The Hiding Place (32 page)

Go upstairs now, Dol, and do your puzzle.

To keep me out of my father’s way. It races through my blood, feeling again the soft dusk falling in The Moonlight and Martineau speaking low:
they were afraid
.

They still are.

Celesta begins to fuss with the glasses, moving Rose aside and rinsing them one by one. She places them on the drainer.

Where’s that Louis? she says in an embarrassed voice, He’s a bugger, he is!

Jumbo reaches into his pocket and pulls out his fob-watch, as if looking at it will make his brother come faster. His round eyes blink slowly at the time.

Nearly half-past four, he says, sounding surprised. Celesta takes this as her cue,

We’ll have one drink and then we’ll be off, she warns, Louis or no Louis.

No one argues. Rose reaches over behind Jumbo and pulls the tea-towel free. She twists it inside the glass until it squeals with pain, and, mocking Celesta, holds it up to the
light.

Clean enough for you?

We raise our glasses. Celesta’s lips are already pursed at the rim when I offer a toast. A last try.

To us, I say, To
all
of us – wherever we are.

It doesn’t matter who they think I mean: Fran, or Marina, our father, Salvatore, even Joe Medora. I’m including them all. I’m including me. I’m looking
at my sisters, caught in the kitchen with their glasses raised and ready to drink. They’re all so still, they could be a snapshot from a family album. I could fetch that pen from the Toby Jug
and write the names in the space above their heads. I’m unlocking a door which would let us all pass through. They will surely let me do this. But Celesta won’t: she closes it
again.

To
Mam
, she says firmly.

Aye, laughs Rose with relief, At least we know where
she
is. Thank God.

~  ~  ~

Drinking in the afternoon has never suited me. Perhaps it’s that. Or maybe it’s the thought of Salvatore, sinking in the thick mud of the bay. It’s defiling,
being dragged into the light. The twisting action of Rose’s hand as it turned inside the glass, the tea-towel squeaking round and round and the kitchen bulb shining through it, the closed-in
streets, the gulls rising and falling in the distance; something being unearthed.

I stand in the yard. Sharp points of light, like silverfish, swim before my eyes.

Come on in, Dol, says Luca, It’s wet.

She inches down the steps and leans against the door of the outhouse. I’m catching raindrops on my face. Inside me, something claws to get out.

It’ll be the drink, she says as I heave again, On an empty stomach.

She puts an arm round my shoulder.

Not pregnant, are you? she whispers.

The cage at the end of the garden. Split skin, fur on the tongue.

Not likely, is all I can manage.

Then I can give you something. It’s herbal. It’ll help.

Luca is getting soaked. The raindrops on her scarf are pretty as pearls. She looks towards the end of the garden and the cage, crouching in the long grass. She doesn’t
like it out here.

Do you remember the rabbits? I ask, keeping her. A short, thick-sounding No. Luca used to be a good liar.

You must! There were dozens. He’d buy them as presents—

I don’t remember, she says, turning away, Understand me, Dolores, I don’t remember One Single Thing.

The rain and the cage and Luca standing in the garden, denying everything. The heaving in me comes out as a shout.

Well I do! You and Rose, locking me in there. Shame on you, Luca!

She faces me. In the twilight, her own sickness shines like a jewel. Luca closes her eyes; she’s tired of not remembering.

Dol, we were
letting you out
, she says.

~  ~  ~

Louis leans over the parapet of Devil’s Bridge, his arms spread out on either side for support. From behind, it looks like a scene from the crucifixion. The lock-ups under
The Arlies have been there for as long as Louis can remember, but he’s confused now; he can’t locate the spot. Curtains hang from a few of the arches, and where there are still doors,
new padlocks have been fitted. Louis knows Anto and Denise by name, and most of the others by sight, but he can’t be sure. Seeing Anto’s lock-up, Louis drops down on to the oily mud
below the bridge. He counts the rows of arches until something catches his eye. That’s it – a strip of Christmas lights looped across an entry. The bulbs are different colours, green
and red and smashed and blue and missing and yellow. The cable ends abruptly. It is plugged in to nothing. Louis knows he will be late back, but he doesn’t care. There’s something
important to do. He passes beneath the string of bulbs, lifting a low hoop hanging from a nail. It reminds him of the restaurant and the gaudy rash of fairy lights. It’s a mistake to call it
The Moonlight, he sees that now; there is no glamour in such a thing. He’ll tell Jumbo when he sees him. Louis peers inside. He is looking for a supermarket trolley filled with bags. He hopes
he’s got it right.

