by Heidi James
The thing about Melanie was that she was brilliant at everything, but she didn’t care. She didn’t want it, this shininess she had. Even in sport: she was the fastest sprinter in the school, setting a district record when she was fourteen, but she turned down all invitations to join the athletics team and run for the county. She was brilliant, and she didn’t give a shit. None of it, not the skull, not the books, her grace or insight, none of it was self-conscious or pretentious: she just was. And he worshipped her. And resented her, just a little.
‘Has she fucked up my hair?’ Mel’s mum said, looking at herself in a small mirror over the kitchen sink, turning her head one way then the other to check the lines of bleached blonde that intersected the rest of her fair hair.
‘Turn around so I can see properly,’ Mel said, her little brother on her lap, sucking his thumb, his blonde hair and blue eyes in direct contrast with her own.
‘I think it looks fine, Mrs Shoreham,’ he said, feeling bold and adult smoking the cigarette Mel’s mum had offered him when they’d sat down with her.
‘Mrs Shoreham! You make me sound old. Just call me Chrissie. Mel?’
‘Yeah?’ She squeezed the little boy close and blew a raspberry on his neck, making him giggle and wriggle on her knee.
‘My hair?’
‘It’s fine.’
‘You sure? Bless Dot, she’s a darling, but she ain’t much of a hairdresser.’
‘Why’d you let her do it then?’ Mel put her brother down. ‘Off you go, Jamie. Go and play.’ The boy toddled off, his tiny flat feet leaving moist prints on the floor.
‘Because she needs the money and it keeps her busy, poor thing.’
‘Is she your sister, Mrs… Chrissie?’ He crossed his legs and leaned back on the chair.
‘God, no. Her mum and mine worked together in the kitchens up at the Army barracks, they were thick as thieves them two. Feels like I’ve known her forever. She used to come to my mum for her dinner after her mum got cancer. She was a pretty girl, you wouldn’t know it now though.’ She sat down at the table with them and lit a fag. ‘That’s what sorrow and heartbreak do to a face.’ She pushed the packet of cigarettes towards him and Mel.
‘Looks more like fags and booze to me,’ Mel said, leaning back on her chair and balancing on the two hind legs.
‘Amounts to the same thing don’t it? And be careful of them chairs, I’m still paying for them on tick.’
‘Right.’ Mel dropped down and stood, walking over to the back door. ‘Come on, Marcus. Let’s go for a walk.’
‘OK.’ He stood, almost knocking the chair over, puzzled by the sudden change in mood. Chrissie sat impassive, smoking, stroking the pad of her ring finger against the weave of the checked tablecloth. ‘Bye,’ he said as he followed Mel out. ‘Thanks for having me.’
‘Don’t thank me, my love, thank your mum.’
‘Pardon?’
‘For having you!’ she said and laughed to herself as he pulled the back door shut behind him.
The Allotment
I turned down the alleyway, two doors down from Mel’s old place, stinking of piss and with nettles over five feet tall that almost blocked the way, but I shouldered through towards the back of the houses and turned left. The path opened out, the nettles and bindweed cut back to allow access. I jogged to the end, past the gardens and houses: the washing hanging limp in the heat, the ponds and water features, plastic garden furniture and rusting BBQs, swing sets, the mattresses and building rubble, neat square lawns and barking dogs.
I felt tired, old suddenly, overwhelmed. I carried on to the end of the path that seemed much longer than I remembered. I wondered if I’d got it wrong, if I was in the wrong place. But then the path split at an angle and squared around the allotments just as I’d thought it would. I followed the tall wire fence to the right, the neat parcels of land full of late flowers, runner beans climbing willow frames, fruit bushes covered in netting and tomatoes swooning against their bamboo supports behind their glass frames. It was more abundant than I remembered, no doubt because of the new craze for organic and growing your own.
