by Fiona Gibson
‘He’s in the garden.’
‘But it’s dark,’ I protest, like a child.
‘He’s just pottering with the dogs.’ There’s a catch in her voice. ‘I’m at the end of my tether with Surf,’ she continues. ‘Drank the toilet water after I’d put bleach in. Sick everywhere, Stella, terrible mess.’
‘Oh, that’s awful. Will he be okay?’
‘I expect so. Wretched mutt has nine lives. Anyway, I can hear you’re rushing off somewhere. Enjoy your night out.’
I arrive home just after eight and glance through Diane’s window where they’re all watching TV through a smoky haze. Diane’s arms are draped around the girls’ shoulders like scarves. Midge is wearing a camouflage dressing gown and some kind of headgear resembling a World War II helmet.
Their Christmas tree never recovered from being crushed beneath the headboard. Its crooked branches are strewn with thick ropes of pink and red tinsel. Diane hasn’t bothered to put it in a pot, and it doesn’t appear to have its own stand. It’s just propped in the corner, like an awkward party guest, next to a picture of a Spanish girl with enormous circular eyes.
We had real Christmas trees every Christmas before Mum’s accident. She’d drive the Citroën all the way to Somerset to choose one from Patrick Lowey’s farm. After she’d gone, we didn’t bother with trees anymore, not even a fake one. Dad said, ‘What’s the point?’
I let myself in and fish out the toothbrush, moisturizer and knickers from my bag. Clearly, I shouldn’t have taken these things to Robert’s. Interesting things happen only when you’re unprepared. The day I met Alex—he’d been trying, unsuccessfully, to windsurf off the back beach—we talked until the sea shivered under yellowy streetlights. He took me back to his flat where there were no candles or wine or spare knickers, and none of that mattered.
I throw my bag onto the sofa. It still looks too bulky, even without my overnight kit. I pull out a packet of sequined butterfly postcards and there, bundled up at the bottom, lies a monkey called Kilty.
‘Robert?’ I tell his answer phone, ‘I’m so sorry, Finn’s monkey was in my bag all the time. I’ll drop him off, or you can come over and pick him up.’ I must be reasonably child-friendly if I refer to a soft toy as him and not it.
It’s ridiculous, of course, to suspect that Robert asked me to come to Butterfly Land to make Verity jealous. And the bedside candles—they’re probably there all the time. Candles are relaxing. Sometimes I light one—lavender-scented, for its soothing properties at the end of a Toby Nichols day. Candles don’t mean ‘I want us to go to bed.’
Robert will be bathing his sons now, or reading The Cat in the Hat, too busy being a good dad to pick up the phone.
13
Here Boy
Diane tried to burn George. She removed the back of a photo frame, pulled out the picture and snipped it in two with her pinking shears. She put her gold lighter to the George half and waited for him go up in smoke, but he refused to burn. He beamed at her, in that sly, lazy way of his, and she grew madder, convinced she could hear his mocking laugh. The photo crinkled and blackened at the edges, but you could still see his face. Diane ended up flinging George into the bin.
‘She must have been really mad,’ I say.
Midge hurries along beside me, relating the story. ‘She is mad,’ she declares. ‘She’s not like other mums.’
‘What are other mums like?’
‘Normal. Nice. Like you.’
The girls have started to call for me on my Paul Street days so we can walk together. I assume this is at Midge’s instigation because, as we near school, Jojo starts to lag slightly behind us, presumably to avoid being spotted associating with a teacher.
She’s wearing a love-heart badge on her coat. It came free with her favorite comic, Fairy World. The badge has a jagged cut down the middle and can be worn open or closed. When I asked her about it she explained, ‘You wear it just above your heart. Closed if you’re in love, open if you’re single.’ At Jojo’s age the concept of being in love or single hadn’t entered my brain. Apart from my music, I was interested only in ferreting in Dad’s study and pretending to drive the old Beetle. Dad once told Mr Bazrai, his friend from the allotment, that I was a late developer, and they both snorted into a tray of tomato plants.
By the time the group lesson starts, Jojo has transferred the love-heart badge from her coat to her sweatshirt. She has taken Laura’s place in the group. The badge has been snapped shut into its ‘in love’ position. She keeps glancing at Toby, who has barely spoken today. Whenever he looks at her, she dips down her head and her cheeks turn feverishly pink. I can smell apple bubble gum, but don’t mention it. I’m determined to make things better between Toby and me.
