The Hiding Place (27 page)

She reaches for another biscuit. Puts the edge to her mouth. Licks the corner. Licks the air out of the room.

You won’t remember him, poor old Sal. Buried in the mud all that time. Can you imagine!

But I do remember Salvatore. Cooking, singing, smuggling parcels of cold meat under his jacket. Then gone like my father. The mention of either name would bring the house
down.

She waited, you know. Thirty-odd years.

Carlotta, weaving the pips of her rosary through her fingers while Salvatore curled like a fishbone under the silt.

Got away with it, your father.

Frankie on a boat to a sunny place.

They’re calling it murder.

The red of Eva’s tongue on the edge. A smell of iron, smell of heat.

There’s none of us left now. No one. There’s no sugar! she shouts, No sugar!

Unbearable heat in here.

Let me out.

~

Eva clings to Mrs Powell as she is led back through the hall. They turn into a narrow corridor where I wait, breathing the cool air, taking it in.

Mrs Amil’s gone to have a lie down, says the assistant on her return, She gets a bit tired.

She holds out a purse, covered in sequins and seed pearls.

She said to give you this.

Luca flies through the morning sky and as she flies she’s dreaming. The light flooding in at the porthole window doesn’t disturb her; she wears a mask made of pale
blue gel which is supposed to cool the delicate skin around the eye. It’s a sight that makes the cabin staff smile: with her head wrapped in a green paisley scarf and her bug eye-wear, Luca
looks like a creature from the depths. The rattle of the drinks trolley brings her to the very edge of waking. She re-adjusts her mask so that a crack of sunlight filters in around the sides,
catching the red rim of her lashless lids, transforming the light into slivers of rust.

~

Fran’s bed has been empty for three whole days but the sheet with the bloodstains still lies folded on the floor. Dolores is curled like a cat in the well of the mattress,
the bit where their mother should be and where Luca can still find the scent of her if she breathes in and out against the rumpled sheet. Luca tries to frame herself around her sister, but
she’s too hot; her body is liquid with the heat of sleep. She listens through the silence for any sound of her mother, lying sedated in the Box Room. Carlotta went home earlier, after a wild
exchange with her father that left him biting his knuckles with rage. From downstairs comes the sound of the television on low, and her father, moving about in the kitchen.

Then it’s blacker, later, the street-light outside their window is off, and perhaps it is this that wakes her, or the shadow of someone standing in the room. Luca is not afraid. The hand
that slips beneath the blanket at the foot of the bed is cool and familiar. It takes her foot and strokes it, lifts it gently so now there are two hands cupping this one hot foot. Slips along the
edge of her ankle, holding it by the heel while the other hand caresses then separates the little toes as if to count them. Then takes the smallest toe and jerks it quickly so the brittle crack of
the joint is lost beneath the cry that comes from Luca’s mouth. Quickly again, cracking the next toe and the next, while Luca squirms in pain and lashes out her other foot against her sister.
Dolores moans and shifts over to the far edge of the bed. The hands are moist from this quick work. They can feel the tremble of shock rippling under the child’s skin. And then a quiet laugh,
a comforting sound, a nice sound even, as if this pain is a gift brought noiselessly to a favourite daughter in the safety of darkness. Kisses the arch of the foot where the skin is softest, covers
it again with the blanket and goes away.

~

Luca’s eyes are wide and unblinking under the mask of pale blue gel. The dreams are stacking up. She concentrates on what there is: the rattle of the drinks trolley making
its way back up the aisle, the snap of an overhead locker being shut, the sharp whine of descent. These are the things she hears.

Fasten your safety belts please, we will shortly be arriving at Cardiff Wales Airport.

~  ~  ~

The New Bridge is a safe enough distance; from up here, the docks look like a picture in a holiday brochure: the Pierhead building with its clockface glittering like a second
sun, the sprinkling of yachts in the bay, the dry dock filled with a wash of blue. Pretty and harmless. But I won’t go near. Behind the wide parade and sandblasted stone is another place
where brick crumbles, sky falls, people fall.

