All at once there’s a shout behind us. “Stop! Stop! Something terrible’s happened …!”
Everyone turns round. Ruth is stumbling over the grass towards us. She’s out of breath and flapping her arms about. “It’s gone!” she cries. The orchid’s gone. It’s not there! I can’t believe it!” Her voice is a sort of wail. “Somebody’s dug it up by the roots.”
I close my eyes. There’s a horrible silence. And then everybody’s shouting. The voices are black and fierce and buzzing like angry wasps. Kenneth’s stings worst of all - he’s disgusted, he’s outraged, and if he finds the culprit he’ll …
I open my eyes a crack and see his face all screwed up and scary, like the Ogre in my fairy-tale book. And then Duncan starts. “It must be vandals!” he shouts. “Did you see anybody, Ruth?”
“No, not a soul. That’s what’s so extraordinary. I just can’t understand it. Unless, of course” - she wheels round and grabs me by the shoulder - “Tilly saw someone when she went off to play on that tree? Did you, Tilly?” She makes my name sound like a swear word and her fingers are digging into my skin.
“N… no,” I stammer.
“Are you quite sure?”
“Yes … No …”
“And what’s that supposed to mean, pray?”
“‘Er, yes, I did see someone.”
“Who?”
“A vandal.”
“Oh, really? And what did this vandal look like?”
“Big. And … ugly. With a scar on his face.”
Kenneth elbows Ruth aside and raises his hand for silence, like he’s suddenly in charge. Then he steps towards me and bends right down, so his face is close to mine. I can see the black hairs in his nose and little blobs of sweat on his top lip. His voice isn’t loud and snarly any more, but soft and sort of dangerous. “Tilly, would you kindly open your rucksack and show us what you’ve got inside.”
“Kenneth!” Mum claws at his arm. “Surely you’re not accusing - ?”
“I’m not accusing anybody. It just so happens that Tilly’s the only one who left the group and spent time on her own. As Ruth happened to notice too.”
“I’m sorry but that’s ridiculous. She just went off to explore, didn’t you, love?”
I nod. I hate lying to Mum, but I feel I’m breaking into pieces.
“Fine,” Kenneth purrs, with a dreadful sickly smile. “If she has nothing to hide, then she won’t mind us seeing her rucksack, will you, Tilly?”
“No, you can’t. There’s … there’s something private in it.”
“I bet there is,” Ruth mutters. Her lip is curled in a sneer.
“It’s only Panda,” I blurt out. “I know it’s babyish to bring him, but Dad gave him to me, ages ago, and … and …” I’m crying. I can’t stop.
Mum wipes my eyes with her hankie. “Look, love, no one minds about Panda. Just get him out and show them and that’ll be the end of it.”
My fingers are shaking, so it’s hard to get the rucksack off my back. Mum helps and then she opens it and takes Panda out and holds him up.
“Ah!” the lady in the glasses smiles, “he’s a darling, isn’t he?”
I could kiss her, she’s so nice. I wish I hadn’t forgotten her name; it was something long and foreign.
“OK?” I say to Kenneth. “Can I put him back now?”
“Just one second, young lady.” He gives me another horrible smile. “I’d like you to take the other things out, if you’d be so kind.”
“Kenneth, I can’t believe you’re doing this! Can’t you see you’re upsetting her?”
“Well, let me give her a hand, then.” He snatches the rucksack and tips it up on end. Out falls the lunchbox, and he grabs it.
I stare down at the ground. I can see a tiny purple flower. I wish Miss O-L would tell me what its name is and whether it’s pollinated by bees or flies or …
Then, before I know what’s happened, there’s a sort of ringing in my ears and everything goes black. I put my hand up to my face. It’s burning and stinging and I feel sick. Kenneth has hit me, I think.
“You could go to prison for this!” he shouts, “you thieving little brat!”
I’m sobbing and my nose is running and everything’s wet and blurry. But I feel Mum’s arms close round me and hear her shouting back at him, “How dare you hit my daughter! You could go to prison - attacking an innocent child.”
“Innocent? She’s a thief. And a bare-faced liar. She commits an act of vandalism and then swears blind she’s -”
“Look at this great bruise! You might have done permanent damage.”