Jojo plays the sonata we’ve been practicing, and afterward Willow says, ‘You’re so good, Jojo. I can’t play like that and I’ve done it for ages.’
‘Can you believe,’ I say, ‘that until three months ago, Jojo had never picked up a flute?’
Jojo prises a drawing pin from the sole of her shoe. I wish I hadn’t said that. No one knows I teach her at home, or that the flute she’s clutching is my flute. I don’t want to be accused of favoritism. ‘Toby,’ I say, ‘do you think you and Jojo could play a duet? I’ve got some pieces here….’
I flick through the pile of music, and when I look up he’s staring out at the skidding clouds, his eyes blazing.
He has always been my top pupil, a reluctant star. And he knows that’s all over.
Christmas cards have started to arrive. I place them on the bookshelf in the spaces between Midge’s weapons of mass destruction and an invitation to Jen and Simon’s Christmas do. It came by post, despite the fact that Jen and I see each other several times a week. On the front is a picture of them—Jen and her husband, Simon—in a circle of feathers and twigs. Empty-nest syndrome. Elliot started university in September but Jen’s still conscious of the space he left. ‘I’m still waiting,’ she said over drinks at the Anchor, ‘for it to feel normal.’
Jen had her baby shortly after leaving school. She and Simon lived with her parents while Jen did her teaching degree. Everyone said it wouldn’t last. Eighteen years later, Jen and Simon are sending out beautifully handmade invitations that read Come Fly With Us.
The last week of term passes in a blur of carol concerts and church services and the Christmas concert at St Mary’s. The year-six boys writhe on their front-row chairs, trying to peek up Hilary Bullock’s skirt as she plays her cello. As the orchestra skids through the Bach piece, I fear it’s all going to unravel, like loose knitting. The kids battle onward, climbing to a chaotic climax, and the mums and dads—the dutiful parents who show up to watch every school-related event—are clapping and dabbing faces on tissues and sleeves.
Each day of the final week I come home laden with cards and presents: a candle decorated with pansies, a mouse-shaped pumice, cheap bubble bath with a leaky stopper and a pen that lights up and plays ‘Greensleeves.’ Toby Nichols gives me heady gusts of lemon Hubba Bubba as he careers past me, giddy with freedom.
Jen and a cluster of Paul Street teachers have drifted down to the Anchor for drinks. I slip off to town to avoid the inevitable ‘What are you doing for Christmas, Stella?’ which leads seamlessly into ‘Going to your dad’s? How is he these days? Still doing that…thing on Friday Zoo?’
Earlier this week, I’d wandered into the staff room with my coffee and flapjack from the bakers. Stephen, the deputy head, looked up from his copy of Q magazine and said, ‘Hey, Stella, how’s your father?’ Everyone laughed. I forced myself to laugh back—for too long, in fact, until Stephen shifted uncomfortably in his seat and turned back to his magazine.
In the town center, people are surging into pubs in their party clothes and tinsel tiaras. I wander through the quieter backstreets, looking for presents. Charlie and I have a hazy plan to spend Christmas Day together. He, like Dad, is impossible to buy for. Doesn’t care about clothes, never reads novels or sp
ruces up his house. You wouldn’t, for instance, buy him a cushion.
In Grieves and Hawkes, I buy a book of duets for Jojo and Toby to play in the new term. ‘Met a friend of yours,’ Mr Grieves says. ‘Young girl—your next-door neighbor.’
‘That’s Jojo. Her playing’s amazing. I’ve never met anyone who’s picked it up so easily.’
Mr Grieves chuckles. His mustache is white now, like the fuzz of hair above each ear. ‘She’s certainly keen. Came in with her mother, persuaded her to buy lots of music, quite advanced pieces—they had a squabble, actually. Made some deal about the girl promising to keep her room tidy.’
‘I’m surprised Diane gave in.’
‘You know, Stella,’ Mr Grieves adds, ‘that girl reminded me of you, when you used to come in here with your mother.’ He catches himself, touches his mustache.
‘I remember that, too,’ I say.
