The Third Person

by Stephanie Newell

  Our mother’s plastic-rimmed glasses are smeared with finger-prints from where she’s been pushing them up her nose all day. She barely looks at me. Anyway, if she did, she would only see a greasy blur hovering in the kitchen on the far side of her world.

  ‘Where did I put those vegetable pasties?’ She rummages around in a plastic bag.

  Since the Nelsons went on holiday, I’ve taken to pouring myself a drink at five o’clock, just like Mrs Nelson. But since the recent tightening up of licensing laws, the landlord down the road has refused to serve me alcohol, so all I’ve got to choose from is my dad’s old collection of single malt whiskies at the back of the food cupboard. Rebecca didn’t throw them away when she cleared out the rest of his stuff. Although I like my dad’s whisky bottles because the labels and the necks have a trace of his musky smell, I much prefer the drinks Mrs Nelson makes for me, especially the cocktails, although Talisker mixed with coke and a dash of lime juice is also nice, coating my teeth with sticky sweetness.

  For the first few days, each sip of whisky burnt my throat and scalded the inside of my cheeks, but I’ve grown used to the sensation as the drink moves down my neck like an arrow aiming for my middle. It makes me feel alive on the inside, although once or twice this week it’s also made me feel near to tears. I don’t know why, but I think this is because I’m really missing Mrs Nelson.

  I don’t like Laphroaig.

  Ardbeg is quite nice.

  Bowmore is okay, smooth and sweet.

  ‘Chin-chin,’ I say, sitting in my bedroom with my back pressed against the radiator, raising my glass to absent friends.

  When I finish my drink, I wash and dry the glass, and place it back in the cupboard so nobody will notice. My nostrils and throat are lined with peaty flavours for the rest of the evening.

  ‘Put the pasties in the oven when it’s heated up, will you, darling, and make a nice coleslaw?’ my mother says, lighting a cigarette. She jerks her hand in the air like a puppet, and disappears along the corridor to the study, leaving a sharp elbow of smoke in the kitchen behind her.

  Rebecca needs total silence to write her book in the coming weeks. She says her research has reached a crucial stage. This year she will finish her book. It’s her New Year’s Resolution. She’s decided on the subtitle, but not the title yet. The subtitle will be ‘An Appreciation of Edwardian Nature Poetry.’ She says that her poets are tragically under-rated by current generations of academics. These academics are elitists who privilege Modernism above middlebrow literature. Sadly they form the majority among her colleagues. She says her book will rectify this state of affairs and change their limited outlook.

  When she talks like this at the dinner table, Helen and I smirk at each other and roll our eyes at the ceiling, stifling mock-yawns. In those moments, I feel that I could almost like my sister.

  It’s not funny, however, when Rebecca decides to say these things in public. She sounds so pompous I move away in embarrassment. The longer she stands there, the further away I move, step by step, trying to erase the sound of her voice. Whenever anyone says hello in the supermarket, or stops her in the street to ask how we’re doing, she tells them about her research. People ask how she is, how we are, if everything is okay at number eleven. And she starts talking about her stupid book. She should simply answer their questions, then we can get on with our shopping and go home.

  Our mother could learn a thing or two from Mrs Nelson.

  Mrs Nelson says books are bad for the eyes. They cause headaches and give you a nervous twitch. Books with small print cause premature wrinkles and myopia, which is especially unpleasant for girls because glasses look very unattractive on them. I agree: just look at Rebecca. Mrs Nelson knows of one girl in Katie’s class at school who had epileptic fits and went cross-eyed because she read too many books before bedtime. And Katie’s only in the first year.

  ‘Young ladies should go to sleep at night,’ Mrs Nelson says. ‘Have pretty dreams and wake up looking beautiful in the morning.’

  The pasties are perfectly cooked under my careful supervision. I distribute them on three plates, arrange clumps of shredded cabbage and chopped tomato around each one, and call my mother and Helen to the table.

  Nobody speaks. Our mother’s eyes race about behind her cloudy glasses, chasing thoughts in the kitchen air.

  Helen nibbles her nails instead of her food, and stares at the table.

