‘That won’t matter. You’ll be better than me. It was my husband, you see, that used to do the reading.’
There seemed to be no escape. The girl cleared her throat. Queenie May held tight to the counter, waiting. The lines came slowly but right. Queenie May heard them as though it were Arthur. After a verse, the girl stopped and closed the book.
‘It seems all right,’ said Queenie May. ‘It seems like it was before.’
The girl, relieved, packed the book in a large box. Queenie May paid, although the sum alarmed her. When she left the shop she was afraid to take the bus in case she would have to leave the box in the luggage rack, away from her, so she walked home with the weight of it pulling her arms. She took the book out, once, when she was safely in the kitchen, feeling the coolness of the cleaned skin of the binding, but she did not dare open it. She put it away in its box and burnt the paper that Alice had used to wrap it for the wedding.
When Alice finally came home, letting herself in quietly through the open front door, she found a woman who might once have been her mother swathed in an indeterminate, multicoloured cloth bag, kneeling with her ear to the skirting board, the grubby soles of her feet pointing skywards and one hand poised on the stained wooden handle of an old spade. On the floor beside her was a small slab of furred meat, torn apart, leaking dark blood, twitching slightly. Alice did not know quite what to say.
‘Ma? Is that you, Ma?’ she tried.
Queenie May jumped. It was a voice she only half recognized.
‘I’ve come to see you,’ said Alice.
Queenie May turned on her knees, but did not yet get up. ‘Can you see the head, my love?’ she said. ‘I think it might be by the door.’
And Alice looked, despite herself. The head was there, apparently undamaged. She nodded.
‘Good,’ said Queenie May. ‘I thought so.’
She got up then, slowly. Her movements were stiff. She had been crouched a long time, waiting, her back tipped against the wall and her hands propped on the hard floor, everything about her still. She liked to let the mice come. She watched their soft fur flick with the movement of quick deft steps; she liked the shape of their ears and the sinuous pitch of their tails. She allowed them to taste a raisin, their whiskers twitching, and then she pounded the shovel into them.
‘Aren’t your feet cold, Ma?’ asked Alice because what she was really amazed at were the dripping folds of Queenie May’s extra weight.
‘I can feel the mice better that way, my love.’ Queenie May was matter-of-fact. ‘You get a sense of them. They scratch, you know, nibble at things, and it’s everywhere in the house, in the floorboards.’
Alice reached forward now and took both of her mother’s hands, helping her straighten up. They hung for a moment, balanced. And at that moment, as Queenie May looked at Alice, there was nothing to disturb her pleasure. The past had been scrubbed clean, shrinking between them so they could reach across it.
‘Oh Ally,’ she said. ‘I thought you were dead. I was so sorry.’
Alice let go of her mother’s hands and looked at Queenie May’s face. She noticed the pallor of it, the wrinkles wedged deep by the salt air.
‘Do you want to sit down, Ma?’ she said.
Queenie May shook herself. ‘I want that ruddy mouse’s head.’ She reached behind the cupboard for the dustpan and brush. Alice thought afterwards that she should have helped, but at the time she just watched as her mother knelt again and swept the head into the pan, turned it over once or twice with the tip of the brush, sniffed it with her nose close, and then threw it briskly into the open bin by the kitchen door.
‘There,’ said Queenie May when she had finished. ‘That’s better.’
Alice did not know much about mice. ‘I like your dress, Ma,’ she said instead, and she reached out to touch the edge of the patched material.
Queenie May swung her hips to make the fabric flutter. The dress was unfitted, with a frilled drawstring neck and no belts or ties or darts to nip. They both watched as it continued to move without her. Then, seeing Alice there, realizing, Queenie May felt a burst of joy, and all at once she dropped the dustpan with a clatter, gripped Alice hard by the arms and pulled her close. It was the feel of Alice she wanted, and she did not let her go for a very long time.
While she was still holding her daughter, Queenie May talked about the book. She knew afterwards that she should have waited, but it was lively in her mind and the words welled up, unstoppable.
‘I’ve been wanting to tell you, my love; I’ve been waiting all this time. There was… I don’t know… an accident. Something happened. It got torn.’
