by Sarah Jasmon
Victoria threw one leg over the wall and sat there, watching them go down the garden. ‘Where did you find her?’
Piet didn’t seem to hear, and carried on, but Moira glanced over her shoulder, letting her gaze rest on Helen, as if she thought she was the one who had spoken. Her voice was cool and mocking.
‘Where do you think he found me, in the bargain bin?’
Helen felt herself colour, her mouth opening and closing in mute protest. Victoria swung her second leg across and went over to the van.
‘Bitch.’
Helen heard the softly spoken curse, but Victoria didn’t seem to be inviting any opinion. She reached into the van for the box and headed towards the house without saying anything more. Helen could feel her animosity, though, imprinted on the air. It was disturbing, as if there was some kind of history playing out. For a second, Moira reminded her of the older girls at school, the tough ones who rolled up their skirts to unofficial shortness and smoked more or less openly at break times. But she had the gut feeling this was between Moira and Victoria; although Moira had been looking at her, she hadn’t seen her. She followed Victoria into the cottage, pushing against her own reluctance.
Piet and Moira were in the sitting room, both leaning back in their chairs, both with a foot crossed up on their other knee. Victoria was over by the window, fiddling with a group of small animal figures left there by Pippa. Helen had followed Victoria to the doorway, but hung back from entering. She watched as Moira studied the painting, and felt her fingers grip the door curtain with dislike. Who did she think she was, curling her lip like that?
‘Have you told Alice that we have a guest?’ Victoria’s voice was almost normal.
Again, Piet ignored her, taking his time in rolling a cigarette before passing the tin to Moira. Then he flicked his lighter, inhaled, and reached down for a cardboard tube on the floor next to him.
‘For you.’ He tossed it to Victoria. ‘I found a poster stall at the market, every girl needs Che Guevara on her wall.’
Victoria slid the poster out and unrolled it. Intense, shadowed eyes burned out from a red background. She didn’t say anything, but with one finger, she touched the red star on the man’s beret.
‘Helen, here’s something to broaden your reading list.’
Dumb with surprise, Helen held out her hands in time to catch the books he threw over to her. There were two of them, both battered paperbacks. She tilted them sideways to read the titles along the spines. The French Lieutenant’s Woman and Bonjour Tristesse.
‘Thank you!’ She looked up, saw his uneven smile. She took a deep breath. ‘I don’t read French, though.’
‘Don’t panic, I got you the English version.’ He winked at her and she smiled back.
‘Did you get me anything?’ Pippa, who had been standing behind Helen, pushed her way past in a hurry, and leant against the arm of Piet’s chair. Piet looked up at her and pulled at a pigtail.
‘They didn’t have anything for your wall, trouble. But I might have found something in the sweet shop.’ He levered himself up slightly, and felt in his back pocket. ‘Here you go. Share them with Fred, mind.’
Pippa grabbed the bag and gave him a hug. Helen was watching their faces, so close together, when a sudden realization flooded her mind. Piet had been in Greece when Victoria’s dad had vanished. She remembered her calculations about birthdays. If Piet was the twins’ father, it would explain why he took care of everyone. Piet’s voice interrupted her thoughts.
‘And Victoria.’ He was holding out a small box. ‘Repair kit for the dinghy.’
Victoria had let the poster roll back on itself. Her eyes were on Piet as she reached out to take it, but she spoke to Helen.
‘Come and help me put it up.’
Helen gave Moira a wide berth as she crossed over to the stairs, but she couldn’t help a quick glance before she followed Victoria up. The older girl was relaxed in her seat, taking no apparent interest in what was going on around her. One hand held a cigarette, the other lay motionless on the armrest. It was all wrong. Instead of gratitude, she gave off an air of being in her rightful place. As if tuning in to her thoughts, Moira lifted her eyes to return Helen’s inspection. They rested on her with no expression, leaving Helen to turn away hurriedly, feeling she’d failed some kind of test.
