Counting Chimneys: A novel of love, heartbreak and romance in 1960s Brighton (Brighton Girls Trilogy Book 2)

by Sandy Taylor

  I dusted the glass with the sleeve of my cardigan, then I traced the outline of Mary’s face with my finger. I still missed her.

  I could hear the baby crying downstairs and Rita’s voice rising above everyone else’s. I knew they were all waiting for me, but I didn’t want to move. I knew Mum was worried about me. For all she said about me being sophisticated, I could see the way she looked at me sometimes, as if she were trying to read my mind. I had to try and look happy all the time, which was wearing. In London I could be myself, but here I felt suffocated. I loved my family but there were too many memories in this house, in this town.

  ‘What are you doing up there, Dottie?’ Mum shouted.

  ‘I’m coming,’ I shouted back and headed downstairs.

  It was very warm in the living room. Everyone except Dad was staring at the baby, who had stopped crying and was on Mum’s lap, holding onto her fingers with her fat little hands and trying to stand up on two stiff little legs. Her eyes were red and her nose was running. The last time I’d seen her she’d still been a little baby, but she was growing up, she was changing, and I hadn’t been here to see it. I told myself it was because of work and Joe, but it was more than that. I loved my family, but being back in Brighton unsettled me. It was easier in London. I had my work, and I had Joe and Polly. In London I could convince myself that the past was behind me, but that was just geography wasn’t it? Every time I returned home, the past was there to meet me as soon as I stepped off the train.

  ‘Her nose is running,’ I said, gesturing in the general direction of the baby.

  ‘What do you mean… her? She has got a name, you know. It’s Miranda Louise, which is a very pretty name, and I’d be obliged if you used it,’ said Rita. She had gone all red in the face.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘Miranda’s nose is running.’

  ‘That’s because she’s off colour, Aunty Dottie,’ said Mum. She smiled in a slightly scary way, put her face close to the baby’s and said in a silly voice: ‘Aren’t you, my little precious? You’re off colour, your little tummy wummy’s poorly, isn’t it?’

  ‘I’d rather you didn’t speak to her like a baby, Mother,’ said Rita.

  My dad, who had been sitting reading the paper, looked up and said: ‘She is a baby. How’s your mum supposed to speak to her? Like she’s an old-age pensioner?’

  ‘Now, Nelson,’ said Mum. ‘Our Rita’s got a perfect right to say what she wants and what she doesn’t want where her baby is concerned.’

  ‘Thank you, Mother,’ said Rita.

  Dad looked up from his paper. ‘And when did you start calling your mum ‘Mother’? What’s wrong with ‘Mum’ all of a sudden?’

  ‘I think Mother’s more polite. It’s what I shall teach Miranda Louise to call me.’

  ‘Stuff and nonsense,’ said Dad. ‘What does Nigel think about all this?’

  Rita’s husband, who had been sitting quietly, nearly jumped out of his skin. His ears went all red, and he was opening and closing his mouth like a fish.

  ‘Well,’ said Dad, ‘haven’t you got an opinion, Nigel? Or are you under our Rita’s thumb already?’

  Nigel seemed to have completely lost the ability to form a sentence, and a red rash was beginning to creep up his neck. He started pulling at his collar as if he was choking.

  ‘Take no notice of him, Nigel,’ said Mum. ‘He had a port at lunchtime to wet the baby’s head and port always makes him gobby.’

  I thought I had better help Dad out and show some interest in my beloved sister and her offspring. I mean, I was glad Nigel and Rita had eventually managed to have a baby – they had waited a long time to get her – but, according to Rita, no one had had a labour like she had and no baby was as perfect as hers. I looked over at Miranda, who was trying to pull Mum’s glasses off her nose. She was rather sweet, but I was pretty sure she had inherited Nigel’s sticky-out ears. We stared at each other suspiciously then she sneezed and a load of snot shot out of her nose, which she then proceeded to rub all over her face with a tight little fist.

  ‘Nelson get me some toilet paper quick,’ said Mum, holding Miranda at arm’s length.

  Dad looked up from behind the paper. ‘What do you want toilet paper for?’

  ‘Are you blind as well as daft?’ said Mum, rolling her eyes up to the ceiling. ‘Miranda needs her face wiping.’

