Shop Girl

by Mary Portas

  Now I flick on the hall light before walking around the house and turning on all the rest. I switch on the television and the radio, anything to get rid of the dense silence that fills our home now. Opening a window in the Front Room, I pick up Dad’s ashtray and walk back to the kitchen, where I reach into the cupboard underneath the sink and pull out a bottle of Glade. The smell makes me feel sick but I go back to the Front Room and spray it around. Anything is better than the stale smell.

  It was always the same whenever I returned to our empty house at the end of a school day. I just wanted to keep my mind busy – reciting lines from plays or singing the theme tunes to adverts as I started peeling potatoes for tea. The words and lyrics would roll around in my head as the TV and radio played and I tried to stop myself letting my mind drift back. I was the centre now, the one who had to hold everything together for my father, Joe and Lawrence. Keep going. Just keep going. All I had to do was pull everyone along with me. Force them to continue.

  But the heartbeat of our house had died with Mum and at first I’d tried to fill the space around my father and brothers with my noise, smiles and chatter.

  ‘Sister Gabrielle had us in stitches today,’ I’d babble, while we ate tea together. ‘Cindy asked for a book from the top shelf in the library and we knew what was coming. We couldn’t stop laughing when she clambered up the steps and we saw her tiny little bird ankles wrapped in these massive fluffy socks. But she got really angry and threatened to report us to Mr Cartmell.’

  I soon saw that it was pointless. There was only one thing I could do: create a routine that would make my father and brothers put one foot in front of the other every morning. So, I’d get up at seven to lay up the breakfast table before cooking Dad his eggs and pouring Lawrence his cereal. I’d always try to make sure he ate something because Mum wouldn’t want him going to school with an empty stomach. But Lawrence hardly ate and neither did I. Soon I had to start borrowing his trousers because mine were too big.

  As I peel potatoes, I hear the key in the lock. I am sure Lawrence waits for me to get back each day because he doesn’t want to come into an empty house.

  ‘Hello,’ I say, as he walks into the kitchen. ‘Was school okay?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Lawrence looks around, as if searching for something, before silently leaving the kitchen.

  I stare into the sink as I think of Joe. He got back late last night: the house was in darkness when I heard the front door open. But as I waited for the creak that would tell me he was coming up the stairs, I’d heard a different sound – a cry so keen it sounded like a wounded animal’s. I’d lain still in bed as I listened to my brother’s heart breaking.

  Dettol

  Patch died on my thirteenth birthday and Mum missed him so much that we got a new dog about a year later. Sam was an older adult dog that needed a new home, a Greyhound Labrador cross with a strawberry gold coat. With hair the same colour as Mum’s, he’d sit in front of the window and we’d tease her that the neighbours would think he was her. When she went out into the garden to call him, we’d joke that they’d think she was a fishwife calling her errant husband because Dad and the dog shared the same name.

  We all loved Sam because he’d co-operate with any game: leaping over the jump courses that Lawrence and I made for him in the back garden or dancing on his hind legs as we dangled a biscuit from Michael’s fishing rod. He was just as popular with other people too. When Sam was hit by a car and the vet realized my parents couldn’t afford the bills, he came round in the evening to treat him for free. The dog and Mum’s baking were a combination that was too hard to resist.

  The person who loved Sam most, though, was Mum. For her, he could do no wrong. He was her constant companion.

  ‘How’s about an eggy for Sammy?’ Mum would cry in the mornings, as she gave us breakfast.

  Sam would look up at her adoringly as she fried him an egg before popping it into his bowl. After gobbling it up, he’d walk to where Mum had sat down at the table, then rest his head on her knee.

  ‘Sammy, Sammy Soo,’ my mother would croon, as she stroked him.

  Now he sits with his head on my knee. We’re at the vet’s. I want to push Sam away. I wish he’d stop staring up at me with his brown eyes. I turn my head but can’t stop myself reaching out my hand to him. His coat is so soft and thick, his skin warm beneath it.