The sign next to Grieves still says Dino’s, even though the café is long gone. Thin white paint has been swirled over its windows. At the far end of Bay Street is a new shop called Feathers ’n’ Fur. There’s no sign of it being open—no lights on, no person inside—but the door pushes open, and there’s a low mumble of a radio from a back room, and a faint odor of rodents’ bedding, like in Diane’s kitchen.
Toward the back of the shop are fish tanks with eerie pale blue lights. An olive-skinned man is transferring fish from a black bucket into a tank with the aid of a miniature net. ‘Looking for something?’ he asks.
‘Yes—a present. Something for a dog who’s quite…excitable.’
He places the net across the bucket and ambles to the front of the shop. ‘Gift set?’ he suggests, indicating a shelf of wicker baskets containing dog chews and rubber hedgehogs. Below the baskets are packets of pigs’ ears and a wonkily written cardboard sign that reads Delicious Treats for Your Dog. Eat Whole or Cut into Strips for Smaller Dogs.
‘I’d like something,’ I explain, ‘to help to train him. His behavior’s quite…challenging.’ I could be talking about Toby Nichols. I wonder how he’d respond to a Good Doggie Gift Set.
‘You want a training whistle,’ the man says. He rummages on a shelf and hands me a slender gold object, its cap attached to the main whistle part by a gilt chain.
‘Do they work?’
‘I don’t sell anything that doesn’t work,’ he retorts, plucking a leaflet from the whistle’s box that reads:
HEREBOY DOG WHISTLE
∗ Adjustable frequency.
∗ Tune according to your dog’s hearing.
∗ Ideal for close or distant work.
∗ Our products have been used with a wide range of animals including dolphins, killer whales and giraffes.
Hereboy whistles: bringing dogs to heel since 1936.
I put the whistle to my lips and blow, and of course there’s no sound. The door dings open, and the voice says, ‘Stella Moon, don’t tell me you’ve bought yourself a dog.’
Between the woolen hat and bunched-up scarf is Alex’s face, and Alex’s smile. ‘It’s you,’ I say, stupidly.
He smiles, and I try not to smile back, but can’t keep it down. I’m horribly conscious of my blinking and breathing. ‘Good to see you,’ he says.
‘You, too.’ There’s an awkward pause. I feel a pang of sadness.
‘You’re buying a whistle?’ he says.
‘For Dad’s dog. Remember Surf, the mad one, who was always getting injured?’
‘So he’s still bonkers.’ I don’t know if he means Surf or Dad. I pay the shop man, and he slips the whistle into a waxy bag. ‘Use it wisely,’ he says. ‘You need to show him who’s boss.’
‘I’ll do that,’ I say, feeling Alex’s eyes on me. He’s standing very close, as if he’s waiting for me and we’re going somewhere together. ‘Coming for a drink?’ he asks.
‘Okay. Just a quick one.’
‘Be firm, love,’ the shop man adds. ‘Don’t stand for any nonsense.’ He strides away to attend to the bucket of fish at the back of the shop.
Alex follows me out. ‘What are you doing for Christmas?’ he asks. All that time we spent together, and we fill our small silences by asking about Christmas.
‘Probably spend it with Charlie. I haven’t decided.’
‘Me neither.’
Our pale breaths fill the space between us. ‘What were you in the pet shop for?’ I ask.
‘You,’ he says.
Alex sets our drinks on the table in the darkest corner of the Mariner Bar. ‘So,’ I ask, ‘are you working these days?’
‘Not at the moment, but I had an…unusual job, towards the end of last summer.’
‘What were you doing?’
‘Ever seen a crop circle?’ he asks, settling into the opposite chair.
‘In pictures, yes. Something to do with ley lines or aliens.’ I think of Midge and her antennaed umbrella.
‘I met a guy who needed help on his farm over in Somerset. The previous year he’d made three times as much from crop circles as he did from farming.’
‘How?’
‘Believe it or not, people pay to tramp round them with their dousing sticks, all that hippie mumbo jumbo…’
‘You were interested in dousing,’ I remind him. ‘You went all summer-solsticey and did that aura-reading course.’
He touches my hand and says, ‘I’ve done lots of stupid things.’
