by Morag Joss
Enid, smirking, came in with their tea. ‘Go on, then,’ she said. ‘Let’s see if it’s big enough.’
Mrs Foley nodded. ‘Go on, I’m dying to see it on. Slip it on and let’s have a look at you.’
Lila said, ‘Please. Oh please, Mrs Foley, please can I just take it home? Can I take it away to try on at home? I’ll be careful, I promise, I won’t let anything happen to it. I just want to try it on at home, is that all right? I’ll bring it straight back tomorrow.’
Enid’s mum laughed. ‘You’re a funny one. What, Lizzie, are you shy? Aye, if you want, I suppose, take it away home. It’s tougher than it looks, silk. There’s brown paper under the counter, wrap it up in that. If it doesn’t fit you, bring it back. There’s plenty more stuff.’
Lila found some brown paper and some tissue, slipped the dress off the hanger and folded it up into a parcel. Enid watched her, her bottom lip hanging loose. Lila went about wrapping it feeling big and indelicate, afraid of leaving fingerprints where she touched the dress, afraid to breathe too close in case she dulled it.
‘Er, right, that’s me away. I need to go now,’ she said. ‘Thank you very much.’
Enid’s mum inclined her head gently and told her she was welcome. Lila hesitated. She wanted to fall into Enid’s mum’s arms and declare love and gratitude but the right words were not available.
She said, ‘Thank you. It’s really, really lovely.’
The right words belonged to opera and to Joe. Not even Enid’s mum would understand if she tried to say them. Lila squeezed the parcel to her chest and her eyes filled with tears.
‘Away now, you’re welcome,’ Enid’s mum said. ‘Off you go, you try it on and let me know how it fits.’
Enid said, flatly, ‘Not want your tea? It’s poured.’
‘Er, no, I won’t bother, thanks. See you tonight.’ She paused. They had agreed that Enid would come to Seaview Villas at six o’clock so they could do their makeup together. ‘I’ll just see you there, okay? Half past seven.’
‘We’re meant to be doing our makeup. What about the nail varnish? Half’s yours, remember.’
‘Oh, no, sorry, I can’t. I forgot. I’m to be ready early. My mum says. She’s in charge. I’m to be on hand to help with refreshments, they’ll want a hand putting plates out.’
It was not a good lie and both Enid’s and her mother’s silence made that plain. Fleur was never in charge of anything, nor did she take sufficient notice of Lila to organise her movements or commandeer her help. Ashamed, Lila left them in the back shop and made her way swiftly past the counter to the door. She had almost reached it when Enid called out from behind the curtain, ‘Hey, what about the sandals?’
‘Oh.’ Lila had forgotten. ‘Oh, just bring them with you, okay? I’ll see you there and get them then.’ She pulled the door open and launched herself through it so that whatever Enid yelled in reply was lost in the clanging of the bell.
i find my way to the hairdresser’s all right, on Main Street not far from Woolworth’s, although Woolworth’s is now a Pet Supplies & Aquatic Centre, which seems odd. It’s a very big place for selling Winalot and goldfish.
They’re a bit surprised to see me at the hairdresser’s, I can tell, maybe even impressed; I bet it’s not every freezing day in January that a woman with a walking stick and one foot bare but for some bandages (which I admit are a little grubby now) keeps an appointment. They are not very well organised and seem to have lost any note of my appointment but they have a stylist free, they tell me, as if I should be grateful. The girl who does me doesn’t see me, of course. She gawps in the mirror and addresses my reflection. She lifts my hair in strands and asks what I want. I can’t find the words, and she’s bored already.
She sighs at the mirror, So will I just give it a shampoo and trim and a tidy and a blow dry and finish, then?
