The Hiding Place (3 page)

There are treasures here, stashed along the edge of The Square where scrub grass ends and gravel begins. Fran studies the ground minutely, her boots marking a careful path between the dog-shit,
broken bottles, coils of rusted wire, fluttering chip-papers. The asphalt shimmers with shards of glass; green, blood-brown, clear as ice. She collects the best shapes and places them carefully in
the pocket of her gymslip. Today, Fran has the matches. She strikes one and holds it to her face. A rush of phosphorous stings her nose. Crouching now, she strikes another. Fran loves this sweet,
burning scent. She licks the sandpaper edge of the matchbox. A tang of spent fire.

Under her bed, Fran keeps a red oblong box. It used to have chocolates in it, and smells like Christmas when she prises off the lid. But now the plastic tray holds all her jewels from the
Square: jagged slips of sapphire; worn lumps of emerald; a single marble with a twisted turquoise eye. To mark my arrival, she has begun a secret collection which she stows in a cigar box my father
has given her. Not glass this time, but an assortment of cigarette stubs she picks up, when no one is looking, from the pavement outside our house. Tipped or untipped, flaky grey, or smooth menthol
white. Some are crushed flat with the weight of a heel, others are perfectly round and lipstick-smeared. Fran holds each butt to her nose before she hides it away.

~

I’m stuck in the house with my mother: at one month old, I’m sickly and I must be kept warm. My mother brings the chest down from the bedroom and puts me in it,
smothers me in layer after layer of mothballed blankets. She drags a bucket of coal from the outhouse to the kitchen, bumping it against her knee until she gets to the hearth, where she pauses for
breath. She bends down, rattles at the grate; it looks like an age since a fire was lit in the kitchen: the ash which should be smooth and fine is clogged with stray hairs, clots of dust. Turning
the strips of newspaper neatly in her hands, she thinks: Joe’s man will call for the rent today, that kindling’s a bit damp, bet the chimney needs sweeping. The chest scrapes across the
tiles as she pulls it, pulls me in it, nearer to the hearth; two long thin scars, like a tram track, will remain to show what she did. My mother puts me at an angle in front of the fire: the sight
of the flames will amuse me.

She turns to the table, hacks at a loaf of bread and sings in her sharp, tense voice,

Don’t you know, Little Fool, you Ne-ver can Win

Use your Men-talitee, Wake up to Re-alitee . . .

~

Upstairs, my father is making music too, whistling through his teeth as he pulls a tie off the rail in the wardrobe, catching sight of himself in the mirror as the wardrobe door
widens. He looks Lucky. Today, Frankie’s choice is a black tie with a thin seam of gold running through it. He sweeps the length between finger and thumb, smooth and cool as water, then ducks
his head, flips the tie around his neck, folds back the stiff white collar of his shirt. He pauses in front of the mirror, pushes the door open to get a better view. It annoys him, this glass;
flecked and tarnished with oily orange patches beneath the surface – even in close-up, he can’t get a clear reflection. Frankie pauses. He hears my mother downstairs, shouting from the
front door.

Celesta! Kids! Dinnertime! My father pulls on the jacket of his suit, casually stretches out his left arm, then his right, turning the exposed cuffs over the sleeves. A pair of gold cufflinks,
embossed with the rising sun, is now the only jewellery he owns. He lifts them from the polished surface of his dressing-table, chinks them in his palm for a second, and then puts them back. He
doesn’t feel
that
lucky. He takes his hat from the bed-post, pads downstairs, avoids my mother’s eyes. She weaves between the children in the kitchen as he makes for the living
room mirror.

I won’t tell you again, wash those hands. Will you see Carlotta today, Frankie? Leave that. Eat your dinner. Frankie? Frankie, mouths my father as he steps up to the glass. Frankie, he
goes, flipping one end of the tie into a smart loop, taking up the slack, adjusting the knot, nice and tight.

Do you hear me? shouts my mother.

He’s going out, says Celesta, straddling kitchen and living room doorway and staring at my father. They share the same black eyes, hard as steel, and a stubborn squareness in their faces.
Celesta holds a plate of sandwiches high in the air, out of reach of Rose and Marina. My father grins at her in the mirror. She grins back, then suddenly retreats into the kitchen as the clamour
rises behind her.

