I told Mrs Dakin that her milk was in the fridge and that I didn’t know Keithie wasn’t allowed sweets, and she looked at Lisa and raised her eyebrows without speaking.
‘She said I was doing her a really big favour,’ I said and flicked my hair.
Mrs Dakin said she was sorry we had to wait for our money, and I said it was fine, because I’d been looking at Lisa’s mules and I thought I might be able to read Lisa’s magazine when she’d finished with it. Lisa said she wouldn’t be finished with it for ages. Probably never.
Mrs Dakin went into the kitchen to find her purse, and Lisa followed her. I could hear them talking.
She’s a sweet girl, give her a bit of time, Lisa and It wouldn’t kill you just to be nice and You can see how much she looks up to you. I turned to Tilly. ‘Don’t be embarrassed,’ I said, ‘they don’t know you can hear them.’
When they came back, Mrs Dakin remembered something in the pantry and she disappeared for a few minutes.
‘You all right, Mum?’ Lisa said, when Mrs Dakin returned.
Mrs Dakin wasn’t pale, because she always had a tan, but she didn’t look very brown when she walked back in, just slightly yellow and uncomfortable.
‘It’s Dorothy Forbes,’ Mrs Dakin said, ‘she does my bloody head in.’
‘Has she been lying to you as well?’ said Tilly.
Mrs Dakin was about to light a cigarette, but she let the flame go and took the cigarette out of her mouth instead. ‘Lying?’ she said.
I knew Lisa was watching, and so I flicked at my hair again before I spoke. ‘She lied about knowing Mrs Creasy. She said she’d never spoken to her before.’
Mrs Dakin went back to lighting her cigarette. ‘Oh she’s spoken to her, all right,’ she said. ‘She’s definitely bloody spoken to her.’
‘I don’t think she’ll ever get to heaven,’ said Tilly. ‘God doesn’t like goats very much.’
‘Goats?’ Mrs Dakin’s cigarette drooped very slightly in her mouth.
‘What she means’, I said, ‘is people who fib always get discovered. God knows you’ve done something bad, and he’ll come chasing after you with knives.’
‘And swords,’ said Tilly.
‘Both sometimes,’ I said. ‘But the point is everyone gets found out eventually, and you’ll never get away with it, because God is everywhere.’
Tilly and I both waved our arms about.
‘Do you believe in God, Mrs Dakin?’ I said.
Sheila Dakin sat down. Her cigarette had burned into a tail of ash, and it fell into her cardigan as we waited for an answer.
‘I just need something from the pantry,’ she said.
‘You’ve gone really pale, Mum, do you want some water?’
‘I’m just worried about Margaret Creasy,’ she said. ‘I’m worried she’s never going to come back.’
‘Course she’ll come back.’ Lisa sat on the arm of the settee. ‘She’ll just have decided she needs a break from it all.’
Mrs Dakin nodded, like a small child.
‘I don’t think so,’ I said.
Mrs Dakin stared at me. ‘Why?’ she said, ‘why don’t you think so?’
‘Because she had an appointment the next day, and she wasn’t the kind of lady to let people down.’
Mrs Dakin continued to stare. She stared so hard, I could see a large company of red veins, embroidering the whites of her eyes. ‘Who with?’ she said.
I knew Tilly was looking at me, but I decided to answer anyway. ‘Thin Brian,’ I said.
‘Did she,’ Mrs Dakin said, ‘did she now.’ And she rolled up her cardigan sleeves and tried to get to her feet.
Afterwards, Tilly said we shouldn’t have talked about fibbing and swords and Thin Brian, but I told her that it made Mrs Dakin think about God, and surely thinking about God can never really be a bad thing.
Number Ten, The Avenue
10 July 1976
Eric Lamb held the photograph around the edges of its frame.
