Puccini's Ghosts (29 page)

‘The Dashing White Sergeant’ came to a finish with a long, emphatic
harrumph
from the accordions; the dancers sighed, drew breath and clapped and made their way to the water jugs, the straw bales, the tea tables. A few people looked in her direction and turned away. She needed Joe here. Maybe she did look a little odd, hovering alone on the edge of things without him to make it clear, by his admiration, that she was meant to look like this. But Joe was somewhere else. From the back of the shed she became aware of movement, and looked up.

‘Oy! Oy, Lizzie!’

Threading his way towards her from the back of the shed came Uncle George. She beamed at him. He was coming to rescue her. He would know where Joe was. She wasn’t in the wrong place after all.

‘Uncle George! Where’s Joe? Is he here?’

‘Lizzie!’ he bellowed. ‘What the bloody hell are you doing? Just what the bloody hell are you up to?’

She could hear his words but she had no idea why they were being addressed to her. He was accusing her of something, so there must be some kind of mistake. How could she have made him so angry? People in Uncle George’s path melted to the sides and her mother strode along just behind him, dressed perfectly in a red flared skirt.

‘Jesus Christ, Lizzie! Have you no sense? You’ll
ruin
that!’ he thundered. ‘You stupid child! Suppose you tear it? Do you think this whole thing’s a game? Do you think this is about dressing up?’

Lila’s mouth opened and closed. The lights of the shed were striking too brightly off the walls; the shapes of people were losing their edges, moving in a silent, confusing dream. Heat poured through her and burst in a wave of sweat over her skin.

‘Jesus Christ! I’m trying to do something to a
professional standard
here. Don’t you know we’re up against a deadline, most of the costumes aren’t even half-done, and you jeopardise all that work for the sake of
dressing up
?’

Still she could not speak. Though surely she was being misunderstood, she felt like a criminal. Fleur laid a hand on George’s arm. Lila looked at her.
Stop him,
she begged her mother silently.
Explain. Speak for me.

Fleur gently pushed George away and came forward. ‘Just what do you think you look like?’ she said. Her voice was soft and deadly. ‘You’ve got proper clothes, haven’t you? What do you think you’re doing, appearing like that, you silly girl? Honestly! You look like…like a…demented bridesmaid!’

She looked round, bringing the other women into it. Her voice cracked in a short, hard laugh. ‘Honestly, kids! Who’d have them!’

‘Please…’

Uncle George said, ‘No, but honestly, Lizzie, you’ve gone too far, it really won’t do…’

Lila looked round desperately. Mrs Mathieson had handed her plate to Mr Mathieson and was ambling over to the band. She leaned over and spoke to the leader, a man with sleek black hair, and he nodded to the others and off they sailed into a new swirling tune, releasing everyone. Mrs Mathieson caught Lila’s eye with a look of calm goodwill and walked slowly back towards Mr Mathieson. Before he had handed back her plate, Lila had disappeared.

It was now quite dark. Lila ran as hard as she could under the swinging lights in the yard and down the track, not slowing until her short sobbing breaths and the high rasping of the silk as she went were louder in her ears than the grinding of the band. Inside the bright shed it was Ladies’ Choice. As Raymond and George looked on, Fleur swished her skirt around her ankles and took to the floor in a Canadian Barn Dance with Mr McArthur. At the same moment, Enid ran out into the dark from the space between the shed and the barn and fell on her knees, belching up cidery gas and crying with shock at what Billy had got her to do. She tried to gasp out a prayer, her first in weeks, but she knew it was too late for that. The Lord wouldn’t want her now, a tainted Eve cast out from even this improbable Eden, kneeling in a thriving clump of Ayrshire nettles that were stinging her legs all the way up to her thighs.

Behind her, Billy picked up the cider bottle and retreated back to the alley and further into the dark. He sank down against the wall and drained the bottle. He thought he might be sick, later, but now he rammed his hand into his open trousers and with his eyes glassy and teeth clenched, he turned his face towards the moon and concentrated on pumping himself to a hot, raw finish, racing ahead of the throb of the band. Overhead, the sky poured darkness over the sighing sea, the dunes and the scrub grass, the Pow Burn and the banked shapes of Seaview Villas. Across the thistles and abandoned tyres and the patient hulks of Mr McArthur’s cows grouped for the night round the pylon in the field, the beat of the music followed at Lila’s back until she was enveloped in the dark and her sobs lessened. The track, abandoned again under the night, fell silent.

