Reading by Lightning

by Joan Thomas

  In the parlour Nettie Nesbitt fell silent, now when it didn’t matter. Nan dozed on the settee beside Aunt Lucy, her tissue hat perched on the nest of her hair like a bird about to take flight. Mrs. Shillingford gave herself over to her wine, and the second it was finished her husband tipped his head towards her and she stood up and Aunt Lucy brought their coats. They said their goodbyes and stepped out onto the front sidewalk, fussing with their umbrellas, adjusting mufflers round their necks. Then they embarked cautiously on their journey home, three doors down the row.

  When they were gone Aunt Lucy went to the kitchen to make another pot of tea, and Madeleine moved around the parlour collecting teacups from the last round. Lois sprawled on the carpet, looking listlessly through the gramophone records. I took off my party hat and examined it. It was two sheets of pink tissue glued together and cut into a crenellated pattern at the top. It was not so much a party hat as a joking reference to a different sort of party.

  Across from me, alone on the loveseat, Nettie Nesbitt sat with her chin in her big, bony hand. On the shelf above her head was the Blackpool tower done in white china, and a Queen Victoria plate, cracked in half and mended with glue. Everything had been swept and dusted for Christmas, all the clutter tucked away, showing how shabby the parlour was under its crocheted doilies. The cushions Nettie sat on were so worn that cords showed white along their edges. Framed in the doorway to the kitchen, Aunt Lucy bent over a drawer, wiping at something inside it. The glass of wine I’d drunk revealed the scene to me with all its baffling proprieties. Sadness rising in the silence, people doing ordinary things with a secret intent I could not decipher.

  Suddenly, in the archway to the hall George was looking over the bowl of his pipe at me, smiling cryptically with his puckish old man’s face. His hair stood up in tufts all around, defying the shape the barber had intended for it. His eyes were the same slate grey as Uncle Stanley’s and half of Lancashire. He blinked eagerly, trying to hold my gaze, and I looked away in confusion.

  3

  I saw Mrs. Grimshaw’s hat outside our living-room window and opened the door before she knocked. No coat? I said.

  Oh, lovie, it’s just one door to the next, she said, stepping over the sill and plucking off her hat. She was an old bird, a bottom-heavy chicken hopping into the henhouse, her legs grown skinny with age and a scalp like a pink rubber bathing cap showing through her hair. Forty years your nana and I’ve been side by next, she said, batting at the feathers in her hat. Forty years I’ve lived here. Me sister died in the front room, and me husband died in the bedroom, and me mother died in the loo. It don’t bother me none, death don’t mean nothin’ to me. She set her hat on the sideboard and plopped herself down in her usual corner of the couch. I’m eighty-two, me. You’d never know it, would you? You’ll never go, the doctor says, we’ll have to shoot you.

  I stooped and looked anxiously at my hair in the peeling old mirror above the sideboard. New Year’s. I was going alone on the coach to spend the night at Oldham, there was to be a party. Mrs. Grimshaw was to spend the evening with Nan and I’d filled the cookie tin with something special for their tea.

  So our gel’s flittin’ off, is she? said Mrs. Grimshaw as Nan came in. She’s flittin’ off and leavin’ us on our tod. She reached for my hand, pressing a toffee into it. I was just saying, dear, I was just saying to your Lily, I’ve buried three sisters and three brother-in-laws, and I woke up one morning and me husband was layin’ in bed glarin’ at me. Wasn’t he, dear? Your nana seen him, pet, I come and fetched her. He was layin’ there glarin’ at me, he was stone dead, his kidneys give out in the night. But the doctor says to me, he says, You’ll never go, he says, I’ll have to shoot you.

  There, love, said Nan, giving me a kiss. Are you warm enough? And don’t let Stanley put you on the coach tomorrow. There’ll be all sorts about, what with the holiday. You tell your Aunt Lucy he’s to drive you home.

  Madeleine met me at the coach. I’m so glad you’ve come, she said. Lois is in a right state. First Archie said he was coming, and then he said he wasn’t but hinted at some posh party in Hale Barns he wanted to go to, and so she blubbered, and then he said, Oh, all right, he would come, but she doesn’t believe he will. And he didn’t ask her to Hale Barns, did he?

  There were guests in the parlour already, but we climbed the stairs to see Lois. She was sitting on her bed, her face tragic. Look, look! she cried, stretching her legs out in front of her.

  Yes, said Madeleine, leaning towards the mirror and raising her lipstick to her mouth. You have smashing legs. Everyone agrees.

  My stockings, cried Lois. She dragged us over to the window, where light from the west still fell, and put her legs out theatrically one at a time, lifting her skirt to her garters.

