Drowning Rose

by Marika Cobbold

  A little later we moved upstairs to the sitting room, partly in order to have somewhere comfortable to sit while we finished off the interview and partly to give Jodie a change of backdrop.

  ‘Please, sit down.’ I indicated the sofa. I followed Edwina’s gaze. ‘The stains are just glue and stuff.’

  ‘I was just curious. Everything else in here is so . . . well, pristine.’

  ‘Edwina has germ issues,’ Jodie said. ‘Do you mind if I have a snoop round your bookcases?’

  ‘I don’t have “germ issues”,’ Edwina said, turning to Jodie. ‘Just because I don’t rummage around other people’s dustbins . . .’

  ‘Skips,’ Jodie said.

  ‘Skips, then.’ Edwina tuned back to me. ‘I’d love to be one of these people who find treasures in skips and bring them home and use them as plant stands and all that but I just can’t do it.’ She shuddered. ‘You see what people drop in other people’s skips. In fact I don’t really do car-boot sales or flea-markets either. I mean, “vintage” handbags, for example. People could have put snotty old tissues and all kinds of things inside . . .’

  ‘Told you,’ Jodie said. ‘She’s got issues.’

  I gestured at the sofa. ‘I can understand that. Stains are personal things. Rather like children. Your own are fine but other people’s can be really disturbing. But the sofa really is perfectly safe. Actually, it comes everywhere with me. Well, not everywhere obviously. I don’t take it shopping or on holiday. But we have been through four moves together.’

  Edwina asked me if I ever carried out what one might term ‘ordinary’ mending? I told her that I did. ‘Mainly as a favour to friends or when my own things meet with an accident. I feel as if I’m the last chance saloon for all these chipped teapots and cracked plates that not long ago would have been tossed in the bin or on one of Jodie’s skips. And people are changing the way they regard their possessions. It’s not just about saving money. They are mindful of what it is that’s gone into producing even the humblest item and they feel that it’s a kind of wanton wastefulness, a disrespect almost, to write something off without at least trying to save it.’

  ‘That’s exactly what this piece is about,’ Edwina said. ‘Make do and mend is becoming sexy. Caring for your things; polishing furniture until it shines; mending your cashmere, or is it darning? Anyway, looking after your stuff is no longer seen as being an anal-retentive fifties throw-back but a badge of honour. It shows you care about the environment, that you’re in tune with the planet.’

  Jodie picked up a Daisy Makeig-Jones pot, looking at it as if it were a particularly deluded participant in a talent show.

  ‘You don’t like it?’ I asked.

  ‘Not really. I prefer artists like Brenda McMahon and Beate Kuhn.’

  Edwina said, ‘I’m always fascinated by what makes people dedicate their lives to a particular line of work. So what was it that made you go for restoring porcelain as opposed to, say, picture restoring?’

  Suddenly I felt tired. I had not slept well for weeks, years, decades, possibly. When I did sleep my dreams were raw and dangerous, leaving me drenched in sweat and with my jaws clamped as if I were trying to hold in water. Of course I loved my house on the hill, I just wished I were living there with someone other than myself. In short, I could not be bothered to give her a thought-out answer.

  ‘What attracted me to restoring porcelain?’ I repeated the question. ‘Well, I suppose it breaks easily.’

  Twenty-six

  Sandra/Cassandra

  We were in the common room. The princesses were fussing around the two-ring stove, heating milk for hot chocolate. We had only just been given the privilege of making ourselves hot drinks this term and you would have thought we had been granted the freedom of a city or something, the way they carried on. ‘How about it, girls,’ one of them would say in the corridor as a group of juniors passed. ‘Shall we go and make ourselves some tea/chocolate/coffee?’ And then the other two would say, in equally loud voices, ‘Let’s,’ and off they’d trot with little glances all around, hoping no doubt for envy. And they got it. The juniors couldn’t wait until their lives got that glamorous. It was pretty pathetic when you thought about it, the way the smallest, most day-to-day treat became a huge deal in a place like this. No one at my old day school would put up with a single week here. Cubicles with curtains instead of doors would be unacceptable not to mention sleeping in beds with two-hundred-year-old mattresses made from unwashed horsehair or whatever it was. No privacy, no wardrobe space. And now this, thinking it was the biggest deal being able to make yourself a hot drink.

