A Little Bird Told Me

by Marianne Holmes

  ‘Well, I’ve just told Ruth,’ we hear her say, ‘that she needs to stop and think before she gets into proper trouble. It’s not that he’s not a nice boy, I like him, but I’ll be blowed if she’s going to leave school with no job prospects and a baby in her arms. You tell him that!’

  Debbie pulls out a drawer in the table and passes me the table mats.

  ‘Are you ready to listen to reason then, Ruth?’ Mrs Walker shouts upstairs. We hadn’t even noticed that Ruth had come out of her room until the door bangs shut again. Mrs Walker slams down a bunch of cutlery and we start setting the table as she goes back into the kitchen.

  ‘I’m sorry, Liz, I’ve had a right morning of it what with trying to find out what’s going to happen to little Danny now.’ There is a whoosh as Mrs Walker throws the chips into the pan, and she has to raise her voice. ‘Well, we both know it was an accident waiting to happen what with Bill’s filthy temper. It’s the boy I feel sorry for — whatever she is, she’s still his mother.’

  Mrs Walker pokes her head back through the hatch before we can turn away and looks me straight in the eye.

  ‘I hope you two are not earwigging.’ Her head disappears again and her voice lowers, but it’s hard not to listen. ‘The Stanton girl’s here. I’ve half a mind to tell her what Jemima’s meddling’s done.’ The hatch slams shut, but I can still hear the sausages spitting in the background, and the smell is amazing. I look at Debbie and ask her what happened to Mrs Mace, but she just shakes her head and says nothing. Sometimes, Debbie’s Mum blows up like this but normally she comes straight out after and says, ‘Don’t mind me, girls, a morning smiling at all sorts over a couple of pennies and I’m fit to explode by the time I get home.’ This time she doesn’t come out of the kitchen and something feels wrong.

  ‘I’m going to go home,’ I say to Debbie and run upstairs past Ruth’s door to pick up Sindy, the pony and my bag. Debbie rolls her eyes when I come back down, and I open the door and leave with the smell of sausage and chips fading away behind me. I pull out a Rainbow biscuit that must have fallen into my bag and lick the icing off while I think about what Mrs Walker was saying.

  As I walk out of The Coppice I look all around me in case I can spot Mrs Mace and Danny, but there is hardly anybody about, and all the houses look the same. The sun is so hot that there is a shimmer in the air over the pavements. The smell of other lunches escapes through open windows, and I think of the sausages and chips and wonder what kind of accident Mrs Mace had.

  I have a few coins left over from my pocket money and I think it should be enough for a bag of chips if I have a small one. I go to the chip shop on the High Street where the prices are written outside on the window so that I can check. I have to walk past a group of older girls that I don’t know sitting on the wall outside the library, but I tuck the top of my bag, where the pony’s head sticks out, under my arm and they leave me alone.

  When I get to the window of the newsagents, I peer in through the For Sale cards and see Mr Walker leaning on the counter chatting to a couple of men I don’t recognise. He sees me and stops talking for a moment but doesn’t smile when I wave. Usually, he waves back or comes to the door to ask me what I’ve done with Debbie. He always says that he knows if he can see one of us, the other must be close by.

  There is a Late News headline on the board outside the shop saying, ‘Local man arrested for assault’ and underneath in smaller writing there is an advertisement for a funfair, and I wonder if we’ll be allowed to go. Mum hates funfairs, but we can normally talk Matthew round and sometimes he’ll persuade her to come too. She always has to check which one it is and what kind of rides it will have.

  There’s a bit of a queue, so, by the time I get my chips, I’m starving. I walk into the little garden by the library and sit on the grass, leaning back against the warm wall. I draw my legs up to rest the chips on my knees, and the tangy smell of the vinegar bursts out into the dry air when I unwrap the paper. In the heat, the chips feel especially greasy and delicious, and I stop to lick the gritty salt off my fingers after each one.

  I have only eaten a few when my bag is pulled away, and I look up to see the WendyCarols tipping out my Sindy doll and her horse.

