Kissing Alice

by Jacqueline Yallop

  ‘Well, don’t set your heart on it, my girl. It might change. We’ll see. It might just be you and your father, as before.’

  ‘Oh no, you must let her come, Ma, you must. And let the priest pour water on her and hold the candles. No one’ll touch her if she’s a child of God.’

  Queenie May saw the tears in Florrie’s eyes. She looked at her daughter, wicker thin before her, her weight shifted on to one leg with the other pressed into the floor on curled toes, the new rise of her slight breasts pushing at the buttons across the chest of her blouse, her long hair tucked behind her ears, her eyes wet still with the passion of fear and her grubby fingers in her mouth. Queenie May looked at the child who looked back at her, waiting, and she wished she could feel some of what Florrie felt, some spark of life. She did not, of course, come close to understanding what it was that Florrie was trying to say. And when Mary let out a sudden, full-blooded screech, she turned away to the baby. She did not want to look at Florrie any more.

  The only thing Queenie May could think of, at that moment, to take their mind off things, was Arthur’s book. There was nothing else in the room that would not just remind them of where they were. It was something she remembered Florrie liked. She dandled Mary over her shoulder to quieten her.

  ‘I know, Florrie, my love. Let’s have a look at them pictures. Get the book down, will you? It’ll do us good, a bit of something different,’ she said, hoping it sounded the most natural thing in the world. ‘We can show Mary.’

  Florrie didn’t know what to say. ‘There’s no time, Ma,’ she settled on. ‘Da’ll be home soon. And Ally.’

  ‘Well, that’s all right. Ally can see too, if she comes.’

  Florrie could not quite imagine this.

  ‘Come on, Flor. Reach it down.’ Queenie May was impatient. She didn’t want the effort she was making going to waste. But Florrie was not stirring herself. She was scraping grease from the floorboards with her toe and wouldn’t look up.

  ‘Get it, Florrie, my girl,’ said Queenie May sharply.

  So Florrie did as she was told, because she had not yet found a way of resisting. She no longer needed to stand on a chair, and when she reached to the back of the shelf the book was naked; there was no sign of the old tarpaulin. This surprised her. And the cover, she noticed, was paler now at the corners and along the top edge, where the clutch of Alice’s fingers had worn the soft leather. Looking at the tones of it, the contours of its shade, she had the sudden, lurching sense of the world having changed, leaving her stranded with her mother in their close, dark room. She could not bear to hold the book, to slide her fingers on to the worn skin where her sister’s had been, to be still with it, marooned, while things whirled around her, warping. She dropped it with a dull thud to the floor.

  Queenie May would not be so easily defeated. With a sniff, and a sidelong glare at Florrie, she put Mary down and picked up the book. She held it for a while without opening it. She was waiting for Florrie to come next to her, but Florrie didn’t move and Queenie May could not press her point. She was suddenly tired. So she let Florrie stay apart. She sat heavily on a chair and opened the book on her knee. But it wasn’t what she’d hoped. Florrie was not won back. She was stiff and watchful, accusing her mother of something Queenie May did not understand, and the pictures had no allure in them. They were colours, that was all, too bright and squalid for the dense summer daylight.

  ‘There should be something else,’ said Queenie May, putting the book down beside her. Mary started to whimper. And then Florrie came to her mother, holding so tightly that they could feel the pinch of each other’s bones. The world continued to pitch and sway around Florrie, to sicken and disorientate her, but she held on for as long as she could to Queenie May, her eyes closed and her head burning.

  Arthur waited outside the school for Alice. He sat on a low wall across the road, half obscured by the thick trunk of an old elm, pushing the gravel into patterns with the heel of his shoe, smoking. He waited a long time. He saw Florrie first, walking slowly with two other girls, bending together over something on a scrap of paper. He saw one of the teachers come to the gate and look down the road, away from him. And then he saw Alice, alone, as he knew she would be. He did not call to her. He got up as she turned out of school, walking with her but on the other side of the road, waiting for her to notice him. When she did, he beckoned her and she came.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ Alice was whispering, although there was no one close to them.

  ‘It’s a lovely day, Ally,’ he said, flicking his eyes at the clear blue sky. ‘I walked out, to see you. I could carry your books.’

