by Anne Berry
‘There, there,’ she cooed. ‘There, there.’ And hearing this, Lucilla wanted to slip into the bony envelope of Mrs Fortinbrass. She wanted to have her mix up a mug of hot Ribena, and butter a Rich Tea biscuit then sprinkle it with sugar, and sit with her while she drank and ate. But when her mother gained the stairs, panting and beetroot-faced, she curled up in a ball like a hedgehog. She envied the prickles. Because she didn’t have any her father kept patting her back. He said, ‘You had a bad dream, Lucilla. It’s all right now. Pull yourself together. We’re here.’
And Mrs Fortinbrass said, ‘Poor love. Oh, poor mite! Oh, poor little love!’
And her mother said, ‘For heaven’s sake! It’s only my dressmaker’s dummy! Whatever’s the matter with you?’ But when Lucilla answered her speech was all minced up with sobs. She gibbered about the strips of pasty skin, how they were peeling off her, how raw she was underneath them, how some days the pins felt like nails driven into her flesh and how her heart was trapped in the bony cage of her chest. ‘That’s the ivory satin gown I’m making for the temperance summer dance,’ her mother interjected irritably. By then Lucilla had uncurled herself. She blinked at her mother, at her nightwear. Blink – a purple dressing gown baggy as a bedspread. Blink – beige knitted bedsocks. Blink – toilet-brush hair standing on end. Blink – wrinkles flecked with cold cream. Blink – knobbly nose with nostrils flaring. Blink – eyes pelting her like hailstones.
‘Well, if you have it all under control, I’ll say goodnight,’ Mrs Fortinbrass twittered, giving a timid wave to Lucilla. Her parents apologised to their lodger for the upset, apologised for their daughter’s deranged exhibition, but Mrs Fortinbrass insisted that she had not been able to sleep anyway, and that she had been reading the People’s Friend to combat her insomnia. Then she closed her door with a click. Lucilla’s father escorted her back to bed. He said that he was going to cover the dressmaker’s dummy with a blanket so it couldn’t frighten her again. And he said that he would leave the light on, although her mother already stomping downstairs was grumbling about the electricity bill. But despite this, after he left Lucilla thought that she could still hear the crackle of the paper as the tattered skin slip-slithered.
Scamp was the glue that stuck her back together. They got him four months after her eighth birthday. She told her father when he asked that she would like a spaniel, her turquoise eyes putting the stars to shame. Her hands were clasped in front of her and she very nearly dropped to her knees. It was a Saturday in May, a clear day. Her father was toiling at his bureau, balancing the books for the Sons of Temperance. His brow mapped with contour lines and he laid down his pen, so that for a dreadful moment she supposed he had changed his mind.
He shook his head and back and forth solemnly. He had on the mask he wore when the figures did not tally. Fixing her through his glasses from under the thicket of his dark eyebrows, he made an observation. ‘Spaniels are pedigrees and prohibitively expensive. I don’t think we can afford a spaniel.’ Lucilla looked downcast, bereft. The dog that almost was had begun to evaporate before it had even been brought home. But then her father continued, saying that the following weekend, when Frank and Rachel were over, they would all go to the market to look at the pet stall.
Saturday, and she woke early, giddy with excitement. They were to set off mid-morning. At 9 am she was sitting at the bottom of the stairs in her Robin Hood outfit. Her mother made it for her entry into the temperance Christmas fancy dress competition. She planned for Lucilla to go as Sleeping Beauty, or Cinderella or Little Red Riding Hood. She showed her lots of tempting material: buttercup silk, apricot satin, velvet as red as cranberries. But Lucilla was perverse, insisting that she that if she couldn’t be Robin Hood she would not enter. Her mother caved in, and then ranted bitterly when she did not win any of the prizes. Still, Lucilla, riding through the glen in the Sherwood Forest of her imagination, didn’t care a fig, for she was Robin Hood, who robbed from the rich and gave to the poor.
She did have to admit though that the avocado-green nylon tights were rather itchy, and that the leatherette tunic with the crenulated hem was subject to chilly updrafts, which caught you unawares in the brisk May air. Her boots, also made in the leatherette fabric, had pointed curling toes and fringed tops that sat snugly over her calves. She tugged down the brim of her pointed cap and plucked impatiently at her bow. She had three rubber-capped arrows in her quiver. She was scheming to shoot Frank when he turned up, to score a bulls eye on the board of his fat head. At five minutes past, her cousins trotted in, Frank, a pack horse with saddlebags jammed with his stamp albums and his book matchboxes. She followed them into the front room where glasses of milk and a plate of Nice biscuits awaited.
