The Best in Blountmere Street (The Blountmere Street Series Book 2)

by Arnold, Barbara

  ‘In other words, she can’t get much worse than she already is.’

  ‘I wouldn’t say that, but …’

  ‘You don’t have to. What d’you think, Paula? D’you think we should go home and talk about it?’

  Still clutching his hand I move closer to Dad. He’s used my name and he’s going to talk to me about Mum. I begin to cry.

  Dad tucks The Star under the cushion of his armchair. ‘What d’you think about us going down to Devon for a week?’ It’s typical of Dad that the question comes without any lead up to it. ‘It’ll be nice there at this time of year. Make you feel better.’ Unused to showing concern, he looks embarrassed.

  ‘But what about Mum?’

  ‘What about her? Your mother’ll be all right for a week. She probably won’t notice we’ve not been.’

  ‘Will you be able to afford to take a week off work?’

  ‘Let me worry about that. I’ve got a bit put by.’

  ‘It’s a pity Mum didn’t know that. She might not have worried so much,’ I respond with a newfound boldness that, without understanding why, I feel has something to do with Dad using my name.

  ‘Now don’t go bringing your mother into this. What I’ve got’s my own business. D’you want to go to Devon or don’t you?’ Dad bristles. Uncharacteristically, he softens almost immediately. ‘You’d like to see that young friend of yours, wouldn’t you? I’ll write to Ted Heathman and his missus, see if they can put us up. It’s a bit early in the year for the tent.’

  ‘Will we go on the motorbike?’ The thought of seeing Damielle dims at the prospect of all those miles in the cramped sidecar.

  ‘I thought we’d go by train,’ Dad replies airily.

  ‘But you always told Mum it was too expensive to go anywhere on a train.’

  ‘I told you to mind your own business and let me mind mine. Do you or don’t you want to go on the train?’

  ‘Well, yes.’

  ‘That’s that then. Go and get my fountain pen and a couple of sheets of paper and I’ll write the letter straight away. There’s no point in shilly-shallying about.’

  The woman rises from her seat beside the piano, pulling her cardigan around her. ‘You’ve done very well, Paula, considering you haven’t played the piano for so long. I’m only too pleased to pop in and give you a lesson whenever you visit your uncle. He can always pop along and get me as he did today. I’m usually around and not doing anything that can’t be put off.’

  ‘She used to be a concert pianist before she had her accident. I’m not altogether sure what sort of accident it was, but, as you can see, she walks with a nasty limp and three of her fingers are completely stiff now.’ Bill talks on and on. ‘It’s handy she lives so close. A hop, skip and a … ’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me you were going to get her? I thought you’d gone down to the shop for something.’ I stand up in an effort to assert myself. ‘I don’t want you arranging piano lessons for me.’

  ‘It seems a waste to have a piano here and a teacher living so close and not be able to use them both. You wouldn’t want to deprive my neighbour of the enjoyment she obviously gets from teaching you, would you?’

  ‘That’s not the point.’

  ‘The point is that it makes everyone happy, and that’s the main thing.’

  I wander to the window and watch the piano teacher shuffling up the path to her house. ‘And another thing. Why did you tell her you were my uncle?’

  ‘Simply because it’s easier than trying to explain the true connection.’

  ‘That’s what you do at the hospital where Mum is. You’ve been visiting her and telling the hospital you’re her brother, haven’t you?’

  ‘I wouldn’t have done it if it had upset her.’ Bill runs his fingers into his hair. ‘I’m sorry, Paula, but I had to … I had to see her.’

  Our departure for Devon can’t be more of a contrast than when we’d last gone. This time, Dad’s motorbike rests outside our flat, covered by the tarpaulin that had once acted as the ground sheet for our tent. Our only luggage is the suitcase that’s usually stuffed with wool and Mum’s knitting patterns. Now there’s no Mum rushing around flushed and flustered. No Tony to give me liquorice, and no Lori and Fred to assure us every thing will be all right. No one waits on the pavement today to see us off.

  Across the road, two women pass. ‘Looks as if they’re goin’ on ‘oliday. Poor blighters deserve it after what they’ve been through,’ I hear one of them say. ‘Mind you, he’s always been an arrogant sod. It’s the girl I feel sorry for. Tied to her mother’s apron strings, then she ups and goes barmy on her.’

