Undertow (12 page)

Mum said I didn’t need to do this.

I’m sitting at the breakfast table bolting down cake and cranberry juice, because that’s all there is, and she’s telling me she’s got a plan. That she’s going to turn Cliff House into a B&B. Do it all up in off-white with driftwood mirrors and proper sheets, the kind that come with a thread count. So I lie and say I need money for art stuff. That I’m saving up, for myself. Mum says it won’t be easy. That it won’t be like rinsing out the bath here. It will be proper work. Hard work. I laugh. Say it will be fine. I’ll be fine.

But it’s not. I’m not. The doors swing open, bringing a hot gush of stale air from the kitchen. Stench of meat and potatoes and root vegetables boiled too long. Of schools and old people. Of Nonna and Nonno. Mum’s parents were lucky, I think. Lucky this isn’t where they ended up. Lucky to be gone. And then I start. Want to pinch myself, throw cold water on me. Because that’s an awful thing to say. Even think. A Cass thing. An Eva thing.

“Oi, Billie.”

I turn and see Debs waiting for me, one Marigold hand on her hip, a bucket in the other.

“Bedrooms. I’ll show you which are yours.”

I shake myself. Like it will clear my head. But all it does is waft another gust of hot stewy air around me. So I say goodbye to a wall of silence, and follow Debs up the clacky tacky lino stairs.

“You do the odds,” she says.

At first I think she means oddballs, like the weirdos or something. And I think, That’s not fair; it’s my first day. Scared I’m going to get some Jack Nicholson nutter or a Miss Havisham in her wedding dress, wondering where her groom has gone for fifty years. But it’s just the numbers. One and Three and Five all the way to Thirteen. Lucky for some.

“Hoover, dust, clean the sink and toilet, make the bed. Unless they’re in it, or have peed in it,” she adds.

I laugh. But it’s not a joke. None of it is.

In Five a woman – I’m guessing ninety though I’ve never seen anyone that old, so who knows, she could have been a hundred – is lying on mauve polyester. Her skin like paper, hanging loosely over protruding bones so thin I can see her veins tracing a blue map beneath. She is a living skeleton, watching me through milky cataract eyes. I lift a mug on her bedside table to dust underneath.
SUPERNAN
it says. But when I put it down again Supernan starts to wail. I panic, back off, thinking I’ve spilt something, hurt her somehow. Because it’s the sound of pain, of wounding. But Debs just comes in and tuts, and slides the mug a centimetre to the left. The wailing stops instantly.

“Fussy old so-and-so,” she says, rolling her eyes. “You’ll get used to it.” And she goes out again, back to the evens.

I finish dusting, not touching anything else, scared that if I nudge an ornament, a photograph, even slightly I’ll set her off, cause her this pain that is so real it makes her scream. Supernan. I wonder who gave her that mug. Where they are now. If they know that this is what she has become.

When I go into the next room I hold my breath, praying that the sheets are dry, the bed empty, its occupant watching TV downstairs. And it is. And made, too, the duvet pulled back into place. I poke my head round the door again, check the number, in case I’ve got it wrong, in case Debs has already been in. But it’s Seven, one of mine. Then I see him. Sitting in a chair next to the window, staring out at the patch of overgrown, rabbit-holed turf they call the garden, and the petrol station beyond it.

“Hello,” I say. Just to let him know I’m here. In case I turn the Hoover on and give him a shock, or worse. Debs said it can happen. Has happened.

He turns and I can see he’s not that old. Seventy or so. Younger maybe; his hair longer than the others; less military, curling over his black shirt collar in salt and pepper tendrils. His trousers are black too. Loose. He doesn’t fit in here, I think. He’s not old. He’s not one of them. But then he speaks to me, and I click.

“You took your time.”

“I… I’m sorry, I’m new.”

“New?” he says. Not getting it. “Where’s your mother? I want to see your mother.”

Christ. He thinks I’m his granddaughter. I don’t know whether to play along or run and hide. In the end I try the truth.

“I’m Billie,” I say. “The cleaner.”

He stares at me blankly. His eyes still dark, not the faded milky blue of Supernan. He can see clearly. But somewhere the picture of me is getting sidetracked, misdirected, and re-emerging from his memory, mixed with another girl, another time.

Then,
click
, he’s here.

