by Morag Joss
They sat round the table pushing food and drink at him and letting him amuse them, as if he were a strange new pet whose habits they had to learn. He produced a quarter bottle of whisky from his holdall, tipped some into his teacup, swilled it round and tossed it back. As an afterthought he offered the bottle round. Raymond fetched liqueur glasses and took what he called just a wee hoot, but George refused. He looked, suddenly, as if some air had been let out of him; the spinning ideas and the whipped-up energy of the previous few days were in abeyance. Like Lila he watched Joe who, in between nips of whisky, had plenty to say. When Joe was talking his eyes would settle on some object, the cruet, the hedge outside the window, his two thumbs circling each other, and stare at that rather than look in the direction of the person to whom he was speaking. Although short and round and solid—there was a substantial quilt of flesh around his torso—he seemed ready to flap away into the air if startled; his beak of a nose added to the impression of a solitary and alert bird of prey. When he looked at Lila, in the same way that he had stared at the hedge, she felt floodlit, as if there were something in her that he was determined to find in the bright beam of his gaze. His eyes were channels for escaped light, as if a sun blazed somewhere in his body; his skin seemed luminous. He wore short sleeves, and she studied the plump lilac veins in his forearms as they writhed down to his hands under dark, shining hairs. Why had nobody else noticed how startling he was? Her father was half-asleep. Her mother was listening too hard, leaning forward with her chin resting along the back of an arranged hand. Uncle George just sat looking folded up, his hair dull with smoke and his dark eyes, next to Joe’s that were the same green-grey as a winter sea, merely blank.
Nothing was to be trusted now. Angles were newly treacherous, objects unreliable, words slippery; what if she were to collide with furniture or drop a teacup or come out with something childish? She was having to learn much too suddenly how to pretend that nothing had changed, when everything had. She got up from the table and began to fill the tray with things to take back to the kitchen, trying to do what she always did on an ordinary day. But Joe’s eyes drifted over the outline of her body as he handed her his plate and she needed the shelter of the table again and sat back down. She felt as if he knew something, as if all her seams and fastenings and buttons were showing and now that he had seen them she could be in an instant dismantled.
‘Aha! Kind young lady,’ he said, tipping his head to one side. He poured himself more whisky and to Raymond he proposed, lifting the cup and draining it, ‘A toast, to the daughter of the house!’
Raymond pulled at his earlobe with a finger and thumb and glanced at George. His glass was empty anyway.
Fleur touched Joe on the arm. ‘Joe, carry on with what you were saying. You’re ambitious, you have a strong sense of direction, do you, about being a singer?’
‘I feel something pulling me towards a career in music, certainly,’ Joe said, frowning attractively. ‘La Forza del Destino! Whatever the hurdles might be—and oh my goodness, Fleur, you know what those are—whatever the hurdles. I simply must sing!’
He flashed a smile around the table, stood up, struck his chest with one fist and launched into ‘Ode to Joy’.
Fleur got to her feet and joined in from the other side of the table, lit up with mirth. They sang to Lah, stretching arms towards each other, trading actors’ glances; they were both equally proud of the power of their eyes. When they came to the end everyone clapped. Joe pulled Fleur’s hand to his lips and kissed it and turned a sparkling look on her. She sat down stroking her hair with both hands as if arranging a veil of his admiration over her head. Across the table she looked at him as if saying calmly, can I help it if I fascinate you?
Lila got up from the table again. Joe’s attention was all that mattered now, and she wouldn’t have it again this evening. Already she was getting an idea of how hungry life could be when you were in love, how it would call for patience and cunning to live from now on in need, waiting to pounce on whatever thin bones of hope he might drop behind him. With some idea that by drifting up to her room she might leave behind a memory of herself that would be more compelling than her presence, she said goodnight. She knew that her eyes were too hot and bright, her face too pink and young-looking for her to be taken seriously by the adults for a moment longer.
In her room she peeled the clothes off her limbs as if she were undressing a doll, imagining Joe’s gaze. She lay very still in bed with her eyes open, straining to hear his voice and waiting to be struck down by a fever whose first symptoms were already creeping through her. The stereogram started up: Act III of Turandot and ‘Nessun dorma’, to which Joe sang along. There was clapping and more laughter. Somebody, she assumed her father, clanked knives and forks alone in the kitchen and ran water into the sink.