  Dad told me that I had to bring Sam here. Ever since Mum’s death, the dog has been messing in the house because he’s left inside all day. Sam is used to running in and out of the garden but suddenly he has to sit in the kitchen for hours on end and I often get home to find dog mess everywhere. I always clear it up and wash down the floor with Dettol before opening the windows. But I can’t hide Sam’s misdemeanours from Dad because the telltale smell of antiseptic always gives us away.

  ‘I’ve had enough of it,’ he’d told me a couple of days ago. ‘You’ve got to take him to the vet. It’s got to stop.’

  Tears start to roll down my face as I sit with Sam. He can’t help it. He’s as lost as we are. I brush my tears away, embarrassed to be crying in public. But I can’t stop them as I watch other people walk out of the consulting room with reassured smiles on their faces. The vet has told them that their pet will be well, no longer in pain or distress.

  But I am not going to ask the vet to give Sam a pill or a vaccination. He will not hand me a cream to rub on him or a bottle of drops to put into his food tonight. Instead I must go into the consulting room and tell the vet that my father wants the dog put down.

  ‘We just can’t cope with him any more,’ Dad had told me. ‘It’s too much. He’s too old for a new home and it wouldn’t be fair anyway to send him to strangers. He misses your mother too much. It’s kinder like this.’

  The weight of Sam’s head on my knee feels like lead. I dig my fingers deeper into his coat, fighting the urge to run out of the waiting room. All I want is for Dad to stop being so sad.

  Mother’s Pride

  I reach into the supermarket chiller, taking a quick look around me before bending down to the plastic packet of chops. Pulling at the price label, I peel it off, not daring to breathe as I stick it onto a bigger packet. I don’t have enough money for chops that will feed us all. Dad leaves me cash on the kitchen table when he goes to work in the mornings but often it’s not enough to buy what I need. I try to tell him but he just looks at me blankly.

  ‘Your mother always made do,’ he says gruffly.

  Saying a silent Hail Mary, I pull the chops out of the chiller and look around me. No one has seen. I’m safe this time. But if it wasn’t for the shopkeepers Mum visited for years, I’d never keep us going. Most days, I get off the school bus, go to see them and find they’ve put something aside for me.

  ‘Your mum always liked lamb’s liver,’ the butcher says, as he hands me a packet. ‘I’ve put a bit extra in. Just give me what you’ve got.’

  Or I go into Dick Froome’s and he hands me a box packed with all the basics that Mum used to buy each week: Omo, Kerrygold butter, Bisto, Oxo cubes, Robertson’s jam and Homepride flour. Fishing the flour out of the box because baking is now a thing of the past, I replace it with a loaf of Mother’s Pride as Mum’s words about ‘processed rubbish’ ring in my ears. Then I walk around to Bill Green’s shop, knowing I will find a box of vegetables left at the back door, if he’s already closed, with a handwritten note telling me how to steam, roast or boil them. These men and their endless kindnesses to me are often all that keep me rooted in a day.

  I have to leave school early now in order to get back in time for the shops or start cooking tea. There’s no time for hanging about in the common room listening to the radio any more, and I can’t do much drama because Lawrence has to let himself into the house if I stay late for rehearsals, which I don’t like him to do too often. Mr Harold and Miss Coleman have helped me apply to RADA but I can’t really think of what it might mean. The future doesn’t seem real now. It’s all I can do to get
through each day so I scramble out of the door as soon as the final bell goes, knowing that Dad will want to eat the moment he gets in.

  Try as I might, though, I can never cook things right. I take Mum’s Marguerite Patten Cookery in Colour recipe book off the shelf and flick through it, follow the instructions to the letter, and it still doesn’t taste right. Or I try to remember what I saw Mum do a thousand times and make one of Dad’s favourites. Last week, I made mince with cabbage and potatoes but knew as I stirred the pan that I was doing something wrong. The mince was a dull grey colour. It smelt grey too.

  ‘I can’t eat this,’ Dad said, after he’d taken a mouthful.

  Then he got up, pushed his chair back and left the kitchen without a word.

  ‘Boogie Nights’ by Heatwave

  I’m standing in the New Penny. Joe, Tish and Phil wanted me to come out.