  ‘Oh look, Wendy,’ says Carol, whose shorts look like they’ve been frayed on purpose and are decorated with floral patches and little tin badges, ‘it’s only the girl who draws pigs.’ Her hair is really short, and Debbie says it’s because she keeps catching nits, and her mum is fed up with trying to comb them out. Everybody hates it when the nit nurse comes to school because she yanks the comb hard, and no one wants to be sent home with that letter.

  ‘Actually, they’re ponies,’ I say and stand up to get my things. The WendyCarols are in our class at school. In class, they’re pretty quiet, but, out in the playground, they’ve got a lot to say for themselves. Wendy has an older brother, Mickey, at the senior school, and Kit says only a loony would mess with Mickey.

  ‘Do you think this little pony can fly, Carol?’ Wendy kicks my horse hard and then has to yank her yellow halter neck back down over the soft folds of her tummy.

  ‘Guess not, Wendy,’ says Carol as the horse slams into the hot brick wall and drops to the ground.

  ‘Stop it!’ I shout and try to reach Sindy, but Carol blocks me and shoves me so hard that I land in the scratchy flower bed. A wasp rises angrily beside me and dives and darts at my face.

  ‘Give us the chips, Pig Girl, I’m starving. Aren’t you, Wend?’

  The chips are still in my left hand and I grab a couple and stuff them into my mouth while I think. My things are scattered, so, if I run for it, I’ll lose them. Carol sees me checking where everything is and picks up my bag. She signals to Wendy to bring the horse and doll and puts everything back in. Then she starts swinging the bag around, higher and higher, like a cowboy with a lasso.

  ‘So, what’s it to be? Chips or bag?’

  I look out to the High Street, but I can’t see anyone over the walls of the garden. I say nothing and hand the chips over. Carol laughs as she swings the bag high over her shoulder and lets it go. Sindy’s hair shines in the sun as she flies out and I have to duck to avoid being hit by my pencil case. The horse and sketchpad don’t come out of the bag, and the whole thing gets caught in some pampas grass. I run to pick up Sindy, and Wendy sticks out her foot as I pass, tripping me over so that I fall on to my face. When I sit up, wiping the dust and grass from my front, the WendyCarols are skipping out on to the road, the bag of chips held between them.

  ‘I’ll get you for this!’ I shout after them when they’re far enough away not to come back.

  ‘Yeah?’ shouts Wendy. ‘You and whose army?’ I can’t find anything to poke the bag out of the pampas, and, by the time I manage to pull it out and find the pencil case, I have fine slices in the skin of my arms where the leaves have cut me.

  I go in through the back door so that I can wash the streaks of dried blood from my arms and get a glass of cold milk. Mum calls out to say hello from the living room, and I take the glass with me and go in to her. She is curled up at the end of one of the sofas in a nest of cushions. On the carpet beside her is an empty mug and a plate with a couple of digestives. Around her feet is a pile of library books, some open and others bristling with little torn bits of paper covered in notes. Her hair is still tied up on top of her head with a huge tortoiseshell pin, but the odd strand is stuck to her skin in the heat even though the windows are rammed up as high as they will go.

  When she sees me, she straightens her legs, pushing the books to the far end of the sofa and opens her arms out wide.

  ‘Are you going to let me have my oven cleaner back? Or are you and Christopher planning to clean it for me?’ She is smiling, so I know she’s not really cross. When I get closer, she grabs me and pulls me on to the sofa with her and I wedge the glass of milk between the cushions like a lighthouse. ‘Did you think I was going to start packing?’ she asks and pats one of the books. ‘No, this is how to ma
ke a difference, Robyn. Get an education. Give yourself choices. Don’t be dependent on others.’ She laughs and gives me a squeeze. ‘Not even on me.’

  ‘Did Mrs Mace have an accident, Mum?’ I ask. ‘Is she going to be alright?’

  ‘Where did you hear that?’ says Mum and shakes her head. ‘Oh, Debbie’s mum said something? I don’t really know if Mrs Mace is going to be alright, sweetheart. We tried to help her though, didn’t we?’ She leans over the milk and gives me a quick hug. Then she keeps one arm around me and goes back to her book, so I pull my bag up on to the sofa too and start pulling everything out. Sindy and my sketchbook are okay, but the horse is missing an ear, and there are scratches down one side that are full of red brick-dust. I fetch a wet tissue to wipe the horse, and, when I climb back up, Mum sees what I’m doing.