“And what about the damage she’s done? Digging up a priceless specimen -”
“It’s only a plant, for God’s sake! Your trouble, Kenneth, is that you think flowers are the most important things in the world. Well, they’re not. They’re - ”
“And your trouble, Lesley, is that you don’t belong in this group. You know nothing about botany. In fact, I’ve come to the conclusion that you know nothing about anything.”
“If I want your opinion I’ll ask for it, thank you very much! And if I’m so pig-ignorant, why did you invite me?”
“Please stop this!” Miss O-L begs. “Let’s try to behave like civilized adults. It won’t help matters if we all get so worked up.”
But Kenneth takes no notice and goes on shouting at Mum. “I certainly wouldn’t have invited you if I’d known you’d bring your loathsome brat.”
“That’s it! We’re going. And I intend to report you, Kenneth Parker, for assault. And, as for you stuck-up lot,” she yells at the others, “you can stuff your wild flowers, you wankers!”
She seizes my hand and pulls me along, full tilt down the hill. We trip and slither on the loose stones. Trees are flying past and the path slips and slides away from us, like it’s escaping too. I fall and graze my knee but she yanks me to my feet and we scramble on again. There’s a roaring in my ears and I’m sure my chest is going to burst. When we reach the bottom we can hardly breathe, we’re so puffed. And I’ve got a stitch and my cheek hurts terribly.
We sit on the grass, to recover. The sun’s gone in and where everything was bright before, now it’s flat and grey. And the clouds seem tired, sagging in the sky above the hill. I don’t know how we’ll get home. We haven’t got a car. Kenneth drove us to the Centre in his Range Rover. We haven’t even any money for the bus. We’ve left our rucksacks behind and Mum’s had her purse in it. And her new wild-flower book that cost £10.99. And her lucky mascot key-ring.
Miss O-L’s a liar - today wasn’t the Eighth Wonder of the World.
“I’m sorry, Mum,” I whisper.
“That’s … OK.”’
“But what about Kenneth?”
“What about him?”
“You love him, don’t you?”
She doesn’t answer, just wipes her forehead with the back of her hand and looks at me for what seems ages. Then she says, “I love you, Tilly.”
I don’t want to start crying again, so I sit quite still and watch a tiny insect crawling up a blade of grass. The grass must seem awfully high and steep, but it just keeps going up and up. I wonder if it’s scared.
Mum unlaces her new trainers and rubs her feet. I think they must be hurting. “I’m sorry you lost Panda,” she says.
“That’s … OK,” I say, copying Mum’s words, and the sort of slow, sad way she said them. “It was time I gave him away. Pandas are for babies.” When Dad comes back, he’ll give me something more grown up - roller skates, or a radio.
There’s another long silence and I try to think of radios: what sort I’d like, what colour.
Mum’s still looking at me. “But why did you take the orchid, Tilly? I mean, what on earth were you going to do with it?”
I bite my lip. I can’t explain - not yet. I’ve got to work things out: how to find Dad, how to make him fall in love with Mum again, even without the money.
The insect’s half way up. As I watch it, a thought j
umps into my head: if it reaches the top, Dad will come back; if it doesn’t, he won’t.
I hate the thought - it’s frightening. But inside I know it’s true. Things work like that: a secret voice is telling you and that voice is always right. I’ve proved it loads of times.
I can hardly bear to watch as the insect moves another centimetre, then stops again, to rest. I think it’s tired like Mum and me.
Get on! I hiss. Crawl faster. You’ve got more legs than us.
But it pauses, like it’s lost its nerve and is just clinging on for its life. And then it lifts a feeler and I’m sure it’s begging me for help.
You’re nearly there, I whisper. Don’t give up. You’re doing well.
I keep as still as a stone, so I won’t put it off or scare it. I’m even trying not to breathe.
It creeps up a little bit more, but it’s going slower and slower, then suddenly it falls off and lands on its back.
I touch my cheek. It’s throbbing and feels hot.
“Is that hurting much?” Mum asks.
“No,” I say. If I tell her the truth she’ll only be upset. She’s lost Kenneth now, as well as her bag and all the other stuff.