When she got to the bedroom, Victoria was lying on the bed staring at the poster of her dad behind the drums. Helen put her books on top of the piled surface of the chest of drawers and took in the crowded walls.
‘Which one do you want to take down?’
Victoria gave a dismissive wave. ‘It can go on top of the others.’ She rolled on to her side, propping her chin up on one hand, the other one picking at the fringe of the bedspread. ‘What did you make of her?’
‘Dunno.’ Helen wasn’t sure what Victoria herself thought. ‘She’d be prettier if she washed.’
‘You’re so bourgeois sometimes.’ Victoria had one of the strands of the bedspread wrapped around her finger. She gave a vicious tug downwards, but the threads refused to break, digging into her skin instead. She let them unravel and inspected the white and red grooves left behind. ‘I don’t trust her.’
‘Why?’
‘She had that look.’
They were silent for a while. Helen could hear the twins running in the garden and Seth in his room playing his guitar. Either it was something new he was making up, or he didn’t know the chords too well. He would start with a run of single notes spilling over each other, but when he tried to add the chords underneath he had trouble keeping them straight. Over and over, he stumbled on the same section. Part of Helen’s mind was following his attempts, willing him on, the other half was preoccupied with Moira and Alice.
‘Will she stay for long?
Victoria glanced up.
‘Who, Moira? Shouldn’t wonder. I reckon she’ll be hard to shift.’ She pulled at the thread again, and this time it snapped. ‘It’s something Piet does. Sometimes he paints them.’
Helen imagined Moira lying on the sofa, Alice forced to watch from her picture frame above. In her mental picture, Moira was wearing her boots, the cool, assessing expression on her face. She shook her head as if that would get rid of the image, but she didn’t seem to have a stop button. Her mind turned its viewfinder, with helpless clarity, so she could see Piet standing there, holding a brush and studying both women.
‘If your mum …?’
Victoria interrupted with a snort. ‘Seriously? Alice? Anyway, Piet pays the rent.’
She went back to picking at the bedspread. Helen stayed where she was, perched on the edge of the chest of drawers, and feeling somehow in the way. The books from Piet were next to her, but it felt as if reaching for them would send a signal saying she wasn’t involved in this, that she didn’t care. The silence stretched out, broken only by the sound of Seth’s guitar. He finally got the run of notes in the right order. Victoria lifted her head and yelled through the wall.
‘Play something with a tune!’
Seth’s reply was brief and profane.
Chapter Thirteen
Moira’s presence changed everything. She didn’t have to do anything; it was the mere fact of her that made the difference. On the day following her arrival, Helen stayed at home, reluctant to face the cottage whilst Moira was there. She expected Victoria to come and find her, secretly looking forward to another session of complaining about Piet’s unwanted guest. When Victoria didn’t show up, Helen finally made herself go and see for herself what was happening, only to find the cottage was silent and the doors locked and unwelcoming. There was no reason why the family couldn’t go out, of course, no law that said they had to tell her where they were. But it hadn’t happened before, not like this, and she felt as if a layer of her skin had been stripped away.
There’d been no sign of anyone today, either, so here she was, in the garden by herself again, transported back to the beginning of the summer but with the emptiness doubled. The
same roots were pressing against the small of her back and the same light flickered over her closed eyes. She couldn’t bring herself to make the walk down the lane, though. If no-one came, at least they wouldn’t know how much she cared.
The sun itself felt stale, its tricks exhausted. She tried to relax, to let her mind float away, but she couldn’t find a comfortable position, and there were ants and tickling grass. The sound of an engine trickled through the air and she sat up to listen, waiting for it to turn down the lane and bump over the track in the field, but it faded away. She gave up on the garden and wandered inside, flicking the television on and then off. Nothing. In her bedroom, the curtains were drawn and the air was fusty. How long had it been since her bed had been changed? Doing anything about it was too much effort, though. Finding sheets, tucking in corners … She pushed the idea away, and sat at her desk, pushing over the pile of books that waited on its otherwise clear surface. What if they didn’t come back? They’d arrived so suddenly. What was there to stop them leaving in the same way?
