by Nicky Singer
Jan looks out of his bedroom window. In a few hours it will be dark. Stars will shine. And it will be impossible to know whether those stars are living or dead. Because dead stars still shine, the light they give out before they expire taking maybe a thousand years to reach the earth. Is that just a story? No. It is a truth. You have to understand with your heart as well as look with your eyes.
But he still should not have taken the doll. How would it be if she had leaned over and stolen Violeta? The idea alone quickens his breath, makes him reach out to the drawer and the tiny box, just to check that his stump-armed Violeta is safe. She is safe. He closes the box, slides the drawer shut.
There is a knock at the door.
He closes his hand over Tilly’s doll.
Mercy’s face appears. “Did I make you jump?”
He shakes his head.
“Do you mind me coming in?”
She comes in.
She is composed now. Her face, once more, flawless skin. In the restaurant he saw sinew, bone. As she bit into the chilli seeds her face contorted, her neck twisting with the effort of swallowing. Then her head began to shake. Her hair swinging in a frenzied staccato, cracking the tang of her about him like a whip. Then the spitting started. She grabbed for water, took huge gulps, crying out all the while so that the water spilled from her mouth. His mother thrust her a napkin and she fought to clean herself, to wipe away the shame. But the fire in her mouth was too violent, so she had to take more water, more and more until she vomited it on to her plate, her fish a lake of spat fluid. The mothers were shocked. His own mother offered napkins and consolation, but Mrs Van Day roared, all indignation until her own teeth closed on a seed and the burn began to burst on her lips too. She moaned, she cried, then she grabbed for her daughter and hurtled them both towards the ladies’ loo.
The commotion excited the other diners. All eyes swivelled to the table where he and his mother sat, now silent and exposed. The mood was expectant, as though someone (himself, his mother?) was about to make an announcement, offer an explanation. But what explanation could there be? For an unbearable minute, they sat and sat and then the restaurant manager arrived, swiftly followed by Richard Weaver, the restaurant owner. A small sandy man with a soothing voice, Tilly’s father offered apologies and astonishment. He couldn’t imagine how it had happened, he was taken aback and sincere.
It took Mrs Van Day to mention Tilly. Mrs Van Day who returned at length from the ladies, all make-up wiped from her lips. “But think nothing of it,” she said to Mr Weaver’s further apologies (he had checked the facts with a bus boy). In the light of the tragic circumstances, Mrs Van Day said, she understood. She understood perfectly.
Mr Weaver ordered fresh linen and new main courses. But the Van Days and the Sparks could not be persuaded to stay for dessert, for coffee, for liqueurs (even though it was on the house). The Van Days and the Sparks were busy people. They needed to get away. They had things to do. Things to discuss. Like Tilly’s mother.
An hour or so later they were ensconced in his mother’s very English drawing room, the coffee freshly brewed.
“How many times is it now, Mercy?” asked Mrs Van Day.
“Three,” said Mercy.
“I thought twice?”
“Three times.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because every time her mother goes in the sin bin—”
“Detox clinic, darling.”
“Tilly’s gran brings her to school. But her gran doesn’t drive her to the gate. Too embarrassed apparendy. Drops her about three roads away. Makes her walk.”
“The poor girl,” said Susan Spark. “The poor, poor girl.”
“Still,” said Mrs Van Day. “No need to take it out on Mercy. What would be the justification for that?”
Was it then that Jan left the room, mumbling something that might have meant he needed to relieve some bodily function? But he came to his room, and now Mercy has come. As he knew she would. He looks at her beautiful mouth. The chilli seeds were like nettle stings on her lips, she said.
“What is it with these seeds?” Mercy says. “What part of them stays on your hands? I just rubbed my eye and hey presto – sting sting sting. So I’ve just had to wash again,” she adds, as if it’s an explanation for her being upstairs.
The skin of her eyelids is pale and transparent. He can see thin blue veins. How delicate she is, he thinks.
“I’m sorry,” she says then, “about – well, the restaurant.”
“Sorry?”
“You must have thought …”
He thought nothing, just watched the way her face dissolved to bone.