It had been a cold day. Elsie had always wanted to get married in December. She’d wanted a white, furry muffler and holly at the ends of the pews, and a brush of icing-sugar snow on the paths. Even before she had known who she would marry, she had known all of this. When it was suggested, the vicar had stared at his diary and sucked air in between his teeth, and said it was his busiest time of the year. It had taken Eric three visits and a small bottle of brandy to get him to realize how important it was. As it happened, God didn’t seem to realize the importance either, because their wedding day sky was a scrubbed pigeon-grey. Snowless, holly-less and with the kind of cold that whispered into your bones. Eric had left his sickbed to get married, standing in church with a temperature of 102, and shaking so much with the rigors the vicar had mistaken them for nerves and put a reassuring hand on his shoulder for most of the service. But none of it had mattered. None of it had mattered because he would have done anything for Elsie. And as long as he had Elsie, he had everything.
He replaced the photograph on the mantelpiece. When he’d said ’til death do us part, he never really thought it would happen. It seemed so unlikely, so far-fetched. And yet here he was, sidestepping a world filled with other people’s plans, walking around a shop with half a loaf of bread in a wire basket, and coming down each morning to find the house exactly the same as he had left it the night before.
He took a tin of soup from the cupboard. It was too hot for soup, but his eyes couldn’t seem to find anything else. He was ashamed that he thought of Margaret Creasy now and how much he missed her, but it wasn’t so much the plate of food she would carry round, it was the conversation she brought with it.
She never said that Elsie had a good innings, or it’s been five years and he should pull himself together, and she never commented on Elsie’s toothbrush, which still sat on the sink in the bathroom, or her coat which hung at the bottom of the stairs. She just listened. No one had ever listened to him before, they had only waited until he stopped speaking, so they could burden him their own stories. Perhaps that’s why he told her.
There was a click and a whoosh of gas, and pin-pricks started at the side of the saucepan.
He had never talked to anyone about Elsie. Not properly. Not with any substance. He had murmured all the words you are expected to murmur when people offer concern, but no one really listens to the murmured words. They’re like punctuation in someone else’s speech, small springboards for another person to bounce their opinion from. Margaret Creasy was different. Margaret Creasy asked questions. The kind of questions you can only ask if you were hearing something in the first place.
He stirred the soup. The kitchen filled with a thick smell of tomatoes, and it trespassed into ninety-degree heat.
He hadn’t set out to tell her, although when he went back over the conversation, it was obvious that it would happen. He had told her about the day they were given the diagnosis and how Elsie had said everything was going to be all right, and how her shoulders looked thin and worn out. He told her how Elsie paused after each sentence to give the consultant a space to put the hope, and how the consultant had stayed silent. There was no hope. The cancer was racing through her body as though it had a very important meeting to get to. He told Margaret Creasy about the hospital stays, and the long corridors he walked alone; the nurses with gentle voices and tired eyes; the doctors who circled the wards without ever stopping. He told her how Elsie seemed to disappear into the pillows, how her hands were the only thing he could recognize, how her body seemed to be leaving before she did. He told Margaret Creasy about the day Elsie decided it was enough, and the hospice they turned down, and the bag of tablets they were sent home with. The hospital bed in the front room; the people who came to clean and wash and turn. The shame, the humiliation. He told her about the pain when the cancer found Elsie’s bones, how he would listen to Elsie sobbing when she thought no one could hear. He told her how Elsie said if she had a gun she would shoot herself. How they had both looked at each other.
How he would have done anything for Elsie. He told Margaret Creasy everything. He’d even shown her the handful of tablets which were left in the hospital carrier bag. Margaret had told him to drop them off at the pharmacist’s, but how could he, when they would want to know what happened to the rest?
He took the soup, and set it on a tray with a spoon and yesterday’s bread roll, and he stared at it.
In five years, he had never told anyone about Elsie. He was good at keeping secrets, he had proved that much, but for some reason he had told Margaret Creasy. Immediately afterwards, he had felt a relief, as though saying the words out loud had leaked away some of their power. The secret had been trapped in his head, shifting to the perimeter, pushing at the sides and carpeting all the other thoughts until they became silent. He had studied Margaret Creasy’s face as he’d spoken, searching for a condemnation to match to his own, looking for a reason to stop speaking, but there had been nothing.
