The Wisdom of Sally Red Shoes

by Ruth Hogan

  The rain had started again; not heavy, but enough to make you thoroughly wet if you were out in it. It rattled on the car roof and doodled watery squiggles down the windscreen. Alice checked her watch and sighed. Twenty minutes to kick-off and then another ninety minutes standing on the touchline in the cold, cheering Mattie on. Alice had much preferred it when Christmas had meant coming to watch him in the nativity play or Christmas concert. Unlike Alice, Mattie was a natural performer and loved being centre stage. His innkeeper had brought the house down with his ad lib to Joseph of ‘Don’t you know it’s Christmas? It’s our busiest time of year!’ She pulled on her gloves and buttoned the neck of her parka.

  Never mind. She consoled herself with the thought that this evening, after tea, they were going to decorate the tree. It was artificial, but looked every bit as good as a real one without the annoyance of needles dropping all over the carpet or the inconvenience of finding a way to dispose of it after Twelfth Night. They always decorated the tree together and Alice loved sharing this special Christmas ritual with her son. When Mattie had been small, Alice would wait until he was in bed and then rearrange the ornaments in a more even distribution over the tree. He tended to hang them in a cluster dictated by how high he could reach, but now he was taller than Alice, and it was his job to place the star on the very top of the tree.

  The match was a nil-nil draw. Mattie had scored the only goal, but it was disallowed by the referee, who was a teacher at the home team’s school. He was still fuming at what he perceived to be a terrible injustice when he flung his sports bag onto the back seat and slammed the car door. Alice had no idea whether the referee’s decision had been justified, but she was pretty sure that the yellow card he had shown to her son as a result of his subsequent prolonged and aggressive protest was completely fair. She had been aware of some of the other parents glancing furtively in her direction and had felt her cheeks redden. The man standing next to her, who was the father of one of Mattie’s team mates, shook his head in disbelief.

  ‘Bloody ref should have gone to Specsavers! There was nothing wrong with your lad’s goal.’ Alice was ridiculously grateful for his support.

  Mattie slumped into the passenger seat beside her, glowering. She didn’t want to fight with him tonight.

  ‘Bloody ref should have gone to Specsavers!’ she repeated. Mattie very rarely heard her swear, and knew full well that she understood next to nothing about the rules of football. The grin he fought so hard with his teenage pride to keep from his face eventually defeated him and the storm broke.

  ‘Can we have fish and chips for tea?’

  Alice fastened her seat belt and turned the key in the ignition.

  ‘Of course we can.’

  Chapter 14

  ART

  Masha

  Now more than ever seems it rich to die

  To cease upon the midnight with no pain

  In loving memory of Marie,

  cherished daughter of Maud and Francis

  Delivered from her pain at last

  and sleeping peacefully with the angels

  I often wonder about little Marie. I rather hope that having finally escaped her pain, she is doing something a little more exciting than sleeping peacefully with the angels. I like to think of her as dancing or trampolining or riding ponies with them. Hers is one of the many graves I visit regularly, with its carved lilies on a headstone that, this afternoon, glints in the silver sunlight of the last day of an old year. On the grave itself there is a white marble figure of a sleeping child watched over by two angels. Each delicate curl on her head has been lovingly coaxed from the cold hard stone until it seems as if it would be ruffled by the softest of breezes. Today, as always, I cannot resist stroking her sleeping head. She looks as though the gentlest touch could wake her; so close to life yet so long dead.

  Of course, Keats has been taken out of context. Actually, he is contemplating suicide. He says in the same poem, ‘I have been half in love with easeful Death’.

  Me too.

