by Amy Mason
They stood in silence for a few moments until the woman lifted her head, wiping the make-up from under her eyes. “I said I wouldn’t do this, I didn’t think I would. It’s been so long – too long.” She reached out and touched Peter’s face, and he kissed the tip of her fingers.
“Sweetheart,” he said.
“You’re Agnes,” said Alice, as though she was just getting to grips with what was happening.
They all laughed awkwardly.
The woman smiled and turned to Ida. “Yes, I’m Aggie, Agnes Ida Simpson, nee Adair. I’m your aunt. I suppose I’m the other Ida.”
Tom stayed out of their way in the kitchen, while the others huddled together in the sitting room, looking at each other, smiling, and touching occasionally.
It was impossible not to stare at this bosomy, sober woman, as though Bridie had not only come back to life but had become a proper mother in the process.
Ida spoke first. “Can you tell us then – all of it?”
“Yes, I should get on with it before I lose my nerve,” Agnes said. “I’ve practised this would you believe it, but I’m still not sure where to start. I’ll start at the beginning. I don’t know what you know. And I hope you’re not easily shocked.”
“We don’t know anything. And we’re not easily shocked,” said Alice.
“We do know that she lied about things. And at the weekend we found her certificate of baptism. We know she was born in Ireland, not London. And that your father was a tinker,” said Ida.
“She always lied,” Agnes said, eating a biscuit. “Ever since she was a little girl. We were treated the same, like twins, really. There was less than a year between us; I was an accident. Bridie always seemed a lot older though. She was so sure of herself. And she wanted to be different, maybe that’s why she made things up. Most of her stories were versions of things she’d seen at the pictures, she always loved the pictures. There was a little cinema in town that showed old films – The Wizard of Oz was on about every week. But the grown-up ones were the ones she loved – The 39 Steps and From Here to Eternity. Then there was one called Road House with Ida Lupino. She was so jealous I had her name after that. She used to tell people it was hers.”
“Right… wow,” said Alice.
“Ma didn’t know where she’d got her,” Agnes said, “always tried to make her own up to her lies. But she seemed to believe her own nonsense, however ridiculous. I don’t know what she remembered about the past. Maybe she blocked a lot of it out.”
“She made notes. I’ll show you,” Ida said.
She went to her room and brought back the pile of papers. “Here, look,” she showed Agnes the page with her name on it. “This is where I read your name, and there are these funny words. And some stuff about the cat and Judi Dench which I suppose isn’t relevant, ha.”
Agnes took the notes and started to laugh and cry at the same time. “These words are the Cant – traveller language. Our father spoke it and we did, sometimes. It’s a bit like Irish, but not quite. It was our funny, secret language. Jesus, it’s so sad to see her trying to remember it here.”
“What do you do? Or did you do?” Ida asked.
“I’m not retired,” Agnes said. “I was an actress, bit parts in Crossroads, things like that. I was never very good. Bridie was far better. And I model – well I’m a life model. At the Slade.” She took another biscuit from the tray.
“Fantastic,” Ida said, delighted.
Agnes squeezed her knee and carried on. “I still live in Soho. On my own. I was married years ago but I was never very good at picking them. He ran off with a girl who worked in the shoe shop of all things. A stripper, even a waitress, would have been better than that.”
Ida and Peter laughed.
“He had money though, thank God,” Agnes said. “I just keep working because I like the attention.”
“Brilliant,” Ida said.
“What happened, between you and Ma?” Alice asked, quietly.
Agnes brushed the crumbs off her lap before meeting Alice’s eye. “Firstly, you need to know how bad things were for her. She did everything for me. Our father was God-awful, beat at least two other children out of our mother. Ma was so timid she wasn’t much help. Bridie got strong. Too strong really. Something went wrong in her head and she could switch off, from anything. I want you to know I forgive her, totally. And I hope to God she forgave me too.”
Chapter thirty-two
~ 1960 ~
Bridie held the thin, rough hotel towel up round Aggie’s waist while she changed into her new two-piece swimsuit. It was eight in the morning but it was already hot, and Bridie was impatient to get into the sea. Agnes fussed with her bottoms for ages, but whipped off her bra without a second thought, showing her bosoms to the world.
That was her sister through and through. Shy one minute, and brazen the next. She was an odd girl, really.
There weren’t many people on the beach, only a dog walker or two, and a few old couples who, Bridie imagined, swam every day all year round. She watched an ancient woman come out of the water, bent, brown and wrinkled, a pink swimming cap on her small, shrivelled head. Bridie shuddered.
“Finished,” Agnes said, throwing her arms into the air.
Bridie looked at her sister’s body. It was pale, with a nipped-in waist and full, round breasts. The two of them were similar, but she was shorter and softer than Bridie; less striking certainly, but the type of girl that men liked best.
She thought about Jacob.
She wouldn’t ask yet.
They stood side by side looking out to sea. To their right, high above them, was the long pier and in the distance a few small boats floated on the glinting water.
