The Wisdom of Sally Red Shoes

by Ruth Hogan

  A few moments later the kitchen door opened and Mattie shuffled in wearing his favourite old jogging bottoms and a sheepish smile. He looked so young again, more like her little boy. She took a deep breath.

  ‘Mattie, I was worried. It gets dark so early, and there are only a couple of street lights out there. If you had rung me and asked, it might have been different. That’s what your mobile is for. But you didn’t and so I was afraid that something bad might have happened. To you.’ She waited a while for her words to sink in before adding, ‘Can you understand that?’

  He nodded, keeping his eyes fixed on his feet.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mum. I didn’t mean to make you worry.’

  When he was little he would have hugged her, but now he was too embarrassed. He stroked her arm roughly with the back of his hand; an awkward, loving gesture that made everything suddenly all right. Alice ruffled his hair – he was still her boy – and shook her head in mock despair.

  ‘Well, I suppose I’ll just have to chuck this away.’ She picked up the plate with the cake on it and made towards the bin.

  ‘Nooooo!’ Mattie howled and swiped his finger through the chocolate icing before smearing it onto the tip of her nose.

  After dinner, when Mattie’s homework had been done, they sat together on the sofa watching WALL-E for the umpteenth time. It was a film about a small, sweet-natured robot left alone to clean up a post-apocalyptic Earth and Mattie had loved it ever since she had first taken him to see it at the cinema. The fact he still loved it reassured Alice that the spirit of her small, sweet-natured boy remained somewhere inside the body of this gangling youth beside her, and when the familiar happy ending played out as it should, she could have sworn he brushed a tear from his razor-sore cheek.

  Chapter 9

  ART

  Masha

  My parents’ neat 1930s semi is a time machine. Each room transports me back to a different point in my past. On the wall in what used to be my bedroom, the poster of Red Roofs by Pissarro still clings resolutely to the wall. A little curled at the corners and tattered around the edges now, it was a present on my fourteenth birthday and back then was flanked on either side by Madonna and Boy George. The single bed is bare but I can still picture the rose-strewn eiderdown that used to cover it. It was the kind that, with its shabby chic credentials, would now fetch a fortune on eBay. I can still feel the prick on my skin when one of the feather quills poked through the silky material, and smell its powdery, Parma violet embrace when I snuggled beneath it on winter nights. Mum tried many times to persuade me to change it for a duvet, but it had come from my beloved grandma’s house, and I refused to part with it. My white dressing table used to stand under the window, cluttered with the usual magpie miscellany that was the lifeblood of a teenage girl. Flashy bottles of perfume and gaudy nail polish, Maybelline mascara and eyeshadow, and a wooden music box containing a real silver charm bracelet and a tangle of cheap costume jewellery. It’s all gone now, except for the empty bed and the poster, but these four walls still hold the essence of my teenage self.

  Mum and Dad had planned to redecorate the room as a place for their grandson to stay. But before the stepladder could be brought in from the shed and the pasting table erected, their plans had been made obsolete. I never asked what happened to the Peter Rabbit wallpaper and matching bedlinen.

  On the landing is a low, glass-fronted cabinet containing a collection of tiny animal ornaments that my dad bought for my mum while they were courting. The dogs were always my favourites, and when I was about six or seven I was occasionally allowed to take them out and play with them. Carefully. I used to re-enact The Hundred and One Dalmatians, or at least a rather loose interpretation of it, with a pair of pugs, a dachshund, a Great Dane and an indeterminate specimen, my preferred playmate, who looked like a cross between a sheep and a weasel. He’s still in the cabinet, despite having lost a foot in one of our adventures. He was parachuting to the floor attached to a plastic rain hood to rescue one of the pugs from the evil clutches of a ferocious daddy-long-legs, and he miscalculated his landing, ricocheting off the edge of the coffee table during his descent. I stuck his foot back on with a tiny piece of bubble gum. Mum probably doesn’t know, even now.

