Tiger, Tiger

by Galaxy Craze

  In the flat, my father would settle into the comfortable chair by the flame heater and read the paper or watch a game on the telly while Hannah cooked lunch. She was a delicious cook; everything she made was tasty. On Sundays she made us a roast chicken with rosemary potatoes and bread sauce. In the summer she made salmon cakes and egg salad. She sliced whole potatoes into thick chips and fried them in a frying pan of oil until they were golden brown. She grilled haddock and cod and served it with tartar sauce and horseradish. She made trifle in a glass bowl so you could see the layers of custard, jam, and sponge cake. My mother said the reason her cooking was so good was because she cooked with love.

  “Mum,” my father would say, raising his teacup, “you make the best cup of tea in England.”

  We ate at the small table in the room with the heater. Our parents never fought at Hannah’s, and Eden and I spent the day looking at her things. A cut-glass bowl of sweets sat on the sitting room table on a lace cloth; we wondered how she could have bowls of sweets around and not eat them all in one day. Her sewing kit opened like a fan into different layers and compartments. She took Eden and me round the corner to her friend’s flat, to show us off. She took us to the park across the street and sat on the bench for hours while we played. I always felt, with her, a little younger than I was: watched over and cared for. After she died, I prayed to her.

  As she grew older, there was a flattened look in her eyes, a faraway fear; you could see it when we said good-bye on Sunday evenings. We would put on our coats in the hall, dimly lit by a chandelier.

  “I’ll see you next week,” she would say. “Give me a ring, let me know what you fancy, so I can make it to the shops in time.” Our father would slip a twenty-pound note into her hand.

  As Hannah stood in the doorway, she held her cardigan closed with her hand, her toweling slippers on and a packet of cigarettes and a gold-plated lighter in her pocket. She would wave, watching us as we walked down the street.

  The spring before she died, Eden and I spent a week at her house during the Easter holidays. When she moved from the East End to Maida Vale, Maida Vale had not been considered a desirable neighborhood. But London was changing; prices had risen and younger, more fashionable people were moving in.

  It was a warm day, and in Hannah’s kitchen we packed a picnic to take to the park. Hannah made us egg sandwiches with chopped onion on Portuguese buns, wrapped in wax paper. She packed a cold bottle of fizzy lemonade, three paper cups, and a packet of chocolate biscuits. Even though we were only going to the small park down the road, she had dressed up a bit: powdered her face, put on lipstick, pinned her hair back.

  As we were leaving, Hannah realized she had forgotten her reading glasses and went back in to get them. Eden and I sat on the wall outside, waiting for her. The daffodils planted in the park had grown tall but had not yet opened.

  We waited on the warm limestone wall while two men in their late twenties, dressed in dark suits, talked outside the building. From the brochures in their hands, I could see they were the estate agents. The taller man pointed to the ground-floor flat with the wrong end of his pen.

  “This one, the ground floor, has two bedrooms. It’s being let for next to nothing now, to an old lady. But I don’t expect she’ll be around for much longer: fingers crossed,” he said to the other one, who laughed uncomfortably.

  The men had not seen Hannah open her front door. She stood on the doorstep with her key in her hand. By the expression on her face, I knew she had heard what the estate agent had said and had also heard the other man laugh in response. She fumbled, putting the key inside her purse, and looked unsure of how to step from the doorway to the pavement.

  The estate agents walked on to the next row of flats without seeing her. Hannah walked slowly from the doorway. She stopped to look at the daffodils in the boxes. In the crook of her arm, she held a dark green carry bag from Harrods, with a section of the paper folded, to read in the park.

  “Nice day, isn’t it?” she said, looking down the street at the two men.

  In the park, she sat down on the bench while Eden raced to the swing set. I laid out the picnic blanket on the grass but realized she would sit on the bench. I unpacked the sandwiches she had made, but when I offered her one she shook her head. The crossword section of the newspaper lay on the bench beside her.