  Alice had brought two schoolbooks home to read but this was special dispensation from the teacher, and she held on to them, not trusting her father with them.

  ‘I’m all right, Da.’

  They took the usual path, cutting through the scrubland by the side of the railway. The summer plants were high, great heads of hogweed floating above Alice and crickets chirping industrially.

  ‘If you like, Ally, we could take a bus,’ said Arthur, flinging a bramble from across their path with pinched fingers.

  ‘The bus? Where? What for?’

  ‘We could go up on the Hoe, have an ice cream. If you like.’

  ‘Have you got money for that, Da?’

  Arthur, grinning, flicked the change in his pocket so that Alice could hear it rattle. ‘Plenty,’ he said.

  ‘For ice cream?’

  ‘For everything.’

  Alice wanted to walk. She liked the looseness of the hot day. But Arthur knew there was more chance of them being seen that way.

  ‘We shouldn’t risk your chest getting bad, Ally,’ he argued. ‘We don’t want to start it off.’

  And so they took the bus, together, for the first time, and rode all the way to the end of the Hoe where they could see the sea stretching evenly to the horizon. Then, as he had promised, Arthur bought his daughter an ice cream.

  ‘Oh my,’ she said, licking the drips from her wrist and running her tongue hard between the wafers until she had bored out a vanilla groove. With her free hand she held her school-books away from her, her arm far outstretched, so they wouldn’t get spoilt. ‘Oh Da. Whatever’ll Florrie say?’

  ‘Best keep it to ourselves,’ said Arthur, bending down across her to lick the ice cream himself.

  They went to the park then, grateful for the shade of the trees. Alice took her shoes off and ran a little way on the hard grass. When she stopped, Arthur caught up. They sat down, the ground around them worn away by feet and tree roots and the long summer.

  ‘Do you want to read, Ally?’

  Alice shook her head and moved the books behind her. ‘They’re for something else,’ she said.

  Arthur nodded. His face was red, shiny with sweat, his mouth restless. ‘Lie back then,’ he said.

  Alice was surprised. ‘What? Here?’

  She looked around. Two young boys were playing with a ball beyond the trees. A dog ran hard across the open ground.

  ‘Yes, Ally. Here.’ There was a threat in it.

  ‘But what if someone… what if… ?’

  Arthur pushed her then, hard enough to crush the rest of the words out of her, and he lay beside her, propped on an elbow, leaning across her, blocking the stippled light from the trees.

  Alice waited. Arthur caught the cotton of her blouse through his fingers, pressing. They were very still, just the heat of his hand seeping into her. Then he smoothed the ridges of her skirt, taking time to even out the creases. He rested his fingers on her knee, and Alice felt the slide of them, damp against the hot skin of her thigh. She closed her eyes. But still his fingers hovered, uncertain. She could hardly feel the weight of them. It was not what she was used to. Then, for a moment, she felt the scratch of a nail, something grazing against her skin, and Arthur had peeled away from her, flopping back, his head resting against the low pile of her schoolbooks. Alice sat up.

  ‘Da? Are you all ri
ght?’

  Arthur had his eyes tight closed, but from the corners of them Alice could see the squeeze of tears.

  ‘It’s all right, Da. It doesn’t matter. It’s too open that’s all, out here. It’s too different. Da?’

  Still Arthur didn’t say anything.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Alice again.

  Arthur opened his eyes and the trapped tears slipped on to the bulge of his cheeks. ‘Will you read to me, Ally, when we get home?’

  ‘Of course I will,’ said Alice, relieved. ‘But I think it has to be at home, that’s all.’

  They walked all the way back, the bus money spent. Florrie watched them climb the hill to the house. The afternoon light made them bright, like puppets, and she picked them out easily as they made their way up through the knitted streets.

  ‘I stayed late, to collect the books,’ Alice tried to explain, but she could see that Florrie didn’t believe it. Queenie May and Mary were asleep together on the bed.

  Arthur patted Florrie briskly on the head and went to sit apart in the kitchen. Alice put her schoolbooks safely on top of a box by the window and then turned to her sister. The sun streamed in across her shoulders, lighting her hair.

  ‘He bought me ice cream,’ she said, flushed.

