She stopped at the cold meat counter to get sliced ham for John’s sandwiches. A girl with short brown pigtails poking from under a cardboard hat and a plump figure that bulged beneath her uniform was cleaning a bacon slicer. Marion stood waiting for several minutes, but the girl did not seem to notice her. She wondered if she ought to say something but didn’t want to seem rude. The girl must have seen her but needed to finish what she was doing before serving anyone.
Then a tall woman wearing a long white linen dress and pushing a child in a buggy as if he were a small prince leading a parade went up to the counter. The baby was wearing a little sunsuit that perfectly matched the color of his mother’s dress. The plump girl immediately stopped messing with the slicer and inquired what the woman would like.
“Excuse me, I was here before that lady. I have been waiting to be served for several minutes,” Marion insisted.
The plump girl looked at Marion with shocked, round eyes as if she were an ill-mannered ghost that had just materialized next to the deli counter. Then the tall woman shook a cascade of butter-tinted hair and said:
“Just serve her, please, we can wait.” The woman spoke in a lovely, polished voice just like a radio announcer.
“Are you sure, madam?” the girl asked anxiously.
The tall woman swept a gracious hand tipped with coral-painted fingernails towards Marion.
“Honestly, it doesn’t matter.”
“Yes, well, what do you want, then?” the girl snapped at Marion. Then the baby’s cheeks went red, and he began to make a horrible squealing sound. The woman picked up her child and squished his blotchy face into the crook of her pale, elegant neck.
“That’s all right, now, scrumpkin, we don’t like rude people, do we?” she said, patting his fat shoulders.
A furnace of rage lit inside Marion. It was so unfair: they were the rude, ill-mannered ones, not her, she had done nothing wrong.
“I—I—d-don’t want it anymore, you can keep your nasty old ham,” stuttered Marion. “I—I’m never going to buy anything from this horrible shop again.”
And then something odd happened. Mother would have said Marion “just flipped.” Of course, she should have just gone on with her shopping, timidly avoiding the woman and her baby as she went up and down the SmartMart aisles, but as she was about to walk away she noticed sitting on top of the counter a tray of sausages labeled: “Organic Pork with Herbs and Jamaican Chilli Dip.” Sample trays like this were often left out in SmartMart with things like cheese or wedges of meat pies. Marion was sometimes tempted to try them, but then felt guilty if she didn’t buy any.
Marion wasn’t sure exactly why she swung out her arm knocking the tray off the counter and towards the woman in the white dress. She watched the little sausages on sticks and dish of red sauce fly into the air and strike the woman and her baby, almost as if someone else had done it. Really, the tray couldn’t have hit them very hard, certainly not hard enough to scar that horrid baby’s cheek as the woman claimed afterwards. And only a small amount of Jamaican Chilli Dip landed on the pristine dress, leaving a stain the shape of a strawberry on the shoulder.
Sitting in the store manager’s office, Marion really felt quite terrible about the whole thing but perhaps not as terrible as she should have done. In fact, although she spent most of her life worrying that something bad was going to happen to her, now that something bad had happened, she was surprisingly calm. While she waited in the small office so stuffed full of filing cabinets and boxes that it was hardly big enough to contain a single desk, she heard the woman screaming complaints in the hallway outside.
“I—I want you to call the police right away, that madwoman assaulted my baby and I—she’s dangerous, probably mentally ill—people like that should be sectioned or something—you know my husband will be just furious when he hears about what happened to Charlie. He works in local government—he has a very senior position and many of our closest friends are lawyers.”
As she was sitting there listening to all of this, she imagined how the nasty woman would like it if something really awful happened to the baby. Perhaps a speeding car might hit little Charlie’s pushchair while she was crossing the road? Marion’s flush of pleasure was soon replaced by an unpleasant afterburn. It isn’t right to blame the child; he can’t help what his mother is like. Perhaps he will grow up to hate her. “I couldn’t abide by my mother, you know, such a rude overbearing woman.” Then the woman in the linen dress would die alone in some dingy retirement home wondering why her son never came to visit.
Working at one of the desks in the room was a man in his thirties who, according to his name tag, was in fact the manager of the whole store. As he typed at his computer his face assumed a pleasant smile. He was quite handsome in a soft, rumpled sort of way. He had a double chin and slightly receding brown hair. She noticed he wasn’t wearing a wedding ring. Marion knew, of course, that this hardly affected her, but she did not like the idea of him being lonely, of going back to some small, bare flat and perhaps reheating one of the large variety of frozen meals sold by the supermarket (that he would be able to buy at a discount as a perk of his job); though perhaps bachelorhood might be preferable to being burdened with some overbearing wife like the woman who was now standing in the corridor shouting.
She quite liked just sitting there while he worked. It reminded her of visiting her father at the warehouse when she was a child, crayoning or turning the pages of a book while he sat at his desk writing checks or making phone calls. She enjoyed feeling as though she was part of something without any demands being made of her.
“Can I get you coffee or a water or anything?” the store manager asked her politely.
“Oh, I’m all right, thank you. That is very kind of you, though,” replied Marion.
