Living In Perhaps Page 8

  Patrick Hennessy usually wore jumble-sale clothes with spatters of paint on them. But I once saw them when they were going out somewhere grand. He had on a black suit with satiny lapels, and she wore a tight crimson dress of rough-surfaced silk. Her hair was pulled back into a couple of tortoiseshell combs and she had on dark lipstick which drained all the colour from her face. The tips of her pale lashes were brushed with mascara, so that when she looked straight at you you saw a row of black dots just above her eyes. Her feet were in high-heeled sling-backs with a latticework of black straps over her toes. She hadn't scrubbed her fingernails, and bits of hair were coming down from her combs before she'd even left the house. I thought she looked strange and unfinished, more like a little girl in dressing-up clothes than a grown woman. Patrick obviously thought she looked marvellous, and kept squeezing her up in his huge arm, or putting his hand on her crimson bottom. I really wished he wouldn't. Then they went out, Tillie tap-tapping down the wooden steps in her sling-back shoes, swaying because she wasn't used to high heels. Patrick called out to us back in the house, and Tillie waved her little black beaded bag, and then they were gone, hidden by the hedge.

  Patrick was much older than her, or seemed older, seemed anyway to be the right age to be the father of so many children. Tall, with a laughing brown face and curly dark hair, he was the king of bonhomie. I was a bit afraid of him, afraid of what he would do next, whether he would ignore me or – worse still – notice me. He stepped over me, once, when I was reading a book at the top of the stairs. I was waiting for Barbara, who unselfconsciously and happily spent hours on the toilet, talking to me from time to time through the closed door. 'Nose in a book,' Patrick said, 'that's the ticket. That's what I like to see. A little scholarship. What're you reading?' I held it up, an old green paperback Philip Marlowe, price one shilling. 'The Lady in the Lake, eh?' And he took the book from my hand and tapped me smartly, painfully, on the head with it. 'That'll teach you to stick indoors reading on a fine sunny day,' he called out, laughing, as he cantered away down the stairs. I could never tell whether he was joking or not.

  Barbara said that he and Tillie took turns to name the children, and all the names he'd chosen were characters in operas. Eugene was for Eugene Onegin, Isolde was from Tristan and Isolde, and she couldn't remember what Sebastian was from. Tillie had chosen Tom, Barbara and Matthew, because they were names she liked at the time. What if they had more children? I asked. They wouldn't, Barbara said firmly, because she'd had the op. I didn't know what she meant, but I looked wise. I never liked to appear ignorant in front of Barbara.

  I liked all their names. They seemed to fit admirably. I didn't feel the need to make rude or witty remarks to myself about the Hennessys' names.

  What Barbara wanted from me was an audience, a sidekick, a constant companion. No one in her family would do. They were all too busy with their own stuff. I wondered why she didn't turn to Isolde. I badly wanted a sister. In her position I would have made great use of a sister. But it was a point of honour for Barbara not to get on with her. They had been little girls together, had shared a room, were lumped together for presents and treats by their numerous relations and friends. Isolde's clothes were passed down to Barbara, Isolde's toys. But it was difficult for me when Barbara dragged my arm and we ran off giggling, flinging ourselves into the bushes or hiding behind the summer house; I wanted Isolde to come too. I wanted her to be allowed into our games and our secrets. But she was too old. Too grown-up, superior, disdainful of our silly behaviour. Which made me yearn after her all the more.

  Sebastian and Mattie, the two youngest ones, were much the same age and size. Mattie had very fair hair just like the roof of a haystack, and ran around the house all the time in wellingtons, kicking his feet out at the sides. It was dangerous to get near him. He was always making a noise. Sebastian, who was an inch bigger, was much more calm. His brown hair grew into tiny perfect corkscrew curls that I wanted to reach out and touch whenever he came near. He had sombre round dark eyes like chocolate drops, and a kind of look – a 'pity me' look – which could always get him out of trouble. He knew he had this look and he went about using it on people when it suited him.

