Puccini's Ghosts (18 page)

13

L
ila woke up with two hot patches high on her cheeks. In the bathroom she washed furtively and afterwards hid her flannel and toothbrush because there was nothing pretty about them. She kept the taps running while she used the lavatory and then she tipped bleach down it and waited ten minutes in case the next person in the bathroom should be Joe.

Back in her room, she looked at herself in the mirror. Reflected behind her she saw clothes draped over a chair and behind that the stale and wrong things that she had accrued, outgrown and stopped noticing: her old dolls’ house with painted ivy wandering up its walls, the shelf of school stories and ballet annuals, a flaking black metal tin of broken geometry tools. She owned nothing that she still wanted. Overnight she had become herself, arriving in her real life at last only to find that she had got there burdened with possessions with no point, and dressed as someone else. She had no clothes she could bear to appear to Joe in. Somehow she had been surviving under a shadow that obscured how unacceptable she looked.

But the tragedy of her clothes could not be played out now, on a Thursday morning in Burnhead. She could smell burning toast from downstairs, she heard the back door bang as her father left for work and the sound of the taps running again in the bathroom and the rippling of her mother’s voice, trilling and turning Italian phrases. A gusty wind blew outside, squeezing an ordinary, everyday draught through the window frame. She had to join the day and get dressed in something, however thwarted her changed self would be in it. She pulled on her dirndl skirt. It had a pattern that reminded her of half-beaten eggs but it was reasonably new; Enid’s mum had run it up for her at Easter at the same time as doing one for Enid in red and white stripes. (Two’s as simple as one, she said, handing it over to Lila and waving away thanks.) If she pulled her white belt in tight it looked better, but the yellow aertex shirt would not do. It would never do again. She put on her reasonable white blouse with the Peter Pan collar and bows on the cuffs, and spent a long time practising how to move: she turned sideways to the mirror, straightened her back and thrust out her chest, imagining through Joe’s eyes the combined impact of her bust and her glancing smile. He had to catch sight of her like this, bashful and skittish, just at the moment when a tiny, breathy laugh escaped her lips.

She was still barefoot. The flat sandals would also have to go, permanently, but she had little else apart from school shoes and plimsolls, only a pair of tan pumps meant for special occasions. They would have to do, with American Tan stockings. She undressed again in order to put on her suspender belt which was ointment pink and needed a wash, but at least she would not have to worry about Joe’s eyes judging it.

The stockings and smart shoes did not look right with the high colour in her face and her hair flattened childishly under Kirby grips. She damped down the pink in her cheeks with some Max Factor but it looked strange, sitting on her face by itself, so she put on mascara as well, scrubbing a paste off the surface of the flat black cake with spit and stroking it into clumps on her lashes with the little doll’s brush. She scraped her hair back hard to make her eyes look Chinesey and startled, and then she backcombed it into a thick, felted swell and tied it high at the back of her head in a yellow chiffon scarf. She was amazed at how long all this took. But she had to count herself now among those who knew the true purpose of dressing to the nines. Realising she could never again be a person who wasn’t prepared to go to such lengths, she felt initiated and dismayed.

Uncle George and Joe were in the dining room. Going in, she broke an atmosphere, as if opening the door snapped threads lately spun between them. She poured herself tea in silence, not sure if their eyes were on her or on the trickle into her cup that meant she was emptying the pot.

‘So,
buon giorno, la bella
!’ Joe said, loudly and suddenly.

Lila lifted a hand to the scarf in her hair.

‘So, today,
la bella
Liù, may I enjoin you to give me a tour of my new surroundings?’ He stretched out a hand that remained too far away for her to touch, had she dared reach for it.

‘La
what
?’ she asked, unconsciously dipping her head to receive the garland of her own special name. ‘
La bella
what?’

‘We have a great deal to do,’ Uncle George said. He sounded as if he were repeating himself. ‘We have a public meeting here the day after tomorrow. The three of you need vocal coaching every day, and on top of that you have to be able to sing your parts in your sleep. And all in a matter of weeks.’

‘Yes, Maestro, but I don’t see why that means we have to hang around all morning,’ Joe said. Lila giggled.

‘There is no need to be hanging around. You should be working on your parts, on your own. Without over-taxing your voice, naturally. Then we need to start thinking about the set, do some drawings, start thinking about materials. You said you were keen to design it. I’d have thought at the very least you’d want to go up to the farm to see the space where you’re performing.’

Joe widened his eyes. ‘Ah, may I remind you, the set’s all up here,’ he said, tapping the side of his head with his index finger. ‘I told you, that’s the way I work. I could get it down on paper in ten minutes. How you fuss! Doesn’t he,
la bella
Liù?’

Uncle George lit a cigarette and looked at his watch. Joe screwed up his nose and waved the smoke away. ‘Really, Maestro, I don’t know why you get so het up,’ he said.

