Something Invisible (3 page)
Read Something Invisible Online
Authors: Siobhan Parkinson
Jake had been to the park to kick a ball around with Finn and a few of the lads, and when he got home he had that hot, heavy feeling you get in your feet when you've been running around, and you just want to kick off your shoes, drink a glass of something cold and then stand under a cool shower and gasp as the water pours over your head and trickles down your shoulders.
Butâthere she was, the greyhound girl with the very pale freckles, in the kitchen, drinking a glass of milk and talking to his mother. And eating ginger biscuits, he noticed. The whole tin was on the kitchen table.
“Oh, Jake,” said his mother. She had Daisy in her arms. “Stella here just called by to see Daisy.”
Stella. Jake registered the name dully.
He took a ginger biscuit, with a defiant look at his mother.
“Hi, Jake,” said Stella, as if they were old friends. “I was just saying to your mum how you'd been telling me all about Daisy the other day, you know, in the supermarket?”
“Er, yes,” said Jake uncertainly.
“So here I am,” she finished, as if that explained everything.
It didn't, of course. How had she found out where he lived? Had she followed him? Been
watching
him? He looked at her suspiciously. She must have been. There was no other explanation. It made him feel prickly under his football shirt.
He gulped. “Well⦔ he started, but he didn't know how to continue. He couldn't think of a thing to say in this absurd situation. “I have to feed the fish,” he said eventually, and he left the kitchen and pounded upstairs.
He didn't come down again till he heard the front door thudding. By then he'd fed the fish (they didn't need feeding), had his shower, dried his hair with his mum's hair dryer (he never did that), changed his clothes and started to tidy his desk (he never did that either).
“You never mentioned your friend before,” his mother said, when he reappeared in the kitchen.
“She's not my friend.”
“Oh, don't be like that, Jake. It's all right to have a friend who's a girl. They're not poison, you know. They haven't got a disease. You'll work it out soon enough, I suppose.”
“She's not my friend,” he persisted. “What did you say her name was?”
“Jake!”
“Stella, was it?”
“Jake, that's not funny.”
“Mum, I'm telling you, I don't know her.”
His mother stared. “That's funny,” she murmured.
“Yeah, we-eird,” said Jake, relieved that at last he was being believed. “I saw her in the supermarket, we said about three sentences to each other, and next thing she's in my kitchen! How did she know where I live? That's what I want to know. She's some sort of a witch. How did she know my name? We weren't introduced, you know.”
“Oh, Jake, she's not a witch. She just likes babies. Some girls are like that. She got an inkling of a baby in the neighborhood, and she turned up on the doorstep. It's not that peculiar. And I probably mentioned your name. Though, come to think of it, she knew Daisy's name. Did you tell her that?'
“No,” said Jake. “It was a few days ago. She was still Marguerite then. That's odd, Mum. You have to admit that's, like, strange?”
“Well, she's a nice enough girl. Though I have to say, that
dress,
in this
weather.
”
“It's June, though,” said Jake, suddenly changing sides. His mother had that effect on him sometimes.
“Theoretically,” said his mother.
She was so illogical.
“No!” said Jake. “It's actually June. Not theoretically.”
“You know what I mean. The weather's dreadful.”
“It's weird about the name, though,” Jake said. “Maybe we should go back to calling her Marguerite. Just to be on the safe side.”
“We can't do that. I've got to like Daisy. Anyway, we can't keep changing her name. She'd get confused.”
“Mum, she's a week old!”
“Ten days. And she knows her name,” his mother insisted. “She turns her head when I call her. Watch! Daisy, Daisy?”
The baby turned her head and stared a big wet blue stare at her mother. She parted her lips and blew a soft bubble.
“See?” said his mother triumphantly.
Jake shook his head. Mothers were so unscientific. Or maybe it was poets.
“Oh, she left her address,” his mother said suddenly, producing a crumpled piece of lined paper, torn out of a copybook, out of her pocket.
“Her address?”
“Yes, she said you'd be wanting it.”
