Tarnished (17 page)

The Street, the long strand of shingle that juts out from the shore at low tide, was almost entirely visible. Beyond was the offshore wind farm, just discernible in the pale light, its blades turning like ghosts waving to the living on the shore.

Normally Peg resisted the urge she always had to strike out along The Street when it was laid bare like this – her reason for being here was usually to spend the time with Doll and Jean. But Jean would be asleep for at least another hour, then Julie would take a further hour to wash, dress and feed her. So, with time to kill, she dropped down off the concrete path, across the shingle and on to the mud and gravel. At sea level, the expanse of exposed seabed before her seemed so vast it appeared to tilt.

She headed out along the spit of land. The breath-counting, ‘inner flow’ work and note-taking were beginning to have an effect: the act of drawing her parka hood round her face called up a vivid memory of tightening her anorak in the same way when Jean had brought her down here one blustery evening many years before.

Unable to take the trolley onto the sand, her aunt had sat and watched over her as she ran out to sea towards the end. Two interfering old bags stopped her and asked where her mummy was.

‘Mummy’s dead,’ she had said. ‘But Aunty Jean’s watching me on her trolley.’ And she pointed to the path, where her aunt cut a large blob of a figure, easily detectable even from half a mile away.

‘You taking the mick?’ one of the old bags said, to which Peg had shaken her head and pointed again at Jean, who raised a hand to wave.

‘Poor mite,’ the other bag had said.

How right the interfering old bag had been. Peg saw it now. She had, indeed, been a poor mite.

She hunkered down into her parka as the wind whistled in her ears and sinuses, freezing her brain. Gulls dropped shellfish all around her, swooping then picking them up, then smashing them down again. Some just missed her head.

‘Dangerous game,’ Peg said out loud to the birds.

She crunched out to the very far point and looked at the mudbank beyond the tip, unreachable now because the tide had started its obliterating journey back to shore. The lowest tides were called Proxigean Spring Tides and they only happened once every eighteen months or so, when the moon was really close to the earth. She had looked it up in Frank’s
Pears Cyclopaedia
once when she had managed to get out to the other side of the mudbank. But there was no chance of that this morning.

As she stood and stared out at the empty waterscape, the plan she had started to form in the hospital flowed into focus. The situation was as clear and stripped-back as the line of sea meeting sky in front of her:

Doll needed help.

She deserved the best.

That meant money.

Exhilarated by the simplicity of this, she stood where she was until the incoming tide lapped at the soles of her DMs. Then she turned, and with purposeful step began the long walk back to land. The briefly exposed sea floor, unable to dry in the cold air, glistened frostily in the pink light of the sun as it crept above the horizon.

On her way back, she breathed in the muddy, ozone-heavy air and exhaled it in warm clouds. The sky was clear. If it hadn’t been for the biting cold, the twinkling lights of Tankerton in the distance could have been the Spanish coast, viewed from a plane.

Back on the beach, she turned to watch the waves slide in, each one covering a little more of the ground, closing it up for its next showing twelve hours later. Then she moved on, following the litter-strewn tarmac path up the grassy Tankerton Slopes. From the number of vodka bottles and cigarette ends, some sort of party had been going on. Avoiding a used condom splatted in the middle of the path, she wondered what had happened to the place she associated, rightly or wrongly, but very, very strongly, with childhood and innocence. It seemed to have lost its sense of a place of safety.

But perhaps that was just because she knew that, for the first time ever, Doll wasn’t there, waiting for her in the bungalow.

Or perhaps it was what she had found out – and what she was starting to remember . . .

Or perhaps this was just growing up.

Seventeen

It was half-past seven when Peg arrived at the bungalow. Julie’s little Metro was parked in the driveway. Towards the back of the house, Jean’s bedroom light blazed behind closed curtains. Doll’s side was in blackness, with no sign of life. In the past few years she had become scared of the dark and had taken to keeping the hall lights on. But Julie must have switched them off.

Bracing herself for the olfactory onslaught, Peg let herself in through Doll’s front door. Viewing the place in the light of that social worker Mandy Dawkins’s comments made her realise just how much work had to be done. Apart from a grubby few inches of carpet leading from chair to settee to kitchen to bedroom, very little floor space remained that wasn’t taken up with piles of stuff – carrier bags full of odd, unwashed pop socks, yellowing stacks of old copies of the
Daily Mail
, saved foil wrappers from decades of Christmas boxes of Quality Street, bags stuffed with Commonplace Books that Doll had hauled in from the shed.

