by Beth Moran
The van was silent for a while, save for the rhythmic snipping of the magic scissors.
“You do realize that when it comes down to the bare bones of it, knowing the truth about your father won’t help you find yourself?”
Oh, I do know that. I have no illusions about finding myself. It’s losing myself I’ve been working on.
Half an hour later I scuttled into reception, about two pounds and six million split ends lighter. Scarlett was shaking hands with Erica’s dad, Mr Fisher. He picked up a briefcase and marched past me out of the door. She crumpled onto the counter, head in her hands, elbows resting on a pile of papers.
“What’s happened?”
My boss inhaled sharply and flipped up her head. Her hands fluttered at her chignon before shuffling the papers, then darting back up to pat her hair again. I waited, and she composed herself, deliberately stilling her hands on the counter.
“Due to economical and recessional factors beyond his control, Fisher has increased our rent. Oh, yes – and being an evil, greedy, graspin’, felonious leech who would suck the whole world to a lifeless husk if it meant he made some extra money out of it may have somethin’ to do with it too!”
“Is it bad?”
“Bad enough that I ain’t gonna sleep this week.” She shook her head. “We’ll think of somethin’. We always do.”
“Can you put up the price of the pitches?”
“Not enough to cover costs and remain competitive. We got peace here, and pigs, but we need a whole lot of bells and whistles if we want to charge much more than we do now.”
I tried to think of something helpful to say. Grace’s secret shoes popped into my head.
But then Scarlett looked up from her muddle of papers, and her startled eyes focused properly on me. She gasped, and nearly vaulted over the counter in her effort to reach me.
“Honey, your hair!” She oohed and aahed, stroking and turning me this way and that. Her voice softened. “Marion, you are so darn beautiful! I hope you can begin to hold that heart-stoppin’, blood-whizzin’, hormone-enticin’ head a little higher now.”
A steely glare entered her eyes. “Hang bankruptin’ rent rises. We’re goin’ shoppin’. There is no way you are insultin’ such a hairstyle with that bargain-bucket wardrobe of yours. Let’s go!”
Scarlett took me to Southwell, a small market town twenty minutes south of Sherwood Forest, full of quirky tourist shops and cafés serving tea made from real leaves in mix-and-match china. She marched me past a few clothes shops, their windows displaying yummy mummy tunics and drapey cardigans, only stopping when we arrived at the market itself.
“The Hatherstone lot are here on Fridays. They’ll be somewhere near the back.”
She jostled expertly through the crowds of shoppers until we reached the last row, where I recognized Jimbo, his usual Robin Hood tourist tat nowhere in sight. Instead he was manning an olive bar. He waved hello, offering us a sample olive on a cocktail stick.
“Crackin’ ’air, Marion.”
“Thanks, Jimbo.”
I saw a clothes stall standing in the middle, but wondered why Scarlett had brought me to a market for my grand make-over. In my experience of market stalls (limited to Ballydown and watching TV soaps like EastEnders), the clothes they sold were for trampy tarts or old ladies. Or in the case of the pink-haired woman who ran the Hatherstone market clothes stall, a trampy, tarty old lady.
Okay, so she wasn’t that old. Maybe in her fifties. But her orange tan plastered over a smoker’s complexion, and pink zebra-striped jacket over a boob tube and wet-look leggings, made her look it. The top said “Bite Me”. I tried to keep my face impassive. My mind screamed silently at Scarlett, “What on earth have you brought me here for?” My gaze flicked over a rail of plastic mini-skirts; bleached skinny jeans with rips where my knickers would show; garish, frilly crop-tops and that most unflattering outfit known to woman, a catsuit with horizontal stripes and a V-neck so low it would be impossible to wear with a bra.
Scarlett remained cool. She caught the attention of the pink-haired trader and introduced us. Icy cool.
“Marion, this is Amanda. Valerie’s mother.”
Amanda smacked her chewing gum. “We’ve met. All right?”
“Hi.”
She smirked at me. Her face was long and pointed. Like a snake’s face. “Come for a new image?”