  I sit quietly, looking from one to the other. I bet the Nelsons’ house is noisy at mealtimes, full of chatter and the sound of knives and forks scraping the plates clean. I finish my pasty and gnaw the dry crusts.

  My sister’s eaten two mouthfuls of salad.

  ‘Don’t you want that?’ I ask, eyeing her untouched pasty.

  Without answering, she stands up and leaves the table, heading for the front door.

  I imagine her grabbing her mountain bike from the front railings and pedalling off up the road. I can’t simply sit here as my sister disappears again. ‘I think I’ll go and see if Katie’s back from holidays,’ I tell Rebecca and stand up quickly.

  ‘Don’t be late, darling,’ our mother says with a sigh.

  I rush out. At the gate, I look left and right to make sure that nobody is watching before running straight up the road to the shop.

  ****

  Fri 20th January

  Mrs Phillips bursts through the door. With pink cheeks and a voice bubbling with excited laughter, she announces they have decided to go to Paris for a long Valentine’s weekend.

  She calls it Gay Parry and puts her arm round his waist.

  ‘The children will enjoy that,’ I say, marvelling at her freckles. It looks as if somebody has sneezed all over her. At least she’s lost her bloated look since Christmas. I expect she’s been on a diet.

  ‘We’re not taking them with us,’ she gushes, looking at him in tipsy adoration. ‘We’re leaving Sammy and George with my mum, so we can lock up shop and have a nice time from Friday right the way through to Valentine’s Tuesday.’

  Her voice is full of disgusting innuendoes when she says ‘nice time.’

  ‘It’s just a chance to visit the galleries and get away from the kids.’ Mr Phillips fidgets from foot to foot.

  Mrs Phillips strokes his arm, stretching her lips towards him in what she clearly imagines to be a seductive pout, then she delves noisily in her handbag to find money to pay me for the evening.

  I am livid. Months of concentrated effort will be poured down the drain if they aren’t here on Valentine’s Day.

  ‘What about the shop?’ I adopt a disbelieving tone. ‘Aren’t you worried about closing it for so many days?’

  ‘Right through till Tuesday!’ she chirrups.

  My voodoo doll has had the opposite effect to the one I desired.

  ‘People will survive,’ he says rudely. ‘We don’t exactly do a roaring trade. Might make them appreciate us a bit more if we close for a few days.’

  On our walk back to number eleven, she chats incessantly about their Valentine’s holiday. I excuse myself rapidly when we reach the front door.

  I can’t sleep. I fidget in bed, blinking at the shadows on the ceiling, trying to work out how to adjust my plan to incorporate their absence just when they’re supposed to be in the village.

  ****

  VII. February

  Sat 4th February

  Helen’s cough has started to get on my nerves. The two of us are standing side-by-side on the rug in our mother’s study, swaying gently. According to my Swatch, we’ve been here for precisely one hour forty-seven minutes. We’re not allowed to speak or move from this spot until one of us confesses. Helen’s desperate to go to the toilet, but our mother won’t let us leave the room.

  Another ten-pound-note has gone missing from the housekeeping tin.

  Rebecca drums her fingers on the arm of the chair. She smokes cigarette after cigarette, observing us closely. Every five minutes she shouts, ‘Just own up! Who took it?’

 
The vertical lines in her forehead look like they’ve been drawn with a ruler.

  I have stronger willpower than them both.

  About half an hour ago, Rebecca tried to appeal to the innocent party’s sense of injustice at being held captive like this alongside the guilty party, but the innocent party knows what would happen to her if she walked into that kind of trap.

  My dressing-gown reeks of smoke. Confined like this, at least I can keep an eye on my sister.

  Helen’s resolve starts to crumble after two hours. Fidgeting and whimpering, she says she’s going to wet herself and asks to go to the toilet.

  I have no idea what my sister will do next. I’m as curious as the next person.

  Rebecca shifts position in the chair. ‘Not until you tell me who took the money. You know who it was, and I’ve got a jolly good idea. Just tell me. Don’t pee on my rug!’

  Knees trembling, my sister owns up to the crime.

  Up-down, up-down goes our mother’s slipper on my sister’s backside. She still hasn’t been to the toilet.