“I
don't
want it!” said Jake, pushing the scrap of paper across the table, as if it were infected.
“Well, neither do I,” said his mother. “I've only just met the girl. Put it in the bin, if you don't want it.”
Jake picked it up reluctantly by one corner, using his nails, and held it at arm's length. He couldn't help noticing what it said, all the same. She had very clear, flowing handwriting, and she wrote in large, black lettersânot like most girls, who went in for mauve and silver and wrote tiny little swirly words, like snails, and put little circles instead of dots over their i's. Her address was almost the same as his. They were in Mount Gregor Road; she was in Mount Gregor Park. In number tenâsame house number as them.
Funny that, he thought, as he stepped down hard on the bin pedal and dropped the paper in on top of eggshells and coffee grounds and a nappy neatly rolled up and wrapped in a drawstring nappy bag.
Well, you can't forget somebody's house number if it's the same as your own, can you? Which is how Jake came to be standing outside Stella's house, thinking it looked a bit small for all those children. Just two windows with a door in between and no upstairs. There was a small gate in front, which was closed, and a big one at the side, for cars, which was wide open.
“It's not as small as it looks,” Stella said.
She was doing it again! Witching about the place. Jake spun around.
“I never heard you coming,” he said accusingly.
“Dancing pumps,” she answered, lifting one foot, in a pink ballet shoe, and pointing it in the air. “Nice, huh? I don't dance, though, I just like the pumps. I got them in the Oxfam shop. I wouldn't like you to think I'm some sort of ballerina person. I'm more a football sort of person, actually. Not that I have anything against ballerinas, it's just not me. But you have to admit that pink satin shoes are cool. Even a boy can see that, I imagine.”
Jake was just about to say he liked football too, but she took off again before he could get more than a grunt out.
“That's the right word, you know, âpumps,' but it's terribly ugly, isn't it? I am in a dilemma about it.”
Jake stared at her. What was she on about?
“I mean,” Stella went on, “I like to use the right word when I know what it is, but I don't like using ugly words. That's the dilemma, you see. Dilemma's a nice word, I hadn't noticed that before. Do you like it?”
Jake went on staring. He couldn't think what to say.
“I collect words,” Stella said. “It's my hobby. But it's a bit like collecting seashellsâyou can't collect them all, so I only collect the beautiful ones. Like âmackerel,' and âplinth,' and âobloquy' I try to go by the sounds, not the meanings, but sometimes the meanings do get in the way, like âtryst,' for example. I don't know whether I really like that word, or whether it's just the
idea
of it. Do you see what I mean?”
Jake coughed. “I like mackerel,” he said at last.
“It goes back and back,” Stella said, nodding at the house. “Like to come in? You could see my word collection if you like. It's in my room.”
“No,” said Jake.
“OK,” said Stella, unexpectedly. She pushed past Jake and opened the gate. Suddenly, there were children everywhere: two swung out of a tree in the front garden; two tumbled out of the front door, squawking gleefully. One waddled around the side of the house, a small one, barefoot and wearing nothing but a nappy and a blue cotton sun hat, and stared at Jake.
Stella skipped up a couple of shallow steps and onto the garden path. When she got to the front door, she turned and waved at Jake. “Bye so,” she called.
“Bye,” said Jake, crestfallen, and watched as she scooped the smallest child up and swung him onto a bony hip, then pushed the door wide open. The children all swarmed around her and she touched each one lightly on the head, as if counting them. The children piled in the door, and the house gobbled up their delighted squabblings. The door closed behind them, and the air was full of an uncanny silence.
Jake stared at the door. Then he shrugged and turned away.
Jake's mum sat in her study in her dressing gown in the mornings and tried to write. Nothing came. That had never happened to her before, she moaned. Always, something came. All her creativity was going into her milk, she said. Jake thought that wasn't a nice thing to say. Women shouldn't talk like that in front of boys. It was embarrassing.
“I wish I smoked,” she said.
“What!”
Jake was aghast.
