Tenterhooks Read online

  ‘Five tickets?’ Mum’s eyes flash the ceiling, several flashes, as if she is searching for more words.

  Dad gives up on his paper, huffs back in his chair. ‘Alison’s in bad need of some fun.’

  ‘And I’m in bad need of some housekeeping. Whatever made you think that we could afford five tickets?’

  ‘Oh come on, Gina, this was a one-off.’

  ‘A one-off here, a one-off there. Are we going to be doing these endless one-offs for the next ten years? The kid needs bringing up, not showering with presents.’

  Dad’s hands open in front of him. ‘Five little raffle tickets –’

  ‘We have to put this behind us, now; we have to continue our lives as normal.’ But suddenly she has turned away, and mutters to the window, ‘Six months and no word from her mother.’

  Quietly, Dad answers back, ‘She has written to Mrs M.’

  ‘Yes, and what exactly did she tell poor old Mrs Mortimer?’ Turning around, Mum’s face is as white as the sunny window. ‘That she has gone away to think.’ Now she is near to Dad, leaning over him, and I hear the rattle of her earrings in her hair. ‘Think.’

  Now her eyes switch to mine. ‘What’s up?’

  This has made me jump: nothing is up.

  She bashes her hair behind one ear. ‘You’re not going to make a fuss about salad, are you? Because I’m not in the mood for one of your fusses.’

  Have I ever made a fuss about salad? Tomato is my fourth favourite food, cucumber my sixth. But as she has asked, I decided to try my luck: ‘No lettuce?’

  ‘No lettuce,’ this is amazingly quick, but she adds, ‘although I don’t know why, because don’t you want healthy bones?’

  What would unhealthy bones be like? Do I have them already? Would I know if I had them?

  Her eyes have turned back to Dad. ‘Perhaps we should talk to Tim about a pet for Alison. Surely he could manage a cat.’

  ‘I did talk to Tim.’

  ‘You did?’

  ‘And he says that she isn’t interested.’

  ‘In a cat?’

  Mum always says that Animals are trouble, but cats are the best of a bad bunch.

  ‘In anything.’

  She takes several steps nowhere in particular, but bumps into the corner of the table, rattling my row of pens. ‘But these competitions! That ridiculous business of the Win-a-Pony, and now this!’

  ‘I know, I know,’ Dad’s hands rise but stay, hovering an inch above the tabletop, ‘but she seems to want to win one.’

  ‘But that’s silly,’ Mum hisses. ‘Why do kids do this? Why do they have to be so impossible about everything?’

  His hands are back on the table. ‘This seems to be something that she wants to do on her own.’

  ‘Well, fine: she could save up. She has pocket money, you know; Roxanne tells me that she has two shillings every week from Tim, and Mrs Mortimer seems to slip her more than the odd sixpence. Isn’t that right, Rox?’

  I look up from the blank bucket which I have topped with blue water, look from Mum to Dad, and nod. And now will Dad realize that I am badly off for pocket money, compared to everyone else?

  He looks but does not seem to see me. He tells Mum, ‘Tim says that she’s more than happy to save for the food and everything, she has saved, but she refuses to spend this money on buying the animal: she wants to win one.’

  ‘Well, this is silly.’ Mum joins us, drops into a chair, drops her elbows onto the table and her chin into her hands.

  The corners of Dad’s mouth fold in and down, they press dimples into his cheeks.

  I wish that I could draw dimples, but whenever I try, they look like boils.

  He says, ‘She wants to be lucky, I suppose.’

  ‘Well, I’m afraid that I hope that she’s unlucky with this one. Because what would she do with a racing greyhound?’

  I put down my pen. I have to explain this to Mum every year on the day of the kennel fête: ‘You don’t have to do anything with the greyhound, Mum. If you win him, then you’re his owner, you make up his name, you can go and see him whenever you want, but he lives in the kennels and they feed him, train him, race him.’ The ideal dog, surely, in her opinion. The only dog, I suspect, that she would ever allow us to have. Because she says that They’re worse than kids; they’re always under your feet or mating with your leg; they’re noisy and smelly and they have to be taken everywhere; they eat that foul food and they poo everywhere.

  Dad says they do not poo everywhere if they have been trained. And he knows, because his family had lots of them when he was little. He seems to remember them by how they died: Bruno as a puppy from a virus, Jake in old age from diabetes, Slipper by mistake from rat poison.

