I cradle my glass and sit with her while Helen and Katie race around the house, shrieking.
‘Katie doesn’t like me drinking,’ she tells me. ‘One small drink won’t kill you.’
We touch the rims of our glasses together, saying ‘chin-chin’ and laughing. My glass feels heavy, even before she’s poured my gin and tonic. Mrs Nelson says I should call my drink a ‘G&T,’ or, if I want to be amusing, a ‘grin and bear it.’
‘These are beautiful glasses,’ I tell her.
I shouldn’t call it a glass, Mrs Nelson tells me. I must call it Waterford Crystal Stemware. It’s part of the set Mr Nelson bought in Harrods for their fifteenth wedding anniversary last year. He spent ten pounds for every year they were married.
‘We got married in November,’ she tells me. ‘If in October you do marry, love will come but riches tarry. But if you wed in bleak November, only joys will come, so you just remember! Remember that for future reference, young lady.’ She taps the side of her long, pale nose knowingly with a finger.
‘What about March?’ I ask, remembering that Rebecca once said she and Dad got married in March with daffodils all around.
Mrs Nelson pauses. Her pink lips swell and contract as she tries to recall the lines. Finally she pronounces triumphantly, ‘If you wed when March winds blow, joy and sorrow both you’ll know.’
‘That’s not very nice.’
The Waterford Crystal Stemware includes champagne flutes and cocktail glasses. As I sip my second drink I try to visualise a champagne flute, but it flutters away.
Whenever Mrs Nelson tries to take a gulp, the coaster sticks to the base of her Waterford Crystal Stemware. She flicks the coaster off each time, but I can see she’s getting frustrated because she keeps trying to wipe the bottom of the glass on her sleeve, nearly spilling her drink.
When she makes cocktails, Mrs Nelson always adds a glacé cherry on a stick and a miniature paper umbrella with dainty wooden spokes. The correct word is ‘parasol,’ not ‘umbrella,’ she tells me. Parasols are always used in drinks from tropical countries such as Cuba, Jamaica, Brazil and Belgium. As well as cocktails, I like Baileys with three cubes of ice, Malibu, and Southern Comfort with lemonade and lime.
The living room smells of furniture polish. Paintings of exotic birds hang all around, bright colours flashing against the rich green wallpaper. Their beaks are orange and yellow and red. A stuffed bird perches on a twig under a bell-jar on the mantelpiece. The carpet springs like moss under my feet.
Tonight, even though it’s nearly winter time, Mrs Nelson showed me how to spray my hair with lemon juice and Sun-In for natural blonde streaks when the sun shines.
‘If I was a young man and I had to choose between you and your sister, I’d choose you any time,’ she says, squeezing her eyes closed at me, then opening them again. ‘Don’t get me wrong. Your sister’s a pretty little thing, but with all those dark curls and that complexion, she’ll start to look a bit foreign and trashy in a few years’ time. But you, with your lovely brown hair and fair skin, you’ll look beautiful once you’ve had a proper haircut and put on a bit of makeup.’
We drink a small tumbler of Stones Ginger Wine to counterbalance the sweetness of the cakes. Mrs Nelson says it’s a pleasure to see me enjoy the snacks and drinks she provides for us after school.
‘What a shame Helen won’t eat these,’ I remark, licking my forefinger and dabbing at the crumbs on my plate. Whenever Mrs Nelson holds the plate under Helen’s nose, she shudders as if the cakes are full of poison.
Two firm lines form in the magnolia powder on Mrs Nelson’s forehead.
I know Helen’s worried in case the cakes have lard in them. Lard is made from the bones of dead animals, and my sister says she can smell it on people’s skin, even at school and in the supermarket.
I sip my ginger wine and nibble my cake. But after a while, I start to picture the lard oozing out of the pores in my armpits. Feeling a bit queasy, I slide the cake down the side of the sofa, and I only just manage to say ‘chin-chin’ when we have a drop more ginger wine.
Helen and Katie stamp around in Katie’s bedroom, screeching and laughing as if they are small children.
