by Laura Powell
‘I love you so much, Mary. You will tell me if something’s wrong?’
Mary nods, her eyes still closed.
In the end it is not the newsagent’s wife or the priest or the landlady or Jerry or even the pair of eyes staring out from the newspaper mugshot that prompts Mary to act, but the shiny-lipped newsreader on the breakfast programme the next morning.
Mary is pulling clots of potato peel from the sink and half listening to the small television on the wall when the woman appears, cutting into the jolliness with her news bulletin. At first Mary hardly notices her.
‘More than one hundred complaints were made to the Press Complaints Commission about the decision to publish the controversial interview with Nigel Forbes, known as the Cornish Cleaver,’ she says and Mary’s head jerks up.
Her dishcloth falls to the floor and, for the next few seconds, she forgets to breathe. The newsreader bleats on, the screen switches to a balding man with a puffy red face and watery eyes, speaking angrily into the camera. The bar at the bottom of the television screen reads, Taylor Cardy, victim’s nephew. Mary is frozen. She still doesn’t move when the news bulletin ends.
When she finally comes to, the kitchen is cold. The sun has disappeared and a shadow falls over her. A different woman is on the television, stirring mussels into a yellow stew. It’s done, that’s what the landlady had said. But the landlady was wrong. You live with it or you do something about it. If you don’t, it’ll eat you up with the cancer. Had someone else said that, or was that the landlady too?
Mary pulls on her good wool coat, picks up her handbag and closes the front door. The landlady or whoever said it was right; she must find out whether she did the right thing that summer – she will ask him herself. She keeps her head low as she passes The Three Hops and only raises it again when she reaches the station. She buys a ticket at a machine with a smudged screen and hurries to the platform.
Mary checks the clock. There are eighteen minutes to fill until the train arrives. She cleans her fingers with a wet wipe, maps out her journey in her head, then perches on the edge of the bench to wait. She is very weak suddenly, as though her bones have disintegrated and her body will flop over if she doesn’t try very hard to keep it upright. She sits a little straighter, clutches her bag tighter and smiles, hoping that no one will notice she isn’t quite right, but it all takes an inordinate amount of effort.
‘You’re waiting for a train,’ she whispers, trying not to move her lips in case people think her mad. ‘Just sitting on a train station bench. Even you can manage that, silly old girl. Just waiting for a train.’
And it hits her then, at that moment, as her fingers dig into her handbag and as the station caller announces the arrival of a train on another platform, that she really is going to see him again, finally. The thought of it makes her run cold and hot at once.
Chapter 7
July 1956
No one speaks during the car ride home from the dance, not even Mary. Betty watches Mr Paxon in the rear-view mirror. His eyes are red and drooping, as though he has been crying, and he doesn’t seem to care whether her sandy dress spoils his upholstery. His eyes flick up and meet hers. She looks away, plaiting her fingers into one another.
They drive the long way to Mary’s aunt’s house. Gray steps out of the car to let Mary out and she shoulders past him. Mr Paxon doesn’t toot as he drives off and Mary doesn’t turn to wave. As they pull out on to the New Road, Gray touches Betty’s arm lightly. She can sense him looking at her from the corner of her eye. She draws away her arm, wriggles further from him across the seat, and focuses instead on the seam running along the back of Mr Paxon’s fedora.
She bargains with herself: if she keeps her eyes on that line of stitching for the whole car ride, her brain won’t turn to jelly and everything will be all right. She will be back at Hotel Eden in no time; Mother will still be upright and they will toast bread with cinnamon, the way they did when she had nightmares as a girl.
By the time they arrive, Betty still hasn’t taken her eyes from Mr Paxon’s hat seam so everything should be all right. She thanks Mr Paxon and lets herself inside. The hotel is silent, the big room is empty and the upstairs landing smells of wine.
‘Mother?’ she calls.
She pushes open the bedroom door. There is a noise coming from inside; an old fisherman’s shanty, it sounds like. The door opens fully and there is Mother, lying diagonally across the bed, singing and shivering and wearing only her thin summer nightdress.
