‘Nose: a vanilla scent with a hint of smoke.’ He took a sip. ‘Palate: Toffee with an undertone of…’ He paused, considering his words, more words than I’d ever heard him say in one go. The drink all looked the same to me, but I couldn’t stop listening. This was his poetry. He spoke the language of whisky with absolute certainty. Here, I caught a glimpse of where he really lived.
An Evaluation of my Grandfather
Nose: Ginger beer, grain, the sugar he puts in the wasp traps. A residue of whisky lingers on his clothes. It runs through his veins. He carries the aroma of the roast chicken he peels into strips at lunchtime and places in a bowl by the distillery for the cat without a collar. He watches it eat the breast while he chomps the skin. No matter how close the cat gets, he never strokes it. Never even tries. It carries the scent of small bloody deaths, but he doesn’t mind. He enjoys the honesty of its hostile company more than a pet he could hold in his hands.
Palate: Whisky, crackers he dips into jars of chutney and pickled onions. He smacks the juice out of the lines around his lips with a slurping sound and never laughs off his lack of manners. Smiles are not something he scatters. When he does crack a smile, it has the power to make my mother recall suppers she had growing up when her parents didn’t really say much, but knew what the other was thinking because it was what they were thinking themselves.
Finish: He wears whatever hangs on the hook of his door, shirts and trousers that never match. For his whole life, someone got out his clothes for him. First his mother, then his wife, would iron what he should wear for the day and lay it flat on the bed. He makes little effort to learn what clothes might sit right together, even when my mother tries to give him pointers. He continues wearing chequered patterns with spots, red with green, any mismatched clothes he stumbles across. He’s as steadfast to clashing colours as a man is to a uniform. It is a uniform, a uniform of grief serving the memory of his late wife.
Overall: A man who brings a thimbleful of whisky and honey when I have a cold. He’ll tell me a story, but only if I ask for it to be told. It’s the same story each time. For a few minutes, he tells it and I see someone other than my grandfather – I just see a man, who was once a boy, who once fell for a surly girl.
Grumps shooed me out of the distillery, sick of me following him around. I put on my roller skates and jolted around the gritty lane, missing the smooth paving of the city. I hadn’t seen another kid since we moved in, other than Toby. He’d recently made the decision he wanted to be a magician and I was getting sick of him asking if he could saw me in half. The girl was a lifesaver. I spotted her and wondered if her rabbits could do tricks too. Perhaps something involving hurdles made of sticks and toilet paper. Rabbits racing, hopping over a ribbon staked in the grass. I’d place my bet on the spotted one that was humping her shoes.
‘We just moved here,’ I said. ‘My parents, me and my brother. Grandma died last year. Grumps is getting rickety, so we came. There’s a smell in my room of something dead,’ I chattered.
She stepped back. Conversation could be contagious. I wanted it to be.
I don’t know why I told her about the strange smell in my room, I hadn’t got around to complaining to my parents about it yet. I could imagine my mother shaking her head. ‘Lorrie,’ she’d say, ‘I’m sick of your attitude. We’re all trying to adjust to life here.’ I decided to say nothing to anyone, but it all spilled out anyway. There was something about the girl. I couldn’t help it with her. Now I’d told her my life story, I felt a bit better.
‘What’s your name?’ I asked.
A woman with strappy shoes trotted out of the house carrying a large box to her car. ‘Sylvie,’ she called. ‘Come on, we’ve got appointments. I have to make a sale. Don’t dawdle now. We haven’t got all day.’
The girl skulked towards her mother, who was jangling her keys, a lucky rabbit’s foot dangling off her key ring, pawing the air.
‘Sylvie? Is that your name?’ I called.
The girl span around, gave a small nod and ran. I waved. I had her name. It was a start.
20th July 1957
The lass is here. And she ain’t going anywhere. If Ma could wave a sparkly wand or a feather duster and make her disappear she’d do it in a jiffy. Puff! But she can’t. It makes her do that wee frown. The one that, as soon as she realises she’s doing it, forces her to grab a pot of cold cream. Quick.
‘That lassie next door’s out there again,’ I say, ‘looking for us.’