I reached the gate and rattled the heavy padlock; it was locked of course. So I carried on, skirting the perimeter, checking to see if anyone was around. Bantams were chittering and scratching in a wood-framed run on a newly-turned patch of soil. It was peaceful back there, the noise from the streets muffled by the vegetation. I could see the appeal of escaping there every day, digging and pruning and minding my own business. At the next turn I should’ve been by Charlie’s plot, but it had gone. Or rather, all trace of him had gone. His shed and loft had been replaced by a summerhouse painted in pink and cream stripes, and raspberry bushes protected by netting. Of course he wouldn’t be there. I was losing my grip, looking in the wrong places. Expecting the world I left to stay the same; that time would stop. I turned to leave, to get back to the car, to Steve Burrell, to Edward and the Sentinel, Mother.
‘Who you looking for?’ A woman, short and fat, leaned on the back gate of her garden. Behind her I could see a folding picnic chair and her discarded newspaper. She was breathless from the short walk down the path. I would’ve put her at around sixty but it was hard to tell; her hair was dyed the blue-black of magpie feathers.
‘What makes you think I’m looking for someone?’
She laughed, a low huffing sound that teetered towards a cough. ‘You don’t look like the type to be nicking potatoes off the allotment, now do you?’
I smiled back. ‘Probably not.’
‘So what you doing there? Admiring the view?’
I looked up at the skyline, where the pale blue met the brown roof tiles and grey satellite dishes, weighing up the question. I had nothing to lose; at the very least it would be another false lead among many. ‘Actually I’m looking for Charlie, he used to have an allotment right here. He had some—’
‘I know Charlie, big fella, handsome. He don’t come here no more. Had a stroke, he did. Here in fact. They had a right job getting him out and into the ambulance.’
‘He’s alive though?’
‘Yeah, take more than that finish off old Charlie. He’s in the sheltered housing down on Gladstone Road. You know it?’
‘I’ll find it.’
‘He’d like a visitor, I expect. You an old friend of his?’ She cocked her head to one side, the flesh under her chin wobbling and adjusting to the new angle of her head.
‘Yeah, something like that.’
‘Been away, have you? Easy to lose touch, I suppose. I’ve lived here all my life, born in this house I was, be taken out of it in a box I expect.’
‘Oh right.’ I wanted to get away, get out of the heat and find Charlie, but I stood there torn between the need to hide and the need for some answers, for some clarity.
‘Make sure you ring first. The warden there is a right old cow. My aunt Ginny lived there after her Eric passed away, miserable she was. Terrible arthritis, so she couldn’t get about much, you know. I used to pop over, take her some shopping, a bit of tea or what have you, that’s how I know the warden. Nasty piece of work, never a kind word or a smile for anyone. They said cancer got poor old Ginny, but I reckon she was lonely.’
‘They say loneliness is a killer.’ I wiped the sweat collecting in the stubble on my top lip and rubbed my damp hand on my trouser leg.
‘Do they? Well, there you go. Make sure you ring first, that’s my advice.’
‘I will, thanks. That’s really helpful.’
‘And tell Charlie Rita says hello, will you?’
I nodded and walked away, knowing that if I turned back she’ll still be there, watching me go. Waiting for me to fall.
1989
‘Come on, I’ll take you to meet Charlie.’ She crossed the narrow garden, stepping over a plastic trike and a half-deflated paddling pool, and swung her legs over the low fence i
nto the alleyway running between the gardens.
‘Charlie, your dad?’
‘My old stepdad, he was married to my mum when I was a kid.’
‘Oh, so is he your brother’s dad?’ He followed her through the passage, dodging the clumps of nettles and brambles still rich and tall from summer.
‘No, he was born after Charlie left.’
‘Right. Have you had many dads?’
She turned and looked over her shoulder, her eyebrow raised. ‘What?’
‘Well, you said the man in the chip shop was almost your dad, and there’s Charlie and…’
She turned right into another alleyway, this one bordered by gardens on the right and a tall chicken wire fence on the left, beyond which a large field was sectioned up into different groups of plants and flowers with sheds dotted here and there, small plastic fencing dividing one section of ground from another.
‘Sometimes things don’t work out, and my mum doesn’t like being on her own. She prefers a man around. It’s complicated.’
‘Right.’
‘Can you stop saying that?’ She’d stopped at a gate in the wire fence and was pulling at the catch.
