Girl With Dove

by Sally Bayley

  No alarm went off when Audrey Taylor walked into the front room. Only the lines on my aunt’s face turned harder and her mouth clipped tight. ‘I won’t be trespassed upon! I won’t allow it! Go away!’ Betsey Trotwood was in the front room, speaking loudly from beneath her bonnet. But Audrey wouldn’t have noticed this.

  And she wouldn’t have noticed my mother, who sank back into the chaise-longue. She wouldn’t have noticed Betsey Trotwood even, with her big flouncy bonnet on, because her eyes were fixed to the floor and her hands were sat in her lap as though she were about to say her special prayer, the prayer about the child who is drowned. And my mother’s eyes were closed. Her eyes are closed and her arms are outstretched and she is flying off to the one who lies dead.

  And my aunt is standing, tall and imperious, in the centre of the room, like a sentinel waiting to deliver her message from God, and her mouth opens, and the black rocks start flying, they fly and fly around the room, smashing the windows and cracking the mirror and shattering the dancing shepherdesses on the mantelpiece, until one large rock hits the chandelier and the pointy pyramid crashes to the floor. It crashes on top of Audrey Taylor and her toffee-coloured coat and Audrey is buried alive among millions of tiny fragments. And Audrey screams. She screams and screams. She wails, because she has glass all over her hands and hair, she has glass in the back of her eyes, she has glass between her teeth.

  When Audrey spoke my mother winced. When you wince, your skin jumps, and your teeth too. When Audrey opened her mouth Mum jumped out of her skin and she stayed there.

  ‘I’d like to suggest a contract.’ Audrey was speaking, she was speaking and smiling, her hoping-for-the-very-best smile. She was perched on one of the pale-blue chairs, chairs with wooden scrolls at the top of the arms. I sat apart from her, on the matching chair, clasping the arms and running my hands up and down the scrolls, hoping they might fold me away inside them.

  Audrey was moving her mouth and speaking.

  ‘I think it would be a really helpful idea if we all made a contract together. What do you think? Something we can all refer to. That way we can reduce some of the conflict and perhaps build bridges.’

  ‘Build bridges?’ My aunt’s mouth snapped open. ‘Do you know of anyone who actually built bridges successfully? Brunel … Brunel did. Is that what you mean by building bridges? You want us to be engineers? Well, we just don’t have the space for that, I’m afraid!’

  Audrey looked flummoxed. When you look flummoxed your eyes glaze over for a moment and you are not sure where to look. Sometimes you look down at the ground. Audrey didn’t do that – she just kept on beaming – but I could tell she was flummoxed because her eyes went a little duller. They had less spark on the inside; they were running out of light.

  ‘I mean that it might be useful if we all agreed that Sally would spend a certain number of mealtimes with you all, with her lovely big family.’ Audrey was trying hard, too hard. I winced.

  ‘Our lovely big family?’ My aunt’s eyes were turning into bullets. They were becoming narrower and smaller, like small slits to start with, for a bullet to fly through. The bullet would come next. The bullet always came. ‘How many are there in our lovely big family? Do you know? I find it hard to keep count …’

  ‘Let’s see … Sally has told me about your lovely family …’ Audrey picked up a small black notebook sitting on her lap and began leafing through the pages. ‘Well, she told me …’

  ‘Did she? What exactly did Sally tell you? She seems to have been very keen on telling you things.’ The dark slits were narrowing. I could feel the bullets loading up. Soon there would be another round and we would all be lying on the floor under broken glass.

  ‘Twelve children and three adults.’ Audrey had got to the answer.

  ‘Well, you’ve been doing your homework. Next you’ll be telling me all our names.’

  ‘Well … let’s see …’

  ‘There’s no need for that. We know who we are, thank you. We don’t need a school register. Now perhaps you could tell us exactly why you are here and what you want. I expect she’s been telling tales.’

  ‘I think Sally needs to talk.’

  ‘Grah!’ A strange growl leapt across the blue carpet and I screamed.

  My mother lifted her head. ‘Stop it, Sally, for goodness’ sake!’ Then she bent back down again. My mother was saying her prayers; she was whispering her poem about the man on the stairs.

  Audrey turned towards me and gave one of her smiles. I winced. She looked back at my aunt and turned up her beam.

