She stirred sugar into her coffee, lit a cigarette. She examined her hands. Red and chafed from the work, her nail polish chipped. She laid her cigarette in the ashtray and reached for the Nulon bottle. She poured a pool into her hands. Rubbed it in. The music changed. Don’t know why, there’s no sun up in the sky, stormy weather . . . Beautiful voice, Billie Holliday – sang like an angel and died penniless.
She picked up the cigarette, took a puff, felt the familiar melancholy ripple through her. Funny, she thought, all the torch songs that she adored, they never made her think of Robert or any old boyfriends or even film-stars. No, it was Nina. Nina who broke her heart. Nina who was her great unrequited love.
Megan
‘We’d have to get a loan.’
‘Who’d give us a loan?’
Brendan shrugged. ‘They seem to be throwing it at people.’
‘But we’ve no assets. This place is rented.’ She saw uncertainty replace the eager expression that he’d had when he had told her about his uncle’s carpet shop. She didn’t want to spoil it for him but the prospect of further debts made her feel physically sick. ‘You might be able to get one of those schemes,’ she said, ‘job creation or whatever they call it. Has Ronnie been making a profit?’
‘Oh, aye. The trick is to get in while the stock’s still there and the reputation. Any gap and we'll lose custom.’
‘And he’s sure he wants to sell up?’
‘Definite. Belle would cuff him to the bed rather than let him work again. He knows his number’s up. The doctor made it plain too. Nice and easy, no strain. They’ll put him in for a by-pass.’
‘You’re sure about this, doing this?’
He nodded. ‘It’s not just selling the shop, there’s fitting and all, they do the lot.’
‘We’d need to talk to Ronnie. And the bank, we couldn’t do it without a loan, could we?’
He shook his head. ‘But Ronnie might accept half now and half over the next year. He knows how tight things are. I’d need to find someone to do the paperwork, the accounts, all that side of things.’
‘Who did it before?’
‘Ronnie.’
‘Can’t be that hard.’
‘You know me and forms.’
‘And figures!’ She raised her eyebrows. ‘I could have a go. If Ronnie showed me the ropes.’
He smiled quickly.
‘Ring him now,’ she said. ‘See if it’s all right for us to call round for a chat.’
‘You don’t want a bit longer to think about it?’
‘No,’ she said, ‘we’re not committing ourselves to owt, just going to see him.’
Besides, she thought to herself, if they didn’t go straight away then she’d get panicky about the whole thing and come up with a million worries about it.
‘Strike while the iron’s hot,’ she said. She looked in the mirror, pulled the elasticated band from her hair and shook out her curls. It needed a trim. Looked like a haystack, one on fire.
And what was the alternative to taking on the carpet business? Another twenty years getting poorer by the week, slogging her guts out and still having to watch the furniture fall apart and the cooker pack up and Brendan get more and more morose?
He slid his arms round her waist.
‘You always were a fast worker.’
‘I never heard you complaining.’ She pushed his hands away. ‘Go on, try him now.’
She watched him dial.
‘Won’t even have to change the sign, will we? Conroy’s Carpets.’
Nina
Nina was sick of school, sick of her stupid, boring, useless parents and sick of being fifteen. She wanted to be nineteen. Able to do whatever she wanted. Get married or go round the world or have a brilliant job and loads of money but not be so old that she was just a boring old square with nothing worth living for. God, she thought, I hope I die before I’m thirty. Be dead famous, then die. Paint brilliant pictures or be a fashion designer and dress the stars.
She looked again at her revision plan, gazed back out of the window, where Dad was putting the new rotary washing line up for Mum. Event of the year. How exciting. Tears pricked her eyes at the bloody awful boredom of it all. She needed a ciggie. There were two in her secret bag in her wardrobe but she knew for a fact that Dad had a packet of ten Benson and Hedges in his coat. He only smoked five or six a day and now and then she would help herself to one if the packet was more than half full. He didn't keep count.
If she did another half-hour then he’d be settled in the lounge and she could take the dog out.
The dog’s the best person in this family, she thought, then giggled at the notion. Causes of the First World War. As You Like It. Alluvial Plains. She let her eyes wander over the headings and the blocks of time she’d allocated. What was the point? She didn’t want to stay on at school a minute longer than was absolutely necessary. She wanted to get out, out of this house, away from this family, far away from this dump of a city.
She caught sight of her brother. Oh, brilliant. Now Stephen’s helping too. Perfect Stephen. Expected to do so-o-o-o well in his A levels. University material. Not like his sister. She was a cuckoo. She didn’t belong here with this lot, rotting in the suburbs. She felt permanently scratchy as though someone had supplied her with prickles instead of pores. There was this big myth that redheads had bad tempers and she did but it wasn’t just a temper like losing it every so often it was like the steam was always building up and when she shouted or flew off the handle it was only a relief for a short while and then she was feeling cross all over again.
Stephen, O perfect one, brains and good looks, he wasn’t ever mean to her no matter what she said. And she said some awful things. He never tried to get her into trouble. A blooming saint. That made it worse. Anatomy of The Earthworm. Respiration. Electromagnetism. Why couldn’t she just have done GCEs?
Now the rotary dryer was fully erected and her mother was smiling like an idiot and Nina loathed how happy they were. They ought to get the priest to come and bless the damn thing. She ripped her plan in half. Began to draw pictures on the back, eyes and teardrops, shadowy people. Like an LP cover. She drew a sea of question marks and in the middle like it was floating she drew ‘Nina’ in bubble writing.