  ‘You off then?’ Angela’s head protrudes from the upstairs window. Her peroxided hair is matted like a ball of off-white wool. Carbon rings circle her eyes. Her face devoid of makeup looks as if it is made of parchment.

  ‘Are you all right?’ I call up to her.

  ‘Course I’m all right. Out on the town last night having a good time,’ she smiles wanly. ‘Talking of having a good time, enjoy yourselves, and don’t do anything I wouldn’t.’

  Even if Angela’s life, now that she’s working, is taking a different direction from mine, she’s still my best friend since Tony went. All at once I ache to see him standing on the pavement as he had the last time, slipping me the liquorice for the journey. I ache to see them all as they had been that day. I ache for nothing to have changed.

  As a concession to the holiday, Dad’s green shirt is open at the neck and he wears his ancient holiday sandals. He picks up the case and glancing down the road at the retreating backs of the two women, says, ‘We’ll show ‘em all a thing or two. The Dibbles ain’t down and out yet. When could anyone along this street afford to go to Devon by train and stay as guests at a farmhouse, you tell me that?’

  ‘We are indeed sorry to hear about your wife’s illness.’ Eliza Heathman is more stolid than I remember her, as if she’s spooned into herself too much of the clotted cream she’s now scooping into tins.

  ‘We hope she will mend quickly. It must be difficult for you both.’

  ‘Just one of those things.’ Neither Dad nor Mrs Heathman mention the nature of Mum’s sickness.

  ‘I expect she’s happy for the pair of you to come down here for a week to get some country air into your lungs.’

  ‘Very happy,’ I reply, studying my hands.

  ‘How do you like your room?’ Damielle asks me, her soft burr filling the awkwardness that’s descended on the kitchen. She’s still the same exquisite fairy-child with silken hair curling to her shoulders and skin painted pink-white. Even her developing breasts look as if they’ve been handcrafted.

  ‘It’s beautiful. Yellow’s my favourite colour, isn’t it, Dad?’

  ‘The colour of sunshine and daffs, that’s what Paula says about our yellow kitchen cupboards I painted.’ Relieved to be free of the subject of Mum, Dad hiccups a chuckle.

  Sunshine really does fill my room under the eaves, where parts of the sloping ceiling touch the floor. Sunshine painted on the walls and on the chest of drawers and cabinet, sunshine streaming through the window onto the floor, causing it to become a golden road; magical sunshine seeping into me, warming me inside.

  ‘Doesn’t it ever rain here?’ I ask Damielle, who is perched on my bed, watching me fold my clothes into the top drawer of the chest. If she notices the sparseness of my belongings or their shabby state, she’s too polite to mention it.

  ‘Rain!’ she replies. ‘Sometimes it rains so much the river breaks its banks and floods for miles around.’ She jumps from the bed like a fawn and springs to the window. I join her and look down on Mr Heathman and Dad squelching across the farmyard. I hadn’t noticed the mud before, only the trees latticed with fresh leaves and the hills shimmering gold with gorse. I smile as I watch Dad chatting. ‘He’s so different when he’s here,’ I say, almost to myself.

  ‘He likes helping my father. He’s a farmer at heart.’

  If Dad had been a farmer, per
haps he would have been more at peace with himself and us.

  That afternoon, Damielle and I recline in the hollow where Mum and Dad had once pitched our tent. The sun warms our backs and the scent of the hedgerows surrounding us is intoxicating. It brings back pictures of Mum wearing her floral holiday frock, cooking breakfast, framed by the tent flap

  “Hello Sleepy head. We thought you were going to sleep forever, didn’t we, Les?”

  The vision persists: Dad’s relaxed reflection in the mirror as he shaves; my shorts and blouse laid out ready for me on the straw bed.

  ‘It was the best week we ever had, the three of us,’ I say.

  Damielle takes my hand. ‘We could take a picnic to Smuggler’s Cove if the memories don’t cause you too much pain.’

  I shake my head to rid it of the circling pictures. The last time I’d been to Smuggler’s Cove I’d been weighed down with the grief of Mum’s impending death. I’d thought then that I’d never be able to bear it, but I’ve discovered there are greater burdens to carry.