  Across the table, Mum shuts her eyes hard, then opens them hard: a sign that she refuses to say a word.

  Once, I pointed out to her that Grandma’s poodle, Rebel, has never mated with our legs, but she said, ‘That yapping perm is incapable of mating with anything.’

  And so we have Leo: for my fifth birthday, I was allowed to choose from the box of kittens and I chose him because he looked sad and trodden on, but this is how he has behaved ever since, he has never grown happy or clever. We hardly ever see him: the only evidence that he lives here is his two bowls on our kitchen floor.

  One of Mum’s arms flops down onto the table; her head stays in her other hand. ‘But how on earth would Tim find the time to keep running Alison up to the kennels? He’s forever ferrying her from home to school to Mrs Mortimer.’

  ‘She was fine when she failed to win that pony,’ Dad sounds worried. ‘She seemed to accept the situation.’

  ‘And how do you know?’ Mum squeaks. Her other arm thuds onto the table. The thud jogs me, jogs my pen so that the red bucket seems to have grown an extra handle. ‘When are you ever here to see how she is? You men, off to work every day. Who stays around to pick up the pieces? What else was she going to do, other than accept the situation? But how do any of us know what she was going through? That obsession, those books … she was coming here with what must have been the library’s entire collection of books on ponies. And then she spent her birthday money on more pony books. All for four or five questions, four or five little questions on that entry form. And she was ringing up local farmers, you know; did you know that? Asking questions. About feeding and forelocks and whatever. Mrs Mortimer found her on the phone, a couple of times, asking questions about hooves and hay, whatever. And that notebook full of tie-breakers! She was working on her tie-breaker for months, lots of clever little lines.’ Mum has to stop for breath. ‘Apparently she’d always wanted a pony, but never this badly. And do you know what she said to me when she knew that she hadn’t won? There’s always next year. Just like that: There’s always next year. Sometimes, I have to say, she gives me the creeps.’

  ‘Gina, please,’ Dad whispers, his head turning towards the door.

  I keep all my wishes for a pony; I wish on every first star that I see, on every birthday candle that I blow. And I tell no one, because if I told, those wishes would be wiped away. I have had so many wishes by now that eventually one of them will come true. But in the meantime I would love to win the greyhound.

  ‘She’s so like Tim, in some ways; wouldn’t you say?’ Mum is quieter, now. ‘Sitting by the phone, but firm in her belief that there’s-always-next-year. And in other ways she’s the opposite: so much hope and determination. Tim could do with some of that; we might have had Anne back by now if he had made an effort to find her, if he had gone after her.’

  Should I chance this red pen on the girl’s cheeks? Does anyone really have red cheeks? Even someone with cheeks as chunky as these?

  ‘But you said that we should let her go.’

  ‘Yes, now. But if Tim had had more get up and go, she might never have got up and gone.’

  How did she go? On a bus?

  ‘That’s unfair.’ Dad sounds tired. ‘Tim’s a lovely bloke.’

  ‘I know he’s a lovel
y bloke.’ Mum, too: very tired. ‘Perhaps that was the problem.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  I know a good word for this girl: apple-cheeked. The apples that we are given by Mrs Mortimer have red on them, she has to find the three most beautiful apples in the box. Mum walks around behind her, saying, Anything will do, really, honestly; but Mrs Mortimer laughs and says, No, no, looks are important.

  ‘Well, you know, not everyone wants a lovely bloke, or not all the time.’

  ‘They don’t?’

  Mum breathes down her nose. ‘You wouldn’t understand. This place …’

  ‘There are worse places.’ Dad seems to be checking through his newspaper for something; the turning pages fan me, fluffing my hair.

  ‘Well, yes, of course, but what are the two main excitements, here, every year?’ Mum leaves us and crosses to the window. ‘The kennel fête,’ she says to the window, ‘and the point-to-point: fund-raising for greyhounds, and betting on horses.’

  I love the point-to-point, I love to walk over the fields which are usually only a boring view from our bedroom windows, fields which look flat from our bedroom windows but which, when we walk on them, are clumps of grass. I love to walk to the hedges that have been built for the horses to jump: higher than real hedges, impossibly high. Then there are the marquees, massive, with tatty flaps for doorways. Everyone from around here comes to the races, but there are hundreds of other people and I have no idea where they come from. Nor do I have any idea where the horses and jockeys come from; but they are proper horses and jockeys, they look like the horses and jockeys that I have seen on the telly. Lots of people have picnics: paper plates and sausage rolls.