  ‘Why can’t Rita go?’ said Dad.

  ‘Because she’s resting.’

  ‘I’m resting.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Mother,’ said Rita in a martyred kind of way. ‘I’ll get it.’

  ‘You will not, our Rita, your father will. Nelson, get up out of that chair or I won’t be responsible.’

  ‘All right, all right, keep your hair on, Maureen, I’m going.’

  ‘Well don’t make such a meal of it.’

  Dad got up from his chair, folded his paper very precisely and went to get the toilet paper, winking at me on his way out the door.

  ‘You look tired, love,’ said Mum to Rita. ‘Did Miranda have trouble sleeping again last night?’

  ‘She doesn’t need much sleep,’ said Rita. ‘Does she, Nigel?’

  Nigel, who looked as if he was about to nod off, nearly slid off the couch. ‘Sorry, Rita, what?’

  ‘I was just saying, Miranda doesn’t need much sleep.’

  ‘Erm no.’

  ‘Well don’t just sit there, tell them why?’ said Rita, settling herself back in the chair and folding her arms, as if she was preparing to bask in whatever wonderful revelation Nigel was about to bestow on us about why Miranda Louise didn’t need much sleep.

  ‘Rita read in a book…’ started Nigel.

  ‘Oh for heaven’s sake, I didn’t read it in a book, I saw it on the television – we’ve got a coloured one now, Dottie.’ As if we didn’t know! ‘Anyway this doctor said that bright children don’t need much sleep. It’s all to do with their brains being so active.’

  ‘Dottie didn’t need much sleep,’ said Mum.

  Rita chose to ignore that. ‘So we don’t mind, do we, Nigel?’

  ‘No, no, we don’t mind,’ said Nigel, looking as if he’d willingly donate a kidney for a good kip.

  Dad came back in with the toilet paper.

  ‘Took long enough, didn’t you?’ said Mum, taking it from him and starting to wipe Miranda’s face.

  ‘I took the opportunity while I was in there.’

  ‘You should have given me the paper first and took the opportunity afterwards. Look at the state of Miranda’s face!’

  ‘I need a fag,’ said Dad.

  ‘Well, make sure you go outside,’ said Rita. ‘I’m not having smoke in the house with Miranda Louise here.’

  ‘I smoked in the house when you were young,’ said Dad.

  ‘Yes,’ said Rita, ‘and we went to school smelling like three packets of Woodbines.’

  Rita came out with these really funny comments and what made them even funnier was that she was being deadly serious. Dad wasn’t amused though.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ he said. ‘It comes to something when I’m told what to do in my own house. Fine. I’ll go outside.’

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ I said and followed Dad through the kitchen and out the back door. We sat on the steps leading down to the garden.

  ‘It’ll get better, Dad,’ I said, linking my arm through his.

  ‘Will it?’ he said gloomily.

  ‘I bet all new mums are fussy in the beginning.’

  ‘It’s nice to have you home, love,’ he said, smiling at me. ‘We don’t see nearly enough of you these days.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Dad, it’s work.’

  ‘Is it, Dottie?’

  I leaned over and kissed his stubbly cheek. ‘It's other things as well, Dad.’

  ‘I know it is, love’

  ‘But I’m fine, really I am, and it’s getting easier.’

  ‘Your mum and I worry about you.’

  ‘I know you do.’

  We sat quietly toget
her for a bit and I slipped my arm through his. ‘I promise I will try to get home more often.’

  ‘We'd all like that, love. You’re missed.’

  Dad took a last drag on his fag, tossed the end into the flowerbed and we went inside. As we went into the front room I heard Mary’s name mentioned.

  ‘What were you saying about Mary?’ I asked.

  Rita looked up. ‘I was just telling Mother that Mary Pickles’ husband Ralph is getting married to Nigel’s cousin Fiona and we’ve invited them to the christening tomorrow.’

  I felt in that moment that any moving on I’d done had been completely wiped out. It was as if I’d been punched in the stomach. Rita must have noticed.

  ‘What?’ she said.

  I didn’t know what to say, but Mum saved me from answering.

  ‘Dottie finds it hard, Rita,’ she said.

  ‘Oh for heaven’s sake,’ said Rita. ‘Mary has been dead for four years and you’re all still talking about her in whispers. I’m surprised you haven’t applied to Rome to have her canonized.’