  ‘I think if we can agree that Sally spends a certain number of mealtimes with you, then you will feel as though she is still part of you all. If we build a contract together then we’ll feel as though we’ve all been heard …’

  Audrey’s voice trailed off. Another growl was flying towards her. Thump! It landed in her lap. It tore at her blue flares, it ripped open the bottom of her Aran sweater. But Audrey kept going. Audrey was good at that. Just keep going, Auds, just keep going. Don’t give up, girl, that’s my girl. That’s what her mother must have told her. Or perhaps that’s what you learn when you become a social worker, because the fact is most people won’t like you, no matter how nice you are, and Audrey was very nice, but she was interfering. At least that is what most people would say. But it wasn’t her fault; that was her job. She’d been sent to interfere. Poor Audrey. I felt sorry for her.

  ‘This will help us all compromise,’ she said brightly. ‘This way the contract will do all the difficult work for us. If you have something written down, you can all consult it.’ She looked down at her notebook and began scribbling. She seemed pleased.

  My aunt’s lip curled. ‘A bit like negotiating an overdraft. Ange is good at that, aren’t you Ange?’ Mum nodded, as she always did.

  ‘Except that all negotiations can be ignored, can’t they? People agree to all sorts of thing and then sign off on them, but those bits of paper don’t mean anything at all. They’re utterly worthless … like so many marriages.’ My aunt paused and gave one of her fake smiles, a smile that sent chills down your spine because it was so bright, and today she had on her lipstick. Even brighter.

  ‘Are you married, Ms Taylor?’

  Audrey stopped scribbling and looked up. She hadn’t expected this sort of thing.

  ‘As it happens, I am. But perhaps we could continue with the contract? We’re doing rather well.’ Audrey looked a little ruffled. Her wings were put out. But Audrey wouldn’t fly away. Audrey always stayed to see things through. ‘Come on Audrey, love. You always see things through. You’re a good Christian girl, and good Christians have stamina.’

  Audrey continued. ‘We’ve agreed that Sally will spend most mealtimes with you all. She won’t stay late at school. She will do what the others do, the other children I mean, but two days a week she can do her own thing.’

  ‘You see, it’s rather different if you’re married. Marriage brings a certain sort of mind-set.’ My aunt was ploughing right over her. Audrey blinked and held her pen tighter. Hold tight, Auds, hold tight.

  ‘We don’t share that mind-set, so you can’t just waltz in here and tell us how to raise our children. We don’t share the same point of view. This is a family without men. We’ve decided we don’t need them. In fact, we’re doing rather well without them. Sally is just trying it on, as all teenagers do. It’s all a bid for attention. You don’t need a degree in psychology or social work’ – she paused and looked directly again at Audrey – ‘to work that out.’

  Audrey’s forehead puckered up. She looked worried. Things were spilling over. She needed to tip the cup back up the right way. She dipped down towards her tea and raised her teacup to her mouth. She needed something to hide behind, but her spoon was clattering too loudly. Audrey’s hands were trembling. Keep going Auds, keep going.

  ‘What lovely china. So delicate. Is this a family heirloom?’

  ‘Wedgwood. A good family. Unique. You know a Wedgwood anywhere.
An old English family.’

  Audrey looked pleased. She started again. She’d done this before. She could do this. She could! ‘All families are unique. There’s no set rule about that, obviously. It’s just sometimes families need a bit of extra help.’

  A strange noise came from my aunt’s mouth. Not a growl, but a screech. She was trying to speak, but her mouth was freezing over. The lipstick was turning icy cold. I looked at her eyes. They were small, dark bullets. She turned them straight towards Audrey.

  ‘Bang, bang. Bang.’ The room was suddenly very dark. ‘Bang, bang, bang.’ My aunt shot Audrey straight through the nose and teeth. Then she went for her pale-green eyes. She shot out all her tiresome smiles, all her earnest glances, all her sympathetic downcast looks, all her bright beams of hope. I could smell gunpowder. It was the smell of rage.