Picking her way through the kitchen to the back door, she found the remains of Doll’s lunch from the day before: a thin ham sandwich with just one tiny bite out of it and an un-drunk glass of milk. She had left it on the side, called – perhaps by Jean’s intercom buzzer or possibly just maternal whim – to pop next door with a snack for her daughter.

Peg tipped the leftovers into the bin and emptied and washed the glass and plate, stacking them on the crowded draining board.

Time to start as she meant to go on.

She took the key to Jean’s from its hook by the back door – Julie must have replaced it the night before, or perhaps Doll had forgotten to take it with her – and carefully negotiated the scene-of-the-crime slope down and up again to Jean’s back door. It was horribly icy. Doll should never have been outside, and she, Peg, should have at least made sure the paths and slopes were gritted. What sort of dutiful granddaughter was she?

One that had been lied to, perhaps.

Batting that unhelpful thought away, she unlocked Jean’s back door.

‘Congratulations’.

Cliff Richard sang so loudly in Jean’s bedroom that the floorboards rumbled with the sound. Her aunt liked music in the mornings, especially Cliff.

‘He keeps my pecker up, dear,’ she said once to Peg. ‘And I know they say he’s one of them, but he isn’t. He nearly married Sue Barker, you know. And he was in love with Olivia Newton-John.’

Peg could hear poor Jean complaining loudly as Julie tried to wash and move her. One of the many dangers for someone of Jean’s size was bedsores and chafing in the folds of her flesh, which, if left unattended, could become infected. Peg knew all this from helping Doll.

‘It’s just like it was in the war,’ Doll used to say, as she made Peg take notes on flushing open sores.

‘Ouch,’ Jean cried from the bedroom.

Cliff sang on about wanting the world to know he was as happy as can be.

‘Hello!’ Peg called, hovering behind Jean’s closed door. ‘It’s me, Meggy.’

‘Just a minute!’ Jean gasped, then she gave out a long, low moan.

‘I’ll wait here,’ Peg said, squatting down in the hallway. ‘Call me when you’re done.’

She leaned back against the wall and closed her eyes. The stale smell of cigarettes saturated every surface in Jean’s extension, even overflowing onto the edges of Doll’s side. The resulting airlessness, the cloying, top-of-thermostat central heating and the wheezing and panting of Jean’s anti-bedsore air-bed – like the sound of some ancient iron lung – almost lulled Peg to sleep after her night of hospital wakefulness. But her new clarity about what she needed to do kept her sharp enough to hold her eyes open.

‘All done!’ Julie said brightly as she burst out of Jean’s bedroom, a bulging plastic bag marked Clinical Waste under her arm. She was rubbing a white cream into her hands, which Peg noticed were sore and chapped. ‘How’s poor Mrs Thwaites?’

‘Comfortable as she can be. They got her a bed eventually.’

‘Good!’ Julie said loudly. Then, rolling her eyes back towards the bedroom she added, under her breath, ‘We’re not in our best mood this morning.’

‘Thanks for the warning.’

Julie went through into the kitchenette and Peg clasped her hands together and closed her eyes briefly to steel herself for Jean.

‘I can’t believe it,’ Jean said loudly blowing her nose on yet another tissue. ‘Poor Mummy.’

Cliff had been replaced by the
Jeremy Kyle Show
on the TV. Two women were screaming bleeped-out insults at each other and grabbing each other’s hair.

‘She’s fine, Aunty Jean. I can’t tell you how comfy she looked. And it might even be a good thing in the long run. It’ll force her to understand that she can’t go on all alone any more.

‘But she’s got you, though, Meggy.’

‘I’m not enough. Not any more.’

Jean reached for her cigarettes and lit up. As she inhaled and exhaled, Lexy the cat jumped up onto the bed and burrowed his bloated, fluffy body underneath the folds of one of her breasts.

‘She’s a right bitch that one,’ Jean said, nodding at the TV, which showed a snarling close-up of one of the women. ‘She had a baby by her sister’s husband and she never told her it was his. Pass us the ashtray, there’s a dear.’

‘I’m going to stay for a few days, sort things out a bit in the bungalow before Nan comes back,’ Peg said, handing Jean the pelican-shaped ashtray that, even so early in the day, overflowed with lipstick-stained cigarette butts.

Jean looked at her through bloodshot eyes. ‘She won’t like that, Meggy. You going through all her things.’

