“Fuck off, wee doll,” he says leaving the tent abruptly and taking his penny with him.
As Elsa shifts her position, she accidentally stands on the sheet, tugging it a little. Maureen turns her head sharply to see who is there. Elsa quickly darts away from the tent and runs back to her home baking stall before Maureen finds her out. Elsa stands at her stall thinking of Richard Marr and can’t help but feel sorry for Maureen. She watches now as her mother moves over to the fortune-telling tent.
Katherine enters the tent, bending in under the silky pink folds of its entrance and squeezing onto the small wooden toolbox that has been upended and that serves as a seat for each of Madam Maureen’s customers. Katherine is holding Stephen, who is wriggling excitedly in her arms. As Katherine is settling herself and trying to position Stephen comfortably enough on her lap, she registers how Maureen appears taciturn and withdrawn.
The chatter of people outside only serves to enhance the sense of secretiveness and enveloping calm that this enclosure of sheets and scarves has created. Outside, Mrs. Carter, who has just arrived, can be heard talking animatedly to Mrs. Hamilton about her husband’s angina. Some of the children are calling out to one another, laughing and squealing. Isabel can be heard in the midst of the babble, her confident, defiant syllables punctuating the summer air.
Inside the tent, Stephen has become quiet. He is staring cautiously at Maureen and holding on to his mother. Katherine’s head is bowed slightly under the gentle droop of the cotton sheet that forms the roof of the tent, like a billowy inverted cupola. The sunlight is diffused through the sheets and scarves and it now bathes the inside of the tent in a mellow raspberry light.
Stephen breaks the calm by blurting out “Marmar” and pointing at Maureen in sudden recognition and relief. This strange creature in the swathes of green and blue and with the solemn dark eyes is his big sister. He is delighted with himself and arches his back, pointing and laughing at Maureen.
Maureen is annoyed at her mother. Katherine senses this and immediately attempts to tease Maureen out of her somber mood by leaning forward and talking in a deep staccatoed voice.
“Tell-me-my-fortune-Madam-Maureen-please.”
“Stop it, Mummy,” Maureen replies sourly. Stephen flaps his chubby hand up and down in the air. “Marmar,” he calls out, squealing and laughing.
“What-can-you-see-in-your-crystal-ball?” Katherine insists.
“Mummy, p-l-e-a-s-e.” There is definite hurt.
Katherine looks at Maureen. The green curved shadows around Maureen’s eyes and the slit-sharp red of her lips betray the emerging young woman she is becoming. There would have been a time when Katherine would have known exactly how to coax Maureen out of a bad mood. But more recently, within the past few months, those same moods had taken on a certain heat. Katherine would witness Maureen defiantly withdraw from her and realize that, so easily, she had said or done the “wrong” thing. After trying all her usual ploys, Katherine would end up feeling out of her depth and ever so slightly foolish. Maureen now seems to have the capacity to judge her mother and her mother’s methods, and Katherine is painfully aware of the scrutiny.
“Marmar dere.” Stephen begins kissing his palm, then flings out his hand in Maureen’s direction.
“Oh, of course.” Katherine endeavors to lift Maureen’s spirits with mock surprise. “I’ve forgotten to give you a penny.”
Katherine produces a penny from her purse, her head still bowed in supplication under the swoop of the sheet above her. Stephen grabs Katherine’s purse and begins banging the table in front of him, babbling and singing. Maureen quickly lifts the crystal ball, her ball of the sea, to save it from falling and breaking. The frenzied sea fish have dispersed; the crystal ball is empty.
“I don’t want a penny.” Maureen’s annoyance still pulses.
“Ah, love, what is it? Is it Richard Marr?” Katherine realizes that she has arrived too quickly at the nub of the problem and consequently has given herself away.
“Nooo . . .” Maureen says the word slowly enough to let Katherine know that, in fact, it is Richard Marr.
“Mama look. Awh gon.” Stephen’s two arms are now outstretched ; his eyes are wide. He has dropped the purse at Katherine’s feet. It has magically disappeared.
Katherine bends down to retrieve the purse.