  ‘I don’t think we need the sort of help you are suggesting. Ange and I have managed quite well by ourselves. We’ve had our little experience with Social Services. You’ve come round with your little notepads and pens, with your sociology degrees from your redbrick polys, and you expect us to listen to your glib little diatribes. We’ve had to deal with tragedy here, real tragedy, not just the little bit of dysfunction you might read about in a sociology textbook … a textbook no doubt written to satisfy leftie tendencies.’

  My aunt paused for breath for a moment. Her eyes were tiny black pins. She was ready to fire again. ‘It’s all nice ideas for you lot, with your pretty ideologies and your left-wing principles and your dungarees and duffle coats …’

  I watched Audrey’s face. She was wincing slightly. Her feet were shifting back and forth. Her hands were turning pages over and over. She was twirling her pen. Now she was biting it.

  ‘… and your Home Counties husbands …’

  ‘Ms Bayley, I really think now that if we keep going …’

  ‘No! we’re not going to keep going! At least not the way you think. If you want Sally to sign up for some sort of contract that isn’t worth the paper it’s written on, then go ahead with that. But Ange and I are having nothing to do with your limp, leftie gestures. If Sally doesn’t want to comply with our way of doing things, then perhaps it’s time she left home and found somewhere else to put herself. I’m sure that you lot can find her a decent home with sugar and spice and all things nice. Isn’t that what little girls are made of? Isn’t that what you are made of, Ms Taylor? Sorry to be so personal, but this is a personal matter after all. Perhaps Sally could come and live with you? I expect you have a nice little place in the country …’

  She paused and looked directly at me – bang – and then directly at Audrey – bang, bang, bang.

  ‘After all, what you are really saying is that the way we do things here isn’t quite to madam’s sensitive needs.’ She looked at me again, and this time it was hatred that was boring holes through me. Large, wide holes.

  ‘Well, if we’re not good enough for her, you’re welcome to her, that’s all I can say. I don’t suppose she has the first idea what she’s got herself into – what she’s dragging us all into. Well, we’re a family here, not a set of selfish individuals. A family is like a tree: when one branch gets diseased, you lop it off.’

  Somewhere I heard a large gasp, but it didn’t come from Audrey and it wasn’t from Mum. The sound was both near and far, outside the door, beyond the front steps, over on the sea front, across the scudding waves, up in the windblown clouds. Somewhere, someone was gasping very loudly and I thought it must be God coming up for air.

  29

  The Inexorable

  But in his countenance I saw a change: that looked desperate and brooding – that reminded me of some wronged and fettered wild beast or bird, dangerous to approach in his sullen woe. The caged eagle … whose gold-ringed eyes cruelty has extinguished.

  (Jane Eyre)

  There are some things you can never recover from. Mr Rochester knows this. When Jane Eyre wanders off into the early-morning light, he is ruined, like the old house he lives in. He crumbles away. When Jane Eyre returns, some years later, she finds a desolate man.

  By then, Mr Rochester has assumed a different shape. For one thing, he’s stopped wearing his hat. I heard a movement – that narrow front-door was unclosing, and some shape was about to issue from the grange. It opened slowly: a figure came out into the twilight and stood on the step; a man without a hat: he stretched forth his hand as if to feel whether it rained.

  Poor Mr Rochester, who is now blind. Poor Mr Rochester who now needs a guide, someone to give him a good steer.

  I’ve never been blind but I think sometimes not seeing everything that lies ahead means you just carry on. You don’t know what you’re up against, so you just keep going along the path you’ve already fixed on, because you can’t see anything else. There’s no looking left or right or up or down, only carrying on.

  This is what people mean when they say things are ‘inevitable’ or ‘in-ex-or-able’. There is no or about it. Being able to carry on is all you can do. Nothing else. You are stuck staring at the ex, the way out. Ex is the moment you might just lose your nerve. But you don’t. You place your other hand on top of the latch to stop the trembling and push up hard until you hear the click.

  By then it’s all over. By the time you’ve clicked open the latch you are already well on your way out; by then something is pushing you, some invisible spirit, some reckless sprite, something quite hard and inexorable.

  ——————————

  After Audrey’s visit, after the letter arrived, nothing was ever the same again. Circumstances were altered, and I saw a change, a very large change. After Audrey came, no one would look at me. Whenever they saw me coming they turned away. They had sent me to Coventry.

