by Sarah Jasmon
‘Hi.’ Her mind was completely blank. She sounded like a fool. The girl ignored her, anyway.
‘Do we have to go?’ Pippa’s voice was desolate. ‘But we’ve got horse jumps!’
‘Yes, we do. And if you go off like that again without telling me, I’m going to tie your hair to the banisters.’
‘I did tell you. I called up the stairs. I …’
‘Pippa, get your shoes.’ She turned her back slightly. ‘And you, Will,’ She didn’t look at him.
‘It’s Fred. We decided.’ Pippa folded her arms and stared into her sister’s face. ‘And we did tell you.’
‘Pippa, shut up.’
Turning to Helen, Pippa spoke with trembling dignity. ‘This is my sister. She thinks she’s in charge but she’s only fifteen. She’s called Victoria. Like the Queen. Because they’re both grumpy.’ She trailed off across the grass.
Helen cleared her throat. She couldn’t work out if Victoria was angry with her. Should she have known that the twins weren’t supposed to be there? Sent them back earlier? She put one hand up to fiddle with her hair, remembered the dirt under her nails and jammed both hands in her pockets. ‘I like your dress.’
‘Thanks.’ Victoria gave a brief smile then went back to examining the grass along the edge of the path.
‘Are you staying with Mrs Weaver for long?’
Victoria glanced up. ‘Who’s Mrs Weaver?’
There was silence.
‘In the house up there.’ Helen lifted a hand to point but let it drop at Victoria’s expression. ‘Isn’t she, well, your grandmother?’
‘Is that what Pippa’s been telling you?’ Victoria glanced over to where Pippa was inching into her shoes. Her face was the same as Pippa’s had been when she was exasperated with Will. ‘What else has she said?’
‘She didn’t …’ Helen tried to remember what Pippa had said. ‘I thought perhaps …’
Her sunburn prickled across her neck and shoulders as she came to a halt.
Pippa wandered up to them. She seemed to have regained her equanimity. ‘Can I come again, Helen?’
Helen caught an expression of what could have been annoyance or distaste flash over Victoria’s face, although it was hard to read her properly.
‘I … uh …’ She felt bad. It had been kind of fun but, with Victoria standing there, she felt silly. ‘I’m – I’m not sure my dad’ll want to keep the canes up.’
‘What she means, Pippa, is no, she’s got better things to do than jump around like an idiot.’
Before Helen could say more, Pippa pushed past Victoria and started off down the lane, going towards the canal. ‘I hate you, Victoria Dover!’
Will slid past Victoria, giving her as wide a berth as he could before setting off after Pippa, all arguments forgotten.
Victoria made to follow them. Helen’s mind raced. There had to be some way of delaying her. It was one thing to make the best of an empty summer, but knowing someone like this was down the road, someone who’d never come back because of a stupid first impression: that would be unbearable. She spotted Will’s fishing net.
‘Do you want to take this?’ She bent to pick it up. Victoria had turned, and was staring at the net as if wondering what it was. Helen kept going anyway: ‘And will Pippa be OK? She can come over if she wants, I didn’t mean …’ She stumbled on what she wanted to say. ‘You know, I didn’t want to upset her.’
Victoria gave an unexpected laugh. ‘It is what you meant, though, isn’t it? I’ve done you a favour, believe me. She’d have taken residence, bridles and all.’
Helen smiled back. ‘I didn’t have anything else to do.’ She thought of something else. ‘Do they know about the canal down?’ She gestured in the direction Pippa and Will had gone. ‘Only, it’s quite deep.’
‘Yeah.’ Victoria passed through the gate and shut it behind her with a bang. ‘We’re living in a cottages on the bank.’
Helen waited for Victoria to look back as she followed the path of the twins, to wave, or make some acknowledgement of leaving, but she sauntered away with no sign, already in another world. Then, at the last moment, she seemed to lift the fishing net in a kind of salute. Helen raised a hand in response. The scent of the privet hedge was rising, as it always did at this time of day. It was an odd smell, coming from nowhere and setting off a tingle in the pit of her belly. Only last night, as she’d leaned out of her window, it had surrounded her with melancholy, reminding her of everything she hadn’t got. Now it promised excitement instead, the world outside, some half-acknowledged dream. Helen rested her forearms on top of the gate and dropped her chin down on them as she gazed out at the empty lane. A new summer seemed to be spread out in front of her, but it was still beyond her reach. If only Victoria would come back, then perhaps it would happen.