  And then there was Tom.

  Tom was the most like Tillie. Tall and thin, he had the same white-fair hair, but it grew in curls. Not like Sebastian's, which had an inch of straight hair before the curling started, but right from his scalp, springing out round his head like bunches of grapes. His face was rounder and sharper than Tillie's, rounder at the cheeks and more pointed at the chin. His eyes were very light in colour, and although he had eyebrows and eyelashes you could hardly see them. But it didn't spoil his looks. There was something about him that was compelling.

  The Hennessys weren't like anyone else I knew. They had three dimensions and the rest of us, I saw now, had only two. But maybe, thinking about it, they were just so alluring because they let me into their lives without ever questioning my presence. They gave me an inch, and I took a mile.

  Things happened in the Hennessy household that never happened anywhere else, not that I knew of. They were relaxed and slapdash in a way that delighted me. Tillie washed dishes with the cuffs of her jumper dipping into the water, seeming not to notice. Or the flopping unbuttoned sleeve of her shirt would catch in a stack of cereal bowls waiting to be washed, so that they fell to the floor with a resounding crash. Milk and strands of leftover shredded wheat sprayed all over the floor, and two of the bowls split neatly in half, their white china insides grinning between the layers of sunshine-yellow glaze. 'Oh bugger!' Tillie shouted. 'Bugger-bugger-bugger.' A chant unknown to me. Our cereal bowls at home were made of convenient melamine so that even if our mother knocked them carelessly to the floor they wouldn't break. Nor would she jump lightly up and down and shout so merrily if they did.

  To help in the kitchen, Patrick thumped the gas water-heater to get the washing-up water going and sang the duet from The Pearl Fishers, both parts, alternating them. He loomed big against the cupboards, his feet enormous, spanning each floor tile. He would try to put things away, but was always asking, 'Where does this go, then?', holding up a cup by its handle as if it were a small fish he'd caught, or an egg whisk or a place mat, looking like he had no idea of its function, let alone its home.

  The Hennessys all liked doors to be constantly open so that they could look – and shout – through them, but also shut, so that they could come flying through, kicking them open for preference, flinging them back on their hinges. You could hear Patrick's voice from all over the house, booming out instructions or singing bits of opera and Irish jigs; and the flip-flap of Mattie's boot-tops as he ran up and down, making crowing noises; and Isolde clicking about in her heels and sighing heavily. 'I think I must have been a changeling,' I heard her say, more than once.

  All in all, it was a rich diet for a girl like me.

  And then there was Tom Rose. He was a friend of Tom's, always hanging round the house as if he had no home of his own to go to. Like me, I suppose. I was always disappointed if I found him there, too. But Barbara took his presence for granted so I didn't dare complain. 'Oh, it's just Tom Rose,' she'd say.

  We would sit on the floor in Tom's room, just bare floorboards stained with varnish, and he would teach us things: card tricks, and how to roll dice properly. He taught Barbara and me to play poker. Isolde wouldn't join in, but she watched from the doorway with her arms folded and her nose in the air.

  'Corrupting the children again,' she said.

  'We want to be corrupted,' Barbara told her. And giving me that glinting look, she added, 'We're not goody-goodies, all timid and feeble, must-do-what-your-mummy-says. We're not bungalow kids.'

  When Isolde stalked off Tom called after her, 'Interfering bitch,' and glanced conspiratorially at Tom Rose, who snickered with amusement. And that was that. Nothing happened. No fire or brimstone rained down on him for being rude, or disloyal about a sister, or for using such a word. Nobody came crashing up the stai
rs saying, 'I heard that!' No one suggested he wash his mouth out with soap and water.

