Tenterhooks Read online

  Because the story was that Mum had been the prettiest girl in her class. Whenever Dad overheard her telling us this story, he would laugh and say something like, ‘As if that’s an achievement.’ But, turning eleven, I was beginning to realize how much skill was necessary for conventional prettiness: the plucking, crimping, shading.

  Mum considered. ‘Fairly. Not bad-looking. Although I thought that she had a squint.’

  Blossom wriggled forward on her vast seat. ‘Fairly?’ She looked at me. ‘Like Hermione?’

  Mum turned to me, then back to reprimand Blossom: ‘What a thing to say!’

  I told Blossom, ‘You have freckles.’

  Mum returned to me. ‘Stop that; she’s eight and I don’t want her to grow up with a complex.’

  Then she lectured Blossom, ‘Once Hermione is blonde, her whole face will perk up; you wait and see. True, even, for me: since I turned blonde, I’ve never looked back.’

  So, sometime in the future, like Mum, I would have to slap bitter-smelling sludge onto my hair, to wrap my head in an old towel for hours but still manage to scatter burning droplets over the bathroom carpet.

  Then she added, wistfully, ‘But Connie was clever, she had a prize for Latin, and she threw it all away.’

  Blossom’s face opened in horror. ‘She threw away her prize?’

  Mum snapped shut her eyes and drove her fingers into her black roots.

  Blossom pressed on: ‘What happened to her?’

  Her eyes remaining closed, Mum said, ‘You know what happened to her,’ because, over the years, we had been told; but she obliged anyway, ‘she ran away with a pop group.’

  ‘But not like the Bay City Rollers?’

  Eyes open, but vague, ‘No,’ wearily, ‘you know not like the Bay City Rollers.’

  ‘Like who, then?’ Blossom unscrewed a Curly Wurly from where the tip was stuck between her teeth.

  ‘I’ve told you: men with dirty long hair.’ She folded her arms and muttered to the scenery, ‘It was those bloody Beatles.’

  I dropped a Toffo. ‘She went off with The Beatles?’ I had never heard that version before.

  Mum whirled towards me with a click of her tongue, ‘It was the fault of The Beatles. They put ideas into her head. They were pipsqueaks when they were Liverpudlians, but they were even worse when they began to take drugs and flounce around with Indians. I mean, Martha Reeves didn’t feel a need to push her bed around the street, pronouncing.’

  I did not know where to start with this, but Blossom chirped, ‘Who’s Martha Reeves?’

  Mum merely despaired, ‘Questions, questions, questions; one more, and I’ll have your guts for garters.’

  I remembered how, when she had told us that Connie had run away from her baby, Mum had complained, ‘That stupid sister of mine couldn’t look after a hamster.’ And I had been confused, unsure if there had been a real hamster, if the hamster had been real. I was worried for the hamster, on and off, for some months. Mum had told us, ‘Connie went off on the hippy trail,’ and explained, or failed to explain, ‘Morocco.’ I knew nothing of Morocco, which I mistook for Monaco, for the location of the motor races that Dad liked to watch on television. And hippy trail? On the trail of some hippies? I had imagined hippies trailing their hair and beards and beads around the racetrack in Monaco.

  Now Mum muttered to the branch-blurred window of the train, ‘I hope Miriam’s not Jewish.’

  The toffee in Blossom’s mouth rattled, ‘What’s Jewish?’

  ‘Foreign,’ she replied faintly to the window.

  But I was not quite sure this was true. ‘Elaine Bourne’s piano teacher is Jewish and he’s not foreign, he’s a cockney.’

  Mum turned to me, her eyes unusually wide and clear, ‘I was born within-the-sound-of-Bow-bells, and you know what makes me sick? That people think that we are so cheerful all the time.’ She turned back to the window and complained, ‘People think that cockneys spend their days going on about apples-and-pears.’

  Blossom groaned theatrically, ‘I hate pears, especially ones with brown in them. Never give me another pear.’

  ‘I mean,’ Mum continued, ‘when have I ever said apples-and-pears?’

  I ventured, ‘But you do say Barnet and Boat Race.’

  She turned on me, ‘I do not.’

  ‘You do. This morning you said Barnet; that was what you called Blossom’s hair: her Barnet.’

  Her hands clenched on the carrier bag in her lap. ‘Well, that must have been in passing. I wasn’t being clever.’

