The Hiding Place (8 page)

You won’t believe, says Ilya, his face open with amusement, Frankie’s bad luck. Joe looks up at this.

What now? Ilya kisses his fingers to his lips, blows them away in a flutter.

A fire, Boss. He’s had A Fire. His house is Burnt. Joe is icy now; sees that Ilya is an utter fool.

My house, says Joe. It’s
my
house.

~  ~  ~

Arthur Jackson is ashamed of his vest. He stands in the doorway, forgetting his manners, and looks at my mother. She is lovely in the semi-dark of the street-lamp, her hair in
curls round her face and her brown eyes bright and worried. He remembers his manners.

I’m sorry, Missus, do come in out of the rain. Sorry about that! Ah, Mrs Amil, he says, spotting Eva cuddling a sleeping Luca, You’d better come in too, I suppose.

I’m not having that woman in here, says a voice from the living room.

My mother turns her face to Mr Jackson, wonders what she’s done wrong. Eva steps in smartly.

It’s alright, she means me, love, she says, with an angry laugh.

Eva bends close to my mother, mimicking Alice Jackson’s voice –
That woman! Lowering the tone of the neighbourhood!
My mother stares at her in wonder: as if the
Jacksons’ aren’t low enough themselves, she thinks. Eva reads her look.

I’ll tell you about it, Mary, she says, If you don’t hear it somewhere else first, and then dipping her chin at Luca,

Shall I take the little ’un across to mine for a minute? Number 14, alright?

My mother watches Eva as she crosses the street.

Arthur Jackson shows his teeth to my mother; it’s supposed to be a welcoming smile, but he has a funny feeling now that she’s standing there and looking straight at him, and he
can’t quite bring it off.

I’ve come for my kids, says Mary shortly, as if to remind him, And then we’ll get out of your way.

He nods quickly, pulling the envelope out of his trouser pocket.

They’ve gone here, see? Your daughter said to tell you. Mary reads the name he’s written.

Celestia? Celesta? She turns her head sideways, steadies his hand with hers to stop the letters jumping.

Aye, Mrs – Mary, that’s right. They’ve gone there. Mary curls her lip.

Celesta is my
daughter
, she says. And suddenly panicking at the thought of the social worker, Who’s got them?

No, Mary, that’s where they’ve gone! Mr Jackson stabs his finger at the name he’s written down. Mary snatches the envelope from him and presses it to her mouth. She’s
thinking. She runs through where they might be: Celesta might have taken them to The Moonlight. Possible. Or maybe out to play. Mary turns her head to the door. It’s black outside: too dark.
What else would Celesta do? Arthur sneaks a look at her again now, sees her staring into the night. He doesn’t know why, but he feels guilty.

Is that door still open? Another shout from the living room,

’Cos there’s a hell of a draught in here! Mary places the envelope across her heart; she is trying to calm the juddering in her chest. Mr Jackson sees this gesture, sees her hand
drop from her lips to her breast, and it moves him. Alice Jackson appears in the hall. She’s wearing slippers, Mary notices, pale blue ones with a band of fluffy wool.

They’ve gone to their aunty’s, says Alice, and seeing Mary’s puzzled face, turns to her husband.

What did she call her, Arthur? He shrugs. He’s afraid to repeat what he thinks he remembers. Alice turns her head to one side, pinches her nose. Deep in thought.

Carlotta, she says firmly, That’s what your girl said. Gone to their Aunty Carlotta’s for tea. Wouldn’t eat ours! She retreats back into the living room. Arthur Jackson watches
her go, leans in close to my mother.

Is it far, Mary? Shall I come with you?

No ta, says my mother, It’s just a bus ride.

~  ~  ~

Celesta led Rose and Marina and Fran across The Square. She thought, If I don’t find Carlotta’s house straight off, we can go to The Hospital. I can ask someone the
way. Or we can go to The Moonlight; Salvatore’s bound to be there.

So she isn’t too concerned at first, but when they pass down The Parade, she gets confused. They wait at the corner while Marina runs up the terrace looking for a street name.

What’s it say? Celesta shouts.

Dunno, Cel. Uh, hang on. South . . . Church . . . Street. They continue, but the next row is North Church Street, the one after that, Greek Church Street. Intersecting all three is West Church
Street. It’s like a bad dream. Celesta is furious to discover there is more than one church: she was using her own as a guide.