Later, Joe and Uncle George came up to the landing and paused at the door of the spare room across from Lila’s. There was some bumping of luggage, doors opening, the rise and fall of their voices. Her father’s joined in; she wondered if it were being explained that Joe would be sleeping in the attic room because Fleur (on account of her nerves) had her own room and George was in the tiny spare one. There was a clattering up the attic stairs. Doors opened again, feet shuffled to and from the bathroom, water gurgled, doors closed, the landing light was snapped off.
Lila lay in the dark, glad to think of Joe in the room above, alone like her. She heard his feet on the boards and the creak of the camp bed, and sent silent messages up through the damp-stained ceiling that he was to wake up the next day to find himself in love with her. She had no notion that he was typical of anything or anyone; he seemed freshly invented for her alone, in answer to a long, aching list of things that until now she had barely realised she wished for.
when you go to Venice you see scores of Joe Foscaris. I was a little unsettled on my first visit. I kept accidentally catching the eyes of strangers and opening my mouth to speak—but to say what? Then, the moment I knew there was nothing I could say I would realise it couldn’t possibly be him. But he is replicated everywhere, the stocky, squat Italian running to fat, arms swinging, bandy little legs bearing him along with a pugilist’s bounce. He sells fish, steers the vaporetti, hawks headsquares and keyrings on the Rialto Bridge. Through eyes the colour of the Adriatic he scans yours, without malice, to see the size of the bargain. I remember reading in a guide book about the people of the Veneto, their meeting and mixing with whoever it was—the Phoenicians or some other seafaring tribe, perhaps more than one—and the attractive genetic accident as east and west conjoined: the aquiline nose, the dark hair and black lashes fringing eyes the colour of the lagoon. You never truly see through the milky greeny-grey to what lies below.
Paris. The child’s name is Paris. She is quite an engaging little thing, twisting in Christine’s arms as she stands at the door this morning, and staring at me from under a hat that looks like the toe of a sock. She holds a rag of striped brushed cotton up to the space between her top lip and her nose, and rubs it gently against her skin. Her eyes are glazed and distant; she sees only the secret landscape of the comfort it gives her. She doesn’t even hear when Christine tells her to say hello. Christine can’t get her Stripey away from her, she says. She supposes she’ll grow out of it but she’s looking forward even more to the day when she grows out of needing so much picking up, she’s a dead weight. Paris comes to, grins and turns to hide in her mother’s neck. Christine is holding a carrier bag as well as Paris and looks rather burdened. I tell her she may come in as long as she takes me as she finds me.
Paris made you some chocolate krispies, Christine says, putting Paris down among the papers and boxes and chests in the back room. Didn’t you, Paris?
I warn her to watch the child because there is no guard round the gas fire but actually Paris can’t get near it for all the stuff. Christine takes a deep breath and I notice a smell of hot cardboard that I don’t think was here before.
Christine looks at me. Are y
ou not well? I didn’t get you out of your bed, did I?
I don’t understand the question.
I mean, you in your dressing gown. Are you all right? Still turning stuff out?
I’m fine.
You look tireder than you did before. Is it getting to you?
She raises her voice as she says this because she is on her way into the kitchen with the chocolate krispies. I hear her putting on the kettle.
I’m making you a wee cup of tea, she says. See when you’re on your own—you sometimes forget. I’m the same, I don’t look after myself. Oh, is there no milk?
She pops home to get some while I wonder how to be friendly to Paris and she stares back at me from behind Stripey, her eyes full of suspicion. Just before she starts to cry, Christine comes back with the milk and a plastic container with a lid.
I brought you a drop soup, she says. You don’t look very well. If you’ve no much appetite I thought still you maybe can manage a wee drop soup.
She pronounces it ‘seup’ and I want to smile.
Instead I say, Oh, you Scotswomen! You and your soup! If in doubt, make a pot of soup, eh? Soup, soup, soup!
