Birdseye Page 7

  But Orville wasn’t listening. Not properly. He walked across the room. But not quickly enough. I flew ahead of him and threw myself across the two chairs. For good measure I gripped on tight to one of them.

  Orville sighed. ‘Bird,’ he said, ‘I promised your mother I’d do this. She can’t cope with meals any more. Not when Oz and Ollie’s chairs are empty.’

  ‘But what about me, Dad?’ I asked. ‘I won’t like eating at the table now. It looks all wrong.’

  Orville knelt down beside the chair and stroked my hair. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said again. ‘This is the way it has to be, Bird. You’ll get used to it soon. We all will. Now get up, please.’

  I gripped harder to the edge of the chair. ‘Dad,’ I said, ‘I can’t.’

  But then Orville laid his forehead on mine and looked deep into my eyes.

  ‘It’s not just your mom, Bird,’ he said. ‘I can’t stand eating down here either. You’re going to have to help me here.’ He closed his eyes and his eyelids trembled. ‘Can you do that for me, Bird? Can you be a big girl and get off now and let me do what I have to?’ He sounded so tired. Not anything like he used to, when his voice was happy, even when he’d had a hard day at work.

  ‘You promise they’ll be in the garage?’ I asked. ‘You won’t sell them, or give them away?’

  ‘I promise, Bird,’ Orville said. ‘You have my word of honour.’

  I sat up. ‘Okay then,’ I said, stroking the dark leather of the chair. ‘Okay. But it doesn’t mean Ollie and Oz aren’t coming back, Dad. It doesn’t mean we aren’t keeping a space for them.’

  ‘No, Bird,’ Orville said. ‘It doesn’t mean that. We’ll always keep a space for them.’ He swung me off the chair and set me on my feet.

  I walked to the door of the dining room, then turned to look back. The table stood in the middle of the large room, shrunken and unfamiliar. The boys’ chairs sat side by side against the wall, their frames touching. Soon Orville would carry them to the garage, and one more gap where Ollie and Oz had been would close for ever. Things were getting desperate. I had to do something to keep their space from shrinking any further.

  In the cupboard under the stairs, Annie kept all the school stationery supplies. The small blue exercise books she stocked up on every year, along with spare pencils, crayons, erasers and pens.

  I left the dining room, marched to the cupboard and flung it open. I was helping myself to what I needed and no one was going to stop me. I had to start remembering for Oz and Ollie, otherwise how would we be able to fill them in on all the news when they got home?

  And that’s when I started writing to you. I mightn’t have remembered everything, and to start with I couldn’t write too much because my hand got tired. I told you the important bits, like how awful it was sitting next to Anthea that first night at our new too-small table. I kept expecting to see your chairs there, but everything was all squished together. That was the first thing I told you about in the first blue book. And then, day by day, I filled you in on the rest.

  III

  1

  1985

  I wish you could have seen Angela tonight, I wrote to the twins. She was shining brighter than any princess. Looking at her made me so happy: I bet she could have granted us all wishes, if she’d had a wand. Even Ma Bess couldn’t spoil things. And you know how good she is at that.

  The Harbiton Rugby Club was holding a fundraising dance, and all the girls were abuzz about their dresses. There was a rush on magazines at the shop, and Mrs de Klerk, the local seamstress, was swamped with work. Girls with mothers who could sew waltzed through their houses to the music of Berninas and Elnas zipping along seams. Some even took the train into Cape Town to scour the shops for the dress of their dreams.

  Angela and Andy were going to the dance together, of course. The two of them were a couple and always had been. It was as if they were already married, but I never felt as if they’d had any of the whiz-bang of fireworks, the luminous lighting-up that Orville and Annie had.

  But on the night Angela came down the stairs dressed for the dance, Andy gasped. We all did. In awe, wonder, amazement – and fear. Because Angela was wearing one of the gowns that Ma Bess had worn when she was young.

  She stood tall and proud, like a slender shaft of moonlight. The dress she wore was a silver sheath, crusted with multitudes of tiny crystal bugles. They shimmered in the light. Her pale-blonde hair was pulled back in a simple knot. She wore no lipstick, no mascara. The only colour in her face was the rosy flush of her cheeks. She gazed at us quietly, her eyes bright, daring us to say anything.