“Cleaner.” He nods, like this makes sense now. “Bloody awful job. But someone’s got to do it. I had a job, you know. All mine it was. It’s gone now. It all goes.”

“Right,” I say. Like I understand. Maybe I do. A bit. That in the end, all there is is us, and what’s inside our heads. The rest is ephemera.

He lifts up his legs so I can hoover under the chair, laughing like a child as he does it. But when I flick the switch off and reel in the cord, he’s gone again. Inside. Gone back to staring out at the garage and the gloom.

Later I tell Debs about him. About his granddaughter.

She snorts. “He hasn’t even got one,” she says. “Never married. No kids, no grandkids. Some old girlfriend paid for him to come here, they say. Then left him money in her will. Or he’d be down the council home by now.”

My heart sinks to think there’s a place worse than this. Worse than the cheap seats and the bleakness and the promise of death that hangs over everything, clutching at the curtains, the carpet, like another stale smell.

“Poor old bugger,” Debs adds. “He don’t even know who he is most of the time.”

But I’m not sure. There was a second there when he knew. When he recognized it all. But it was only a second. And that’s not enough, not for anyone.

ELEANOR

ELEANOR HAS
seen him once before. Standing on the front, eyes closed, letting the heat of a June midday beat down on his face and chest. Roger pulled her quickly past him, muttering under his breath, but she looked back, fascinated by this sun-worshipper in his paint-spattered fisherman’s smock and jeans. Roger never wore jeans. They were working men’s clothes. Beatnik clothes. He wore suits, or scrubs, his only concession to a Saturday to remove his tie. But this man; this man doesn’t care what people think. What he looks like. Eleanor envies him
.

When she sees him again, she is sitting in the window of the Grand, drinking Earl Grey and ersatz coffee with Carol Lister. He walks past, a cap on his head, something rolled up under his arm
.

“Who is that?” Eleanor asks
.

Carol looks up, her lips as thin as her waspish waist, as her humour. Eleanor loathes her. Thinks that beneath the veneer of Yves Saint Laurent and Rive Gauche she is cheap, vulgar. But her husband is a colleague of Roger’s. And she does have her uses. An unwavering interest in everyone else’s affairs being one of them
.

“That,” she intones with the surety of knowledge, “is Alexander Shaw. Bought the Blue Gallery three months ago. Used to live in London. Chelsea apparently. Very chi-chi.” She raises her eyebrows at this. Like Chelsea is something to be despised, pitied. Though Eleanor guesses Carol would leave Seaton and the Grand in a New York minute for a seat at anywhere on the King’s Road
.

“Married?” Eleanor asks, affecting disinterest, as if it would be impossible for him to be because he’s so odd. Because Carol would swoop at the first hint of— What? A crush? Not that Eleanor means it that way, she says to herself. She is a married woman. It’s just, he seems so different. So elsewhere
.

“Not,” replies Carol, picking an invisible hair from a macaroon. “Good God, what is this place?” To no one. Then back to Eleanor. “Those artistic types often don’t.”

She spits out
artistic
in the same inverted commas in which she encased
Chelsea.
Like it’s pretentious. Or pretend. Made-up. But he’s not made-up. He’s real. More real than the man she shares a bed with every night. Who pretends that they are happy, pretends he loves her, as she pretends to love him. Or maybe she does. She married him, didn’t she? But it all seemed so inevitable. The dates, the dance, the ring, the reception at the golf club. It will be babies next. Because that’s what you do. People like Carol. And her. But when she sees Alexander Shaw, she wants to step out of her life, wants to stand with the sun on her face and her head back. Wants freedom
.

The next day she walks past the gallery. Every day for a week she stops at the window, pretending to be absorbed by the watercolours and seascapes. “Daubings” Roger calls them. “Amateur. Not worth a penny.”

But Eleanor likes them
.

Then, one afternoon, she forgets to try, and lets herself become transfixed by the turquoise of a seascape. She doesn’t see him get up, walk across the bleached boards, open the door
.

“Hello.”

She yelps, her reverie shaken
.

“Sorry,” he says. “I didn’t mean…”

“No. I was just… Who’s the artist?”

“Do you like them?”

She nods
.

“In that case, I don’t mind telling you. It’s me.”

