Florrie could not understand why her sister was pressing her. It irked her. ‘’Course not,’ she said. ‘We bought it afterwards, together, when we’d seen what we could afford.’
Alice nodded, her point proved. She sank on to the end of the bed, smudging the growing stream of blood between her thighs. ‘Well then,’ she said. ‘Well, then – you don’t know what it was, do you? You don’t know what he was after. You don’t even know that he meant it at all. You could have put it in his head for him. He could have been thinking something else, when he was in a state. He could have been thinking he’d end it with you. How do you know he’s not having you on?’
‘How could I put it in his head, Ally? He asked me because he wanted to. It wasn’t anything I said, I swear it – it was what he wanted.’
There was a pause. Florrie concentrated on the glint of her ring, rubbing it gently with the fingers of her right hand.
‘Don’t try and spoil it, Ally,’ she said.
Alice leaned back on the bed, slight and bony, her elongated nakedness defiant. ‘I just know he doesn’t love you, that’s all,’ she said.
They both watched as Florrie raised her hand, but the light was dull in Alice’s room and the ring was flat on her skin, unremarkable. Alice sat up and crossed her arms. They both waited. And then Florrie began.
‘I don’t think you do know, Ally,’ she said evenly. ‘Just because Da…’ She shrugged, half-smiling. She was not meaning to finish.
Alice looked straight at her sister. ‘Because Da what?’
‘Because he wanted you.’ The words dipped away.
‘He always did.’
Florrie let her head drop for a moment, as though it were too much. Alice thought she caught the mumble of a prayer. And then something gathered pace in Florrie. She came close to the bed, standing tall, a long way above her sister, rubbing hard at the ring on her finger. Her voice was bold.
‘Ally, listen to me – that’s nothing. That’s just dirt, filth and dirt and grubby fingers. It’s just – Ally, feeling up little maids like that, it’s…’ She shook away the picture of it. Her voice steadied. ‘He should never have done it, Ally. It made you… you always thought it made you special, all that. You always thought it made you smart, like you was different, better. But it’s nothing.’ She screwed her toes into the floorboards, the leather of her best shoes scuffing. ‘I can see that now.’
Alice felt tears coming and was surprised. ‘Have you told him about that?’ she asked.
‘Who?’
‘Eddie.’
Florrie sucked in the cold air. ‘Blimey! ’Course not. Why would I tell him that?’
‘He doesn’t ask about me?’ kept on Alice. ‘You don’t talk about me?’
‘Just about how weird you’re getting,’ said Florrie. She saw the tears now slipping out of Alice’s eyes. They braced her.
‘That’s you, Florrie, saying that. He doesn’t say that,’ said Alice, as though she knew. But there was doubt in it.
‘You don’t know what he says, you,’ hissed Florrie, defending Eddie, bearing down on the naked girl below her. ‘It’s the same all over, you thinking you know everything. But Eddie’s marrying me, Ally, whether you like it or not. And you – you’re just weird. You’re filthy and embarrassing.’
Alice realized for the first time that Eddie must have given her away. ‘He’s told you,’ she said. She felt the bitterness like fire behind her eyes, drying the tears.
But Florrie was not paying attention. She had more to say. ‘Ally, this is not like it was before, with Da. This is not like that. This is Eddie. This is the way he looks at me and holds me and…’
‘It was just like that,’ Alice said. ‘With Da.’
‘No, no, Ally this is different. This is Eddie. Me and Eddie. And whatever I do and wherever I go, even if we’re miles and miles apart, I can feel him beside me and—’
Alice laughed out at this. ‘Just the same,’ she said, her voice hard.
It brought them to a standstill. Florrie stooped again. Alice wiped the blood from her leg with her hand and stood up, turning away from her sister. She crossed to pick up the blouse from the floor and hung it loosely over her shoulders, leaving smudges of bloody fingerprints on the pale fabric. They both felt their anger sag.
‘You think I don’t deserve him,’ said Florrie. ‘You think I’m not good enough for him.’
Alice sighed. ‘It’ll never happen, Flor, the wedding, you mark my words,’ she said.