  Florrie moved towards her and hissed. ‘I’ll tell someone,’ she said.

  ‘Tell them what?’

  ‘Tell the truth and shame the devil.’

  Alice laughed. ‘I’m going to go and read to him,’ she said.

  But Florrie stopped her, putting a hand hard on her arm.

  Alice squealed. ‘Ow!’

  ‘If you came to church with me… if he thought… ’ She had to let Alice loose to brush the sudden tears from her eyes. ‘It’s because he thinks you’re, you know, like the boys; he thinks you’re going to hell.’

  Alice laughed again. She picked up the book from its storage place on the shelf and brushed it quickly with her sleeve. ‘I’m not going to hell, Flor,’ she said, and she went through to her father. Florrie heard the ripple of his voice.

  Florrie brushed her hair and sat for a long time by the window. She watched a beetle lumber up the frame, disappearing finally into a crumbling split in the wood. She could hear sounds from the kitchen, but she flicked her eyes away to the bleached blue of the sky and listened only to the soft rhythms of her mother’s breathing as she slept, her face limp. When Mary woke, Florrie spooned mashed potatoes through her baby sister’s creased lips, wiping trickles of spit-sick from her chin. Then she went out into the hot streets.

  It was still brilliantly light. The damp gutters buzzed with flies, and there was nothing left of the smell of the sea. There were girls playing hopscotch on the corner by the butcher’s, their grid drawn out across the pavement. Florrie stopped for a while, because they asked her to, but she did not want to play. She felt too tall for it. Her breasts slid up and down loosely in her blouse as she hopped, and she thought she saw people looking at her. She stepped on a line on purpose and moved out of the grid, setting off again without saying anything. The game continued behind her and she could hear the squeals. There were boys, too, chasing down to the dockyard, but she ignored them. In the still hot sun, a group of men stood outside the pub. They all knew her. Some of them sat close to her at church on Sunday.

  In the end, without hurrying, Florrie made her way to her Aunt Annie’s house, the same house they had once all shared. Annie’s husband was an overseer now at the yard, and had never been without work. Another family had long ago moved in on the second floor, and, being regular with the rent, had stayed. It was a house now for seventeen children, one way or another, its doors and windows open to any cooling breeze and two small tight-haired dogs wrestling in the hallway. So Florrie, as she expected, simply blended into the crowd. She was patted on the head by someone. She stopped to tie one cousin’s shoelace and to kiss another. She was offered a suck on a diminishing gobstopper. And she passed quite unnoticed through the kitchen, pulling out the drawer at the end of the scrubbed table where she knew Annie kept her housekeeping purse, and taking out all the coins she found inside.

  Florrie apologized quickly to God as she slipped the purse back into the drawer. She did not dare take the neatly folded notes. She would have preferred not to steal the money at all, if it could have been helped, and she hardly looked about her as she left her aunt’s house, moving quickly now through the streets, shaking off greetings, aware only of the coins bouncing slightly in her loose pocket. She was relieved to find the hopscotch game was finished, the chalk lines scuffed and already disappearing. Anxious not to be spotted, she skirted behind the house, ducking through the weedy alleys, turning away from the sea. She began to run, clipping into a skip sometimes to save her breath, keeping her hand tight over the coins. When she arrived at the pawnbroker’s, sweating slightly, her heartbeat was stuttering.

  The shop was cluttered with things she knew her mother would like, neatly arranged, stacked on shelves and hanging from hooks set in lines from the rafters. Even in the late light there was the gleam of glass-bead necklaces, the twinkle of buttons and buckles, the soft silk glisten of pale china, promises everywhere, waiting. But standing now in the midst of it all, feeling the pawnbroker watching her and the coins hard against her skin and the evening heat heavy across her shoulders, nothing was quite right. All Florrie could think of was her father’s book, the thick thud of it as it fell and something she did not understand in the way Queenie May had held it. She sighed a long sigh.

  ‘I don’t know what to buy,’ she said, out loud, but not expecting an answer.

  The pawnbroker looked around and dusted the top of the counter with his hand, as though preparing to make a display.

  ‘Well, my dear, there’re all kinds. Something for all tastes. That’s the joy of it. If it’s something modern you’re after…’

  ‘It’s for my ma,’ said Florrie.