Alice, deep in the folds of her mother’s arms, felt the words drift by her.
‘But you see, Ally,’ went on Queenie May, ‘I couldn’t give it to Florrie, not with what you’d written, and I didn’t know where you were.’
Alice hardly moved. She felt sleepy. ‘You should have given it to her. It was hers.’
‘Mary read out for me what you’d written,’ said Queenie May. ‘And so I couldn’t, could I? Not then, with Eddie away, and Maggie… and anyway it’s fixed up now, my love, if you want it. I’ve kept it for you.’
Alice heard the murmur of the sounds rumbling through Queenie May’s heavy arms, but it meant nothing.
Eventually they drew apart. Queenie May boiled the kettle for tea and Alice flung her coat and scarf down, but by then all kinds of things had swept back between them like the returning tide. They only spoke once more about the book.
‘Well, it’s best off out of harm’s way – and that’s where I’ve kept it all this time. And you can take it now along with you and have it back,’ said Queenie May, when they were sitting together. She did not yet dare tell her daughter about the repair; she thought this would come naturally when Alice had the book again.
But Alice surprised her. ‘I don’t know. Perhaps it’s best thrown away,’ she said.
‘Oh, but Ally, no – you couldn’t do that – it’d be so sad.’ Some kind of anger was pitching inside Queenie May.
‘I don’t know,’ said Alice.
In the long silence that followed, Queenie May sat with her feet splayed wide, flat on the floorboards, feeling for mice. Alice wrote her name, in bold italics, in the dust on her mother’s windowsill. The accumulating flotsam was sinking them both. After ten minutes, Alice made an excuse to leave and Queenie May let her go. On her way home, Alice stopped at a van and bought an ice cream in a thick cornet. She felt like she was celebrating something. Several days afterwards, she found the bruises from her mother’s grip turning yellow on her skin, even though she could not remember any pain.
Mary walked carefully and quietly through the house, her movements deliberate, as if they mattered, making hardly a sound. Her breath did not come. This is what she enjoyed and she walked slower, paraded, opening the chest of drawers and sliding the book out from under the linen, careful to cover the slightest trace of her intrusion. She knew the exact configuration of her mother’s clothes, the way the edges folded against each other, their measured patterns.
Despite its slimness, it felt heavy in her hands. She rested it partly on the top of the chest of drawers as she opened it. Her mother had gone with neighbours on a picnic, pushing a pram full of sandwiches. Now, the patches of blue sky lengthening with the tide, Mary swung the open book wide across the room, offering up the bright pictures to the empty house. She circled for a while, gathering pace, but it was when she slowed, the colours coming close, that her head spun, disorientating her. She felt the spit of excitement. The letter, she knew, would remind her of love.
There was a knock at the door. Mary jumped with the surprise of it, and the book fell to the floor. Then the knock came again, louder. It left her no choice. She trudged through the corridor and, letting in the rustling air of the street, saw a man holding four dahlias, like splinters of stained glass. He had clearly shined his shoes. He seemed nervous, and when she saw it was Charlie, Mary sighed.<
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‘I thought we could have a walk,’ he said. ‘If you like.’
She was thinking about the ridge in her hair, and the splashes of grease on her old skirt. She knew she was not wearing lipstick.
‘Come in,’ she said. ‘I’m doing something. I’ll be with you in a minute.’
She left him there in the hall and went back to the book. She thought of putting it away and going to tidy herself up. But Charlie, after a minute, followed her, and, because the door was open, stood and watched her in the bedroom. She caught the ripple of his gaze. And for no good reason she held the book out to him.
‘Here – look at this.’
He took it in one hand, awkward with the dahlias.
‘Give me the flowers – here – and open it at the beginning.’
Charlie did as he was told. He read the book’s title, and then the words that Mary had written. He scowled.
‘Is it yours?’
‘Not really. It’s a family thing. Ma has it now. But that…’ and she could not help herself. ‘I wrote that.’
Charlie said nothing.
‘It was a while ago,’ added Mary.