  There have been times since my beloved boy died that I have thought about it. Not in the fanciful and romantic way Keats describes it, but simply as the most practical option. Just to stop living a life I no longer wanted. I never wanted children. My son was not planned, nor was his father the love of my life. They were both mistakes. But whilst one lost his sparkle as quickly as Christmas tinsel on New Year’s Day, the other lit an unexpected spark of fear and excitement. I double-dared myself to see it through. I needn’t have worried. My fear, like grit in an oyster, turned into a love as pure and perfect as any pearl as soon as I saw his crumpled face. He was an angel and I named him Gabriel. But I wasn’t reborn or transformed into a Blue Peter presenter overnight. I had no intentions of ‘settling down’ to a sensible life and I still wasn’t that fond of children, but this tiny boy became my life. I loved him fiercely to make amends for the fact that I hadn’t wanted him enough at the start.

  His death was my apocalypse.

  After the initial, searing pain, there were days of dark, falling, numbness and then the agony would return. And so began the endless, uncontrollable merry-go-round. Excruciating days of hell on earth when I retched and cried until my throat bled, followed by senseless days of living death when I couldn’t even crawl out of bed. When Gabriel died, I wasn’t there. I failed him at the last. I will never know if he screamed for help or if he struggled. If it was quick and painless, or slow and agonising. It was the things I didn’t know that tortured me and threatened to unravel my sanity, and so I found out as much as I could. I became an expert on drowning.

  Next year I must try harder at swimming.

  This wonderful cemetery, where little Marie is buried, was opened in 1855. I know this because I’ve been swotting up. I spend so much time here that I’ve decided to make myself useful. I intend to volunteer as a Friend of the cemetery. Given my natural aversion to joining things, I don’t want to be on any committees; I just want to do something, preferably on my own, to be helpful. I quite fancy myself as a tour guide, showing people around the cemetery and pointing out graves of particular interest. But before I offer my services I want to make sure that I’m up to the job. So I’m practising what I might say. For example, I might introduce my tour by explaining that the cemetery was designed to look ‘natural’ with its meandering paths and informal tree-planting, and that the aim was to create a landscaped park, but with aspects of the cosy and familiar churchyard to accommodate the Victorian notions of the contemplative tomb and the domesticated dead. Although I’ll probably have to find a slightly slicker way of saying it if I don’t want to bore my tourists to death before they’ve got through the gate.

  Marie’s parents probably visited her every week to keep the grave pretty and tidy. It must have brought them some comfort and I can’t help but envy them that. But now she belongs to my family too. She is one of my ‘Family on the Other Side’, as Edward calls the people whose graves I visit regularly. I have adopted them, one by one, over the years, for a variety of reasons. Some because I am touched by the brief details on the headstone; others because I am drawn by the beauty of the monument; others simply because they look forlorn and long forgotten, and in need of a visitor. All because I have no grave for my own son.

  My second visit today is to Dear Little Colin who died aged eleven in 1913 and was at least spared the pain of losing his father just two years later in the desperate trenches of the First World War. His headstone is crowned with a daisy chain carved into the stone, and bears the inscription ‘The souls of the righteous are in the hands of God’. Let’s hope so.

  Sapper W. W. Ralph is buried near the bottom of one of the rows of graves that run vertically from the chapel towards the park. I visit him on behalf of his mother, Sarah, who will certainly be dead herself by now, just in case she has not been reunited with him. Sapper Ralph died in Mesopotamia in 1917, of heatstroke, aged twenty-two. He was interred in the British Cemetery in Baghdad, and I think it unlikely th
at Sarah or his father, Thomas, were ever able to visit him there, which is why they had a memorial erected in my cemetery. I picture their young son delirious with fever, dreaming of his mother’s cool, comforting hands on his face and a glass of ice-cold, home-made lemonade, whilst dying beneath the sweat-soaked sheets of an Army hospital bed thousands of miles from home. Of course, it’s entirely possible that Sarah was a dreadful fishwife and Sapper Ralph dreamed of a large glass of beer and a final night of passion with a big-breasted woman called Gloria. But I’m basing my opinion of their characters on the only clues I have, which are the tasteful design of the headstone and the poignant words written in his memory.