  Ma Bess’s old bedroom was untouchable; none of us were allowed in there. We’d all broken that rule though, tiptoed in and inspected the rows of beautiful, classically cut dresses in the wardrobe, looked at ourselves in the three-way mirror, stroked the rusty velvet of the bedcover. And yet somehow, each time yesterday’s dust was stirred, Ma knew. She didn’t have to say anything. The knowledge was in the cold beads of her eyes.

  Now, Annie was the first to break the stunned silence. Her voice cut through Angela’s crystal cocoon and shattered it with a cry. ‘Angela!’

  A confused babble of voices followed. Angela’s defiance thrilled me. How brave she was! I was elated, but also appalled.

  With good reason.

  ‘Take it off.’

  Ma, standing on the landing above us. How had she managed to get there? Looking up at her, my eyes dazzled by Angela’s glistening beauty, all I could see was a thin dark streak, the white mask of Ma’s face floating above it. She descended, her hand gripping the banister. One slow step, two steps, three. Her darkness seemed to swell until it blocked all light. Angela’s radiance faded and all I could see was Ma. She didn’t seem furious. No, Ma was calm, and her voice was quiet. A quick flick of a whip.

  ‘Angela,’ Andy held out his hand, ‘you’re beautiful.’ He was looking pretty good too, his heavy rugby player’s shoulders boxed in a black dinner jacket, his shirt a blinding white, his bow tie velvety black.

  The silver column of light that was Angela stepped towards him, then wavered. I sucked in my breath. She was going to be extinguished. I knew it. Smothered by darkness.

  ‘Go to your room. Take it off. Now.’

  And then, the miracle happened. Andy moved forward. A small step was all it took, and he was at Angela’s side, and his arm was at her waist, pulling her towards him. ‘Shall we go? The car’s outside.’ A car, not a white steed, but it might as well have been, for Andy was rapidly becoming princelike in my eyes.

  ‘Not another step, young lady.’

  Again the measured tread, one slow step down, two, three.

  ‘Goodbye, Mr Little, Mrs Little,’ Andy said to my parents. And then he turned to face Ma, head on. ‘Good night, Ma’am. Come, Ange, shall we leave?’

  Angela’s face was tortured. She swivelled her head towards Andy, my parents, Ma.

  ‘Leave this house,’ Ma said, ‘and you will never set foot inside it again.’

  Where Andy found the words he did, I will never know. ‘It’s just a dress, Mrs Marchbank-Hall,’ he said. And then he crowned himself in glory, placed his name in the annals of family history. ‘After all,’ he said, ‘you’re not likely to wear it again yourself, are you?’

  I was a balloon, buoyed with tension, excitement and dread. But Andy’s words proved my undoing: I couldn’t hold it in. A huge snort of laughter erupted from me. An image of Ma – the scrag of her neck, the sinews of her arms emerging from the silver beauty of the dress – filled my head. Anthea kicked me sharply, but she was too late. I tried to sober up, but another giggle escaped, and then another, a long sniggering one. And I knew that Angela wouldn’t be the only one made to pay.

  Then Orville stepped forward, and in the set of his shoulders and the determined line of his mouth I saw the young man Annie had described to us so often, another hero who had braved the beast. He placed his hands on Angela’s shoulders. ‘You’re beautiful,’ he said, ‘n
o matter what you wear. Now off you kids go, and have a great time.’ He tilted Angela’s chin up. ‘Do you hear me, Angel? You’ve been looking forward to this dance for a long time. Don’t let anyone spoil it for you.’

  And then Annie was infected by the madness. ‘We’ll see you to the car,’ she said. ‘Orville, don’t forget the camera. I want photographs of our lovely girl.’ She leaned forward and dropped a kiss on Angela’s forehead. Angela raised her head and smiled at all of us. Once again she shone, from the top of her head to … Well, I couldn’t see her feet. But I didn’t need to. Because my sister floated out of the house that night.

  When we came back inside, Ma was waiting. She had made her way to the bottom step. Now she was angry. Her cheeks were marbled red and white, her eyes flashing.

  ‘Into the drawing room. Now!’ She stepped ahead of Orville and Annie, leaning on her cane, leaving a line of scorch marks in her wake. Well not really, but that’s what it felt like: the air around her was burning with rage.

