Perfect Lives

by Polly Samson

  Lola arrived looking like a parsnip, all pale and scraggy. Their mum and dad were grabbing last-minute things: tickets, car keys, his mum was dithering about whether to take her camera. Angus was pretending to do his homework on the computer but Ivan knew he’d be straight on to a game the minute they left and stringy Lola would do nothing about it. Ivan stared longingly at the painted cut-out that Laura had made, at his yellow hair all whipped up like icing on a cake, his blue legs. You could see the black line of her crayon where she drew round him. The painting looked quite scruffy now. People kept going in and out and it had lost a hand, but still it made him get goosebumps.

  He’d been woken from a dream that night: in the ring, he could smell the sawdust. Laura and him riding the fat blond ponies, there’d been cheering from the wings. There was the sound of a bottle being knocked over and he could hear peals of laughter downstairs. Cato came screeching to a halt in his bedroom, scuttering the rug.

  He could see Angus lying in his bed by the window, mouth a little open, soft adenoidal snores, safely in the land of nod. Ivan followed Cato on tiptoes down the stairs.

  They were playing Twister. He could see them quite clearly from the bottom of the stairs. They were in darkness but for the fire which had been lit with a roaring flame. He could smell the wood and he could smell that they’d been smoking. Their legs were entwined on the mat. Tim reached over her to spin the arrow and she laughed as though she’d been tickled. ‘Left arm on red.’ They were both snorting with laughter but Ivan couldn’t work out what was so funny. Right leg on yellow. Left leg on green. She was on her hands and knees beneath him. Right leg on blue. She was breathtaking: hands and feet barely losing contact with the correctly coloured discs, she was flipping herself over and arching into a perfect crab, head thrown back and her hair pouring like honey over the Twister mat. Tim tried to keep his balance with his left leg over Laura’s right, grabbed at her and then fell into a heap. She collapsed on top of him, laughing, and Ivan saw her shirt fall open and saw that she was wearing her blue bra.

  THE ROSE BEFORE THE VINE

  The man at the next table asked for tap water as though it was a special virtue and in a voice far louder than the one he’d used ordering wine. Self-satisfied twit, Rose thought, as under the table she eased her swollen feet from her shoes.

  She’d already asked the waiter for San Pellegrino and her feet ached along with the rest of her, enough to make her despise everyone there. The couple in the window had brought their baby along, its plastic rattle too. A vegetarian restaurant. How typical of Anna to have picked it. Rose couldn’t remember wanting to sink her teeth into a steak quite so much before in her life.

  She’d eaten her way through a whole bowlful of flaccid olives, she’d even started to pick at the salt crystals in their little bowl; soon there would be only pepper left to sustain her.

  Rose called for some bread but lacked confidence in the waiter. Incy Wincy Spider incessantly, and percussively, climbed the waterspout. She checked her watch. Officially late. Anna, you always had to shout at her. Rose stemmed a wave of sudden panic that maybe she wouldn’t turn up at all. Anna, the one to hide just one of her shoes in the attic, or go missing herself, just at the point that everyone was trying not to miss the bus.

  Infuriating of the girl to have suggested somewhere so unpeaceful. Rose longed to be back in Italy, free of this dismal place and the burden she was in it to deliver. It was more than a prophecy, weightier than a hunch; it came with statistics that hung like a bag of nails in her heart and still no sign of Anna, annoying girl that she’d always been.

  How ugly the people were. Tap water man had the sort of looks that made her think that his own birth might not have been a pleasant one: eyes close together in a head shaped like a hillock, flock of dark hair taking flight; and his wife neat as a tulip, probably put her pale clothes on fresh from the packet each morning.

  The special of the day was haloumi cheese pretending to be chip-shop fish. Chunky chips. Mushy peas. Her stomach made an embarrassingly enthusiastic gurgle. She’d order that, should Anna ever deign to appear. Always missing. Too often missing from Rose’s memories.

  ‘Mama? What’s wrong?’ She hadn’t noticed her come in and the breath of her made her jump. She’d been busy eavesdropping on tap water couple, who were on the brink of an argument. Anna was a sprite on her feet, scruffy Balinese slippers, too thin; a bit of a mess as usual, all angles like Jimmy, hair roughly scrunched into a band. Rose didn’t mean to cry, hurriedly blotted a couple of tears with the end of her sleeve.

