Closure (12 page)

But then I meet the daughter… Oh… she was a brat.

I could see why the other family had to move.

I couldn't bring you all up here to that house.

I just wanted a place where my children could live and not be teased.

I did see an advertisement for a house for sale on Goldney Road. But we never have money to buy house. I never really give it any mind. Remember your daddy only come to save up to buy land in Jamaica so we were not thinking of buying house in England. I have to beg to persuade him to come look at this house with me.

We had to scrimp to find the deposit. But by the Grace of God we manage it. And we have somewhere to put you.

It was almost three years yu know since I leave you girls in Jamaica with Mama.

On the Sunday night I soak up my pillow with tears and I decide I'm not going to cry any more nights for unnu. I just going to have my children with me.

I book your tickets on the Monday morning and you all were coming on the Saturday. So… we didn't have much time.

Not even a full week we have.

But we found Goldney Road.

And we managed to find the deposit.

God is good.

Elaine, Second Born

Ooh Julia, I like this. It's like one of those tinted photos of us from the sixties.

Hang on a minute… I need my glasses for this.

Oh my life… it's… it's us. That is us. It is us, isn't it?

There we are, me, you…

How come Sarah's not there?

We were a threesome then. In those days.

Where are we though…?

Oh I know… I do know. It's the dining room at the old house in Goldney Road.

I really loved those curtains.

And the wallpaper with the apples and the grapes. D'you remember when Daddy hung that paper? I remember that. And he had no idea how wallpaper should be hung. None of us knew that he should match up the pictures at the edges, did we? …That the fruit should be matched so you don't see the separate strips across the wall like that.

It stayed up for years that wallpaper.

Can't believe you remember all this… How much time did you spend painting this? Must have taken you ages.

Why?

Why would you want to paint this? I can't believe it.

We're wearing our judging clothes. Did anyone else call them that? I think we must have been the only ones who called them that.

And Daddy singing and swinging the little ones on his leg.

Look how Rosie's holding on.

Wasn't she a lovely? She was a beautiful baby.

And little George waiting his turn – with his hands in his little pockets. Oaoaorh sooo cute… There are some photos somewhere of him standing just like this. So lovely.

Shame we never had any baby photos of us…

You've really captured the likeness of everyone.

He used to let them sit on his foot and hold on to his leg.

This is sooo funny. It's really weird… remembering all this stuff.

Why've you painted this? It's odd. Really weird.

Why do you even think about this stuff, Julia?

I don't know why you do it.

You need to forget it! That's what I did.

I never think about those things.

I really don't.

I can't believe you even remember it.

Just look at you standing there. Looking at them.

So like you.

I don't know why it meant so much to you. You really wanted to have a go didn't you? You wanted to join in.

I remember… I was pulling on your skirt to make you sit back down but you just stood there… watching.

Waiting.

Hhhuh.

And then you actually asked for a go.

I wouldn't have even asked. I'd never ask them for anything.

I mean, what's the point?

I knew you wouldn't get a turn.

We never got turns at anything.

The trouble is, Julia…

You really wanted to be like them, didn't you?

You wanted to be one of the little ones.

I've always thought that. You wanted to be like them.

Even Sarah used to say that you
should
really be one of them because you were quite young when we came here and you weren't that much older than them. You were really small. Still a baby really.
She
thought you should be treated the same.

You really
did
want to be one of them, didn't you?

But you weren't born here were you?

You were one of us.

One of the bigger ones.

Rosie, One of the Little Ones

Julia, I just peeped my head round the door of your studio. I hope you don't mind… but that painting, I had to go in and take a closer look. I was on my way upstairs to see what the kids were up to, but honestly, Julia… it just drew me in.

Gave me goose bumps it did. Really made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.

It's beautiful. All that detail. Tch, you're so clever, you are.

Everything about the old dining room at Goldney Road, you've got it all, to a tee. Even the wallpaper… That wallpaper was up forever.

All these years I never even thought about that time. Then suddenly… Honestly, it jumped me right back to it. I mean, I found myself holding on for dear life to Daddy's leg and felt the great whoop of rising up through the air, head thrown back and looking up at him. Like staring into the eyes of God. He seemed so far away. I used to think I was flying… And the song just poured out of my mouth. Do you remember it…?

Oh my God, after all this time… and that funny little song… there it was in my head… Daddy's song – every word, just came back to me. You probably heard me singing it…

Here on our rock-away horse we go,

Johnny and I, to a land we know,

Far away in the sunset gold,

A lovelier land than can be told.