She decides to take them to The Moonlight. As they turn the corner, they are blinded by the headlights of a big car travelling fast. Celesta pushes her sisters into a doorway as it tears down
the street. It’s dark and raining hard, and at the wheel, Joe Medora has his mind on other things; he takes no notice of the four little girls pressed flat against the wall.

~  ~  ~

Eva has filled Luca with bread and Chocolate Nesquik, and has put her in one of her mother-in-law’s shawls. Now Luca sleeps in the middle of the sofa, caught between
Eva’s husband Yusuf, and Najma, his mother. Najma says nothing, but she loves having this baby in her house; she watches Eva carefully for maternal clues, tweets soothingly at Luca when she
stirs. Luca’s mouth is open, her legs are splayed, she has one hand pointing a finger into space and the other curled tightly around the chain she snatched from Eva’s throat. She looks
very at home.

Aaah, whispers Eva, What a Pet.

Yusuf stretches across the sofa and touches Luca’s foot.

Such a beautiful child, Missus, he says, grinning up at my mother in the doorway.

You don’t want to disturb her, Mary, says Eva quickly, You can leave her with us for tonight – she’s no bother!

Ta very much, love, but she’s coming with me, says my mother. She lifts Luca into her arms with a groan. The chain in Luca’s fist dangles, slips and falls on to the floor.

Sorry about that, she says, as Eva bends to retrieve it. My mother sighs, pulls the wing of her cardigan around Luca’s body.

Suppose I’d better go and have a look at the place first. No point in bringing the kids back if it’s not . . . livable-in. Eva makes a face at Yusuf, and takes Mary’s arm.

We’ll both go, shall we? See what sort of mess they’ve made.

~

The living room is lit with a faint orange glow from the street-lamp. Eva can see Mary’s body quaking in this dimness: she tries the light-switch.

They’ve turned off the electric!

It’s on a meter, says my mother, Under the stairs, in the kitchen. I’ve not got any change.

And starts to cry. Eva takes Mary’s hand and leads her back into the street.

Go and find your kids, she tells her, We’ll sort this out for you. Come back in the morning.

Eva takes a ten shilling note from her purse, and presses it into my mother’s hand.

Bus fare, love. And get yourself something to eat on the way. You look all in!

~

When the bus finally comes, Eva helps Mary into a seat. She leans over, lifts Luca’s fist, and kisses it.

What a Pet! she shouts, stepping back down on to the pavement.

Eva pulls her coat tightly across her chest. She watches my mother’s face in the window until the bus moves off.

For the second time in our lives, my father stands over me with a clenched fist. It won’t be the last, but he remembers the hospital visits as the worst. He’s
weeping.

Bambina, he chants. Bambina, Bambina, Bambina. In truth, my name has deserted him; he can’t remember what I’m called. All thoughts of Joe Medora, of what he will say to Mary –
what he will
do
– are drowned beneath this hymn he sings to me. Salvatore sits next to my bed, now and then passing a hand over the wet hairs on his head. He hears the soft cries of a
child at the far end of the ward, and the catch of air in his own throat as he bends to search for his handkerchief. He finds it folded in his trouser pocket and passes it to my father, who uses it
to hide the sight of me, holding the square open and drawing it down in a veil from forehead to chin, repeatedly, like a man wiping sweat from his face. He hasn’t touched me yet.

A nurse brings two cups of tea; the silence is broken by a rattle of china. My father stares down into his cup, grateful for something to look at, blowing on the surface until a scum forms, then
blowing on this until it breaks like muddy ice.

The nurse stands by and fidgets with her clipboard, stuck between these two men in their suits. She takes a sly look at her watch.

Your wife has gone home, she says, her eyes moving quickly from Frankie to Salvatore: they both look so distraught, she can’t tell who the father is. She gets no response from this, and
tries a sterner tack.

You’d be best coming back in the morning. The child needs her sleep. She bends across my bed and pulls the light cord.

It’s not entirely dark in the ward, but it feels hotter under gauze, a swarm from deep inside me, and with it a noise which comes and goes. At first it’s hard to place, it sounds so
much like a sigh. It’s the wind, swishing the last leaves on the tree outside; but to me it’s like the hiss of bubbling varnish. My father reaches over now, wanting to touch me but not
knowing how, and the hover of his hand above the ghost of mine is the deepest, blackest heat. The ward fills with a scream like a siren.