‘Oh yes, it will. I’m going to marry him. And then you’ll see, Ally, what it’s like when someone loves you, like they should. You’ll realize,’ said Florrie. There was a final spat of rage in her. She picked up the handkerchief and threw it at her sister, but it floated in the air between them, settling without venom on the floor.
‘It’ll never happen,’ said Alice.
When Florrie had gone, Alice was brisk. She did not realize that she was crying again. She was concentrating on cleaning herself, on setting her hair straight and on wrenching out from deep inside her the broken pan handle that was making her bleed. She crouched, her legs wide, pulling herself free and did not see Mary standing at the half-open door.
‘I’ll help you, Ally, shall I?’
Alice sprang upright and the bloodied handle fell to the floor.
She was fierce. ‘Mary! Can’t you leave us alone? I was talking to your sister.’
‘No you weren’t. Florrie’s in the kitchen.’
‘I was – before. We were talking.’
Mary pushed the door further and squinted at the odd debris in the room. She shrugged. ‘If you don’t get dressed soon you’ll miss her,’ she said calmly, and Alice heard her scatter away.
When Alice came out of her room, Florrie was leaving. Queenie May was fussing over the ring, then bringing Florrie tight, then holding her away to look at her. Mary was swinging on her oldest sister’s free hand, getting tangled in the embraces. Their parting took a long time. Alice hung by the end of the corridor and watched them, without a word. Only when Florrie had stepped out into the street, and Mary had run up to the corner to wave her off, did she move up behind her mother at the open door. For a moment, unexpectedly, she wanted to call after Florrie. There were so many things she wanted to say now. But Florrie was walking quickly and instead Alice watched her as she turned at the bottom of the street and then, when she had passed out of sight, she watched a crane at the dockyard swinging a load of timber high over grey tin roofs.
‘You’ll get your chest bad, standing there in the cold,’ said Queenie May.
Alice closed the door.
‘What do you think he sees in her, Ma?’ she asked.
‘Florrie? She’s a lovely maid,’ said Queenie May. ‘She’ll do him proud.’
Alice turned away, back to her room. Queenie May noticed the slump of her walk and later, when she thought about it, she wished she’d gone after her.
It was a windy day at the end of April when they were married. The high spring tide flung damp air into the streets and the confetti blew back in their faces along with the drizzle, as they stood by the door to the chapel. They had to move aside as a navy car passed, but it slowed and beeped its horn. Florrie waved, a great arching wave, and pale yellow petals from her bouquet floated down with the confetti. One caught in the cuff of her jacket, and she brushed it away, enjoying the feel of the sober tweed of her new wedding suit. The small crowd threw up three cheers, relieved to be free of the strange cadences of the mass, and Eddie reached up trying to kiss her. Florrie was not paying attention and did not bend to him.
‘Go on, Flor, let me kiss you.’
She noticed him then, and for the first time that day felt too tall. ‘Perhaps you’ll get taller, now you’re in the navy,’ she said, bending.
As they kissed someone called out to them from behind: ‘You know what they say about Catholic maids on their wedding night.’ And Eddie batted the thought away with a sharp arm, not quite laughing.
/> After the ceremony they went back to the house in a noisy huddle. Queenie May’s neighbours had helped while they were out, and there were flowers on the kitchen table and a cloth so crisp and white that it might not have been fabric at all. There were plates stacked on the pristine draining board and bottles of beer lined neatly along the window ledge. A fire had been lit, even though it was not cold. All these things Florrie and Queenie May noted with something like wonder, and they would have been satisfied with all this, and talked about it for many months to come. But Eddie had wanted to surprise his bride, and he did it with the cake.
‘Just watch your backs. I’ve got some friends coming in,’ he said, when they had all squeezed into the kitchen and he had taken off his uniform jacket and laid it carefully on Alice’s bed. ‘Thought we could do with a treat.’ He winked at Florrie. And the cake was paraded into the small kitchen by two of Eddie’s old friends from the Continental, on a magnificent hotel silver platter, its sharp white icing as smooth and firm as the tablecloth, its flowers crystal pink and so seductive that many of the guests pressing around thought they caught the heady scent of freesias.