I twist open the clasp on Eva’s purse, releasing a pocket of damp air. Inside are two old bus tickets and a photograph, spotted with mildew. It shows a wedding party: woman man, woman man,
woman man, so at first I don’t know who is who. But the young girl’s hair is braided with flowers – Celesta the bride. The men on either side of her are the same age, same height:
one of them is fat and balding, and the other is my father. He squints against the sun. He could be smiling. He could be thinking of Celesta’s happiness: married to Pippo, safe at last.
Behind the slits of his closed eyes I look for evidence of his own escape. I can almost see his heart thundering in his chest. The woman on his right is my mother; in her suit with the silver
threads, she doesn’t look much older than her daughter. A slight breeze lifts the fringe from her forehead. She raises her head against it so she looks aloof, as though she might just blow
away into the sky. And behind her, Salvatore, his face cutting into the corner like a spot of sunlight on the lens. He’s smiling. He knows nothing yet; he cannot see how the day will end.

Eva’s purse rests on the edge of the bridge. Just like my mother, placing her white handbag carefully on the stone above the river; before my father ducked into Joe Medora’s car;
before Eva came and found me under the tree. And my memory which cannot be trusted and which is all I have clings to me like mud. It brings back Eva, inching a fingernail under her crooked
hairline, the colours all aflame, and the conservatory, dazzling heat through every pane of glass. Her round eyes shiny as shillings.

Buried all that time. Can you imagine!

~

I can. It would have been very different then; it was a
dry
dock then. The walls would have been visible, an endless drop of brick speeded-up so fast no eye could fix it,
shooting past Salvatore as he fell. I lean over the edge of the bridge and up comes the colour, roaring.

~

He looks at the moon. He follows it, tracks it as it moves across the sky. Salvatore shuts his eyes, for only a moment, he thinks, but when he opens them again, the moon has
slipped away: it rests now at the corner of his vision. He follows the twisting ropes of the paint cradle as they pass above him. He could haul himself up, if he could only move. Salvatore cannot
even turn his head. First the wind, then clouds heaping over the sky, rain settling on his face and clothes, chilling the inch of naked flesh between the turn-up of his trousers and his sock. He
hears the shouts of far-off voices. Greek sailors, drunk and staggering over the footbridge, followed by the ssh-sshing, clacking, giggling noise of the prostitutes they will somehow smuggle aboard
their ship. Another cry, of fear and glee, as one of the women leaps clear of the edge thirty feet above the place where Salvatore lies. He opens his lips to call to her. Rita, he recites, Rita,
Sophia, Gina. Then quietly, Frankie, Frankie.

Frankie sits on the bottom bunk of the tiny cabin and carefully empties his pockets: front right, a roll of notes, front left, his cigarettes, scrabbling against the satin
lining of his suit for the inside jacket pocket and his new papers. He lights a cigarette, places it between his lips where it will gather a long tube of ash as he rolls, unrolls, folds, and
unfolds the papers with his proud black signature. Blows smoke on them. Licks the edges and rubs the parchment between forefinger and thumb, wearing the newness into age. Thinks about a different
life. Tries not to think about Salvatore.

The woman stops, holds an exaggerated finger to her lips.

What now? says her friend.

I yerd some-in, she says.

Her friend takes one arm and drags her away from the drop and the low whisper that sounds like an animal moving in the darkness.

Frankie,
Habib
.

Frankie lying down now, arms crossed behind his head, staring up at the curving grille of wire a foot above his face. The imprint of a fat man. He thinks back to when he first
arrived in Tiger Bay, the basement room and bed in the corner, how he’d bang his head until he learned to swerve sideways off the pillow. The ruby ring twirling out of his grasp, finding Joe
Medora.

Is you is or is you ain’t my baby? C’mon, Frankie!

bending the woman, like a gift, into Frankie’s lap.

I ain’t, says Frankie to himself. I ain’t no more.

He twists the ring on his finger. A callus will appear where the gold bites new. Frankie feels a molten wash of heat tingle through him. It’s relief, he thinks,
excitement. He gives himself up to it; Frankie can be anybody now.

One leg bent at the knee. Salvatore thinks he must be lying on something sharp, a hard thing digging at his shoulder blades; he can’t feel his right arm. He eases
slightly to the left, sending the cradle on a sideways lurch. The stars swagger in the sky.

Salvatore is unconscious when he finally hits the soft mud of the dry dock below. In the morning, the water oozes through the split lock-gates – pressing mud into his clothes, bits of
stones, coiled wire, a paint can knocking gently against his cheek – until the whole of the dock is filled with the sea. The ship, cutting its way gently through the narrow passage of silt,
buries Salvatore for ever. The water around it is a rainbow skin of petrol blue and red.