  We had to walk miles from the station, the three of us trying to make sense of the directions that Mum had written down in a margin in her magazine, and which I read across into the printed words to try to amuse us: Right exciting colour scheme for your kitchen, Straight on a cool surface. Finally, turning into Lee Close, we saw that they were watching for us from behind their garden gate: a square woman beneath a mess of dark curls, a little boy who seemed to have the same hair, and a golden dog who was as big as the kid. Seeing us, they began to wave, the dog waving with his tail.

  A few steps nearer, Mum called, ‘Miriam?’ The woman smiled even wider, the mouth pushing her cheeks line by line further into those crispy curls.

  ‘Winnie! Come on in.’

  Up close, the two heads of hair were very different: Miriam’s darkness was dying away to grey, but every one of the little boy’s curls cupped a buttery slick of sunshine. He could have come from an old-fashioned book, with his button nose and – I looked lower to check – the tiny rubies of a graze on each chubby knee. Next to those knees were Miriam’s thick shins, driven down into solid purple ankles.

  Mum announced, ‘Nathaniel.’ She was looking down, I could not see her face.

  Miriam laughed as if the name was a joke, then immediately explained: ‘Nat is easier.’

  Blossom’s knees twitched with joy, ‘Gnat!’ I knew from her knees that she had said gnat rather than Nat. Then she was saying, ‘Look at this lovely dog, Mum!’ and reaching towards the sleek blonde head which was tipping back to track her hand.

  Mum slapped down the hand. ‘Careful! What have I told you?’

  Miriam laughed again, ‘He’s fine,’ and she told Blossom, ‘his name’s Goldie.’

  The dog was dancing in front of us on his four thin legs, his front paws dabbing the long grass. He managed an appreciative touch of his nose to Blossom’s fingertips, but her hand was not quite what he wanted, or not all that he wanted, he seemed to want something from all of us at once.

  ‘Nat,’ Mum was trying again, unsurely. I remembered that she had told me that she did not know who had named him: Connie, the maternity ward, the social workers, or Miriam. ‘As in King Cole,’ she added, slightly more confidently.

  Blossom’s face puckered, she was puzzled. ‘Old King Coal?’

  Mum touched my elbow as she told Miriam, ‘This is Hermione,’ before turning stiffly, reluctantly to Blossom, ‘and this is Deborah.’

  Blossom had hold of both sides of the dog’s head and was rubbing his ears, the floppy triangles of orange velvet. The dog’s eyes were closed, sunk into black patches that were not quite fur and not quite skin. ‘Blossom,’ she informed Miriam. ‘No one in the whole world calls me Deborah.’

  Mum scowled down over her jutted chin. ‘But it is your name.’

  ‘Yes,’ crisp and helpful, ‘but Blossom’s my name, too.’

  ‘Not your proper name.’

  ‘My middle name.’

  Mum switched tactics, began to explain: ‘I’d wanted a Hermione ever since I was a little girl …’ How many times had I heard this? And every time she made me sound like a doll. ‘… so I’d had my choice; and then, second time around, I decided that I wanted a Blossom (postnatally, I was not-quite-right) but Hubby said that she should have a proper name.’

  ‘Deborah.’ Blossom opened her mouth wide, crinkled her nose, displayed her tongue, the root of her tongue.

  Mum looked away. ‘But Blossom stuck.’

/>   Miriam purred, ‘Blossom’s a lovely name.’

  Mum’s hands went to her hair, her pale nails fluttered in her dark undergrowth. ‘Oh,’ she was dismissive, with a weary breath, ‘it’s only for family.’

  ‘Oh,’ Miriam’s breath was the opposite, scooped back, ‘you’d rather that we didn’t –’

  Mum realized her tactlessness. ‘Oh, no,’ the hurried insertion of a smile, ‘Blossom is fine with us, if it’s fine with you.’

  Suddenly Miriam was walking away, leading us into her garden. ‘One of my girls is a Petunia,’ she called, cheerfully, over a chunky shoulder.

  Mum perked up. ‘Goodness! You were adventurous.’

  Miriam laughed for a third time, louder, perhaps she had to laugh louder because she was further away. ‘I wish I was: I didn’t choose her name, she came to me as a Petunia.’

  As soon as Miriam had settled us on a picnic blanket and gone to fetch drinks for us, Blossom wanted to know, ‘Is Miriam a Jewish, then?’