ACT III

The Third Riddle

Ice which gives you fire

And which your fire freezes still more!

Lily-white and dark,

If it allows you your freedom

It makes you a slave.

If it accepts you as a slave

It makes you a King!

TURANDOT.

That night in Peking, no-one sleeps. Turandot’s guards go through the city issuing the royal decree. Under pain of death, whoever knows the stranger’s name must reveal it. When Turandot learns that Liù the slave girl knows it, she is put under torture. Liù, rather than be forced to betray her love, seizes a sword and kills herself.

Her sacrifice moves even the icy Turandot. Calaf places himself in her power, telling her who he is.

As the sun rises, everyone in the city assembles to learn the prince’s fate. Turandot proudly announces that she has discovered his name: it is Love.

The betrothed lovers embrace and the crowd rejoices.

i
’m well down the second tea chest now. Another cutting, another big photograph. Christine would like this:

Burnhead & District Advertiser
Thursday 4th August 1960:

Ceilidh in Support of
BAST ‘Outstanding Success’

Leading lights of the Burnhead Association for Singing
Turandot
pictured (L to R): George Pettifer, conductor and musical director, Fleur Pettifer (‘Turandot’), Raymond Duncan (Stage Manager), Audrey Mathieson (Production Secretary), John Mathieson (Production Manager), Moira Mather (chorus), Sandy Scott (‘Pung’), Veronica Clarke (chorus), Alec Gallagher (‘Timur’ & BAST Press Liaison Manager). Also pictured are Stanley McArthur of Pow Farm and Jackie Shenley, whose band played for the dancing. A substantial sum was raised.

By Staff Reporter Alec Gallagher

The picture shows them in a line, arms linking arms or hooked over shoulders. Looks as if the photographer told the women to show a bit of leg.

Come on now, ladies, big smiles please! Let’s have a bit more of those lovely pins?

Moira Mather and Veronica are making a big effort but my mother does it best. She’s a natural. She’s lifted one knee and made a little quarter turn of the leg inwards to show a fine gleaming shin and the line of a strong thigh under the flared skirt. She has pointed her raised foot like a ballet dancer’s. She’s not a tiny woman by any means, she’s curvaceous, heavy breasted, but she has delicate ankles and she looks like a glossy, high-stepping thoroughbred. In contrast Mrs Mathieson, her arm locked on one side in Mr Mathieson’s and on the other in my father’s, looks homely. She is content to stand with just the back of one foot lifted a little from the floor and she is smiling without showing her teeth. George, on my mother’s other side, is making such a silly pouting mouth to the camera that I wonder, now, who is taking the picture. Mr McArthur and Jackie Shenley the bandleader watch from the side.

It occurs to me that Christine’s gone missing. I haven’t seen her since she brought that doctor here and I’m not sure exactly when that was. I wonder if she likes doughnuts, Christine. I’ve got three left.

When she answers the door she’s in very big pyjamas and she looks a little rumpled and she doesn’t smile. Behind her, her house is very hot and bright. I hear a television. It’s got very pink inside, that house, since old Mr Henderson’s dark green and cream days.

Do you like doughnuts?

The bag is all greasy now and as I proffer it I can see she thinks there’s a catch, or maybe something wrong with me.

Come on in, she says. You’d better come in for a minute. You shouldn’t be up and about on that foot.

I follow her down the hall. Washing drapes the radiators like bunting; lines of coloured garments are hardening over the heat and the air is sticky with scorching polyester and the tang of washing powder. Steve is lying in an armchair in front of the television, his chin resting on his chest. He seems about to slide to the floor.

It’s nearly eleven o’clock at night, you know, he says without turning from the screen. Time folk were away to their beds.

Steve, don’t you start. Then Christine says to me, Never mind him. You’re all right for a minute, we’re still up.

Is it really that time? I don’t have a watch. I was thinking maybe Paris likes them, I say. Doughnuts, I mean.