‘What?’
‘“Right,” as if you were a social worker or something. It’s doing my head in.’
‘OK, sorry. I’m just curious.’ She’d managed to open the gate and together they walked into the allotments; rows of houses, including Mel’s, bordered the fence all the way around. ‘My mother hasn’t had a boyfriend or anything since my dad died. I wish she would though.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know, it might be nice for her.’
‘For her, maybe. Be careful what you wish for.’
Charlie’s allotment was in the far right corner and, unlike all the others with their fruit bushes and ruler-straight rows of vegetables, his was a small patch of bare earth with a tool shed one side and a large aviary on the other which he was sweeping out as they arrived.
‘Hello there, my treasure.’ He straightened up, smiling when he saw Mel, tucking the broom into a corner and stepping carefully out of the enclosure, leaving the door open behind him. ‘How are you?’
‘I’m alright. You?’
‘Mustn’t grumble, you know. Who’s this then?’ He stretched out his large hand towards Marcus.
‘Marcus meet Charlie, Charlie meet Marcus.’ His hand wrapped around Marcus’s and squeezed, but not too hard; there was no macho crushing of the bones in his fingers.
‘Hello Marcus.’
‘Hello.’ He let go and stepped back close to Mel.
‘You come to see my birdies then?’
‘Yeah, and you of course,’ she smiled up at him. His face was lined, dry as split wood, and his nose was broad and crooked at the bridge. Thickset and stocky, the bulky muscles of his youth were now covered by a soft layer of fat. He looked like a retired boxer, with just a hint of menace still lingering.
‘You going to school?’
‘Sometimes.’
‘You sure?’ He turned to Marcus. ‘Is she?’ He shrugged and Charlie shook his head.
‘How’s your mother?’
‘Same.’
‘That Steve been back?’ Melanie shook her head. ‘She alright then, is she?’
‘Ask me no questions, and I’ll tell you no lies.’ Mel smiled and pressed her face up against the fine wire of the aviary. ‘How’s Lucinda?’
‘She’s alright. She’s doing well actually.’
‘Can I show her to Marcus?’
‘In a minute,’ he said. He opened the door of the little shed, pulled out a couple of folding chairs and wrenched them open. ‘Come on then, sit yourselves down.’
They sat, side by side, as Charlie rummaged in his shed again, lifting out a large black bucket and upending it to make another seat. Bending his knees to sit, he tucked his right arm under his backside and scooped his trousers flat against his body as he sat down. Then he pinched the knee of his trousers and pulled them up his big thigh a little, to prevent bagging. It seemed strangely fussy for such a big, bulky man, especially one who looked like he could swing a punch as quick as he would shake your hand.
‘Well then, this is nice,’ he said, his hands clasped between his knees. ‘Do you want a cup of tea? I’ve got me Thermos in the shed if you fancy it.’
‘Go on then,’ Mel said. ‘I’ll get it shall I?’ As she stood, a small flock of birds turned a tight loop over their heads, wings cracking the air. They dropped as one into the aviary and settled on the perches that stretched across the wire in front of nesting boxes.
‘There they are, my babies!’ Charlie stood and walked with Melanie into the enclosure, shutting the door behind them. Charlie held out his hand and stroked the plump breast of a large white bird with his finger. ‘Here’s my Lucinda, here’s my special one.’
‘Oh, is that a dove?’ Marcus said, coming closer.
‘No, she’s a pigeon, but a beautiful one.’
‘She’s not just a pretty face either is she?’ said Mel, scooping up a fistful of grain from the feed tray and offering her cupped hand to the birds.
‘No she isn’t, she’s a champion this one. Ain’t you?’ The bird cocked her head to one side as if listening, her eyes clicking open and shut. She puffed out her feathers and shook herself, the red metal ring around her ankle flicking like a bracelet before she settled down to sleep.
‘What’s the difference?’
‘What’s that?’ Charlie said.
‘Between a dove and a pigeon?’ Marcus asked.
‘There ain’t one really, one is smaller than the other, that’s all.’