  It is getting chilly now and I’m ready for home. Edward is throwing a party tonight and Haizum and I are both invited. For once, I’m looking forward to New Year’s Eve. In fact, for once, I’m trying to look forward instead of longing for the past. Another wasted year has almost slipped away, but I’m determind that next year is going to be different. Haizum cocks his head as a disembodied snatch of music floats past. He turns and searches for the source of the sound, pulling me with him. There is a distant figure standing in a higher part of the cemetery with her arms flung open and her head held high. Singing. She is singing. It looks like Sally. I am too curious to walk away but approach using a circuitous route, so as not to intrude or (heaven forbid!) appear nosey. It is Sally. She seems to be directing her performance towards a group of Italian graves covered in lanterns and bright silk flowers, and is engaging with the headstones exactly as if they were her audience. I recognise the tune, but the words are in Italian, apart from the odd, random English expletive. It is a bizarre scene, but strangely beautiful. I don’t know whether to stay or try to slip quietly away. As Sally hits a particularly high note, Haizum decides to harmonise, throwing back his head and howling like a banshee, which soundly scuppers any chance we had of making a discreet exit. Sally sees us and acknowledges me with a slight nod, but she is totally immersed in her music and Haizum continues as her enthusiastic accompanist As they reach their final crescendo, a scattering of crows bursts skyward from the canopy of one of the firs and Sally bows deeply to the sound of their wings’ applause.

  As the crows fly off into the park Sally grabs a red rose from one of the graves, picks up her bag from the ground and heads towards us. The sun is low in the sky now, and the leaden clouds are backlit with gold. Haizum greets Sally with the affection that he reserves for those whom he associates with food, and tries to push his nose inside her bag, searching for bread.

  ‘Daft silly fucker.’ She rubs his head and fishes out a crust for him. She hands me the rose and takes my arm – which catches me by surprise – and she walks me towards the gate.

  ‘Your singing was lovely,’ I tell her.

  ‘Him too!’ she replies, nodding at Haizum.

  This woman should, by rights, scare the bejesus out of me. She shouts and swears, sings to dead people, steals flowers from graves and is clearly as mad as a jumping jack. And she’s touching me (remember my aversion to gratuitous hugging?). But I think I like her. She is like a naughty best friend at school who will lure you into mischief but will always have your back. Maybe we could form a double act and my guided tours of the cemetery could include musical interludes courtesy of Sally. In the park the crows are waiting on the grass and Sally flings the bread at them as though she is sowing seeds. By the time her bag is empty, it is getting dark and the silent park is falling asleep under a blanket of shadows. As I leave her at the bus stop I wish her a happy New Year. She bends and kisses Haizum on the head and then turns and salutes me.

  ‘Bugger my boots and knees up Mother Brown!’

  I couldn’t have put it any better myself.

  Chapter 15

  ART

  Today’s pool temperature is 6.3 degrees, and this morning I’m swimming not drowning. I’ll do ten lengths and then treat myself to a flat white coffee and a blueberry muffin before heading off to work. Since my epiphany at Epiphany’s dinner party, I’ve been trying to change. Christmas was hard, as it always is, with memories divided into ‘befores’ and ‘afters’. Even the happy ones, when my boy was still alive, are now bordered in black, like mourning stationery. But it’s a new year and things are going to be different. It’s not easy. I’m still an addict and some days I succumb to the merciless cravings. Then, once again, I can be found crouching underwater at the deep end. But not today. Today the sting of cold water on my bare skin is exhilarating, reminding me with every stroke I take how very much alive I am. And lucky to be so. There are only a handful of other swimmers in the pool. Epiphany would very much approve of the man I keep passing in the lane next to mine. With his broad shoulders and powerful legs, he is, to borrow her words, scything through the water like an Olympian.

  The high from swimming in such cold water is intoxicating and I am disappointed when my ten lengths are done, but my fingers are beginning to go white at the tips and it is time for me to get out. Dried and dressed, I order my breakfast from Flo, the woman who serves in the lido café.