  She sat on the bench in the park, looking at the children in the playground, and then closed her eyes for a moment, tilting her face toward the sky to catch the last of the afternoon sun.

  Eden and I walked to the river to look at the houseboats. Slowly, the boats and barges passed by. We spent a long time, deciding which houseboat we would want to live in, if we could.

  The smell of brine from the river mixed in with the city air. Two men fished on the banks below the river wall, wearing caps with brims and rubber boots to their knees. Eden leaned forward over the wall, looking down at the water.

  “Remember the time Dad said he was cooking Porridge for breakfast?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That was funny, wasn’t it?” His voice sounded uncertain, as though he was trying to rearrange the memory of it.

  The morning Eden was talking about, we had come down to breakfast and seen Dad stirring a bubbling pot of porridge. “Morning, dustbin lids.”

  “What are you cooking?” Eden asked, excitedly.

  “Porridge,” Dad said, winking at me.

  The pot was pale gray, the color of our cat. “Almost ready,” he said, tasting it from the wooden spoon. “Just mind the toenails.”

  Eden’s lips quivered; he still looked like a baby when he cried. After a moment of silence, he began to sob. He cried so hard, he hardly made a sound.

  “Oh, we’re only joking, you silly boy,” Dad said, trying to comfort him.

  Mum came into the kitchen, her hair in a towel, wet from the bath. “What’s the matter, Eden?” she asked, but he could not answer her. “Why is he crying?” She looked at me and Dad.

  “He thinks Dad’s cooking the cat.”

  She knelt down by Eden, and he buried his face between her neck and shoulders. “You’ve really upset him.”

  “We were just having a laugh,” he said. “I didn’t know he was going to get so upset.”

  She looked up at Dad. “Why would you tell him that? You just don’t think, do you?”

  The table was set: a bowl of brown sugar, a bowl of strawberries, cream, and sliced pears. A tulip in a glass and a present in a small box wrapped in gold tissue paper. It was our mother’s birthday.

  We crossed the bridge to the park. The sky was clear—no rain to-day—and we sat down on the bench.

  “May,” Eden said, “if you were stranded on an island and you could only have one type of sweet, what would you choose?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know. What would you choose?”

  Eden stared down at the rubber ground beneath the swings. “I’m not absolutely sure, but probably Smarties.”

  “That’s a terrible choice. They’d all melt together in the sun and turn an ugly greenish color, like they did when we left them in the glove compartment.”

  “Oh, yeah.” Eden hit the palm of his hand against his forehead. “I forgot about that.”

  The pigeons reflected in the rain puddles as they flew up and away from us. I thought they were pretty, the gray and white pigeons. A woman sitting on a bench pushed a pram back and forth with her foot while she read a magazine. After a while, she closed her magazine and stood up, straightened the back of her skirt, and wheeled the pram out of the playground.

  Soon another woman took her place on the bench, a young mother with short brown hair wearing long beaded earrings. She crossed one leg on top of the other, blowing cigarette smoke over her shoulder, while her two boys shouted and chased each other around the swing and the slide.

  EIGHT

  “Oh, lovely. That sounds lovely,” I heard Greta say, as I walked into our house. “Is it near the beach?”

  Gr
eta was Eden’s babysitter when I wasn’t available. She was twenty and wanted to be a television actress. She was pretty—“In a very English-looking way,” Annabel would say. Annabel was my mother’s friend, who decided who was pretty and who had style, in real life and in films and magazines.

  “Is what near the beach?” I asked, from the doorway.

  Mum looked at me as she clasped an earring to her ear. “I thought you were spending the night at Julia’s house.”

  “She has the chicken pox.”

  “Didn’t she have them as a child? Well, Greta’s already canceled her plans for the evening.”

  “I don’t mind,” Greta said. “I’ll stay here with May. We can read the latest Hello!” A red suede purse with her name, Greta, written in rhinestones, hung off the back of the kitchen chair.

  “We have the new Vogue too.”