Chapter Three
A handful of letters slithered down on to the doormat as Helen came down the stairs the next morning. She knew without looking that they’d mostly be junk. There was already a heap of them on the hallstand now that her mother wasn’t there to sort and bin. Helen thought about adding the fresh arrivals to the pile, but she couldn’t be bothered to bend down and collect them up. She carried on to the kitchen instead, pausing as she always did to assess her father’s mood. If he was even a bit cheerful, it would validate her own feeling of lightness, meaning her anticipations were strong enough to be rubbing off.
He sat at the table, dressed but unshaven, his hair rumpled and greasy. There was an empty mug and a full ashtray at one elbow and he’d pushed the mess on the table aside to make room for the newspaper. Helen pictured the kitchen as she’d always known it: ordered, shiny, nothing ever out of place. It wasn’t big, and the layout made no pretensions to an efficient use of the space, one of her mother’s running complaints. It was too much to expect her to manage in such an impractical room, she said. She’d been promised a new kitchen and she wasn’t going to put up with this matchbox any longer. Helen packed the arguments back into their mental box and slammed the lid. She hated remembering them the trickle of helplessness as she’d watched them brew and the sick fear of what was to come. She didn’t want to feel sorry for her dad, either. His back wasn’t giving much away, but the air was free from any noticeable tension. She was an expert at spotting that.
He turned another page of the paper, and then picked up his mug, holding it out to one side. ‘Make me one, will you?’
‘If you’ll let me get by.’
He squeezed himself in a fraction, eyes fixed on the paper. ‘You’re up early today. Got a plane to catch?’
Helen pulled the kettle to the length of its cord and tilted it to fit under the tap. The sky was as blue as on the previous day, warm air pooling through the open window. She smiled inwardly as she spotted the garden canes scattered over the grass. Pippa was so sweet. The thought prompted her to lean over the sink so she could see the gate. Not that she was expecting to see anyone, of course. She held her breath anyway.
Water overflowed from the spout of the kettle, soaking the front of her T-shirt and spraying over the floor.
‘Damn!’ She let go of the kettle, grabbed at a tea towel to dry herself. ‘Shit!’ The tea towel had left a streak of grease down the white front of her top.
She had yet to get out of the habit of expecting a rebuke for clumsiness. There was something relaxing in the way Mick didn’t notice. Helen emptied some of the water out of the kettle and put it back down on the counter, flicking the switch and looking for the dishcloth. It was crumpled up behind the tap. She soaked up some of the puddle with it and then pulled at her T-shirt, wondering if rubbing at the mark would make things worse. Maybe her dad could help. She glanced at him dubiously. He did surprise her sometimes with things he knew, and she didn’t have another clean top. ‘How do you get grease out of clothes?’
‘Washing-up liquid.’ Mick turned another page. ‘Where’s my tea?’
Helen ignored the question and opened a cupboard door. There was an empty packe
t of cornflakes, and a tin of custard.
‘There’s nothing for breakfast.’ It was Mick’s turn to ignore her. She crossed to the other side of the table and peered in the fridge. ‘And we’re out of milk.’
Mick leaned back and stretched, nodding his head towards the door.
‘Doorstep. I haven’t brought it in.’ He rubbed at his temples. ‘Got a bloody headache again. Must be the sun.’
Or the whisky. She tried not to notice the empty bottle standing by the toaster. Saying anything made it worse. The milk was on the back doorstep, the foil top of one bottle pecked out by a bird. The milkman had left a note. She brought it in with the bottles, and dropped it by her dad’s elbow.
‘Dad …’ She was stopped by the sound of the kettle. A plume of steam was bouncing against the wall, making wet runnels on the paint. There weren’t any clean mugs in the cupboard, so she made do with rinsing a couple from the crowded sink. ‘Dad, you know those cottages?’ She put the tea on the table.