‘He loves me, he loves me not,’ she is singing to the fisherman’s tune, as rain taps on the window. ‘He loves me, he loves me, he loves me.’
‘Mother,’ gasps Betty.
She pulls a crocheted blanket from the top shelf and drapes it over Mother. She pauses for a moment, wondering what to say – she wanted to tell mother what happened. She would like to describe the patch of sand stained rust red and the tender way the piano man placed his purple jacket over the dead girl’s face, and her grey feet poked out. But she looks again at Mother and slips out of the bedroom, shutting the door quietly behind her.
She opens the larder door. The jars and tins and herb pots are blurred and wobbling, and she realises that she is crying. She shuts herself in the larder, sits on the floor, her knees drawn to her chin, and she weeps.
The men amble back eventually. The front door opens and closes, opens and closes, and she holds her breath, hoping that no one will find her in the larder. When they are upstairs, she opens the bread tin but only crusts, studded with furry white mould, are left. She licks her finger, presses it into the tub of cinnamon, and tastes it. Her nerves still don’t settle.
She steps out into the kitchen, wondering where to sleep, and spots a pile of half dry towels on the table. She arranges herself a bed on the floor and stuffs one in the crack under the back door to block out the icy slug of draught and the screams of wind, but the raven girl’s wails echo in her head as she falls into a restless sleep.
The next morning, it happens again: Mother’s eyes lose their shine and she looks grey all over. She stands for ten minutes, then crumbles back into bed. There isn’t time for Betty to think about the killer or the raven girl or the dead girl, or even Mother; only a pile of breakfasts that need cooking. She pastes on a smile, just like Mother’s, and starts work.
One week later, Betty ambles along the water’s edge, enjoying her last gulps of salty air before she must go back indoors. She twists her wrist in little jerks, making the string shopping bag in her hand spin upside down. The parsnips and carrots and swedes don’t fall out; somehow they cheat physics, making her laugh.
She is still laughing when she notices Gallagher striding across the cove. She stops, self-conscious, and thinks she might slip away but he looks up and their eyes meet. He too pauses, as though wondering whether to run away, but he walks towards her.
‘Lovely day,’ she says a little too brightly.
Funny how the sun can still shine after terrible things happen, she would like to add. Gallagher nods. He looks out to sea but his brain seems elsewhere.
‘You’re not working today?’
He shrugs.
‘The others left at seven,’ she continues for want of anything clever to say.
He still doesn’t speak and she feels trapped in this electric silence.
‘Cat got your tongue?’ she says lightly.
‘Something like that.’
‘My friend Mary says the best thing about me is my ears.’
‘Is that so?’
‘Yes, they’re very good listeners,’
She hopes it will make him laugh and blow away the awkwardness but he still frowns.
‘I’ll remember that,’ he says eventually and she wishes she hadn’t spoken at all. She sounded young and silly.
‘I always think, if it’s a bright day, that you might be able to see Morlaix the other side of the water,’ she says in a serious tone.
She hopes she has pronounced it correc
tly. She had read the name in an atlas left behind by a guest who wore a monocle and a single tarnished cufflink and disappeared one day, without paying his bill. But Gallagher still doesn’t respond. She checks her wristwatch. It is almost time to go back to the hotel and peel the vegetables for supper.
‘Fancy a dip?’ she tries.
‘In this weather?’
She lowers her head to hide her disappointment and unbuckles her sandals. The shingle is cold under her feet. A tinny whistle of wind and then she is in the shallows, wetting her toes and jumping back from the sharp bite of the water. She doesn’t turn back to see whether Gallagher is watching. He might think she is showing off. She tries to enjoy it and not think about him watching; she will be back at a chopping board soon.
Every day has been the same since the dance: scrubbing potatoes, washing bed linen, cleaning crockery, shining the doorstep, and repairing, cooking, greeting, all in a big circle as if her life were on a loop, while Mother lies in bed sobbing. She should never have left Mother alone.
Time up: Betty turns away from the sea, shakes the water off her feet and picks up her sandals. Gallagher watches but his face looks different, as though his softer twin has replaced him.