‘Then I think Lucinda is a dove. It sounds better than pigeon don’t you think?’
Charlie laughed, his eyes screwing shut. ‘He’s a right one you’ve got there, Melly-Moo.’ A cough erupted from deep in his chest, a dark rattle that shook his whole body.
She nodded. ‘He’s special all right. You should see a doctor about that cough.’ She rubbed his wide back.
‘I’m not seeing no quack. Can’t stand ’em,’ he said, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand
‘Why? That’s silly, you should get checked out.’
‘Because no one should know more about my body and its doings than me. Too much bloody power them doctors have. Keeping secrets from me, telling me what to do like I’m a kid.’ He started to cough again, his face red.
‘OK. Whatever you say. You know best.’
‘Yes I do. Right, I’ll better get on with clearing up this lot. Help yourself to that cuppa if you want one.’ His large body looked suddenly hollowed out, as if it was made of blown glass filled with bad air, rather than solid and strong as before. He seemed angry at his own weakness.
‘Nah, it’s alright, we won’t deprive you of your tea. Right, let’s go, Marcus Aurelius.’ She hugged Charlie, pressing her face against his chest and letting him hold her close for a moment.
‘Alright then, bye, babe,’ he said. ‘Tell your mum I was asking after her.’
‘I will,’ she said as she came out of the coop and took Marcus’s hand.
‘He’s nice,’ he said.
‘Yeah, he’s a prince, he really is.’ She smiled up at him, still holding his hand, and swung their arms to and fro, like kids.
‘Isn’t he worried his birds will fly away and not come back?’
‘You what? They’re homing pigeons, you silly berk. They always come back. That’s how you race them.’
‘Right, I get it,’ he said, not getting it. He looked back to see Charlie sitting on his chair watching them go. He raised his hand to wave, which Charlie returned with the flat of his palm, fingers spread wide. Melanie didn’t seem to notice.
At the end of the alley she kissed him on the cheek and said good-bye.
�
��Where are you going? I thought we were hanging out together.’
She’d started to walk in the opposite direction to her house. ‘We have, and now I’ve got to go somewhere!’ She laughed and walked away.
He went home. He never would find out where she went on her jaunts, though his mother once saw her sitting on the river wall behind the council offices, gazing out over the estuary. Other times she was spotted walking up the hill towards her estate, shoes in her hand, or getting off the train from London, still in her school uniform.
‘She ought to be in school,’ his mother remarked. ‘Besides, it’s not safe for a girl to gallivant around.’ He thought that everywhere was safe for Mel, so why be afraid of anywhere? But he didn’t say so, because it would be disloyal, and anyway, deep down he suspected that he was wrong, that she was in danger, but he didn’t want to believe that and it was easy not to.
Whenever he asked where she went, she would say, ‘somewhere, everywhere.’ And though he was tempted to follow her, to find out precisely where she disappeared to, in the end he couldn’t do it. Perhaps he didn’t really want to know. Perhaps he understood, even then, as stupid and ignorant as he was, that she deserved her vanishing.
Thick as Thieves
When the doorbell rang we were sitting on opposite sides of the sitting room; my mother was reading a book and I was trying to, but couldn’t focus. We’d barely spoken all day and, even though nothing had been said, I suspected that even she thought I was guilty. The radio played the splintered chords of Scarlatti, which only heightened the feeling that my nerves were being slowly pulled through the pores of my skin, like the extraction of a tropical parasite, twisted from the flesh on a matchstick.
‘Are you expecting anyone?’
‘No, I don’t think so.’ She stood, rubbing her fingertips on her skirt, as if the pages of her book had dirtied her.
‘Sit, Mum. I’ll go.’
She sat back down and watched me as I left the room. I felt a sharp twist of trepidation in my gut. I wasn’t ready to deal with the police or talk to fellow hacks, not with the image of Steve Burrell, gold tooth glinting, on my mind. I’d begun to question myself: maybe I was losing my grip, sliding, missing details, not thinking things through. What if I had missed something with the St Clair research? Misinterpreted the facts. I could’ve. I had before, hadn’t I? Even if I had been just a kid.