  ‘Aren’t you having one?’ Eliza asked me.

  I told her I couldn’t be bothered. This obviously puzzled her. Then her brow cleared. ‘You can have some of my chocolate if you’ve . . . run out.’

  ‘Sandra, sorry I mean Cassandra, has a humongous tin,’ Portia said. ‘Her mum sent it by return.’

  It was obvious that my mum had got it wrong again. Around here you could go on a Kenyan safari for your Christmas holiday but if you wanted some chocolate powder you saved up or waited until your birthday. If I lived until I was a hundred I’d never work out all the little snobby rules of the princesses’ existence. I couldn’t believe how much I used to care, too. Before it happened. Before my life changed.

  ‘Porsh, is Julian going on the excursion?’ It was Rose asking.

  I had been rummaging in my satchel for my cigarettes but now I looked up.

  ‘He said he was.’

  ‘Looks like it’s you and me sitting together then, Porsh,’ Eliza said, grinning at Rose, who flushed beetroot.

  I tried to stifle the grin spreading across my face but it was impossible so I pulled out my hankie and pretended to blow my nose. My heart was beating faster the way it always did when they mentioned his name. I had been trying to find a reason to say it myself, to suck the sweetness from each letter. J.u.l.i.a.n. I wanted to tell someone about us. No, I wanted to tell everyone. I wanted to shout it out and sing it out and for everyone to know. To know about how it was true that love made you go weak at the knees, literally. How it was true that love hurt and how it was as if a band were tightening around your chest until you felt breathless. How it made you wake each morning so full of energy you wanted to dance instead of walk. And how it made you feel sorry for everyone else in the world simply for not being you. I wanted to tell everyone all of that. But I couldn’t. I had promised Julian. He said it was extra special only us knowing. Like we had a private world. Anyway, he couldn’t stand PDA – public displays of affection. It cheapened a relationship. But we wouldn’t keep it secret for ever, obviously. Maybe the trip would be a good time to go public. The princesses would be in their seats, Portia and Eliza next to each other and Rose would be across the aisle with an empty seat just happening to be next to her. We’d stop at LABs to pick up the boys. Julian would climb on board, pause and look around. Rose would blush all cutesy and Portia would call him over in that bossy proprietorial way she had with him. And then it would happen. Julian would push his fringe back the way he did when he was determined about something and then he’d saunter down the aisle, past the empty seat next to Rose, and, ignoring his sister, right on down to where I was sitting. Then, and in full view of the entire bus, he would smile that slow lazy smile that showed the dimple in his right cheek before slipping into the seat next to me, next to poor old Sandra/Cassandra.

  ‘Cassandra, you look weird. What’s up?’ I was so deep in my daydream that when Rose spoke to me I flipped my arms back, knocking the mug of chocolate from her hand. It was almost empty but what little was in there splashed across the wall as the mug crashed to the floor and broke.

  I couldn’t believe it but Rose, seeing it there in pieces, started to cry. And not just any crying but she cried like a little kid, open-mouthed and wide-eyed, not even bothering to look away.

  ‘Shit,’ Eliza said. ‘Her mother gave that to her.’ She put her arms round Rose and hugged her c
lose. They looked like little girls, all foal-legged and lost.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I’ll get you a new one.’

  ‘That’s not the point,’ Eliza hissed at me. She turned to Rose and her expression changed. ‘We’ll get it mended, Rosie,’ she cooed. ‘It’ll be as good as new.’

  I wanted Eliza to speak to me that way, and look at me so sweetly. Maybe she would once she knew about Julian. Maybe then she would see that I was more than just the annoying bumpkin hanging around the perimeters of the group.

  Rose had stopped crying and was looking at her with those big blue eyes. ‘Promise?’

  ‘Promise.’