  ‘You have given me the fright of my life!’ Anna fired at her before they’d caught their breath. ‘Why so urgent?’

  ‘I’ll tell you,’ she said.

  They pecked each other’s cheeks, left and right, a courtly dance. They almost hugged: they both thought about it then let their arms fall.

  ‘Well?’

  As they pulled the chairs back their eyes met for the first time in over a year: Anna’s big and grey, sad always, even when she smiled. Rose’s sadder still because she couldn’t look at Anna without seeing how her future lay, the darkness of the pit that she would fall into.

  ‘What’s the big mystery?’ Anna’s elbows sharp as she rolled up the sleeves of an oddly shapeless garment, rubbing her long forearms. ‘What are you doing turning up here like this?’

  Rose pulled her knitted collar closer around her neck; the sight of Anna almost made her shiver. Anna so wraithlike: as a child she could disappear into thin air. One hot day, all playing hide and seek in the vineyard, they’d lost her for an entire afternoon, shouted themselves hoarse. It was almost dark when she reappeared and she never told them where she’d been.

  ‘Is everyone all right? Is Massimo OK?’

  Rose nodded. ‘Of course Massimo’s all right,’ she said, blowing her nose on the napkin and wondering if a secret part of Anna hoped that he wouldn’t be. ‘He still gets out for a walk every day.’

  Massimo, the marauding Roman who’d leapt into Jimmy’s shoes too soon after his death, and dragged them all off across the sea to his lair. It was easy to imagine that they might see him like that. Especially this suspicious daughter winding the loop of her shoulder bag around the back of her chair, in case it should be stolen. Little Anna who came running back and saw how Massimo kissed her when he walked her from Jimmy’s grave.

  Anna was apologising for being late, something to do with her work. The row on the next table was reaching its crescendo: ‘Life would be a lot easier if you didn’t keep having to go abroad all the bloody time,’ Mr Tap Water’s wife said in a whiney voice, like a child.

  ‘Stop staring!’ Anna hissed.

  Abroad all the bloody time was precisely where Rose wanted to be; she was chilled to the marrow as only the English seaside could make her. She longed to be in the warm folds of her house in Castagnola, the soft earth with its smell of the forest, the river just starting to flow, the leaves falling, Massimo’s pipe smoke, an elegant decay all around. All she’d ever wished was that her girls should marry Italians.

  ‘Food first, we need to order.’ Rose held up a finger, silencing Anna’s questions. ‘Talk after that.’

  The least she could do was to try to feed the poor thing up. Anna made her think of a bedraggled pigeon.

  Anna bent her head to study the menu and Rose thought at first that she was mistaken by the silver glintings in the looped-up nest of hair, just one or two here and there. She didn’t feel ready to be the mother of a daughter whose hair was going grey.

  Anna recommended a salad, typically for one so thin.

  ‘I wish they wouldn’t employ people like him,’ Rose said as the waiter approached. ‘It could put people off their dinner.’

  Anna stared at her. ‘Don’t you care if he hears you?’ Her daughter’s disapproval, sharp as a slap. Rose could feel her cheeks going red already and her bones almost ached to be in front of the fire in Castagnola.

  There was that English saying, wasn’
t there? A girl’s your daughter for the rest of her life. A boy’s your son until he finds a wife. Rose snorted at the injustice. Anna was stuck, had been since she was a little slip of eighteen, clinging like a barnacle to the underside of this grim seaside town. Rose hated its Victorian pretensions: the fallacy of ornamental piping on facades hiding stacked-up bedsits and rising damp.

  These dreary and unfortunate Isles held nothing but bad memories. The dusty smell of the rain and lumpy stew with strings of gristle, the sting of a slipper, slam of a door, a dank room with a carved crucifix on the wall. Her first husband, Jimmy, and three little tots to bear witness to his slow yellowing, until sinew was all that separated skin and bones. He looked like he was being crucified, silently screaming, as the children hung on her arms, her thighs, always someone on her lap, almost bruising her they clung so hard, and his refusal to give in right up to the end, the way his ghost’s hand still pushed away the morphine.

  England: like a bad dream. The repulsive waiter brought their food, long shoes slapping across the floor, pale and slightly sweaty as though he’d been poaching too long in his own juices.

