The Woman Before Me (7 page)
The window shook, but I was safe from the weather in my duvet den.
I cuddled close and Mum kissed my head. My nest, her bed. They wanted a home, those birds, a place for eggs, for chicks to hatch. “Oh my, just look,” she said, so soft, “how they keep on and on. They believe in their little nest … and it’s pouring now. How did they learn to be so determined?” She nestled in the downy pillow, and the exhaustion of speaking made her close her eyes.
A shameful thought: not like her. She never had any determination, always so tired.
Push it away.
I kissed her hand, light as a feather, and so cold. “Oh, Rosie,” she said, her eyes still closed, “just to see them makes me so tired. Over and over, until the nest’s built, and then the waiting…”
I knew about waiting. The sitting and being still and waiting until she was well again, until she was up and I was safe and could breathe again, and she was my mother.
The rain didn’t stop.
Elaeagnus. “El- ae – ag – nus” she said the next day, sounding it out for me. That tree. That shrub, so thick and wide, outside the window. Yellow and small, white flowers that smelled of lime even stronger after the rain. I knew – I’d been there, before school. If only she would open a window. Since the sky was dried out, all wrung. But she wouldn’t. Couldn’t. It was her nest. Days she stayed in there. Days and days.
We watched, after school. Me in blue gingham and her in a white nightdress. She watched the blackbirds and I watched her for signs that she was ready to get up. To be well. More comings and goings from the blackbird nest, but only one this time, “The male. You can tell from the orange beak,” she whispered, as if he might hear and be disturbed, “and it’s bigger too.”
What was bigger, when there was only one? Nothing to measure it against. How do you know what’s big, what’s right, what’s wrong, if you’ve nothing to compare it with? But its beak, sure enough, was orange. Full, too, not with twigs anymore, but with worms and grubs and I thought the chicks must be hatched. The bird was so quick, keeping on and on. “My chick,” she said, stroking my arm, “my Rosie.”
I thought of Peter, downstairs. Her clumsy, stupid other chick, who only came to see her when Dad made him. “Go say goodnight to your mum.” Not like me, who couldn’t stay away and was always getting told off by Dad for disturbing her.
I thought of Dad, working downstairs in the shop, and how he foraged like the blackbird each meal time while Mum was in her nest.
“I wish,” she said, and I held my breath, not having known her to wish for anything, so knowing it was important. “I wish I could look in that nest.” She surprised me. “Climb up, into the Elaeagnus – no, fly up there like a bird and peer in to see how many chicks, how many preciously thin, hollowed-boned babies are waiting, mouths wide for food.”
She wasn’t talking to me. It was to herself, to the air. To the birds outside that she envied. “I wish I could make them strong and healthy and able one day to leave. To fly away”
She started to cry, like always, and I didn’t know how to comfort her. How to stop her open mouth, which was crying out for something that I couldn’t give her, because I didn’t know what it was she needed, to make her strong. I had no comparison, to know what was wrong.
When I arrived home after school I would be tired and hungry but I would have to sit in the shop until closing time, my head resting on crossed arms as my eyes blinked away sleep. The regulars got to know me, and would joke about me being the youngest shop assistant in Lowestoft. My favourite place in the whole shop was on a wooden stool beneath the row of glass jars full of sweets: pink peppermint rock, square yellow pineapple chunks that made your mouth sore, shiny brown cola bottles you could spend ages sucking the sugar off, sherbet lemons the colour of mum’s hair and – my favourite – those sticky toffee bon bons covered in icing sugar which dusted your fingers.
The shelf was too high for me to reach, even from the stool, so they tempted me every day. Peter could reach, and he would get a sticky toffee, taunting me. “Not getting any for you. You’re fat enough already!”
“Please, Peter.”
“Get stuffed.”
He’d chew his toffee loudly, with an open mouth, wide open, showing me the sticky mess inside, until I wanted to slap him but if I did he’d go crying to Dad and I’d get told off, since Peter was a bit ‘special’, meaning he was retarded. He was in a learningsupport class in school and the books he brought home I’d read at infant school.
The only thing Peter and me had in common was that we both loved penny sweets. We called them that because each Saturday Dad would give us ten pence to spend, and we would buy a bag, one penny for each sweet we chose. I spent hours planning how I was going to spend it.