  ‘That’s unkind, Rita,’ said Mum. ‘Mary was very important to Dottie. It takes a long time to get over a loss like that.’

  ‘Well at least this time Ralph Bennett is marrying someone because he wants to, not because he has to. And I’d be obliged if you’d bear in mind that tomorrow is all about me and Nigel and Miranda Louise and not about Dottie and Mary Pickles.’

  Dad winked at me. ‘Don’t worry, Rita. I don’t think that’s something we’re likely to forget,’ he said.

  4

  I didn’t sleep well that night. It might have been the lumpy old mattress on my bed, or the fact that the green and cream striped winceyette sheets were worn and slightly damp, or maybe it was the quiet of the estate after London. Perhaps I was missing the traffic noises and the hustle and bustle of the city. I’d grown up as part of a generation of children on the council estate, and now most of us had moved away or moved on, and it was mainly older people that lived in the houses surrounding Mum and Dad’s. The gardens were better cared for, there were fewer toys and motorbikes in the front yards and more net curtains up at the front windows, but everything was quieter.

  Or maybe I didn’t sleep because every time I closed my eyes all I saw was the face of Ralph Bennett. His lovely face, the face that I’d loved and lost and which, by the sounds of it, was about to marry somebody else. I wish I didn’t feel like this every time I came home. It made coming home something to worry about rather than something to look forward to. I loved spending time with my family but Brighton was too full of memories. The sights, the smells, the sounds of my hometown pulled me back like a magnet to somewhere I didn’t want to go. There were times when I wondered whether it would have been easier to have stayed, to have gone through the pain of losing my best friend and the boy I loved, but when Mary died my only thought was to get away from this place, to walk out of the door and never come back, but life’s not that simple, is it? Coming home is like rubbing salt into a wound that is trying to heal, and so I walk the pavements I walked with Mary and Ralph, I go out of my way to pass the café that is haunted by the people we were. I walk beside the sea, and I sit on our special bench by the lake. I open the door to the past and let it back into my heart, and tomorrow I will have to face Ralph and I am frightened that my heart is going to break all over again. What does all that say about my feelings for Joe?

  Having given up on sleep I got dressed and went downstairs to make a cup of tea. Dad was already up, sitting in the kitchen in his vest and braces, polishing his best shoes on sheets of newspaper laid out on the table, his trademark cigarette burning on the rim of a metal ashtray beside him.

  ‘Do you want a brew?’ I asked.

  ‘Go on then,’ he said. ‘Though I think it’ll take more than tea to get us through today.’

  ‘You could be right.’

  ‘I’ve got a little something in my hip flask,’ Dad said. ‘For emergencies only.’

  ‘Like when I feel like strangling our Rita?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Hope it’s a big flask,’ I said.

  The morning passed far too quickly. I had a bath, a nice hot one with Mum’s best bath salts, and then sat in the garden with a magazine until my younger brother Clark arrived with his new girlfriend. I hadn’t seen Clark for a few months, and although I was prepared for the fact that he was about three inches taller each time I saw him, he had changed his appearance somewhat too. His hair was wavy and came all the way down to his shoulders, and he was wearing round, narrow-rimmed glasses like John Lennon and a long, bright blue coat with what looked like fur on the inside. His trousers were embarrassingly tight and his boots had pointed toes and heels.

  ‘Bloody hell!’ Dad said when he saw Clark.

  ‘Hi,’ I said, going over to hug my brother. He hugged me back.

  ‘Good to see you sis,’ he said. ‘This is Emma.’

  ‘Hello, nice to meet you,’ I said. The girl was tiny, elfin, with a pale little face looking out from behind a huge pair of false eyelashes and lots of blue eyeshadow.

  ‘What’s going down?’ Clark asked.

  ‘My life,’ said Dad. ‘It’s going down faster than the bloody Titanic.’

  ‘Now, Nelson, don’t go getting all in a lather,’ said Mum, swooping into the kitchen.

  ‘Have you seen what he looks like?’ Dad asked, nodding his head in the general direction of Clark. ‘People will wonder if he’s our son or our daughter.’

  ‘I think he looks very nice,’ Mum said in a tone of voice that implied the exact opposite.