  In the kitchen, the back wall of the pantry still bears patches of the wallpaper that is one of my earliest memories – a hideous brown, cream and orange repeat floral pattern – that once covered all the walls and was home high fashion when I was still in my high chair. Also in the pantry, somewhere at the back – probably hidden behind a dusty packet of cornflour, or tucked inside an empty cocoa tin – is a white china pie funnel in the shape of an elephant. It was originally my grandma’s and Mum used it every time she made one of her apple and blackberry pies. As a little girl I loved it. And so did my little boy. Which is why it is now hidden out of sight for fear that it might summon up painful memories. But I know it’s still here – somewhere. They couldn’t bear to part with it, but nor can they bear to look it at.

  Haizum bounds in through the back door, tail lashing furiously, and sets off in search of Mum, who is a soft touch when it comes to the contents of the fridge. Before I can wipe my feet on the doormat, she follows him back into the kitchen.

  ‘Here’s my big boy!’ she greets him, cupping his head in her hands. ‘I expect you’re hungry, aren’t you?’ She opens the fridge and feeds him half a dozen cocktail sausages that he wolfs down without even chewing.

  ‘Would you like a cup of tea, love?’ She addresses me more cautiously.

  ‘Thanks, Mum. Just a quick one. I’ve got loads to do. I just popped round with the name of the Chief Constable for Dad.’

  I always do that. Pave the way for my departure when I’ve barely set foot in the door. I don’t have to be back at work for at least an hour, but I can’t be here without having a clear sight of the way out. I need to see the EXIT sign lit up in the dark, just in case I have to escape the other memories that resonate relentlessly here. I didn’t have to come round. I could have phoned, but I do like to see them. And I know how much they love having Haizum around. But. I go through to the sitting room, leaving Haizum in the kitchen begging Mum for more sausages. This room seems closest to the present, but still feels as though it is snagged on the hook of that terrible moment that changed all our lives forever. It has a dual aspect, looking out onto both the front and back gardens, and today it is bathed in the tawny light of a sunny winter afternoon. I sit, as I always do, on the sofa that faces the front window, overlooking the closely cropped lawn and the privet hedge that shelters a flock of garrulous sparrows.

  The photos used to have pride of place on the mantelpiece, but now they sit on top of the bureau in a shady corner of the room beside the back window. There are three of them. One was taken when he was just ten weeks old. He is in my arms, looking up into my face, and the tiny fingers of his left hand are curled around my thumb. If I look at the photo, my arms remember the warm, breathing weight of him, and the grip so hard on my thumb, as though he would never let it go. But I don’t look. There is another of him in the back garden of this house, sitting on a blanket, legs splayed, playing with a ball. The third was taken just a week before he died. It is a studio shot of the proud grandparents with their precious grandson. The happy smiles before the heartbreak. It has never been mentioned – the migration of the photographs. There are lots of things we don’t talk about now.

  Haizum trots in looking very pleased with himself, followed by Mum carrying two mugs of tea.

  ‘I’ve called your father twice now, but he’s messing around with something in the garage, so if his tea gets cold it’s his own fault.’

  She hands me a mug and nudges a coaster nearer to me on the side table next to the sofa. As soon as she sits down in an armchair, Haizum plonks his head in her lap and stares up at her adoringly.

  ‘How’s my handsome boy, then?’ she asks him, stroking his ears.

  ‘Probably full of sausages, judging by the amount of time he spen
t with his head in your fridge,’ I tease.

  Haizum sighs contentedly, basking in the attention he is receiving. Or perhaps he has indigestion. I wouldn’t be at all surprised.

  ‘He’s a great big fella, so he needs to keep up his strength.’

  Haizum demonstrates Mum’s point by whacking her knee with one of his giant paws.

  ‘This tea’s cold!’ Dad marches in, still wearing his cap and overalls, his nose red-tipped from the chill of the garage.

  ‘I called you twice to come in, but either you’re going deaf or you had the radio on too loud. In any case, there’s more in the pot if you want a fresh one.’

  Haizum trots after Dad, back into the kitchen, where I can hear the fridge door being opened again.

  ‘You’ll make him fat!’ I call, but either Dad is going deaf or – much more likely – he is choosing to ignore me.

  Mum plumps the cushion behind her and then picks up her mug from the table and takes a sip. ‘Your father’s going daft as well as deaf,’ she mutters. ‘This tea’s still plenty hot enough. So, how’s work? Are you busy?’