“Poets who can't write smoke. It's better than nothing.”
“No, it's not, it gives you cancer,” said Jake darkly. “And strokes. And heart attacks. And bad breath. And varicose veins. And nightmares.” He just threw in the last one for effect. Also, he was interested to see if she would challenge him on it.
She didn't even notice.
“Oh, don't worry, I'm not going to start now. It's just that it would be something to do. It would be nice to have something to do. With my hands. With my mouth. You know.”
Jake didn't know. It was his feet that gave him trouble when he had nothing to do, not his hands or his mouth. They kept wanting to kick things. Football helped, but sometimes you couldn't play football, like in the middle of the night or in a snowstorm or at Sunday lunch. It was amazing the number of times you couldn't play football, if you set your mind to thinking about it. In school, in church, in any building, actually, come to think of it. On the bus, on the train, at the airport. On Sundays in Scotland. In bed, in the shower, at the swimming pool. And in Jake's back garden, because there was a sunroom at the back of their house with glass panels. Breakable glass panels, as his parents frequently told him. Expensive-to-replace glass panels.
“âThe Daisy follows soft the Sunâ'” said Jake's mother, “âAnd when his golden walk is doneâ/ Sits shyly at his feet.'”
“That's
good,
Mum,” said Jake. “Especially âfollows soft the Sun'. And âgolden walk.' That's a day, I suppose. Like the American Indians; they believe the sun walks across the sky, from sunrise to sunset.”
“Of course it's good,” said his mother glumly, banging her head with the palm of her hand. “Because I didn't write it. That's Emily Dickinson. And before you ask, yes, she's famous; yes, she's dead; no, she's American; but no, she's not an Indian. How amazing, though, about the sun walking across the sky. You know the maddest stuff, Jake.”
Jake smirked, self-satisfied.
“Or she might be Chinese,” he said, “you know, because of the word for âsun' being the same as the word for âday' in Chinese. Did you know that?”
“You're a rare one,” his mother said with a laugh, and ruffled Jake's hair. “But she's not Chinese.”
“Don't,” Jake said, pushing her hand away and smoothing down his hair again. He didn't like having tossed hair.
His mother stood up from her desk in her red silk kimono and stretched her arms over her head. The baby cried.
“Drat,” said his motherânot “brat” as Jake, for one wonderful, awful moment, had thoughtâand scratched her head. She yawned, catlike, and drifted out of the room in the direction of the cries.
Jake found himself walking past number ten, Mount Gregor Park, so often over the next few days that he had to admit it wasn't just by chance. For a start, it was a cul-de-sac, which meant it wasn't on the way to anywhere. Something was drawing him. Stella never appeared, though, so if he was going to talk to herâand it seemed to him, when he thought it over, that he must want to talk to herâhe was going to have to ring the doorbell.
He stood on the pavement and thought about ringing the doorbell, and what would happen when he did, and who might answer.
In the end, he decided he would just give it a go. But it didn't work. At least, he couldn't hear it, though maybe it rang somewhere deep in the house. Anyway, no one came, so he picked up the snarling lion's head knocker and let it fall heavily against the door.
Almost immediately Stella was there, framed in the doorway.
“Oh, it's you,” she said, neither surprised nor displeased, it seemed, to see him. “Come in.”
Jake had been rehearsing things to say, such as, “Would you like to come and play football in the park?” or “I was just passing and I thought⦔ But he didn't say any of the lame things he'd been practicing. He didn't need to. It was as if she'd been expecting him. Anyway, she didn't seem to wonder why he had knocked.
She was right about the house being bigger than it looked. Much bigger. It went on and on, room opening out of room, till you got to the kitchen at the very back, off which was a room called the back kitchen, where they kept Wellingtons and garden implements and a vegetable rack full of onions with long browny-green leafy bits, like leeks, and a sack half full of potatoes, and a basket for the dog. They didn't have a dog, just a dog basket. Nobody explained why. Maybe one of the younger ones slept in it, Jake thought, and giggled quietly at his own hilarity.