  The pawnbroker could picture Queenie May, her hair tightly curled beneath her scarf, her face shining, the good-natured way she bantered with him as he wrote out his tickets. They had known each other, in a way, for many years. He looked again at Florrie.

  ‘Then something useful, that’ll be best,’ he said. ‘How much do you have?’ Florrie put the coins on his counter and he slid them into piles. It was only slightly more than he had expected.

  ‘Here then,’ he said. He did not move from behind the counter because that was too much trouble in the airless heat. Instead he reached to the low shelves to his side and held out what was within reach. It was a flour jar, plain and bulbous, a thin blue line doubling around its waist. ‘Keeps flies and maggots and what have you right out. Pretty too. She’ll like that, your ma.’

  Florrie fixed her eyes on a line of wedding rings pinned on a card. ‘Is there nothing else?’ she asked.

  The shopkeeper shrugged and slid the jar towards her across the counter. ‘It’s handsome, this,’ he said.

  But Florrie wanted something with a story. She looked around. There were baby clothes, washed and folded, hardly used; heavy coats, blankets and hats with dusty crowns; a flute propped upright in the corner, a selection of buckets. There was a black and gold sewing machine with a carved wooden box and a wheel that Florrie could tell, just by looking, would turn without effort. But none of these things was what she wanted.

  ‘That. What about that? Could I have that, do you think?’

  It was the disc for a gramophone. The paper cover was glossy, a man in black hardly visible behind a pink-dressed woman, twirling. Florrie picked it up and laid it reverently on the counter.

  The shopkeeper laughed. ‘What you be wanting that for, my love? What’re you going to do with it? You can’t play it, you know. You need a machine to play it on.’

  Florrie wanted to cry. ‘But she’d like it,’ she said. ‘It’s the kind of thing she’d like. If only she could see it.’

  There was something of Queenie May in the way the dancer held herself, in the litheness
of her.

  ‘You don’t see it, my love, you play it. It’s music. You mark my words, you’ll be better off with the jar.’

  Florrie touched the record one more time. ‘But I think,’ she said, ‘I think, if I could just…’

  He shook his head and waited for her to change her mind.

  ‘What’s it like?’ she asked him. ‘The music? What’s it like?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know.’ The shopkeeper turned the cover so that it faced him. He looked hard at the picture. ‘Something lively I would say, wouldn’t you; something flighty. That’s what it looks like.’

  ‘I’d like to hear it,’ said Florrie.

  ‘Then you’ll have to save up. For the gramophone.’ The shopkeeper snorted a laugh. ‘You can come back for it then.’ He looked at her hard. ‘Here. I’ll give you a halfpenny discount.’

  He pushed the jar until it rested against Florrie’s tight hand. She did not move.

  ‘Come on, missy,’ he said, suddenly brisk. ‘I haven’t got all day.’

  ‘But my ma,’ she said. ‘If she could see the dancer…’ Her words faded.

  The shopkeeper slid the stolen coins off the counter. Florrie reached across, as though to stop him but he was too practised for her, patting her lightly on the arm. This appeared to seal the deal. She took the jar without looking at it, not able to tell him that her mother was, or could be, curious and funny and flighty, beautiful in the way she swayed and twirled, dancing in an unswept, unlaundered house.

  Florrie turned the first corner after she left the shop, into a narrow street with a high wall blocking its far end. It was a quiet street, shaded. The blunt noise of the breaking jar ricocheted from the brick-fronted houses as she threw it to the ground. Someone leaned out of a window to find out what was going on, but seeing it was nothing, slipped back into the dark. Florrie stood for a moment, looking at the shards of china in the gutter. The plain blue tramlines that had run around the thick waist were wedged and truncated, like the threads of minerals in the winter cliffs. She wondered who the jar had belonged to, properly, before it had been hocked, and the thought of this, of someone being proud of it, loving it, filled her with such panic that she hurried back out on to the main street. And there she stood, stranded on the scrap of pavement, completely still. Only when a woman passed, pushing a pram and holding another child by the hand did Florrie move, stepping back out of their way, but it was almost ten minutes before she went back into the street. She picked up one of the scraps of cream china and put it in her pocket, an amulet.