Peter would eat his sweets immediately, but I would squirrel mine away in an empty ice cream tub. Through the week I’d allow myself one or two, a bon bon or liquorice bootlace, but most would be hoarded, and soon my secret stash grew quite large. Each week, his bag empty, Peter would steal handfuls from my box. I learnt to offer him some for favours: to have him reach me things, to borrow his personal stereo.
I took such pleasure in my horde that I would often tip them from the box, just to look. My mother had coloured sweets too, in little glass bottles with tops that didn’t ever come off when I tried to open them. She kept them in her bedside cupboard and would eat them when she was ill. I sometimes offered her one of mine, but she would always refuse.
That summer, when school finished and I was nearing my 11th birthday, the days in the shop seemed to drag on and on forever. I willed Mum to get better so we could go out somewhere, but she had been ill for ages and hardly left her bedroom. At least we had the blackbirds to watch, and she let me go to her each evening once the shop was closed. Together we saw the yellow ball of the sun change to red and die. The moon replaced it, beautiful and large and shining on us, turning her nightdress to white sand, her skin to millions of pearly shells. The air was thick and warm and smelt of salt. It was safe up there. Downstairs Peter would be into something he shouldn’t be or scoffing sweets. Dad would be working, stocking shelves and ordering, and then cooking our tea with the TV blaring out, but in Mum’s room it was peaceful.
Dad didn’t go up to Mum anymore, but slept in a chair in the lounge, and I thought it must be normal, mustn’t it? Since Mum was ill and Dad worked so hard. But I worried about the pretty laughing ladies and wondered if he would fly away if he could, leaving Peter and me alone in the nest.
I thought he was a good man, but I couldn’t be sure. I had no comparison.
Black Book Entry
My Dad’s shop was so small that even three customers made it seem packed, and it was always busy after school, when the bell above the door rang over and over like the collar bell on a cat that won’t go away, but stays at the door waiting for milk. There were quiet times during the day, but after school the shop was busy with children in blue and white gingham dresses, or grey trousers and navy blazers, swapping silver coins for sherbet fountains or strawberry laces. The women squeezed the bread, sniffed the cheese, tested a grape. Dad smiled at them, ran a hand through his blue-black hair, shiny with wax.
Dad liked Mrs Carron. He stroked his hair even more when she was around, and she was always running out of things and having to pop in. If Mum asked who’d been in the shop that day I knew better than to say Mrs Carron’s name. Not since the time Dad had to tell Mrs Carron to fasten her blouse because a button was undone, and she looked but the button was gone. Her blouse was gaping open at the neck and I even saw her red bra! I thought it was funny, and Dad laughed, and so did Mrs Carron, but when I told Mum about it she frowned, and her hands started to pluck at the sheet. I said, “but a red bra, mum!” thinking it was a funny thing, because I’d only seen them in white or fleshcolour. Mum didn’t smile. She asked where Dad had been just before Mrs Carron noticed her button was gone. That was easy, since I knew he’d been in the storeroom out back to see if he had any Earl Grey tea that Mrs Carron said was the best. I’d stayed in the shop, watching the till. Mum asked where Mrs Carron was, and I said she’d gone out back to make sure Dad knew which tea to look for. She came back to the shop all smiles so they must have found what she wanted.
Mum cried then, and I never mentioned Mrs Carron again, but I took it upon myself to watch her and Dad. To make it safe for Mum to come out of her nest, and be well again.
I used to go to the blackbird’s nest every morning before breakfast, and every afternoon, so I could let Mum know how the birds were doing. It was the only thing she seemed to care about. When I told her the eggs had hatched she was so pleased. I told her about the three chicks with thin scrawny necks and hardly any feathers. I felt like I’d given her a great gift, and we watched from our duvet-den, the parent blackbirds to-ing and fro-ing with their worms and grubs, happy, knowing the little ones were safe.
But you can’t know anything for certain.
The day after I’d counted the three chicks, about a week after I saw Mrs Carron’s red bra, I put on my blue gingham dress and went to see Mum before school. She was awake, but lying very still, and she gave me a little smile, then asked me to pass her pills.
“I think I might get up today, Rose,” she said.