  I don’t know what you’re on about, said Madeleine.

  Like heck you don’t. Lily? They’re different shades, aren’t they? This one is orange. There — look — you can tell from her face! I’d like to know what’s happened with the pair I bought last week. What have you got on, Maddy?

  Madeleine stepped back out of the light. Never mind trying to strip my stockings off me, she said. It’s first up, best dressed.

  Oh, I can’t stand it! Lois cried, gesturing beyond her legs to the heap of clothes on the bed, the water-stained wallpaper, her tawdry life. I’m fed up to the teeth with all of this.

  Come off the perch, said Madeleine. Who’ll be looking at you? Archie won’t be here, and no one else cares. Let’s go down, Lily.

  In the kitchen Aunt Lucy said, The young folk are all outside. I followed Madeleine into the back garden. At the sight of ten or fifteen boys and girls my age standing on the flagstones and sprawled on the garden wall, my heart began to pound. George did a fanfare with his imaginary trumpet — he’d conjured me up as a party diversion. My full attention went to my shoes, not the hated tie-up farm shoes that had become as painful to me as a deforming birthmark, but the black-patent pumps I’d found in Nan’s closet and asked to wear. Everyone called hello. You’ve come a long way! a kind girl exclaimed, and I understood with a stab that the patent shoes were worse, they were the cheap shoes an old lady might wear in a pathetic effort at glamour, and furthermore they were out of style. I couldn’t speak and then the moment to speak was past and still I stood frozen. Finally they stopped looking at me and conversation drifted back to the long hike George and a mate named David had taken that day.

  You lot are bringing on the war, you know that, one of the boys said. They’ll think we’re fit.

  Not Monty, a girl cried. Monty’s doing his bit for peace. Monty spent the day on the Bull’s Head ramble.

  It was a tramp and a jolly hard one, said Monty. He held his cigarette low, and smoke leaked from his mouth with his words. We walked six miles and the only pubs we could stop at were Bull’s Heads. We had rules, and we kept to ’em.

  How many did that leave you? someone asked.

  He grinned. Four.

  A small, thin girl stood with the boys, listening with a fixed smile. She wore a trench coat cinched tight around her tiny waist. It was dark in the garden, and the yellow light from the kitchen window fell on her amber hair. Madeleine pressed meaningfully against my arm and raised her eyebrows. That’s the girl George fancies, she whispered. Imogene. But she fancies David.

  Another girl, a very large girl, leaned in and put her arms around our shoulders. Stop your whispering, she said, unless you wants to tell me too.

  We were talking about her, said Madeleine, tipping her head. My future sister-in-law there. I was just telling Lily.

  Oh, God help us! moaned the large girl, collapsing against Madeleine. She was Jenny, from next door. She wore a felt cloche hat with a swooping feather, which she’d bought for three shillings sixpence in town. Her coat was also new, a Christmas gift.

  You’ve got fur, said Madeleine, touching the collar.

  Watch that! Jenny shrieked, jumping back. It’s genuine monkey, that! she cried, going off into g
ales of laughter. Just that afternoon she’d been to a fortune teller, who read her palm and told her she’d be meeting an older man with red hair who would take her away in a ship. This was obviously her brother who lived in Guernsey, so she tried to get her money back, but the gypsy just offered to give her a different fortune. The rotten tinker! cried Jenny in her big, rough voice. She tossed her head gaily at the boys by the shed. She wanted to dance: she executed a few steps, thrusting her big chest forward.

  Fetch the gramophone out, Maddy, somebody called.

  Dad won’t let us, Madeleine said.

  Well, put it up to the window, then. They’re not using it.

  Jenny led a gang inside to set up the gramophone. In a minute there was a commotion at the door and two boys came out. Carrying Lois, her arms and legs flailing. She was wearing slacks. Bloody Christ, she cried as they set her upright. Get your filthy hands off me.

  The girls by the garden wall exchanged looks. Lois stared boldly back. I say, you’re a dead lot, she said.

  Just waiting for you, love, said Monty.

  Well, I’m here now. Look at you! What a pack of tea grannies! Let’s do something. Let’s play kippers!

  Kippers! everyone laughed. Just then the kitchen window was hauled open behind Lois. Jenny’s hat feather appeared in the opening. Requests, Jenny called. Requests, ladies and gentlemen, let’s hear your favourites.

  Seriously, said Lois, ignoring her. Enough standing around.

  All right! George cried, springing up. We’ll play kippers. Seriously. Lily shall be it.