  Mum was frantic to hush her, ‘Shhh. How do I know?’ Then she hissed to me, ‘How many kids do you reckon she has here?’

  ‘Well, how do I know?’ There was no sign of anyone other than the little boy, who was riding his bike on the strip of paving stones which surrounded the house, his stabilizers sounding brittle on the cracks. His cardigan seemed to have been knitted from a pattern for a baby, simply made bigger. He had very few places for a smooth ride: the garden, front and back, was mostly grass, unmown. Back home, we had a square of concrete for the dustbins and had to walk through the house to reach the back garden which was mostly a path down the middle and the whirly clothes drier. Our back garden had a splintery, sticky brown fence; here, we were hidden behind a hedge, I could smell the sunshine on the leaves, I could smell the warm wax on the shiny leaves.

  Blossom said, ‘He even has eyelashes.’

  We turned to her; she had both arms around Goldie’s neck, deep in his blonde ruffle. But his eyes were turned from her close gaze and his head held so high above hers that his firm black mouth sagged. From down here, he looked like a disdainful old man. From above, he had looked like a toddler, beseeching, following our eyes with his own, his black buttons with bone-coloured rims.

  Mum merely muttered, ‘What have I told you,’ which failed to rise to the pitch of a question.

  I looked closer. Goldie’s eyelashes were nothing like his long white whiskers, each of which came from a big black freckle. There were so many of his tiny eyelashes that they made a stubby golden fringe above each amber eye.

  Mum said, ‘The only Goldie that you’ll have in my house is a goldfish, and that’s if you’re lucky.’

  I turned back to the house and saw that a woman had appeared by the side door in a dark-pink quilted dressing gown. Her bottom was pushed back onto the pebble-dash wall, but her head was dropped down and she looked caved in, or in pain. Her brown hair, so long and thin that it trailed to a point, had slipped forward to hide her face from us, but we could see that she was smoking, the cigarette cupped in her hand, beaded with her fingertips.

  ‘Good God,’ whispered Mum, ‘who’s that? Or what’s that?’

  ‘Petulia?’ guessed Blossom.

  From the house there were two loud strikes of steel onto crockery, accompanied much closer by a squeal from Blossom, ‘Mum!’

  We whirled to her: Goldie’s ears were tented, his head was on one side, and then suddenly he was galloping from us towards the house, his back legs bouncing behind him: time for his lunch, apparently. Blossom continued, ‘Did you see his face? Didn’t he look like a dog in an advert!’

  The smoking woman did not seem to see him as he skidded through the door.

  A few moments later, Miriam was wobbling on the doorstep with a laden tray. The smoking woman slunk behind her and was replaced by a girl who dropped down from the doorstep with Miriam. How old was this new girl? Younger than me, slightly? Her bones were much thinner than her joints; she was made of shoulders, elbows, knees, ankles.

  Miriam called ahead cheerfully to us, ‘This is Suzette, who is staying here with her mum for the summer.’

  The girl’s hair was the same colour as the trailing hair of the disappeared woman – dark, no particular colour – but was built, inch by precise inch, into a French plait. Her eyes were cupped by dim blue shadows, the darker, deeper streaks of which were slightly speckled.

  Blossom twisted up onto her knees. ‘That lady who we saw by your door?’

  ‘Yes,’ Miriam’s breaths pushed hard into the heavy air; Mum rose to help her, to take the tray.

  Behind them the girl ducked onto our blanket, cross-legged: one fluid movement, she was collapsible and now she was crumpled on our blanket, her head bowed over the butterfly of knees, the rope of hair slack between her shoulder blades. She linked her hands in her lap, a much more definite movement, but they pulled on each other, faded ink stains flitting on the dry skin, stains which were the same colour as the softnesses that I had seen around her eyes.

  Miriam was checking with Mum, ‘Will you all be okay to stay here in the sun?’

  One of the blue-dappled hands flew to the girl’s mouth, the tip of a nail slotted between her teeth.

  Mum considered, ‘Blossom has a tendency to burn.’

  Blossom bellowed, ‘I do not.’

  Mum whipped around to her. ‘You do.’

  Blossom tipped her flaming nose into the air. ‘I do not.’

  Mum turned back. ‘Well, burn, then.’

  Miriam tried, ‘You have lovely fair colouring, Blossom.’

  Blossom said, ‘Mum’s dyed.’