When he’d finished, she had put her hand over his, and said, you did what you thought was right, and he had experienced an absolution so strong, it felt like a chemical reaction.
But when she left, his secret left too. It walked back with her across the avenue and went through a different front door, and wandered into a different life. He had given the secret its freedom, and a whole new set of thinking had moved into his head – thinking that kept him company at night. Thinking that made him wish he’d kept his secret to himself.
He watched a film creep over the soup.
Now Margaret had disappeared, his secret had disappeared too.
He picked up the bowl and poured its contents down the sink. It was too hot for soup anyway.
Number Four, The Avenue
11 July 1976
Should have told her that I can’t linger, said the radio.
‘There’s a wedding ring. On. My. Fing-er,’ Tilly sang back.
‘How do you know the words?’ I said.
Tilly was more of a Donny Osmond type of person.
She rolled on to her tummy and leaned her chin into her hands. ‘Because your mum sings it every time she washes up. It’s either that or “Knock Three Times”.’
‘Is it?’
‘Twice on the pipe means the answer is no,’ said Tilly.
We were sitting on the front lawn, my mother’s radio playing through the kitchen window and pollen prickling our noses. I was drawing a map of the avenue and trying to chart our progress. Tilly was making helpful comments.
Mrs Forbes’ flowers are taller than that and Mr Creasy’s fence isn’t straight, for example.
She reached over and drew a bird on Sheila Dakin’s roof, and another one on our front lawn.
‘Birds are the only thing I can draw,’ she said.
We stared at the map.
‘There isn’t much sign of God, is there?’ She traced her finger across the line of houses. ‘I’m not sure we’ve seen even a hint of Him yet.’
I thought about Mrs Forbes’ fibbing and May Roper’s fondness for funerals, and the way Sheila Dakin stumbled and tripped across the avenue.
‘No,’ I said, ‘but we’ve still got plenty of places to search.’
I stole a look at Tilly. ‘We could go to Mrs Dakin’s again.’
‘We’ve already been there. Why do you want to go back?’ said Tilly.
‘No reason.’
‘Is it because of Lisa?’ she said.
‘Nope.’ I flicked my hair.
‘Because you and I are best friends, aren’t we, Gracie? I mean, nothing will ever change that, will it?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘It’s just Lisa and me have got so much in common.’
‘You do?’
‘Oh yes,’ I said. ‘Me and Lisa just fit together. Some people do, don’t they? They just belong.’
Tilly nodded and looked back at the map. ‘I suppose so,’ she said.
Sometimes, Tilly didn’t understand the more complicated things in life. That is why I needed a friend like Lisa. Someone who was sophisticated and more my wavelength.
Tilly pointed at the map. ‘Who lives there?’
I looked up to where she was pointing. ‘No one yet.’
Number fourteen had been empty for as long as I could remember. The Pughs had moved in for a while, but they disappeared after Mr Pugh had a mid-life crisis and stole £5,000 from his accountancy firm. He had a trilby and a caravan in Llandudno. Everyone was very shocked. After they’d left, a man from the estate agent had put a ‘For Sale’ sign up in the garden, but Keithie knocked it over with his football on the first day, and no one had been back since.
‘What about this one?’ Tilly pointed to another house on the map.
‘Eric Lamb,’ I said. ‘He does mainly gardening.’
‘And there?’
Tilly was pointing to number eleven.
I didn’t answer for a moment. Tilly pointed again and frowned, and said, ‘Gracie?’
‘Walter Bishop.’ I looked across at the house. ‘Walter Bishop lives there.’
‘Who is Walter Bishop?’
‘Someone you don’t want to know,’ I said.
She frowned again, and so I explained.
I explained that I had only met Walter Bishop once. Before Tilly arrived, I went to Bright’s Fish Shop every Friday with Mrs Morton, and we would order battered sausage and fishcakes, whether we wanted them or not. He was there one day, shifting in the queue that snaked around the shop. He was pale and shiny, like the fresh cod behind the counter, and Mrs Morton had drawn me closer into her coat. I hadn’t been allowed to duck under the railing and watch the fish rise and fall in the oil, and feel the cooking on my face.