  Once, even, I was in the kitchen and Patrick was having a sort of mock fight with Tom (I thought it was a mock fight), and had grabbed him by both arms from behind. Tom, who was nearly as tall, struck backwards with both elbows into his father's ribs, with all his might. Patrick yelled and let him go, laughing and crying out, 'You bloody little sod!' I froze. My ears turned crimson, and I could feel a prickling sensation all over my face. Could other people hear that sound as if a huge pane of glass had smashed, the tinkling of the slivers of glass as they fell to the ground? Tom was hovering in the doorway, cackling at his father's discomfort. Patrick rubbed his ribs through his grubby jumper, and said, 'Little sod,' again, in wonder.

  No one ever uttered a swear word in our house. We knew there were words one could not say, or even hear, without being defiled. But we didn't know what they were. So, how come, from out of that startling sentence, spoken by a father to his son, could I unerringly pick out the words I knew to be wrong? Bloody little sod. And no one baulked, no one froze – except me – no one else did hear the glass crashing to the ground. Tillie went on with her washing-up, glancing over her shoulder, untroubled, and Tom hopped up and down in the doorway, and then, laughing, sprinted off down the hall like a dog that really wants to be chased.

  They even arranged their house differently. I just assumed that the biggest bedroom was reserved for the parents, the couple, the heads of the household. At Gloria and Stella's the bigger bedroom automatically belonged to Gloria and Eddy, even though the high marital bed was so seldom busy. Stella was banished to the back room, being single. And Bettina, who spoilt Mandy in every way possible, still claimed the bigger bedroom for her own. It went without saying. Until I knew the Hennessys.

  It was Tom who occupied the big upstairs front room. The curtainless windows let in all the sun. He had louring posters on the wall, Che, and amorphous bubbling shapes, and Dalí's soft clocks. He lay on his bed and threw darts at Che's handsome warrior features. The room smelled of socks, and old cardboard, and something sweet and sour. Tillie and Patrick were relegated to a smaller room at the back of the house, where all the furniture was pressed up against the walls to make way for their bed. Barbara had a room downstairs which she referred to as the study. 'I sleep in the study.' It looked like an ordinary bedroom to me, though desperately untidy. This was another shock – that you could have a bedroom downstairs in a house that was not a bungalow. And Isolde had stepped through the blue curtain into next door and taken up residence in one of her grandparents' spare rooms, gradually moving all her possessions through after her.

  Right at the top of the house Patrick had opened the attics, painted them white and made them into a studio. A long breeze blew through all day, and here he painted, or in the garden if the weather allowed it. It was Patrick I'd seen through the hedge that day, preparing one of his big canvases. I often caught sight of him down by the summer house, hammering and stretching and sizing. It was what he did, while the children ran round him, slamming tennis balls and jumping on molehills, playing poker, swearing, kicking open doors. And while Tillie washed up and washed clothes and squeezed dough and sat on the back step with one of her home-made cigarettes (the type of cigarettes I thought only men were allowed to smoke) and looked at books and taught us things.

  Now that she knew my name, Tillie sang out, 'Carolyn-nie, Caro-lina,' when she met me in the hallway or the kitchen. She always seemed cheerful, energetic, girlish. There was one day I remember particularly, when she seemed so full of light, and everything amused her.

  Barbara and I were perched on the kitchen table, eating apples, and Tillie was drying knives and forks with a frayed tea towel. 'Where do you live, Carolyn?' she asked.

  'Oh, not that far ...' I said. I glanced at Barbara. I knew she would kill me if I got any closer than that to my address. Heaven forfend that Barbara should be the one to introduce something suburban into the Hennessy household.

  'You're at the Wren as well, then?'

  'No. I know Barbara from piano lessons,' I replied, glad to tell a truth.

  'Would you like some ice?'

  Tillie must have seen the perplexed look on my face, and went into peals of laughter.

  'Look, I've made some ice cubes. What do you think?'

  She opened the fridge door. She had laid out the ice cubes on three plates, blue and green. The cubes were made from frozen orange squash, lemon squash and lime cordial. I thought her taste in colour exquisite then. We sat on the veranda in the shade, sucking ice cubes till our cheeks hurt.