  And I knew this: that Coventry is a nasty town in England. I asked Mr Drake at school where Coventry was and he said somewhere near the Midlands, which is the middle part of England, but he was quite vague. Coventry, he said, is a place built from concrete because Coventry was bombed badly in the war. Coventry Cathedral was bombed very badly by the Germans; Coventry had to be built again. Coventry is covered in concrete. Mum would hate Coventry. There is nothing she loathes more than grey concrete. It really gets her goat. That’s why she hates the flats along the front.

  ‘They should never have been built. It’s a disgrace, an absolute disgrace.’

  After the Momentous Interview, after Audrey came to visit, after the Experts Barged In, I was in disgrace. I was stuck in nasty Coventry. That winter Mum sent me to Coventry and I never really came back. Mum put on her best Margaret Thatcher face and for years she didn’t take it off. I’d seen that face before. It was the face of Betsey Trotwood as she looks out from her parlour window upon the Murdstones; the face of Aunt Reed greeting Mr Brocklehurst on the drawing-room carpet; the face of Miss Marple as she greets Dr Quimper at his surgery desk; the face of Miss Blacklock ushering Inspector Craddock across the threshold of Little Paddocks.

  And then one day, in the middle of Coventry, I came home from school and my aunt was wielding an axe. She was swinging an axe high above my head. That was the day the trees fell and I tumbled from the tower into the cold, dark sea.

  I came home from school and she was there, glowering in the upstairs kitchen where my grandmother sat making cheese on toast looking worried, my grandmother with her face turned towards the wall. And that’s when The Woman Upstairs, the woman I remember sitting on the floor in a downstairs room, cross-legged and chanting, began to yell. That woman, the woman in my dreams.

  I’ve had quite enough of your antics. I’m sick and tired of all the trouble you are causing. How dare you drag Social Services into this, and what business do you have going to the doctor like that? You’re a selfish little bitch for dragging all of us into this mess, just because you need to feel special. You’re beginning to remind me of my friend Sue. Sue went that way … She had to be taken away … Sue was weak … She had no backbone; that was her trouble. She wouldn’t say
boo to a goose but she didn’t have any insight either. Sue was too meek for her own good. She hadn’t grown up. Arrested development, that’s what it was, a case of arrested development, anybody could see that. She went that way because she hadn’t any character. Yes, Sue was weak. That was her trouble. And now, look at you, you’re going that way too.

  Sue, Sue, Sue, Sue, Sue. You, You, You, You, You. Fee-fi-fo-fum, I smell the blood of an English girl … Your bones will never grow … Osteoporosis. Bone disease, that is. Lack of calcium. Broken bones. Your bones will break … they’ll never mend. You’ll grow fur! After a certain point, you’ll grow fur! And then no one will want you, no one, no one, no one, and above all you won’t be a woman, woman, woman. You won’t be able to breeeeed. You won’t grow breasts, you won’t be able to feed children, and children are the mainstay, children are the source of life, children are what women are born for, to breed bairn, as your useless father would say. And where is he now? Where is he now, the drunken sod?

  And then suddenly I was on the floor; I was rolling around on the carpet. I hit the carpet and I rolled, I rolled and I rolled, down the steps, out of the house, towards the sea, and as I rolled I touched my arms and legs and felt a thin layer of fur.

  ——————————

  The kitchen carpet was the worst place to find yourself in our house – on the kitchen carpet that is, on top of, or close to, or anywhere near – because the kitchen carpet was always filthy, caked in dirt. Disgusting, my brother said, and he meant like the house Mr and Mrs Twit live in where they throw all their cold and congealed spaghetti. Like the bottom of a sewer, like the place where rats get stuck, like the place where all the bits of food and hair and unwanted vegetables and cold bits of greasy potato and scraggy bits of toenails and skin festered, said my brother, who was copying Mum, because ‘festered’ wasn’t his word.

  Festered! Festered! Festered! Jane Eyre festered on the floor of the Red Room. Jane Eyre festered all alone. To fester: to feel the opposite of going to a festival or fête, or a birthday party; quite the opposite of a sunny day on the green in the summer with Aunt Jayne and her billowing skirts and strong calves; very much the opposite of a lovely day outside on the beach with an ice-cream cone at the end of it.