  We were on the bus, waiting for the boys to board. My heart was beating so hard I felt as if my blood were being whisked, bubbling up to my brain, and I imagined my head lighting up red like a beetroot or a lamp in a prostitute’s window. But no one seemed to notice anything different as I made my way to the back. It was amazing, the princesses were sitting just the way I had imagined they would with Portia and Eliza next to each other and Rose on her own with an empty seat next to her. Both Gillian and Celia had been about to join her but Portia had stopped them, literally throwing herself across the aisle. I was actually beginning to feel a bit sorry for Rose. She would feel completely humiliated when Julian walked past her to sit with me. I used to wish I were she, with her perfect looks and Eliza for her best friend. But after today she might be wishing she were me.

  As the engine of the bus idled I thought of Julian limp and grateful in my arms. He had chosen me, just the way I was. I had been tempted to ask him, why me? But I always held back. I didn’t want to break the spell. Because maybe that was what it was, a spell. Some fairy godmother bored with princesses who had it all had rolled up her sleeves and got down and dirty, making so that Julian, when he looked at me, saw perfection. Maybe that was the spell. ‘Whenever Prince Charming looks at you, my thin-lipped, frizzy-haired child, he shall a perfect beauty behold.’ Or some crap like that.

  Then I spotted him on the forecourt with his friends. Julian was actually shorter than the others, which was weird because his sister was so tall, but he’d told me his father had been the same but then he’d had a late growth spurt. I told him he was just right the way he was. Anyway, taller men didn’t live as long. I’d read that in the paper just the other day. The spring sunshine was turning his chestnut hair copper and when he turned his face towards us it was as if the whole bus shivered with a moaning sigh. In front of me Portia twisted round and grinned at Rose. The two of them made me sick, behaving as if he were a piece of prime steak to be divided between them.

  The doors opened. I sat back in my seat as if I were about to go to sleep and half closed my eyes while I looked out for him coming towards me. I had my hand ready to pat the empty seat next to me in a gesture that only he would see. I watched, from under lowered lids, as he hung back with his friend David, the boy Eliza liked, letting the others pass, and he was looking round as if searching for someone. I sat up straighter and lifted my hand just a little in a tiny wave. But he wasn’t even looking in my direction, having spotted his sister. I realised that someone was talking to me and I looked up to see Gareth Penning.

  ‘Is this seat free?’ he asked again. Gareth was the only boy I could think of who would ask and not just plonk himself down. He was a complete loser, unfortunately.

  ‘No, no, it isn’t,’ I said. And he lumbered off to sit on his own somewhere. If I hadn’t been so excited I might have felt sorry for him.

  I craned my neck in time to see Eliza and then Portia signalling to Julian and David. Julian was coming up to Rose’s row. I couldn’t stand it any longer so I got to my feet.

  ‘Hi,’ I called. Julian turned and looked in my direction. I gave him a smile and a wave.

  It had gone quiet. Everyone was watching. I held my breath as I waited. This was when it was going to happen. This was when they were all going to find out. I exhaled and relaxed my shoulders and the air escaping through my lips whistled like a steam-train.

  Slowly Julian raised his gaze and looked straight at me. I widened my smile, God, I must have looked as if I were about to swallow him, and gave another wave. But Julian let go of my gaze with no flicker of a smile back. David said something to him and then they laughed. Eliza turned round and looked and as our eyes met she went pink and looked away. I realised I was still standing. As I sank back on to my seat she turned to look at me again. She seemed to be asking me if I were OK. I pretended not to notice. She half rose to her feet but Portia grabbed her arm and said something and she sat back down. Just as well, because if she had come over I would have smashed her stupid face through the bus window.

  The bus pulled out and as I turned away my heart exploded into little shards that went all over the place, piercing my throat, my breasts, my stomach, my groin. I breathed in and out, slowly, rhythmically, the way Dr Curtis had taught me when I was little. The bus turned on to the main road.

  Twenty-seven

  Eliza

  The newspaper article appeared with my picture beneath the open-to-misinterpretation headline of ‘Old is the New New’.

  My mother, having got hold of a copy somehow, phoned to say that she thought the new haircut was flattering but that she did not quite see why I had felt the need to dye it black. As I had not had a haircut nor had my hair coloured I was as much at a loss as she was.