Wash your hands first, Celesta yells, slapping at Rose and Marina as they snatch at the bread. And again, Mam, tell them to wash their hands.

Wash their hands, says my mother automatically. It’s getting very hot in this kitchen, what with the fire and the heat of my mother’s bad mood. She wedges the back door open with a
chair, sending a blurt of wind racing through the house. The flames in the fireplace swoon in the draught. A door slams upstairs.

My mother mixes up a bowl of something grey for Luca, rapidly beating milk into powder. Her fury travels down the spoon and into Luca’s dinner. I am breast-fed: I get rage straight from
the source. My mother’s also angry with herself: she needs Carlotta to visit with one of Salvatore’s parcels; some corned-beef pie maybe, or a bit of roast chicken. Her words are thrown
to anyone who will catch them.

Never thought I’d want to set eyes on her fat face again, she says, thinking of Carlotta as she forces Luca into her high-chair. Celesta laughs, thinks it’s a shocking thing to say
about your kid, even if it’s true.

And where’s Fran? asks my mother, an afterthought.

~

My father moves from the mirror to the sideboard, stops his breath as he pulls open the drawer. His eyes stay on the doorway, watching the shadows on the kitchen wall while his
hand slides over bills and chits and a soft bundle of knitting. All promises forgotten now, Frankie thinks only of the Race. His fingers trip along the stitches, the sharp point of the needle, and
down to the cool metal surface of the Biscuit Tin. Then his hand inside, and the unmistakeable greasy slip of money beneath his touch. Frankie feels the edges of the notes – not much, enough
– catches them up fast and folds them over, straight into his pocket. It takes five seconds. With his tongue hot on his lip, he pushes the drawer back into place, and starts up his whistling
again.

Do you hear me, Frankie? Will you see Carlotta? My mother appears at the doorway with one hand on her hip, waving a spoon in the other.

And where do you think
you’re
going? She has noticed his smart suit. And the hat.

Frank?

An accusation.

Out, he says.

~  ~  ~

There are eighteen cafes on Bute Street, and my father doesn’t own any of them. Not any more; not since me. My parents argue about whose fault it is. She blames him, he
blames me, and I can’t blame anyone yet. But I will. I’ll lay it all at Joe Medora’s door, when I’m ready.

Except Joe Medora has so many doors. He owns nearly everything round here: two boarding-houses on the Terrace, and our home, of course; and four cafes on Bute Street – the latest being The
Moonlight.

My mother has to pass the cafe every day. She’s got herself a job at the bakery next to the timber-yard. It’s a factory more than a bakery, churning out hundreds of thick white
loaves which my mother drags from the ovens with a long metal pallet. She does the nightshift, so whether she’s setting off for work or coming home at dawn, she can’t pass The Moonlight
without noticing that the lights are on and there are people inside. Sometimes, not often, she can smell cooking, and she gets a yearning for one of Salvatore’s almond tarts. She hears music
too, a lonely voice in the early hours; but mostly she hears the jangle of money rolling over and over in Joe Medora’s pocket. She spits a dry curse at the window as she passes.

~

My father takes the same route now, cutting over the street, down the alley, and across The Square. Fran sees his shape approaching from around the broken fence, his head cocked
to one side in the sunshine, and she hides from him. For a second she wonders if he’s come to march her back home for dinner, but Fran senses that there’s something different about him
today. She sees how his hair catches the light, a slice of pure silver dancing on the black, and the hat in his hand beating lightly against his thigh; she hears his whistle wandering on the air.
It’s like watching a stranger. Fran ducks, crabs along the track of dirt near the railing and hides behind the hedge.

My father doesn’t expect to see her, so he doesn’t: his eyes are fixed straight ahead, conjuring the sleek brown frame of the horse he will gamble on. Just one bet, that’s all.
Court Jester. Two-thirty.

Frankie strolls past the Bute Street cafes, nodding now and again at a familiar face, or raising his hatted hand in a greeting. This is Frankie’s Patch. Most of the restaurants and cafes
are owned and run by his friends: seamen from the Tramp Trade who came to rest and stopped for good. And my father has also stopped, for now, although like most of the other Maltese, he won’t
settle in the city – he can’t escape the salt-scent of the docks. When he talks about his ship coming in, meaning a winning streak, an odds-on favourite, a dead cert, he also feels,
like glitter in his blood, the day when he will take a folded stash of money and simply disappear.