I jumped in the air, whooping with joy. The spell was broken, and today she would be back to normal. I knew from all the times it had happened before that when the bad ‘loony’ days had passed she would be lovely. She would take me to the beach and buy me ice cream, and make up for all the days she’d stayed in bed.
I ran outside and tagged Peter on the arm and kept running, so full of energy that I could’ve run to the end of the earth that day, but all I wanted to do was get school over so I could be with Mum again. I knew she’d be waiting for me downstairs. Dressed and ready.
It was only when I was at my desk at school, kicking the back of creepy Alfie’s chair, that I realised I’d forgotten to look in on the three chicks. But that was okay – I bet it was the first thing Mum would do after she’d got dressed. And Dad would sleep in her bed again tonight, and everything would be normal. I didn’t even mind when Alfie passed a crumpled note to me, saying he fancied me.
After school I ran home, ran so fast I tripped but didn’t care about a grazed knee. I ran right past Peter and his mates, and kept going until I ran straight into the shop, hardly hearing the bell, and straight into an empty room. Where was she?
I started calling, “Mum? Mum!”
I heard a sound coming from the store cupboard. A woman, and it sounded like she was in pain. “Mum? Is that you?”
I ran to help, opening the door as the sound became a cry of pleasure. I saw Dad’s back, two hands on his shoulders. He was pushing someone against the wall.
“Mum?”
“Here, Rose.” A voice from behind me.
I turned around. Mum was stood there, her hair still wet from a recent bath, clothed, smelling like a new day. But her eyes looked beyond me into the store cupboard, to Dad’s back and the other woman’s hands.“Rose, what is it?” I wished, how I wished, that I’d been able to keep her safe. She pushed me aside and then I heard a high-pitched scream, “You bastard!”
Inside the store cupboard Dad twisted his head, there was a scramble of bodies coming apart and clothing being pulled down. He came forward, his shirt untucked and his hair all messed up, and behind him I saw Mrs Carron, wearing nothing on top but a red bra and a satisfied smirk. Mum doubled-up like she’d been punched, and started to howl.
I ran out of the shop, and round the back, throwing myself on the grass at the base of the Elaeagnus. Then in front of me, I saw them.
Tiny baby dragons. No hair, just thin necks, big black beads for eyes, and one wing outstretched. Two of them.
As I watched, a magpie came out of the Elaeagnus, a scrap of life held tight in its cruel beak, which it jerked, tossing the tiny bird to join its dead brothers on the grass.
The magpie flashed its beautiful, glossy wings, looked at me quickly, and was gone.
I cried for a long time, and the sun was setting when I finally got up from the ground and went to the tree. I stood on tip toe and reached for the empty nest, cupping it in my palm and gently pulling it from the branches. It may be empty, but it was still a home. I would take it to Mum, as a gift.
No sign of Mum or Dad or Mrs Carron. No sign of Peter, who was supposed to stay in the shop after school. I would look in the flat, find Mum and give her the nest. I pulled back the curtain and climbed up the stairs, listening for any noise but hearing none. My stomach rumbled with hunger and I decided to dip into my ice cream box of sweets, hidden under my bed. But when I looked the box was gone. Peter must have it! He’d be hiding somewhere, stuffing himself on all my lovely sweets that had taken so many weeks to collect, and so much of my willpower to resist.
The kitchen was empty. So was the front room, just Peter’s shoes lying on the floor where he had kicked them. I checked the bathroom, even looking behind the shower curtain, but he wasn’t there. There was just one place left. My parents’ room.
The door was closed and I pushed the handle down slowly, seeing from the shape on the bed that Mum was there, huddled up under the bedding. Poor Mum. The room was hot and stuffy as she wouldn’t have the windows open. She didn’t like to hear the outside world. She was lying very still, so deeply asleep that I couldn’t resist going over to her, thinking I’d climb under the duvet and make it a den.
I placed the empty nest on her pillow, so she would see it when she opened her eyes.
She was so pale, her long blonde hair lying in a rope on the pillow. I tiptoed right up to the bed. She hadn’t stirred and I suddenly wanted to kiss her. Surely that would be allowed, if I were careful not to wake her. I climbed onto the bed, and lay down close to her, afraid of being caught but entranced by my beautiful mother. If she woke she might shout for Dad to fetch me away, and I would get a good hiding. But it was worth the risk, just to be near her.