“You know, it can’t have been pleasant to watch.”
And this is it, of course, her fear, the thing she wants to say. She is afraid that she lost control. That she looked ugly. But, even contorted, Mercy’s face could not be ugly.
He shrugs. “Not your fault,” he says inadequately. But how can he talk about beauty and bone?
There’s a pause and then Mercy asks: “Do you know her, then? Tilly?”
What is he to say? He has seen the girl but not met her. Been addressed by her but made no reply. She walks in his dreams.
“Only the way she looked at you…”
“No,” he says, “I do not know her.” The words are true, but not true. They sound like a betrayal.
Something in Mercy’s body seems to relax. She smiles. “I’ve known her for ever. We used to be friends. Good friends, in fact. In the days when she was charmingly eccentric as opposed to seriously weird.”
He waits. Perhaps he was wrong. Perhaps this is what Mercedes Van Day has come to say.
“Not that it was ever an ‘equal’ friendship, even at the beginning,” Mercy continues. “She was always a little, well, secretive. Kept something back. And, of course, she never invited me to her place. Even though she came to my house quite often. I never knew why. Until I called on her unexpectedly one day.”
He says nothing, but his head is lifted.
“She tried to stop me coming in. Said her mum was asleep. ‘Don’t worry’ I said, ‘we can tiptoe.’ Well, we did tiptoe, right past her mum who was lying on the sofa in the drawing room. Then there was a moan, and a sort of choking noise and then her mother rolled off the sofa and landed on the floor. In a puddle of her own vomit.” Mercy pauses. “It was disgusting. And do you know the worst thing? Her mother never even moved. Just lay there. Where she’d landed. Anyway, afterwards Tilly denied it happened. Said I’d made it up. Called me ‘a filthy liar’. Said that at school, in front of everyone.” She smiles again. “I’m afraid our friendship took a bit of a downhill turn after that.”
Mercy crosses the room to where Jan’s guitar is standing against the wall. She strums a finger across the strings.
“Are you going to play at the Celeb Night?” she asks.
Jan shrugs.
“You should. Your mum says you’re amazing.”
He winces.
Mercy laughs. “Go on. I’ll put money on you.”
“Mercy!” It’s Mrs Van Day calling. “We need to go. Cindy’s coming!”
Mercy looks at her watch. “Oh – the dressmaker.”
Jan gets up and as he does so, Mercy catches sight of something in his hand.
“What’s that?” she asks. “Oh God, it’s not the doll is it? Oh, it is, let’s see then.”
And she’s right beside him now, and when he doesn’t open his hand, she touches him. Or maybe she touches the doll’s hair, and just glances her fingertip against his. He feels it in his spine, like electricity.
His hand opens.
“Oh,” she breathes. “Is that gross or what!” She pokes at the doll with fascinated disgust. “I’m beginning to think our friend might need some professional help. I mean that is revolting. I can’t believe her mother made it.”
“Her mother?” queries Jan.
“Yes, that’s what Tilly’s mother does, when she’s not drun
k. Makes dolls and sells them at markets. But they’re normally big dolls, you know, rag ones. For kids. But this one – she must have been in the middle of some seriously random nightmare to have made this.” Her cat eyes shine. “How did you get it?”
“When she came to the table,” Jan falters. “She had it in her apron pocket. It … fell. I picked it up.”
“Tilly’ll be mad without it,” Mercy says. “She’s obsessional like that. Do you want me to take it? Give it back to her at school tomorrow?”
And he doesn’t. All of a sudden he doesn’t even want Mercy to touch the doll. The doll is something between him and the girl at the bridge. But Mercy is right. He shouldn’t have taken it. Tilly, mad with the doll, will be madder without it.
“Mercy!” shouts Mrs Van Day.
“Jan!” shouts Mrs Spark.
“OK,” Jan says. “OK.” And he gives Mercy the doll.
She pushes the doll so deep inside her skirt pocket it disappears. He cannot see the bulge of it against her svelte body.
She turns to leave.
I have done wrong, he thinks.