  Nice and safe. These are the things we do talk about – work, Haizum, the weather. Whether it’s garden rubbish bin collection this week, or orange recycling. These things we are comfortable with. The other things are always just a whisper away, but we never give them oxygen.

  ‘Busy enough. I’ve had two new clients this week, which always helps.’

  The mantle clock ticks steadily, marking the nearly but not quite comfortable pauses in our conversation. Mum is silently counting the ticks, but stops when she catches me watching her barely moving lips.

  ‘Peggy next door is having her cataract seen to next week. I’ve promised to make her Ronald a chicken casserole to tide him over while she gets used to wearing a patch. She’s worried she might not be able to cook without dropping things.’

  ‘She’ll have an eye patch, not her arm in a sling. She just fancies one of your home-cooked dinners instead of that microwave mush she usually serves up.’

  The neighbours are a lovely couple, but cooking isn’t something that Peggy has ever got the measure of.

  ‘Don’t you feed this hound of yours? He’s starving.’ Dad comes back in, minus his cap and with a fresh mug of tea in his hand. Haizum is following him, nudging at Dad’s trouser pocket.

  ‘He’s clearly not starving; if anything he’s getting a tad portly for a wolfhound. He just knows that you and Mum will spoil him rotten whenever he comes to visit.’

  Haizum pushes his nose into Dad’s pocket, causing him to slop tea over his hand onto his trousers. I grab Haizum’s collar and address him sternly.

  ‘Now that’s enough, my lad. Sit down nicely or you’ll be waiting for me outside!’

  My attempt at discipline is wasted as Dad immediately springs to his defence with ‘Oh, leave the daft bugger alone. He was only after the humbug that’s in my pocket.’

  He pulls the boiled sweet out to prove his point and Haizum is immediately by his side looking hopeful.

  ‘Absolutely not!’ I warn the pair of them. ‘Especially as you never let me brush your teeth,’ I add, to a crestfallen Haizum.

  I drain my mug and stand up to hand Dad a piece of paper.

  ‘Here are the Chief Constable’s details. Now, don’t go causing any trouble . . .’

  I kiss each of my parents on the cheek. ‘Don’t come out. Stay and finish your tea.’

  ‘What’s left of it!’ says Dad, ruffling the fur on Haizum’s head. On my way out through the kitchen, I pause at the back door and glance over towards the pantry. For a moment I’m tempted to go in and fetch the pie funnel. To hold it in my hand and feel the smooth, cold china on my skin. But I don’t. I leave the bittersweet sepia world that my parents’ home has become exactly as I found it.

  Chapter 10

  ART

  Today’s pool temperature is 8.7. In other words, absolutely freezing. I was in the pool for a grand total of ten minutes. Partly due to the icy water and partly because of the nosey parker in the wetsuit. I know that most people would find my behaviour in the pool a bit odd and I fully understand why. I swim to the deep end, disappear under the water, stay there for as long as I can and then swim back down the pool and get out. It’s strange, I grant you, but I’m not doing anything wrong. It’s not as though I’m taking a pee in the pool or ogling passing packages in Speedos. I don’t expect to be questioned. This is England. But the woman in the wetsuit was Australian.

  ‘Blimey, what’s your game? It’s a bit chilly to be playing fishes, isn’t it?’

  She must have got into the pool just after me and she is the reason why I am now sitting in the car park pretending to sing whilst Edith Piaf is throwing a wobbly. Edith Piaf is my car – a green and white Citroën 2CV. Like her namesake she is small and French, with huge eyes (headlamps) and can be a bit of a diva. Currently she is objecting to the cold and refusing to start, which is why I’m having to perpetrate this ridiculous charade while the Australian takes an age to unlock her bicycle from the cycle rack.

  ‘I’m a singer. The underwater thing is just a way to improve my breathing technique.’ As lies go, I was rather pleased with it at the time. She caught me on the hop. It was the first thing that came into my head and I thought it sounded pretty plausible. But I couldn’t sustain it in conversation. I know nothing about ‘proper’ singing. So now I’m over-compensating in case the Australian is watching, whilst willing Edith to get her derriere in gear and start. I’ve even chosen ‘Waltzing Matilda’ as my pretend song. Finally, Edith gives a grudging splutter and shudders into life. Merci beaucoup!