He was standing very stiff. ‘Who’s Eddie?’
Mary laughed and moved towards him. ‘Eddie’s Florrie’s husband – you know that. It’s nothing to do with him. I made it up.’ She nudged into his arm and leaned across. ‘It’s a love letter,’ she said, feeling it needed more explanation. ‘From Alice, my other sister, to Eddie. But it’s not true. I made it up. For a lark.’ She nudged again.
‘It was all just in your head?’ said Charlie, admiring. ‘Like a kind of story? With words like that?’
‘I suppose so.’ Mary nodded.
They came close. And in a whisper Mary read it, her voice hoarse.
It all happened in rather a rush, on the floor, which was littered with the crushed petals of Charlie’s dahlias, like bruised butterflies. They hardly spoke, though Charlie buried his face in the crook of Mary’s shoulder to hide the sound of his unexpected grunts. They had a walk afterwards, once the room was set straight and the book put back in its drawer, and the world around them glowed in the light breaking off the sea. Queenie May was sitting in the kitchen half asleep when they got back, and so Charlie didn’t stay.
‘He’s asked me to marry him,’ said Mary, nonchalant. It wasn’t true. But she saw that it could be, and she wanted to prick her mother from her stupor.
Queenie May, however, had her mind on mice and was considering ways in which she could sharpen the edge of her spade, by filing it perhaps. ‘Right you are, my love,’ she said, testing the imaginary blade between her thumb and forefinger, closing her eyes on the pain of it.
‘Did you hear me, Ma? Charlie – he wants to marry me.’
Queenie May looked then at her daughter. She was surprised. ‘I thought it was the other one you liked, him from the quarry.’
‘I said he was asking, that’s all. I didn’t say I was going to marry him. I didn’t say I was marrying anyone. I’m only just twenty, Ma.’ She was annoyed at her mother’s indifference. ‘But it’s nice to be asked.’
By the time Charlie said the question out loud, the bump of their baby was swollen hard and he stumbled over the words. Mary found she was tense with him, unyielding, and she kept the bulge of her stomach resolutely between them. After the wedding she stood apart and when they went back to the house to cut the cake, she refused to come through from the bedroom.
‘It’s the baby, making me sick,’ she said to Florrie, sending her sister in her place.
And so Charlie made the first cut alone, and Florrie afterwards carved neat squares that she passed around. They saved one for Mary. Queenie May, when she could not be seen, also wrapped a piece in a paper napkin and put it aside for her second daughter.
‘Do you think I should have come, Ma? I could have come,’ said Alice, as she ate it a few days later at her mother’s house.
‘I don’t know, my love.’
‘It’s just, after so long…’
Alice ran her finger through the crumbs. Queenie May nodded, reaching across to take the napkin, refolding it carefully, letting nothing fall.
‘I thought by now… I thought you might have told them about me,’ Alice said. ‘You haven’t, have you?’
‘No. No, Ally – I thought it best.’
Alice finally flapped the cake debris from her skirt and stood up, moving away from her mother, towards the window. There were mouse traps lined up along the skirting board there, primed with almonds.
‘I should have just gone to Florrie, in the beginning, like I wanted,’ Alice said. ‘I should have just gone. I shouldn’t have let you keep it secret. She would have been all right. She would have—’
‘It’s best not to upset things,’ said Queenie May, flatly.
‘But a wedding, Ma – Mary’s wedding.’
Queenie May crouched and began to sweep the few fallen cake crumbs across the carpet with her open hands. Alice watched her.
‘The mice’ll be after them,’ Queenie May pointed out.
She manoeuvred the crumbs into a ridge and then flipped them into her palm. She looked up at her daughter.
‘You can’t go about, Ally, just upsetting things. I’m not having it. I don’t want them to know – not yet.’
‘I know that, Ma. That’s what you always say – the same. But it’s not that, is it? How can I upset things? You’re just keeping me to yourself.’
Queenie May sat back on her haunches. ‘Why on earth would I do that, Ally?’