7
I’m sitting at my mother’s sewing machine, my feet on the treadle. I’ve lit some incense, nag champa from Bangalore. It took me a while to find the incense holder, the simple wooden stand Inti gave her. I discovered it eventually, clean and in a drawer. Grandma’s work. My mother always lit incense when she worked. And sang. “Pluie d’amour, my soul dances in your eyes. Pluie d’amour.” I turn the hand wheel of the machine and begin paddling with my feet. It’s as I remember it, that rhythmic, comforting clunk, the background noise of my childhood. Pluie d’amour, my soul dances in your eyes.
“What is it?” my father asked once. “That tune?”
“Big’s theme,” my mother replied and laughed.
Big.
That was my mother’s market name. All the traders had nicknames, not that I understood that at first. For years I thought the dun, wiry man who sold honey and mead and beeswax candles really was called Wasp. Just as I believed that Sir Henry, the second-hand clothes man (a public-school boy who bought his wares by the hundredweight, threw most of them away and still made the best profit – so he said – in the market) was a genuine member of the nobility.
Clunk, clunk-de-clunk. This machine is spooling memories as it once spooled thread. Inti. Was that a nickname? I don’t think so. It was probably just strange enough for the other traders not to have to invent something new for him. Inti with his gappy teeth and Latin grin. Inti who looked out for me when my mother was busy with a customer, when she was loading or unloading. Inti who made the time pass by telling me stories about the fire inside a Mexican opal, or showing me how to blow a run of notes on the panpipes, or pointing out the flies in his new delivery of amber.
“This one,” he’d say, cradling a large honey-coloured drop with an eternally dancing fly inside, “this I give to your mother.” He charged her half what he wrote on the tickets for his stall. “But hey,” he would shrug, “not everyone wears amber the way Big does.”
Big.
Does it all come down to this? Big. Was Big a nickname or just a description? I don’t know. Maybe it was simply a truth. For Big was Big in the same way that earth is earth or sky is sky. A big woman with a big laugh. Someone you remembered. Someone to be reckoned with. As much part of the market as the steel stalls, Big was essential, Big belonged. Big was big, her status clear. The only woman the male traders allowed to play the Football Game. And probably the only one who would have wanted to.
It was Sir Henry who started it.
I treadle faster.
“Reckon we’ve got a centre forward,” Sir Henry’d shout, if he spotted an attractive woman near his stall. Centre forwards were always dark. If it was a blonde (I was eight before I realised this) he’d yell, “Striker.”
Then all the other men – and Big – would pause, look up and admire the passing goods.
A bit later he might shout, “Midfielder, what do you think?” The aim of the game was to assemble a full team by the end of the day.
“Goalkeeper, more like,” Wasp would remark.
“Nah,” said Inti. “On the bench.”
“On the transfer list, I’d say,” said Big.
And they’d all laugh and Sir Henry would go to the off-licence and bring back a bottle of plonk. It would be eleven in the morning and they’d need it by then. That was Sir Henry’s view. It could be cold at the market and, if it rained and the tarpaulins weren’t tight, a gust of wind might gush a freezing roof-pool of water down your neck. Didn’t a person standing alone against the elements deserve some comfort? It was always too rainy, or too cold, or too hot. “So hot, you could die of thirst,” said Sir Henry, bringing the bottle back concealed in a plastic bag. The game with the plonk (for everything was a game at the market) was to guess the country of origin. If you guessed right, you didn’t have to pay your share. If you guessed wrong, you paid for Sir Henry’s.
Sometimes there were arguments about accuracy. You couldn’t just say “France” – you’d have to name a region: Bordeaux, Rhone. I learnt more about regions in Europe from Sir Henry than I did from school. But Big wasn’t always so patient.
“Quit haggling,” she’d say. “Just get the cork out.”
“You’ve got your own nip, haven’t you?” Wasp, who enjoyed the haggling more than the wine, would retort.
And she had. A little silver flask she kept in her hip pocket. But then so did Sir Henry. And Inti. You couldn’t always leave the stall. They took food and drink, all of them. Even I had a sandwich box and a Dalmatian flask of Ribena. I went so often with her, I was the market kid. They all knew me, looked out for me. Though it was Inti I loved.