Lorrie’s poking a sandal through the fence. Ma looks out the window, ‘If you ignore her, she’ll go away,’ she’s saying.
So I try to, all week, I ignore her like a whiffer in church. I keep my head down when I’m feeding the chickens, feart to look up in case the lassie meets my eye. And still she keeps wandering over, yattering my ear off. There’s this painter who did sunflowers and cut his ear off once. I reckon that’s what happened to him.
‘I dunno how long I can ignore her for, Ma. Won’t it look weird if I do?’
If there’s one thing I shouldn’t look, it’s weird. If Ma could knit me a gansey to match the wallpaper, she would, I reckon. Lassies like me should blend in. Be good. Be sweet. Be as ordinary as we can.
‘Hmm, I suppose it won’t hurt to be polite,’ she says. ‘Just don’t be too friendly to her.’
I know what ‘too friendly’ means. I found out when I was four and she banned me from speaking to that wee lad in callipers EVER AGAIN. Do you hear me? Sylvie, NEVER. I MEAN IT. I haven’t been too friendly since. I keep my gob shut, in company anyhow. Women blether and I stare at the buckles on my shoes. Kids blabber and I’ll think of something dead interesting to say, but the words clag in my throat before I can spit anything out. It makes school this never-ending spelling test full of words you could spell yesterday, but can’t picture once you’re holding the pen. Lorrie never notices. That’s why she’s fantastic. She’s so busy havering, I never have to worry about being struck dumb. I tell Ma this and she hmms, slathering a greeny face mask all over her cheeks like the witch in The Wizard of Oz. Maybe that’s what was wrong with her, she was just scared of the wrinkles setting in.
‘The child does have excellent posture, I’ll give her that. Hmm. You could invite her over. Just don’t—’
‘I know, I know,’ I say. There’s no need for her to finish. I know the rules. Don’t say much about myself, keep my mouth shut, and for heaven’s sake, Sylvie…
I put on my nightie and peek out before bed. I listen to the pip of a bird and stare at the light over the fence. That’s her room, Lorrie, my pal. Maybe. If she looks out she’ll see me. Lorrie and Sylvie. Sylvie and Lorrie, waving across the way. Flicking the lights on and off, knocking about. Ordinary lasses. Just like everyone else.
Lorrie
Bunny Tyler believed in God and Tupperware. I’m not sure which she believed in more. Wherever she went, she carried a duck-egg handbag containing a Bible, a revolutionary cheese grater, and a storage pot. One hand remained on the clasp, ready to whip out the contents at any given moment, should anyone need spiritual guidance. There was no Tupperware on the island until she discovered it; even the mainland had never set eyes on it before.
Bunny’s pen pal in Florida had sent her a sample. Caroline Craig was married to a man Bunny’s husband served with. The wives, both lonely and curious about life beyond their front doors, started corresponding at the suggestion of their husbands.
I buried my sister today, Caroline wrote. We hadn’t seen each other for years. I drove across two states with a truck full of Bundt cake. Bringing something was the only thing that stopped me going crazy. When I got there, the cake was still fresh as a daisy. Thank God for Tupperware!
It hadn’t been long since Bunny’s husband suddenly passed away. In the time it takes letters to cross in the post, everything had changed. Bunny picked up a pen and found herself unable to write the words ‘my husband has died’. Instead, she’d replie
d asking her friend to tell her more about this Tupperware, please.
It was shiny and clean. It made everything last so much longer. Bunny imported a crate and set about converting the island with a missionary zeal.
‘This will change your life!’ she said, whipping out a salad pot in the grocers. Women in the village still quoted the occasion. It was proof she has airs and graces, that one, always has, always will.
It wasn’t only storage pots that took Bunny’s fancy. Whenever the mood struck her, she’d import a box full of some kitchen gadget or other, and set out to sell it to whoever she met. ‘You wouldn’t believe what I have to show you! This will save you so much time…’ she’d say, waving around a peeler that made short work of potatoes. ‘I can save hours of your life. Just look!’
I skipped around to Sylvie’s and avoided the hinges on the gate, sticky with oil. There were no men living at the property, not that I knew of, but a man arrived every weekend, always carrying something. Last week, he brought an oilcan.