I pick the insect up and put it back on the blade of grass. It needs a second chance. But it doesn’t even try this time. It just slithers down and tumbles to the ground. I cup it in my hand and feel it tickling my palm. Dad used to tickle me sometimes when he was drying me after a bath, and then we’d have a pillow fight and he’d chase me round the room. I smile, remembering.
“What’s funny?” Mum asks.
I take her hand and squeeze it and somehow manage another smile. She needs me to be brave.
Because now I know Dad isn’t coming back.
Angelfish
On three nights out of seven Mr Chivers dreamed of purple candlewick. Sometimes they wrapped him in it as his winding sheet; other times it formed the fabric of the universe and everywhere he wandered little purple tufts tripped him up or clung to him like burrs. Occasionally they served it up as bacon with his rubberized fried egg. He often woke screaming. He switched his torch on underneath the blankets and prayed to a purple God that Miss Lineham hadn’t woken up as well. Miss Lineham slept with her door open. Maybe she didn’t sleep at all, but she retired to her room at ten o’clock sharp, with a purple hairnet and a cup of cocoa, and demanded silence until seven.
Mr Chivers crept out of his tangled bed into the bathroom. There it was: living, breathing candlewick - no dreamstuff this. Purple candlewick bathmat lying exactly parallel to the cold white bath; purple candlewick toilet-seat cover asking the shameful business that went on underneath it. Even the toilet roll was ruched and frilled in purple candlewick.
He stumbled to the basin and inspected his tongue in the mirror. It was shaggy grey, as if a fine mould had settled on it in the night. His bladder was kicking him in the gut, demanding to be emptied. He hitched up his pyjama bottoms and tied the cord more tightly. He dared not risk the jet of urine on white porcelain, not at three a.m. Even in normal daylight hours he preferred to use the public convenience. Miss Lineham’s lavatory was a decorative item. He doubted if she even used it herself. She was too refined to pee. He presumed she must evaporate off her waste products in some noiseless, odourless form of osmosis. Even the cistern was shrouded in candlewick. She had turned a cesspool into an ornamental lake.
Little matching doilies, hand-crocheted in purple, smirked at him from every surface, standing guard beneath the Harpic, cushioning the Vim. The bathroom boasted little else. Toilet articles were strictly banned. No toothbrush was permitted to flaunt its dripping nakedness in public, no bar of soap to wallow in its own slime. Aftershave was decadent, bath salts an indulgence. Flannels, toothpaste, sponges, razors - all must be locked away in strictest purdah. In the early days, before Mr Chivers realized the perils of exposure, he had rashly left his nail-brush by the basin. Miss Lineham had said nothing. But four mornings running he found the damply accusing object cringing by his breakfast egg. Four mornings running he suffered with indigestion and tension headaches.
Now, he never quitted the bathroom without a thorough scrutiny, going down on his hands and knees in search of slops of water or stray hairs. Still on his knees, he would reposition the bathmat, making sure it was dead centre - not that he ever dared to take a bath. His feet might print obscene naked splodges on the purple candlewick or his city dirt leave a tidemark impossible to remove. The cleaning rag was folded so squarely on the canister of Vim it would be sedition to disturb it.
He ran just a piddle of water into the basin. If he turned the taps full on, the geyser roared in accusation: Miss Lineham’s private spy. He dabbed at his face, then at his private parts, gazing upwards at the prim white ceiling so that he wouldn’t get excited. Arousal made the bed creak. He couldn’t even eat an apple in bed. The very first bite brought a warning cough from Miss Lineham’s open door. There were ways and means, of course, if you were desperate. It was dangerous to chew, but you could graze your teeth very gently, up and down, up and down, against the skin, until the flesh gradually succumbed. Then you held it in your mouth and sucked. The saliva did the rest. It took an hour to dispose of one small Cox’s Orange Pippin, and Granny Smiths were more or less impossible.
“I do not consider it hygienic, Mr Chivers, to store perishable foodstuffs among your underclothes. Nor would I have deemed it necessary to supplement the more than adequate diet I supply.”
He couldn’t even hide a Cox. Miss Lineham inspected everything in his room, including his underpants. (Cleaning, it was called.) She lined his cufflinks up in twos, sprayed his shoes with foot deodorant.
“Tabloid newspapers, Mr Chivers, are not encouraged in this establishment.”