There was no answer and Alice shook her head. ‘It’s just I can’t do it on my own,’ she said quietly. ‘I can’t just go back to them after all this time, out of the blue, not if you don’t help me. You can explain to them that it’s not like they think; it’s not like they’ve heard. I’m not…’
Queenie May stood up, straightening stiffly, the hand full of cake crumbs flat and steady in front of her.
‘Alice, they know, my girl. It’s no good pretending. Mary’s told me all the things you did; she’s told me about all the – men.’ The word came out too hushed between them. ‘I can’t just say… she has all kinds of stories about you, Alice. They know what you’re like.’
‘But Ma, it isn’t true! When you told me what they said, what they thought I was like… But I don’t know where it’s come from. It’s not fair, what they say – it’s not right, Ma. You have to listen to me.’
Queenie May swallowed a series of sharp tuts under her breath, blinking away the ancient, wearying maelstrom of warped faces, of her husband bending close, and Alice straining for breath, of the long-dead doctor, peering; shaking away the ache of sharp-imagined men, sneering at her from Mary’s tales, entwined on beaches, clasping. The exhaustion of it overwhelmed her.
‘Well then, what about Eddie? What about that, my girl?’ Her voice was weary with unasked questions.
Alice didn’t understand. ‘What’s wrong with Eddie?’
She looked at her mother, puzzled, and Queenie May saw such a young girl there, such wide, clear eyes washed bright with unfallen tears, that she couldn’t, just then, accuse her with the letter.
‘Nothing, my love,’ she said. ‘Nothing. But you know very well what men can be, once you set them going.’
She shuffled away, her hand outstretched with the crumbs, her bare feet silent on the carpet. Alice picked what might have been cake from under her nails until her mother returned. Then she spoke quickly.
‘Are you not ever going to tell them, Ma? Are you not ever going to have them here when I come? Florrie and Mary, Eddie?’
Queenie May pursed her lips and her flesh folded around them. ‘Shall we see, Ally, how it goes?’
‘Because if I see them once – if I explain… it’ll be all right then, when they hear. I don’t like it like this, Ma – like a fugitive.’
‘You made your own bed, my girl,’ said Queenie May firmly.
Alice looked away, defeated.
&
nbsp; Winding her way through familiar streets on the bus from the city, the view from the window fixed itself oddly in Alice’s mind, sharp and clear, strange again after her absence. When the bus set her down, she slipped along the line of shops to buy something for her mother. The buildings were shabby. One or two were boarded up and there was litter jammed in their doorways. A squat brown dog was tied with thick string to the metal bicycle rails, over which two small girls were looping. Alice felt conspicuous. But she took her time, passing from shop to shop, and in the end she chose a small-flowered yellow rose, the colour of custard, its heads drooping low over its pot. She did not have much money, and it was expensive, but the moment she saw it, she knew it was the thing, and she carried it up the hill with great care.
Queenie May opened the door promptly, her baggy dress floating about her. It was a different cloth, with small coloured circles imprinted, but if anything it was looser than ever, and the low bulge of her breasts pushed it out in odd places. The house behind her was dark and quiet, and Alice felt the lurch of disappointment.
‘You haven’t said anything to Florrie then, Ma? You didn’t tell her I was coming?’
Queenie May took the rose without any ceremony, bending over it to kiss Alice on the forehead.
‘I thought it best not,’ she said. ‘She’s busy just now, my love. Eddie’s away again in a week or two. South Africa, you know. And Maggie’s grown now, too. She’s turned six – a pretty little maid.’
Alice heard the complaint. ‘I know, Ma. I’m sorry I’ve not been for a while.’
Queenie May shrugged. She had counted the months: it was almost two years.
‘It’s been summer,’ she said, as if that was enough and she turned to lead Alice into the lounge. There was a stiffness now in the way she moved, shuffling her feet close to the floor and keeping her back bent slightly forward. Alice watched the labour of her mother’s waddle from behind.
Queenie May invited her to stay for lunch even though it was still nearly an hour until midday. Alice sat by the window on to the street while her mother worked in the kitchen. They said very little to each other, the distance between the two rooms and the noises from the stove making chatter awkward.
Kissing Alice Page 15