Marion judged from his manner and voice that he was university educated. She wondered what would happen if she got up and tried to leave. Would the handsome, youngish manager try to restrain her?
Then they heard the woman outside exclaim:
“If you don’t have that crazy fat bitch arrested, I will have you fired and sue this bloody shop for negligence!”
At this point the manager glanced at Marion and gave a little shrug. Marion felt a flush of joy. This gesture let her know that they were allies, coconspirators against the awful woman.
Then the assistant manager, who had been standing outside the room listening to the woman’s complaints, came into the office looking weary. She was a heavy woman in her fifties. Her hands were bedecked with gaudy rings that seemed painfully tight for her thick fingers. Wiping a sheen of sweat from her flushed face, she looked at Marion, then turned to the manager and shook her head. All her gestures seemed exaggerated as if she were performing in a comic play. The manager swiveled round in his chair and leaned back with his hands behind his head in a relaxed manner. The office was so cramped that his outstretched leg brushed against Marion’s shin, making her flesh tingle.
“Do you really want me to call the police over this, Jeff?” said the woman in a strong Northport accent.
“I think we can sort it out ourselves, don’t you, Linda? This lady hardly seems a threat to me. Perhaps it was an accident, who can say. What if she apologized and offered to pay for the garment to be dry-cleaned?”
Linda looked at Marion with an expression of pantomime sternness.
“Would you be prepared to do that?”
“Of course, that seems reasonable, but how much ought I pay—?”
Marion took a wad of notes from her worn purse. Mother had always told her to carry a bit of spare cash in case of emergencies, and this, she supposed, was an emergency. Linda and Jeff were clearly quite surprised by the amount she held in her hand.
“You must have a couple of thousand quid in there, love. What if someone stole it?” asked Linda, her brows raised and eyeballs bulging.
“Well, I suppose if they did, I could just get some more out from the bank,” Marion replied.
/> Jeff and Linda exchanged looks that Marion did not quite understand.
“Tell you what, dear, give us a couple of hundred, and I’ll see what she says,” said Linda.
Marion handed over the money. A few minutes later Linda returned and said that although the woman had accepted her money, she did not want her apology, and Marion was free to go. Marion realized suddenly that she was sorry the little drama had ended so soon and that she would have to leave this office and the company of Jeff the store manager.
• • •
IT WAS DIFFICULT to chat with Mother, as even the blandest subjects might upset her. “White carnations make me think of Uncle Tom lying in that hospital bed while the tumor ate him alive,” she would complain if flowers were mentioned. Or if someone said they were packing to go on holiday, she would announce: “Suitcases remind me of all those poor Jews being sent off to the camps, they used to show films of their luggage piled up, packed ready to go off to their deaths.” And the conversation would be brought to a juddering halt.
Dad wasn’t much of a talker either. If someone started chatting to him, he usually picked up a newspaper or switched on the television in defense. Since her parents spent most of their married life in frigid silence, it seemed odd that after Dad’s death, Mother should become obsessed with the idea of communicating with his spirit, even insisting that Marion accompany her to weekly sessions of a spiritualist congregation at Northport Cultural Centre. The hall was let out to all different kinds of groups and societies, and each Thursday as the spiritualists arrived they would be met by Lycra-clothed women chugging water from plastic bottles and wiping hair from their sweaty faces after the “Trim and Tone” sessions.
Marion loved these evenings. For once she felt young and lively compared to the stale, misshapen souls who went along because the only people who ever loved them now resided on what was referred to as the “other side.” Toothless Mr. Bevan had been devastated by the loss of his mother despite the fact she had lasted to the age of ninety-seven, and he would gasp as if stuck by a dagger each time someone made reference to her favorite type of cakes, which happened to be coconut macaroons.
Bea King was an actress who regularly appeared as an extra in pub scenes of soap operas or the jury of legal dramas. She always wore long colorful caftans, and her face was surrounded by a vapor of red frizzy hair. Dark crusts of stage makeup gathered in the lines above her mouth when she dragged from her cigarette and talked about her only son, Michael, the product of a brief fling with a Nigerian jazz drummer, who had died of a heroin overdose.
Jean Page’s husband, Barry, had been crushed in an industrial dough mixer. Jean then lost all poor Barry’s compensation money to a confidence trickster who took her to bed, then persuaded her to invest every penny in stocks and shares that didn’t exist. She was desperate to contact Barry so she could apologize for not being able to afford new trainers for the kids or the catalog payments on the color TV that would soon be repossessed.
There was Miss Anderson, a tiny lady with a foreign accent, who always wore odd dresses with laced bodices and frilly collars. These getups might have been the national costume of her homeland, though no one ever bothered to ask where that was. Her face, round and squishy like an unbaked bun, made it hard to guess her age; she could have been anywhere between forty and seventy. She didn’t seem to want to speak to anyone in particular; instead, like a volunteer prison or hospital visitor, she was interested in hearing from the departed who might have no other friends or family who cared enough to try and make contact.