~  ~  ~

All is rusted here. The cage has a corrugated sheet for a roof, rivulets of water shiver in the folds. I catch a droplet from the edge and it sits in my palm like a wept star.
There are weeds growing over the square door, ivy embedded in the joints and cracks. When I drag it away, a frenzy of woodlice scatter in all directions. The grille with its crumbling skin of rust.
I half expect to see a rabbit, or a litter of pink-white babies shut-eyed and squirming. All there is, is darkness.

Rain on the tin roof sounds like a shower of stones falling from the sky. You have to be on the inside to know this.

Forgetting time was when I stared at the kitchen window, watching her move across the lit square and willing her to come out and get me. I could see her at the sink. Sometimes
she would be staring into nowhere, her hands pressed over her ears. Or she’d turn on the tap and I could hear the water curling down the drain. It would run forever, like a thirst.

Punishment time was whenever I was caught, sinking against the door that shut off the stairs, listening to them. One time my mother was shouting. Take me with you, I heard her
say, Take me too. She flung the door open and dragged me down, over the last wide step, then the cold graze of the flagstones on my feet and the shivery plank sinking sideways in the mud.
Don’t tell your dad, she was saying in a whisper that stung my head, Don’t tell him. So I knew the man she was begging was not my father.

There was one other time which had no name.

I’m here because I’m safe. A smell of murder in the house, strong as burning. I can see long grass to the left and right, the mud track and the plank leading back down to the yard.
The kitchen door is open and a shadow blocks the light – I won’t catch its eye! Upstairs, Rose and Celesta’s room is all in darkness. The Box Room blazes bright. Lightbulb in the
centre of the ceiling hanging like a pear.

He was coming back down the hill, his hat pulled over his face and the rain cutting around him in sheets. He was too early; he must have lost it all. I was on lookout. I would have warned my
mother, I was on my way – but as I turn the corner of the stairs I see the man. He’s bent across her and her head’s back on the table and her hair is swimming over the cloth, this
way and that, as she turns her face from side to side. The Toby Jug is just behind her, grinning. Her eyes hold mine. She freezes, and the man turns now, looks at me, smiles. His smile is golden.
His hand covers my mother’s mouth and what I fear is blood is just a flash of scarlet on the hand.

There’s a shout from the doorstep. Fran is guarding too, standing out in the night air and doing as she’s told, but now my father has caught her. He’ll catch all of us. We run
like water: me and Fran past my father, his hand clutching the air at our necks, Joe Medora flitting through the living room and away into the street. But not my mother. He gets her, rending the
clothes from her body like the pelt from a rabbit. Now she lies in the box room with the bare bulb hanging over her head.

He stands on the back step, waiting for Fran. If I keep very still in here, he won’t find me.

~

Things surface; the rabbits and the stink of them next to me in the hutch; all bits of streaky skin; my father with his hand inside the body, the split wound like a secret and
the darkness in there, the hot black closed-in smell. The heat.

He would’ve smothered you.

Wanted to saw
me
to bits, Dol, like a magician!

I imagine my mother upstairs on the narrow bed, her body cut in a jagged half. My father standing over her with the handsaw raised above his head, and the blood flowing out of
her like a burst pipe. His shadow on the step is giant with death; he might have murdered her already. I can’t tell from here: blood looks black in the dark.

Fran slides around the yard door. I want to shout, but he’s too quick. He punches her to the ground. She gets up; he screams in her face.

Arms down!

And she will stand it. The belt slices air, curves back invisible, flies again. The cry of Fran as she escapes is a close sound now, squeaking, wet. Something is being
unearthed. In the corner are the squares of newspaper, all clawed up; and the rabbit, turning round and round in a tight circle, her breath going quickly. A tiny bubble pops out from beneath her,
then another, another, like lumps of rain-soaked flint, like rubies in the straw.