‘Don’t worry; I’m just going to clean and tidy up a bit. It’s got to be done.’

Jean shrugged and looked away, her eyes glazing, fixed on the TV, where, restrained by two burly bouncers, the two women were trying to get at a skinny tattooed man, who was shouting something unintelligible and pointing furiously at the studio audience. He didn’t appear to have any front teeth.

‘It’s got to be done, Aunty Jean,’ Peg said again, trying to draw her aunt’s gaze with her own eyes. ‘The social worker said.’

‘Heartless bastards,’ Jean said.

‘Mandy Dawkins. Said she knew you.’

‘That bitch.’ Jean’s eyes narrowed. ‘I’m not surprised. Made my life a living hell when I had those first girls come here. Told me I wasn’t a good patient. Me! If anyone knows how to be a patient it’s me. Told Mummy off for looking after me, too. I ask you. A mother’s got the right to care for her own daughter, surely?’ Jean scrunched her face up and sighed. ‘I only wish I could pay Mummy back in her hour of need, but look at me. I’m no use to anyone. Can’t you come and look after her, Meggy? After all the sacrifices she made for you?’

Peg shook her head, trying to brush off this attempt at emotional blackmail. ‘I’ve got to work, Aunty Jean. Nan needs proper carers, coming here. It’s how it’s got to be. In the short term at least.’

‘What do you mean, in the short term?’ Jean looked up sharply. ‘You’re not going to put her in a home? You promised.’

‘Of course not,’ Peg said, hurriedly. ‘No. There are other possibilities.’

‘What other possibilities?’

‘Well, I could get the place done up for her and we’ll have full-time carers come and live here for you both.’

‘But the council won’t pay for that, surely? It’ll cost the earth. We haven’t got that sort of money. Anyway, Mummy won’t have it. She hates all that sort of charity.’

‘It won’t be charity. There’ll be no council involved.’ Peg took a deep breath. It was time to lay her beautiful, newly formed plan on the table and get Jean on board. ‘I’m going to get my dad to help us out.’

‘What do you mean?’ Jean said, grinding out her cigarette.

‘He’s got money. Lots of money.’

‘How do you know?’

Peg took a breath. ‘I went and visited him in Spain.’

Jean blanched and put her hand up to her chest. For one second, Peg wondered if she was doing the right thing by telling her, but she had to plough on.

Like one of those films of a slowly developing foetus, Jean’s face took on a look of horror as Peg told her an edited version of her trip to Spain. She left out, for example, the fact that Raymond had called his sister a lazy, fat, bad bitch.

‘You went all the way to Spain and we didn’t know?’ Jean said, at last. ‘That doesn’t sound like you, Meggy, hiding things from us.’

Peg chose to brush this aside. ‘Also,’ she said, the sense of release grasping at her belly like excitement, ‘I know about him being in prison, Aunty Jean. And I’ve found out why he went there.’

‘Oh no,’ Jean said, bringing her nicotine-yellowed hand up in front of her eyes. ‘Oh no.’ Her whole vast body seemed to deflate, as if someone had stuck a pin in it.

‘Why didn’t you or Nan tell me?’ Peg said quietly. She looked away and focused on the collection of model pelicans sitting on Jean’s dressing table.

A commotion from the TV drew her attention. One of the women had launched herself at the man, pushing him to the ground where they grappled, four bouncers trying unsuccessfully to pull them apart. The audience bayed, loudly.

‘Can we turn that off, please?’ Peg said, reaching for the remote on the pillow on the other side of Jean, who still held her hand over her eyes. She pointed it at the TV and they were plunged into a silence punctuated only by the wheeze of the air-bed.

Peg breathed in and out quietly and tried again.

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

Jean sighed heavily and the whole bed rumbled. ‘Why didn’t you tell
us
you was going to Spain? Because you didn’t want to upset us. Same thing our end. We thought it best you didn’t know. It was a dreadful thing he did.’

‘Was it so bad? Whatever you or I think, he was doing what he believed to be best. What Mum wanted. If it happened today, he’d probably not even have got a sentence.’

‘You can think what you like, Meggy.’ Jean shook her head and reached for a big pack of Monster Munch from her bedside table. She pulled out a handful and crammed them into her mouth, crunching them quickly. A few orange crumbs spilled onto her brightly coloured giant smock, one of a set of ten that Doll had sewn for her a couple of years back when off-the-peg became impossible for her, even from specialist mail order outlets.