  ‘What happened to that?’ she asks, taking the horse out of my hands and turning it over. Then she sees the scratches on my arm and grabs my hands.

  ‘Nothing.’ I say, but I can feel a hot tear sliding down my face, and she just watches me and says nothing until I tell her all about the WendyCarols.

  ‘Well, let’s see what their mothers have to say about this!’ she says, pushing herself upright.

  ‘No!’ I cry. ‘You’ll make it worse. Samantha Evans told on them and they took her bus money for a week and she lives miles away!’ I don’t tell her that no one will talk to Samantha now and that at school she stays really close to the dinner ladies at lunchtime.

  ‘Right,’ says Mum sinking back into the cushions, her forehead wrinkled up. ‘Let’s work this out, then.’ Then she closes her eyes, and I wait.

  When she doesn’t open them again for a long while, I say, ‘I could just let them have the stuff straight away as if I was going to give it to them all along?’

  Mum snaps her eyes open and grabs my hands.

  ‘No, Little Bird, never, never give into a bully. You never give in because they won’t stop, and they won’t just go away, and they won’t change, and, before you know it,’ she stops herself and takes a big breath, ‘well, it gets worse.’ She swings her legs off the sofa.

  ‘Right, stand up. You’ve got to look tough. Now, first thing is to put your shoulders back and keep your back straight!’ She stands up like a soldier, and I do the same.

  ‘Second, if I take a step towards you to take something. Grrr!’ she growls, shaking her fist and stepping forward, so I start to lean back. ‘Don’t you dare step back, my girl, you step right back at me. Takes them by surprise!’ I take a big step forward and come down hard on her toes.

  ‘Aaah, oh no, you got me, mercy!’ She grabs her toes and hops about howling like Scooby Doo. I start to laugh.

  ‘Oh, that’s a good idea too!’ she says. ‘Use laughter! Now, let’s see.’ She holds her hands together as if reading from a book and says,

  ‘There was a young girl called Wendy,

  Whose mind was twisty and bendy,

  Carol gave her nits,

  She had to nick chips,

  Poor itchy and fat bendy Wendy!’

  Kit and Neil walk in while we are still laughing and scratching at our heads.

  ‘I wouldn’t say that in front of Wendy’s brother.’ Kit sounds serious.

  ‘Yeah, he’s a real creep,’ Neil adds, and they head off to the kitchen.

  Mum rolls her eyes and gives me a big hug.

  ‘Just try and keep clear of them if you’re on your own then. Come on; let’s have a look at these famous pictures of pigs.’ She picks up my sketchbook, and I can see that the horses’ legs are a bit too short just by looking from the toy horse to the page. Mum turns over the page without comment, and I can feel her mood change. The page is full of little pictures of the wooden babies where I have drawn around them and then tried to fill in the faces and the folds of the wraps. I couldn’t get it quite right though, however many I did.

  ‘What’s this?’ Mum puts her hand on my arm so that I know we’re not playing anymore. I reach into the pocket of my shorts and pull them out. They are warm and smooth, and I hold them out towards her.

  ‘A cowboy gave them to me. I was going to tell you, but I forgot, honest!’ Mum’s face goes as pale as water, and I wonder if she is going to faint like Debbie did in assembly one time. She hit the floor so hard, I could feel the boards shake.

  ‘What do you mean, a cowboy?’ she asks, and I see that it was a mistake not to tell her before. I feel my hand go up to twist my hair, which I know she hates, but I can’t help it. Mum bats the hand away from my hair and stands up.

  ‘He was wearing a cowboy hat. At the pool. I told him I’m not allowed to take things from strangers, but he said these already belong to us. Who is he?’

  But Mum waves the question away with her hand. ‘Did he hurt you?’ I shake my head. ‘What did he want?’

  ‘What? No.’ I try to understand what she’s asking, but I feel guilty and confused, and I’m not sure why. ‘He said these are magical, what are they?’

  ‘What else did he say?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  Mum is pacing up and down now, skirt tangling around her legs as she turns. She goes to the door and shouts for Kit.

  ‘What’s the matter, Mum, who is he?’