  Back home I leave Edith in the drive and walk to the corner shop. I didn’t trust her to start again if I stopped at the shop on the way. Inside, Elvis is sitting on the floor, carefully examining the tins of tomato soup. Not the swivel-pelvis Elvis of Graceland, Memphis, Tennessee, but our local reincarnation of him. Our Elvis is in his late sixties and has slicked-back black hair and red cowboy boots. Today he is wearing a peaked leather cap, crushed velvet trousers and several coats of mascara. And our Elvis rides a bicycle. But not just any bicycle. It is a magnificent machine with coloured tassels attached to the end of the handlebars, a large wicker basket and an assortment of mirrors on long stalks that look like strange futuristic flowers. As a small girl I distinctly remember having two things at the top of my wish list before the days when the desperate longing for a pony eclipsed any other desire. I wanted a swimming costume with a little frilly skirt attached and coloured tassels for the handles of my bike. I was disappointed on both counts. Every time I see Elvis’s bicycle I feel a ripple of envy and, on occasion, gently stroke the tassels as it stands outside the shop. I have even once contemplated grand theft bicycle. But then, I’d never get away with it. Everyone knows this is Elvis’s dream machine.

  Elvis is a discerning shopper. Today his list includes tomato soup, which means each tin must be removed from the shelf, scrupulously inspected, and then set down on the floor. Once all the tins have been examined, a selection will be made and the chosen tin will be placed in his shopping basket. Occasionally someone will tut ungraciously as they are forced to manoeuvre themselves around his seated form and selected groceries to reach the cornflakes, but regular customers take it in their stride. Literally.

  The corner shop is a microcosm of the neighbourhood it serves. The shopping baskets filled with its products are small windows into the lives led by its customers. The tinned prunes and denture cleaner are for the inhabitants of the retirement flats on the corner. The sweets, crisps and fizzy drinks are bought by the younger pupils of the private girls’ school just down the street; boisterous, self-assured creatures with Alice bands and ankle socks. Celebrity gossip magazines, bottles of flavoured water and lip gloss cater for the fifth and sixth formers; willowy adolescents, quieter, less assured but more disdainful. Cigarettes, cheap cider and Pot Noodles are favourites with the tenants of the nearby Housing Association flats, largely o
ccupied by young, single, unemployed men. The smart, thirty-something professionals who live in the streets that run off the main road, in large houses brimming with newly acquired period features and bespoke furniture, buy lemongrass, truffle oil and goat’s cheese for their dinner parties with other smart, thirty-something professionals with names like Hugo and Olivia.

  Or perhaps I misjudge them.

  Maybe the woman in top-to-toe Ted Baker, who is carefully selecting a ripe avocado to add to the crème fraîche, pimento-stuffed olives and organic chocolate already in her basket, is having a post-children, pre-menopausal, passionate affair with her snake-hipped, wet-lipped Zumba instructor. Maybe she is going home to change into her Agent Provocateur underwear. Maybe this woman and her afternoon lover will paint one another with the organic chocolate and then lick it off during the throes of wild and sweaty sexual intercourse. Maybe. But I’m definitely right about the people from the retirement flats. The tinned prunes are for digestive rather than sexual purposes. I am here to buy a bottle of wine, a custard doughnut, dog biscuits, a packet of mints and some tissues, which probably makes me a boozy, lonely, comfort-eating dog-lady with bad breath and chronic rhinitis.

  Elvis is behind me in the queue, quietly singing to himself. The elderly woman at the counter is struggling with gnarled, arthritic fingers to prise a couple of pound coins from her purse to pay for a pint of milk and a packet of fondant fancies. I wonder if they will have fondant fancies at Happy Endings. The thought makes me feel ever so slightly sick. Coins flick out of the poor woman’s uncooperative fingers and spin across the floor. Elvis retrieves them and places them gently into her veined and crooked hand with a flirty wink that brings a smile to her face.