Inti admired my mother’s craftsmanship. He’d examine a new doll (there were always new lines), hold it, run his hands over it, comment on the stitching.
“Big,” he’d murmur. “But what hands! What skill!”
Was he in love with her? I don’t know. I stop treadling. I think maybe I was just in love with her, and alert to any mirror that seemed to reflect that love.
I’m aware of eyes. In the boxes lined up against the wall, the market dolls stare. Two Hallowe’en witches, with black hair and black eyes. Six of Big’s top-selling “My Baby” dolls, with the Velcro strip across their pink breasts, so the customer could attach the name of their choice. If she took a liking to a customer, Big would embroider a name to order, otherwise she’d just say, “No Tiffany? Now there’s a shame.” In a box labelled “Christmas” are some chubby-faced babies in red and white fur hoods. Next to this is the Nursery Rhyme box, with a half-finished Bo Peep and two pairs of Jack and Jill dolls. But it’s into the plastic container marked “Fairy Tales” that I push a tentative hand. In here is a Cinderella, a Tinkerbell and two Prince Charmings. The Prince Charmings never sold very well. But she kept making them. “The triumph of hope over expectation,” she said. I turn over a Rapunzel, and then I feel the velvet skirt of a Red Riding Hood.
“Get your grubby fingers off,” my mother says. “They’re to sell.”
But today, I don’t get my fingers off, I slide my hands deeper, lift Red Riding Hood’s skirt. And there it is, the cold, glassy shape my furtive fingers expect. I pull my hand out immediately, as though I’m in the wrong, as though I’ve unscrewed the lid from the bottle and let that twisting, reeling smell escape. My cheek are flushed, I know they are. I’m hot, guilty. I wait for someone to come in and catch me. But no one comes. Not even Grandma. Don’t you know about the Red Riding Hood skirts, Grandma? Don’t you?
“Mama’s sick. Mama’s not well. She’ll be better in the morning.”
Then I want to be away from this room. I push my way out and along the landing, past my mother’s bedroom. The door is shut. But it shouldn’t be shut, not against me. I turn the handle, let myself in and make straight for her clothes cupboard. I need to smell my mother, bury my face in her. I open the wardrobe door. It’s empty. A
rail with a few wire hangers and a huge space. No clothes. Not one dress, not a skirt, not a blouse, not a pair of trousers. Nothing. Nothing at all. Except the smell of wood polish.
Grandma.
Grandma!
And now she’s here, standing behind me in the doorway, watching.
“You’ve thrown them away,” I shout. “You’ve thrown all the clothes away. How could you do that?”
“They were cut,” says Grandma. “You know that.”
And of course she’s right. “You still shouldn’t have done it,” I say. “You should have left things.”
“Maybe I’ve left too many things,” she says. “Over the years.”
I turn my back on her, yank open my mother’s underwear drawer. This drawer has been spared. It springs with socks and knickers and stockings my mother never wore. I select a thick pair of black towelling socks. Though my mother was big she had tiny feet and poor circulation. Her feet were always cold. When it was really icy outside shed come home and ask me to bring her a bowl of tepid water. Shed take off her socks, sometimes three pairs, and plunge her feet into the warmth. As her feet thawed, tears would run down her cheeks. I didn’t understand it was pain, I thought it was her heart melting.
I also extract a pair of knickers, plain cotton, white once but now grey, the elastic stretched and giving. I clutch my trophies to my face, inhale. And there she is again, the perfume of her, powdered flesh, jasmine, conkers …
“Tilly,” Grandma begins but is, in turn, interrupted by the doorbell.
Neither of us move. The doorbell rings again. And I know who it is. The ring is angry. It’s furious. And the next thing we hear is a key in the lock. Because of course he still has a key, even after all these years. Though, out of courtesy, he normally waits for the door to be opened to him.
My grandmother goes out on to the landing.
“Richard,” she says.
“Tilly,” he yells and he bounds up the stairs. “Tilly, Tilly!” He barges past Grandma. “What the hell do you think you were playing at?”