  ‘You ought to be having a bloomin’ great fry-up after swimming in that freezing pool,’ she exclaims, as she tops up my coffee with steamed milk. Flo is everyone’s mother, dispensing advice, whether it’s wanted or not, to all her customers in the same no-nonsense tone.

  ‘I expect that’s what you’ll be having,’ she says to the person waiting behind me to be served. It’s the Olympian.

  ‘Next time, Flo,’ he answers with a grin.

  ‘That’s what you always say. Let me guess – Americano to go?’

  I take my order over to a table overlooking the pool while Flo prepares his drink. I hate to admit it, but I’m disappointed that his order is to go. He looks just as good with his clothes on as he does without them, and there is something very warm about the tone of his voice. And by warm, what I actually mean is sexy. I suddenly realise that I’m staring and turn my attention to the singing book I have with me just in case the Australian turns up. As I flick idly through the pages I’m reminded of Sally singing to the Italians in the cemetery. I’m certainly no expert, but from what I could tell, she can sing very well. I’m inexorably drawn to Sally. Every time I go to the park or the cemetery, I find myself seeking out her raggedy figure through the dark trees or amongst the gravestones, hoping that she’ll talk to me or, if her words are ferhoodled (word of the day – mixed up, muddled), simply walk with me. Her idiosyncrasies are strangely comforting, as though they somehow excuse or at least diminish my own.

  When the Olympian has gone, coffee in hand, Flo comes over to wipe the top of the perfectly clean table next to mine.

  ‘He’d just do for you,’ she says to me, with a wink. As I said: advice given, wanted or not. And now I’m blushing.

  Chapter 16

  ART

  Alice

  As the cold, velvet drugs slunk into her plump vein, she leaned back into the softness. This was the terrible place where the brown envelope that she had refused to open until after Christmas had led her. This could be the beginning of the unravelling of her carefully constructed world. She would try to hide it from Mattie for as long as she could, but her past had finally caught up with her and now she would have to pay a catastrophic price. The here and now slipped away and her mind was sucked backwards into a vacuum until it was caught in a net woven by memories of the distant past.

  Kissing the crown of dark, damp curls and counting the ten tiny fingers and toes as she held Mattie in her arms for the first time. The nurse had smiled and said that he weighed 7lbs and 4oz . . .

  A spring morning so long ago and Mattie crying by the river. She had kissed away his tears, hot and salty. Scraps of bread to feed the ducks were still squashed in his baby, chubby fingers, and a tiny white feather . . .

  Mattie in a school blazer, too big; his first. Shiny black shoes and grey socks that folded over just below his bony knees. So excited to be going to school at last. Until then she had kept him close; too c
lose, perhaps. Just him and her. But when that day came she knew she had to let him go. She spent the whole day waiting for him to come back . . .

  Mattie’s sixth birthday party. His friends from school came over and there were games – Pass the Parcel and Musical Chairs – and the little girl in the blue dress who cried when she didn’t win. Or was it a red dress? She had made cheese straws and a cake with a train on it.

  Back in the real world her arm was cold and she shifted in the chair, pushing herself further back, but her mind stayed where it was, clutching at the memories as they drifted past.

  Learning to swim at the local baths. She had held his hands while he kicked like fury with his strong little legs and laughed with joy. Blue swimming trunks with a red stripe. Armbands at first, but soon he didn’t need them. He could swim on his own like a big boy . . .

  He was always such a good boy; a happy boy. She must have been a good mother because he was always happy. She made him a birthday cake and taught him to swim. And he hadn’t died like all the others.

  Chapter 17

  ART

  Masha

  Most people would call this a fine spring morning, but not me. I hate the spring. I don’t want to. I want my heart, like Wordsworth’s, to dance with the daffodils. But instead I fall morosely into step with Pooh’s friend Eeyore. As soon as the trees flaunt fresh leaves and lanterns of blossom and the sun begins to warm as well as illuminate, my world is cast into shadows. As new life emerges all around, I can only see how fragile and vulnerable it is. For me spring is always a harbinger of doom.