  ‘Come on, Mary!’ Joe had exclaimed. ‘It’ll do you good. I’ll look after you.’

  It’s a few days after Christmas. We sat like waxwork dolls as we tried to get through the day, all of us sighing with relief when it was over and we didn’t have to pretend any more. We tried to keep Lawrence occupied and I think he enjoyed it. It’s hard to know what he’s feeling, though, these days. Lawrence has just turned fifteen and we bought him a skateboard from Alpine Sports. He seemed to like it. I hope he did.

  Everyone around me is dancing as ‘Boogie Nights’ plays. My school friends are here, teenagers I know from Watford too. People come up to me to chat and ask how my Christmas was.

  ‘Yeah, fine,’ I say. ‘We nearly burned the turkey but it came out all right in the end.’

  I smile at them as I ask how their Christmas was, offer to get them a drink or pretend that I have to go to the loo, anything to get away. Everyone is dancing and smiling, throwing their heads back as they laugh at jokes. But as I stand in the middle of the dance-floor, I realize for the first time that I am no longer like everyone here. My friends are looking forward to celebrating the end of one year, hopeful about what the new one will bring. They are carefree but there is a weight inside me now. More and more, I cannot stop myself wondering if all the trouble I caused Mum somehow made her ill. She had so little. No holidays or meals out, new clothes or treats. She gave us whatever extra she had, and I ask myself if I wanted too much. The thought settles heavily inside me – expanding so quickly it makes me breathless. I was always giving Mum problems. Was it me who made her ill?

  I will never know what I might have done better. She is never coming back.

  ‘Mary?’ I hear Joe say, as he puts his arms around me, and I feel tears wet on my face. ‘Come on, Sis. Let me take you home.’

  ‘Baker Street’ by Gerry Rafferty

  The radio is on as Lawrence and I stand peeling potatoes.

  ‘I got my report today,’ he says quietly.

  I look at him. His face is white.

  ‘It’s really bad. I can’t show Dad.’

  ‘How bad?’

  ‘I got Ds in maths, French and geography.’

  I lean under the sink and pull out a saucepan. ‘I’ll sign it,’ I say.

  ‘You will?’

  My heart twists as Lawrence looks at me.

  ‘Of course,’ I say. ‘There’s no point in Dad finding out. He doesn’t have to know. Just make sure you do better next time, okay?’

  Leg-warmers and Mary Janes

  My stomach growls. I am standing in a large rehearsal room surrounded by about thirty other teenagers. I couldn’t eat a thing when Tish met me earlier off the train to Euston and took me across to the canteen in her nursing digs at UCH.

  ‘You’ve got to eat something,’ she said, as I picked at some toast. ‘You won’t be able to think straight if you’re hungry.’

  But I was too nervous to eat and soon left her to walk across to Gower Street and through the doors of RADA for my final audition.

  I’m wearing a pair of black Mary Janes, leg-warmers and drainpipe jeans. As people around me talk about audition pieces and what we’re going to have to do, my stomach rolls with nerves. They have almost overwhelmed me each time I’ve come to RADA to perform. I’ve had two auditions so far and recited Shakespearean speeches, a scene from a Brendan Behan play and a speech from Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge. I’ve cried, laughed and poured everything into each performance.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ a man cries above the noise. ‘Welcome to you all and congratulations on getting this far. As you know, we get a lot of applications to study here and you’ve all done an excellent job in your auditions if you’ve made it to this final step of the process.

  ‘We’ve seen all of you individually but today is about working with other actors. We want to see you perform alongside each other but remember that there’s no right or wrong. We just want you to make the most of today and leave feeling as if you’ve got something out of it.

  ‘Once we’ve seen you all, we’ll be writing to offer successful candidates a place to study here. And, of course, letting those of you who haven’t got places know so that you can take up offers you might have got from other drama schools.’

  I wonder what Dad will say if I get offered a place. I still haven’t talked to him much about RADA because I don’t want to upset him any more than he is already.

  ‘Why don’t we take him out?’ Don and Harry say, when they come over for tea.