  Not Lily, said Madeleine, taking my arm protectively. Lily won’t know it. You made it up, they don’t play kippers abroad. And she won’t know the hiding places. From inside the house, a man’s voice crooned, Blue moon…

  All the better, all the better, said George. She’ll spot new ones. Lily, it’s just like hide-and-seek, but you’ll be the first hider and not the seeker. When we find you, we all squeeze into your hiding place until only one is left looking. We pack in like little fishies. So choose a place with a bit of room.

  They groaned and laughed, but eventually they buried their heads in their arms or leaned against the wall and started counting in chorus. I stood frozen until George raised his head and caught my eye. Get off, he said.

  I ran around the corner. There the garden wall passed very close to the house. I climbed it and then, using the drainpipe for footing, I scrambled up onto the roof and lay flat on the cool hard roof tiles. The music faded and the counting stopped. I could hear the lorries out on the motorway climbing the hill into town. Above me the clouds glowed greenly with the reflected light of Manchester. In a moment I heard the crowd spread out. Some of them passed just below me. A boy said something like, You’re a right cow, and a girl said something back (I’ll give you a thick ear-O, it could be). I knew I would never be able to talk like that, in that quick, wry, sidelong way. But I lay on the roof and made a mental list, my New Year’s resolutions: I would wear lipstick. I would learn to pin my hair up in front. I would buy shoes — I had the pound note Aunt Lucy’d given me for Christmas. I will, I’ll do it, I vowed, before I ever see any of them again. And then they’ll forget what I was like when they first met me.

  It was George who found me. I heard him walking along the top of the garden wall and then the scuffing of his shoes on the drainpipe. For a moment he was silhouetted against the sky and then he stepped over me and eased himself down beside me. Inch up a little higher, he whispered. Your feet are peeping over the edge.

  We lay side by side. Lady Mab and Sir William on their tombs, George said. You won’t have seen that yet. It’s at Wigan Pier. In the parish church. Like Ferdinand and Isabella.

  He was so close I could smell the ale he’d been drinking, so close I couldn’t bring myself to turn my face towards him. Sir William’s got his legs crossed and his eyes open, he said. Whereas Lady Mab’s praying.

  He put his cold hand over mine and brought my arm up to my chest. Like this, fold your hands in prayer, he said. Lady Mab took a new husband when Sir William was away fighting in the Crusades. Then he came back. She had reason to pray.

  Someone walked below us and there were shouts out on the Edge. They’ll never find us, George whispered. No one’s ever hidden here before.

  I folded my hands in prayer. Above us a slanted moon floated free of the clouds. I wish I could mount my telescope up here, George said. Funny what a difference a few feet makes. What’s the moon like in Canada?

  Different, I said. In Canada it’s blue. I dared to tip my face towards him and he laughed a silent, open-mouthed parody of a laugh. His breath hung above his face in the damp air.

  Is this roof stone? I asked, after a minute. My legs were freezing.

  It’s slate. It cost a bleedin’ fortune. If that lot climbs up here Stanley’ll kill us. Let’s get down. They won’t check round this side of the house again.

  We climbed down. There was a corner between the garden wall and the shed. We sat side by side against the house with our shoulders lightly touching. David and Monty found us and squeezed in, and David passed a flask to George. Others found us and we had to stand up to make room. Jenny pressed her way in, grumbling. A ragged song started up in the house. Aunt Lucy’s company was singing. It’s a long way to Tipperary, it’s a long way to go. By now the moon had sunk over the roof of the shed and it was dark. We stood with breath in-held, a little pod of sweat and smoke and damp wool in the cold air. Oy! a girl hissed. You’ve burned me. Laughter telegraphed through the crowd. Tobacco smoke drifted over us. Quit that, the same girl said. You’re going to knock us over!

  Is anyone actually looking for us? asked Monty, not bothering to whisper.

  Maddy’s out in front, said Lois.

  After a while we heard Madeleine opening the garden gate. Okay you lot, she called. I know where you are. There was a long silence. Then we heard her voice again, a little farther away, a strange, plaintive cry. Barley! she cried. Barley! Someone leaned back against me and the whole mass of bodies teetered, and then I was off-balance, held upright by the group, my arms pinned between other bodies, one of my dreadful shoes lost. We were a pile of laughing bodies on the ground then and no one tried to get up. Something was caught against my leg — it was a hand, the fingers cold and intentional. It slid along my leg, disembodied cold fingers stealing upward under my skirt with a private message to deliver. They were rooting for the soft skin at the top of my stocking, for the inside of my thigh. Then the whole body of us heaved and the hand was pried loose and with shrieks and laughter we disentangled ourselves and scrambled to our feet.