Paris isn’t very well, Christine sighs, otherwise I’d have been in to see how you were doing. She shifts a mug and some magazines off a chair. Sit down a wee minute. You’re welcome to stay a minute. Though I’ll not be up that much longer, I’ll be away to my bed.

Steve looks over at her and says, I told you over an hour ago you should be in your bed.

What’s wrong with Paris? I ask. Is she all right? I was thinking she might like a doughnut.

Just a wee cold, says Steve. She’s all right.

It nearly went on her chest, Christine says, frowning at him. It
is
on her chest a wee bit. She’s sleeping now.

Sleeping? Oh, can I see her? I’d love to see her asleep. The words are out of my mouth without warning, before I even know it’s what I want. I say, I won’t disturb her. I promise I won’t make a sound.

Steve says, Jesus, what now? and looks hard at us both. Eh? What next?

Christine says, Well, I was just going up to check on her. You can come up and see her, and then I’ll be going to my bed, okay? You should get to bed yourself, she says, peering at me in her usual worried way, which I no longer object to. I may even have missed it.

We climb the stairs, me with my stick, taking them one at a time, resting now and then on my good foot. As we go the smell of carpets gets stronger. Paris’s room is full of shadows. There are hundreds of tiny luminous moons and stars and planets studded all over the ceiling.

Oh! I whisper. Oh, how pretty! How magical, all those stars! The moons!

Christine frowns. You get them in packets, she says.

Paris is snuffling, curled up on her side like a little human comma. She’s lying under two mobiles suspended over the bed: one is of sheep, the other’s composed of shapes I can’t make out. They hang utterly still. Her puffy feet are turned in like resting flippers and the palm of one hand lies open, her little flakes of fingernails scraping the pillow. In the other hand she is clutching Stripey, or was; her hold has relaxed and Stripey has fallen away from her lips. Her eyelashes are soft, tiny fans placed carefully upon her cheeks, and her mouth is open and damp. At the side of the bed is a glowing green lamp in the shape of a tree. Bathed in its votive light she lies, small and calm on her green shrine. Christine looks at her and her daily fight to be brisk and practical and all together melts out of her. Sedated by love, she smiles and yawns and sags, and the room swells with adoration. As she arranges the covers around the child I can tell she is resisting an urge to lift her up and hold her in her arms until dawn. She touches Paris’s cheek with one finger, smiles and yawns again and pushes me gently from the room.

When we get downstairs Steve is in the kitchen. That you away home, now? he asks. Here, let’s fix up your bandage before you go.

He has kind hands. When he’s done with the bandage he walks me back to number five. I have my stick in one hand and he makes me take his arm and we go slowly.

Well now, he says at the gate. Let’s get you safe in.

Up the path we go in the orange light from across the street, past the broken heap in the garden, the piano and tea chest and papers and all the sodden drapery.

To stop him saying anything about it I tell him, You have a sweet little daughter.

Aye, wee Paris. Just three, time goes that quick, he says. Christine was saying you never had kids yourself, that right?

No, I never took the plunge, I said.

Never married, then?

Too late for that conversation, I can’t open the subject now. We have only a few more feet to go.

Well. I came close once or twice, I say.

Shame, he says.

But not that close, I say. So not a shame.

Aye, doesn’t suit everybody, I suppose.

I think I’m living in the wrong era. I should have been born in another time.

Steve seems nervous at this.

I mean, in a time when a woman being a spinster wasn’t the oddest thing about her. There used to be lots of spinsters. I think it’s odder than it used to be, not getting married. Not having a partner, rather.

Is that right?

On the other hand, these days it’s not getting divorced that’s the real oddity.

Steve laughs gently. So with your dad gone, is that you the end of the line, then? There’s nobody else left but you.

We reach the front step. I have a sudden clear picture of next door’s pink walls and homely smells and the precious child of the house asleep upstairs, and my heart flutters and sinks like a little falling leaf. I catch my breath, thinking of the many and various messes that await me behind this door. They are all of my own making, which doesn’t help.

That’s right. He was the last to go, I tell Steve. I’ve seen them all off now. Goodnight.

To my great surprise and I have to confess, pleasure, Steve kisses me tenderly on the cheek.

Never you mind, he says. Goodnight.