‘Wasn’t there supposed to be a daytrip to Torquay yesterday?’ he says. ‘For locals.’
‘Hardly anyone went what with… you know, everything that’s happened. They organised it before.’
‘Didn’t you want to go?’
‘I stayed behind to help Mother.’
He looks thoughtful. Betty works her gritty foot into the garish raspberry slingbacks that Mother bought her last summer. They have buckled straps and bits of toe cut out. Peeptoe, Mother had called them. The straps cut into her skin and sand grates her foot. She can’t quite push in her heel.
‘How about we take our own outing, just as soon as your mother’s back on her feet?’ says Gallagher.
Betty looks up startled.
‘Because I’m thinking of going for a spin to St Ives next week,’ he continues, in a voice that doesn’t sound as robust as usual. ‘You should come.’
‘I don’t imagine she’ll be well enough.’
‘But if she is.’
Why me, she would like to know.
‘I’m not sure,’ she says instead.
‘Forgive my bluntness but…’ He pauses. ‘Everyone deserves a break, Betty.’
She loves the way he says her name; long and deep and precise. She looks down so Gallagher won’t see her red face and tries to squeeze her foot back into her sandal but it has grown, or the sandal has shrunk. Gallagher crouches too and their heads almost bang together. He reaches down and holds her ankle, clasping the sandal with his other hand. His fingers are cold and his breath is warm on her wet shin. Betty blushes deeper as he buckles it.
The second shoe now; he guides it on and stands upright again. Her legs wobble but she pretends to feel nothing. Gallagher goes pink but it is probably just because he was bent over and the blood has rushed to his head.
‘I should go home,’ she mutters.
He nods. She nods at the promenade and he nods again. Betty giggles shyly, thinking them a pair of puppets with loosened neck joints and bobbing heads.
‘What’s funny?’ he asks, searching her face.
‘Nothing. Just the bobbing.’
‘I see,’ but he still looks uncertain. ‘You’d better get yourself to the hotel.’ He pauses. ‘Take care, won’t you?’
Betty smiles to herself as she walks back across the sand in his upside-down footprints.
Tinny music pumps out of Hotel Eden and fills up Newl Grove. Betty peers through the nets into the big room. Mother is mid-pirouette, her skirt fanned out like a ballerina’s tutu and her arms raised above her head. Betty looks away. She should be pleased that Mother is out of bed again but a cold, hard lump sits in her stomach.
She unlocks the front door and steps into the hall. The music is even louder indoors. She walks into the big room, just as Mother trips over the coal bucket. Black dust spits out, speckling the rug. Mother waves.
‘Come on, dance with me Betty boo boo,’ she screams over the song, kicking the rug out of the way. ‘I got a girl named Sue. She’s the gal that I love best. You know he loves me, yes indeed.’
Mother grasps Betty’s hand and spins her in a circle as she sings. Betty lets herself join in; after this song, she’ll calm her down. Mother tips back her head and screeches with laughter.
‘Oh tutti frutti, tutti frutti. Tutti frutti, aw rooty.’
They twirl until the room looks like a spinning top. Betty closes her eyes and inhales the rush of air, laced with Mother’s perfume and wine. There is a loud smash, as Mother’s hip catches the spout of the teapot and sends it crashing to the floor. Mother dances over the broken pottery with her bare feet. The song ends abruptly and the carpet is covered with red footprints.
‘Mother, your feet!’
‘Everything’s fine,’ breezes Mother. ‘Did you hear it? What a song!’
She limps into the kitchen leaving more bloody footprints, while Betty roots in the dresser for a bandage and pin.
‘You’re bleeding,’ Betty calls after her.
‘Wonderful how much life a bit of music can bring to a dull, dead place.’
Betty hurries into the kitchen. It smells of burnt mutton pie. Mother collapses onto a chair and Betty kneels at her feet. There is a small tear in her heel and blood still seeps out.
‘You’re a sweetheart,’ coos Mother.
Betty dabs it with antiseptic and winds around the bandage while Mother sways, as though the music is still playing.