  Uncle Ian was happy. He Skyped, having read it online. As I listened to him talk all about the way my life seemed to be taking off I felt happy; Frankenstein could not have been more proud of his monster than Uncle Ian was of me. He finished the conversation by saying that Rose was as pleased as he was. That unsettled me all over again. I couldn’t make sense of it, the way he seemed completely rational in every way but for this insistence that he spoke to Rose. I had asked Katarina about it. She said that in her view there were more things between heaven and earth. I had felt she could have tried to come up with something a little more helpful and anyway she’d got the quote wrong. Because I was annoyed I told her. ‘I think it’s “in”, actually. As in “there are more things in heaven and earth.” ’ Then, feeling bad for being rude, I had added that it did seem odd. I mean who says ‘in earth’? None of this, of course, had got me any closer to the truth about Uncle Ian and Rose.

  Ruth phoned to tell me she was so sorry about the photographs.

  Archie, lying in wait in his usual spot, felt compelled to tell me that I was not the first celebrity they had had in the area. Not by a long shot. I had assured him that I a) knew that and b) never imagined that an appearance in a Sunday supplement made me a celebrity. Archie had countered with the warning that I might nevertheless be stalked and murdered on my doorstep especially as I lived on my own and had some ‘unfortunate acquaintances’. I told him my stepsister really wasn’t that bad, which had made him choke and splutter and apologise.

  My five minutes of fame also brought a small, dark-haired child to my doorstep. I found her there when I returned from work, a girl of about eight or nine, all knees, teeth and eyes, seated on my doorstep with a plastic crate in her lap. As I approached she struggled to her feet, the box in her arms.

  Her name was Annie Bauer, she told me, and she lived in Number 12. ‘Sometimes,’ she added. She had read about me in the newspaper and she wondered if I could mend her jug, or rather her father’s jug.

  I stifled a sigh. On the bus ride home I had been thinking of nothing else but a glass of wine, a bowl of salted almonds and sitting with my feet up in front of the television.

  ‘I’m a bit busy right now but I’m working from home tomorrow so why don’t you come back then?’ I unlocked the door and was about to step inside when I realised that the child had not moved away. I gave her house across the square a meaningful look. She looked at me.

  ‘I can’t. Daddy is home tomorrow too and I want it to be a surprise.’ She sighed theatrically. ‘I can’t go anywhere when he is around, without him knowing.’

  ‘S
o why don’t I take it in with me and then we can talk about it once I’ve had a chance to examine it. Tomorrow.’

  But the child Annie somehow managed to sneak past me into the hall. She was quick, you had to give her that. ‘I don’t think I should leave it with you just like that,’ she said. ‘I don’t mean to be rude or anything but it’s a nice jug and I don’t even know you.’

  I sighed again. ‘All right. We’ll take it to the studio and have a look.’ I paused. ‘Actually, you should not get into the habit of going into strangers’ houses.’

  ‘You’re not a stranger. You’re the woman who moved into Number 2 and we hope hasn’t tarted it up beyond all recognition.’

  I gave her a long look. ‘I am, am I. Still, as you said yourself, we don’t know, know each other so you should really have an adult’s permission.’

  ‘I do,’ she said. ‘You’re an adult and you’ve given me permission.’ She stepped further into the hall.

  Good try, I thought. ‘I mean a proper adult. Of course I am a proper adult. What I mean is an adult belonging to you.’ Warming to the subject, I went on, ‘In fact I think that according to the latest regulations you need a permit in order to entertain strange children on your premises.’

  ‘I’m not a strange child,’ Annie said. She looked offended. ‘And I’m not asking to be entertained.’

  I sighed again. ‘When I said “strange” I meant simply a child unknown to me, previously unknown to me.’ I corrected myself before the child did. ‘And when I said entertain, I didn’t mean as in juggling or telling jokes, I meant hosting.’

  ‘Hm.’

  ‘I don’t think we’re really getting anywhere,’ I said.

  It was the child’s turn to sigh. ‘I’ll get Sheila,’ she said. ‘She’ll sort this out.’ She was still holding the crate. She gave me a look as if to tell me she was on to me, put the crate down and walked out. I closed the door and thought of bolting it. I didn’t think a simple string of garlic would work with that child. Then again if I didn’t let her back in she would probably call the police to say I had stolen her broken pot.