Where all the flowers go niddlety nod,

Nod, nod, niddlety nod.

Where all the flowers go niddlety nod,

And all the birds sing by-low

Lullaby, lullaby, by-low.

One minute I was singing and then I burst out laughing as though I really was rising through the air. And swinging… Honestly… I was, right in that room, and I was almost hysterical. I really was that tiny child again. It was utter joy. And then before I realised it, I was crying my eyes out… I mean, properly sobbing, Julia.

I had to sit down … and great idea putting the old sofa there by the way; I dropped into it; and you were right, you can't have too many cushions… So, I'm all cushioned up with the sound of Daddy's voice. Didn't he have a lovely voice, Julia? It was so soft… really gentle. Pure velvet. I could actually hear him, It's as if I was being cradled, like he was rocking me… I felt so warm… and Julia, you're not gonna believe this…

I fell asleep.

DINESH ALLIRAJAH
EASY ON THE ROSE'S

The first thing Donna noticed about working at The Raven was that the floor stuck to her feet. It became a bedtime ritual to peel off fag-butts and scraps of beer-mat from the soles of her shoes. The next thing she noticed was that punters stuck to her as well.

Fifteen years ago, two weeks after moving back to the old house, she'd stopped by the local pub for a lime and soda and an application form. The owner of a tiepin, which read “Gavin”, introduced himself as the man in charge. He was younger than Donna but his Bar and Ents management CV, he told her, was as long as her arm, and he'd looked at her arm as he said it.

The pub, as it stood now, had another six months in it, Gavin said, and then it'd be closed for a refit. The Raven would re-open as an eatery specialising in Valentine's and Christmas menus, and the old regulars, if they hadn't already vanished while the place was closed, would all be gone as soon as the smoking ban kicked in. Now, at the end of each day, Gavin said, they needed a wrecking ball to get rid of them.

When she began work, Donna would prompt one of the regulars into a conversation about something else that had disappeared or was on the way out: mugs of ale, proper music, the welfare state, human rights, smoking next year, this place soon enough, or
us lot –
whichever they got to first.

She carried their voices back to the house where they blended with those on the rolling news channels throughout the night. This was her routine for her first six weeks at The Raven until Sal took occupancy of the stool nearest the cigarette machine.

Sal had appeared in a moulting camel overcoat with a burnout velvet shawl around her narrow shoulders in defiance of the May sunshine outside. On the stool, she looked like a warbler on a reed. Fragile, the coat and shawl seemed to be all that kept her in one piece.

She delved into her coat for her pack of Berkeley's and a lighter. Face powder drifted from her in tiny clouds, smelling of Yardley's April Violet. Donna recognised it as the scent on the folded-up bedclothes in the airing cupboard at her house.

“Who
is
this nut?” Gavin murmured in Donna's ear.

He brushed past, fiddling with the Bluetooth headset attached to his left ear, and arrived in front of the old woman just as she breathed a cloud across the bar. Gavin fanned the air in front of his face. “Yes, love?”

She spoke as she moved, in puffs of vapour. “Well, first of all…” There was a huge drag on the cigarette, from which the crinkle of the paper cylinder could be heard across the pub. “Good afternoon, dear.” Another drag. More ash dropped to the floor. “Now, what I would very much like you to do is to fetch me a gimlet, would you?”

Gavin was already at the optics. He placed a single gin on the bar in front of her.

“And what's this, dear?”

Gavin directed his response to the gallery of regulars at the other end of the bar. “That's a gin, my love, just like you asked for.”

“I'm perfectly aware that it's a gin, young man, but are you aware that I asked for a
gim
-let?”

“A… gimlet?”

“Yes, dear.”

“Not a gin.”

“Well, gin is a constituent, yes.”

Before he could prolong the conversation, Donna grabbed a bottle of Rose's Lime Cordial and caught the old woman's eye.

“Now, you see,” said the woman, “this lovely young lady seems perfectly appraised of the situation. So perhaps she might also be able to locate a second shot of gin to go with the one you were kind enough to bring. Would you, dear?”

Gavin nodded a retreat. Donna took the glass of gin to the Gordon's optic, added a shot, dropped in a wedge of lime and returned to where she'd left the cordial in front of the old woman.

