2003 - A Jarful of Angels (18 page)

“I’m gonna ask if I can have one when they’re born,” Fatty said.

“How much will they cost? Pedigrees are expensive.”

“That’s the point, Iffy, they won’t be pedigrees, they’ll be mongrels and they give mongrels away.”

“Great!”

Iffy wondered if the wish she’d made that night would come true too, but she knew it wasn’t possible. Dead people didn’t come alive. Then she had to go in case the milk turned sour.

Iffy was told to call her Auntie but Auntie Blod wasn’t a real auntie. She was just someone that Iffy’s nan had known for years. She kept a home for bad girls down the valley.

Iffy thought it a scary-sounding place. Fatty’d told her that it was where unwanted babies came out of girls’ bums in the middle of the night.

Auntie Blod was an old maid even though she had a daughter. Cousin Eirwen wasn’t Auntie Blod’s own baby, but Auntie Blod had felt sorry for her because all the other babies had been adopted, but no one had wanted Eirwen and she would have had to go to the orphanage, so Blod had adopted her instead.

Auntie Blod was cross-eyed so it was hard to tell who she was looking at or who she was talking to. She looked Iffy up and down when she arrived in the kitchen. At least Iffy thought she looked her up and down. Iffy didn’t like the look of Auntie Blod. She was hard-faced and thin about the lips.

“Give Auntie Blod a kiss, Iffy.”

Iffy flinched. She hated being told to kiss people. Grown-ups told you never to talk to strangers one minute and then asked you to kiss them the next.

She gave Auntie Blod a swift peck on the cheek. She didn’t like the smell of her: fresh perm lotion and stale wee. She was dressed all in brown like someone out of an old photograph: brown skirt, cardie, stockings, shoes. Even her teeth were brown.

“She’s the spit of her mam,” said Auntie Blod looking at Eirwen.

Iffy stared at Eirwen. Her mam must have been dead ugly.

Nan coughed and clattered cups and saucers.

Best china. Posh teapot. Apostle spoons.

“Got her father’s eyes mind…got a nose like that cat.”

Iffy peered at Eirwen. She had a nose more like a pig than a cat, with big black nostrils. She also had a slack-lipped mouth that hung open showing sharp pointy teeth.

“She’s got her own bloody nose, Blod…Take Eirwen into the pantry and give her some biscuits, Iffy,” said Nan.

Iffy pretended she hadn’t heard. She didn’t want to take Eirwen into the pantry. She didn’t like the look of Cousin Eirwen any more than she did her mam.

“Nan, Fatty Bevan’s going to get a puppy.”

“Use his proper name, Iffy! It’s not nice to call him Fatty all the time. A puppy? It’ll never survive in that house.”

“He is though. Can I have one?”

“Not on your nelly! I’ve got enough to be doing without clearing up after a puppy!”

“Who’s Fatty?” said Auntie Blod.

“Lawrence Bevan. You won’t know him, but you’ll remember his mam, she was the midwife round here.”

“Which midwife?”

Nan didn’t reply, but coughed a sharp little cough.

“Oh. Ellen Bevan. Is she still living round here?”

“Ay, but she hasn’t worked for some years. She had trouble with her nerves. Too much of the old pop and being married to that hopeless article. She should have left him years ago. Don’t stand there gawping with your mouth open, Iffy. Go and get some biscuits.”

“There was talk she had a fancy man years ago. She fell for him hook, line and sinker.”

“Iffy! Move!”

Iffy moved reluctantly. She beckoned Eirwen to follow her, but across the kitchen Eirwen stood rooted to the floor, staring at Iffy with her small, queer eyes. Iffy smiled, a weak smile of half-hearted encouragement. Eirwen made no sign of moving. Iffy stared back. Iffy guessed Eirwen was about thirteen. She was a big beefy girl with skin the colour of old chip fat. She grunted through her open mouth, like Bessie did when she was constipated.

Iffy sighed, turned on her heel and lifted the latch to the pantry. All of a sudden Iffy felt Eirwen’s hot breath on the back of her neck, large as she was, Eirwen had made no noise crossing the kitchen floor. Iffy shuddered. Feeling Eirwen that close without being able to see her made Iffy feel unsafe.

It was dark and cool in the pantry, only a little light came in through the high small gauze-covered window. Iffy loved the smell of the pantry. Sometimes she hung around in there for ages soaking up the smells: Fairy soap and Reckitts blue; block salt and pickled onions; cooking apples and mud-crusted potatoes; runner beans and peas in the pod waiting to be shelled. When Nan was well out of the way Iffy took sly nibbles from cold cuts of lamb or beef, snaffled pork crackling, or slipped her hand quietly into the biscuit jar and picked the currants from rock buns and the icing from cakes.

She turned round to face Eirwen. Eirwen stared back at her. Iffy thought her eyes were the oddest she’d ever seen: pink-rimmed with white lashes that blinked too fast, stared too hard and too long.

On the other side of the door Mrs Meredith and Auntie Blod were whispering together.

“When did she come back?”

“November. Out of the blue…Never thought she’d set foot in that house not after…”

“Have you seen her?”

“No. She keeps to the house. She’s not even been to Mass, though God knows she needs to go to confession if anybody does. She must have known what he was up to.”

“Who’d have thought she’d ever come back?”

“I’ve told our Iffy to keep away.”

“She must have known what he was doing with those young girls. And what sort of girl was
she
anyway, giving her own flesh and blood away. Dear God, if the child hadn’t been the spit – ”

“What if she realised?”

“The old doctor said she didn’t want to know. Took one look at the baby and said, take it away.”

Snippets of conversation like all adult conversation – completely unintelligible. Sounds of cups and spoons clattering.