The rabbits dusted my shoes with their tails. I bent down.
‘Can I pick one up?’ I cradled a rabbit and rubbed the sunlight in its ears. ‘What’s his name?’
‘Pie.’ Sylvie studied the grass on her shoes.
‘What’s his name?’ I pointed at a rabbit so perfect my brother would have done anything to pull it out of a hat.
‘Stew.’
I didn’t understand. Not straight away. The rabbits weren’t christened because they weren’t pets. Their job was to breed and hop into pans, their leftovers interned in plastic coffins in the cold store. Bunny was saving for a fridge. She dreamed of drinking milk in the middle of the night without trudging outside in her dressing gown. If I’d known about the rabbits, I’m not sure I’d have waved at her carrying an armful of kitchenware and trotting across the lawn in her heels.
‘You must be from next door? Lorrie, is it? Lovely to meet you.’
The sunlight was a halo behind her, cupping her curls. Bunny beamed as if angels or the King of Kitchen Gadgets had landed on her lawn.
‘I’m so sorry about your grandmother last year. Lovely lady,’ she said. ‘I’d let her have my redcurrants and she’d give me her apples, so we could both make jelly all year round. Well, she’s gone to a better place now.’
The plastic boxes in her arms slotted into one another Russian-doll style. Bunny looked down at them as she said ‘better place’ and I couldn’t be sure if she meant my grandmother had gone to heaven or Tupperwareland.
‘Come on in,’ she said. ‘I’ll make lemonade.’
Bunny charged around her kitchen sprinkling sugar and slicing lemons. It was nothing to whip up a batch. When it came to Bunny Tyler and I, everything was nothing. If I came over after supper, apple crumble withheld because I’d grabbed a crowbar and lifted the floor in my room, she’d whip out the caramel wafers, or pop open a container of lavender shortbread. No problem. Nothing was too much trouble, providing I followed her rules: cross my legs at the ankles, use a coaster and always say please and thank you.
‘It’s wonderful to see Sylvie with such a confident girl. Perhaps you could teach her a thing or two.’
Bunny proffered the biscuit barrel, looking at her daughter. I’d once seen a beauty queen hand over her crown with the same look on her face. Beautiful disappointment.
‘If you’d only speak up and smile now and then, like Lorrie,’ she said, ‘people might like you!’
‘I like her as she is,’ I said.
I wasn’t sure if I did yet. Sylvie was so quiet I wasn’t sure there was much to like, but in the conspiracy of children against adults it was the right thing to say. Bunny stirred clanking ice in the frosty jug. Sylvie scratched her knuckles, back and forth, in the same place until the skin was raw. I sensed a silent war between them I was fighting both sides of. I was a hero and a traitor all at the same time.
The kitchen was lemon. The plastic table was cleaner than ice.
‘It’s a lovely room,’ I said. ‘My mother would be so jealous.’
Don’t ask me how I knew this was the right thing to say to get in Bunny’s good books, but I did. Bunny dreamed of owning more kitchen gadgets than any other woman on the island, and displaying them with the most flair. I knew it, even then, I knew her kind. It wasn’t so different to mine.
‘I just had it painted. I had that dresser built to fit there.’ Bunny pointed at the dresser.
The wood was painted fire-engine red. Whoever made her it had sawed a heart and the silhouettes of a pair of rabbits into the plinth.
The room was the same as ours, but in reverse. The window was on the opposite side. The hob sparkled. I could see what my parents meant when they stared at crumbling walls and said, ‘I can see the potential.’ This was a life they could see, if everything was put away and labelled correctly, which it wasn’t.
We’d been spooning sugar out of the coffee canister since I’d found the rat under my floor. I’d been desperate to get to the bottom of the smell in my room. The crowbar was lying on the stairs, carpet fibres still clinging to the steel. I pried up one floorboard, then another, and brought the rat down by the tail. Dangling. Its skeleton visible, poking out of the fur. I winced to hold it, but I wanted my mother to see. I wanted her to realise I’d lifted a floorboard under the bed she’d slept in as a girl. It wasn’t the only thing I’d found.