  It was that same afternoon that Tillie asked about my reading matter and pulled out the huge book on Dutch masters especially for me. She hefted it on her knee and said, 'I think, Carolina, that you'll like this.'

  And nobody before that day had ever consulted my tastes, or entertained a single thought about what it was I liked.

  13

  Shopping: One

  I miss being able to go out here. I've heard that in time you're let out on little journeys, though always accompanied by a member of staff. If you're deemed fit to go, that is. I don't know who decides. Or what fit looks like. As far as I can see there aren't any prime candidates in this place – except maybe Hanny and me.

  I miss stupid simple things like going shopping, and being able to just wander about. I lie on my bed here and think about all the shops I've known and what was in them, and I imagine the kind of shops I'd like to visit and what I'd buy there if I could. If I suddenly found ten thousand pounds lying in the road. And if I could suddenly get out of this bloody place.

  When Brian and I were little the shops at the end of our road seemed the ultimate in adventure and indulgence. There was a sweet shop on the corner, the wool shop, the greengrocer's, and another one which every so often went out of business and opened up again as something quite different. Our favourite, Brian's and mine, was the sweet shop. We homed in on the comics, the counter full of sherbet fountains and penny chews, the rack of cheap plastic toys hanging by the door. As the streams of trippers flowing past increased, the shopkeeper grew canny and expanded his stock into ever new and fascinating lines until it spilled out on to the pavement. Bottles of fizzy pop for thirsty travellers, crossword puzzle books for the beach or the homeward traffic jam, postcards, sunglasses, buckets and spades, inflatable lilos, plastic boats and plastic cars to keep the kids quiet. Then ballpoint pens to write the postcards with, straw bags to carry the drink bottles and the toys in, rubber beach shoes, sunhats with cheeky messages, ashtrays with plaster seagulls perched on the rim. I'm sure most of his trade was homeward bound. This was the last port of call to buy that hat, that postcard, that blow-up sea monster they'd looked at and longed for down on the prom, and then thought better of. Last chance to spend their money.

  The wool shop was Mum's favourite. We never passed without peering into the window, where the display was protected from bright sunlight by a layer of cellophane the exact same colour as Lucozade. Inside the shop it was shadowed and dim, as if the contents were precious, easily disturbed. The balls of wool were stored in little cells on the back wall of the shop with all the intricate precision of a beehive. My mother understood the mysteries of two-ply and four-ply. There were long conversations about buying eight ounces now and having the rest 'put by'. Mrs Drew, behind the counter, would store the other balls of wool in a crumpled clear cellophane bag, marking it with a pencil, to be claimed when needed, or not, as the case might be. She was consulted over the glass counter about patterns and quantities and needle sizes. Under the glass, which I was commanded not to lean on, were rows and rows of cotton reels, in all the colours of the rainbow and far more. Below these were glass-fronted drawers of hair ribbon, lace, elastic and bias binding. Everything came in a choice of colours. The sweet shop didn't offer rubber rings or beach hats in every shade imaginable, just bright yellow plastic and white cotton. But it was the prerequisite of the wool shop to imagine th
at human beings liked to make a choice, a slow and deliberate, tantalizing choice. Now should it be lilac, or should it be mint? There again, the lemon was nice.

  Brian didn't care for the wool shop. He couldn't see the point of all that deliberation. He couldn't care less if his jumper was grey or green, so long as it wasn't pink. It was a female place, a quiet, careful, female place. Even more so in that, as I later discovered, under the counter in discreetly thick white paper bags, Mrs Drew kept the bulky supplies of sanitary towels her customers whispered requests for. Kotex, and Dr White's. Twelve luxury towels, the packet said, making them sound like an indulgent treat, like a Badedas bath. When I was sent I always bought Kotex. Dr White's, with that medical aroma, was a scary name. Sickness, emergency, catastrophe was Dr White's arena of action. Not swathing oneself in luxury towels.