Eggshell Days (36 page)

Perhaps her entire life was one great big cloak-and-dagger operation, perhaps there were all sorts of things Emmy pretended were one thing, but were in fact another. Perhaps she hadn't been sewing in her sewing room at all. Perhaps she had just been sitting in there, staring at the walls and smoking and talking to herself so she wouldn't have to talk to anyone else. Like Cathal, for example. At least some things made sense now.

Maya was frightened that nothing was what it seemed anymore. When she thought about it too hard, she felt seasick, as though the floor was rolling under her feet. She stood for a while outside the room, trying to pluck up the courage to go in. Now was as good a time as any to put Emmy to the test.

It was very dark in there. The curtain across the long narrow window was drawn and the light was off.

She thought about what she would say if she was caught, but realized she didn't care. She put one foot inside the door, and then the other, then slipped through the gap and shut it quickly behind her. In the shadows, she could see vague outlines of things hanging from the shelves, and she began to feel scared of what she might find. She remembered the look on her mother's face every time she had answered one of her knocks. Wild, tired, as if she had a ghost in there with her or something.

In a flash of uncharacteristic fear, Maya flicked the old light switch and the room burst into life.

“Uh!”

What she saw reminded her of when the old TV in the music room went wrong, got stuck on black and white and you had to bang it on the top to bring the color back. Bang! Pop! Color! It made her draw breath, and a little of what she had lost wafted back into her soul. In her excitement, she clamped her hand over her mouth to stop herself shouting.

“Mummy!” she whispered.

On hangers, suspended from the back of the door, from the edges of shelves, from the curtain rail and over the back of the chair, were costumes from every story she had ever been told.

There were petal skirts with layers of rainbow-colored floaty fabric, bright ribbon halos, miniature bridal gowns with lace-trimmed veils and rosebud bouquets, frothy pink net tutus and shimmering shifts with pearly drops and gauzy sleeves. There was a red satin cape with a black forked tail, a hood with matching horns, majestic ermine-trimmed cloaks and crowns, bejeweled headdresses, velvety hats, wicked-witch wands, and a purple wrap covered in moons and stars. A pair of angel wings flapped very gently in the breeze coming through the window.

She felt as if she had walked into a fairy's workshop in an enchanted kingdom. She thought of the Elves and the Shoemaker, and, funnily enough, she thought of Rumpelstiltskin too. Had some witchcraft gone on in here? Was this her mother's hand? It was unbelievable, fantastic, and utterly, totally mesmerizing. More than that, it was enough to make her forget everything she had held against Emmy since the night before. It was almost enough to make her believe that anything was still possible.

She stood rooted to the spot for a minute, and then she began to smile. The smile turned into a bigger one, and that in turn became a laugh. She sifted through the piles of discarded ribbons and rubbed her face in the fur on the table. She pulled at a length of silver chiffon that was poking from a heap of metallic remnants on the shelf and it went on and on and on and on, like a scarf from a magician's hat. When she finally found its end, she waved it above her head, making circles, and then, her arm aching, dropped it on the floor with the other piles and went to the window.

Hanging from the rail was a deep purple satin cloak, in the most beautiful color she had ever seen, covered with stars and edged with twisted gold braid. She felt it between her finger and thumb, and turned it to see its soot-black lining, scattered with moons. A piece of paper pinned to it in Emmy's handwriting simply said,
Magic
. You'd better believe it, she thought.

*   *   *

“We just want to show you how thankful we are, before we go,” Mog said shyly, climbing the bus steps. She was still walking a little gingerly, the stitches so carefully administered by the community midwife occasionally reminding her of what her body had gone through.

She was nervous in her role as hostess. She and Dean had thrown parties before, but they had been scruffy affairs, with cans and cigarettes and loud music. This was a whole new world.

Dean had been into town on the blat to buy pasties which they had warmed in Bodinnick's kitchen, and saffron cake which Mog had spread out on a makeshift table covered with a Cornish flag and resting on trestles over the sofa where Nathan had been born. A big pottery jug on the side was full of cider, and there were small boxes of orange juice for the children. Balloons hung from the metal trim and a pickle jar of cow parsley and cranesbill geraniums sat on the side.