She asks me how my hair has ‘been’ lately and is disappointed by what I say. She washes at least three kinds of shampoo into it and rinses them all back out one after the other. She tells me there’s a Senior Citizens’ discount before she asks if I’m retired. But her movements are gentle. When she takes the weight of my head in her hands and her fingertips travel into my hair and over and over my wet skull I feel soothed as if by a lover. She snips in silence, smoothes my hair into an acceptable coating for my head and by then it is almost dry. She wets it again with a spray and dries it herself. At the very end she sprays something on it. Across my forehead, when I leave, there’s a tight hot band of bright pink from the blow drying and my head is buzzing with perfumes and my neck prickles.
Next to the hairdresser’s is a tiny shop, no more than a stall really, selling hot doughnuts and cookies and I think that perhaps Luke, being American, might like a doughnut, and I am slightly peckish myself. I buy six.
When I arrive quite a bit later at the Evangelical Lutherans, Luke is busy. He is counselling, I am told by a young woman who looks rather like his wife Lucy but isn’t. She wants to know if I’m all right, which is a silly question. Who seeks out a priest when they are all right? She tells me I can wait and I admit I’m glad to rest my throbbing foot. When Luke is ready there are four doughnuts left. I hobble into a hot little room full of books with a desk, and armchairs grouped round an electric fire.
Luke’s face is full of hope that he’s got me now.
Hey, Lila!
Then he takes a proper look. Oh Lila, oh, my. Here, sit down, you get that foot up here, now. There. You want a cushion under there? Looks real painful. You want me to fix that bandage? You sure you should be walking around? Shouldn’t you be home, resting it?
I told you I didn’t really know him, but there are things about him that could be said, I tell Luke. When you asked me about him before, I wasn’t very helpful, I realise. But there are things that one might say.
About your dad, right? That’s just fine, you can include anything you want, we’ve still got three days. But Lila, I would’ve come to you any time you asked—there wasn’t any call for…okay. Okay, now you’re here, Lila, do you mind if I just take a minute?
Before I can consider whether I mind or not he’s straight in with it: Lord, uh, this is Luke, your servant. I pray, Lord, bless all communication today that helps me give wise counsel and to listen prayerfully and to offer your hope and comfort and balm to our sister Lila whose spirit may be in trouble at this time, send her peace in your holy name O Lord Jesus Amen.
You shouldn’t give counsel and then listen, I say. Listening comes first, or it should, I would have thought.
Luke laughs. Lila, you’re right. I’m listening.
All right. There are things about him that could be said. For instance, he served time in prison. I didn’t know that myself till I was fifteen. It was kept quiet.
You sure you want me to know that?
Not that he was a criminal. It was only a bit of selling during the war. Black market. He got six months. When he came out he was a changed man. Never the same. Lost his spark.
Lila, really, it’d be kind of nice to know things I could say at the funeral. Memories of your dad, the kind of man he was. I’m not sure this is the kind of stuff you’d want me to say.
I’m talking. You should be listening. That’s why he was a clerk all his life. He wasn’t allowed to practise, not with a criminal record. I don’t think that was fair. He brought his wife and baby down to Burnhead and bought his house with money he inherited from his father. By that time the daughter was three months old.
The daughter? You, Lila? You mean you?
Have a doughnut. Go on. His wife, by the way, loathed him. She only married him because she was pregnant and even then only because she thought she was marrying a lawyer. It came out in the end, him being in prison, along with a lot of other things. A lot of things came out all at once, really.
Luke is looking desperate now, poor man. He thought he was going to hear about my father’s love of gardening, his kindness to small animals, his quiet faith, and he’s getting
this. He doesn’t know why. Not sure I do.
I allow him a minute to think.
I guess things have a habit of coming out in the end, he says, and I nod. He goes on, I guess the truth will always out. I believe that the ultimate truth is God’s truth. The truth, Lila—
I interrupt:—will set you free? Ah, but will it? Will it, though? That’s where you’re wrong. It’s the illusions that keep us going. Illusions and delusions. Stories. Fairy tales. You haven’t eaten your doughnut.
Illusions and stories? Is it illusions that keep you going, Lila? Don’t you want to shed illusions and let God’s truth into your heart? Don’t you want to hear the greatest story in the whole world, the best true story of how Jesus Christ died for you?