  Anna was wearing dark leggings with a shapeless flappy wool thing and a thin grey T-shirt through which her breasts poked like little mushrooms. At least there wouldn’t be much to miss, Rose thought grimly.

  ‘What is the dreadful thing you’ve discovered?’ Anna pulled at the sleeves of the thin woolly, reminding Rose how hard she’d always been on her clothes as a child. ‘You’ve found out who your parents were, is that it?’

  Rose nodded, pulled at her own more substantial cardigan.

  ‘And it’s not good news.’

  Anna said she knew that much. She’d already spoken to her sister. ‘I know when Tilda’s trying not to cry, I could hear how she kept having to swallow.’

  Fresh tears came stinging to Rose’s eyes and she had to dab them again, just to have a thought of Tilda. How carefree she’d been, only last night, dancing around with that putto of hers before Rose had come crashing in and ruined everything with her news. Tilda, so warm and oily from her bath. The naked baby boy on her hip, a regular cherub, the pair of them like Titian’s Madonna and Child. The smooth glow of her skin, all gleaming curves; God preserve. Tilda calling to her, their arms entwined, cherub and all. The sweet baby smell of her skin. ‘Mama’ being whispered in her ear.

  Anna was pushing some sprouted things around her plate; there were small ladders at the seams of her flappy jumper, she always had looked like she was falling to bits. Tilda you could put in white and it’d stay white all day, she didn’t come home in rags like Anna.

  ‘You are too thin,’ Rose said, exasperating her, making her reach up and twist her hair more tightly into its band.

  Tilda’s child was a regular cherub. He ran towards Rose, gloriously naked from his bath, escaping the towel that had been wrapped around him. ‘Ciccio!’

  Tilda laughed, that chuckle of hers, lovely round naked shoulders, copper hair falling in waves about them, some still pinned up, generous body draped in a towel. ‘A real little fatty,’ she said.

  The child was ablaze with Titian curls, slippery-naked, wriggling himself into her arms like a puppy. ‘Ti sei fatto male quando sei caduto giu del cielo?’

  ‘Did you hurt yourself when you fell from heaven?’ Tilda translated for her Danny boy, ruffling his hair.

  ‘Ciccio, fatty, bello …’ Rose was unable to stop herself from pinching bits of him like dough and chuckling too, feeling her daughter’s arms enfold her, cherub and all, and then standing for a moment, a trio, and imagining that all around them there had been a heavenly glow.

  ‘So, what did you find out?’ Anna prompted. ‘Who were they? What’s the big mystery?’ Rose took a gulp of water, wondered if Anna looked like any of her ancestors; she certainly hadn’t inherited much from Rose. For all she knew Rose’s own mother and grandmother were boyish too. That was one of the problems with being an orphan: never being able to look through the telescope from the other end.

  She thought again of Tilda through the bathroom door, not like Anna at all. Rose had seen as she unwound her towel, Venus, young and plump, emerging, pale-skinned and lovely as a moon.

  ‘Turns out my mother was not a whore from the backstreets of Dublin, after all!’ she said.

  ‘Why would you think she was?’ Anna’s eyes widened.

  ‘She was a hard-working farm girl from County Kerry who married a soldier. It’s a pity no one found any pictures. Bernadette and Donal O’Docherty.’

  ‘They have names!’ Anna reached across the table and shook Rose’s shoulder. ‘How does that feel?’ Rose remembered how hard it was to maintain eye contact with this daughter.

  ‘It’s a mercy the Sisters of Mercy let us see the files after all the asking,’ she said. Anna’s eyes made her think of a starving child they were so large in her face.

  ‘But, there’s a terrible thing …’

  ‘So?’

  Rose waved a hand irritably around the restaurant, indignant as a teacher in a noisy classroom: ‘I can’t tell you here with all these people.’

  Mother, grandmother, both aunts; probably more, the whole family riddled with it. Jimmy’s lot, too: mother and sister.

  ‘Did someone murder someone? Is that it? Should I start suffering from ancestor shame right away?’ Anna started to giggle.

  Rose shook her head, she couldn’t do this right now. The DNA time bomb would have to wait. ‘Later,’ she said. ‘I want to know how you are. We haven’t spoken for so long.’