I battled to keep my arms from crossing over my body. I had on my raincoat, excellent for keeping wild Irish weather at bay, but at the expense of some style, admittedly. Amanda looked me up and down with her snaky face and snickered.
“What size are you? Ooh – I reckon about a sixteen? Tell you what, let’s go with an eighteen, save any embarrassment. You’re obviously a girl who likes her cake. Nothing wrong with that, mind. Personally I find most fellas like a woman with a bit of sommat to grab hold of.” She rolled her bony, saggy hips and leered at me.
Discovering that this odious woman was Valerie’s mother did not surprise me.
“Amanda.” Scarlett’s voice made a sharp, pointy icicle jabbing at Amanda’s smug bubble. “I’m sure you have lots of work to do. We’ll browse in peace, if you don’t mind.”
Amanda popped her gum again. “Whatever.”
Scarlett took my arm, gently, and bent to mutter in my ear. “As much as I loathe contributing to the profit margins of this business, she is great value for money, and her partner is a good woman who somehow ended up financially shackled together with a nightmare. If we look carefully we’ll find the stock she has bought in. There are gems hidin’ in this trash heap. Now, a split-second lesson on transformin’ your image from jumble sale don’t-give-a-rat’s-ass to I-love-myself fabulous. One: you ain’t fat any more, so stop dressin’ like you are. Two: pick those clothes the secret person that you dream of becomin’ would wear, not what you think you deserve. Three: never try something on just because it’s in fashion, what everybody else is wearing, or in the sale. Do you like it? Will it suit you? Is it well made? Real women are not slaves to fashion but free to be themselves. Four: life is too darn short to save your best dress for a special occasion. Far as I’m concerned, you need no better reason to look your best than simply celebratin’ bein’ alive on God’s great earth for one more day.”
I spent five minutes uselessly dithering up and down the racks before Scarlett ran out of patience. She deftly worked along each of the four rows, pausing two or three times on each rail to whip out an item and toss it to me.
“Right.” She called to Amanda, who lounged at the back of the stall with a cigarette dangling from the side of her mouth. “Still using Betsy’s?”
Amanda shrugged. “She gets a twenty per cent discount for it.”
Behind the market was a retirement complex. Scarlett led me to one of the entrances and rang the buzzer for a ground floor flat.
“Hey, Betsy! How are you doin’, sugar?”
We were buzzed in, and I soon found myself in Betsy’s chintzy bedroom trying on clothes while Scarlett and her friend caught up. I picked out a cardigan, soft dark brown with a thick cable pattern down the front and a knitted belt. Judging it to be a safe, stretchy bet, I put it on over what I was already wearing.
I forced myself to take a look in Betsy’s full-length mirror. I could see the cardigan was shaped well, and it felt comfortable. Did I like it? Did it suit me? It was a size twelve and it actually fitted. That seemed like a good enough reason to buy it.
“How ya doin’ in there?” Scarlett poked her head around the door. She sighed. “Honey. You can’t possibly tell if that beautiful cardigan is gonna work if you are still wearin’ it with those hideous jeans. Here…” She handed me a teal top and a pair of jeans apparently designed for a child.
“I don’t think I’ll be able to – ”
“Put them on. They’ll stretch.”
They did stretch. They were soft and fitted closely, but not tight enough to squish out my flab. What can I say? I looked like a woman. W.O.M.A.N.<
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I bought that outfit, and the rest of them. Scarlett had been right: they were great value. But I was still left with a very light purse, wondering if I could survive on the products of my cooking lessons for the next couple of weeks. I tried to care about having spent all my money on clothes. I didn’t try very hard.
Saturday afternoon, I slunk into my cooking lesson. Not a sexy, slithery, sleek slink. A trying to be invisible so that a handsome, intimidating man won’t notice my new image and embarrass me slink. Reuben sprawled at the huge table reading the paper with a mug of coffee, Lucy in her favourite spot on top of his feet. He looked up at me casually, then became very still for a few moments. My heart ricocheted about in my ribcage. He raised one eyebrow, and pulled out a stool.
“Ready?”