  I feel a bit sorry for Helen. She’s got to pay the money back from her Post Office savings account.

  ****

  Tues 7th February

  ‘Stay outside until she’s done her business, girls. Don’t let anyone catch you if she does a you-know-what on the pavement!’ Mrs Nelson waves a tumbler at us. The dense orange liquid drink slops dangerously close to the rim, and the ice-cubes thump against the side of the glass. ‘Do up your coat, Katie!’

  ‘Let’s go up the road, not down, so we can spy through the window of the shop,’ Katie whispers as we hover at the top of the path, lit by the floodlight, looking left and right in the icy drizzle.

  Katie hasn’t stopped asking questions since the time we saw them dancing Flamingo. Neither of us has seen anything since then, and Katie’s weekly reports contain no sightings at all. She won’t shut up about the Flamingo dance, though, and poses all kinds of impossible questions that trail off into the mist. The other day she asked me why Mr Phillips wants to play with Helen when he’s got children of his own. Why can’t he play with them instead? I said it’s because he’s only got boys. He’s always wanted a girl. Another time she asked why, if they’re such close friends, Helen never mentions their games. I knew the answer to that one, but I didn’t tell Katie Nelson: it’s because Helen doesn’t want to share him with me.

  I wish I’d never let Katie Nelson come to observe them with me, and I regret asking her to write those weekly reports. I suspect she didn’t hide properly when I first sent her up the road, and got seen. As a result, Helen and him have gone underground.

  ‘It’s not spying,’ I insist as she struggles to do up each toggle on her coat. ‘It’s information-gathering. Anyway, we won’t see anything tonight. Helen only goes up there Mondays and Wednesdays.’

  ‘But she never goes up there any more, not even Mondays and Wednesdays.’

  Katie’s too immature ever to be a real friend of mine. She seems to think Mr Phillips is a funny, brightly-coloured fish illuminated behind the shop window, flitting hither and thither for our personal entertainment.

  We set off up the road. Shafts of light spill out of the cracks in people’s curtains and flash in the puddles.

  The dog has a lead that extends thirty-three feet. Knowing the length of its freedom, it usually trots at a distance of precisely thirty-three feet, tugging at the string like a kite in the breeze. Happily out of reach, it zig-zags across the road, knots itself around trees and dives into people’s front gardens to squat on their paths and lawns.

  On the rare occasions that I agree to hold the lead, like now while Katie buttons up her coat, I keep the dog reeled-in at choker length and my finger firmly pressed on the lock. The dog lurches forward, gags, is thrown into reverse, lurches forward, chokes, halts abruptly, lurches forward, gags, sits down on the wet road, looks up at me.

  Katie skips up to the shop and peers in.

  ‘Nobody there.’ She sounds a bit relieved. ‘Just like always.’

  I hand her the lead and the terrier gusts away. We hunch our shoulders in the rain. Katie tries not to step in any puddles because she’s wearing her new Nikes, but it’s difficult to see the pavement in this light.

  We turn back before we get to the churchyard and the dog gallops ahead, homeward-bound, name-tag tinkling on its collar.

  ‘Let’s watch a video when we get in,’ Katie suggests. ‘How about Wizard of Oz?’

  ‘I’ll probably have a quick chat to your mum first,’ I reply, pressing my tongue against the back of my teeth and sucking, thinking about how the liquid clung like a sugary blanket to the side of Mrs Nelson’s crystal tumbler this evening.

  Suddenly the terrier stops in its tracks up ahead and stands stock-still, nose pressed against a garden gate. The lead gets shorter and shorter as we approach.

  ‘Trixy!’ Katie calls nervously. ‘Come on!’

  The dog doesn’t move a muscle. Katie gives the lead a sharp tug, but the terrier’s legs remain rigidly fixed to the spot.

  Three feet away, we see what Trixy is looking at.

  On the other side of a slatted wooden gate, a vast Rottweiler stands on a dark path, silently staring at Trixy with eyes like dim lamps. The small dog looks into the face of the big dog, transfixed. Predatory and silent, the big dog doesn’t acknowledge us at all: it only has eyes for the terrier.

  ‘Come on!’ Katie yanks the lead. The spell is broken.