  ‘You met me at the point-to-point.’ Dad closes the paper, squashes those crackles into silence.

  Mum laughs, but not much; just two low, slow notes. ‘I met lots of boys at the point-to-point; there’s a beer tent, there are lots of boys. Lots of horrible, drunken boys.’

  If she had married one of those other boys, would I have been born? Would I have been me?

  ‘Don’t talk about our fathers like that.’ Dad’s laugh is quicker, thrown higher.

  ‘Anne’s father had drunk himself six feet under by the time we were old enough to go to the point-to-point on our own.’

  Six feet under means dead: a Mr Mortimer, dead. Why had I never thought that there would have been a Mr Mortimer?

  ‘You know what Anne and I loved about the point-to-point? The refreshments tent.’

  Me, too: the smell of cake.

  ‘The cream teas, coffee kisses; we had a passion for those coffee kisses.’

  ‘Sugar and spice.’

  ‘Sugar and spice,’ but now she sounds far away, further away than the window. ‘Beer and bets. Anyway, why did you say that you met me there? We’d known each other since we were five, since Mrs Goodchild’s class.’

  ‘I spoke properly to you for the first time at a point-to-point.’ Dad has joined her by the window.

  A moment of silence, ‘Improperly.’

  ‘I don’t think that I’d have spoken improperly to you, I don’t think that I’d have known how to do that.’

  ‘Yes, but you know what I mean.’ She is turning her wedding ring, her only ring; a spark of sunshine stays in place, on top. ‘Remember how drunk Tim was?’

  ‘Our Timbo? Our Timmy, horrible and drunk?’

  ‘Well, horribly drunk.’

  ‘Horribly sick.’

  Suddenly she takes his face into her hands. ‘You showed me your teeth.’

  He looks surprised, his hands on her shoulders. ‘Sounds rather aggressive.’

  ‘No, you showed me your two chipped teeth.’ She slips the tip of her nail between his lips. ‘You and Tim had come off your motorbike, the day before. Remember?’

  Dad had a motorbike?

  His hands drop on to her hips. ‘I remember coming off the bike, I remember the teeth, but I don’t remember that I showed them to you.’

  ‘Well, you did,’ she says up into his eyes.

  ‘Well, I’m sorry,’ he says down into hers.

  Stroking his hair, her ring disappears in the shiny darkness. ‘I was touched.’

  ‘By the chips in my teeth?’ He is laughing, trying to suck his lips over his teeth.

  I am laughing inside, picturing potato chips held in his teeth.

  And Mum laughs in a way that I had forgotten that she could laugh. ‘The chink in your armour, I suppose.’

  Armour?

  ‘Not touched enough to come to the pictures with me. Or not straight away.’

  And Mum loves the pictures; she has promised to take me to see her favourite film, Gone With the Wind, whenever it comes again to our cinema.

  ‘So, why did you change your mind a week or so later?’

  ‘Because of Anne.’

  ‘Because of Anne?’

  ‘I never told you? Well, Tim seemed so keen on her, and I knew that he was a nice boy; and she’d had such a rough year, with her dad dying. And, of course, she didn’t want to know, when Tim was throwing up around the beer tent; but I thought that if we met up again as a foursome, then I could probably persuade her that he was okay.’ She smiles, ‘And I did,’ the smile becomes smaller, ‘I suppose.’

  I look back down, but my picture means nothing to me: I have finished, filled the blank spaces with colours, but there is nothing more than a girl and a boy carrying a bucket down a hillside. I have had enough, for today: when I have packed up these pens, I am going next door to try to be friendly to Alison.

  As I open the door, Dad asks Mum, ‘Do you really think that she has gone off with someone else?’

  And as I close the door behind me, I hear Mum’s whisper: ‘Listen, remember when I came home from the hospital, and I went to fetch the kids? Well, Rox came running to open the door, she’d been in the front room; but Anne was in the kitchen, and as I walked into the hallway, I’m fairly sure that I saw someone leaving by the back door.’

  4

  NIGHT FLIGHT

  ‘No kids?’ she asks me, with a laugh of exasperation as she kneels to her toddler who has ended up near my table in his tantrum.