‘Do you want the tour?’
Bunny led us to the lounge. The plastic-covered sofa broke wind when Sylvie flopped down, but Bunny didn’t giggle. She stood by the TV the way a salesman stands beside a new car. No one on the island had ever owned a television before Bunny Tyler, she wanted me to know.
‘It was the craziest thing. I got it with the life insurance. Women kept calling around the week it arrived. Their kids pressed their snotty noses against the window, smearing the glass to get a peek!’ she said. ‘You’re welcome over anytime, Lorrie, if there’s anything you want to see.’
I suddenly loved her. There was no set at home yet. Dad always promised to get one as soon as he got a bonus. But no matter how many life insurance policies he sold, he always fell short. It wasn’t that he was a lousy salesman, as such. If anything, he painted a picture of disaster too well. People couldn’t wait to shoo him out of the house. They had somewhere to go. Someone to meet, dinner was ready. His what would happen if… was enough to put anyone off their shepherd’s pie.
There was a faded Virgin Mary figure on Bunny’s fireplace. The afternoon sun streamed through the curtains and bleached her features a little more each day. The statue’s painted lips were almost as pale as her face. Bunny wasn’t a Catholic, but she’d had the figure since childhood. Whenever she went out, she patted it and said, ‘Look after the house.’ Whenever she came in, she ignored it. Next to Mary, a pair of wrinkled boots stood on the shelf. It appeared they’d been walking through mud and frozen with their laces undone.
‘The sun’s coming out anyway. That reminds me, I’ve left plastic in the car.’ Bunny flitted out to save her storage pots from warped lids. I nudged Sylvie in the ribs.
‘What’s with the boots?’
‘They’re his,’ Sylvie said. ‘They’re the Miracle Boots.’
I had to hold my breath when she spoke. Really listen. If I missed a word, she’d never repeat it. The way she breathed his made me think Jesus had stopped by, slipped his sandals off at the door and come in for a cuppa without leaving a footprint on Bunny’s freshly scrubbed carpet.
‘What do you mean?’ I asked, but Sylvie was off, trudging upstairs to her room.
I followed. Beyond the swallows on the walls and the canary in a cage by the window, I could see my bedroom window. It looked cleaner at a distance.
‘Have you been sick?’ I gestured to a jug of flowers, a pot of vapour rub and a packet of cough drops by the bed.
‘Not lately,’ Sylvie said. ‘I’m always poorly though.’
‘Always?’
‘Pretty much.’
The canary started to sing. Its throat was a yellow pulse bobbing in and out, brighter than a summer’s afternoon. Sylvie kicked a glossy stack of magazines under the bed and slammed a diary in the drawer, flustered.
‘You’ve got more than one copy of the same book.’ I pointed to a shelf higgledy-piggledy with books for identifying birds and wild flowers, plus several editions of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
‘I love comparing the illustrations. Look.’
Sylvie turned to a page bookmarked by a folded Tunnock’s wrapper.
‘This Alice is beautiful, but that one looks wise, like a little old woman is locked inside her somewhere.’
The page didn’t interest me as much as annuals about girls solving crimes of stolen peppermints at school, or my mother’s film magazines, but I looked. Sylvie had never showed me anything before. Every word from her had to be dragged out slower than pulling a splinter. She made it look as painful.
‘Look at this one, compared to this.’
She flicked through the pages, showing me her favourite illustrations. If I was dying to hear about the Miracle Boots? Tough. I’d have to wait. I’d never seen her look so enthusiastic about anything.
25th August 1957
So, I’m standing there with Lorrie. And everyone’s giggling. And trying to be clever. And making me look stupid. That’s school all over, I reckon. It’s just there to make some folk look clever. And Lorrie can see it. She’s wearing this cardigan the colour of wild hyacinths and her hair’s all shiny ripples like a breeze on a loch. The kids are all clutching their lunchboxes and peering at her behind fringes cut with kitchen scissors. Hands twitching at their sides, desperate to stroke a shiny new pet. Oow. Who’s that girl? Where’s she from? I heard the mainland. I heard she lives at the distillery. She looks like someone from a city. You can tell.
Something Like Breathing Page 2