Christine stares at me. It’s out of a carton, she says. I’ll put it in the fridge.
She pours our tea and brings it in and we sip at it. She has put sugar in mine. The dark clumps of Paris’s chocolate krispies sit on sideplates in neon-coloured paper cases. I nibble a piece and find it hard to swallow. Then I see on Christine’s face another impending outbreak of compassion so I draw attention to the half-empty, upended tea chests, some of whose contents are littering the floor. I pick up a cutting, the full page advert Uncle George took in the Burnhead & District Advertiser on 7th July, the same day they published our photograph and the old one of my mother.
What do you think of that, then? I ask, holding the page up to her. The paper is filthy, the edges frilly with rot and damp. I sneeze, twice.
She cranes forward and reads it.
I wouldn’t know, she says. What’s it meant to be?
I don’t answer because suddenly she exclaims, Paris! Paris, come out of there!
Paris has got hold of my cross-stitch, pulled it out of its bag and is making a kind of cat’s cradle out of my silks. I jump to my feet. I don’t want it spoiled, she’s a sticky-looking child. She may have chocolate on her fingers. Plus there’s a needle in it.
Christine gets there first and pulls the work gently away from her. Paris wails, plonks herself on the floor and returns to Stripey.
Hey, brilliant, Christine says, smoothing it over, did you do this? It’s brilliant.
She turns it this way and that. Honest, it’s really good. What’s it meant to be? What way up does it go?
It’s not meant to be anything, it’s stylised, I say. It’s not meant to be anything, it’s just a symmetrical pattern. Just shapes.
Christine doesn’t know what to say to this, so as she sits down again she picks up the cutting and looks at it.
My God, she says, this is over forty years old. People hang on to stuff that long, don’t they? She waves an arm over the boxes and papers on the floor. It’s daft. I mean what would you want to hang on to stuff like this for?
BAST
BURNHEAD ASSOCIATION FOR SINGING TURANDOT
Needs
YOU!!
COME AND JOIN IN this thrilling amateur production of Puccini’s Turandot taking place in Burnhead 26th, 27th and 28th August under the baton of top London professional. NO EXPERIENCE NECESSARY. We need the following VOLUNTEERS AGED THIRTEEN OR OVER:
…
PERFORMERS
Chorus: (all voices, no auditions, just bring your enthusiasm!)
Principals: (some amateur experience desirable)
Strings, brass & percussion players
(own instrument and stand preferred)
Dancers, jugglers, acrobats—any style,
all other special skills also very welcome
…
PRODUCTION
Carpenters, painters, technicians, general helpers, front of house, costumes, makeup, props, production assistants. Electrical knowledge helpful. ALL HELP WELCOME
…
WHATEVER YOUR AGE OR EXPERIENCE
you can join in and have lots of fun. Come to an INFORMAL MEETING to LEARN MORE at 5 Seaview Villas, Pow Road, Burnhead, Saturday 9th July at 6.00 p.m.
ALL WELCOME FREE REFRESHMENTS
I wouldn’t know, I say.
When she goes I sit among the cuttings and papers and they feel like old wrappings, the crumpled and torn tissue round precious things so long ago put by that the reasons that made them worth keeping have disintegrated silently inside their coverings. Treasures shrink with time, as do the objects of all youthful ecstasies; unwrapped and recalled later, they are mystifyingly undeserving of preservation. Although those paperweights in the sideboard may be the exception here. I bring the paperweights out again and set them in a row along the sideboard. Clean and pretty things make a contrast in this house.
My father was a mild man—a gentleman, as Christine says—mild to the point of powerlessness, unable to put up much resistance, but still I ask him now, aloud, over the purring of the fire: Why did you allow it? When Joe Foscari came that night, did you not see? I saw you watching. Surely you saw me fall for him. Why was there nothing in me that inspired your protection?
No answer comes. I see his face in old age when his mildness had deepened and he had grown whimsical and ambiguous. No answer will come now.
All right then, I say. All right, just tell me this. Were you not in the least concerned about the way they came and took us over—all of us? Were you not at the very least concerned about the money? You always worried about money. Did it not bother you, the whole Premium Bond being wasted on an amateur opera?