This is not that day. This is the day I am burnt.

~  ~  ~

She was sure. She was absolutely certain. But now the money has gone. My mother wrenches the drawer and it slides too quickly, tumbling from her hands on to the floor, and with
it falls the spilling mess of paper, magazines, a brass bell, a broken picture-frame, the abandoned knitting in baby-blue. She claws on her knees through the bills while the Tin sits wide open
beside her. Perhaps she put it somewhere else. She casts her eyes around the room to the fireplace: two framed photographs, my father’s long black comb with its pointed end jutting over the
tiled lip, and in the centre of the mantelpiece, a glazed chalk fawn with a mocking smile. The dull orange Rent book nestles behind it, thin and empty.

Celesta! she calls, wildly scanning the floor, Have you been in this sideboard?

Celesta stands over my mother with Luca in her arms and a look of dismay on her face. She drops Luca into the armchair, crouches down on the floor.

No. It’s Him. Again.

As if my mother needs telling. Celesta rises to shunt the empty drawer back in its gaping hole. She gathers the heap of papers from the floor and forces them back.

Use your Men-talitee, my mother sings suddenly, with a bitter laugh. It frightens Celesta, this noise.

What you gonna do, Mam?

My mother doesn’t answer directly. She’s listening for the thud of a fist on the door.

Haven’t a clue, she says, to the ceiling. Not a clue.

Then to Celesta,

Take the kids out for us, Cel. Get them out of the way for a bit.

Celesta leans over to pull Luca’s coat off the chair. She kneels in front of her, pushes one baby hand into the sleeve, pulls the coat around the back, bends Luca’s
arm into the other.

C’mon, she says to Rose and Marina, Let’s go and find Fran.

~

My mother drags the chair from the back door and sits on it. We both stare into the orange fire. She contemplates the sink, the square table strewn with crusts of bread, the gas
cooker with its beckoning oven: she could put her head in there. Instead, she bends, puts her hands between her knees. There’s an ache in her leg where the falling drawer had caught her. She
stares down at her calf and the rising blue in her flesh.

~  ~  ~

Frankie passes Domino’s Resto, then Tony’s Top Cafe, then the Seamen’s Mission. He passes the barber’s shop with its striped red awning rippling in the
breeze. Next to it is The Moonlight, its new neon sign at a right-angle to the wall. It smells of fresh paint here, and sure enough, on the red door there’s now a glossy silhouette of a woman
in a tight dress and stiletto heels. Frankie doesn’t falter, doesn’t turn his face to the window: he looks straight ahead towards the black square of shadow like an oil-spill under Bute
Street Bridge. Just got time for a soda before meeting Len the Bookie.

~  ~  ~

My sisters go searching for Fran. The sun has gone, whipped away by the sharp wind, and in its place, a bolt of cloud. It scuds over the top of the wall at the end of the
street, smearing the last of the blue sky with a hard metallic grey. Rose cradles two of Celesta’s tennis balls in the crook of her elbow, dawdles behind the train of pram, Celesta, Marina.
She pauses at the corner, watches her sisters cut sideways down the alley, waits, then turns to the wall next to Number 9.

Rose throws hard, first one ball, then the other: she catches the first but not the second, which angles off the brick, rebounds against the door of Number 4, and finally deflects with a clud
off the window of Number 1. Home of the Jacksons. It rolls in silence along the pavement and drops into the gutter. Rose stands waiting with her fist wrapped around the other ball and her legs set
to run. She runs.

~  ~  ~

Len the Bookie sits in the cafe with his back to the window: he needn’t bother, no one can see in since the glass got smashed six months ago. The proprietor has mended it
with a rough square of hardboard. He’s written a notice on the side which faces the street:

Len’s refreshment, depending on who asks, is a lemonade soda. Mikey has tipped in a thimbleful of something which is supposed to be whisky. The tall beaker sits on the
table in front of him, pale yellow, lethal, a tart froth breaking slowly on the surface. Len leans slightly to one side now to avoid the wind pushing in around the shifting board at the window. He
hears a sudden burst of rain, like horses’ hooves, sputter at his back. He reaches inside his pocket for his notebook.