‘Do you want to be in my band of merry men?’ Lucilla enlisted precipitously, as Frank spread his albums on her father’s desk. Rachel, her manners impeccable, asked her aunt if she might sit down on the settee.
‘Of course, dear. And may I say how charming you look in that matching two-piece. I do like the peach knit. Polyester is such an easy-wear fabric. Help yourself to a biscuit, dear,’ her mother said. She gestured dramatically at the plate, as if she was a hostess in a Noël Coward play offering tempting hors d’oeuvres to her guests. Then, back down to earth with a thump, ‘Lucilla, get off the back of the settee! You’re scuffing the cover with your dirty boots!’
Lucilla dismounted reluctantly. ‘Well, if you don’t want to be a merry man, how about Friar Tuck, Frank? Then we can fight with long sticks and bash each other up.’
Her mother’s high giggle sounded like a dentist’s drill. ‘Hehehehe! Really! Do you have to be so unladylike, Lucilla?’ Her daughter adjusted the strap of her quiver and undeterred looked questioningly at her selected recruit.
‘No fear,’ Frank sneered. Now eleven and grown tall and reedy, her cousin’s boast was that he was an expert philatelist and phillumenist – far too busy to play with foolish little girls. ‘I’ve brought along my collection of book matches, the cigarette brands for Uncle Merfyn to peruse. Since he last went through them there have been some rare finds.’ His horn-blowing was wasted on his cousin.
‘What about the evil Sheriff of Nottingham then,’ Lucilla persisted, cunning in her voice. If he were the enemy she would be entirely justified in using him for target practice.
‘Lucilla, stop harassing your cousin,’ her mother interpolated. She had on the mustard frock with the cowl collar she only completed a few days ago. She swirled her skirt and had a go at plumping up her resistant lacquered hair.
‘You look spiffing, Aunt Harriet,’ Frank said through an obsequious smile.
‘Why thank you, kind sir,’ her mother acknowledged bobbing a curtsey. ‘Frank is a young gentleman now and doesn’t want to be bothered with your childish pranks, Lucilla. Have another Nice biscuit, Frank dear.’ Frank needed no further persuasion to post a biscuit, his fourth, entire, like a letter into his slit mouth.
‘Aunt Harriet, I have a Matinée, De Luxe Tipped, Lambert and Butler of Drury Lane. “The kindly smoke”,’ he gloated through crumbs and sugar grains.
‘Do you, dear?’ Her mother managed a look that was a blend of blank and overawed. ‘Jolly well done!’
‘And that’s not all,’ ran on Frank sensing the limelight, ‘I have Craven “A”, “Cork-tipped for cool clean smoking”.’ As he bragged, he pulled book matchboxes out of his bag and wafted them under her mother’s nose. ‘And Wills Whiffs, “The little cigar with the big reputation”. And … and Baron’s, “Deeply Satisfying Baron! Because you get all the lift of deeply satisfying tobacco through Baron’s unique easy draw filter”.’
Lucilla, brain-bludgeoned into a condition of near-terminal tedium gave a kitty-cat yawn, despairing of Frank’s credentials ever to join her valorous men in avocado green, in place of the usual Lincoln. Turning her attention elsewhere, she tugged on Rachel’s jacket sleeve, desperate to be off to the garden and up the apple tree.
‘Did you learn all that by heart,
Frank?’ her mother delved, her tone hushed, eyelids fluttering as if she had a speck of dust irritating her vision. Frank nodded, basking in his scholarly attributes.
Rachel courteously declined her mother’s suggestion that she might like to cut hexagon shapes from the fabric scraps in the ragbag. ‘But it’ll be such a lark, Rachel dear. And I can show you how the patchwork quilt is coming on.’
‘Thank you so much, Aunt Harriet, but perhaps I can do that this afternoon, after we’ve been to the market. You see I told Lucilla I’d be Maid Marian,’ she forestalled ingeniously.
Her mother’s features gave the optical illusion that they were edging closer to each other in umbrage. ‘Oh very well,’ she accepted defeat with poor grace.
Needing no further encouragement, the girls clattered outside. Minus Frank, they soon tired of being merry, so Lucilla switched allegiance to the Swiss.