Suddenly Eirwen smiled. The pantry grew cooler with that smile. It was a twisted, sly smile that didn’t join up with her eyes.

Iffy stretched up and took down the biscuit tin from the top shelf. She pulled off the lid and took out three biscuits and gingerly held them out to Eirwen. One broken custard cream, two fig rolls.

Eirwen held her hands behind her back and shook her big lollopy head slowly from side to side.

Neither of them spoke.

Iffy ate the custard cream and put the fig rolls back in the tin.

Then, quick as a wink, Eirwen pushed past her and grabbed hold of a bar of Fairy soap that was kept on the scrubbing board next to the tin bath. She held the soap in her fat, dimpled hand and began to tear at the wrapper. She peeled back the paper until half the bar of green soap was uncovered. Then she lifted it to her mouth and began to bite greedily into it. Lumps of green soap disappeared into her mouth as she chomped away with her pointy teeth. Iffy gawped in disbelief. Eirwen ate soap as if it was chocolate! She munched and crunched until foam billowed out of the sides of her mouth.

She was nuts.

Then Eirwen poked out her tongue at Iffy, threw down the half-eaten bar of soap and snatched a bottle of dandelion and burdock pop from under the table and drank half the bottle without coming up for air.

She burped loudly and glared at Iffy. Then she yanked the biscuit tin from the shelf, drew out a fistful of biscuits and stuffed them all into her mouth at once.

Iffy sidled past her, breathing in so as not to touch her, but Eirwen followed, her feet padding on the stone floor. Too close for comfort. Iffy felt the hairs on her neck shoot out warnings.

She sat back up at the kitchen table as close to Nan as she could get, as far away from Eirwen as possible.

“Nan, that girl’s just ate the soap,” she whispered from behind her hand.

Nan ignored her.

“Go and play in the parlour,” said Auntie Blod. “Eirwen’s got a nice new doctor’s set and your nan and I have got a lot of catching up to do.”

Auntie Blod pulled a paper bag out of her basket and thrust it at Eirwen.

Eirwen took the doctor’s set out. It was a little white case with a red cross painted on the side.

“Go on,” said Nan. “You don’t want to sit here listening to women’s talk.”

Iffy did, though. She didn’t want to go in the spooky room with the soap-eating Eirwen.

They stood in silence facing each other in the back parlour. Outside, sunflowers nodded by the grey garden wall. A bee fizzed against the window trying to get in. Iffy was dying to get out.

Granny Gallivan looked down from her picture frame and gave Iffy a knowing look, as if to say, “Look out behind you!” On the stiff-backed settle the invisible bones of the ghosts creaked and their movement sent up the smell of moth balls. Iffy kept one eye on the wooden biscuit barrel half hoping the hand would come out and grab Eirwen by the rude bits and drag her screaming and wriggling into its magic depths.

Eirwen spoke first, “That’s my mammy,” she said to Iffy pointing at a painting of the Virgin Mary that hung on the wall. She spoke as though she were pushing the words out through her nose, more a snuffle than speech.

“That’s Our Lady,” Iffy said.

“My mammy,” said Eirwen glaring.

Iffy went back into the kitchen.

“Nan, that girl said the Virgin Mary is her mam.”

“That girl’s got a name, Iffy.”

“Eirwen says that the Virgin Mary is her mam, but she’s not, is she, Nan?”

“Sometimes she says daft things. Take no notice. She’s not all there, poor dab. Go and play, there’s a good girl,” said Auntie Blod.

Back in the parlour, Eirwen was looking at the picture of Napoleon.

“That’s my daddy,” she said.

Iffy smiled and bit her lips so as not to laugh. She didn’t feel brave enough to argue.

“I know a good game,” said Eirwen.

So they played Eirwen’s game. Iffy was too afraid not to. Eirwen gave the orders. Iffy had to be the doctor first. Eirwen was the patient. She sat on the high-backed settle between the moth-ball ghosts. Iffy took invisible splinters out of her chubby white arm with the pretend tweezers and listened to her chest with the stethoscope that didn’t work. But she could only hear the sound of the bleeding heart pumping away behind her as it dripped blood over the chair backs.

When it was Eirwen’s turn to be the doctor she ordered Iffy to lie down on the couch. The black, cracked leather was cool against her legs. Horsehair, escaping from a rip, tickled her neck. She giggled.

“Shut your eyes,” said Eirwen very solemnly.

Iffy shut her eyes.

“Tighter,” said Dr Eirwen.

Behind Iffy’s tightly squeezed eyelids the world went black and red. She could hear Eirwen’s heavy breathing somewhere in the blackness.

“It won’t hurt a bit,” said Eirwen.

She took ages. She must have taken a run up from the back door at least.

“Aaaargh!”

Suffering doughnuts!

The plastic syringe quivered in Iffy’s arm like a Red Indian’s arrow.

“Now I’m going to take that baby out of your bum.”

But Iffy was up and off the settee like a shot. She flew into the kitchen roaring.

Her nan had to pick out the plastic with a pair of tweezers, and dab her arm with iodine in case it went septic. Iffy was going to have a bruise for weeks after.

When Auntie Blod and Eirwen had gone Iffy showed Nan the bar of soap with the teethmarks in it. Nan said Eirwen couldn’t help it, she wasn’t normal.

Iffy showed Fatty the bruise and the hole where the needle had gone in.

“Bloody hell,” he said. “Good job she didn’t give you the injection in your bum!”

She told him about Eirwen eating the soap.

He laughed and said, “Next time she farts bubbles will come out of her bum hole. Ha ha ha!”

They rolled about laughing and called her Eirwen Fairy Hole after that but not to her face because she only came the once.