One of the main reasons I like Mrs Nelson is that my sister’s little-girl voice has no affect whatsoever on her. In fact, whenever she says Helen’s name, Mrs Nelson arches her eyebrows and purses her lips. She says my sister has a lot of strange ideas for a nine-year-old.
I would like to be Mrs Nelson’s daughter. I would like to warn her to make sure my sister’s strange ideas don’t rub off on Katie when the two girls romp through the house after school.
Hard lumps of cake stick to the roof of my mouth. I dab at my lips with a serviette. The exotic birds in the living room slide down the walls and swim around as if they’ve turned into fish.
I tell Mrs Nelson about some of my sister’s strange ideas, which include refusing to eat meat and refusing to wear anything made out of leather.
Mrs Nelson snorts, and her nostrils flare in a figure of eight. ‘I’m surprised your mum puts up with it.’ She sighs and picks a crumb of scone out of her tooth with a pink fingernail. I notice a streak of lipstick on her incisors. Then, in a new voice, she asks, ‘don’t you ever get to see your dad, pet?’
Squeals of piercing little-girl laughter tumble down the stairs. ‘One mushroom, tra-la-la, two mushrooms, tra-la-la!’ Helen shouts, and Katie joins in, ‘three, three, three mushrooms tra-la-la!’ They thump the floor, howling with laughter, making the dog bark.
‘He’s away. Travelling.’
I don’t know if I want to talk to Mrs Nelson any more. I’ve got homework to do. Every night this week, she’s asked a few more questions. I can feel her circling around the fading image I have of my dad, tucked away privately inside me. I am in a difficult position.
‘He was a teacher,’ I say, offering her a Fact she knows already. ‘He went away suddenly, but it wasn’t our fault. It was his work. The pressure.’
I have given her this small morsel of truth about my dad because she’s looking for something solid. This can be her thank you present for being so nice to me in the evenings after school.
Her eyes dart about as she unwraps my information in her mind. Beneath her sweet perfume, Mrs Nelson smells faintly of sweat.
I stare at a beautiful bird of paradise which fills a scarlet frame on the living-room wall. Jagged emerald leaves surround it, but the forest in the background is almost black.
‘Yes, but when does he come to visit? I can’t say I’ve ever seen him, and we’ve been here nearly a year.’
I fidget with my pencil case. ‘I’d better start my homework,’ I say in my most chirpy voice.
‘Not once, I bet! You poor love! He abandoned you!’ Mrs Nelson stops herself suddenly. ‘Write him a nice letter, and get that silly sister of yours to do the same. I’m sure he’d come for a visit if you did that.’
‘We do write letters. He writes back all the time.’ I have no idea how to stop her from talking. The fact is that my Dad doesn’t write very often any more. He can’t. He’s busy in his new job as a volunteer.
‘Are you a bit worried about seeing him?’
‘We’re all fine, thank you.’
I’ll never tell anybody this, but when I close my eyes, I can’t see the details of his face any more, just a blur of beard and glasses. If Rebecca had stuck our family photos into an album and labelled them properly, I would at least be able to locate his picture whenever I needed a reminder.
Helen and Katie race downstairs, chased by the terrier. All three are panting and blinking at each other. The girls start to throw a squeaky ball to and fro in the living room, too close to where I’m sitting, and the dog runs hysterically between them, barking, snapping at the air. The screeching of the girls combines with the yapping of the bulgy-eyed dog to completely disrupt my peace of mind. I try to focus on the writing in my biology textbook, but it slithers around in front of my eyes.
Helen
and Katie let the dog lick their faces. They roll on the living-room floor with it, giggling with pleasure while it barks excitedly and bounds around.
‘Go into the garden, girls, and let poor Lizzie get on with her homework,’ Mrs Nelson calls to the over-excited trio.
I watch them race outside into the cold air, but they rush straight back in again, screaming about the stench from the bone factory. I imagine their bowels and stomachs full of writhing worms from the dog.
****
Fri 28th October
I survey the empty fridge, slam the door, and march along the corridor to the study.
‘I’m starving. What’s for dinner?’
‘Pardon, darling?’
The first time, a couple of weeks ago, when there was nothing left to eat, she thumped her forehead. ‘I knew there was something.’