‘Who was that?’ I’d asked her later, as we pulled the newspaper from our tea.
‘Walter Bishop.’
She didn’t even need me to explain.
‘Who is Walter Bishop?’
And Mrs Morton had passed the vinegar across the table and said, ‘Someone you don’t want to know.’
When I’d finished my story, Tilly looked over at the house as well.
‘Why don’t people like him?’ she said.
‘I’m not sure. No one ever explains. Perhaps it’s something to do with God?’
Tilly rubbed at the pollen on the end of her nose. ‘I don’t see how it can be, Gracie,’ she said.
We sat in silence for a moment. Even the radio seemed to be thinking about it. I counted all the houses with my eyes, and I wondered if the vicar was right, if Mrs Creasy had disappeared because there wasn’t enough God in the avenue. That He’d somehow missed some of us out, and left holes in people’s faith for them to fall into and vanish.
‘Perhaps we should visit Walter Bishop,’ I said. ‘Perhaps we should check to see whether God is there for ourselves.’
We both looked across at number eleven. It looked back at us with quiet, dirtied windows and blistered paint. Weeds crept along its brickwork and buried themselves in its corners, and at the windows, all the curtains pulled themselves tight against the rest of the world.
‘I don’t think that’s a good idea,’ Tilly said. ‘I think we’d better do what people say, and stay away.’
‘Do you always do what people say?’
‘Mostly,’ said Tilly.
She got to her feet and said we should go and see Eric Lamb instead, and I said okay then, and folded the map up and put it in my pocket.
But as we walked across the avenue towards number ten, I looked over at Walter Bishop’s house and I wondered about things.
Because I had already decided it was a secret that needed to be unwrapped.
*
It wasn’t difficult to find Eric Lamb.
He was always outside, no matter what the weather, digging and pruning, and pressing seeds into the soft earth. In the rain, you could see him standing under a giant umbrella, watching over his charges, or you could find him in the shed at the bottom of his garden, with a little flask and a bobble hat. I had waited in that shed, whilst my fa
ther asked the best way to make a compost heap or when he should prune the roses, and Eric Lamb would always think over his answers very slowly, as if the words were shoots that needed to grow.
‘So you’re doing a gardening badge?’ he said.
I stood with Tilly in the same shed. It smelled of soil and wood, dark and safe and edged in creosote.
Yes, we said, very deliberately, because speaking very slowly appeared to be catching.
He didn’t look at us, but stared out of a little window, which was smeared with the effort of past summers.
After a while, he said, ‘Why?’
‘Because that’s what Brownies do,’ said Tilly, ‘they earn badges.’
She looked at me for approval, and I nodded.
‘Why?’ he said again.
Tilly shrugged her shoulders behind Eric Lamb’s back and made a ridiculous face.
‘Because it shows that you can do something,’ I said, trying not to look at the ridiculous face.
‘Does it now?’ He rested the cup from his flask on the counter. ‘Do you think you need a badge to prove that you’re capable of something?’
‘No.’ I felt as though I’d wandered into school assembly by mistake.
‘Then why do it?’ he said and went back to his flask.
‘Because it makes you feel part of something?’ said Tilly.
‘It’s an emblem,’ I said.
‘An emblem,’ Tilly repeated, although it came out like bumble.
Eric Lamb smiled and screwed the cup back on the top of his flask. ‘Well, we’d better go out there and earn you both an emblem then,’ he said.
*
Eric Lamb’s garden seemed much bigger than ours, although I knew they were exactly the same size.
Perhaps it was because his was marked out in tidy, important sections, whereas ours had old boxes thrown about and a rusty mower in the corner, and bits of grass missing, where Remington had sped around the lawn in one of his slimmer incarnations.
The Trouble with Goats and Sheep Page 16