The Hiding Place (28 page)

Inside the first sack, she finds baby clothes and children’s clothes and men’s suits, stuck together with a sour grey mould which flies up in a dust when she pulls at them. The dog
dashes around her, poking its head into one bag, emerging suddenly, dipping his muzzle into the next one. He starts to pull at something, tugging with his teeth, his back legs bent against the
weight and his claws scraping across the lino. A tangle of ties and belts and leather-hooped braces come suddenly free. The belt whips out from the bag with a noise which startles them both. Rose
sits back on her haunches and looks at it. The leather is black and worn. There is a sunrise carved into the buckle, the orb and beams mouldered green at each proud edge. Unmistakable. Rose wraps
the belt around her hand. It comes like an instinct. She has never beaten the dog, but this action terrifies him; a leftover memory that he can smell, oozing through the cracked leather. He crawls
flat on his belly until he’s safely under the bed. Rose feels the stillness of the room and the past spilling out around her.

~

She’s twelve again; she’s sitting in the window of the back bedroom. In the distance, a fire burns out of control, but it isn’t Fran’s doing. Fran is
lying down in her own room, waiting for tomorrow when Lizzie Preece will come to take her to the Homes. It’s been a week since the Evanses’ shop caught fire, since her dad stood in the
kitchen and punched Fran sideways on to the floor. Rose didn’t know it then, but that was just a taster. The house has been full of people all day: Lizzie Preece with her forms, then Arthur
Jackson, helping her mother through the front door and sitting her down on the chair. Her legs covered in mud. Rose was sent to look for their dad. She never found him. She left messages at The
Moonlight and the Betting Office and The Bute. He never came home. But now he’s here, sitting downstairs with the belt across his knees and his eyes on the door. He’s shut her mother in
the Box Room. No one is allowed to see her. The house is quiet.

It’s not right, Cel, Rose whispers, It’s not right!

Celesta slips off her bed and crouches on the floor. She sifts through the slurry of singles drifting across the floor until she finds the one she wants to play.

What do
you
know, she says, tilting the record and blowing on it, You’re just a kid.

I know it’s not
right
, Rose persists. She doesn’t want an argument; she wants Celesta to do something. Celesta pulls the edge of her sleeve over her thumb and rubs it
carefully along the vinyl.

They deserve it. This family is a bloody disgrace!

She drops the needle into place with a click and hiss. ‘Under the Boardwalk’ fills the dusk.

C’mon, Rose, says Celesta, Let me show you this dance! Her pink toes beat the lino as she counts herself in.

One, two, three, and – she stops – Come
on
, Rose! she says, snapping her fingers in front of her face, You can’t do anything about it!

And she picks up the rhythm again.

Click. Click. Roll from the hips,

Hitch-hike right thumb, step and turn,

Hitch-hike left thumb, step and turn,

Back Step, Back Step,

Slide to the side. And Turn.

Rose doesn’t feel like dancing. In her head, she goes through it once more.

The living room is in darkness; not even the blue light of the telly. Something’s wrong. Rose is worried that she’s stayed out too late. She never found her dad,
but as she makes her way round to the backyard, she hears him, shouting. It is Fran she sees first, standing on the scrub of lawn. She has her arms up in front of her face.

Arms down! he shouts. He has his back to Rose. His shirtsleeves are rolled up, the belt is coiled around his fist. Fran drops her arms to her sides and stands quite straight. It’s
military. She doesn’t recognize Rose; they’re only a few feet apart but everything in Fran’s eyes is a bright mosaic of fear. In the light falling from the kitchen window, Rose
sees the raised pink stripes on her sister’s skin. Neck and arms and legs. Frankie pauses, takes a breath in, steadies himself on his back foot, breathes out. And with that breath comes the
sound the leather makes as he sends it, buckle flashing, through the air. A white cry from Fran’s open mouth. Another small cry, like an echo, in the distance. Frankie drags the belt back,
wraps it round his fist,

Like your mother, he says.

Silence. Fran tilting, looking like she might topple.

A Liar. Just like your mother.

Aiming at her head. The sharp claw of the buckle grazes her face, cuts a thin notch of gristle from her ear. A noise like an animal. Frankie catches her up in his hands. Her
body bends. So bent, Rose thinks, she must be broken. He throws her down. His fingers on her neck.