  Quietly, as she is wrenched away, Trixy snuffles the grass by the big dog’s gate.

  ****

  Fri 10th February

  I’m not surprised that Helen’s sulking at dinner this evening because two hours ago Mr and Mrs Phillips drove off into the fog together.

  Two cracked plastic crates sit outside the door of the shop, abandoned in the cold until Tuesday. Everything on the shelves looks stagnant when you peer through the blinds. You can almost smell the stale light as it falls through the slats.

  Until yesterday, I didn’t feel particularly happy about the situation either, but there was nothing I could do to stop them leaving. I struggled to think of ways to delay them. Given the way their cat wanders through the shop spraying up the vegetables, I thought about composing a letter on Rebecca’s typewriter saying a team of experts from the County Council would be coming for a compulsory sanitary inspection on Monday, but I couldn’t get past the first sentence in any of my drafts. Next I wrote a letter to Mrs Phillips from the Baby Clinic containing an urgent summons to an appointment on Monday morning. In the absence of any headed paper, I typed the letter on one of Rebecca’s blank index cards. I was extremely unhappy with the result of this experiment because I couldn’t provide a single detail about the clinic, not even its location.

  In the end, I adjusted my arrangements and came up with a revised plan to take account of the situation. Now I think their absence will actually work in my favour because it gives me more time. Instead of having to post the Valentine’s card on Saturday using Royal Mail, I will be able to deliver it in person, by hand, tomorrow. By royal female! And just in case he gets to the card first, opens it and tries to hide or destroy it before Mrs Phillips sees it, I’ll take my time tomorrow and deliver some supplementary items to the house as well.

  With the approach of their holiday, a sour lump has been forming in my stomach, getting bigger, spreading through my body, weighing down my arms and legs like concrete, sealing up my lungs.

  Every night I lie in bed panting for air like a fish washed up on the seawall. I can’t think of anything apart from his hands, fingers reaching out in the dark.

  Something is suffocating me.

  For all these weeks I’ve been lurking in the shadows. I can’t wait in the darkness any more. I need to grasp a fistful of facts, bunch them up and not let go however hard they struggle.

  ****

  Sun 12th February

  Locating the garden shed is tricky without a torch, but I can’t risk being seen by
the neighbours. As it is, I think I saw a net curtain twitch when I bumped into the dustbin at the corner of the building.

  The garden’s chaotic: I kick terracotta tubs and bump my forehead on a prong of the washing-line. Finally at the shed, I fumble with the bolt and tug the door open. The spare key is easy to find, hanging on a nail of its own just inside the door.

  As I close the shed door, something alive and heavy brushes against my leg in the blackness and I nearly scream. Then it meows and writhes.

  The pressure behind my eyes intensifies.

  I fumble for the keyhole and turn the key. All the while, I watch myself incredulously. I see my fingers with the key, my arm reaching out for the handle, but I can’t feel responsible for any of these actions.

  I put the key in my jeans pocket.

  I’ve never been in this house without the children upstairs. Apart from that one incident with Samuel, the boys always sleep soundly whenever I’m here. The whole house breathes with them at night, giving shape to the air, moving in and out on a gentle current. I feel their presence in all the rooms, upstairs and down. When I’m delving around in the bureau, or nosing through the messy recesses of cupboards and drawers, I hear sneezes, rustling bedclothes, coughs, brief whimpers.

  Now I feel like a ghost. I have no place here. I am nothing here.

  Moving into the kitchen, eyes adjusting to the half-light, I feel a thrill in my stomach, but can’t work out if it’s pleasure or terror. I’m breathing stolen air. No object that I’ve ever taken, no matter how valuable or precious to its owner, can compete with this sensation.

  The kitchen stinks of cat food. I tiptoe over to the window and tug the curtains closed. Then I switch on the lights and take a look around.

  The floor is littered with heaped bowls of cat meat and dried food, enough for a week. But the obese black-and-white creature is more interested in me than the food on the floor. It bundles around my feet, purring, meowing, nudging my ankles and calves with its cheeks. Perhaps it recognises me. Perhaps it thinks I’ve got a place here after all.