  At Smuggler’s Cove, the waves ripple towards us like shy young girls who have come to meet their lovers. Softly laughing, and all too quickly retreating, they leave their sweethearts to await their inevitable return.

  ‘It’s still as lovely. Perhaps even lovelier without anyone here except the seagulls.’

  ‘Until the holiday makers arrive, it’s like this all the time.’ Damielle spreads her arms and pirouettes. ‘No-one sees me dance across the sand except John. He watches me sometimes.’

  ‘Who’s John?’

  ‘His family owns the farm next to ours over Brimbleton side.’ Damielle continues to dance along the shore, her hair streaming, her voice lost in the sea sounds. She circles back to me, laughing. ‘Let’s go inside Smuggler’s Cave.’ She skips towards the opening, beckoning. ‘Follow me. I have a torch hidden.’

  I run to catch up: the mortal following the immortal.

  Inside the cave, with flickering light from Damielle’s torch, we clamber through a rocky maze to where Damielle says smugglers once stashed their booty. We sit huddled together, our closeness and the half darkness freeing our inhibitions and loosening our tongues. As I’ve never been able to in my letters, I tell Damielle of Dad’s refusal to let me accept a place at Riversham, and of the voices in Mum’s head. I tell her of Mum’s admittance to the asylum, and of Tony, Angela and school, even of Herbie and what had happened at the pictures. But of Bill, I say nothing. It would be disloyal to Mum to speak of Bill.

  ‘John and I come here sometimes. He’s my sweetheart, see. When I’m eighteen, we’ll wed and live on his folk’s farm and have babies,’ Damielle tells me, while I heap shingle between my toes. How predictable! How wonderfully predictable! One season giving way to the next, one child followed by another; generation after generation, the rhythm constant and unchanging.

  I wrap my arms around myself, aware of the not too distant rush of waves ‘It sounds as if the sea’s close,’ I say.

  ‘It’s inside the cave now,’ Damielle replies, unperturbed.

  ‘But how are we going to get out?’ I scramble to my feet.

  ‘Don’t fret. We’ll wait for the tide to turn. We’re safe enough here. Those old waves are afraid to come this far and there’s a shaft hereabouts where the air blows through. That’s why the smugglers used this cave.’

  ‘Won’t your parents be concerned?’

  Dad wouldn’t be worried, whereas the old Mum would have been frantic if I hadn’t returned after half an hour.

  ‘They know I come here often and that the sea doesn’t reach this far.’ Damielle stretches and becomes a graceful shadow.

  I raise my hand to shade my eyes as we eventually wade through the waist-high water and out of the cave.

  ‘We shouldn’t have left our picnic on the cliff with our shoes. I’m starving. We should have taken it into the cave with us, even though we wouldn’t have been able to see much of what we were eating.’ I look up and see Dad running across the beach towards us. His arms are semaphoring above his head. Mrs Heathman is scrambling down the cliff, but she is trailing behind. He is shouting, but his words are sucked into the intervening space. I begin skipping towards him. Now he seems to be stumbling and I hasten my pace. I catch the sound of my name. Cheerfully I call back, ‘Hello Dad,’ but Dad half falls, rights himself and continues lurching towards me.

  ’I thought you were dead. Drowned.’ Dad eventually reaches me and collapses, pulling me down with him on to the sand. He buries his face in my hair and begins to sob.

  ‘I’m all right, Dad. It’s all right.’

  Dad’s crying, actually crying and I don’t know what to do.

  ‘I told him you would both be safe at the back of the cave, but when he saw your shoes, the picnic basket on the cliffs, and the waves covering the cave mouth he became nigh-on inconsolable.’ Mrs Heathman, panting from her exertion, covers me as best she can with a towel, before wrapping another around Damielle. ‘You best come home and leave Mr Dibble and Paula to make their own way back,’ she puffs.

  ‘I don’t know what I’d do without you. You’re all I’ve got.’ Dad’s lips tremble as he rubs me dry.

  ‘I didn’t mean to upset you. I just didn’t think … I didn’t think you’d be worried about me.’