‘I’m William Tell now,’ she informed Rachel, handing her an apple. ‘Balance this on your head and I’ll shoot it off.’ She answered the look of alarm that dimmed Rachel’s normally serene face with fulsome assurances. ‘My aim is true. I never miss. If I can split the apple on my son’s head, you’ve nothing to worry about.’ They played for a further hour, then at her mother’s bidding came indoors to ready themselves for their thrilling outing. Rachel had the scarlet imprint of three penny-sized misses, two on her forehead and one on her cheek. But she was stout-hearted as the victim of Lucilla’s dismal aim, pleased to have survived the encounter rather than bearing her cousin grudges. When her aunt interrogated her, she claimed that she gained the marks by accident, tripping over a flowerpot. Without being told, Lucilla stripped off her Robin Hood costume, folded it carefully and slipped on the shell pink and light green seersucker dress her mother had selected earlier. She surveyed the decorative smocking in her dressing-table mirror, and reflected how unflattering and frumpy the garment was.
‘I look revolting,’ she attested.
‘No you don’t,’ said Rachel, brushing her cousin’s hair and using hair slides to secure it from off her face. Lucilla pulled on her cardigan, and buttoned it all the way up. Although she felt garrotted by the tight collar, she knew her mother would approve. And the plus was that it concealed the intricate smocking. But all attempts at prettifying came to nought when seconds later she crashed down the stairs, Rachel in sedate pursuit. In the front room, Lucilla was dismayed to still see Frank and her father inspecting the stamp and matchbox collection, through a magnifying glass.
‘I haven’t any yet from French Guiana,’ cousin Frank complained. ‘Or from the Ivory Coast or Martinique. Abyssinia’s missing too. And it would be brilliant to get some from the Chinese Expeditionary Force, and Puttialla, Rajpeepla and Sirmoor.’
Her father, puffing on his pipe, emitted sympathetic grunts. ‘Can’t promise to deliver on those, Frank, but I will try to get a book of Olivier matches for you.’ They were both so preoccupied that it took Lucilla and Rachel a full ten minutes to bring their industrious philately to a close. They travelled on the bus to Pentonville Road market. By the time they ground to a stop, Lucilla’s mind was a kennel crowded with dogs of every breed. The market was a rowdy warren of stalls trading to hoards of people. Everyone was shouting, all trying to outdo each other.
Lucilla’s eyes devoured the hectic scene greedily, the colours and foreign sounds, the characters and their banter, the wares displayed to snag the cruising shopper. She whispered in Rachel’s ear that she wanted to paint it all, later that evening when it was peaceful. She had no interest in the racks of dresses her mother lingered at, or in the bunches of plastic flowers, which Rachel said would not fade or die. But she would happily have stayed by the stall that sold pets all day and through the night as well. There were mewing kittens and cheeping budgies, and tortoises chewing mechanically on leaves. And, most fabulous of all, there were two large crates full of puppies.
‘These are pedigree,’ the beak-nosed stallholder reported, indicating the larger of the crates, and pulling at a few stray whiskers on his square chin. ‘Cocker spaniels. The real deal.’
Frank glanced down disparagingly at the squirming bundles of fur. ‘I expect they’re overpriced, Uncle Merfyn. Beat him down,’ he urged, his tone low and sly.
‘How much?’ her father hustled, opting for the direct approach, while the puppies licked Lucilla and Rachel to death. Lucilla was smitten by them all. If she could she would have shouldered the whole crate and kept the entire pack.
‘One pound,’ said the stallholder with a shift of his heavy-lidded eyes, lifting out a black and white bundle. ‘Top condition. Win prizes in dog shows these ones. I guarantee it. Worth every penny.’
Her father and her mother exchanged appalled looks, and she heard Frank mutter that if they were not careful they would be robbed. She could strangle her cousin, she really could. Her father, too, was transparently unmoved, raising his eyebrows and squeezing his nose between thumb and forefinger. To Lucilla this shilly-shallying was inexplicable. Couldn’t they see that if the stallholder said ten or twenty, or even thirty pounds, it would be worth it, money well spent? Her parents consulted briefly, with Frank conspicuously eavesdropping. Lucilla swayed, nearly passing out, Rachel’s hand on her arm restoring her balance. ‘And the other box?’ her father probed at length his cadence measured, indicating the second box with a nod of his head.