  Orville reached for Annie’s hand. She grasped it tightly. They looked at each other and smiled. ‘Didn’t she look magnificent, Orville?’ Annie whispered.

  ‘Of course she did,’ Orville said. ‘After all, she has the most beautiful mother in the world.’

  And then they walked into the sitting room to face the wrath of Ma.

  After they’d gone, I saw a small glass bead at the bottom of the stairs. I held it up to the light and remembered Angela, shimmering and shining.

  I put it away in my ballerina box. A memento. Orville said mementos were what we remembered things by, or people. Like his photographs of Ollie and Oz.

  2

  When things are going really well, and we’re all happy, Ma Bess comes along and does something horrible. Anthea said we should call her Ma Beast. And Annie said Anthea! the way she always does with Anthea. But she smiled and Orville did too. But only a bit, because she wasn’t happy about what Ma Bess did to Angela. None of us were.

  A few nights after the dance, when all the excitement had died down, we were seated around the dining-room table. Angela was still upstairs, delivering Ma’s meal to her. Thelma placed the soup tureen in front of Annie and we passed our plates for servings of leek-and-potato soup. I didn’t like it much, even when Thelma made it, but it was one of Ma’s favourites, so it appeared frequently. I much preferred Thelma’s butternut soup, or her tomato one. But I’d have to wait until I had my own house before I could choose what would be on the menu – that’s what Thelma told me whenever I asked her to change it.

  As Thelma left the room, Angela slipped into her place. Her face was white, and her hand trembled as she picked up her spoon.

  I nudged Anthea. ‘Look,’ I whispered. ‘Angela. She’s crying.’

  Angela’s head was down and she wiped her cheek.

  ‘Ange,’ Anthea said, ‘what’s the matter?’

  ‘It’s nothing.’

  ‘She’s done something, hasn’t she?’ Whenever something went wrong or felt odd or funny, Anthea blamed Ma Bess. And she was usually right.

  ‘What’s she done?’ Anthea asked again. ‘Come on Ange, tell us.’

  ‘It’s not so bad, really,’ Angela did her usual, tried to put a brave face on things. But her face didn’t look brave at all, and her voice sounded as if she wanted to be sick. ‘She wants me to give her pedicures.’

  ‘She wants you to do what?’ Annie’s voice was as confused as we all felt.

  ‘On a Saturday morning,’ Angela said. ‘That’s when it suits her.’

  ‘But that’s when you go to watch Andy play,’ I said. ‘You love watching him, Ange.’

  ‘She told me she could get her manicurist to do it, but as I have an eye for beautiful things, she thinks I’ll do a better job,’ Angela sniffed.

  ‘Is that going to be for ever?’ I asked, dread deep in my voice. I couldn’t think of anything worse. Having to kneel down in front of Ma Bess. Handle her long, bony feet. The skin on them would be white, and cold. Like dead fish.

  ‘No,’ Angela said. ‘Just a while. Until she doesn’t need the treatments any more.’

  ‘Until you’ve learned your lesson, you mean,’ Anthea said. ‘That’s bullshit!’

  ‘Anthea,’ Annie said automatically.

  ‘Well it is, Mom. It’s because of the dress, isn’t it, Ange?’

  ‘I suppose so. She didn’t mention the dance. She just said she was giving me a chance to repay her many kindnesses to us all.’

  I picked up my spoon and pushed at the thickening skin on my soup. This was my fault too, for laughing, and Orville and Annie’s. We’d all made Ma Bess furious the night of the dance.

  ‘But it wasn’t just you, Ange,’ I said. ‘She was angry with all of us.’

  ‘Yes, but I was the one who wore her dress.’

  ‘I’ll try speaking to her, Angela,’ Annie said. ‘But I don’t know how much luck I’ll have.’

  ‘I know. Don’t worry, Mom.’ Angela stood. ‘Please may I be excused?’

  ‘But darling, your supper, Thelma’s made—’

  ‘I’m not hungry, Mom,’ Angela said. ‘Please—’

  ‘Of course, Angela,’ Orville spoke quietly. ‘We’ll keep some back for if you’re hungry later.’

  I thought of Angela up in her room, and then I thought of Ma Bess’s feet floating thin-skinned and chicken-boned in a basin of water. I imagined touching them. Washing them and patting them dry with a thick fluffy towel and filing the toenails and rubbing Crabtree & Evelyn lotion into her skin.

