a restaurant—no that won’t do, the jangle of cutlery and clatter of delph is too loud to do justice to my joke-telling—a quiet pub perhaps: a quiet pub on a Monday evening. I’m surrounded by friends and I’m telling a joke, one of the jokes from the book. The scene I’m picturing is of the moment just after the punchline and people are laughing, they’re laughing so hard that they’re bent double and drink is pouring out their noses. I’m sitting up straight with a mildly amused smile on my face, but that is just the start of my jokes, there are more to come: funnier, better, cleverer jokes that will flatten these people, flatten my friends to the ground with the force of my humour.
“Viv? Sorry: VIV!”
“Yes?”
“It’s boiling.”
I blink and stare at the bubbling pot. Penelope comes over to the cooker.
“Right, what do you want me to do with these?”
She picks up the bowl of eggs. I put a second bowl on the counter beside her.
“You crack the egg, empty the egg-meat into this bowl, and then put the shell into the pot.”
“Okay. How many eggs?”
“Half a dozen.”
I sit on the rocking chair in the corner, but I can only see Penelope’s back.
“Can you turn to one side so that I can see the eggshells going into the pot?”
She moves to the counter and turns.
“Like this?”
“Yes, carry on.”
She cracks an egg on the side of the bowl.
“Stop!” I shout. “I’ve thought of something.”
Penelope pauses, lifts her hair from her eyes and slaps at a thin yellow worm of egg yolk running down her wrist. “What is it?”
“I should be in a cradle. Or some kind of baby’s cot.”
“Why?”
“In the stories, that’s where changelings were when they watched the eggshells brewing.”
“But that’s because they were babies.”
“Oh, oh right.”
I pull the rocking chair over to one side and lean out to get a better view. Crack goes the egg on the side of the bowl. “Feck,” says Penelope when the shell smashes in her fist.
“Don’t mind it,” I say, “there’s more, keep cracking.”
She cracks an egg, empties the insides into the bowl, throws the shell in the pot, and does it all over again. On the sixth egg, I watch closely and wait for the voice of a thousand-year-old fairy to come burbling up my gullet, but nothing comes. Penelope turns to me.
“Do another one,” I say, “maybe seven’s the lucky number.”
She does it again: nothing.
“Eight could be a lucky number in some country,” she says hopefully.
I shake my head.
“Let’s stop now.”
Penelope walks to the sink and rinses her hands.
“I didn’t know you washed your hands,” I say.
“I do on special occasions,” she says. “What are you going to do with the eggs?”
I get up and look into the bowl. The yolks are suspended in the whites; some whole and smug, others gaping and disappointed, oozing slowly into the clear liquid. Bits of broken shell hang in the mess, like fractured stars in a gluey galaxy.
“I’ll make poached eggs,” I say, “crunchy poached eggs.”
I dip my finger into the yolk-stream and lick it. It tastes like I shouldn’t. Penelope sits in the rocking chair and I eye her, feary that she might be the one to go shooting up the extractor fa
n while I’m fiddling with the eggs—who’s to say she doesn’t belong to another world? I throw the egg-meat into the pot and swirl it into a whirlpool with the wooden spoon. This, I presume, is poaching. It feels good to cook eggs with such a dishonest verb. There isn’t a peep from Penelope, and when I turn around to look, she’s running a finger around the rim of the cake, scooping icing into her mouth. Faster and faster I stir the water until the eggs seem on the verge of taking flight like so many squashed flying saucers; faster and faster they whirl until I feel like I’m in the water with them, I’m spinning around and around and “Um Gottes willen, es brennt, es brennt,” the only phrase I can remember from German class in school, “Oh my God, it burns, it burns.” There are flames: orange-red-purple-green up-close flames that don’t look real, they’re so bright. I’m straining, pushing, pushing back back back against hands that are pushing me on on on. I try to scream but my throat clogs and holds it so I push I push I push my body back and my voice up until the scream emerges, and even though it’s from my mouth, even though it’s my scream, it’s so far beyond me and so far above me that I scream again, wondering what I am taken over by.
