Prized Possessions (9 page)

‘And how are you tonight, Mother?' Lizzie said.

‘Terrible, just terrible.'

Lizzie removed her coat, unpinned her scarf and hung them on the solitary hook behind the kitchen door.

‘Is that a fact?' Lizzie said.

‘It is, it is – a sad fact, but a true one,' said Gran McKerlie who, though she'd never heard of Socrates let alone Zeno, had grasped the principles of Stoicism by brute instinct. ‘It's been a terrible day, terrible.'

‘Is it your legs,' said Lizzie, washing her hands at the sink by the window, ‘or is it your you-know-what again?'

‘It's my you-know-what.'

‘Since it rained she's had a lot of trouble with her you-know-what,' Janet explained.

Lizzie raised her head and stared – puzzled – into the window glass.

To the best of her recollection there had been no rain to speak of for the past ten days, an occurrence so rare in the west of Scotland in November that even the
Glasgow Herald
had been moved to remark upon it. But then her mother didn't read the
Glasgow Herald,
or the
Bulletin,
or the
Evening Times
or anything, not even the disingenuous little booklets about true love and matrimony that Janet sneaked in from the shop from time to time.

All day long her mother did nothing but ruminate in the broad, wooden-armed chair by the fire that Janet lighted first thing or, if the sun shone, by the sink at the window.

Lizzie could not have endured such inactivity and couldn't enter her mother's head and share the scant thoughts that occupied the old woman hour after empty hour, day after empty day.

There had never been much there to begin with, Lizzie suspected, but after twenty years of widowhood, crippled by peevishness and illness, there was nothing left to muse upon and nothing, of course, to plan for except another day, another year exactly the same as all those that had gone before. Her mother's mind now was as spartan as the kitchen.

The kitchen was furnished with three wooden chairs, a small table, a bed, a stove, a sink, a few pieces of crockery and a cupboard in which clothes were kept. There were four solitary ornaments upon the high mantelshelf above the range: a moon-faced clock, a pair of tiny boots fashioned out of polished brass, an empty letter rack and a pewter pot with two charred clay pipes in it – her father's pipes, the only mementoes of the time they'd shared with him.

No tinted photographs, no sentimental cards, no corks or ribbons or flowers, not even – as Babs had once remarked – the pickled egg that Grandpa had been about to bite into when the reaper cut him down.

Lizzie could no longer engage with her mother.

There was nothing left to engage
with,
nothing save a self that revelled in suffering and, Lizzie supposed, constantly pondered the mysteries of its own, quite bearable existence.

She dried her hands briskly, folded the towel and draped it on the wooden rack by the side of the sink. She was always tidy in Mam's kitchen, excessively tidy, otherwise Janet would berate her with pernickety little gestures and patient little sighs that screamed disapproval of her, Lizzie's, sluttish ways.

‘Have you been takin' the bottle the doctor gave you?' Lizzie asked.

‘No use,' Gran said.

‘No use,' said Janet.

‘Bound me up.'

‘Bound her up.'

‘Did you tell him that?' said Lizzie, rolling up her sleeves.

‘He's not interested.'

‘Not in the slightest interested,' said Janet.

‘Takes his money. Does me no good,' Gran said.

‘Doesn't know what it is to suffer,' said Janet.

‘Be old himself some day,' Gran said.

‘Then he'll know all about it,' said Janet.

Lizzie advanced upon her mother. Without apprehension, the old woman watched her daughter's approach. Inactivity had laid great slabs of fat upon Helen McKerlie, ballooning out her face and swelling her hands and feet, so that whatever minor disorder had once affected her had blown up into genuine ill-health. Her flesh was tender and bruised easily. Her joints were locked, her organs swollen and sore.

None of this did Lizzie doubt or mock. She knew that her mother was an invalid but, like the town in which she lived, like the Scottish nation itself, Lizzie reckoned that the woman had brought the condition upon herself by indolent self-pity and a sense of persecution that had no basis in fact.

‘I'll lift,' said Lizzie, patiently, ‘an' you take off her clothes.'

The ritual was as familiar as breathing. Janet did not even need to nod.

‘Ready?' Lizzie asked.