She gave me money to buy baked beans and oven chips from the village shop. He served me. It was wonderful. We chatted for hours.
Rebecca is not interested in shopping at the moment because she’s still writing her public lecture. As I stand outside the study door and wonder out loud, for the second time, what we’re having for tea, the guilty voice inside confirms, ‘I haven’t actually had time to stock up this week.’
Enough is enough. I open the door and face her. ‘I’ll do the shopping from now on. Give me the money. Then you can concentrate on your work and get your talk finished.’
If she puts me in charge of shopping and cooking, I can see him every single day.
‘It’s not a talk, darling.’ She throws my word back like a rotten vegetable. ‘It’s a public lecture. Anyway, I’m not particularly hungry tonight with that terrible smell…’
‘I’ll get the dinner ready,’ I say. ‘I don’t mind.’
Rebecca tells me to cover my nose with a scarf, take her purse out of her handbag, and run up to the village shop to find something easy to cook for tea.
****
Sat 29th October
Another convoy of trucks trundles up the road, churning through the puddles, exhaling blasts of black exhaust and disappearing through the gates. Seagulls swarm around the top of the factory. The chimneys belch rancid odours through the village.
In the street outside, a few brave drivers jump into their cars and accelerate away, keeping their windows tightly closed.
I examine the bubble of glass trapped in my Victorian windowpane.
Mr Nelson revs his Capri as he drives past with Katie in the passenger seat. He looks like a gangster. His face is masked by a white polo-neck jumper all the way up to the bridge of his nose.
The stench has kept us prisoner all week, gagging behind sealed windows and doors every evening after school. On the positive side, however, it’s prevented Helen from visiting him since Tuesday. Forced to stay in her bedroom, she’s been playing Tubby the Tuba again and again on Katie’s old record player until I want to snap the stupid record in half with its um-pah um-pah um-pah.
I’ve been standing at my window since seven o’clock this morning, watching the road in case he comes past. I can’t leave my place, not even for a pee, in case my sister tries to sneak off with him. She’s currently in her bedroom, but she’s developed a knack of evaporating from the house.
I need to be vigilant at all times.
Downstairs, our mother keeps listening to the weather forecast, waiting for the wind to change direction so she can hang out the washing and get on with her writing.
Mrs Phillips drives down the road, a red scarf wrapped around her nose and mouth, orange hair spilling down her shoulders. I catch a glimpse of the baby’s fat thigh in the back of the car.
Rebecca bursts out of the kitchen downstairs. ‘Girls, I’m going to the library. Can’t do anything here. Bloody smell!’
She slams the door and drives away. She doesn’t even tell us when she will be back.
Less than a second after our mother leaves, Helen sneaks out of the front door. I see a flash of white running up the road. As quickly as possible, I wrap a scarf round my mouth and follow her up to the shop.
****
Mon 31st October
I take a large handful of headache pills from our mother’s handbag in the hall and drop them onto the dinner plate with a clatter. I will use these as a base to bulk out the rest. I fill an old Robinsons jam jar with bleach from the cupboard under the kitchen sink, close the lid and balance it on the plate beside the pills. From the top shelf of the bathroom cabinet, I take three or four tablets here and there. There are numerous half-empty brown bottles on the shelf.
I tiptoe past the study and walk quickly upstairs to my room. The pattern on the dinner plate curls beneath my assembled materials. Now that I’ve gathered my ingredients, I’m not sure whether I should press ahead with my idea.
I go back downstairs to the kitchen and make myself a mug of tea. I wish Rebecca would emerge from the study and talk to me. But she remains silent.
I lift the pestle and mortar off the kitchen mantelpiece and return upstairs, carrying my tea in the other hand. Steam from the mug dances gracefully in the air.
First of all, I grind up the headache pills, then I add the other pills one by one, crushing and pressing until I have created a mound of powder, white with flecks of pink and blue.
If I am to do this properly, I realise, I can’t possibly make use of the bleach as well. All my other ingredients are designed for human consumption: I can’t pour bleach into the bowl if I am serious about my idea. What would I do with a mixture containing bleach?