The rabbit’s eye is fixed on me. These are her babies. They are new and squirming. I want to laugh. I want to run inside and tell everyone.

Look! Babies! Six new babies!

But they are covered in a purple film. It will choke them. My father, standing in the kitchen window as the water splashes in the drain, easing the evidence from the sharp
tongue of his belt.

He would have smothered you, Dol!

Closed-in heat. Darkness underneath. The weight of him.

I take each of the young in my lap and slip the membrane from their heads. I will not let them choke. It takes a long time. I have to use what I can – straw, paper, hand, mouth.

The rabbit had eaten them by morning. All that was left, I showed my mother. I tried to tell her then.

I’ve told you before, not to interfere, she said, But you had to, didn’t you? You had to interfere.

~  ~  ~

I’m kneeling with Luca in the long grass. I don’t know how long she’s been with me. She’s holding my hair back from my face, and her mouth is pressed
close to my ear; she’s whispering words. There. It’s gone, It’s all gone. Dusk fell when we weren’t looking. It’s a navy light that finds us now.

Bad dreams, Dol, she says, That’s all they are. We all get them.

With her arms wrapped tight around me, we walk the plank, unsteady as a pair of drunks. I stop at the back door. I can’t face the others yet. Luca’s scarf has
slipped down like a caul around her neck. Her head is bald. She sees me looking.

It’ll grow back, she says, smiling faintly.

I used to think my hand would grow back too. I’d watch for signs. At night, I’d will the fingers to sprout, eating up the vacant space like a bloom captured on a
time-lapse camera. So I know what will and won’t grow back, and I know now when Luca is lying.

~

Rose sits on her own in the kitchen. The window behind her is mirror black. Me and Luca are a soaked and shivering reflection.

They’ve gone, Rose says, raising her whisky in salute, Celesta said to say goodbye.

She takes a sip and makes a loud sucking noise through her teeth. Tips the bottle towards us.

Tell Luca she must pop in before she leaves, says Rose, mimicking Celesta’s clipped tone, That’s what she said, honest!

Rose places her hand over her heart, feigns a hurt look – No message for you though, Dol. Or me. Or Parsnip.

Luca smiles. She pulls the scarf from her neck, expertly coiling it round her hand where it thickens like a bandage. Her lipstick is blurred across her mouth.

Shall we drink to the old bitch? she says.

Rose pushes two empty glasses towards us and pours an inch of whisky into each one.

Thought we already had, she cracks, raising her glass, But if I can do it for one, I can do it for two!

And this time I drink with them, and it feels warm, the whisky and the moment and being on the inside.

Feeling alright now? Better out than in, says Rose.

I don’t trust my voice so I have to nod at her. Luca finishes her drink in one gulp. She wraps the scarf tight again around her head, meticulous, covering the exposed
skin. Takes a tissue out of her bag and drags it across her mouth, then reapplies her lipstick with a practised sweep of the hand. She doesn’t use a mirror. She looks expectantly at Rose.

Are you ready then?

They’re leaving too. Rose will go back to Terence and Luca will go back to Vancouver.

Don’t be a stranger, Luca says, and we all laugh. We know what we will be.

the list

I’ve got my holdall, a worn wooden dice, and a rosary. I’m taking the chest too. It was a bed of sorts, when I was little. It has survived a fire. There’s the
picture of the whole of me with an angry Luca by my side, scowling from under her firestorm hair, and the one of us all sitting on the long couch, Fran with her arm round my shoulder and her mouth
open about to say something. There’s nothing of Marina I can take. There is no sign of who she was, not even a photograph. But you can’t miss what you’ve never had: it’s
only ghost pain.

~

I walked up the road between my two sisters, Rose’s dog lunging ahead of us, Luca’s smart case wheeling behind. We didn’t say much. At the corner where the
Evanses’ shop used to be, we phoned for a cab. No one passed us; no one else on the street.

You’ll be alright, Dol? asked Luca, You could come with us to the station.

I told her I needed to put things in order. I would get a late train.

Do you think they’ll take Parsnip? asked Rose, I might have to walk into town.

But when the driver came he smiled and put his hand on the dog’s head.

It’ll be a squash, he said, Don’t let him on the seat now. This time he was wearing a cowboy hat. He tipped his brim at me.