  ‘But what’s the point of us raising a lad if he insists on dressing like a girl? Our Dottie’ll be turning up in a bloody jockstrap next!’

  ‘Nelson, don’t use words like that in front of Emma!’

  ‘I’m sure that’s not the first time she’s heard someone say “bloody”.’

  ‘Not that, the “J” word!’ Mum hissed under her breath.

  Emma had gone very pink.

  ‘Where’s your boyfriend, Dottie? Joe, isn’t it?’ Clark asked, no doubt to change the subject. I felt an immediate, strong pang of guilt. It had never, not for one moment, occurred to me to invite Joe to the christening or to meet my family. The idea just hadn’t crossed my mind. Even worse, now I was thinking of it, he’d dropped quite a few hints that he would have liked to be here with me. What was wrong with me? Joe was, everybody agreed, the best boyfriend ever, and I’d treated him like an afterthought.

  ‘He couldn’t come,’ I muttered. ‘He’s busy.’

  Aunty Brenda turned up just as we were about to go.

  ‘No Carol?’ said Mum, enquiring about her niece.

  ‘She seems to be having trouble getting her body out of bed. She said she’d be round later.’

  Mum clapped her hands. ‘Now are we all ready? We want to get the 1.20 bus to be sure we’re at the church in good time.’

  I ran upstairs to fetch my coat and hat. I was pleased with them both. The coat was short, nipped in at the waist, with big buttons. It was a sherbet-orange colour. The hat was cream, with a wide, floppy rim and a ribbon that matched the coat. I put them on and checked my appearance in the mirror in the hall. I put on a little more make-up, hoping that the Dottie behind it would disappear, and I was ready – or as ready as I was ever going to be.

  The christening was being held at St John’s Church, where we had all been christened. It’s a nice church, with a nice vicar. Luckily the bus was on time so our party arrived early. Dad stayed outside smoking, but the rest of us went in to find our seats. Rita and Nigel were already there, Rita looking glamorous and cross, Nigel looking red and sweaty. Baby Miranda was wrapped up in so much lace she was like a caterpillar in a doily. All you could see were her beady little eyes staring in a rather panicked way from deep inside her bonnet.

  ‘Oh bless her little heart!’ Mum said, going all teary-eyed and moving in to kiss Miranda’s cheeks.

  ‘Mum! You’
ve got lipstick all over her now!’ Rita cried. ‘She looks like she’s going down with some awful skin disease.’

  ‘It’s only a little smudge,’ said Aunty Brenda. She took a handkerchief out of her sleeve, licked the corner and went to dab at Miranda’s cheek.

  ‘And that’s unhygienic!’ Rita squealed. ‘Am I the only person round here who cares about anything?’

  I wished Dad was beside me. I could have done with a nip from his flask already.

  I sat down next to Nigel, in the very front row. I figured that this way I wouldn’t have to see Ralph when he came in with his fiancée. And he would go out of the church before us, and I’d just hang around after the service until he’d left. Still I felt nervous. I would be in the same building as Ralph, breathing the same air, singing the same words to the same hymns. I would know that he was there. My heart would know that he was there.

  Nigel’s parents arrived next, and there was a lot of helloing and how-are-youing amongst the older generation. Rita always behaved a bit better in front of her in-laws – what with them living in a mock Tudor house and taking their annual holidays on the Costa del Sol – which meant the rest of us could relax a bit.

  Only I couldn’t relax. I had to keep fighting the urge to look back over my shoulder to see if Ralph had arrived.

  In the end, the christening went very well. There was a hairy moment when I had to walk to the back of the church, down the centre aisle to the font, carrying Miranda in my arms, but I kept my eyes fixed on her face and didn’t look to the left or the right, so if Ralph was there, there was no danger of inadvertently catching his eye. Miranda stared at me with the utmost fascination, as if she believed I was very wise. She was beginning to grow on me. She was good as gold and didn’t cry, even when the vicar sprinkled the holy water on her forehead. Rita, Mum, Aunty Brenda and Nigel’s mum were all dabbing at their eyes and even mine were misting over a little.

  Once the christening was over, the family started making their way out of the church, but I hung back. I hadn’t seen Ralph yet. I didn’t even know whether he was there.