Lily Poole

by Jack O'Donnell

  ‘Are you saying I shouldn’t meet her?’

  ‘Yes. Yes. A hundred times yes, you shouldn’t meet her.’ He shut his eyes, shook his head and opened them again. ‘God commanded us in Leviticus not to seek out the dead. If she is simply a lost soul then— ’

  The door shushed open. ‘Ah, Mrs Shields.’

  Day 17

  To be alone, just smoking and looking out of the frame of the kitchen window was enough. There was not much to see – the drop of the house roofs in the street below and St Stephen’s Church edging into view. The distant arboreal backdrop of Dalmuir Park was eclipsed by the squirrel-grey of clouds scudding across the sky, the sudden light filtering through, hinting at change, the smudges of brown and green shadowing the distant hills. Mary snatched another draw of her fag and narrowed her eyes. The yellow rayon curtains on the window were a mess and had to go. They had wilted. She took another drag, knowing pretty and functional had little relevance, they were just something to peg her thoughts onto.

  The girls would be in soon. She didn’t need a watch to sense the day moving on without her. She heard Daft Rab’s clumping steps upstairs as he put on his dinner. Dogs barking. The vibrating echo of trains and the plaintive note of an InterCity horn, muffled with the window closed as if a sock had been placed over it, warning those on the metal tracks that it was time to move. Normal living sounds setting out the course of a day.

  John, of course, pulled normality out of shape. But he had not been her first. She had been six-months pregnant when she had lost Joseph. There was no baby to hold. No baby to bury. She had just got on with it. That was what you did. Then a second life ten months later, John Joseph’s perfect little hands and feet. The screwed up squall of mewling face, crying to be alive. Seconds before, but a lifetime later, her body had, in a literal and Biblical sense, cleaved to his. Something airy-fairy passed through her when she first held him to her breast and cradled the fragile skin of his wobbly head, an ecstasy and sense of fulfilment. It had soon been dashed into the Beelzebub pit of depression. The blind mirror of his dumb animal faith reaching for her allowed her to stick it out. She had not had that whirlwind with her daughters. She had cared for them, but that kind of consummation bypassed her at their births. A prickly, fierce, protective love only grew up later. She stabbed her fag out in an ashtray on the sill. The front door banged open. She brushed her thoughts aside along with the tendrils of cigarette smoke curled around her hand and face. A rush of staccato feet sounded in the hall.

  ‘Oh, Mum,’ Alison sobbed, using her mother’s body as a climbing post, monkeying into her arms to be hugged and comforted. ‘They’re saying bad names about me and Johnny.’

  ‘Who, Ally? Who?’

  ‘Them at school.’

  She had the head-on innocent expression of a red deer calf. Unable to say more, playground grief loosened Ally’s thin frame. She shivered, holding herself lock-tight against her mum’s shoulder. Baby-wool hair, white eyelashes and eyebrows contrasted with the angry red patches on her cheeks. Tears dampened the floral pattern on her mum’s blouse. Her howling lips had an oddly naked look, as if they lacked a layer of skin. But she’d always been like that. At home they called her ‘Band-Aid’ because of her tendency to get yellow sties between her white eyelashes, and bulbous sores in her mouth. Always first to get a rash or an infection, she was also last to recover. Frail and clumsy, she’d earned all her Girl Guides’ badges in scrapes, bruises and walking into closed doors. Her head tightly nestled in the comfort of her mum’s body, her sobbing lessened enough for Mary to carry her a few steps and slump onto the couch behind the living room door. She allowed her a minute to recover before gently asking, ‘Who was it?’

  ‘Pauline Moriarty and Anne Gallagher started it.’ Ally squeezed out another few sobs. ‘All the boys joined in. They started shouting and making chimp noises – “John is a Mongo. Your mum’s one too and you should go and live in the zoo.”’

  ‘And look.’ Ally’s eyes were bright with tears. Digging her shoe into the chewed-up sofa cushion, her kneecap shot up as she proudly showed off a red dot that might have been a scab. ‘Someone pushed me into a puddle.’