I look down at his arm. It’s fuzzed with fine golden hair. I’m itching to ask about that girl, the one he replaced me with. ‘Nothing special,’ he said on the phone. I want to know her name, age, occupation, favorite perfume, whether she’s the type to plow into the sea or prefers to arrange herself in an aesthetically pleasing position on a beach towel. Whether she was the girl with outrageous legs in the antiques market. Questions flit around my head like tiny darting fish.
‘Alex, are you still seeing that girl?’
‘I told you—that was nothing. I’m not really looking.’ I try not to seem pleased. He studies me, narrowing his eyes. The pub’s filling up now. A cluster of friends or maybe work colleagues is presenting a birthday girl with novelty gifts: handcuffs with pink fur attached, chattering false teeth. There are bursts of high-pitched laughter.
‘How did you help with the crop circles?’ I ask.
‘I made them,’ Alex says.
‘You mean you faked them?’
‘Sure. If you look at a genuine crop circle—if there is such a thing—the corn’s flattened in the same direction as if it’s been blown down or rolled on. It’s not difficult to—’
Laughter bubbles inside me. ‘I can’t believe you did that.’
‘Why not?’
‘It’s just so, so…you.’
He looks at me quizzically. ‘You should come with me next summer. We could do with the extra help.’
I snort into my glass.
‘What?’ he says, laughing, too. He looks like the Alex I first met, trying to windsurf off the back beach, lurching from one project to the next, just to see what would happen. It frustrated me, eventually—the way he filled up our home with barely touched guitars and fishing tackle. But it had, I realize, been the reason I’d loved him. His keenness to try everything. The very opposite of me.
‘I don’t think I’m cut out to be a crop-circle faker,’ I say, draining my glass.
‘That’s a pity. Another drink, Stella?’
‘No, I’d better get home.’
Without thinking, I bend down and kiss his cheek. I can feel him watching me as I head for the door. ‘Don’t forget this,’ he calls after me.
He stands up, squeezes through the birthday girl’s party and hands me the bag bearing the Feathers ’n’ Fur logo.
‘Thanks.’
‘Call me, if you want to.’
‘Okay.’
The smile surges across his face like a wave. ‘Or,’ he says, ‘you could whistle.’
14
Turkey Mousse
Dissolve 2 oz packet aspic powde
r in 1 pint chicken stock. Add 8 oz cooked turkey, 1 tbsp tomato puree, 8 fl oz double cream and a generous splash of brandy. Liquidize—do you own a liquidizer, Stella?—and pour into a fancy mold. When set, garnish with satsuma segments. This recipe is ideal for using up leftover turkey.
Dad’s on the phone, sensing that I’ve filed his recipe for future non-use. I figured out a long time ago why he sends them. He needs to remind me who he was, who he is—that he knows things I haven’t the faintest chance of getting my head around. ‘Any plans for Christmas?’ he barks into the phone. No pleasantries. No How are you, Stella? How’s your hand?
Surf is growling fretfully in the background. I’m about to launch into a detailed rundown of the many glittering events to which I’ve been invited (my sole invitation, to Jen’s Come Fly With Us party, eyes me from the bookshelf) when Dad continues, ‘We have a problem here, Stella. Blasted radiator in the big bedroom. Fell off the wall, can you believe it? Water pouring through the living-room ceiling. Plumber’s in, and we’re being replastered….’
‘Dad, that’s terrible.’
‘We’re staying at Harry’s so I’ll have to be quick.’ Dad regards phone calls as an outrageously expensive indulgence. When Maggie calls, I often hear him in the background, muttering at her to get off the phone.
‘What will you do for Christmas?’ I ask.
‘That’s the issue. Harry’s expecting a houseful, and Charlie can’t help us—he’s booked a last-minute holiday with some woman.’
I assume he means beach-hut Phoebe. Charlie hasn’t mentioned anything about going away. I assumed he’d be spending at least part of Christmas Day here, with me.
‘You’re welcome to come here,’ I say.
‘Can you accommodate dogs?’ he asks, as if I’m a hotel.
‘Of course, it’s no problem.’
‘We’ll go home on Christmas eve. Ceiling should be fixed by then. We don’t want to intrude.’
‘Dad, you might as well spend Christmas Day here.’
He sighs, as if I’ve forced this situation upon him. ‘Don’t go buying me presents,’ he adds. ‘You know there’s nothing I need. That barometer still said stormy last time I looked, and we’ve had clear skies all week.’