‘What cottages?’ Mick turned another page of the paper, leaning in to study an advert.
‘The ones down on the canal.’
‘What about them?’ He put the paper down and reached for his tea. ‘Where are my cigarettes?’
Helen could see the tobacco tin under the edge of the newspaper. She sat down on the other side of the table and picked up her own tea. ‘Does anyone live there?’
Mick wasn’t listening. ‘I had it a minute ago. Mess every-bloody-where.’
He swept a hand through the piles of paper in front of him, and the tin fell to the floor. His belly got in the way of him bending, and he couldn’t quite reach it. She stifled a sense of revulsion and leaned down to pick it up for him.
‘Dad? The cottages?’
‘What?’ He flicked the lid of the tin up with a thumbnail, pulled out the packet of papers. ‘Nearly out.’ He glanced up at last, fingers separating the strands of tobacco and rolling them up in the paper without him needing to concentrate. ‘They’re only at the bottom of the lane, go and see for yourself.’
Helen took a sip of tea. ‘I wondered if anyone lives there, that’s all. I thought they were empty.’
She could picture them: a row of three or four in a brick terrace, with front gardens right up to the towpath. Surely they’d had missing tiles, broken glass in the windows? She hadn’t been down to the canal for such a long time, and they probably weren’t as bad as she thought. A tiny, clear memory popped into her head, of herself on the bank, holding her dad’s hand. That must have been years ago, definitely before they’d bought this house. It had been one of their special places, where he’d taught her to skim stones and explained about the locks. They’d had a game where they chose a boat, and her dad would tell her a story about how they’d sail away to where the water was carried across a valley on a bridge as high as the sky. Had it been real? She turned to ask him, half-expecting to the man from that time to be sitting there. He’d finished making the cigarette, and was tapping the end against the folded newspaper, searching for something. Helen picked up his lighter and held it out. Mick sat back in his chair, the rollup in his mouth, and held the flame to its tip. When he was done, Helen picked the lighter up, even though she knew the engraving on the side by heart. The letters curled into each other: Not all who wander are lost. She flicked the top open, spun the wheel, watched the flame rise steadily. She could remember the moment when she managed to light it by herself for the first time.
‘There’s the old lady, she still lives down there. What’s her name, Taylor? Tyler?’ Mick’s voice came as a surprise, and it took her a moment to catch up with what he was talking about. ‘She must be getting on a bit, though.’
‘So they’re liveable?’
‘More or less.’ Mick pushed his chair back with purpose and stood up, patting at his pockets. ‘Right, I’m going into Southport. Someone’s having a sale of boat stuff. One of the old shrimpers.’ He pushed the stub of his cigarette into the pile on the ashtray.
‘Can you get some shopping?’ Helen scrabbled in the mess on the table for a pen and an old envelope.
‘Only if you’re quick.’ He picked up the newspaper and folded it twice before shoving it in his back pocket. ‘Not too much, mind, I don’t want to be all day.’
After Mick left, Helen sat at the table gazing into her empty mug. The sense that something was going to happen, the mild fizz that had woken her up and driven her out of bed, was fading away. The mess seemed to have taken over, and she’d forgotten to say about getting milk. It wasn’t fair that she was left to do it all. She let out her breath in a long sigh, tipped the rest of her tea into the sink. She wasn’t going to do any tidying up now, anyway. At least the sun was out. If nothing else, she might as well see if she could get a tan this year.
The leaves from the tree danced shadows across her eyelids. There was a lump digging into her back, from a root going under the ground, she supposed. It was too much effort to find another spot, so she wriggled around until she was more or less comfortable. How long had she been lying there? Long enough to check for any colour change? She took a quick peek. In her mind, she was already turning brown, and the pale reality made her close her eyes with a sigh. She was considering whether it was time to turn over when she heard the gate squeak. From some vague superstitious impulse, she kept her eyes shut. If she didn’t look, she wouldn’t be disappointed. Instead, she strained her senses to pick up clues. She was almost sure someone was there, but didn’t realise how close they’d come until a shower of grass seeds fell on her face. She sat up in a hurry to see Victoria collapsing down next to her.