“Vivian,” comes a voice, definitely not my voice, “Vivian, are you alright?”
I realise it’s dark, and it’s dark because my eyes are closed. I open them and Penelope’s face is hovering over me. Her cheeks hang down like empty balloons, her eyes are so huge and bulging I fear they will fall from their sockets into my mouth, and her breath—her breath is fit to wake the dead let alone the fainted so I quickly say, “Yes, yes, I’m alright,” and I sit up. It’s only then the pain hits, a sear across my chest and down my left arm, a mean, petty kind of pain that stings, but isn’t brave enough to go deep, deep as the flames.
“Viv, I mean VIV! The water spilt and scalded you, let me take a look.”
I snatch at her hand but it’s too late, she has pulled the top of my jumper aside.
“What are those scars, what happened to you?”
She is all gasp and stutter, she sounds like she could keep spilling questions at me in higher and higher pitches if I don’t answer.
“My father tried to send me back, he wanted to swap me for his human child.”
The new pain has mounted the old pain; it’s deep and all-consuming, a constant bass-note throb. I pull my jumper back over the pain and look around. The floor is scattered with ragged chunks of egg whites and gleams of yolks. It’s a pity my skin doesn’t look so perfect when it’s poached.
“How?” she asks.
“Twice through the fire, once through the sea.”
“The sea?”
“He said that if fire didn’t work, water might. It didn’t.”
I get up from the floor and sit on the rocking chair. Penelope rinses a dishcloth under the cold tap, I take it from her and lay it on the scald.
“I like scaldy mots,” I say.
“You like what?”
“Scaldy mots. It was written on a building in town. I wonder who wrote it and if they mean it. Near that was written, ‘The army are coming.’ I wonder if they were done by the same person or if they were linked in some way.”
Penelope pulls a chair opposite me and sits down. I don’t know where to put my knees.
“Viv, when I told you about my mother…when I talked about what happened…why didn’t you tell me then?”
She is not making full sentences; she is not making sense. I get up and walk to the table.
“It’s a pity the poached eggs are ruined,” I say, “but we can have cake instead.”
I cut another slice. I skim off the smoothed outer rim of icing that Penelope has run her finger around and take a bite. It doesn’t taste as sweet as before, and the coffee flavour leaves a bitter tang in my mouth. Next time, I will try a different flavour; next time I will buy a plain sponge.
24
I WALK TO Penelope’s house in the belting heat. Summer has landed overnight, and the street is full of arms and legs that are not usually seen; they seem detached from their owners like so many piles of limbs in the death scene of a war film. I ring Penelope’s doorbell. The door opens after a clatter and a thump, and her face appears, a yellow splodge on one cheek and a blue swash across her forehead.
“Come in, Vivian, I’m just finishing off a painting.”
“Oh,” I say, “I thought you were dressing up as a rainbow.”
I follow her up the stairs to the living room. She’s wearing a T-shirt with thick pastel-coloured stripes, she could be a block of ice cream. The cats are arranged in different poses on the sofa like a greeting card. I take the list out of my pocket.
“Right,” I say, “we need white walls and a full glass of water and a small mirror and a torch.”
Penelope goes to the cupboard, takes out a wide glass, and fills it with water. She puts it on the table, then she opens a drawer and foosters around until she pulls out a torch. Finally, she goes into the bathroom and comes back with a small rectangular mirror, puts it on the table and looks at me.
“Now we need to close the curtains,” I say.
I sit at the table while she closes the curtains to the small windows and the patio doors. An envelope on the table is addressed to Miss E. Drysdale. I look quickly away: it’s not good to snoop in other people’s things, and anyway, “E” has far too many rigid lines and corners for an initial. When Penelope sits down, I put the mirror into the glass of water, turn on the torch and shine it onto the mirror. I move it around, until rainbow swirls of colour appear and Penelope shrieks and claps her hands. I hold the torch in position for a while, but no small man appears. Penelope yawns.