“I have found it necessary, Mr Chivers, to invest in a new front-door mat, and I should like to draw your attention to the fact.”
He never saw her smile. The nearest she got to it was at nine o’clock every evening when she fed her angelfish. The bevelled tank stretched its tropical turquoise luxury along a table in the hall. Jungle plants trailed soft green fingers through the water. Broad-backed leaves and ferny fronds rippled in an effervescent spume of bubbles. And through them glided the fairy fins of three exotic angelfish, one gold, one silver, one marbled black and cream. Their glowing opalescence seemed almost blasphemy in Miss Lineham’s fawn and frowning hall. No one else in the house was indulged as were those fish. While the lodgers shivered in their fireless rooms, the angels basked in a constant eighty degrees Fahrenheit. Mr Chivers ate frugally off melamine, but the twelve varieties of super-enriched fish-food lorded it on a silver tray.
Feeding time was a sacred ritual: hall lights turned low, front door locked, parlour blinds firmly closed. Mr Chivers watched through a crack in his bedroom door, peering down through the banisters, awaiting that magic transformation in Miss Lineham’s granite face. As the angelfish darted to the surface and nibbled at her dead white fingers, her face turned from stone to petals; the corners of her mouth lifting slightly, so that he could see the tips of plastic teeth.
“My pretty angels,” she whispered, sprinkling Magiflakes like manna.”’My pretty, pretty angels.”
Mr Chivers’ pulse raced. There was something about the way her cold eyes sparked and softened, the flirtatious flurry of her hand across the water. He never heard that velvet voice at any other hour; it was sackcloth and hessian when she was snapping at her lodgers.
“Some of us are born to work, Mr Chivers, and some are born to idle.”
“I do not wish Princess Margaret’s name to be mentioned in this house again.”
She was even uncharacteristically generous with the fish-food, flinging in fresh pink shrimp and bite-size worm almost with abandon. Everyone else was rationed. Mr Chivers’ scant teaspoonful of breakfast marmalade was apportioned out the evening before and sat stiffening in an egg-cup overnight. He never saw the jar. Bacon rashers were cut tastefully in half. And when he had swallowed the l
ast morsel of his one barely buttered piece of toast (thin-sliced from a small loaf), Miss Lineham whisked every comestible swiftly out of sight. Not a crumb nor tealeaf remained to give promise of future sustenance. Even the smell of food crept cravenly away at the touch of Miss Lineham’s Airfresh. Five minutes after breakfast the kitchen looked like a morgue or a museum - shining tiles and dead exhibits in sterilized glass jars.
Mr Chivers started eating out. He sprawled in Joe’s caff or Dick’s diner, elbow-deep in chips, baked beans tumbling down his chin, wallowing in ketchup, gnawing chicken bones. (‘Dogs eat bones, Mr Chivers, not Civil Service gentlemen.’) He ordered both cream and custard on his syrup sponge and slurped it down, savouring every mouthful. Delirious contrast to those tight-lipped breakfasts when Miss Lineham jumped and blinked her eyes every time his teeth made contact with the toast.
He spent more and more time away. He added the public baths to the public convenience, running the bath full to overflowing and shouting above the Niagara of the taps. He set up floods and cataracts, slooshing water over the side of the cracked white tub. He bought a plastic duck and spent reckless hours torpedoing it with the bar of municipal soap. He flung in whole cartonsful of bath salts and turned the water as blue as Miss Lineham’s fish-tank. He left hairs in the plug-hole and a rim around the bath. Nobody cared. Nobody pinned crabbed little notes on his door, saying “Water costs money, Mr Chivers, were you aware?” No one slipped a purple crocheted doiley underneath his soapy bottom.
He discovered a bath with a toilet beside it, for only tenpence extra. Now he ruled the world. He jetted his urine at the stained, un-Harpicked bowl, aiming at the central ‘C’ in the maker’s name, his own initial. Sometimes he took risks or invented games, standing further and further back and still not missing, or stopping and starting the stream, or tracing patterns with it, as if the jet were a golden pencil. That done, he sat on the cracked and germy toilet seat (which had never known the chastening caress of candlewick) and strained and groaned in thunderous ecstasy. He even returned to prunes.
Wendy Perriam Page 3