Maybe her real mother was scratchy too. Maybe that’s where she got it from. If she found her at least she’d know whether it was in her blood. She scribbled out her name and turned the question marks into keyholes. Nina has artistic flair, a good eye, strong technique, and applies herself diligently. Best part of her report. For art. As low in the scheme of things as cookery, which she was rubbish at, and woodwork, which might have been good but most of the class were boys and they just messed about.
What could you do with art? Be an artist and starve? She liked it but she couldn’t see it going anywhere. Be cool to do album covers or posters, like for films and stuff, but how did you do that? They never had those sort of vacancies in the paper. You’d probably have to go to art school, and for that you had to stay on and do A levels and there was no way she was staying on.
She was dying for a fag.
She listened and worked out that Mum and Dad were in the lounge. Stephen wherever.
She went down and poked her head round the lounge door. Dad reading, Mum watching Upstairs Downstairs.
‘I’ll take Joey out.’
They grunted.
She went to the small shelf by the front door, where Dad left his keys and loose change and cigarettes. Five left. Do-able. She took one and got her Zippo from her schoolbag. She whistled for Joey and attached his lead.
Once they’d reached the banks of the river she let him off to mooch about a bit while she sat on a bench and smoked. The river was ugly, steep-sided banks shaped in stiff angular lines. Something to do with flood control. The river a grey-brown sludge between the towering banks, the banks covered in rough grass and clods of earth. Nothing like the rivers in stories. The rivers you imagined when you said the word river. A real river would have shallow banks, clear, burbling water; you could see the pebbles and the shadows of the fish. There would be stepping stones draped in moss and willow trees overhanging the edges, maybe a stretch of waterfalls making the water silver as it tumbled down.
She took a deep drag, held it and blew out.
This river went all the way to the sea. Somewhere near Liverpool. The Mersey. ‘Ferry Cross The Mersey’. Good song, they’d re-released it. Bit sad but she liked that. Sad things were more . . . real . . . they meant more. Like Chloe, her best friend, cut-throat Chloe they nicknamed her because she was so down and talked about killing herself and how pointless everything was. Her loony way of looking at things meant she knew exactly what Nina was on about when she talked about being a cuckoo and her dumb, happy family and all that.
She whistled for Joey. The dog returned, delighted to be summoned, his tail beating, ears perked up. He licked her knee. She rubbed his head. She finished her cigarette and flicked the tab into the river. It could go all the way to the ocean.
She walked home quickly. The light was starting to fade and she was ready to go to bed. Not much revision accomplished but another day done. Another day closer to freedom. Another step nearer to the journey she was intent on making.
She had only asked once, that she could remember, when she was nine. She had learnt somehow that her adoption and Stephen’s were not talked about. Close family knew, like Auntie Min and both the grannies and Dad’s brother John. Other people must have known surely. Mum turning up to Church with a babe in arms, no former sign of pregnancy? Presumably people just took their cue from the Underwood’s reticence. So she had learnt, not that it was shameful, but that it was private. Nobody else’s business. Not quite a secret but as good as.
She’d been driven to ask after having a nightmare. So bad it had sent her to Marjorie’s room. That was unusual, for she was a child who resented rather than sought out physical affection. She had always wriggled out of Marjorie’s embrace, preferring to be unfettered. In the dream she had chopped Marjorie’s head off. Robert had shouted at her and then she had pointed to her mother and said no harm was done. Her mother’s head was back on but the face was that of a stranger.
She had reared up gasping and switched the light on. It was autumn and a moth batted against the shade, which gave her another shock, making her heart race and her breath hurt. With shadows biting at her heels she went to her parent’s room. She let her mother hug her and delayed her return to bed by asking for a glass of milk. Her mother tucked her back in and kissed her on the forehead. She put the landing light on and left Nina’s lamp off so the moth would leave her room.
The following day she waited until she could be sure no one would interrupt them and then asked her mother, ‘When you adopted me did you meet my mother that had me?’
Marjorie froze, blinked fast, put the iron down and let her hands rest lightly on the edge of the board. Nina watched her.
‘No.’
‘What was she called?’
‘I can’t remember, erm . . . Driscoll, I think. Yes.’
‘What was her first name?’
‘I don’t know, Nina. I don’t think they ever told us.’
Her mum looked calm but Nina could tell she was really upset. She was squashing her hands together and her lips were tight. But Nina couldn’t stop.
‘What did she call me?’
‘Claire.’
It was a shock. She hadn’t expected an answer. Claire. Claire Driscoll.
‘Did she have red hair?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why did she have me adopted?’
‘Because she wasn’t married. She wanted you to have a good home, a proper family. And that’s all we know.’ An edge in her voice. Putting an end to it. The lid on it.
Nina had gone out into the back garden, walked up the rockery to her perch by the birdbath. She felt hot and mean for asking all those questions. Horrible, but there was a bit inside burning bright because of the red hair. Red hair like Nina. She didn’t even know her first name. But red hair, ginger. She knew that now. And Nina had been baptised Claire – Claire Driscoll not Nina Underwood.
She had never spoken to her parents about it since. She couldn’t. They couldn’t. So as she planned to find out more she knew it would have to be done in secret. She had learnt that from them. The way of secrets.