Mog didn't know how to do what she so badly wanted to. She wanted there to be some formality, for there to be one moment when they all recognized what they were there for. Nathan had changed everything, transported her from a world of drink and blats without petrol to a world where people said thank you to each other and put flowers in jars and planned ahead.

When Emmy hugged her, Mog felt a forgotten warmth dance right through her. This was how life was. Not like the coldness she had felt at boarding school, or the distance she had suffered at home, nor the self-conscious hardness of the travelers at the camp. For a split second, she thought of her mother, a woman who didn't do hugs or parties. But this time, there was no stab of pain. She realized now that things like that weren't genetic. You could learn them.

Dean winked at her, and she blushed, pouring the cider as Jonathan proposed the toast.

“To simple living,” he said. And they all stood there with their mugs and their pasties, wondering if, at last, there might be the slightest chance of them all getting the hang of it. But Niall was missing, so it wasn't quite the hit it could have been.

*   *   *

In the sewing room, Maya and Asha wriggled out of their sneakers and jeans and dirty T-shirts, half terrified of discovery, half desperate to reveal. They stood giggling in their pants for a while, holding themselves as if they needed the loo. Lila was on the floor in the heap of ribbons, waving a wand and shrieking.

“You want to be a fairy, do you? A great big fat fairy?” Asha asked, pulling down Lila's elasticated floral trousers and squeezing her out of her green cotton top.

Maya found a small, soft, lined pink petal skirt with a stretchy bodice. “Do you think this will fit?”

It was for a two-year-old and the volume of shiny flimsy net turned the baby into an instant puff ball.

“Candy floss!”

“Mmm, let me eat you!”

They attached the fairy wings to the back of the dress, put a hairband on Lila's dark crown of silky hair and laughed. Lila laughed back. When people laughed, she laughed, and when people screamed, she screamed. Simple.

Maya went over to the purple velvet cape at the window and felt it again. “Do you think I should wear this?”

“Yeah. You could cast a spell over us, turn us all into frogs.”

But Maya knew which spell she would use if she could. She took down the cloak and the long, pointed hat with the silver moons. Then she found a silver stick with an explosion of stars sprouting from its end.

“You
shall
go to the ball,” she giggled as she tapped Asha's head.

Asha picked a fairytale princess, a reversible shimmery skirt, a spangly blue top, a sumptuous cape with a huge ribbon bow and a cone hat with a trailing chiffon scarf.

“Lady Asha awaits,” she said.

“Pop! You're a frog.”

They tiptoed along the landing, dragging Lila between them. In Emmy's room, they found the long mirror where she had once stood in her boots and jacket for Niall, and they twirled and danced and laughed at their new selves.

Then Asha sprang round to face the wizard.

“Come on, let's go and show everyone how clever your mum is!”

*   *   *

Dean was outside, fiddling with the batteries from the belly boxes. They lay, battered and scratched, on the gravel drive next to a multi-pack of Special Brew which Niall had bought them before he had left. “Wet the baby's head for me,” he'd told them. Inside the bus was his other gift, a bottle of champagne which neither Mog nor Dean had any idea how or when to drink.

An empty can rolled away as Dean attached wires to the back of Toby's ancient guitar amplifier. The volume dial was right up, from the last time someone had played with it hundreds of years ago, and a squeal of feedback orbited the bus as he made the final connection.

“Shit!” he shouted, throwing his head back, his dreadlocks flying all ways.

For a minute, Emmy wondered if the bus was going to take off, then, when the ambient whale noises the midwife had given Mog screeched into the air, she thought that perhaps it already had. “Not this,” Mog called from the door. “I don't want this.”

With Nathan in a black cotton sling, she grabbed the basket of tapes from the shelf and ran outside. Sita and Emmy followed, and at that moment, the two girls spilt from the house, clutching their pasties, flapping their capes and their wings and their ravishing gowns. They came flying across the lawn, with Lila in the stroller, her fairy headdress flopping over her eyes and her petal skirt bouncing up and down on every rut.