  The wrinkled surface of the potato-and-leek soup was grey-white and glutinous and I put down my spoon.

  Then, one day at lunch, there was a brown envelope on Angela’s plate. Orville had finished the film in his camera and he’d developed a whole pile of black-and-white photos of Angela and Andy ready to go to the dance – better than any they could have had taken in a studio. And there she was again, exquisite.

  Later that week, I caught Anthea slipping one of the photos between the pages of Ma Bess’s library book. ‘Can’t wait for the old cow to get to page 62,’ she muttered and slammed the cover shut.

  3

  Nobody laughs much, not since you left. But tonight at supper, Orville told us all about a dreadful lady called Mrs Daphna Roux and her daughter Dora who wanted their photographs taken, and nothing he said to them or did was right: there was no way he could make them look even a little bit pretty. Dreadful Daphna and her daughter Dora, Angela said and it sounded so funny, all those Ds. We laughed, quite loudly. I imagined the laughter rippling up the stairs to Ma Bess’s room and sneaking under her door, into her grey space, and making her mad. You know how she feels about children – about us being seen and not heard. That’s what I was thinking about while I was eating, and the more I chewed, the more I thought about Ma Bess and whether she had ever been a child.

  ‘Bird,’ Annie said, ‘don’t play with your food. If you’ve finished eating, put your fork down.’

  ‘Sorry, Mom, I was thinking.’ I put my fork on my plate the way Annie had shown me to, neatly next to my knife. Then I looked up at her. ‘Mom,’ I asked, ‘did Ma Bess also have all those rules? Like your ones, when you were growing up?’

  ‘I’m not sure, Bird,’ Annie said. ‘She probably did. She doesn’t really talk about when she was a little girl. All I know is she was born into a very wealthy family and lived in a beautiful house. A stately home, she called it once. Much larger and grander than Marchbanks.’

  ‘Grander than Marchbanks?’ Anthea interjected. ‘She always makes out like this place is better than anywhere in Harbiton. Especially the houses down in the village, where all the yokels live – the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker.’

  ‘All right, Anthea.’ Annie sighed and turned to me again. ‘In houses like that, Bird, in the time when my mother was growing up, they used to have very strict rules for children. Children should be seen and not heard—’

  I nodded vigorously. ‘We all know
that one, Mom.’

  ‘And you’ve just broken the next one,’ Alice said. ‘Never interrupt when an adult is speaking.’ She ticked off the next few on her fingers: ‘Never run inside the house. No shouting, no whining, no answering back. Stay clean and tidy at all times—’ She looked around the table. ‘You know how she’s always banging on – “Enough of this boorish, tomboyish behaviour, young miss.”’ Ma Bess’s clipped vowels rattled from Alice’s mouth.

  ‘That’s not what I get,’ Angela said. ‘I get, “It’s all very well to have a young man, girl, but one would have hoped you would have looked further than Harbiton to find him.”’

  ‘“I am surprised your mother tolerates the amount of face paint you wear, missy,”’ Anthea chimed in, mimicking Ma to perfection. ‘“We have certain standards to maintain; kindly don’t forget them.”’

  They all looked at me. ‘A lot of talk about spines and backbones,’ I said sadly. ‘I don’t have one, and my back is never going to be straight.’

  ‘It’s the way she was brought up, girls,’ Annie said. ‘In a world of wealth and privilege. Big houses in the country, and so on.’

  ‘Those houses employed a lot of people,’ Orville said. ‘Maids and gardeners, cooks and butlers. A nanny upstairs in the nursery to look after the children.’

  ‘Upstairs?’ I asked.

  ‘In the sort of house your grandmother grew up in, they’d have a special room, right at the top of the house, called the nursery,’ Orville said. ‘Children were looked after by a nurse, or nanny. She’d feed them and bath them and put them to bed. Take them outside for walks. Sometimes their mothers and fathers would go upstairs to see them, maybe play with them for a little while. It wasn’t that their parents didn’t love them,’ he said when he saw the look of horror on my face. ‘It was more a case of how that love was expressed.’

  ‘No hugs?’ I asked, trying to imagine it.

  ‘Oh, I’m sure there were some hugs,’ said Orville. ‘And I’m sure there were houses where the rules weren’t so severe, but your grandmother was probably brought up very strictly.’