  ‘Hurry up and eat then come back to the flat,’ Anna said. ‘Tell me whatever the big bad secret is when we get there.’

  She seemed to bounce a little in her seat. ‘And I can show you what I’ve been working on.’ Anyone would think she suffered from arrested development. Still dresses like a teenager. Such rags! And fingers all inky blue for some reason. Mortuary blue; Rose couldn’t suppress an internal shudder.

  ‘Natural indigo,’ Anna said, noticing Rose’s gaze and holding her hands above the table and wiggling them as though she were playing an invisible keyboard. ‘Stains everything.’

  Ah, yes. It never failed to astonish Rose that Anna had become the artist of the family; that Anna’s hand-dyed rag rugs hung on the walls of galleries in London and Amsterdam. It seemed the world couldn’t get enough of them. The one Anna had made for Rose some years before was pleasant enough and was currently employed as a bath mat, and a very nice bath mat it was too.

  The baby in the window had possession of the rattle; tap water man was defending his need to travel. Why would anyone want to live with you twelve months of the year anyway? sneered his wife; plates were being crashed about. There was a chicken-kiev-style outpouring of liquid grease when Rose cut into the battered haloumi.

  ‘So, your parents? Are you going to tell me anything?’ Anna pushed her long fringe behind her ears. Her daughter’s eyes were a storm colour that shifted uneasily between blue and grey; even early on Rose had felt judged; even when she was breastfeeding Anna, the cold, unblinking marble of her baby eye had the power to spook her.

  Rose’s other children all had brown eyes; it had taken some getting used to. Jimmy had promised to haunt her, and he did.

  She told Anna some of what she knew about Bernadette O’Docherty. ‘My mama,’ she said, and immediately felt foolish for saying it.

  Rose had been found clinging to Bernadette’s dying body. ‘There was no one else to take me, her own mother already in the grave and my father killed in the war before I was even born.’

  Bernadette died alone, in agony probably. ‘The Sisters of Mercy took me when she became too weak to lift me.’ Rose tried to stem a rising tide of anger, or grief, she wasn’t sure which. There, she wanted to say to Anna, give that to your shrink from me: tell him to stick all that in his pipe and smoke it, the next time he decides to conjure up Jung or Freud or whoever while you moan about your childhood and he theorises about me.

  It was o
nly a light drizzle when they got outside, just a short walk, Anna said. She took Rose’s arm, waved at the sodium lights on their tall posts with their halos shimmering on the black wet streets all the way up the hill, sighed: ‘It is beautiful here, don’t you think?’

  Rose shivered, hoped it wouldn’t be far, her feet couldn’t take it. The porches of the houses had fluted pillars; there were curlicues and garlands. The plasterwork reminded Rose of her first wedding cake, the one she’d cut with Jimmy, a struggle to get the knife through the cold white icing, three tiers. A piece brought out like a prize with tea and silver spoons at the christenings of Leo, Tilda and then finally, though Jimmy’s moods by that time made her feel less than celebratory, Anna.

  Rose couldn’t manage to walk these streets and talk at the same time. ‘Better with a brandy,’ she said.

  Rose’s Italian wedding cake had been a different affair: messy, glistening; a pyramid of creamy profiteroles, piled up in a generous heap, caramel-coloured as the sun-baked houses in Castagnola; sticky and sweet as any metaphor for love. She couldn’t wait to be back. Massimo’s was the only shoulder that she allowed herself to cry on.

  She thought of him collecting pine cones for the hearth, out there in the forest, poking around with the end of his stick, hoping to find a truffle, as likely as a four-leaf clover, but he was the lucky sort, grinning slightly foolishly, wearing his thick knitted scarf the colour of ripe tomatoes. Rose felt a little warmer just thinking of him as Anna led her left into Evrika Street.

  ‘Is it much further?’ Rose asked, puffing slightly, regretting her inability to lose a couple of stone.

  ‘Do you not remember that this is my road?’ Anna stalled, a little huffy.

  ‘Evrika Street, of course!’ Rose’s last visit had not been a success. It had only been for one afternoon; on the way back from Tilda’s then, too, and a small crumb of conversation to go with the cup of tea that Anna plonked down in front of her would not have gone amiss, instead of the reproachful ragtime she bashed out on the piano.