The wall in front of her was covered in rosebuds, tight and complacent on their white background. They wobbled, vibrating slightly as if to say they’d warned her nothing good would come of having friends like the Dovers. She’d always hated those rosebuds, she realized, sitting in the background with their endless conformity and pink smugness. There was a zipped-up case of felt-tips in the desk drawer. She started off with black. The first rosebud disappeared behind a neat, black circle. As she went along, changing colour at random, the circles grew bigger and the colouring-in less exact. When the whole area in front of her was complete, she drew a breath. It was a start.
She was in the kitchen when she heard Mick’s car. As she waited for him to reach the door, she felt herself tense, picking up something, either anger or frustration. There was a feeling of excess in the air, something she hadn’t been aware of since Piet had started working on the boat with him. Had he noticed Piet’s absence as well? It was a different emotion, though, that pushed in with him.
‘Get some newspaper on the table quick, before I drop it!’ Her dad had the door open and was coming in backwards. She automatically went to close it behind him, her hands trembling with reaction. ‘Newspaper, girl, hurry!’
The surfaces were all clear for a change.
‘I don’t …’
‘Box, cupboard, open your eyes!’
His voice was impatient. There was newspaper in the box, but it was covered in a layer of slimy potato peelings and tea leaves.
‘This is the compost …’
‘I don’t bloody care if it’s the crown bloody jewels, get it on the table.’
With the extreme ends of her fingertips, Helen shook loose the lower sections and spread them out, and he dropped his armload with a grunt and a thud.
‘How about that, then?’
It was a propeller that must have been underwater for a long time. The flaring edges of the blades were thickened with what appeared to be shellfish, and the rank smell of water and weed hung over the tabletop.
‘It looks … old.’
‘Quality engineering, this.’ Mick ran a palm along the length of the shaft. ‘Needs a bit of work to get it back into condition, that’s all. Nothing that can’t be fixed.’
‘Where did you get it from?’
‘I told you about the shrimpers, didn’t I? Saw it the other week, but they had someone else interested. Fell through, though.’
‘Are you planning to work on it in here?’ It was as if her mother were in the room. She fished around for a palliative. ‘Because I could find you some more newspaper.’
He wasn’t listening anyway. ‘I’ll take it through to the garage.’ He heaved the propeller up from the table and gestured with his head for her to open the door. ‘Bring me out a sandwich, will you?’
Helen held the door wide, making sure she was out of range as he sidled through.
‘Will cheese and pickle be OK?’
‘Yes, fine, anything.’ He crossed the path to the side door of the garage and stopped. Belatedly realizing he was waiting for her, Helen ran to open it for him. As she went back to the house, he called something after her.
‘What was that?’
‘That youngster was round earlier.’ His voice sounded impatient. ‘Her and another one.’
‘Who was it with her?’ Not Moira, she thought. Please not Moira. She gripped the door handle, willing him to make the right answer.
Mick’s reply was muffled.
‘What was that?’
There was a heavy thump from the garage, and Mick’s head came back out.
‘Don’t go setting me up as your social bloody secretary.’ He was cleaning grease from his hands with what looked like one of her mother’s old blouses. ‘Go and find her yourself.’
Victoria was sitting on the canal bank, throwing stones across the water, as if she’d never been gone. She was wearing her tie-dyed sundress as well, the one she’d worn on the first day. It was an omen, a good one, but Helen paused, trying to hold down the bubbles of hope saying everything could go back to normal. A pair of seagulls swooped down, screeching in their oddly seaside way, and the noise sent her onward.
‘Hey, what’re you doing?’ She’d already decided not to ask where they’d been. Much better to pretend not to have noticed.
Victoria skimmed another stone out with a practised flick of her wrist. It bounced four times before sinking below the surface, and she scooped up the rest of her pile in one hand, throwing them out in a wide arc.