Her eyes flick to the lower-left corner. There it is:
A. Shaw,
in tiny italics. God, how stupid. “I… I didn’t realize. It’s … beautiful.”

“There’s more inside.”

She shakes her head quickly. “I have to go,” she says
.

“Another time, then.”

“Yes. Another time.”

And there will be. And another. And another
.

BILLIE

I FINISH
at four. Six hours of scrubbing, wiping, vacuuming, dusting. Of stacking dishwashers with gravy-smeared plates and unloading them again, ignoring the brown caked-on grease that has hardened to an immovable crust. Of eating my lunch in a tiny office, leaning against a filing cabinet, trying not to listen to Debs on her mobile, laughing and swearing and slagging off some woman in Room Four, who peed the bed again.

Six hours. By the time I step out into the damp sea-heavy air, every inch of me is crawling with the feel of nylon, every inch smells of old people.

I want to wash, to shower it off me. But when I get home the bathroom door is locked and I can hear the buzz of the portable radio playing something classical. Mum is in the bath, has been for an hour, Finn says. So I make us toast and watch a game show. Play along as Finn tries to guess which box has the fortune in it.

“What are you doing here anyway?” Finn speaks and a mouthful of buttery crumbs fly out onto the green velvet of the armchairs. “I thought you were going swimming.”

“Oh my God. Swimming.” I had forgotten. How? I stand, trying to remember where I’ve left my towel. The bikini.

“Can’t you take me?” Finn pleads. “I can swim.”

“No. I know. But … it’s a lesson. I can’t look after you too.” Don’t want to tell him that I want Danny to myself. That I don’t want my kid brother tagging along.

“I don’t need looking after.”

I laugh. “Listen. Tell her … tell her I’ll be back late.”

“Whatever.” He bites off another mouthful. “You smell.”

I plunge my head under the water, one hand holding my nose, Danny gripping the other. Chlorine rushes into my ears so that I am locked in this underwater world, bleach washing away the stew and polish. Then I stand up, burst through the surface to take a heaving lungful of air. I am clean.

This time, when I lie back and he lets go, I don’t panic and swallow dead-skin water, I don’t rush to find my feet. I let the water hold me.

“Kick your legs,” he says.

And I do. And then I’m moving backwards, the water rushing past my ears. And I know it’s dumb, but I feel like I’m flying. And I know now how Finn feels, why he screams and hoots when he’s in the water. Because it’s incredible. How can Mum be scared of this? I think. How can she not want to feel like this?

He gets chips afterwards, and we sit on the front.

“Go on,” he says.

I realize I’m starving, with the thrill of it, the effort. And the two days of cake and canapés. I suck the vinegar off the hot crisp potato and smile. It’s the taste of the sea. Of Seaton. Of this new life.

“Come back to the flat,” he says.

And it’s not a question. So there’s only one answer.

“OK.”

Jake and Mercy are there. And Eva. She’s lying full out on the sofa, eyes shut, nodding in time to the throb of some CD. When she opens them, I see her pupils are wide, black. Smell the air above her, above them all, sickly sweet with weed. She waits to see my reaction. But I don’t flinch. Don’t take the spliff either though. Cass used to smoke; Luka too. I tried it, a couple of times – another secret – but I didn’t like the taste or the dizziness or the glassy eyes looking at you but seeing someone else. No one finishing a sentence. It scared me. Reminded me of Mum on her bad days. Why would I want to be like that? So I let the scorn shine in Eva’s eyes and the smoke and conversation drift over me. And it’s only when the silence ticks on for more than the time it takes to have a toke that I realize they’re waiting for me to answer.

“Sorry, what?” I’m sitting on the floor, next to Danny, my back against a bookcase, my shoulder a breath from his.

“How come your mum left and then came back?”

“I don’t know,” I say. And it’s the truth.

“You going to stay?” Eva is watching me, waiting.

“I don’t know. I think so. I hope so.” And I do. At that moment, I really do. But then Eva has to ask.

“What about your dad?” She takes a long pull on the spliff. Holds it in. Then breathes out the words in a cloud of smoke. “Not Luka. The real one. Where is he?”

Suddenly the insects jerk awake in my stomach. “I don’t know,” I say, defensively. My fingers are shaking. I push my hands under my thighs.

“Did he leave?” she pokes again, digging at the wound like a dog at a bone.