As she poured, a slim, crumpled hand curled around the neck of the bottle. “Ssh, ssh, ssh!” said the old woman. “
Easy
on the Rose's, dear.”

A sip brought a momentary stillness to her hand. The rim, pressed into the circles of rouge on her cheekbones, left grooves in her skin and a faint blush on the glass, now held out to Donna for a refill.

Donna built another gimlet, her every move chaperoned by murmurs of admonishment or approval. The old woman gave the end result a sigh of satisfaction and sat for a moment in weary euphoria before a new fluster came over her.

“I do have the means to honour this…” She let her voice trail away. She delved into her coat pocket and produced a 20p coin and a cloakroom ticket. “If you would care to set up a chit, I could –”

Another 20p and the plastic shell of a Kinder egg. Donna tried to calculate whether her share of the tips would cover the woman's two drinks. She reached over to prevent her from going back to her pocket, but instead found herself catching two £1 coins, some silver, a muslin cloth and a ten pound note.

“Silly of me to monopolise your time without establishing my probity, dear, wasn't it? Now, would you be very sweet and tell me your name, so I don't have to keep calling you ‘dear'?”

Donna gathered up the change after taking the price of two gimlets. “It's Donna.”

“Yes it is – Donna. How lovely. And you, my dear, must call me Sal. How lovely… how lovely that I can trust you, can't I, to prepare another of your gimlets which really are excellent, dear, they really are.”

Donna made gimlets for the rest of her shift.

The next day Sal was back with another pocketful of foreign objects and the correct amount of cash to keep the cocktails pouring. If Donna was in, Sal would be served by no one else. Over the course of a week, this had taken on the status of a sacred ritual. Donna observed how The Raven manufactured its own folklore, how zones of exclusion formed around tables and bar stools, tankards and buttons on the jukebox.

Sal's shawl never left her shoulders; it was held in place by a brooch. Four birds, either completely green or silver-bodied with green wings, sat on a leafy branch, each head facing in a different direction, beaks open in song. Donna would admire the detail, how the different greens reflected various stages of the dawn.

She had mentioned this to Sal one afternoon when the old woman seemed in a particularly jittery state, and the dance of the flame from her lighter to her cigarette threatened to veer out of control before Donna steadied her hand.

“The birds? Ah, the brooch, yes, hmm.” Her fingertips traced the edge of the brooch, then gave a dismissive flutter. “Well, honestly, it's only a little something from John Lewis.”

The way she said it, John Lewis could have been a former suitor who used to festoon her with love trinkets. She continued to wave away imagined compliments, her eyelashes batting in anticipation of a panorama of appreciative glances. This ended when she took a heavy drag of her Berkeley and puffed out the smoke.

“Thinking of anyone in particular, Sal?”

Sal's lips smacked on her glass. “Oh yes, dear. Yes, it could be anyone. That's really it, you see. It could be anyone.”

She sat in silence, staring at the middle distance, occasionally blinking. Only when Donna began making another gimlet, did Sal re-emerge. She now held Donna in her gaze, the scent of Yardley's April Violet hovering between them.

“And what about you, my dear? A young woman like you. Is there anyone in…?”

“In…? Oh,
in particular
?”

“Precisely, dear.” Sal's mouth spread into a crimson grin.

Donna shook her head. “No, there's just me.”

There was a loose ice cube glinting on the bar. Donna wiped the water around it then gathered it up with a bar towel. She watched the towel absorb the water and the cube. “I've got a great big house all to myself.”

“And that's splendid. I'm so glad,” Sal said, drifting back to the middle distance, “so very glad… Oh! she's done ever so well for herself, oh yes, a house of her own… But you see, dear…” The lines around her mouth were deeply defined. “Be careful because if you just stop where you are…” Now she was clasping Donna's hand, “if you just stop, you might forget how to start again.”

*

Donna was polishing champagne flutes in an area of the bar that provided a chapel of rest from unwanted conversations, when Gavin approached her.

“Can I be real with you, Donna? When the eatery opens it's really not going to be the sort of place where you can spend all day chatting up some auld tramp and plying her with gizmos or whatever… Don't get me wrong! You're rinsing her for the cash so there's no complaints.”

“It's almost like she belongs here,” Donna said.

“Ex-
actly
– but when we get the place sorted, your dipso mate will be brick dust, and I worry you'll have a problem with that. Just being real.”

“I appreciate how real you are, Gavin.”