Ah, wasted? It was wasted, you think?
I see him, his hands draped over the arms of his chair like empty, hanging gloves. I could never actually have seen him this way in life so I must be imagining what it was like for him afterwards, late that night, that botched night when everything disintegrated and everyone left.
Yes, I think it was wasted. I lick my fingers clean of chocolate, pick up the cross-stitch, rearrange the skeins of silks, take up my needle and work by the glow from the fire. I don’t want bright light.
Christine grows bolder. This afternoon she is back. Paris has just been deposited at the Pow Little People’s Paradise—a wee playgroup kind of thing, Christine says—and she is dropping in to ask if I enjoyed my soup. My eyes are hot and dry from my sewing. Her lips tighten a little when I find myself unable to answer and she walks past me to the kitchen and starts to bang around looking for a pan to heat it up in. She rests in the doorway while it’s on the stove and asks if I’m all right for bin bags, because if I like she can pop home for a couple and give me a hand to get some of this mess tidied up.
No thank you, I say.
She sighs. It’s just, I seen it in the paper at lunchtime, she says. The paper, the Burnhead Advertiser, it’s out today. Mr Duncan’s funeral’s in the paper, the announcement? So I was kinda wondering.
Wondering what?
You know. Wondering where you’ll be going after, Christine says, as if such a concern is natural or obvious. After the funeral, for the refreshments. The announcement never said. I’m thinking if you’re having them back here you’ll need a wee hand to get tidied up first.
Refreshments? I haven’t thought about refreshments, I tell her. There won’t be many there. There may be no-one.
Christine disappears into the kitchen and comes back with soup in a mug. It is far too hot and smells of compost but something tells me she’s not leaving till I’ve eaten it.
Listen, she says. When her voice drops like this, it’s pleasant enough. I watch her over the rim of my mug. Listen, it’ll mainly be old folk, it’ll be a cold day. You need to give them a cup of tea. It’s expected. It’s what you do.
The soup tastes green and salt
y and makes my eyes water. I fish about for a tissue. Christine finds one on the floor. There are, in fact, many paper handkerchiefs on the floor, among all the other papers.
I’ve got this friend that does wee functions, teas and parties and that, Christine says. She works from home, does all her own baking. Want me to ask her? She’ll do it all nice for you, brings the urn and cups and everything. She’s not dear either, not like the hotels.
She pulls a business card from the pouch in the front of her fleece. On it there’s a picture of a pie with ‘Sheena’s Party Fayre’ and a telephone number written underneath. In a cloud of steam coming out of the pie it says in fluffy letters: ‘Function catering in your home. Complete service. Large or small. All fresh made.’
I wonder what this has to do with me.
Here? I say, looking round.
Christine is looking at me carefully. Uh-huh, she’s got a wee van and everything. I’ll help you get straight. I’m thinking, maybe, she says gently, maybe Mr Duncan would have liked folk back here. He was the gentleman.
Maybe, I say.
She is catching me off guard, this girl, easing herself sideways into my business with bloody soup and chocolate krispies and that blonde, blank child and now, pictures of steaming pies.
See, I’ll help you get tidy. Want me to phone Sheena for you? Will I tell her tea and sandwiches and cake and maybe a dram? For about a dozen, or maybe twenty?
I don’t stop her. It’ll be something to work towards.
12
Audrey entered the clients’ waiting room and saw that Raymond was frowning. That meant it would be one of their talking days. She liked those, especially after one of the other kind; it allayed the sound of her mother’s voice that could sometimes still, even now, start up in her head, telling her she was plain oversexed and a shame to her parents (there being no shame like that of missionaries with a daughter in trouble), just the type to get caught in a trap of her own making, a web woven from her dirty wants, her cheap compliance and her graceless soul. No man’ll ever respect you, she said. After all these years Audrey found this information wearying, but not much more. She was safe from the worst consequences of it, even supposing it were true, but still she liked to see that Raymond was as anxious to talk to her as he sometimes was to have her splayed, as decorously as she could manage, on the leather Chesterfield. He was frowning at the Burnhead & District Advertiser.