One Whole and Perfect Day (20 page)
‘Rose Lee.’ Rose held out her hand and the girl clasped it warmly. ‘Jessaline. Clara’s got an early tute on Fridays, Mrs Lee; that’s why she isn’t here. And then she goes to the library. Or sometimes, instead of the library, she goes out with Lonnie –’
‘Lonnie?’
Oops! Too late, Jessaline remembered Clara’s mum hadn’t been told about Lonnie. ‘Did I say “Lonnie”? Sorry, I meant, um, she goes out with some friends. Shopping and stuff, little things . . .’
‘Little things,’ echoed Rose. Lonnie. So Clara had a boyfriend. She could tell from the guilty expression on this nice girl’s shiny face. A boyfriend she didn’t want her mum to know about. ‘You’re doing the same course as Clara?’ she asked.
‘Oh, no,’ said Jessaline. ‘I’m doing Linguistics. Or at least, I was.’
‘Was?’
‘I’m changing to Hospitality.’
Jessaline hadn’t quite done this, not formally, not yet. She would, of course she would, but – the Admin. block was very near the Maths building where her parents worked. They might see her through their windows. They might come out from their rooms and follow her. They’d want to know why she was going to Admin., what business she had there.
Clara kept wanting to know why she
hadn’t
gone. ‘Have you gone to Admin. yet?’ she asked Jessaline every evening. ‘Have you filled in those forms?’
‘Hospitality? What is that? Exactly?’ Clara’s mum was asking her.
‘I want to
cook
,’ said Jessaline, and Rose saw how, the moment she spoke the word ‘cook’, the gawky girl’s face was transformed.
‘I love cooking,’ murmured Jessaline.
Rose smiled at her. Behind Jessaline’s shoulder she could see a pretty homely room with pale blue walls and gay striped curtains and carpet on the floor. ‘Is Clara’s room like yours?’ she asked.
‘Pretty much,’ said Jessaline. ‘Except her walls are yellow.’
‘Does she have carpet on the floor, like you?’
‘Of course,’ said Jessaline. ‘Everyone has. But Mrs Lee, here I am, a future Hospitality student, and I’m being inhospitable. Won’t you come in? Have some tea? And I’ve got these macaroons I made last night.’
Rose looked round the room. ‘You have a kitchen, too?’
‘No,’ said Jessaline, smiling. ‘But I
will
have a kitchen, some day.’
‘You mean she was
here
?’ Clara glanced nervously around her room, as if she feared her mother might still be here, concealed behind the curtains or the wardrobe door. ‘She was in my room?’ Her words bounced back loudly from the walls. God, she sounded like Father Bear from Goldilocks. She sounded like
Dad.
‘No, no,’ said Jessaline quickly. ‘She was in
my
room; I asked her in for some tea.’
Clara’s heart sank. ‘You didn’t tell her about Lonnie, did you?’
‘’Course not,’ said Jessaline, but Clara saw the glint of uneasiness in her friend’s soft brown eyes.
‘You did, I bet.’ Jessaline was such a gobblemouth. She’d have let something slip, for sure.
‘We talked about her library, where she works, and recipes and stuff, that’s all. And, and carpets. She wanted to know if you had a carpet in your room. Or if it was a bare wooden floor.’
‘She’s got a thing about that,’ said Clara. ‘She hates wooden floors. It’s almost like,’ Clara’s voice softened, ‘almost like she’s frightened of them.’
‘I could see. She was so glad you had a carpet. And Clara –’
‘Yeah?’
‘She was just passing by; she said to tell you that. She hadn’t come to check up on you. Like my folks do,’ she added.
‘She can’t “pass by”,’ said Clara. ‘This place is miles from anywhere she goes.’
‘I thought she was lovely,’ said Jessaline in a small soft voice.
‘It’s all right for
you
to say so.’ Clara glared at her friend. ‘Have you been to Admin. yet? To change your course? Have you filled in those forms?’
Jessaline went red. ‘Not yet. But I’m going soon.’
‘Soon? You’ve been saying that for weeks. How soon is soon?’
‘It’s, it’s – next week.’ Jessaline held out a big plastic lunch box.
‘What’s that?’ Even as she asked, Clara recognised the box. It came from home.
‘Your mum brought you these. Home-made spring rolls.’
‘Oh, trust
her
,’ said Clara crossly, but as she lifted the lid from the box and the delicious, familiar scent assailed her, tears pricked at her eyes.
Clara was coming to visit the Boarding House for Gentlemen, and Lonnie knew his room looked like a tip. Tips could be cleaned up, and Lonnie had nothing against housework, because hadn’t his favourite writer done it? Hadn’t Emily Bronte peeled potatoes for Tabby, the vicarage’s old housekeeper; hadn’t she washed dishes, swept and polished, mopped and scoured? And she’d even seemed to like it.