‘Mongrels. Ten shillings and sixpence,’ the stallholder replied peremptorily. He gave the twisting mass of chocolate-brown puppies a derogatory stab with a grubby finger. ‘Can’t vouch for anything with them. Don’t know what they’ll turn into.’
‘They look fine.’ Frank volunteered his expert opinion, hands clinking some coins in his pocket. ‘If you ask me –’ and Lucilla reflected privately that no one had ‘– they’re all much the same.’
The stallholder whipped his cap off and shook his head, eyes narrowing on Frank.
‘Not to the trained eye, sonny,’ he said glacially.
Her father bent to inspect the occupants of each box in turn. ‘Hmm … yes, yes, we’ll take one of those,’ he murmured straightening up. He flapped a hand at the half-breeds, the stock that had a pinch of this and spoonful of that, a blood-shake of types pulsing through their canine veins.
‘Very wise, Uncle Merfyn,’ Frank remarked, looking smarmy.
‘I should think so too,’ her mother contributed, adjusting the diamanté beetle pinned to the parsley-green angora monstrosity atop her head. ‘Twenty shillings for a dog! I never heard of such a thing. You’d think the pups were eighteen carat gold.’
‘And that, Mother, is why we’re going to buy a mongrel at half the price,’ her father the economist asserted. Lucilla’s heart gave a lurch, and she and Rachel clutched hands and skipped in a circle. She didn’t care whether it was a pedigree or a mongrel, so long as she had her dog. ‘Will you take ten,’ her father bartered, looking down his nose at the substandard puppies. But by now the seller had become surly, and was not in the mood to give them a deal. They wrangled over the sixpence animatedly until he surrendered, relieved to be rid of such stingy customers. Frank made a prat of himself applauding his prudent uncle so loudly that they attracted an audience, then planting a wet kiss on his aunt’s cheek. Rachel smirked at Lucilla and grinned. And her mother, her cheeks cherry pink with embarrassment, wandered off to finger some costume jewellery. ‘Lucilla, you can select a brown puppy. The spaniels are quite beyond our budget,’ her father ordained counting out the coins.
She did not waste a second. Not knowing what the puppy would develop into was a bonus as far as she was concerned. Hurriedly, she disentangled herself from the spaniels she was fondling, and directed her focus on the wiggling, yapping mongrels. They all had floppy ears, but the pooch she lifted out had an adorably quizzical face.
‘Is it a dog or a bitch?’ Frank quizzed, revelling in speaking the term for a female dog with all its derogative connotations.
The stallholder gave it a cursory examination while
it was still in Lucilla’s hands. ‘A dog,’ he sneered, still smarting. ‘Be warned, you get what you pay for. Could have any temperament.’ As her father recounted the money for the third time, Lucilla tucked the six-week-old puppy under her cardigan, by her madly beating heart. Feeling the package shiver, lodged there, was a foretaste of heaven, she concluded on the bus ride home. As they travelled, they discussed names, settling on Scamp. Lucilla pleaded if he might sleep in her bed, but her mother was unswerving in her resolve that he should stay in the kitchen. Though, she added acidly, if she were to have her way he’d be kept in a kennel, all weathers, outdoors.
After the cousins had gone home, Lucilla rummaged in the garden shed, chancing on an old wooden tea chest which had previously held tins of paint. She lined it with newspaper and a cosy blanket. She borrowed a book from the library and followed instructions on house-training, taking Scamp out to the lawn every couple of hours and telling him to ‘get busy’. Her mother bought him cheap offcuts of meat from the butchers that they called ‘melts’. And when she boiled them, the putrid smell pervaded the entire house. Lucilla walked him in Cherry Tree Wood and Coldfall Wood and on Hampstead Heath. He sat at her feet while she sketched the horse riders she saw cantering there. If they went away with the Sons of Temperance, he boarded with her grandmother.
Each week Lucilla goes to the meetings with her parents, to the shabby chapel hall with coffee-coloured walls in Archway. As they travel, her turquoise eyes feed on the darkening palette of the sky, and on the ghostly blue sparks flying from the overhead trolley bus cable. And her ears tune to the hum and crackle of electricity. The hall reeks permanently of stewed tea, as if the plaster has been injected with it from the huge urn they brew up in the evenings. Refreshments amount to this, cup after cup of it, and molehills of biscuits that have lost their crunch – custard creams, jam shortcakes, digestives and, on extra special nights, chocolate bourbons.