He’s getting down to business now, not that I blame him. This is the kind of thing he does.
But that’s what I’m telling you, I say. A true story. Or a story about the truth, anyway. Because in this story, it comes out in the end. And my illusions, and a lot of other people’s too, they don’t survive the story. Some of the people don’t survive, either. My father only survives it in a way.
What are you talking about, Lila?
Everything comes out. The brother-in-law goes to prison.
Your father’s brother-in-law? You mean they were in it together, the black-market deal?
No, no. The brother-in-law goes for something quite different. And it kills him, prison kills him. My father takes it hard. And it doesn’t help, though this comes a little later, the wife killing herself just before her fortieth birthday.
He still hasn’t touched his doughnut.
The wife, he says. He says it so gently, as if he knew her, that I think about crying. The wife. Your mother. Your mother, Lila.
There is another long pause and I sense he wants to give me this silence for some purpose, but I don’t want it.
The wife, I repeat.
Okay. Right, Luke says quietly. So, the daughter. What happens to the daughter, Lila?
The daughter? Oh, let’s not concern ourselves with the daughter.
You say you want to tell me a story about the truth. You came here to say things about your father. Are you sure it’s not the daughter you need to talk about?
Of course I detect the therapeutic timbre of the voice. It’s counselling tone, loud and clear.
Oh, the daughter survives it, I say. And there’s nothing else I want to say, after all. Eat your doughnut. Do you like my hair? Do you have any painkillers, by the way? I seem to have left mine at home.
Sadly for me Luke does not believe in painkillers, not in tablet form. I let him run on for a while about Jesus being the best cure for just about everything he knows, and then he asks how I’m getting home. He insists on driving me back in my car himself. He takes me all the way up to the front door of 5 Seaview Villas and even comes in with me. He switches on lights and turns on the gas fire and then he has to go and take a prayer meeting at which, I am assured, I will be remembered. From the dining room window I watch him set off into the twilight, turning his collar up. He waves. It is nice of him not to mention that it is a long, cold walk back to Burnhead.
20
Lila waited at the window of her bedroom until the house grew quiet. Outside, the sun was sinking. Long threads of cloud slanted across the sky in careless strokes of silver and the dune grass bobbed and shivered in a mist of sand thrown by the wind up the beach. Inside the house the sounds of doors, telephones and voices had stopped. Her mother had called upstairs for her to get a move on and Lila had shouted back that she wasn’t ready and would make her own way, they need not wait.
Now she had to hurry. The snap of her door latch made her jump—what if the house wasn’t empty? It was already nearly eight o’clock. She crept along to the bathroom. Her mother had taken one of her endless, greedy baths so Lila bathed quickly in a few inches of tepid water and when she ran more into the basin to rinse out her shampoo it was stone cold and made her head ache. She was so late and foolish and afraid. She had not even tried the dress on yet—she had to be clean first—and what if it didn’t fit? What if she tore it before she’d even got it on? Still Joe was not back. What if he walked into the house right now? She listened, her heartbeat hammering in her throat. No, she decided, she was safe; this late in the evening he would go straight to the farm from the station. He was probably already there. She took a deep breath and tried to decide whether to use the Rodeo Princess or pinch some of her mother’s Shalimar. But why had Joe left it so late? Was he coming at all? He must be already there, and now she was the one who was late. Could she get her hair looking all right in time?
But the dress, slipping easily over her head with an exciting noise, restored her nerve. It fitted well except for a tendency to billow up round her bust (Enid’s mum had overdone the bit of leeway) but she smoothed it down and it seemed to settle, for a moment. In any case it didn’t matter because raising her hand and lightly pressing the space between her breasts was the kind of feminine gesture that Joe might like.