Lonnie found he liked it too. It was great the way you found things: his green corduroy shirt beneath the desk, the pen his mum had given him that he thought he’d lost forever, and the very first note Clara had ever written to him.
Meet you in the caf at four. Love, Clara.
A very plain, short note, businesslike even, yet somehow Lonnie spent twenty minutes on it, running the tip of his finger along the firm strokes of Clara’s handwriting, smiling at the way she’d written ‘love’ when she could so easily have written ‘seeya’ or nothing at all.
When you were doing housework time seemed to speed up in the strangest fashion; as Lonnie folded Clara’s note into his wallet, he found it was half past ten. Quickly, he gathered up his scattered clothes and bundled them into the wardrobe, stacked empty pizza boxes and old newspapers into a pile beside his desk, and then began to tackle the window, which was so smeared and streaky that it let very little light into the room, and you couldn’t see outside. Briskly, Lonnie set to work, but when he stepped back to look at the results he saw the smears had simply turned into circles and squares; the same mysterious thing had happened when he’d mopped the floor.
He had to face it; he didn’t know how to clean. There was an art to it, obviously, and it was one he hadn’t learned. Time was really getting on now; it was almost half past eleven, and Clara was coming at two; the window had to be done all over, and there were still the walls to be cleaned, and those strange sooty fingermarks around the electric switches and the wardrobe handles and the edges of the door.
Who knew how to clean?
Lonnie ran downstairs to the telephone and dialled the number of home. It rang and rang, of course it did; in the middle of a Wednesday his mum would be at work. He was about to put the receiver down when a gruff impatient voice came out of it. ‘Yes?’
Lily.
‘How come you’re home?’ demanded Lonnie. ‘Have you started bunking off school?’
‘No, I haven’t!’ barked Lily. ‘It’s Curriculum Day. And
you
should talk, you were hardly ever
there
.’
‘But I wasn’t any good at school,’ said Lonnie. ‘Not like you.’ His voice turned wheedling. ‘Hey, Lil? Hey, can you give us a hand?’
Lily sighed. She’d know those words anywhere. She’d heard them when she was six and he’d wanted her to hold the torch while he took the screws out from cranky Mrs Grimble’s letterbox; when she was eleven and he wanted help to write a love letter – and Lily had no doubt, no doubt whatsoever, that she’d hear them when she was eighty and he was eighty-six. She didn’t say ‘yes’ right away though; she knew when she had the advantage. Instead she asked him, ‘Have you made it up with Pop, yet?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘What do you mean, you don’t know?’
‘I left him that message, didn’t I?
‘And you haven’t done anything since?’
Lonnie was silent.
‘A message about an old dog that’s been dead for years! What good could that do?’
‘It was a message at least,’ said Lonnie sulkily. ‘Now it’s
his
turn.’
Lily ground her teeth. At this rate, Nan’s party wasn’t even going to get off the ground.
‘Are you coming over to help me?’ pleaded Lonnie.
‘With what?’
‘Just a little spot of cleaning. Come on, Lil.’
‘You’re a wanker, Lon.’ All the same, if she went over there and gave him a hand, perhaps she could persuade him to make it up properly with Pop. And it was ages since she’d actually seen Lonnie, it was eight whole months! A little bit of summer, a whole autumn and winter had gone by.
‘So are you coming?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘You’re a star!’
She’d meant to be nice to him, but when she walked into his room and her shoes stuck to the floor, all she could find to say was, ‘Yuk!’, and then, looking round her, ‘You need garbage bags.’
‘Garbage bags?’
‘Big black square things made of plastic. You get them at the supermarket.’
‘I know that. I’m a part-time shelf-stacker, remember? I meant, what
for
?’
‘All this
mess
!’ roared Lily, sweeping her arms out wide. ‘You know where a shop is?’
‘Sure I do.’
‘Then go get some garbage bags. And –’ she peered at the sticky, smudgy window. ‘What are you using to clean?’ ‘That.’ Lonnie pointed to the bucket.
‘Just water?’
‘Yeah.’
Lily sighed. ‘Get some window cleaner, okay? And –’ she looked down at the floor and made a small grimace of distaste, ‘floor cleaner too.’
‘Right!’
The room looked almost wonderful when they’d finished. The window shone, and through it you could see a small green garden Lonnie hadn’t even known was there, with a tiny pond and a wooden bench beside it. And the murky floor that he’d always thought was grey turned out to have a cheerful pattern of blue and yellow squares. The dustbin had been emptied, the pile of old newspapers and pizza boxes gone to their final resting place in Mrs Rasmussen’s recycling bin.