“Remind me what you’re looking for?”
“A leprechaun,” I say, “but I don’t want his money, I want to ask him to guide me to the nearest portal. I’ll tell him he can keep his crock of gold if I can pick his brains.”
“I wouldn’t use that expression, Vivian,” she says. “Leprechauns take things very literally, he’ll think you’re going to partially lobotomise him.”
I stare at her. Sometimes it’s hard to know if she’s very strange or very clever. Sometimes it’s best to stick to practicalities.
“Will you hold the torch?”
Penelope takes it from me and I knock on the table and under the table, looking for a hollow which could hide a portal.
“Can I put the torch down now?”
“No, wait.”
I get some thick books and set them on the table and put the torch on top. I stare at the colours, Penelope stares at the colours, but nothing happens. She yawns like a bored lioness and lays her head on her arms. The breath of the yawn catches up with me, it smells heavy and sleepy, like the dregs of old milk in an unwashed cup. I stare at her face, her head, her body, her entirety. I’m not sure if I genuinely like her or if it’s the shape of her name that appeals to me: all rounded smiling letters and soft consonants like the theme tune of a children’s television programme.
“Let’s have a drink outside!” she shouts suddenly, her head popping up sharply with the force of her idea.
“But there’s no rainbow in the sunshine,” I say.
“Ah, Vivian, leprechauns like the sun too, they make flipflops instead of shoes when it’s sunny.”
I stare at her. Penelope may look like an ice cream but she acts like a cone. She jumps up from her chair and foosters again in the cupboard, taking out two glasses. Then she opens the fridge and pulls out a bottle of wine, unscrews the top and sloshes it into the glasses. It sounds like a giant swallowing a waterfall. She hands me a glass and leads the way onto the balcony. There are two chairs and a table facing the sun, as if they were bought especially for this occasion, this exact hour. The drone of a lawnmower next door sounds like a snore without breaths. We sit. Penelope holds her glass up and says, “Cheers,” and I do the same. I take a gulp and the cold shock of it on my throat is a welcome, it feels like the only thing that could be done right now. We sit and drink in a silence that I hope i
s comfortable, but I’m not sure, so I start using my words in case it isn’t.
“I might be drinking wine in France this summer.”
“Oh?”
Penelope turns her yellow-and-blue face to me. I take another slug of wine.
“I’m probably going to France with my sister and her family. They have a house there.”
“Oh…?”
This “oh” has the power of a question in it, and she barely misses a breath before asking,
“Can I come too?”
“Let me think.”
I close my eyes and think about my sister and her husband and their two children; it will be like Noah’s Ark with them all marching two by two and me trailing behind them alone.
“Yes, probably, I’ll just check with my sister.”
I sup more wine. The sun has melted its gaze a bit, it seems hazier and less direct. My tongue feels thick when I try to form my S’s, so I focus on using consonants with a tougher coating. Penelope stretches out her arms in front of her. They are egg-shell-beige except for the white crooks of both elbows.
“I can paint the sea in France,” she says.
I picture her in a swimsuit and beret holding a palette of paint and a brush, swashing stripes of pink and yellow and green onto the waves.
“As long as you don’t paint it blue,” I say, “it’s blue enough already.”
“Mm.”
Her voice sounds like it’s under the sea already, and when I look at her face, it’s full of bliss and waves. She is draped back in her chair, her body looks looser somehow.
“Would an older mermaid be called a mermissus?” I ask.
“An older Irish mermaid, perhaps,” she says.
“We’ll see mermadames in France.”
“And mermonsieurs too.”
Penelope winks at me, her mouth falling open at the same time. She can’t go looking for monsieurs in France, “mer-” or otherwise; she’s my friend and not Monsieur’s. She refills our glasses, and I take two big sups to put the thought out of my mind.
“Leprechauns like to drink,” I say. “Whiskey’s their favourite.”
“Let’s try him with some wine,” Penelope says.
Eggshells Page 21