‘Are you busy?’ She was wearing exaggeratedly baggy trousers, held up on her hips with a drawstring and tightening at her ankles so the fine cotton ballooned around her as she sat, and a white sleeveless blouse with elaborate pintucking down the front. It looked like an antique. ‘I had to get out of the house. I painted my room this morning and now, of course, the twins want to paint the attic, and they expect me to help them.’ She felt around in a pocket, pulling out a squashed bag of jelly babies. ‘Do you want one?’
‘Thanks.’ Helen took a moment to choose, in lieu of any speech. A blackbird called out from the hedge into the silence. Victoria bit the head off a green baby and impaled the body on a twig. She reached out a hand and picked up the book from where Helen had dropped it on the grass.
‘Are you enjoying this?’ She put on a voice of exaggerated drama. ‘“A stirring tale of passion and betrayal, sweeping from the courts of the French kings to the conquest of the New World.” Sounds like total crap to me.’ Without waiting for an answer, she flopped back on to the grass, and seemed to be addressing the top of the tree. ‘I’ve got a reading list for the summer. All the books people complain about.’
‘All of them?’ Helen felt like kicking herself. Why did she have to sound so sceptical? Victoria didn’t seem to mind, though. She threw a jelly baby into the air and caught it neatly in her mouth before holding out the bag.
‘It was in the paper. I’ll give it to you too, and we can share the books. I’ve not really started yet, so you haven’t got loads to catch up on.’
‘OK.’ Helen reached for the paperback and studied the cover. ‘I was working on a system of random choice. Closed my eyes and had to read the one I touched first.’ She discarded it. ‘If you think that one’s bad you should have seen the last one.’
Victoria laughed, catching at a daisy on the grass above her head and shredding off the petals.
‘Come and try that at our house.’ She threw the remains of the flower at the trunk of the tree. ‘We carry all these books round with us in boxes and none of them are worth reading. I had to go to the library to get the books on my list, and the twins wanted to come along, of course. They cause havoc on the bus.’
Helen sat up and wrapped her arms around her knees.
‘How long have you been here? Only … I mean, I haven’t noticed any removals van or anything.’
Victoria raised her eyebrows.
‘Removals? Hardly.’ She held out the bag, but there was only one left, so Helen shook her head. Victoria bit into it, and then screwed up the paper bag. ‘A friend of Alice’s brought some stuff round in his van. And there’s a bit more coming next week.’
Helen tried to place the name from Pippa’s chatter the day before. She couldn’t remember hearing it.
‘Is Alice your sister?’
Victoria pushed herself up on her elbows. She squinted slightly, and aimed the paper bag at an empty flowerpot.
‘No, my mum.’
Helen waited for more, but Victoria didn’t expand. .
‘What’s it like around here, anyway?’ She asked the question without any great enthusiasm, examining the immediate area with a world-weary expression.
‘Oh, you know.’ Helen bent to scratch at a bite on her ankle to gain time. It wasn’t something she thought about. It was just home, with the wind beating across the flat expanse of the fields behind and the sky that had reminded her of the prairies ever since she’d been given My Antonia for Christmas years before. And, when her mother left, it was a place where she’d been surprised to find she’d needed to stay. ‘Quiet. Not much happens.’
‘Oh.’ Victoria sat up and crossed her legs. ‘Is it only you living here?’
‘Well, and my dad.’ Helen waited for the enquiring look which meant, And what about your mother? But it didn’t come.
‘It’s a lot of house.’
Helen tried to see it through Victoria’s eyes. Grey pebbledash on the walls, stains running down from the overflow pipes. It was quite big, she supposed. She’d never thought of it like that. Victoria hadn’t finished with her questions.
‘Are you staying home for the summer? Or do you go away?’
Helen leaned over to pick up her glass of squash but there was a wasp floating in it. She didn’t want to lie, but she hated having to admit that holidays mostly revolved around air shows and vintage car rallies. She’d never been abroad, unless you counted the Isle of Wight. It was one of the other things her mother had always gone on about: never going anywhere, how other people rented gîtes or toured the Italian lakes. There had been talk of hiring a boat on the Norfolk Broads this year, but that was out the window now.