Lily was exhausted; even the journey over here had taken her an hour.
Lonnie gazed round the shining room. ‘How come you know how to do all that?’
Lily smiled grimly. ‘I’m the sensible one in the family, remember?’
‘Emily Bronte would have approved of you.’
‘What?’
‘Emily Bronte was this nineteenth-century novelist –’ Lonnie paused, startled by the fury gathering on his sister’s face.
‘I know that!’ she bellowed. ‘I know who Emily Bronte is. I meant, why would she have approved of me?’
‘She did housework,’ explained Lonnie.
‘Put her hand to the plough, eh?’
Lonnie flushed. ‘Putting your hand to the plough’ was one of Pop’s expressions.
The fury on Lily’s face subsided to plain grievance. ‘Of course I know who Emily Bronte is! I’ve read
Wuthering
Heights
! And
Jane Eyre
. And yes, I know Charlotte wrote that one! Just because I’m good at Maths and Science doesn’t mean I’m pig ig, ignum, ig –’ Some kind of distress Lily couldn’t quite identify was making it difficult for her to form the word.
‘Pig ignorant,’ supplied Lonnie helpfully.
‘Shut up!’ She was back to furious now, feelings welling up inside her that she hardly knew she had. How come Lonnie got everyone’s attention? How come he could muck round at school and university, keep stuffing up, and yet have a room of his own? Do what he liked! Have a life! How come he’d escaped, leaving her to do the shopping and peel carrots and remember to pay the bills? How come he’d had a dad for six whole years? How come he had a girlfriend, while Daniel Steadman hadn’t even noticed her? How come there was so little justice in the world?
‘You think I’m useless, don’t you?’ Lonnie said suddenly.
Of course she’d thought it, many, many times. She’d been thinking it right now. Only she didn’t really mean it – at least, not in the way she could tell Lonnie meant it: in a way that was deeply serious, that meant he was good for nothing at all. ‘No!’ she shouted.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said simply. ‘I’m sorry I
act
useless.’
Lily could hardly believe it. He’d never said ‘sorry’ in his life. Not to her, anyway, not – meaning it. Standing there in the middle of the small clean room, she thought he looked different.
‘I’m sorry too,’ she muttered.
‘Friends?’
‘Friends.’
A knock sounded on the door.
‘Come in,’ said Lonnie, and the door opened and a slight dark girl carrying a big white cake-box walked straight in. Lily guessed at once that this was Clara, for the girl’s eyes were fixed so firmly on Lonnie that she didn’t even notice there was another person in the room.
Lily’s eyes moved from one to the other. Oh! Anyone could see that this was
serious
; and she felt the same sharp pang she’d felt in this very room on the day she’d found that small piece of paper with Clara’s name scribbled over and over, a pang of envy and distress. Would
anyone
(forget about Danny Steadman) ever gaze at her in the way Lonnie was gazing at Clara? Of course they wouldn’t. Not when she looked like Pop, and smelled of dishwater, and was sensible; and the kind of person whose dad ran off before she was even born, who couldn’t even wait to see what she looked like, and always got her birthday wrong and rang up three months late.
‘Well, I’ll go now,’ she said gruffly.
Lonnie turned, surprised. It was obvious he’d forgotten all about her. ‘Lily? Um, sorry.’
‘Be my guest.’
‘Lily, this is Clara. And Clara, this is my sister, Lily. ‘Clara’s, er –’ Last night Lonnie had lain awake and worked out sums again: he had his part-time job and Austudy, if he did well in the exams he might get a scholarship. Clara had a scholarship and part-time tutoring; they could manage. Perhaps Clara had also lain awake last night, because Lonnie knew when he looked into her eyes that she’d come to the same conclusions he had. He didn’t even have to ask.
‘Clara’s my girlfriend,’ he said to Lily. ‘We –’ An absolute and perfect certainty rushed suddenly on Lonnie. He’d never felt so sure. ‘We’re engaged.’
Lily’s mouth dropped open.
‘She’s beautiful,’ Lily told her mum. ‘And nice, you know? Only –’
All the way home on the train Lily had been worrying about this: how when Pop heard Lonnie was engaged to a Chinese girl, he’d go ballistic. Pop was prehistoric in that way: he knew all these awful racist jokes, and he told them too, without noticing that nobody else was laughing. With roaring toothache, Pop would travel miles on jolting trains to find some awful old Aussie dentist because he wouldn’t trust any other race to fix his teeth. The very least you could say about Pop was that he was in severe bad taste.