  ‘Not yet.’ My standard reply.

  ‘Married, then?’

  ‘Yes.’ Technically, no; but yes is easier, yes will do.

  ‘Not here with you, though?’

  All week I have been mesmerized not by her bulk, but by the suntan-coloured hair which licks down her back and around her waist. Now, from above, I see the lips of the parting around a rosy sliver of scalp. She stands, and the child turns to her.

  I wrinkle my nose, ‘No time off work.’ True. ‘But I needed a break.’

  ‘Been here before?’ She picks up and cuddles the boy; his whine whipped away like waves wrapped into a seashell.

  ‘Yes,’ and for some reason, I laugh apologetically, ‘once. You?’

  ‘No,’ but a similar laugh, ‘never been abroad before. Had a tiny windfall and decided to blow it on some winter sun.’

  ‘Wise choice.’

  Her smile stretches to match mine and now she is on her way back to the beach, her son shrunk to a kitten in her arms, her wide hips rocking a low hem.

  We have been neighbours for a week until this morning, when we vacated our semi-detached, identically furnished villas. But this is the first time that we have spoken. Sometimes we swapped smiles, but only when the man was elsewhere – she would smile only when he was elsewhere. He never acknowledged me, not even on our twinned patios through the bush of bougainvillaea that was our border. His face was made of orange peel, his legs were porcelain but over-fired and cracked by hairs; his glasses magnified the sun and boiled his eyes in their own water. He used their patio as a platform from where he could bellow to the little boy. The child was prone to tantrums; I learned to dread the petulant quiver of his knees.

  I never saw them talk to anyone. Apart from the yells of the man and the child, the only exchanges that I overheard were muffled by their
whitewashed walls and diluted by the drizzle of their satellite television. There is not much to do here, but I had no time to try my television. Every day I followed the sun around my patio: always on the move, the sun, my towel, my books and me. Then there were meals: the strenuous chewing of fresh loaves, the languid peeling of fruits. Plus snacks, the crunching of crisps succulent with heavy Spanish oil, the snapping of the dry folded wings from cricket-green pistachios. Then numerous trips to the little shops to replenish supplies. And a daily clean and tidy in preparation for the maid, who came to slosh the floors and bathroom with lemon-sweetened bleach. More strolls and coffees. Often I was late to leave the esplanade, nearly too late for a last trip to the shops.

  This island is an ideal place from where to watch the world go by; or, rather, the people of the world, overhead in planes. Flat on my back on my towel, I would watch those planes, which were too high to be landing here or on any of the neighbouring islands. Bound for elsewhere. For anywhere and everywhere other than here. Down here on the ground, there is very little to see. Sparse vegetation on volcanic mountains. The population is small, and the number of tourists limited. Traffic is taxis, which are old red Mercedes with leathery upholstery; or tourists’ hire-cars, very new, very white, very small, like toy cars on these toytown roads. Last year, we drove to the capital, desperate for some life. On the main waterfront we went into a bar which was empty except for a group of girls, girls of nine or ten who were wearing white blouses and pleated skirts and who ordered meals which were served graciously by their rather formally-dressed waiter. Outside, in the road, there were other, similar girls, with skipping-ropes, their arms looped around one another’s shoulders.

  This year, I came here alone for the peace and quiet: the inky sea, the eye-blue sky and, of course, the sun. And there is the moon, which, this week, was full. The moon was the reason why I did not mind when the neighbours’ son soared like a seagull from sleep in the early mornings: because, waking early, I woke to moonshine. The moon, here, seesaws slowly with the heavy sun. Every morning I woke to a moonshine stencil of my window draped Dali-esque over my bed. By nine, my neighbours had gone for the day. Why did they go, every day, all day, when there was a pool and playground in the garden? The beach, I suppose. From my patio, I would see the man unfold the pushchair and pack a bucket and spade. Once, later, I saw them in a café with cooked breakfasts: chips, bacon, eggs, and fried sliced white bread. The woman saw me looking, and swallowed hard on nothing. Her gaze clunked on to her plate and bounced away to catch the ferry which slides all day between here and Fuerteventura but never slides from view. What did she think that she saw in my eyes? Disapproval, even disgust? A fat woman guzzling fatty food? I burned to tell her what I had seen before she saw me: her velvet brown hair dropped down and around her solid gold shoulders; the lightness of her eyes and corners of her mouth.