~

My father knew what he had done. He sailed out at dawn and left Salvatore behind. Left my mother and all of us. A man can have a hundred motives, or no reason at all, to simply
remove himself from the life he has made. My father would have flipped a coin and watched his fate come twirling down to earth. A sequence is forming, scuffing at the edges of my mind like a ripple
on water, but there is no order to it yet. Pieces are missing, people are missing. Rose was right about my father: he won’t be back. But there are others. Eva said The Moonlight was still
open. If anyone is left, I’ll find them.

~  ~  ~

Jumbo sits at the dining table with his mother’s telephone pressed to his heart. He notices the bowl of fabric flowers in the centre of the table, each perfect leaf coated
with a sticky smudge of grime. Upstairs on the landing, Celesta, forgetting what she was doing, leans into the hot space of the airing cupboard. It’s warm and dark. She thinks of what it must
be like to lie in there, curled up against the copper pipe with the door shut behind her. She hasn’t been to Hodge’s Row since she gave birth to Jumbo. But now it’s possible that
she will have to go back there. Her son’s voice drifts up to her in angry starts. Celesta makes her way down the stairs.

What now? she says.

Louis got confused over something – you know what he’s like.

Celesta stands with her arms folded across her chest.

And?

And he’s messed up the menus, the advertising—

Fix it, says Celesta, nodding at the phone. She could be talking to Pippo.

Leave it to me, Mamma – her son says, knowing by the hard set of her jaw that she won’t – I’ll talk to him.

Celesta bends under the table. She retrieves one shoe, then the other, and pushes her feet into them.

We’ll both talk to him. Come on.

There goes my surprise, thinks Jumbo, Thanks, brother.

This can’t be right. The avenue is broad and new, shimmering with trees and pavement cafes. This is not where The Moonlight should be: it should be in a side-street;
narrow doors and fractured windows and the cracked slab paving as grey as a Dowlais sky. This is not the place. And then I see the three of them. They look so familiar that my memories skate into
each other and I don’t know what the year is, but I feel as though I’m five again and things are just about to heave to a terrible new start. Celesta is like an older version of the
mother I remembered, right down to the way she stands, with one foot out at an angle and the other tapping madly on the pavement – as if there’s a beat thrumming in her head that no one
else can hear. She scowls up at the plate-glass window. The man beside her could be Pippo; then a second, younger man, leaning against the door of his car and waving his cigarette in the air. He is
the image of my father. Celesta knows me straight away; it’s as if she’s been expecting me. She puts her arms out straight in front of her. The embrace is so swift, I barely feel her
touch.

These are my sons, she says, and to Jumbo and Louis, This is your aunty, Dolores.

~  ~  ~

Luca can hardly bring herself to knock on the door. She peers through the crack in the curtains, sees the bed below the window, the old formica table with the television on top.
The street is deserted. She looks up at the Jacksons’ windows and the house next door to it, sealed with panels of corrugated iron. She wheels her case back up the street, passing a woman
being dragged along the road by a dog that looks as though it’s grinning. They almost brush each other, Rose and Luca. But Luca is wearing her sunglasses and an impressive scarf which is tied
over her head and crossed beneath her throat. Rose notices the woman, so out of place, like a model from a magazine, nearly. But she doesn’t recognize her. Luca avoids the fat woman and the
thin dog. She wants a hotel. She wants a hot bath and a sleep. She’ll do the funeral and then she’ll go home again; her time is wasted here.

~

Rose dumps the bag of groceries on the kitchen table and takes out a tin of Butcher’s Tripe for the dog. In the pantry she finds a metal plate covered in dust, a tarnished
silver tray, and under the shelf, bin-bags, bulging and split like the ones under the stairs. She feeds the dog, then makes a start, upending the first of the bags on the living room floor. Rose
isn’t looking for anything in particular, but she remembers the jewellery. Her mother wore only a dull orange wedding ring which could have come from Woolworth’s, but Frankie wore gold.
Rose considers. Frankie would have taken it; could be wearing it still, for all anyone knew. She pictures the shallow glass bowl that lived on his dressing-table; the cufflinks and the tie-pin and
the ruby ring, the thin spike of an earring clogged with a dirty yellow crust. Sometimes there would be a watch or an identity bracelet, or a long chain with thick links and a sovereign hanging off
it. Like the ring, these things would come and go.