  ‘That’s terrible,’ said Mary, leaning over and kiss-kissing it better, until her youngest child’s cheeks dimpled, followed by a laugh. She held onto her daughter’s warm hand. ‘I’ll need to go down to St Stephen’s and have a word with your teacher. Those bad boys shouldn’t be doing that to you, or pushing you into puddles.’ She gave the knee one last little peck. ‘All better?’

  Mary pulled her daughter in close to her hips, giving and receiving another buzz of warmth before getting up from the couch. ‘We’ll see what your sister says.’ She knew how much Ally wanted to be like her big sister, Jo.

  Many of Ally’s problems at primary school would have evaporated if, after the summer, Jo had not left her behind to attend St Andrew’s Secondary. Her elder daughter was a street cat, more like her dad, liable to spit and hiss when provoked. No tethered claws there. Her youngest daughter and oldest son lacked that protective membrane. The world and its ways got inside them and hurt them far too easily.

  ‘C’mon.’ Mary grabbed her daughter’s hand. ‘You can help me make the dinner.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Mince and potatoes.’

  Ally jumped off the couch, her face buckling with the weight of her grin. ‘When do you think our Jo will be in?’

  Mary looked at the clock on the mantelpiece and, ­settling back down on the sofa, pulled Ally onto her knee. ‘Let’s see if you can tell the time. What time’s the big hand at?’

  Day 19

  John skulked in the draughty back bedroom, his warm feet tethered in blankets that smelled of soap-powder, his big toe worming through a hole in his nylon sock. He flicked through page after page of Commando comics – Achtung! and Spraken zee Deutch? – that had lain sprawling in dust-gathering bundles under his bed. His concentration was too shot to read a book. Each panel was a snapshot into childhood and happier times when there were only evil Nazis to worry about. He hoped the little girl would no longer be waiting for him – he had grown scared of what people said and did. He flicked another page – Snell, Snell vee have ways of making you talk.

  Someone was chapping on the front door. He ignored it, knowing his Auntie Caroline would answer. She’d been round so often lately they’d made a bed up on the couch. John knew it was because his mum was worried about him and his Auntie Caroline was worried about her and him. Whenever anything happened in the family, his aunties rallied. Mary’s parents had died when she was three years old; her eldest sister, Auntie Caroline, brought her up. Her two brothers had all but disowned them, emigrating to Canada or America, or some other far-flung place, where they could forget about being dirt poor and having eleven sisters. John remembered that when he was small he felt as though every woman in the world was an auntie of his, which made him feel very special.

  His Auntie Caroline looked the spit of Vincent Price, but with fluffy grey hair. Her false teeth flapped about, too big for a small mouth, shaping saliva-flecked hisses into words, and eating was a nocturnal activity nobody had witnessed. The muffled voice in the hall sounded like her, but there was also an unfamiliar voice, high and lilting. He groaned, flinging down the comic on the bed and leaving the British officers inside their hermetic panels, planning an escape which would involve shooting everybody, and then flinging a couple of – K-POWWW – grenades just to make sure they were dead.

  ‘John! John!’ his Auntie Caroline shouted. ‘I’ve got somebody here very anxious to meet you.’

  He shuffled into the hall to meet his doom. The most he could manage was to twitch the side of his mouth in a nervous smile at Auntie Caroline. He offered a limp handshake to her friend, who was introduced as Gloria.

  ‘I thought you got lost,’ Mary said, making a joke of his presence, but continual absence, in his bedroom.

  He had to tug his fingers away from Gloria. She kept peeking at
him like a geography teacher mapping the San Andreas Fault line. His face flamed, and he searched for clues to her nuttiness to distract himself. Gloria stood slightly apart from them under the accordion-box shaped lightshade. Her make-up blended in with the texture and coral colour of the walls. She wore a dotted blouse with a floppy bow at the neck, tucked into a brown skirt the same colour as her long coat, which was normal enough. Her hair was shorter than it should have been for a woman of her age and fizzled around her face, its mucky brown colour torched with red at the tips and around her small ears. Her face was as pouchy as a hamster and her small teeth were uneven and stick-brown. It would not have surprised him if she had squeaked, but when she finally spoke she had a soft, feminine voice. ‘Very glad to finally meet you John Joseph.’

  ‘Em, likewise,’ he replied.