“It’s amazing out there,” said Agnes. “You always think of just blue, don’t you? That’s how you colour it in when you’re little. But there are so many colours, it’s like… I don’t know, a dragon’s tail.”
“Not a dragon’s,” said Bridie. “That’s too overblown. A fish’s maybe? Come on, let’s go in.”
They left their handbags and towels on the sand and held hands as they ran towards the shore. Shells crunched under their bare feet, before the icy water reached their toes.
“Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” said Agnes.
Bridie held her breath. “Come on,” she said, pulling her sister’s arm. “Let’s go out to the theatre, we can look at it from underneath.”
The end of the pier was further than it looked and the water got colder as they swam.
“I don’t like it,” Agnes said, panting and spluttering as she struggled to catch up. “I keep imagining dead bodies and things down at the bottom, God knows how deep it is. Let’s go back.”
“Come on,” said Bridie, treading water as she waited, turning her face to the sun. Why was her sister so slow? If she was on her own she’d have front-crawled there by now. “Don’t be a sissy. We’re near now. I think there are steps when we get there.”
They swam a little further, and Bridie went as slowly as she could, but Agnes was lagging behind.
She sounded panicky. “I’m really cold and tired. Please.”
“Let’s go over there,” Bridie said, pointing at one of the huge steel posts that supported the pier. “We can hold onto it and rest.”
The post looked horrible, six feet wide, rusty and covered in barnacles, but Bridie knew Agnes couldn’t refuse. They swam through cigarette ends and past a punctured dingy, the sea growing darker as they came under the shadow of the pier.
Agnes reached for the post and grasped it desperately, trying to find a footing. Above them were the wooden planks, the feet of tourists just visible as they stepped onto the gaps.
Bridie looked towards the beach and realised how far they’d come. It was a long way, it really was. No wonder Agnes was scared.
“I want to ask you something,
” Bridie said.
“What?” Agnes asked, still bobbing uselessly against the post, her hands scrabbling to get a grip.
Without all her make-up she looked like a child.
“Are you sleeping with Jacob?”
“No,” Agnes said, but immediately started to cry. A small wave hit her face and she struggled to catch her breath.
“You’re lying,” Bridie said.
“Yes, I mean. Not sleeping. Slept. I slept with him. Once.”
“You’re still lying.”
“Please,” Agnes said.
Bridie looked at her sister, sobbing and spitting as she fought to keep her mouth above the water. She swam round, grabbed Aggie’s hair, and pushed her head down, hard.
Bubbles rose to the surface while something thrashed beneath Bridie’s hand.
The fingers grabbing at my thighs are fish, she told herself, and the hair brushing my stomach is seaweed.
She counted her breaths and looked over at the beach huts and – behind them – the hotel where Jacob was still asleep.
There were small splashes by Bridie’s side. Chips hit the water as someone threw them over the railing above, and a flock of gulls, dozens of them, instantly flew down to get them.
She watched them squawk and fight until the last gull was gone, until the thing in her hand was still, and the black strands of seaweed floated slowly to the surface.
It was time to swim back.
On the beach there were more people now, families and couples, but their things lay untouched on the sand and Bridie pulled her dress over her wet swimsuit and picked up her bag.
Next to her a fat man sat with his wife, rubbing oil onto her already sunburnt back.
“Excuse me,” she said, flatly. “I saw a girl by the pier, drowning I think, could you call someone please?”
The man opened his mouth.
She didn’t wait to hear his response, but turned and walked up the steps to the promenade, leaving the man now hollering behind her, while two young men who heard what he was shouting dropped their towels and ran past Bridie, towards the sea.
It was a lovely day. The sky was enormous. And the sun felt so soothing on her salty cheeks. “The greens and golds of a fish’s tail,” she said to herself, as she walked through the gardens, up the hill, and back towards the Royal Bath Hotel.
Chapter thirty-three
~ 1999 ~
“So it was true. It actually happened,” said Alice.
“Well, she made it simpler and more dramatic of course, with the chorus and all that malarkey. And she swapped our names,” said Agnes. “I mean, in the play, Ida’s the strong, angry one and Kate – of course your mother’s middle name was Catherine – well, she was weak.”
“Catherine,” said Alice, “of course. I never thought. But why did she swap them?”
“She did always prefer mine,” Agnes said, pouring them all another cup of tea.
“You think it was as simple as that? Nothing was simple with Ma,” Ida said.
“No,” said Agnes, “Not really. I always thought that she really felt like I killed the old her. I mean, she was the one – of the two of us – who was never the same person after what happened that day. She walked straight out of the sea, out of her life, she didn’t even take her suitcase. Common old Bridie Catherine was the one who actually drowned.”
“Look at this,” Ida said, searching for the photocopied letter and handing it to Agnes. “She said she named me after you. I think that’s what she meant.”
Agnes read it and started to cry.
“So I don’t have a murderer’s name after all,” Ida said.
Alice leant over and touched her cheek.
Chapter thirty-four
~ 1999 ~
The sisters waited on the pavement outside the church for them to bring the coffin, clutching each other’s hands so hard it almost hurt.