  When I was back in Salford the next day I asked Nana about George, who he really was, how Aunt Lucy had come to adopt him, and she told me that some poor girl had borne him in secret and left him on the steps of the vicarage in Oldham. Aunt Lucy and Uncle Stanley had been married for three years with no sign of a baby, so the vicar brought George to them, and then before long Aunt Lucy had started a baby herself, the way women will.

  Was he left in a box? I asked.

  I believe so, she said.

  What sort of box? I asked.

  She thought deeply for a minute. I believe it was borax, she said at last.

  The first anniversary of my granddad’s death approached. The turning of the year to the pale green of spring had not carried Nan further from Granddad’s death — it had brought her closer. Every morning she woke up mournful. Often she was awake before it was even light. She put her teeth in and went down to light the cooker and make herself a cup of tea, which she drank sitting in the kitchen, waiting until a decent hour (six o’clock) to climb the stair, calling hoarsely, Wakey, wakey, rise and shine, where’s our pet, where’s our Lily? Come on, Lady Do-Nowt, rise and shine.

  It was a small-enough space I had, just a narrow bed with a row of boxes crammed in beside it, and I surfaced from sleep to see her shapeless form hovering by the bed, a cup of weak tea in her hand (I didn’t like milk in my tea at all, bu
t she wouldn’t be told). The tea and cheer were just a ticket to get into my room. Once in she sank heavily onto the bed and squeezed me up against the wall, and what was preying on her mind came out — she reverted to her grieving. She’d been paying into a burial club called the Funeral Friendly Society, but now that Granddad was gone she was worried that there wouldn’t be enough for her. I’ll go down to the office and inquire, Nan, I murmured, trying to hang on to my sleep.

  And she didn’t want her things sold, she didn’t want the people from the terrace pawing through her things, Mrs. Crisp and that Irish woman from number seventeen. I’ll tell Aunt Lucy, I said. Nan, don’t worry. She sat and looked at me, her faded grey eyes hooded by her eyelids as if to save energy.

  There’s a wee sum in the building society, she said. But I don’t want it touched. It’s for you, for you children here, and for Roland’s in Ireland and Phillip in Canada. Not a lot, mind. She poked me in the hip. Don’t think you’ll be rich, lady. We was never well off. But we was no poorer than the rest of them, and there was never an unkind word.

  By then I’d pulled myself into a sitting position against the wall. Nan, I said, I wish you’d stop fretting. You’re fine.

  And then she roused herself and squeezed my cheeks and said, Oh, well, pet, there’s life in the old doll yet.

  But really Nan asked so very little of me. She asked that I be charmed by her songs when she could manage to sing them and pat her hand when she wept. That I not flinch away when she squeezed my cheeks and kissed me. That I respond on cue. She didn’t ask to know who I really was. She’d taken in all she could take of other people through her long life, and by now if what they gave her was real or pretense, she couldn’t care less.

  And so I had a kind of privacy I’d never had in my life. I paid my tuppence at the library in the precinct and fell into reading, lying on my bed in the afternoons, pretending that I needed a nap and trying to lure the cat in to keep me company, feeling her pelt slip across the muscles of her back when I slid one hand into her soft fur, trying not to dig too deep because that would drive her away. Nan would climb the stairs calling, What’s this, then, Lady Do-Nowt? Lying a-bed while the sun’s shining? and then her snoring would start up like a pump that needed oiling, and I’d spend the afternoon on my bed, turning the soft, worn pages of books all rebound in black-painted cardboard, books named after girls and women. Jane Eyre. Betty Trevor. Lorna Doone. Emma. Even Alice in Wonderland, which Madeleine adored. Or I put my book down and got out the new black slip-on shoes I’d bought with my precious pound. I put them on and stood for a minute with one heel tucked into the arch of the other foot, the way Ruth and Imogene stood after the hiding game on New Year’s (close to the boys, their bodies almost touching, Imogene laughing up into George’s face). Then I crept down the stairs and pulled on my coat and slipped outside, carrying my book. Usually I walked to the bank of the Irwell where holly and blackberries and other vines were knit together into a picturesque fence and a fringe of chimneys poured smoke into the air. Sometimes I walked all the way out Moor Road to Kersal Moor, where (my nana told me) my father used to walk with his mates. Across the moor I saw the square white house that I’d decided must have been Joe Pye’s. One day I would walk out there and ask. One day, when I had more time. At the gate to the moor was a hexagonal stone building with its windows shuttered, and I sat down on a stone step outside it. Robins hopped along the grass (smaller than our robins), and sparrows with dapper black and brown markings (bigger than the sparrows at home, which we called English sparrows). If it was dry I read for an hour before I walked reluctantly back.