  ‘He’s got to leave this house,’ Sadie and Sheila whisper, when he wanders out of the room. ‘It’s no good for him being cooped up here. Theresa would hate to see him like this.’

  This morning Dad was sitting at the kitchen table reading the paper as I got ready to leave.

  ‘Where are you off to?’

  ‘RADA. Final audition.’

  He sighed as he turned the page. ‘Why you want to be doing all that I just don’t know. By your age I was out working. Not studying something that will surely never make you a proper wage.’

  ‘But, Dad! People make a living by acting. Merry’s dad has been in Love Thy Neighbour for years.’

  ‘And no doubt putting ideas in your head.’

  Merry Smethurst and her family have become one of the brightest spots in my life. Merry started at St Joan’s in the lower sixth and lives in a house near Chorleywood Common. The Smethursts’ garden rolls down a hill and Merry’s mum, Julie, is always in it pruning roses or weeding, while her dad, Jack, sits in his cabin smoking cigars and reading scripts.

  ‘You’ll be fantastic on the stage, our Mary,’ he says, when I go in to see him. ‘Go and do it, get any job you can – sweep the stage, if you have to. It can be a hard life but it’s a great one. And you’ve got the talent.’

  As I sit with Jack, he tells me stories about his life as an actor. Sometimes I find other actors there whom I know from television when I go to stay for the night. But it’s not them I want to see. It’s Jack, Julie, Merry, Perdy, Jane and Adam. Their house is so full of life. It reminds me of how ours used to be. Going over to see the Smethursts is sometimes all that gets me through a week.

  ‘You need to get a proper job, Mary,’ Dad said, as I put on my coat.

  His words ring loudly in my head now as I look around the room.

  ‘We’re going to start with some warm-up exercises and movements,’ the teacher says. ‘So, first you will be warming up your voices and bodies by buzzing like bumble bees and working your arms.’

  All around me people begin humming and buzzing, wriggling and looping their arms.

  ‘Come on, now!’ the teacher cries. ‘Just let yourself go. This is the start of a big day for you all.’

  But as people around me start to move, I’m not sure what to do. For the first time ever I feel embarrassed to perform.

  Scotch eggs

  I’m lying in the bedroom I still share with Tish. She’s home for the weekend, and we’re going out to the pub with Phil soon. Tish is on the bottom bunk, the one she’s always slept in, and I’m on the top. Sometimes when she’s at college duri
ng the week, I get into her bed just to feel closer to her. If Tish and Michael didn’t come home each weekend, I’m not sure I could keep going. But I know as I wave them off each Monday morning that they’ll be back on Friday. All I need to do is get through five days, four nights until they’re home again.

  ‘So what are you going to do if you get offered a place at RADA?’ Tish says, as I lie above her reading The Thorn Birds.

  ‘Dunno. I’m not sure how I’m even going to be able to afford it. My Boots money won’t pay for it all and Dad won’t give me any extra.’

  I wish Tish would stop talking. Dad and money is an unsolvable problem.

  ‘Your mother always made do,’ he barks at me, when I tell him I’ve run out of housekeeping. ‘I don’t understand why you can’t, too.’

  The thing is, I’m only now beginning to discover just how many things Dad never really understood – not just how far Mum made so little money go. He’s like a child almost, a weight on top of a weight, without her here to keep him going.

  ‘Will you take the children into town, Sam, and give me a couple of hours’ peace?’ she’d say, on a Saturday morning.

  ‘The fence needs a coat of paint.’

  ‘Don’t forget to change those light bulbs.’

  ‘We need to get the bedding plants in. Will you nip to the nursery tomorrow?’

  ‘I’m going out. Take the casserole out of the oven at six thirty and put the potatoes on. I’ll be back in time to mash them.’

  She was his compass and now he has lost direction. But while we all try to keep each other going, it sometimes feels that Dad is so lost in his own sadness that he doesn’t think of ours. He just wants his life to continue as it did while Mum was here: meals on the table, shirts washed and ironed; rooms polished and vacuumed. I don’t mind filling the gap. I understand that I must be the one to look after my brothers and him. But money is the only thing I ask and it’s a constant struggle.