  They followed Mary into the kitchen. John parked his bum against the sink. The two guests favoured chairs either side of the table. Mary stood puffing on a cigarette with her back to the cooker, waiting for the kettle to boil. The teapot, caddy and the best china cups and saucers were already set up.

  ‘I’m sorry about the state of the place.’ Mary waved her fag towards two mugs hidden in the bigger of the two sinks.

  ‘I do the same,’ said Gloria. ‘Leave everything to the last minute.’ Her mouth puckered as if she intended to say more, but the kettle began to boil and Mary turned away from her.

  John had nothing to add to the conversation. He endured the women’s company, but was anxious to make his escape back to the world of men – Snell, Snell. Auntie Caroline grabbed at the brown-banded cuff of his ribbed V-neck jumper as he slinked past.

  ‘Gloria’s a spiritualist,’ Auntie Caroline said. ‘She can read auras. She’s going to help you put this poor child to rest.’

  Gloria puffed herself up in her chair.

  He let that settle. ‘Whit do you do for fun?’ he asked.

  He heard the swish before he felt the slap of his mum’s hand on the back of his head. He rubbed above his ear. It was painless, but he made the most of his mum’s apologies to Gloria, darting out of the kitchen and back into the safety of his bedroom. His stomach ached and he needed to sit on the toilet pan before he left to meet the little girl.

  He pulled the front door shut behind him. Panic set in. He took the four steps at the door in one swoop, feet slipping on the slabs of the garden path. The border beneath the window was spiked full of ground elder, but it barely registered. Rain had settled in for the day, hard, slashing cuts across his face. He adjusted the spine of the plastic bag and netted his hair, but the deluge saturated the shoulders of his Wrangler jacket and the knees of his denims. He wondered if the little girl was getting soaked and what would happen on a dry, sunny day – maybe she would evaporate and his troubles would fade.

  White-faced, he barrelled downhill, the futility of life’s dark whimsy spilling across his mind. There was not much for the crows to pick over. He had left school as soon as he could with no O-Grades. He had even mucked up woodwork. And from what he had overheard from Jo, his pals were pissing themselves laughing at him now. He was Mr No-Mates. No chance of ever getting a girlfriend – not that he ever had a chance anyway with his stupid hair, big nose and feet. Everyone hated him, except the little girl.

  ‘Wait on us, dearie!’

  He recognised his Auntie’s voice and he turned and looked back up the road. Auntie Caroline wore a red patterned scarf over her hair, noose-tight at the neck. Gloria had a matching blue scarf tied in the same way. Their long winter coats made them resemble competitors in an adult sack race. Acting deaf, John stumbled into a lopsided run, feet slipping and bouncing down the mud chicanes of the shortcut. Minutes later he reached the safety of the street below. He knew they would have to take the longer route and would not be able to catch up with him.

  At the bend of the hill, he spotted the blue of the little girl’s blazer, the billow of her hair and white pallor of her face. She stood shivering in the same spot. He hated himself for his cowardly tardiness, leaving her standing there all morning.

  The little girl peered at him with an owl-eyed intensity, making her body small against the hedge. Beyond the dip of the road, up and along Shakespeare Avenue, the red and blue headscarves of Auntie Caroline and Gloria came into view. He sprinted the last twenty yards that separated him from the child. She weighed about as much as a Christmas turkey and giggled as he scooped her into his arms. The echo of high heels clattered after them, but was overwhelmed by the hubbub of traffic at Park Road.

  ‘Whit’s your name darlin’?’

  Her answer went unheard in the dash across the road. The police van was parked in its usual spot. He knew they were watching and waiting. He walked slower, pushing tight against the church railing.

  She perked up, and carefully rearranged his plastic hat and his hair, to whisper her name in his ear, but instead she said, ‘Big people don’t understand’.

  John was too distracted by the cops playing peek-a-boo to ask again. Even by the abnormal standards of lanky policemen, both of them were inordinately tall. They shuffled from foot to foot, within touching distance of the bole of the tree, trying to use leafless limbs as a shelter from the guttering rain.

  John scanned the bend of the road at the dentist’s, but traffic was intermittent, one or two slow-moving cars spraying up the slicked run-off from the road. John felt the cops’ eyes following his progress. Women’s heels clacked along behind him again, Auntie Caroline and Gloria sauntered into view.