“Oh!” Emmy screamed. “Oh, my God! You look fantastic!”

Everyone looked up and saw the same perfect picture of three little girls floating across the green grass, seemingly conjured straight from the pages of a storybook. No one could believe what they were seeing.

Emmy certainly couldn't. It was the only time she had seen her work in broad daylight.

“Where did you get those from?” Sita asked.

Emmy's skin reddened, and an alien feeling of self-respect came over her. She hopped from foot to foot, not knowing how to accept the shrieks of impressed congratulations and amazement that were falling upon her.

“The sewing room.”

“Emmy made them.”

“But they're amazing.”

“There are hundreds. We could be anything. We could be devils, dragons, knights.”

“Or monkeys, or angels, or mermaids.”

“Emmy.” Sita came over to her, her arms out wide. “They're fabulous, Emmy.”

“Are they?”

The girls were dancing round them and Jay was shaking a can of Coke furiously in front of them. Then, performing a trick he had learned from Scott, he shoved a pin in the side and an arc of sugary brown fizz shot into the air and began to spray Dean, who ripped off his wet shirt and started to chase him across the lawn.

“Watch those oufits!” Sita shouted. “Get them out of them, Emmy.”

“No,” Emmy said. “They can have them. Models' prerogative.”

Jonathan staggered down the steps, too, accepting a drink from his racing son on the way, yanking back the ring pull and licking the foam from his wrist. Then he kissed Emmy firmly on the lips.

“Dark horse.”

To say they presented an unusual tableau to the po-faced occupants of a white Japanese jeep as it crunched its way up the drive would be an understatement.

Then, when it was way too late, they were on top of each other. James Culworthy-King in a tweed jacket with leather elbow patches and sand-colored corduroys was already standing by the door of his Mitsubishi, looking at the thirty-year-old bus and the puddle of dried oil on the gravel with an expression one up from disgust. He opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out.

“Turn that racket down,” Emmy shouted, the last one yet to realize. Her twisted cotton scarf was now tied in a bow on her head. Lila was on her hip, chocolate smeared all round her mouth, her fairy headband at a lopsided angle, her wings round her waist. “The babies are going nuts.

“Ah,” she said, seeing him at last. “Hello.”

“Miss Hart,” Culworthy-King said curtly with a slight nod.

The couple in the back of his car were making no move to get out. The man, wearing a pink crewneck sweater with a blue-striped shirt collar poking neatly over the top, was shaking his head. His pinched-faced wife was looking away in disdain.

“Did you call?” Jonathan asked. “I thought we said by appointment only.”

“You clearly didn't get my message,” James Culworthy-King replied. He was much less ingratiating than he had been on the first visit.

“No, clearly, I didn't.”

“Well, you wouldn't have heard it over the noise, anyway. May I ask, is this a permanent feature?” He signaled toward the bus as if it was emitting a foul smell.

“Oh,” Mog started to say, but Emmy spoke over her: “Semi permanent.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning it will go when it goes.”

“I see. Well, it doesn't matter now. Mr. and Mrs. de Souza have obviously changed their minds, which is a shame since they are cash buyers.” His face was red with anger.

“I bet they are,” said Emmy, looking at their perma-tan. “Would they like a drink? We've got cider or Stella.”

“I think not. They have other properties to see. Perhaps you would like to give me a ring when this, er, addition, has been removed. I really don't see we can market it while it…”

“Don't you like it?” said Jay, walking up, flicking drips of Coke off his soaking sleeve and swinging an electric guitar. “It's our new conservatory.”

“I'll call you,” Jonathan said to the back of the tweed jacket, glaring at his son. “So sorry to have inconvenienced you.”

As the gleaming white back of Culworthy-King's car with its pristine spare wheel cover advertising his own firm disappeared back down the drive, the children cheered.

“I'll give you conservatory,” Sita said to her son.

“I'd rather have a wetsuit,” he answered.

Asha circled Lila's fairy wand. Jay put two fingers up behind his hand. Emmy didn't dare look, but she thought she could feel Sita smiling a little next to her.