Gran answered, ‘Aye.'

She grimaced as Lizzie slid her arms under her armpits and – face to face, cheek against cheek – with a powerful heave detached her from the wafer-thin cushions upon which she had been seated since Janet had got her up that morning. Gran came away reluctantly, like something large and recalcitrant – a mule, say – being dragged out of mud.

Though she was used to the stinks and stenches of the laundry, Lizzie pressed her tongue to the roof of her mouth to shut out the smell that rose from her mother's chair, an odour of decay, of unpardonable neglect which, if it had not been self-inflicted, would have been quite shocking and quite heart-breaking.

‘Okay?' Lizzie asked.

‘If he hadn't of bound me with his new medicine, I'd be all right.'

‘He's a good doctor, but,' said Janet, as she worked on ties and buttons behind her mother's back. ‘It's just his manner. He only charges ten shillin's if we let him come in the daytime. He's a good doctor, Mam, say what you like.'

‘He's got me bound.'

‘I thought,' Lizzie grunted, ‘it was your bladder, not your bowels.'

‘It's everythin',' the old woman answered.

‘Everything, aye,' said Janet and, with a motion so swift that it might have been part of a conjuring trick, peeled off her mother's skirt, underskirt and big, back-tying drawers and swept them away, leaving the old woman clad only in a lambswool bodice, wrinkled lisle stockings and a pair of flannel shoes.

‘Mam,' said Lizzie, ‘lift your arms.'

‘Oooooh!'

‘Please. Try an' lift your arms.'

Janet approached. She held out a baking bowl filled with warm soapy water and a big perforated sponge, while Lizzie, one-handed, wrestled to remove her mother's winter vest.

The garments were clean, for Janet would not allow them to be otherwise, but the veined and bloated flesh beneath was not, or did not seem so. Though she had seen it so often before, Lizzie tried to look elsewhere.

At this moment she was grateful to her sister Janet; she couldn't possibly have borne the sight of that body two or three times a day or, worst of all, to have slept with it, smelling it, feeling it against her flesh, its odours and essences, the contamination of age, seeping into her day after day, night after night. Now, with her fortieth year in sight, it was all Lizzie could do not to fling her mother from her and bolt from the stagnation that Gran and Janet represented, that effortless poverty of mind and body that once the girls were gone might grip and draw her down too.

She had to do something about it soon, very soon. She had to find five hundred pounds for a husband, any sort of a husband who would take her far away from this and give her, if not love, protection.

Mr Bernard Peabody? Perhaps.

‘Mother, lift your arms again –
will you, please?
'

Lizzie felt the whorls and rolls of her mother's flesh stiffen against her palms, not with pain or indignation but in the unimpeachable knowledge that her daughter's indifference had been whittled away and that she, old and crippled though she might be, had gained the upper hand at last.

‘Sorry,' Lizzie said. ‘Sorry. I shouldn't have snapped at you. I'm tired, that's all. I've had a long day of it.'

‘Haven't I?' said Gran McKerlie.

‘Hasn't she?' said Janet. ‘Haven't we all?'

‘Your turn will come,' Gran prophesied.

‘Your turn will come, Lizzie,' Janet added.

Staring bleakly over her mother's shoulder, Lizzie thought: Not if I can help it. Not if I can just lay hands on five hundred pounds and a husband to go with them.

‘Janet,' she said.

‘What?'

‘Sponge.'

*   *   *

Bernard peered at the spot on the table where as a rule he placed his rent books.

‘What's all this then, Mrs Conway?' he said.

‘A bite to eat,' Lizzie said. ‘Ham, egg, sausage. I'm sure you'll manage a mouthful before you scamper away. Haven't had your tea yet, have you?'

‘As a matter of fact…'

Bernard checked himself. He recognised a bribe when he saw one. But this sort of bribe was hard to resist. In fact he might be doing Lizzie Conway an injustice. It might not be a bribe at all. It might be hospitality, good old Scottish hospitality which it would be churlish to refuse.

He swithered, wondering if she had spotted his weakness, if he was that transparent. He caught the aroma that drifted up from the plate. The eggs were fresh, sunny side up, the ham crisp, and the sausage had a plump bursting sheen to it that suggested it came from a tray in one of the better butcher's shops.