They rested it gently on the table. Eddie grinned. Florrie’s hands were pressed to her mouth but Queenie May squealed and bounced as though the floor had caught fire beneath her. Someone started a round of applause that rippled for a long time. Someone else slapped Mary’s hand away as she went to touch the icing with the faintest, most reverent of touches. Eddie, still grinning, manoeuvred his way around the table until he stood by his wife, and then he took her hand.‘I love you,’ he said, to Florrie of course, but looking at the cake.
Florrie did not turn to him. She was pressed hard on either side by their friends, which made it difficult to move, and she did not want to lose sight of the perfect neat features of the white-gowned, long-veiled bride on top of the cake, in case something happened to her.
‘It’s a present,’ he said, ‘for coming away – for starting something new, with me. I thought you deserved something, I don’t know – pretty.’
‘Thank you,’ said Florrie. And the cake seemed sad to her for a moment, nothing but the emblem of another parting, but she reached across to touch it, stroking the flowers with timid fingers, and she trembled then with the joy in it too. For the first time that day she thought of her father, wishing she could show him such a beautiful thing.
There were three tiers, far too many to feed the guests, even if they all took second helpings.
‘You’ll keep the top one for the christening, though,’ said Queenie May, as she rummaged through the drawer for a long knife. It broke the charm. Someone nudged Florrie.
‘What if it’s twins? You’ll need extra cake.’ They laughed.
Florrie squawked. ‘I’m not having ruddy twins. Can’t squeeze them both out,’ she said, which got them all laughing again.
Alice slipped away. Florrie was spoiling everything with her coarseness and she could not bear to watch her cut the cake.
Florrie and Eddie stood side by side, close, with the knife between them, having to press down so hard on the icing that Queenie May was afraid the blade might break. There were cheers all round, a broken verse of song, the light pouring through the kitchen window and making the colours on the cake glow. Florrie shook her hair from its clips and grinned. Eddie let his hand stay tight on hers and nudged against her. He stole another kiss, dipping against her neck close to her ear, and they both felt the prickling desire in it. There was noise all around, happy, rolling chatter, and someone pushed the chairs back so they could dance to the songs on the wireless. When they went to eat the cake, everyone taking a clumsily cut square, there was a murmur of delighted approval like a high-flung spring tide. Eddie took a bow for them, proud, and there was the clatter of applause.
When Alice emerged again later there was just the tablecloth stained with squashed currants and the icing on the kitchen floor giving a graininess like sand. The room was quiet enough for them to hear the rattle of a loose gutter blowing against the walls of the house in the high wind. The guests had gone home, Eddie had eaten too much cake and drunk too much beer, needing the prop of the doorframe to steady himself, and Florrie was sitting alone at the table, pushing the crumbs into messy lines and humming hymn tunes softly while Queenie May swept up around her.
Alice held out a package towards her sister.
‘It’s your wedding present,’ she said unnecessarily.
Mary, at least, was excited by the prospect of this and pushed up against Alice’s arm to see better. She could not imagine what it might be. Queenie May had given the bride and groom an envelope of money as well as cloths and a duster, twisted into a doll, with the white of the dishcloth made up to look like a bride. They had been given mixing bowls and a glass casserole, teatime crockery and a solid metal pail, a hog-bristle broom, two teapots and, from the boys at the naval base, a hot-water bottle with a soft cover approximating a naked woman. As far as Mary could see, they had everything they needed.
Alice held out her arm steadily; her sister still had not taken the parcel. ‘I wanted to give you something,’ said Alice, prompting her.
It was wrapped in gossamer paper, tied tight with a silver ribbon. Florrie thought it might be a bread board, and was rather taken aback by the extravagance of the wrapping. She unpeeled one end of it carefully. And suddenly, before she had taken the paper right away, she knew what was inside. Alice had given them Arthur’s book.
Florrie felt the hard edge of the covers on the tips of her fingers, their long-remembered velvet, and anger and betrayal exploded from her, pushing Eddie and Mary and Queenie May hard against the margins of the room until there was just her and Alice there, alone, ungrown. Alice had planned what she would say. She had rehearsed the words, making them right. But she did not get a chance to speak. Because Florrie sprang up and slapped Alice hard, pummelling her with questions, slamming the wrapped book over and over against the table, sending currants and crumbs flicking high into the air and a noise like storm waves into the houses on either side.