  ‘Not worried about you? I was out of my head.’ Then, for the first time I can remember, Dad kisses me. His whiskers rub wet against my cheek. Abruptly he rises, lifting me with him. ‘We ought to get those wet things off you or you’ll catch your death of cold.’

  We begin crossing the sand with Dad’s arm still around me.

  ‘We’ll say yes to your mother having that electric treatment, whatever it is. What d’you think? You never know, it could do the trick.’ Dad lets go of my shoulder, and clutches my hand to pull me up the cliff. Every now and then, a soft tremor catches in his throat. His hands continue to shake, while I can still feel his tears wet against my cheek.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Angela and I lug our weekly shopping onto the bus. We struggle up the stairs and find a seat.

  ‘So your Dad’s letting you sit the exam to go to that posh secretarial college up West, is he?’ Angela pushes a bag between her feet. ‘You sure he won’t change his mind? You know what happened when you got a scholarship to that fancy Riversham College.’

  ‘It’s different this time. People can change you know. Dad’s changed.’

  ‘All right, keep your hair on. Honestly, you’ve got right edgy lately.’

  ‘I’m sick of people thinking they know everything, sick of … sick of …’

  What was I sick of? I was sick of people changing and of trying to fathom the changes in them. I was sick of being expected to change along with them, when I wasn’t at all sure who I was changing from and who I was supposed to be changing to. ‘I don’t know. I’m fed up trying to interpret people and myself, I suppose.’

  Angela looks at me uncomprehending. ‘I’ll tell you this much. You’re different, that’s for sure.’

  ‘What d’you mean, different?’

  ‘Using words like interpret for a start. It’s posh and different.’ Angela readjusts the bag between her feet. ‘Here’s the bleedin’ bus inspector.’ She feels in her pocket for her bus ticket. ‘Good job I didn’t try and get away without paying.’

  ‘You don’t really, do you? I mean, not pay your bus fare?’

  ‘When I’m a bit hard up. Don’t worry, I never do it with you. You’re a good girl, Paul. Not like me.’ She swivels to face me. Lately her eyes seem to have sunk deeper into the circles around them.

  ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do, Paul. You’ve got to help me.’

  ‘Help you?’

  ‘I’m in the club.’

  ‘In the club?’

  ‘Blimey you’re dozy. I’ve got a bun in the oven.’ Angela sighs. ‘For Pete’s sake, Paul, I’m pregnant.’

  The scent of sweet williams planted in one of Dad’s old buckets wafts in
aromatic gusts over us as Angela and I sit on our back door step late that evening. It reminds me of the times Tony and I had sat there reading our comics and confiding our secrets. It causes the old familiar pain to return to my chest.

  ‘Have you thought what you’re going to do about the baby?’ I whisper.

  ‘Of course, I’ve thought about it, and there’s nothing for it. I’ll have to get rid of it.’

  ‘Get rid of it?’

  ‘Have an abortion. They say there’s a woman in Stowerhouse Street does ‘em. I’ll just have to see if I can borrow the money, though I don’t know who I’d be able to get it from. I’ve wracked my brains, but I don’t know anybody who might have the cash.’

  ‘But an abortion! It’s so dangerous.’ I bring to mind Mum and Aunt Min talking about someone they knew when they didn’t think I was listening: “Stuck a knitting needle up her they did”, Aunt Min had said. Mum had frowned and told her to keep her voice down. But Aunt Min had refused to be quiet and had carried on that if these trollops were wicked enough to muck around outside the marriage bed, what could they expect.

  ‘I haven’t exactly got too many choices. I can’t look after a kid on my own. It’s either this or having it adopted. At least it’ll be over and done with and I can get on with life without the whole world staring at me like I was some fallen woman. Nobody needs to know.’

  ‘But Stowerhouse Street! It’s the roughest street around here. And you don’t know what this woman will do to you.’ Mum’s and Aunt Min’s conversation had culminated with Aunt Min saying the girl had suffered an agonizing death. There’d been enough blood to fill The Thames, Aunt Min had said, before putting the back of her hand to her forehead and making a moaning sound.

  ‘What about the father of your baby? Don’t you think you ought to tell him and see what he thinks?’ I ask.

  ‘Leave him out of this. I can cope with it on my own. It’s my own business and that’s how it’ll stay.’