Although it was sunny they were both shivering and Peter was rubbing them up and down in turn like they were children. His eyes were wet already and Ida felt that she should be the one comforting him.
Ida hadn’t been to St. Luke’s in years. It was ugly, a green domed roof on the edge of an estate, like some kind of asphalt hill. It was nicer inside if she remembered rightly, pine and candles and lots of space. The area was bleak though – a wide, busy road lined with battered red council houses. Cars were driving past, passengers staring out at them as they waited, and the few pedestrians gawped as they shuffled past.
Agnes had gone inside.
From around the corner Ida saw her father and Terri walking towards them, both neat and perfect in black suits, Terri brushing their father’s jacket with the palm of her hand. They came up to the girls and embraced them, Terri’s scent stronger than ever, as though she was trying to ward off a plague.
“Shall I go in?” asked Terri.
“No,” said Ida. “Wait out here with us – you’re our family.”
“Where is she?” asked Bryan, looking frail and completely confused. Ida knew he meant Agnes – he’d cried when Ida had told him on the phone. She pointed towards the church.
“She thought it was better for her to wait there. She thought we should be on our own for this bit,” Ida said.
Other people started arriving – women Ida vaguely knew from mass years before, Martin and Tash, Claire from Chalk Farm, then some of their mother’s local friends who Ida could tell from Alice’s expression hadn’t been near Bridie for years.
“If they’re hoping some celebrities might show up, they’ll be sorely disappointed,” said Ida.
Alice started to shake with silent laughter.
Then Mrs Dewani from the corner shop grasped them both, then entered the church, sobbing loudly and blowing her nose, leaving the two women unable to contain themselves.
“She should be sobbing,” whispered Alice. “She’s a bloody Spar murderess! I bet Ma paid for that hat in red wine.”
“Ma paid for her bloody house,” Ida said.
Peter poked her in the ribs and they all started laughing properly, while Terri coughed and tried to get them to be quiet.
Father Patrick came out in his black vestments and hugged them all, as doddery as he’d always been. He knew better than to be sorry. “She’s at peace, thank the Lord she’s at peace,” he told them. “And well done to you two girls. You are two living miracles. If she wasn’t proud of you before she will be when she looks down.”
“Thank you,” said Ida.
“We’ll do a good job for her, I promise you,” he said. “Lots of Latin, lots of drama. I stocked up on incense especially. I’m not even joking.”
The hearse came round the corner and Ida took a deep breath, realising that she was scared.
As it drew nearer she could see the woven willow coffin in the back. In it lay her mother’s body – she hadn’t expected it would be so close. She was surprised by the sharp pain in her throat.
Beside her she felt Alice weep, her arm shaking as they held hands. She looked at Peter and saw tears running down his face.
Across the road an old lady crossed herself and Ida bowed her head to show she was grateful.
The car stopped next to them and the men from Hendon’s lifted the coffin out, placing it easily onto their shoulders as though it were empty. Father Patrick led them inside and Alice whimpered as they followed into the cool, dim church.
The congregation turned to look, bowing their heads or crossing themselves as the body went past. Ida couldn’t stop imagining her mother inside. How light had she been when she died? She wished she could see her, though she wasn’t quite sure why – whether it was morbid fascination or a genuine desire to be with her one last time.
Ida and Alice genuflected, followed Peter into a row at the front, knelt down and closed their eyes.
Alice tapped Ida�
�s leg and she knew it was time for her reading. She’d been finding it hard to follow the mass. Father Patrick had spoken beautifully about Bridie – been funny and sad, but lots of the rest of it was in Latin and the pain in her stomach was back. She was feeling woozy as well – a combination, she guessed, of the Valium, incense and everything she’d learnt that morning.
She got up and squeezed her way down the row, bowed and walked past the coffin, brushing it with the hem of her dress as she stepped up to the pulpit.
She cleared her throat.
“To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven, a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted, a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up, a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance.”
There was a bang as the door at the back of the church opened and a small blonde woman, wearing sunglasses, walked in, saying ‘sorry’ loudly before finding a place in an empty row. People turned to look at her and Ida noticed two women whispering to each other behind their mass cards about the new arrival.
Ida cleared her throat again, pointedly. “A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; a time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; a time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; a time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.”
The blonde woman clapped three times, then laughed when no one else joined in.
Ida came down from the pulpit, turned, touched her mother’s coffin with her fingers, and squeezed back into her row.
“Who is that? At the back?” Ida asked her sister.
“Fuck – I mean God – I mean fuck knows,” said Alice.
The service finished with Ave Maria, then they followed the coffin back outside into the sunlight and the waiting cars. Ida told Alice she was going to the loo, ran round the side of the church and lit a cigarette, leaning against the wall, not sure that she’d ever been so grateful for a fag and five seconds to herself. There were footsteps on the concrete and she peered along the alley, worried it might be Alice. But instead she saw the woman who’d come in late, smiling, with her arms outstretched.