  Eden came from the garden with two wet action figures in his hands, that he had left overnight in the terrapin pond to see if they would sink. He sat down beside Greta and sipped a glass of Ribena.

  “The fish fingers are in the fridge and the carrots are in the pot on the stove,” Mum told Greta.

  Mum wore her tight jeans, with high-heeled cork sandals and a short-sleeved brown silk shirt.

  Greta put her hand on Eden’s back. “You like fish fingers, don’t you?”

  “I shouldn’t be back too late,” Mum said.

  She kissed all of us, Eden, Greta, and me, leaving a wine-colored mark on our cheeks. She stopped in front of the mirror in the hall, picking up her keys and purse, looking at her reflection from the side.

  “You look quite sexy,” Greta said, with a wink.

  After supper, Greta went upstairs to make sure Eden had taken his bath. I turned on the telly, but it was all news. The royal family was leaving for their summer holiday at Balmoral. Princess Diana was in Cambodia trying to rid the country of land mines. Margaret Thatcher was discussing the recent row in the House of Lords. I sat on the sofa and counted the mirrored pieces in the Indian pillow, waiting for Greta. Last week, she had told me stories about her boyfriend, Trevor, and I was hoping she would tell me more tonight.

  When I grew bored with waiting, I went upstairs to look for her. She was in my mother’s room, looking at the clothes in her wardrobe. “It’s chilly in this house,” she said, when she saw me. “I was just looking for a sweatshirt or something warm to put on.”

  “Her sweaters are in the drawer. Have you had any more dates with Trevor?”

  Greta picked up a perfume bottle from the dresser and dotted it on her wrists. Humming a song to herself, she lifted the lid from an apple carved out of wood and peeked inside.

  “That’s Mum’s button collection,” I told her.

  “Fascinating,” Greta said, letting the lid drop. “Look, I just have to use the loo and then I’ll come downstairs.”

  In the kitchen, I took the biscuit tin down from the top of the cupboard. Last week, Greta told me a sexy story about Trevor and I had it memorized. It went like this: “First Trevor kissed me. He kissed me for such a long time. He is absolutely the best kisser!” She said kisser like kissa.

  We had been sitting on the sofa in the living room. I hugged a pillow to my chest, listening to the story. “So then he put his thigh between my legs and rubbed it up and down; that’s what boys do to make you feel really sexy. Then he pulled my knickers down and put his fingers in my pussy.”

  “Oh!” I said, and felt a pinch right between my legs.

  “He called me juicy. That’s what he said he likes, juicy girls.”

  All week I’d been waiting to find out what happened next. Sometimes, I thought about it happening to me, but not with Trevor, with a different boy: Nicholas, the boy I had seen at the dairy in Scotland. I licked the chocolate from the top of the digestive biscuit and looked down the hallway.

  “You have chocolate all over your face,” Greta said, when she walked into the kitchen. She took her packet of cigarettes from the table and lit one with her pink lighter.

  “Did you see Trevor this week?”

  Greta closed her eyes as she blew the smoke from her mouth. She shook her head no. “He hasn’t phoned.”

  “Are you going to phone him?”

  “I won’t phone him again. That’s not what ladies are supposed to do.” She walked to the sink and dropped her ashes in it. “You know, the other week, when we went to the films?”

  I nodded.

  “I was so embarrassed to be seen with you.”

  I looked at Greta. I thought she was going to make a joke.

  “Your coat had stains all down the front and your hair was greasy. Don’t you ever wash it? I remember when you were younger and I used to pick you up from school, you were the most raggedy-looking girl in the playground. And your mum’s so pretty and dresses so nicely and so does your father.” She put out her cigarette in the sink. “I want you to get your shoes and practice putting them on.”

  “I know how to put them on.”

  She put one hand on her hip. “If you ever want me to take you to the films again or go anywhere with you, you’ll get them.”

  I stood up from the table and walked down the hall to the front door where we left our shoes. Earlier that day I had done the vacuuming and I brought all our shoes that had gathered by the door upstairs. The only ones left were my Wellingtons, lying on their side and still damp inside from the rain.