A scream.

Not from Rose, who has covered her mouth. Not from Fran, smothered beneath the weight of him. The sound stops Frankie. He crawls over his daughter’s body to hide in the shadow of the wall.
Fran staggers away. A moment passes before he follows her inside, ducking low as if the sky will fall and crush him. Rose is reminded of a chimpanzee at the circus.

In the kitchen, Frankie is rinsing the buckle under the cold tap. He doesn’t look up, but he senses Rose at the door. He runs his finger along the brass tongue.

Fetch Dolores to me, is all he will say.

But she won’t. She won’t let him have her.

~

Upstairs, Fran is not crying. She rests her head against the dressing-table mirror. She has a school sock pressed to her ear.

What did you do? asks Rose.

Nothing.

He called you a Liar, says Rose.

Fran inspects the sock, turning it so that a clean piece can be found. It is polkadot blooded.

I didn’t do nothing.

Let’s go and tell Mamma, says Rose.

Fran’s laugh is shrill.

Hah! she says, It’s
her
fault!

Her ear is hot red, blue at the edge where the tine of the buckle fell.

Ow. It kills . . .

She dabs a patch of the fabric to her tongue before pressing it again on the wound. She flicks her hair over her face to cover both ears. Rose looks at the rising welts on
Fran’s arms.

I’m gonna tell Celesta, she says.

But in the back bedroom, Celesta is practising her steps. She doesn’t want to hear.

The doctor’s coming, suggests Rose, We could tell him. Celesta freezes in mid-step.

You bloody dare! she says, He’d kill the lot of us! You tell Fran – tell her – she’s not to say a word to anyone!

Celesta could change things; she’s the oldest, she would know what to do.

But all Celesta will do, is dance.

~

Rose’s leg has gone numb. She unfolds it from under her, tries to move, but the pain of revival is too intense. She waits for the pins and needles to pass.

~  ~  ~

It’s cool inside The Moonlight, an airy space of blond wood and chrome fittings. We sit in a window seat where Jumbo brings us coffee on a polished tray – just two
cups – so that Louis looks at him quizzically before he takes the hint and follows his brother to the back of the restaurant. Celesta sits on the very edge of her chair; her body is turned
slightly away from me. She takes in her surroundings. Avoiding my eyes.

I was going to the
old
Moonlight, I say, It’s a bit of a shock. I never expected—

The name will change, she says flatly, It wasn’t my idea.

The old Moonlight still exists though? – I went to see Eva this morning. You remember Mrs Amil?

and I start to take the purse out of my bag.

I’m not interested, she says, shifting further to the side.

It’s a photograph of your wedding day. Mam and Dad. Salvatore.

I don’t care. Put it away.

Celesta drops her spoon, places her right hand flat on the table next to my left. Careful not to touch me. Two grownup hands now, mine and hers. I turn my palm upwards, expose
the proud edge of bone where my thumb would have been, the crescent of white flesh and the splash of purple scar tissue where the skin grafts failed. I resist the urge to bury it in my lap. She has
to look at me now.

You don’t mind it? she says, It doesn’t bother you?

I turn my hand over again; she means it bothers
her
. I could tell Celesta about starting school and how the other children would refuse to sit with me in case they
‘caught it’, or how my foster mother tried to persuade me to wear a prosthesis which rubbed a channel of soreness round my wrist. But I tell her other things; about meeting Mrs Riley
again and how Rose found me in the old bedroom. All the time I talk, I’m studying her face. She lets me do it, nodding slightly and fidgeting with her napkin. In shadow her complexion is
smooth and brown, but on the other side, where the daylight catches it, tiny wrinkles run beneath the powdered skin.

Mrs Riley had to turn the gas on for me, I say, The cupboard was full of rubbish! To think I used to like it, under the stairs.

Celesta narrows her eyes; she lets out a breath.

You don’t remember, she says, You were only a baby. This isn’t a question but I want to dispute it. I tumble out a desperate list,

I remember learning all the books of the Bible, and how to do my buttons; you teaching me how to twist; Fran going away. Carlotta and Salvatore, and Joe Medora—

You
can’t
remember Joe Medora, she says, her hands flying up as if I’ve just proved her point, You never met him, Dol. You can’t remember Marina, for God’s sake!
It’s only what you’ve been
told
. It’s not the same as knowing.