“Take the purse out to Li-li, out to Li-li. Mummy will come in a minute.”
“Li-li,” repeats Stephen and, firmly gripping Katherine’s purse, toddles purposefully out through the silky pink door of the tent to find Elizabeth, biting and licking it as it slides smoothly over his face.
“I’m sorry. Did you mind him coming in to get his fortune told?” Katherine is treading carefully.
“I don’t see anything in the ball,” mumbles Maureen.
“Oh, have another look. Will I travel to faraway places? Will I build a spaceship in the back garden to take me to the moon?” Katherine, keenly aware of just how juvenile she might be sounding, is determined and tender. “It was only for fun, pet; don’t take it all so seriously. Anyway, I think Richard Marr was delighted; he’s always wanted a dog.”
“He told you what I said!” Maureen’s voice is urgent.
“Well . . .” Katherine is hesitating. “I asked him and he was too polite not to tell.”
Silence. Maureen’s fingers, still clutching the crystal ball, have white-hot edges to them. She raises her eyes to look at her mother. She is turning the crystal ball slowly in her hands, mulling something over and over in her head. Then after a gentle intake of breath, she says to Katherine, “Mummy . . . what does love feel like?”
“Love?” Katherine echoes gently. A single silver-gilded fish darts back into the crystal ball of the sea.
“I mean . . . how do you know? How do you know when you’re in love?”
“Well . . .” Katherine had not expected this. Maureen’s directness takes Katherine by surprise. “Well . . .”
“Is it supposed to make you feel rotten?” continues Maureen.
“Rotten? Not particularly, no, pet. Rotten in what way?”
“Rotten about yourself.”
Katherine looks tenderly at Maureen, trying to decipher exactly what her daughter’s emotions are. Her own emotions are beginning to race.
“You just know,” Katherine continues softly.
“But how do you know?” Maureen’s tone is anxious.
“Because . . . you feel . . . you feel yourself floating and burning at the same time.”
Katherine hears herself explaining it as if it is fact. As if she knows exactly what love is. Can decode it, clarify it, quantify it.
Floating and burning.
Maureen looks cautiously at her mother.
“And it makes you feel different from before.” Katherine smiles at Maureen, the corners of her mouth turning down with compassion.
Floating and burning and different from before. So these are the codes of love, glimpsed and now shared. And Katherine has explained it to her daughter as though she has understood it herself. As though she has understood how the experience of love preoccupies and claims its space. As though she has understood how the experience of love has preoccupied and claimed her.
Stephen comes toddling back into the tent, the silky pink scarf sliding over him slickly in one rapid movement, revealing him suddenly as if he were part of an illusionist’s magic trick. The lack of space curtails him immediately.
“Li-li ky-ing,” he shouts excitedly. “Ky-ing.” He presses his two hands into Katherine’s lap, looking up at her intently.
“What’s wrong with Elizabeth?” Katherine is distracted a moment from her conversation with Maureen.
“Awh gon.” Stephen turns and heads out of the tent again, assuming that his mother is right behind him.
“Don’t worry, my love.” Katherine strokes Maureen’s face. Then shifting slightly on the wooden toolbox, she continues: “I should go out and see what’s going on with Elizabeth.”
> Maureen sighs deeply, then straightens her body. She looks at her mother. There is a brief pause.
“I’m going to change out of these clothes.” Maureen says.
“Good idea, pet.” Katherine still talks quietly and tenderly. “Let’s see what’s happening outside.”
“Oh, wait a minute.” Maureen looks down into her crystal ball “A friend is going to visit you very soon and bring you something.” Maureen looks at her mother and seems a little less upset.
“Oh, thank you, love—something nice, I hope.” Katherine smiles at her daughter, placing her penny on the table. “Come on, let’s go outside.”
Maureen puts the crystal ball down. There are now two black pennies on the tabletop, two dark eyes staring at her. She pulls the scarf briskly from her head and makes her way out of the tent to follow her mother, stooping gracelessly through the exit and leaving the vapors of confession behind. Outside, the sunlight blasts them both.