Each week a medium would guide the sessions. Sometimes it was Chris Shelby, a huge, cantankerous woman with cropped platinum hair and flamboyant taste in cardigans who would strut across the floor pinching the bridge of her nose as if the sprits were blocking her sinuses. She always lost her temper if a message came through that no one understood, and Marion was sure that people often lied about knowing, for example, someone called Theodore who had been killed in a skiing accident, just to keep her happy. She once, rather shockingly, told Mother that Dad understood her need for physical love and would forgive her if she found another man to satisfy these needs, confirming Marion’s suspicions she was making it all up.
When Chris didn’t turn up, Bea or Mr. Bevan would attempt to make contact, but usually without much success. Bea would work herself into a trance that involved a lot of swaying to music and pungent incense that gave Marion sneezing fits. Once during a session she collapsed, and Mr. Bevan had to lay her down at the back of the hall with her feet propped up on a stack of yoga mats. Mother maintained this nonsense was all an act designed to get attention and that Bea couldn’t talk to the dead any more than she could make a squirrel understand Chinese.
Marion liked Mr. Bevan best. At break times she helped him pour tea into the white plastic cups and set the bourbon creams out on paper plates. Mother would say, “No more than two biscuits, Marion,” but he always let her have the broken ones at the end of the packet.
When Mr. Bevan took his turn as medium, Marion would wring her hands anxiously, willing him to succeed. The same audience that responded obediently during Chris’s sessions sat in awkward silence when Mr. Bevan took to the stage. While proffering vague, spluttering messages from beyond, the only reaction he got was coughing and scraping of chairs. When finally his energy and confidence were sapped dry, he would admit defeat, muttering feebly, “Nothing seems to be coming through. Perhaps we should call it a day.”
Once he asked if anyone knew someone called Sally. The back of Marion’s neck prickled when she heard the name; perhaps it was Sally, Dad’s secretary who had died with him in the accident. She put her hand in the air, but Mother gave her a good slap on the leg, so she took it down again before Mr. Bevan noticed her.
“I have a girl called Sally here,” he had called out in a voice flimsy as a stray thread. “Does anyone know her? She wants you to know it wasn’t an accident. He did it on purpose.”
Mr. Bevan’s eyes searched the room desperately, but since there was no response, he was forced to give up.
“Oh dear, things don’t seem to be going too well, do they? Maybe I should call it a night, then.”
SALLY
On weekends Dad sometimes took the two siblings on trips to Frank’s Yard, a local wrecking site. The reason for these trips, according to Dad, was educational. He would walk them around the yard, stopping by the gaping wrecks of vehicles, and point out such things as pistons, crankshafts, and carburetors, then explain the workings of the internal combustion engine. If they came across a car that had been smashed in a road accident, Dad would stand looking at it, just whistling and shaking his head.
“That thing must have gone up like dry kindling.”
“D’you think anyone was trapped in it?” John would ask, his eyes shining with excitement.
“Doesn’t bear thinking about, does it? Being cooked alive in a burning heap of metal.”
Dad said it was criminal the amount of decent stuff people threw away. He and John found an old movie projector that they took back to the house to repair.
“What have you brought that filthy thing home for?” Mother cried.
They carried it down the cellar. Marion never knew if John and Dad got round to fixing it or not, but if they did, they never asked her to watch films with them.
What Marion liked most about Frank’s Yard were the wrecked fairground attractions: An octopus with only five of its eight legs remaining. Some rusty little bumper cars shaped like mice with big sad eyes. A ghost train that was itself a ghost. Horses from a merry-go-round with big scary teeth.
At some point during the visit, Dad would go and chat to Frank in his cabin. Frank was a skinny little man with a bald head and stubble on his face that looked like dirt. You wouldn’t have thought he was at all the kind of person a smartly suited businessperson like Dad would want to mix with, but Frank and Dad knew each other as boys when Frank’s father managed the fabric warehouse.
He h
ad a grown-up daughter called Sally. She’d sit on a stool in the cabin, dressed in dirty jeans and men’s work boots. Marion didn’t think that Sally was pretty, at least not like a storybook princess; she had this birthmark on her left cheek that resembled the icky patch that forms when a piece of fruit has been left resting in one place for too long. Yet there was something about her that made you want to stare.
Perhaps it was because Sally never stayed still. She was always wiggling her bum from side to side on the stool, taking a puff of cigarette, giggling, then wiping her mouth with the base of her thumb, her little tongue flicking out as she removed a speck of tobacco with her fingertip, then tying and untying her oil slick of black hair with a silver bobble. These tiny movements were mesmerising like those of a thief creating a distraction while they snatch your wallet. Dad was always watching Sally, waiting for an opportunity to light her cigarette or catch her arm if she slipped, giggling, from the stool.
One day they went to the yard and found Sally alone in the cabin doodling love hearts on the margins of a racing paper. She said Frank had gone to Blackpool to pick up some old roller coaster cars. Dad stayed drinking coffee in the cabin with her, while Marion and John played on the fairground equipment.
A while later Dad came over to tell them Sally needed cigarettes, so he was going to take her to buy some in the Bentley. Since they would only be gone half an hour, the two of them should wait here.
The Visitors Page 10