  Mum breathed a mixture of a laugh and a sigh, ‘Kids,’ and one hand fluttered over her white-hot hair.

  On the tray there were six tall glasses, a taller glass jug of cloudy liquid, a mound of sandwiches and a fan of paper napkins. The bread was brown, very, and had been sliced thickly by hand. Each filled chunk had been cut only once into two halves, these cuts swollen and tender with wavelets of cream cheese or sinewy tomato. Miriam introduced the sandwiches to us, guided us through the formation on the plate, ‘Cream cheese, cream cheese and cucumber, cream cheese and banana –’

  ‘Banana?’ shrieked Blossom.

  ‘You don’t like banana?’

  She looked affronted, ‘I love banana.’

  ‘Oh,’ Miriam laughed, ‘good. And these are tomato and pickle.’

  ‘Branston,’ Blossom muttered, slightly unsurely, looking at the sandwiches.

  ‘No,’ Miriam had to tell her, ‘not Branston, I’m afraid, but Miriam.’

  ‘Oh,’ Blossom’s puzzled look came briefly to Miriam, then returned to the sandwiches.

  The little boy settled next to Miriam, held his cream cheese and banana sandwich in both hands. Miriam told us that the drink was lemonade, but the cloudy liquid was different from the lemonade that we had at home: not fizzy, and with the taste of lemon, both sharp through the skin of my mouth and clinging.

  ‘And for pudding,’ Miriam told us, ‘I’ve made some ice-cream.’

  Made?

  ‘With the strawberries that we picked yesterday,’ she added, turning to the girl, who nodded.

  So she did mean that she had made the ice-cream, not that she had merely come up with her own mix of flavours and toppings bought from a shop.

  I had to know more: ‘You made ice-cream?’

  ‘Strawberry, my favourite,’ she replied, cheerfully.

  Blossom whooped, ‘My favourite,’ which was not quite true, because she claimed every flavour as her favourite.

  ‘But how can you make ice-cream?’ Because ice-cream was something that spiralled down from silver machines in musical vans, or came rippled in boxes from freezers in shops. How could she make something that was frozen?

  She could see no problem: ‘Well, you make up the mixture and then freeze it in the freezer compartment.’

  Blossom whirled around to Mum, ‘Can you make some ice-cream?’

  Miriam came to Mum’s
aid, ‘But it is a bother, you have to keep stirring the mixture, every hour or so for hours and hours, or you’ll end up with a solid icy block.’

  ‘So,’ Mum told Blossom, with a clipped smile, ‘your answer is no.’

  The ice-cream came in a Tupperware box; we peered down into the box to see a filling which was too pink to be true, party-dress-pink, and winking maroon pips. Miriam levered portions from the smooth rectangle with a serving spoon, each gash slightly furred with ice. This ice-cream had more flavour than strawberries, Miriam had done something – how had she done this? – to distil the flavour. My tongue held each mouthful onto the roof of my mouth, to warm, to squeeze more strawberry from the stubborn ice, the slippery cream.

  When I finished, I was reclining, propped on one elbow; I sank down onto my back and closed my eyes, watched the sun burn onto my eyelids. I heard Mum’s hands move around inside her bag, then Miriam’s decline of an unspoken offer of a cigarette, ‘Not for me, thanks.’

  Mum agreed, ‘I’ll give up soon, this is not something that I want to be doing when I’m old; I reckon thirty-five is too old to smoke,’ and she added, in explanation, ‘three years’ time.’

  Now the rasp and fizz of the match, its dark blue burn of the air. How many cigarettes in three years? The deep smell of the match was smothered by a slick of tobacco smoke.

  ‘Because I’ve had to watch what happened to Dad.’ Mum’s voice again, talking about Grandad.

  I opened my eyes; the sun had disappeared behind the girl’s head, but sunshine ran down the plait which had popped over one shoulder.

  Miriam said, ‘Yes, I was so very sorry to hear about your father.’

  ‘Oh,’ a dizzying inhalation, ‘you know, he was told to smoke, by his doctor. In the olden days. To help him to breathe. He was ill for years.’

  Looking at the girl, I saw that there was a smile in the shadows of the back-lit face, and that this smile was focused on me.

  I asked her, ‘Do you go to school around here?’ Was there a school around here, out here in the country?

  ‘No, because it’s the holidays, but I suppose that I will if we stay.’ Then her eyes were washed away behind her eyelids.