I feel as if I’m watching myself from the windowsill. My head is clear but blank. I lick my forefinger, dip it into the mix, and lick the sherbet. A fierce metallic taste claws at the centre of my tongue.
There is only one obvious place to put the bleach. I carry the jar over the landing to Helen’s room and push the door open.
When you enter my sister’s bedroom, the first thing to strike your nose is the array of pungent plant smells. But beneath this odour there’s an underlay of sour body smells. Why do children always smell sour? Some of the first-years at school still carry this odour around with them.
Helen’s carpet is covered with dry compost, twigs and crispy brown leaves from her plants. Katie Nelson’s record player sits in the corner, lid propped open like a mouth pausing for words.
My sister’s houseplant collection has run out of control. Oversized yukka plants lurch towards her window, tangled ivy creeps over her mantelpiece, and an enormous palm tree heaves in its pot. Her bed is surrounded by cuttings. In between the larger plants, there is an abundance of smaller plants in varying degrees of growth and maturity. She’s planted baby ferns in miniature terracotta pots, and her spider plants sprout happily all over the room. A group of African violets with healthy green leaves and velvety flowers forms a semi-circle under her window.
Helen keeps the all the weakest plants as well as all the healthy ones. If Rebecca ever prunes her houseplants or tries to throw old ones away, my sister rescues them from the rubbish bin. She fills plastic pots with soil, tucks the outcasts in, and takes them to her room. When they’ve recovered, she gives them away to people in the village. Up and down our street, you can see her plants in people’s front windows. You know they’re her plants because she always decorates the old plastic pots with paintings. I’m sure her behaviour makes everybody laugh at us behind our backs. Somebody ought to stop her from doing this kind of thing.
‘I bet you don’t rescue nettles and weeds or slugs and snails,’ I commented a few weeks ago.
‘I think everything should be allowed to live,’ she replied prissily.
‘You’re so pathetic,’ I informed her.
Starting with the yukka plants, measure by measure, I pour bleach into the pots. The air in the bedroom thickens with the smell. When I finish, I stand in the doorway to survey the scene. Nothing’s happened yet, but I imagine the yukka plants drooping together with a sigh, giving up hope as if they’re relieved to be set free from this
cramped, smelly prison. All around me, the other plants I’ve tampered with will sag and wilt as the bleach penetrates the soil to their roots. Already the leaves of the giant palm are starting to fall limply down by its trunk.
I wonder if the sharp smell of bleach will still be in the air when my sister comes home. But I couldn’t care less. It will be too late by then. She won’t be able to change a thing.
I didn’t pour any bleach on the cuttings and seedlings. For some reason, a part of me wants to give them a chance. The only survivors will be the ones I haven’t touched.
It’s nearly eight thirty. I go back to my bedroom and see the heap of powder in the mortar. It will have to wait for another time. For now, I pour it into an old envelope from one of my dad’s letters, fold over the top several times, and slide it into the middle of my Beano collection.
The house is silent. Helen’s still out. I know she’s up the road with him.
The smell of bleach sits thickly in my pores. I can’t get rid of it, no matter how many times I wash my hands in the bathroom. A squirt of Mrs Nelson’s perfume would cover up the smell.
I tiptoe out of number eleven and walk up to the shop. Somebody forgot to close the Venetian blinds this evening. I edge forward. But instead of seeing them, as I imagined, I see Mrs Phillips in the shop, moving to and fro inside, swinging tins in happy arcs from boxes on the floor up onto the shelves, bottom jiggling, feet shuffling.
As I linger outside, she halts, turns around, and moves towards the window.
I must have stamped on her grave.
I pull back into the drive and press my body into the cool wall of the building. When I emerge, Mrs Phillips has tugged the blinds closed, sealing herself inside.
Helen’s wail is loud enough to rattle the foundations of the bone factory and set the boats swaying on the high tide.
Rebecca rushes out of the study, bounding up the stairs with heavy footsteps.
I emerge from my bedroom where I have been composing a letter to Dad.
‘What is it?’ Rebecca calls in panic. Her face is white. She’s trembling like she used to do after a big argument. ‘What’s happened? Helen?’
The Third Person Page 9