I nodded. Time to stop all this scintillating small talk and get cooking.
We made pumpkin soup (using the empty pumpkin shell as a soup tureen), steak and Guinness pie, and apple cake. Reuben had written out the instructions this time. Consequently, with the minimum necessary conversation (and no patronizing, shouty orders from his girlfriend), I relaxed as I got involved in the tasks, and didn’t make too many mistakes or cause any serious mishaps. Well, okay, I did set the frying pan on fire, so there was no bacon for the soup, but it still tasted good enough for me to take to the bonfire party. The pie and cake both had room for improvement, but were definitely edible.
Reuben had two pieces of cake. I turned away to hide my glow in the washing up, without success. I think my pride and delight lit up the fields all the way from the Hall to the campsite. I half expected a report in the Hatherstone Gazette about luminous aliens invading the estate.
I had swishy hair. I had clothes that actually fit me. I could make a cake worth a second helping.
And my alien sheen had nothing to do with spending two and a half hours in the company of twilight-in-the-forest eyes. Nothing at all.
It was the first Saturday of the long nine-week summer holiday we have in Northern Ireland. Ironic, considering we barely scrape nine days of actual summer. Despite this, I left our house at eight-thirty in the morning dressed in what was basically my school uniform. Faded black boot-cut trousers, a white blouse with an ink stain on the pocket and a baggy black cardigan. No tie, no blazer – I wasn’t a complete loser. A raincoat, of course.
I rang the bell at the side of the library door, as it was still locked. Mrs Brown came into view behind the glass and unfastened the bolts at the top and bottom. A thrill ran through me. I couldn’t believe that I had made it.
“Welcome, Marion. How are you then?” Mrs Brown ignored my dishevelled appearance. “It’s great to have you here. Are you looking forward to it?”
I nodded my head, realized that I was on trial, and took a deep breath. “Yes, thanks. Mrs Brown.”
“Please, call me Colleen, now we’re workmates.” She walked me over to the tiny office behind the help desk. “And somewhere in here is my assistant manager.”
Towering stacks of books packed the tiny office. From behind these floated out the sound of humming: the theme tune from Neighbours, I think.
“Harriet!”
A blueberry-coloured head popped up above one of the book towers. Harriet crawled out on her hands and knees. I had never seen pink jeans before. I had certainly never met anyone who wore pink trousers over the age of eight, or teamed them with a red cardigan. Harriet, who I later found out was twenty-nine, hauled herself up by a spinny office chair. Her cardigan flapped open, revealing two rows of hand-sewn badges on her shiny top.
“Harriet.”
“Hi, Coll.”
“Are those swimming badges?”
Harriet brushed her hands over her chest and stuck out her not-inconsiderable breasts.
“Aye. What of it? I’m proud of my aquatic achievements. Thought I might inspire the weans with my hard-earned success.”
“Five hundred metres?”
“Aye. I can swim to shore. That’s enough.”
“Harriet, why are you wearing your old swimming costume to work?”
Harriet hummed a few bars of Aretha Franklin’s “Respect” as she very deliberately buttoned up her cardigan.
“My washing machine’s broken. I had no more clean knickers and I’ve done the inside out thing already. I’ll buy some more after work. Sorry, Coll.”
The strange thing to me about this was not that I had met somebody who wore a swimming costume to work when she ran out of clean knickers, nor that she hadn’t thought to buy either a new washing machine or more knickers before she used up all the dirty ones. It was that she was possibly the first person I’d met who hadn’t got a ma, a granny, half a dozen aunties, numerous family friends she called aunties anyway, old school friends – anyone – who would put through a load of washing for her. My neighbours and relatives would have burned with shame had they known the many times my mother was too ill to wear clothes, let alone wash them. Nothing had me shipped off to Auntie Paula’s house quicker than a creased blouse or a stain on my cardigan. I had grown very good at doing laundry.