She had not really noticed when the dress was on the hanger that the side seams were slit to a point well above her knees. She tipped her dressing-table mirror downwards and inspected her legs. There was quite a flash of skin when she whirled round, which of course you couldn’t avoid doing at a ceilidh, so she might sit out the wilder dances—the Eightsome Reel and Strip the Willow—during which the girls always got flung about. Anyway, the only dancing she wanted to do was a slow, gliding journey across the floor in Joe’s arms. She twirled some more. They were only legs after all, and the dress was narrow; if the slits weren’t there she would hardly be able to walk. It was meant to have slits and swing out. There was nothing wrong with it, it was just a bit unusual for round here. She leaned in towards the mirror and studied her face. The satin of the dress made her skin glow. Her dark hair, loose down her back—there was no time to do anything with it—shone like wet coal against it. Lila smiled. She would arrive like Cinderella. Joe would be waiting for her. Other people in more mundane finery would almost fail to recognise her but Joe’s eyes would light up and everybody would applaud when he took her by the hand and led her to the floor to dance. At that moment the white farm shed with stark overhead lights would somehow be draped in warm velvet and chandeliered, the accordions and fiddles transformed into a tidy little Viennese octet. By the end of the evening she and Joe would be engaged.
Meanwhile she couldn’t wait to see drop-lipped, slow-eyed Enid in her matching turquoise dress and eyeshadow, with midges stuck in the hairspray that would be gluing up her wiry red hair.
But she had almost forgotten again that Enid was bringing the sandals. She would have to go up the track in her black school plimsolls, so it was a mercy she was late, after all. Nobody would see her arrive and Enid would probably be looking out for her, so she would be able to change into the sandals outside in the field without appearing in the plimsolls at all. And if Enid had ‘forgotten’ the sandals, or actually had forgotten them (either was possible) she would dance in bare feet. She liked the idea of herself dancing barefoot, careless and free-spirited. How Joe would adore her for flouting convention.
Before Lila got close to the farm she could make out Mr and Mrs Mathieson up ahead on the track, stationed on picnic chairs behind a pair of trestle tables. Mr Mathieson was counting and thumbing through papers and did not look up; Mrs Mathieson, adjusting a cape round her shoulders and lifting a cup from its saucer, watched her approach. Lila felt her face turning red. It was bad enough the plimsolls being seen by the Mathiesons but worse, there were people milling around in the field. Terrified of being seen by Joe, she snatched glances through gaps in the hedge as she picked her way over the track. They were quite far away, lingering in groups of two and three high up near the farm buildings, mostly men and boys and some in shirtsleeves, but there were girls, too, turning and preening in their coloured dresses. In the low sunlight Lila could make out objects in people’s hands and a blue film of smoke over t
heir heads. Of course, why had she not thought of it? The ceilidh shed was full of straw bales. People were coming outside for cigarettes, and for drink, too, she could see, watching heads tip back and dark shapes lifted to mouths. Probably beer was being sold out of crates round the back, a blind eye turned to ‘intoxicating liquor’ being swigged out here as long as it did not taint the gentility of the shed, where the urn would be simmering and the shortbread doing the rounds.
There was a sudden burst of shouting from the field. Some horseplay started up; drink was being sprayed and thrown around, people scattered roaring and yelping. A group of squealing girls moved away and then turned back and edged in close again as the boys regrouped in a rough, wide circle a distance away from the buildings. A raggedly organised mock-joust began, the boys squaring up to one another, challenging, advancing, swerving, the girls watching at a distance from which they could be sure they were still being noticed. Lila saw Billy swing across the grass in a low, loping run and take a leap onto the back of another boy and together they spun around, turning and turning until they fell and the group roiled around them, laughing. They tumbled over and over, pulling at one another’s hair and clothes, until they lost interest. They got to their feet, slapped each other on the back. Bottles were passed round. The girls moved closer around the group of which Billy was now the centre, brushing himself off and tucking in his shirt. Lila was furious.
She had reached the table now. Mrs Mathieson nudged Mr Mathieson.
‘I forgot my money,’ Lila said. ‘Please can I pay after?’
Mr Mathieson looked up from his cash box and papers. ‘I’m all cashed up now,’ he said, with a purse of his bluish lips. ‘We were just away in, we only stayed out in case we’d gatecrashers. You’re a bit late.’