~  ~  ~

The bus takes a different route at this time of night; ‘the chuck-out run’ the conductor calls it. My mother twitches with impatience; she feels the need to count
all her children now. After three stops, the bus is full, and my mother and Luca are squashed up against the silvered window by a white-haired man with beer on his breath. He eases himself along
the vinyl seat, grips the handrail in front, and launches into song.

A – You’re Adorable! B – You’re so Beautiful! C – you’re a Cutie and a Charm!

pushing his red nose close to Luca, who swerves her head deep into my mother’s cardigan.

My mother rests her head on Luca’s hair, breathes into it. The ‘Alphabet Song’, that’s it. Funny it should come back to haunt her now. She looks out past her reflection
and into the night, beyond the oily rooftops of the city, to a dark hill and a clear dawn.

~

Mary had to walk the two miles from her village to Hirwaun, where Clifford said he would pick her up in his van. She’d planned it well; in her shopping bag she put her
purse, her hairbrush, her polkadot dress, her shoes. She clumps along now in her father’s old work-boots, the toes stuffed with pages torn from the
Echo
. He’ll be mad, she
thinks, but he’ll be mad anyway, whether I’m there or not. It makes no difference; he’s always the same in the morning.

Mary looks at the boots, the tongues flapping up and down as she negotiates the steep path with its slipping stones and frosted gorse. It doesn’t bother her that they’ve got no
laces: when she gets to Cardiff, she’ll send the buggers back, stuffed toes and all.

She sees her route unfolding like a map; down the curving hillside beside their house, along the back of the Chapel and Coots’ Farm, skirting the river-path to the foot of Mynydd Fawr. All
she has to do when she gets there is stand at the lip of the mountain and wait. In daylight, the lane is dogged with craters of mud, but at this hour of the morning, before the sun has got to it,
the ground rings clear as glass. She stamps along, scuffing at the frozen edges of a puddle, chipping up a lump of ice which she kicks ahead of her. Mary is nineteen, and she’s leaving her
father and the slate hills behind her and she’s going with Clifford to The City.

She wanders up and down the lane. She must be early. Mary looks at the sky falling into blue beyond the ragged fringe of oaks; she’d get a better sighting of Clifford’s van if she
were higher up. She climbs the shoulder of the mountain, her eyes tracing the curve of the lane as it disappears then comes back to run like a skid mark down into the town. Mary watches the mist
unwrap itself from the valley, watches the specks move and come to life, making noises too loud for the size they are down there. Nothing looks like Clifford’s van; nothing sounds like it.
Ages now, she’s waited. Mary puts a hand under her jaw and feels her pulse. She stands so still she might be carved in stone; but she’s counting to a beat beneath her fingertips. One
hundred, then another hundred, then another, on and on until the sun is directly above her head and she knows he’s not going to come. Mary gets down off the mountain and starts to walk.

~

Her father reads the note she’s left him. He throws the rip of paper into the fire.

Good riddance, he says, to his empty house.

~

It’s supposed to be Spring, but the wind is as stiff as November. Mary hunches into the collar of her coat. Her legs are bare and purple with cold; the side of her face is
numb, her hands are raw. But inside she is boiling. Mary sucks in her breath, flinging her words down the valley in a white of air,

You Wastrel, Clifford Taylor! You Bloody Fucking Bastard!

An explosion of birds into the sky, a thick silence. Mary feels her blood pump in her head.

Don’t cry, girl, she says quietly, Don’t cry now. She bends down at the side of the road and searches in her bag for her gloves; finds one wrapped around her purse, pictures where
the other one is: on the ledge above the fire in the living room. She’d taken them off to write her Da the note. Mary checks in her purse and counts the money she’s saved. Every
morning, that walk through the weather to Penderyn and The Miners’ Welfare, to that stinking yard behind the hut – chiselling at the ice on the water-butt, plunging her hands in and out
of the frozen water until the skin on them gave up and cracked like chickens’ claws: all winter, standing in the yard, peeling those potatoes. And the nights! The men with their yeasty breath
and glazed stares, watching her as she slopped the beer into their mugs, watching her and saying nothing. The heat of their coal-crusted eyes on her.

All for you, she says, rubbing her hands together, You Idle Bastard.