‘What sort of a present is this? What sort of thing is it, to give someone on their wedding day? What are you doing? What are you thinking? Why can’t you bear to see me happy, Ally?’
Alice was afraid of her sister’s fury. ‘I wanted you to have it,’ she said simply, and the others felt sorry for her.
‘What is it, Flor? What’s in the parcel, my love?’ asked Eddie gently, thinking he could calm things. He moved forward at the same time as Queenie May, both of them wanting to touch Florrie. They could not understand why she was so unlike herself. But Florrie was aware only of Alice. And no one watching understood why she screamed hoarse-high at her sister, and threw the parcel across the room so that it thudded hard against the door of the cooker, and why she then took Eddie roughly by the arm and led him out of the house, leaving the front door swinging open on the cold night of the street.
3. Queenie May
MARY PICKED UP the book from the floor, brushing the soot and crumbs from Alice’s wrapping. She had drunk a bottle of beer and her eyelids stung. She could hear her mother somewhere, sobbing, and she took her time sliding the book from its paper cover. She picked at the small pile of currants and icing heaped in the middle of the table and she turned up the music on the wireless until it was everywhere.
The first thing she read was Alice’s letter to Florrie. It was closely written into the first sheet of the book in dark ink, the words fraying around the edges of the page. It was a lovely letter, an eloquent apology, even-toned and modest. It spelled out the mistakes of the past and promised a new future. Mary read it over again, understanding that Alice was giving something up, but not sure what. She read the names there, Alice’s and Florrie’s and Eddie’s, clasped together in the swirl of writing, and she knew she was left out of something.
She turned the page, snatching at the paper. Inside was nothing, a litter of poems and pictures. She began to read the first lines of one of the verse
s but they were misshapen and stiff. She turned back to the letter.
Queenie May caught her. ‘Mary!’
Mary instinctively flipped the cover of the book closed.
‘What are you doing, girl? That’s not yours. You’ve spoilt it.’
Mary pouted. ‘I haven’t, Ma, honest. I just took the paper off, to clean it. To wipe it down.’ She held up the sheet of Alice’s wrapping to show where it was stained. ‘It got dirty, on the floor. I haven’t touched the rest.’
Queenie May leaned hard on the back of a chair. ‘Let me see,’ she said, and Mary slid the book across the table towards her.
‘I thought it might be that.’ Queenie May hardly looked at it. The tears came again from her red eyes.
Mary did not understand. She was shrill in trying to defend herself. ‘I didn’t do anything, really, Ma. I just took the paper off.’
Queenie May looked surprised to see her there. ‘Not you, I wasn’t talking about you,’ she said.
Mary stored up the rejection.
Queenie May re-wrapped the book as best she could, without looking at it, and put it away in a drawer. But she could not forget it. The thought of it hung heavy. It bewildered her. It was the thought of Arthur, as he had been, young and hopeful and edging towards her; the buckling of time between them, the nostalgia for love; the distortions of the bodies she had once seen there on the pages, a secret somewhere she could not grasp, a longing, a silence, the clatter of confusion, and again, always, Arthur, as though she could reach him. She wanted to untie the parcel and flick through the pages. She thought this might make things clearer. But each time she pulled the book out from the back of the drawer, she lost heart. Still, she kept it. She waited for Florrie to claim it, or for Alice to see that it had not been given. But it was never mentioned, and in the meantime, though she did not quite like to, she treasured it.
Eddie was sent to strange seas. Diligently he posted letters home and diligently Florrie tried to read them, puzzling over the baffling turns of phrase. She underlined in pencil the words she could not read or did not understand, pushing down hard on the paper and often snapping the leads. Sometimes whole phrases were underlined. She would read them out loud, falteringly, to her mother. ‘It seems to be the tropical currents which are responsible, according to the meteorological reports, for the unexpectedly turbulent passage and the inordinate number of crew who find themselves indisposed for service.’ It was all Florrie had of him. When she prayed for Eddie, as she always did, she found it was the letters she saw in her prayers, neatly stamped and enveloped, while his face would not come to her.
Kissing Alice Page 11