Saliva gathered in the corners of Bernard's mouth. He swallowed, hastily.

‘No, I – I'd better not stop.'

‘Nonsense,' said Lizzie Conway. ‘Miserable night like this, a man needs something hot to keep him going. Give me your coat. Come on, Mr Peabody, give me your coat. You're drookit.'

Drookit he was indeed, drenched by the rain that had brought the dry spell to an end. Although he had splurged on a tramcar fare instead of walking across the bridge from Shannon, Peters & Dean's, he'd hoofed it from Eglinton Street and his feet were wet, his shoulders damp and his bowler felt as if it were floating on his hair.

He took off the bowler, held it by his side, let it drip discreetly.

Stooping, Lizzie detached the hat from his chilled fingers and placed it on the metal shelf above the range where, not surprisingly, it immediately began to steam like a small black pudding.

Bernard was sunk, and knew it.

He gave her his scarf and overcoat, accepted a towel and rubbed his face, hair and hands with it. He folded the towel meticulously and placed it across the little wooden rack.

‘Fried tomato?' Lizzie said.

‘If – if there's one going.'

‘Toast?'

‘Please.'

He felt as if he were embroiled in one of those pleasant dreams that you have on a Sunday morning when you're having a long lie in or, more often, when you drift off in an armchair in front of the fire after a hard day. It wasn't just the fry-up that he found impossible to resist but also the kitchen's comfortable atmosphere and, yes, the woman's companionship.

He was too wet, too chilled to be nervous tonight and it wasn't until he had taken his third or fourth mouthful that it occurred to him why that might be. He blinked, glanced round the room, then asked, ‘Where are the girls?'

‘Out somewhere,' said Lizzie.

She had served him, had even put slices of buttered toast into a nice wire rack, had poured his tea. Now she was seated at the table with him, her back to the rain-splattered window, a cup held in both hands as if she were about to read his fortune in the leaves.

She had shed her apron and wore a striped cotton blouse with a woolly jumper over it, a wide black skirt. She looked, he thought, like an expanded version of his mother who, though tiny, emanated the same sort of
joie-de-vivre.
His mother, though, was less passive, less comfortable to be with, and far too nippy for a sixty-five-year-old widow.

Mouth full of sausage and egg, Bernard studied Lizzie Conway with a shade more intensity than was strictly prudent. No, he decided, she wasn't really like his old mum after all. It was just something in the eyes, a sort of tenderness, that had given him a false impression.

‘All of them?' he said.

‘Aye.'

Bernard didn't know whether to be disappointed or relieved that he would not be treated to a leg show from Babs. Relieved, probably. He wondered vaguely if the Conways talked about him after he left and if so what they said.

He chewed, swallowed, helped himself to toast.

‘I don't think I've met all your daughters?' he said.

‘No, not yet,' said Lizzie.

‘Three, isn't it?'

‘Aye. Three.' She paused, reading the tea leaves. ‘What about yourself, Mr Peabody, have you got sisters?'

‘'Fraid not,' Bernard said. ‘I lost both my brothers in the war.'

‘Both!' said Lizzie. ‘God, that's awful.'

‘Not much fun,' Bernard admitted. ‘One was drowned when the
Hampshire
went down. Kitchener was on that ship – not that it did our Charlie a lot of good. Mines don't have much respect for anybody's reputation.'

‘My father's name was Charlie,' Lizzie put in, then, lowering her eyes, said, ‘What about the other one, your other brother?'

‘Nothing special,' Bernard said with a matter-of-fact lift of the left shoulder. ‘The Somme.'

‘An' you?'

‘Nothing special,' said Bernard again.

‘Heroes,' Lizzie said. ‘Heroes all.'

‘Did your husband…?'

Lizzie nodded. ‘March 1918. Near Baupaume.'

‘Who was he with, what outfit?'

She raised herself a little, put down her cup, spread her skirt under her thighs, not meeting his eye.

Bernard had encountered far too much grief and embarrassment in the past dozen years not to recognise a warning signal. He was not in the least surprised when she changed the subject abruptly.

‘Is it true you live in Knightswood?' Lizzie asked.