‘Nothing.’ Victoria stood up, reaching her arms over her head and leaning back into the stretch. ‘I’m so bored.’
Did that mean Moira had already left? Helen waited for Victoria to say something about her, but she remained silent, her face turned to the water, her expression dissatisfied and closed off. Helen had an unsettling thought: what if Seth had gone somewhere with Moira? She could imagine the conversation only too well: the dropping of a remark about a place to visit, a shared interest, then rucksacks packed and buses taken. Victoria would be angry at being left behind. Or perhaps the empty day could be explained by a trip to a port, the waving off of the ferry. Had there been enough time? Helen tried to remember where the ports were. Liverpool? And wasn’t there one in Wales? At the back of her mind was the dull weight of never seeing Seth again. She tried to think of ways to ask without giving herself away, but whatever she came up with seemed to have a big red flag waving her intentions. The silence stretched out, and she heard herself babbling.
‘Dad got a propeller for the boat. They’ll have it all done soon and we can go sailing.’
Victoria’s face turned, her expression briefly engaged. ‘Will he let us take it out?’
Helen felt the tangles of opposing loyalties grab at her again. Could she say yes? She pictured her dad’s face, heard the lengthy reasons why he would never agree.
‘I doubt it, not by ourselves.’
‘A lot of fun that’ll be.’ Victoria scratched at her ankle. ‘We need a boat of our own.’
‘What about the dinghy?’
‘Still needs fixing.’
Victoria tossed another stone before making an abrupt turn. After a moment, Helen followed her under the bridge. There was a small ledge on the inside and, if they sat down, they could edge along sideways into the shadows. Victoria scooped up some more stones and started to throw them at a patch of hanging moss where the bridge curved down on the opposite side.
‘Where does it go, anyway?’
‘The canal?’ Helen slid her thumbnail under a bloom of lichen. ‘Along there,’ she nodded to the right, ‘it takes you to Liverpool. And the other way is Leeds.’
‘How come you don’t know more about it? I mean, how long have you lived here for?’
Helen shrugged. ‘Took it for granted, I suppose.’
‘But you must have wondered?’
‘No.’
Victoria made a disapproving teacher’s face. ‘What’s the go
od of an expensive education if you don’t think?’
‘It was a comprehensive!’ Helen gave her a shove, forgetting their precarious position. Victoria grabbed at her in mock terror before speaking again.
‘Shall I tell you what I know?’
‘Can I stop you?’
Victoria started to shuffle along to the far side of the bridge. She waited for Helen to catch up, then led the way around the wall to clamber up on to the bridge itself. At the top she stopped, and swung herself up to sit on the rough stonework, her legs hanging down above the water. Helen leaned out. It wasn’t particularly high, but even so, the drop made her stomach clench.
‘So.’ Victoria pointed back over her shoulder. ‘Down there is Liverpool, but when you get there you’re stuck in a dock. This way,’ she pointed ahead, ‘goes, as you said, to Leeds, which means, technically, you can sail from the sea on one side of the country to the sea on the other.’
And reach ports and ferries. Helen couldn’t bring herself to ask. Instead she fell in with Victoria’s mock solemnity. ‘Very handy, if you don’t have a car. And why did you ask me if you already knew?’
Victoria held a finger to her lips. ‘I haven’t finished. A short distance along, there’s a branch that connects with the Ribble and therefore with the sea. Which makes the sea, quite literally, within our reach.’ She swung her legs back over the wall and jumped lightly on to the road. ‘Which Uncle Piet says would be foolhardy in our dinghy, especially if we can’t fix it. But your dad’s boat …’
‘You’ll have trouble convincing him.’
‘We’ll see.’ Victoria ran down the bridge. ‘Let’s see how far we can get down the bank.’
The towpath on the far side of the bridge was well trodden at first, the grass flattened by walkers, most of them with dogs. Here, the canal swung round in a slow curve before straightening out next to open, flat fields. It wasn’t long, though, before the track petered out and was lost under a swell of brambles.