  ‘He’s a Nobody, Robyn. Just a bully I used to know.’ She stops in front of me again. ‘If you ever see him again, you will run back to me as fast as you can, and you will shout and scream for help all the way. Do you understand?’ Her hands are gripping my shoulders so hard it hurts, and I nod, but I don’t understand.

  She turns to Kit. ‘Did you see him?’ She crosses to the doorway where Kit is now standing and holds the wooden babies out.

  He is standing almost like a statue, apart from his right leg, which is shaking so fast he can’t be doing it on purpose. He tells her ‘no’ and she gives him an awkward hug and then reaches into his bag and takes out the oven cleaner.

  ‘Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ,’ she mutters and heads into the kitchen. We hear the oven door popping open and the sound of the spray, and then the sharp citrus smell of it cuts its way through the hot air back to us.

  Chapter Four

  1988

  ‘Are you looking for anything in particular?’ the woman asks as she leans over the microfiche machine. Her voice booms in the hushed atmosphere of the library.

  I glance around to see if anyone’s listening.

  ‘Not really,’ I make myself smile, but, out of the corner of my eye, I’ve spotted a woman in a navy jacket watching us. I sit down anyway and pull out the films for 1976 and 1977. Navy Jacket walks over to the counter, and, as she waits for the librarian to return, she leans her back against it. I can feel her gaze plucking at me. Her forehead is wrinkled up as if she’s sifting through her own memories, and I lift a hand to cover my face.

  The librarian takes a seat, and the woman bends over towards her, so I can’t hear what they say. I pull out my notebook and pen and concentrate on the screen in front of me. What I really want won’t be in these newspaper articles anyway, just as it wasn’t in the court records I looked at.

  The woman in the navy jacket walks over to the shelves and starts running a finger along the spines of the books. She’s just visible out of the corner of my eye.

  The chances that I could find anything useful are tiny, but then again, when you’re nine, and the worst thing that could happen to you already has, you don’t pay too much attention to newspapers. Flicking through the sheets of film now though is like trying to see through a veil that softens and distorts the truth until it seems to belong to a different story altogether.

  I stretch my legs out to ease the tension in my muscles. The woman’s still not chosen a book and has now moved around so that I can see her face as she continues to look along the rows of books. I feel restless in this large open room, so I wait until there’s no queue at the counter and ask for photocopies. On a whim, I ask for copies of articles that mention the Mace family too.

  As I walk out the door,
I glance back to see the woman now at the counter again. I lengthen my pace and draw in the fresh air.

  The café on the High Street is warm, and I choose a table in a corner at the back and sort the paper into two piles. Mum brought us here sometimes after school and ordered steaming plates of beans, eggs and toast whenever she thought we needed a treat. I glance up at the waitress as I order and recognise Mum’s friend, Eva. I’m so surprised to see her here that I don’t react at all. She doesn’t seem to recognise me, but I let my hair fall over my face in case.

  Eva was the most open-hearted person in town when we lived here, and she and Mum were friends. I can’t help smiling when I think of them, both laughing and dancing around with their hair astray and their skirts flying about their legs. I almost don’t believe it’s really Eva in the blue and white striped apron, menus tucked neatly under her arm, until she swings her hips in an extravagant flourish pushing the door to the kitchen open. The corners of her apron swirl as she moves.

  I wonder if it’s possible that Mum confided in her, told her secrets no one else knows about. I can see Eva and Mum chatting heads together, Mum firing off question after question at Eva about her job, Eva always turning up when Mum needed her. Kit suggested I find Eva, but he also wants us to tread lightly here. He doesn’t want me to upset anyone. Especially, not people who were our friends. Not that I can see why anyone else should be upset.

  I spread the articles about Mace across the table to see what I have and tuck the rest into my bag, out of sight. The image of Mace bursting through our front door like fury is so vivid, I can almost see the veins throbbing on his forehead. What I’d forgotten was what Mum did about it, and how she was judged for it later.

  A chair is pulled out from the table breaking my concentration.

  ‘There’s a Danny Mace at my school.’ The girl from the train, Michelle, I think, throws herself down in the chair with the piece of paper in her hand. I see that she has a line of black eyeliner under each eye that has smudged at the corners like a thousand nights of missed sleep. It only makes her look raw and unfinished. ‘You know, the one where your boyfriend teaches.’