I do remember Joe Medora!

Celesta says the words slowly, as if I’m a child,

You never met him.

There’s something moving at the back of my mind. I’m recalling a picture of a man bending over a woman, he’s covering her face with his hand and grinning madly
at me out of the frame. His teeth are shining like gold. But it’s an engraving from an old book I used to have. Not a memory at all.

Celesta takes up her napkin and dabs angrily at the corner of her mouth. I’m learning her gestures; this is one of ending.

I’ve kept my boys from all that, she says, sliding back her chair, Your lives are ahead of you. That’s what I tell them. Keep facing forward.

She looks over at her sons, both of them leaning on the long counter, sipping coffee. They’re watching us. Louis hurries to our table.

Go and help your Aunty Dolores fetch her bags, she says, and turning to me, You’ll want to stay at ours, I expect.

It isn’t an invitation, it’s a summons. She would have me abandon Rose to the old house.

~  ~  ~

Louis was keen to escort me back. He loped along like a puppy, sometimes jumping slightly ahead, then walking backwards as he talked. He threw his arms wide in the air, stared
at me earnestly when he made a point. I had to pull him out of the way of people moving past. Louis’s voice had the quizzical timbre of the Docks; every statement had a question inside it. We
veered off Bute Avenue, into a narrow road that bent into a side-street.

No, Louis . . .

I couldn’t catch my breath. I couldn’t explain the feeling.

But this is the quick way, he said, You’ll be safe with me!

The rubbish blew along the gutter, polystyrene cups and balled-up chip-papers skittering in the wind. The developers hadn’t touched this part of town; there were no proud
street-lamps in civic colours, no bins with tattooed heralds. Here I was, despite myself: down the Docks. Louis wanted history, but meeting Celesta had made me wary of telling. It felt like a
swamp, this past we were supposed to have shared. I gave him facts.

Five girls and then a sixth, and then a fire, and I got burnt, I said.

You got rescued! he said proudly,

I got burnt, and then – they couldn’t keep it together.

He went off, your dad. I’ve heard all about it.

He described events he had only been told, his hands moving quickly in front of his face. They were gilt-edged stories – of a vice ring, a murderous feud, a child sold
into prostitution.

This place – it’s a
little
world, right? he said, cupping his hands together as if he had captured a moth, And Mam didn’t want us to know? She sent us to private school?
But people round here – he let his imaginary moth free into the air – They knows us. You hears talk. When Dad died, she was all for going somewhere else, but Jumbo says—

When did your dad die? I asked.

Must be two years, nearly. Kept on going ’til the end, him and Jumbo. The Dynamic Duo!

Louis stopped. There was a bitterness in this reference which told me everything: about Celesta, living here all this time, the rumours never quite going away, but changing,
altering imperceptibly over the years. A small fire is an inferno, a burnt hand is a horror story, and a falling-out between old friends is murder. No wonder she didn’t want to talk about the
past. My own recollections seemed drab by comparison. But Louis was like me – curious, wanting. I clung to it; I told him things I couldn’t tell my sisters; Celesta’s distance,
Rose and Luca’s petty cruelty, Fran’s kindness. How she was there in the dark, reaching her hand across the bed to hold mine. A bent figure in the dawn light silently folding her soiled
sheets; the sense of failure seeping from her. And the fires, those scraps of glass, tattoos. Small acts of torture, third degree damage.

Louis’ eyes narrowed.

Fran, he said, Fran. How old would she be now?

I didn’t have to think.

Forty-five.

And you don’t know where she is? he asked.

Not a clue.

I could ask around, like. I knows some of the old boys. And suddenly, as if he’d remembered something, he grinned at me.

Hey, Aunty Dol, look at this.

He unbuttoned the front of his shirt and pulled it to one side. A tattoo of a dragon on his breast. I couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to be scarred, but Louis was
pleased with it.

Fran had her name written here, I said, putting out my right arm, And a crucifix here – offering my left.

Home-made, yeah? he said, taking my left wrist and holding it fast. The double meaning made us laugh. He didn’t let go. I didn’t let him go.