In the dusky raspberry light of the fortune-telling tent, the crystal ball lies on the table, like a glass heart in which the sun has set. The two dark eyes look into it. And shards of tiny silvery fish have now returned. They swim and dart in the mellow hues. Among the fish now there are words floating, drifting. And as the words turn and twist, they catch the muted rays of light and flicker as though they are burning.
Floating and burning.
The words among the silvery fish: “What . . . does . . . love . . . feel . . . like.”
Katherine finds Elizabeth crying. Stephen, as instructed by his mother, had given the purse to Elizabeth. But Elizabeth, too busy orchestrating blindfolds and buckets and hoops and prizes, had hurriedly put the purse down in the longer grass by the edge of the swing and then could not find it. Katherine now wipes Elizabeth’s eyes with a cotton handkerchief and reassures her that they will find the purse. And they do. They find it on the white elephant stall beside the bottle of 4711 eau de cologne—as easily as that. Someone had spotted it in the grass and had placed it there for safekeeping.
The sun continues shining, warming the heads and backs and arms of everyone at the fair. Katherine is chatting to Mrs. Carter. Isabel is showing Peter Barnsley that she can climb a tree in hot pants and is settling herself on a slender branch of the apple tree to prove it, looking like a glinting golden fruit. Maureen, now out of her Madam Maureen costume, is helping Elsa sell off the last bits and pieces on the tables. Elizabeth is sitting on the grass, making a long, long daisy chain for Stephen, who is clapping his hands in delight. And Richard Marr, who had been the one who had pinned the tail closest to the donkey’s rear, is sitting on the garden wall with a small glass of white lemonade, looking at Maureen.
Surprisingly, no one has managed to hit the upturned buckets beside the apple tree. A small bag of toffees sits in the grass in the summer sun, growing soft.
It is evening and the girls are getting ready for bed. As they brush their teeth, they take turns singing hymns through the gentle white foam in their mouths. In the bathroom, crowded around the washhand basin, they elbow one another as they sing. Their spittals of praise make them giggle and swallow too quickly and choke and giggle all the more. They brush the holy words around their mouths until their teeth are as clean as their souls ought to be. They sputter into the washhand basin and watch their venial sins, their cross words, their white lies, their small unkindnesses, all the little bits and pieces of themselves that make them them, swirl down the plughole. They are sanctified in a skittish kind of way and their tongues are sweet and minty.
Katherine stands at the bedroom door watching them, but she is preoccupied. The question that Maureen had asked her earlier inside the fortune-telling tent keeps repeating in her mind like the words of a song she cannot loose. Over and over. An incantation to the fantasy of his return: What does love feel like? What does love feel like? Floating and burning: just like when he holds her with that polite formality yet his forehead presses a little too heavily against her temple as they move. Just like when the hazy coppery light is splintered by intense, triumphant bursts of gold and crimson. Like when she can feel his weight against her, his breath a pulse upon her neck and the faint scent of almonds from his mouth. Surely she will hear what he says to her no matter how quietly he speaks. What if they do not look at each other? What if, in fact, their eyes are closed and their mouths have fallen slightly open, as though they are astonished at each other? Her green chiffon dress has fallen low at the back, so that her shoulder blades are illuminated in the soft gleam. The yellow light behind them is like an evening sky that defines their silhouette. The broad slab of his palm has moved across the hollow of her back and guides her to the floating rhythms of the music. The sleeve of his gray suit has ruffled back a little, revealing a length of wrist. They sway easily. But the pressure of his forehead on her temple is increasing, as though it is giving him away, for he cannot hide his lust for her. It feels like he is back with her again . . . .
Suddenly, the three girls spill past Katherine into their bedroom, laughing and collapsing like whirling skittles on the floor. Katherine rouses herself (what’s gotten into her?). She speaks quietly but firmly. “Easy now, girls. You’ll wake Stephen. C’mon, into bed.”