  The school bell rang, signalling playtime. Some part of him felt that when the little girl was inside the school gates and mixing with the other kids, she would be tagged den-free in the daily game of hide-and-seek. That was what she needed. He crouched, letting her scramble from his arms, using the sodden denim on his knee as a step down onto the pavement. The church wall acted as a temporary windbreak, but the rain danced around them like apaches taking no prisoners. Her back teeth chattered and her lips pursed in a shade of pinky-blue. John pulled her in close to his chest, offering what little heat and shelter his body could offer.

  ‘Darlin’, I’m not goin’ to be able to take you all the way. Look!’ Her hair dripped rainwater. She nodded and peered towards the school gates ‘It’s not far,’ he said. He patted her on the head. Down the road the cops cut across to block him off at the school railings.

  She got caught up in the calling and high piping of children’s voices colouring the blank slate of the playground. His eyes followed her averted gaze. His voice was high and sweet as a chorister’s. ‘I’ll watch you from here. See how fast you can go. Is that OK?’

  The briefest of head nods. He stood up. ‘Whit’s your name again?’ he asked as if he had forgotten it.

  ‘Lily.’

  ‘Right, Lily. Let’s see you run as fast as fast as you can. On your marks. Get set. Go!’

  She had an audience for her race. Kids dashed across the playground, snagging on the railings like windblown washing, eyeing the chequered blue and white of the police car. Pointed and padded anorak hoods, blue, green, brown and a smattering of red, a loose chain of elfin figures, wax noses poking through the gaps, they stood waiting for something to happen. Lily’s flat shoes clattered on the immiscible glaze of oily water and tar; she lurched sideways, round the long, spidery legs of the policemen, close enough for those in the playground to reach through the bars and touch her, but she kept on going. A few of the smaller children’s heads turned and followed her progress, but most focussed on the two uniformed cops. John got to his feet and craned his neck to look past the barrier their bodies made. Hand-­clapping in an exaggerated seal-fashion, he shouted, ‘Well done, Lily!’

  Looking up into the cops’ faces he felt the size of a child himself. One cop’s long nose was too big for his face and his uniform too small for his body. He had the frown of a Millport holidaymaker who had seen nothing but God’s good rain for a fortnight. The other had a sharp-whittled face, his features carved out of ivor
y. He spun John round by the shoulder. ‘We’re arresting you for a breach of the peace and for being a persistent pain in the arse.’

  John offered no resistance, but the skin on his wrist nipped as the officer ratcheted the handcuffs too tight behind his back, pulling him backwards so that he stumbled into the cop’s midriff.

  ‘Shit.’ The big-nosed policeman looked through the slanting rain at two bedraggled women crossing the road and bearing down on them. He held his hand up in crowd control mode, planting himself between them and the officer escorting John to the patrol car.

  More children piled up against the school gates to watch them. Anonymous white faces, John thought, until he saw Lily twelve or thirteen railings along. A freckle-faced boy and brown-haired girl made space for her at the fence. John’s feet dragged, jerking the policeman that pulled him backwards. A sour look passed over the officer’s face.

  John heard his Auntie’s voice behind him. ‘What are you doing to that boy?’

  The walkie-talkie pinned to the sharp-faced cop’s coat hissed and crackled gibberish – foxtrot and over – temporarily distracting him. Lily’s hand shot out from between the railings and touched John’s side. He felt his legs buckle and his arms flailing; falling, falling, falling. Rain battered down. John felt like a fish tugging on the end of a line and he heard the panic in the cop’s lugubrious voice.

  ‘Jesus, get an ambulance. He’s having an epileptic fit or something. Get an ambulance!’

  John’s senses sharpened and he observed his body from above thrashing on the pavement. He dimly heard a sense of panic and concern in the jagged tone of the cop’s voice. What worried him was how dirty his Wrangler jacket had become in the muck and rain; how he couldn’t afford to get another and, anyway, he didn’t want another, he wanted that one and it wasn’t fair. The officer fiddled impatiently with the handcuffs and they fell from his wrist. He caught a whiff of the cop’s fear, recognised the dark shape, a nimbus hovering above his head.