“But! A little bird tells me you don't have to worry about rent or a mortgage on that gaffe you're in down the road. What I'm saying: there'll be a job for you when we reopen – hold that thought.” He caressed his Bluetooth headset and left Donna with a thumbs-up.

Sal had a mannerism: with a gimlet in one hand and a Berkeley in the other, the glass and the cigarette would be on either side of her mouth, so that moving her lips to either simply required a grimace in one direction or the other. She'd then use a free ring-finger to scratch away a globule of excess mascara from her lower lashes. The eyes themselves would be lit and flickering at these times, peering, it seemed, over a mindscape of shadows. She held this pose until she needed recharging from one hand or the other. Then she would return to a conversation Donna had forgotten from ten minutes earlier, or the day before.

“And you have no way of knowing if it's the morning or the afternoon?”

“If? Well – it's… two – coming up to twenty to three, Sal.”

“My word, dear, no – your appointment, you were saying – the gas board, dear, with the gas board.”

“Oh! The new boiler?”

“Hallelujah.”

“Yeah, it's on Friday – before four, they reckon.”

“And this means what, exactly? You can't possibly work here if you're going to be called away at any –”

“Oh, no – no, I'm taking the day off. Now or never, really. Be getting cold again soon. Where did the summer go, eh, Sal? Time just evaporates.”

Sal's face was again in its tobacco-gin cradle. Her eyes disappeared behind the smoke.

“Yes, that's very true. But, you see, sometimes it petrifies… sometimes it petrifies. And you're left with just the rocks to carry around.”

Donna unscrewed the cap of the Rose's cordial bottle by way of an invitation for Sal to continue.

The old woman reached out her fag hand, ash spilling along its trajectory, and brushed Donna's right cheek. “As you know, I came to motherhood very late in life.”

“I didn't… so… where do your children…?”

“Child.” Sal's reply was emphatic, though she still appeared to be addressing a space over Donna's left shoulder. “A daughter.” There was a sigh. “Yes – came late, and left early. Another gimlet, Donna, if you would?”

This time, when Sal's finger moved to flick away some loose mascara, it found a speck swelling with liquid already drawing itself down the edge of her nose, leaving a trail of blue-black freckles.

The new boiler came on the Friday, which meant the radiator in the front room could at last perform a function beyond that of a slow clothes drier for underwear. Sal wasn't in The Raven when Donna returned to work the following evening. Her stool remained empty on the Monday, and throughout that week. When Gavin closed the place down for the refit, the stool was one of the first items thrown in the skip.

In the weeks The Raven was closed, Donna stayed up most nights, kept company by news reports of natural disasters and insurmountable social problems. She worked some relief nightshifts in the bar of a hotel on the dock road and she'd go by the market on her way back to the house to stock up on fresh limes. The Raven reopened the week after Valentine's and she settled into a perpetual graveyard shift. Unordered specials incorporating goat's cheese were daily tipped into bins where she used to empty the ashtrays. The cigarette smell hadn't been entirely scrubbed away and, when she lifted the bin lids, she smelt the feather touch of April Violet, a gasp of juniper.

When nights are sleepless, you quarter a lime and squeeze one wedge into a tumbler you've liberated from your workplace. Add ice cubes and give it a rattle round with a swizzle stick. Pour in enough gin to quieten down the ice. Unscrew the cap from a bottle of Rose's Lime Cordial and stop yourself just before you tip the cordial into the glass. Slow down and add just a rumour of Rose's. The lime cordial that makes it out of the bottle should be less an ingredient and more a memo, notifying the glass of the existence of liquids other than gin. Wipe around the rim of your glass with another wedge of lime and toss that in. Carry the gimlet back into the front room and repeat until morning.

One early morning, inspecting a thread of green weaving among the ice cubes, Donna noticed more of an emerald sparkle than usual. The curtains in the front room were rarely opened but a small flap had worked its way loose from its runner and sunlight was reaching through the room and into the drink. Donna set down the glass and switched off the lamp. She crossed the room, turned off the television and pulled the curtains open.

Outside, a man walked his dog back from the shop with the morning paper. Milk bottles sat on a neighbour's doorstep. On Donna's side of the road, a sparrow struck up its part of the dawn chorus on a tree branch whose leaves, inflamed by the sunlight, bounced balls of green light against the bird's feathers. Another sparrow, and then a third, joined the line-up on the branch. Donna waited until, answering a sequence of calls by the other three, a fourth bird emerged through the leaves to perch on the same branch.