The girls’ bedroom is, for the most part, a hand-me-down from the previous occupants, the turnip planters. The delicately floral wallpaper print has faded gradually with each season passing, but the cornflower blue of the carpet has remained resolutely cornflower blue despite the fact that, in parts, it is now threadbare and worn and shows the straw-colored weave of its underside. On the wall opposite to the door stands a tall wardrobe with a light, grainy veneer; its door closes with a slight wobble and a quick click. Its key has been removed so as to avoid accidental incarceration. George and Katherine have added to the room as and when they can afford to. Tangerine curtains have recently been hung to brighten the room, the new paper roller blind they put up has since been punctured here and there by fingers idle or curious, and, on the floor in the center of the room, there is a rug the color of gentle lime. The rug’s edges now curl up like a fortune fish.
Alongside the tall wardrobe, there is a built-in cupboard whose white sheeny doors conceal a modest collection of toys, dolls, books, Lego blocks, skipping ropes, balls, board games, and a whole model village of Applewood Green and its inhabitants, apart from Dr. Broom, who has slipped down through a tiny hole where the plaster skims the skirting board (when Elsa shines a flashlight down into the tiny cavern, she can just make out the top of his black hat), and so whenever they play with the model village, Dr. Broom always has to be away on an emergency call.
The three single beds have been arranged at one end of their bedroom around its neat chimney breast. The bed that lies across the breast is Elsa’s, the other two, Maureen’s on the right and Elizabeth’s on the left, fit snugly into the recesses on either side.
The girls, in their excitement, are now crawling on their hands and knees from one bed to another like escapees through a maze of tunnels, continually turning this way and that, as if no one can find the way out. Katherine, tired after their busy day organizing the fair, is hopeful that they will settle down.
“Socks off, pajamas on,” she orders, noticing the first notch of impatience in her voice.
“No, Mummy. Play chicken shadows,” pipes Elsa.
“It’s too late, love, and it’s been a long day.”
Maureen and Elizabeth now join in. “Please, Mummy.”
“Just one game.” Elsa’s tone of voice is all leverage to win her mother around. Elsa’s palms are pressed together and her eyes are wide in mock prayer.
“Ple-e-e-ase.”
Katherine is feeling tiredness like a soft white pain. She looks at her three daughters, expectant, imploring, and needy. They are shuffling awkwardly into their nightclothes, hurriedly stuffing two legs into one pajama leg, like giddy mermaids. Katherine feels the weight of Elsa’s manipulation as though a drowning man is pulling her under the surface of the sea. If
she yields, is easy in herself, her own lightness will save them. If she resists, the children will become saturated with her irritation, slipping away from her into a dismal and unnecessary fretful sleep, while she will return to the kitchen, her lungs full to their saltwater brim with a nagging and futile remorse. But after a day doing every little and last thing for them, she now longs to close the door on motherhood, just for a brief while, and be whoever she is without them. If that possibility exists. Through her haze of fatigue she hears herself say, “Okay, then, just one game,” and immediately she comes afloat with the drowning man.
The girls excitedly turn out the central light in the bedroom, leaving only one bedside light on. They squiggle in beside one another on Elsa’s bed, leaving room for Katherine. Katherine lifts Elsa’s socks, which have been left on the floor, and, easing off her slippers, pulls one of the socks over her toes. The sock flops like a gnome’s soft hat.
Katherine now surrenders gladly to the gentle massage of her own laughter and the closeness of her daughters. Their limbs are like the limbs of foals, playful and gauche. Katherine is squawking and clucking and creating voices to go with the shapes her floppy-socked toes are making, becoming farmer and fowl. Her yielding to her children has brought bounties once again, as it always does. The girls are laughing hysterically.
“That looks like Maureen and Richard Marr,” says Elsa.
“What do you mean?” Maureen asks.
“When that sock”—Elsa points—“flops over that one, it’s like you and Richard Marr in the tent—kissing in the tent—look!”
“We were not kissing!” Maureen thumps Elsa.
Katherine jumps in. “That’s unkind, Elsa. Say sorry to Maureen. Easy, Maureen. Don’t hit Elsa.”
“What were you doing, then?” asks Elizabeth.
“Not you as well!” says Maureen.
Ghost Moth Page 9