‘I wanted to talk to you,’ says Betty carefully. ‘It’s about Mr Forbes.’
‘We’re having a very special supper tonight, with very special guests,’ trills Mother.
She picks up a gin bottle from the table and pours it over a teacup but it is empty.
‘Please Mother, it’s Mr Forbes. I’m not supposed to know this but I do – and you should too, before everyone else finds out.’
‘Bloody vultures, who’s drunk all my gin?’ and she bangs the bottle on the table.
‘The police think it’s him.’
Mother looks down at Betty. She smiles in a slow, strange way as though her brain hasn’t caught up with her ears.
‘They think that Maureen loved him,’ whispers Betty. ‘She was carrying his child and that’s why he killed her. Because he changed his mind or was angry or something.’
‘Enough!’
Mother bangs the gin bottle on the empty table to coax out the last drop. It smashes. Shards of glass rain over the table and the floor and Betty.
‘Are you going to clear up that mess or must I sort out every problem we have?’ shrieks Mother.
Betty shakes off the glass and reaches around to pin the bandage.
‘Let me finish this first. It’ll be all right.’
Mother sighs loudly and drops her head to her hands, muttering something to herself that is too slurred to make sense of. Betty focuses on the bandage and feels Mother’s calf to make sure it sits evenly. On the back of Mother’s leg, just below her knee, is a bump. Betty cranes her neck around to look. It is an angry claw mark, as if a human-sized cat or animal with sharpened talons has clung on and gouged out a trench.
‘What’s that?’ she says alarmed. ‘Who hurt you?’
‘An old war wound,’ says Mother, but it looks fresh.
‘It needs antiseptic.’
‘Stop fussing.’
‘All right,’ she says and fastens the pin. ‘But Mr Forbes…’
‘I won’t hear another word about the filthy pair of them,’ says Mother. Then she beams in a plastic sort of way. ‘The Paxons will be here for supper soon. You’d better go and make yourself pretty for George.’
Betty’s chest sinks but she nods and hurries upstairs to their bedroom. Mother will slot back into her old self soon, she is sure of it. It always works out that way and has done ever s
ince her eleventh birthday when she had come home from tea at her friend Evelyn’s house and watched Mother’s tears plop into her birthday trifle.
Mother had used her hands to scoop out the sherry jelly from beneath the custard and whippy trifle cream. She had swallowed every last drop of the sherry jelly, while Betty watched.
‘You greedy bitch,’ Mother had snarled when she finished, as Betty wiped slops from her chin and lips. ‘You ate it all, not me. You’ll be chubby as well as plain.’
The trifle slops and Mother’s spit had stained Betty’s birthday dress but she hadn’t minded. It was the black snowman talking, as she used to call Mother’s bad spells, not Mother herself. She had helped Mother to bed.
‘Don’t play with that Evelyn girl again,’ Mother had muttered, peeking from beneath the duvet. ‘You don’t need anyone but me, do you?’
‘No, Mother,’ she had said, and Mother had smiled.
‘We’re best of friends, aren’t we?’
‘Yes, Mother.’
She had smiled back but Mother was already asleep.
It is easier now. All Betty must do is hold her tongue, show Mother that she loves her and keep things bubbling along, then Mother will wake up one morning, all bright. She will stroke Betty’s hair instead of the other way around and, wordlessly, she will take over the reins again.
The doorbell rings at half past one. Mother’s heels clack through the hall. The front door opens and voices drift up the stairs. Betty tiptoes across the landing.
‘The wind’s blowing a gale,’ Mrs Paxon is saying in a tight voice. ‘What weather for summer.’
She shakes her head and the long strip of foxtail around her neck jiggles.
‘What a beautiful fox,’ exclaims Mother. ‘Now, where’s Mr Paxon? Parking the car?’
‘There’s a problem with the engine, all very last minute, and he can’t come after all. Men troubles, you know,’ says Mrs Paxon. She notices Betty’s feet on the stairs and looks up. ‘There you are, Betty. Haven’t you grown?’
Not since I saw you last week, Betty wants to reply. George loiters in the hall trying not to meet her eye. Mother looks out into the street.