  One night, Greta had brought over her beauty kit and laid out all her makeup on a towel on my bedroom floor. She taught me how to apply rouge to accent my cheekbones, eyeliner for bigger, brighter eyes, and the lip liner for full pouty lips. This is what Greta does: she helps me look my best.

  I brought my boots into the kitchen.

  “Practice putting them on and taking them off fifteen times,” Greta said. She pulled a chair away from the table and sat in front of me. I sat down on the kitchen step, but Greta shook her head. “You have to do it standing up.”

  If my mother had told me to do this, I never would have. I saw my reflection in the garden window, standing on the step under the hanging light, but I was just moving. Pulling one boot on, then the other, waiting for Greta to approve. The boots rubbed against the blister on my heel as I pulled them on and off.

  Afterward, Greta filled the kitchen sink with hot water and fairy liquid. “Okay, now we’re going to practice washing your face, but put your boots away first.” In the sink were dishes, her cigarette ashes, and the kitchen sponge.

  I carried my boots to the mat by the front and stood them up neatly, next to each other. I walked slowly. The hallway was dark and the only light came through the pane of glass above the front door.

  When I was younger, some days Greta would pick me up from school and take me home. One day, on our way home, I asked if we could stop somewhere so I could use the toilet.

  “Why didn’t you use the loo at school?” she said. “Now you’ll have to wait until we get home. The public toilets are dirty.”

  Greta said it was such a beautiful day she wanted to walk the long way around the common. The weather was warm and an ice cream lorry stopped across the street. “Should we stop and get one?” Greta said. I wanted one but I shook my head, in a hurry to get home. “Oh, but I’d really fancy one.” She walked toward the lorry. She told me she would buy me one, but I was too uncomfortable to eat. We were almost home when Greta saw a pair of shoes she liked in a shop window and went inside to try them on.

  On the doorstep of our house, she rummaged through her bag looking for the key: purse, coat pockets, jeans pockets. I stood with my legs crossed on the doorstep. When she unlocked the door, I ran inside and started up the stairs to the toilet, but Greta grabbed the straps of my overalls.

  “You have to take your shoes off first.”

  “What?”

  “It’s a rule your mother made. They make the carpet dirty.”

  I was wearing lace-up boots, double-knotted. I felt an ache below my stomach, a pain, and a swell.
I couldn’t hold it anymore and wet myself on the floor by the front door.

  “You’re too old to wet yourself,” Greta said, looking at the wet mark on the floor, the dark patch of denim down my legs.

  As punishment for wetting the floor, she said, I had to wear my wet overalls for the rest of the day and was not allowed to change.

  I walked up the stairs to my room. I was alone in the bedroom but afraid to change my clothes. My wet overalls turned cold; they rubbed against the inside of my thighs when I walked. I stood in my room, embarrassed and angry, smelling like the school toilet.

  At the foot of my bed, my dolls slept in empty tissue boxes. The night before, I had given them a bath and hung their clothes over the radiator to dry. I loved my dolls and I believed that they loved me.

  Every day, after school, I rushed home to play with them. But that day, I walked over to where they slept in their beds and kicked them. They tumbled across the floor and when they were still, I stepped on them roughly, until their rubber faces sank in. I could feel the warmth from the tears on my cheeks and I knew they would never like me again.

  I saw Greta’s shadow moving across the kitchen wall, in and out of the light. She leaned against the table, flipping through a magazine.

  “Oh, look at her! She looks dreadful.” She pointed to a model in the magazine. I stood, tempted to look at the photo she was pointing to.

  “Greta,” I said.

  “Yeah?” She didn’t look up from her magazine.

  I held the banister. “Do you remember once you said my mother made a rule that I wasn’t allowed upstairs in my shoes?”

  Greta looked up at me, the magazine open in her hands.

  “You made that up, you lied to me,” I said.