My clothes may have been shabby, sparse hand-me-downs, but there was no disgrace in being poor. Being dirty, slovenly or downright disorganized, now that was another matter entirely. When they arrested Mary Milligan for running a brothel on the top floor of her bed and breakfast (which more than one of my male relatives had been known to frequent), my Auntie Jean commented: “To be sure, it wasn’t right what she did; but I’ll say this much: those sheets on her washing line were always beautiful. The whitest on the street. A woman who gets her washing that white can’t be all bad.”
“I hear you, Jean.” Auntie Paula shook her head in wonderment at whites so white. “All those filthy bodies, rubbing themselves up and down, all hours of the day and night. I’d love to know her secret, that I would.”
I hungered for independence, craved escape from a town full of prying, well-meaning relatives. I dreamed of a world where I would be no longer labelled or judged. Where I could have a broken washing machine and nobody would know or care. Or perhaps, more significantly, I wouldn’t care even if they did. In the humming, pink-jeaned Harriet, I had found my hero.
How was my first day as a library assistant? Stressful, emotionally exhausting, awkward, uncomfortable, brilliant. I spoke four hundred and seventy-eight words. This both terrified and exhilarated me at the same time. I stomped on the little girl who kept screaming that I would kill my mother with my worthless chatter as I read a story to a baby. Squashed the breath out of her when Colleen invited me for supper that evening and I didn’t even phone Ma to check if she was okay first. Punched her temporarily unconscious when Eamonn walked me home and I was the first one to say goodnight.
I walked in the door and found Ma not wondering where I had been, or concerned about how my first day had gone. She was, on the contrary, seething with crazy, jealous rage that I had been working all day, and had not, as she’d predicted, been sacked for being “a pathetic, wallowing, useless dud who creeps people out with attention-seeking behaviour and melodramatic moping”.
I had managed to push every one of her buttons by working for the doctor’s wife, a “manipulative, snotty camel with man’s hands”. If ever I had doubted words were brutal weapons, one conversation with my ma during her plunge back down to serious illness could have convinced me. I prayed she would keep taking her tablets, hold on to the fraying thread connecting her to sanity until I was old enough to avoid another holiday. That she could find a way to love me. Or maybe that my words would spill forth until I killed her after all.
Over the next few weeks, life at the Peace and Pigs settled into a steady rhythm. We worked on campsite repairs and improvements when weather permitted, looked after the animals, dealt with caravan guests and took bookings for the following year. Jake convinced Scarlett to let him design us a website, though since the campsite was often filled to capacity throughout the high season this could bring only limited benefit to the holiday park
income. Grace spent more and more of her time after school at my caravan, occasionally bringing her homework, usually working on her shoes. It turned out we had some things in common. Loneliness, mainly.
Initially I worried Valerie might get jealous. She too often came knocking at my door on her free evenings (did I know the four largest doors in the world are in the Kennedy Space Center and are four hundred and fifty-six feet high?), but I’d underestimated the extent of her pure unselfishness. Valerie often annoyed Grace, who treated her as a pesky little sister with caustic put-downs and mass eye-rolling, but Valerie either didn’t notice or didn’t care.
I spent Saturday afternoons chopping and stirring, blissfully lost in the high of combining different ingredients to produce food that actually began to taste pretty delicious. Reuben, a hands-off teacher, let me rummage through recipe books and experiment by myself while he read the paper to a steady background drone of football commentary. I fell in love with the rhythm of cooking, the focus and patience the process required, finding it an unexpected balm on my turbulent soul. In a few short weeks, cooking became a secret garden where I could forget the world outside and lose myself in the pleasure of my senses. Engagement rings were hidden in the steam of a freshly baked loaf, the memory of photographs overpowered by the smell of herbs lingering in my hair, and the sour taste of threatening messages was drenched with a symphony of new flavours.
Threatening messages. Number three appeared the week after Bonfire Night. No words this time, just four slashed tyres. To claim on my insurance I had to involve the police in the form of Brenda, thorough in her enquiries and quietly concerned that somebody might be trying to scare me out of the forest. I suggested they slashed my tyres because they couldn’t bear the thought of me leaving; got my head down, kept breathing, tried not to get on anyone’s nerves. I wasn’t going anywhere just yet.