‘At 9.15 I shall give Fleur her session. At 10.15 you will have yours, and at 11.30, after a fifteen minute break, it’ll be her turn,’ George said, nodding at Lila. He got up from the table. ‘You will each work for at least four more hours every day learning your parts. At 2.30 every day we shall meet and discuss what else needs to be done. Understood?’

‘We’re not students now, you know,’ Joe said, looking at Lila for support.

‘Exactly. You’re taking on something that even professionals would baulk at. You should also,’ he said, now fixing his attention on Joe and dropping his voice, ‘rest for at least an hour and a half every afternoon. You need to build up stamina. I expect you all singing your parts, word-perfect without scores, in two weeks’ time.’

He set his cigarette in the corner of his mouth and left.

Joe said, ‘He’s not being fair. I just need time. I know the part already, most of it. I need to mull ideas over in my head. My…’ He spun a hand in the air. ‘My ideas for the set…they are buds. They need time to flower. You understand, don’t you?’

‘Oh, of course,’ Lila said. ‘I understand.’

‘
He
doesn’t,’ Joe said. He seemed to be waiting for her to say something.

‘I know. Typical.’

‘Come on,’ he said, standing up. ‘We’ll go out. We’ll just forget all about him, shall we?’

‘Out? Where?’

‘Anywhere—you choose. Take me anywhere you like,’ he said, putting on a smile and spreading his arms.

Lila’s heart thumped; he didn’t care where he went as long as it was she who took him. ‘But Uncle George, the dishes…’

George was now at the piano across the hall, stabbing out the chords of the chorus at the end of Act I:

La fossa già scaviam per te

Che vuoi sfidar l’amor!

We are already digging the grave for you

Who want to challenge love!

The sound rose and punctured through Fleur’s whooping and swooping voice from upstairs.

‘Forget him! Come with me. You’re not scared of him, are you, little Liù? He’s not Bernstein, you know. We’ve got to stand up to him.’ He made for the door and opened it noiselessly. ‘Come
on,
’ he whispered, reaching out a hand.

Without having to discuss the need to avoid the front door, they left the house by the back, crossed the garden and slipped through the gate in the wall into the scrubland that stretched down to the shore. The wind almost toppled Lila’s hair and she raised a hand to steady it while with the other she grabbed her skirt that was suddenly full of treacherous, billowing life. The weather infuriated her. She had to get used to the new way she looked; she did not want to have to concentrate on keeping herself in one piece and stopping her stocking tops from showing. Now the wind was making her eyes water and soon her mascara would run and she would be weeping indelible, soot tears in front of Joe.

‘There’s nothing to see,’ she said, watching his eyes scan the shoreline and the windy sky. ‘It’s a rotten place.’

He was taking deep breaths in the manner of inland people about to say something about sea air. ‘No, it’s not the Riviera, is it?’ he called over the wind. ‘George exaggerates so.’

‘I hate it. I’m not staying, I’m moving to London.’

‘Still, I wasn’t expecting much,’ he said, taking a few purposeless steps. He turned back to her. ‘So! Now Joey is in your gentle hands. Show me round! I’m interested in everything. I want to see it all.’

Lila pushed her skirt down, trapping its folds between her thighs. What did he mean? He had, strictly speaking, asked her out, so why was it up to her what they did? Could this be a date, on a blustery Thursday morning? Was this the material on which she was to build memories for saying, for the rest of their lives:
Do you remember the first time we went out together?

‘Suppose you take me down to the beach?’ he said.

She couldn’t possibly take him to the beach. To get to the beach you had to cross the dunes with sand stinging your legs, and the dunes, as everybody knew, were where couples went at night to make little shelters in the marram grass and writhe privately in the dark to the sucking of the tide. Joe was in short sleeves again. She could see the hairs on his arms, ruffled by the wind. When she looked at his open top shirt button and saw the hair sprouting there at his throat, a ragged flutter of warmth ran through her. She blushed, thinking of One Thing Only, the thing that all boys wanted and that certain girls were apparently prepared to go to the dunes for. Joe might think that was what she wanted. She turned away. It had never occurred to her before, but what if some couples went to the dunes in daylight and they were to stumble across one? Until now she would have thought it impossible because what took place was so embarrassing surely it could only be done in the dark, but she was getting an inkling of powerful reasons why people could throw off that kind of shyness. And hardly less awful than stumbling upon
that
was the thought of Joe and her together catching sight of the things she and Enid occasionally came across on the beach and that Lila was ashamed of knowing the purpose of: the limp, discarded evidence of One Thing Only lying like pink emptied maggots, sometimes delicately knotted at the end.

‘Well, what about showing me the glorious sights of fair Burnhead?’

His gaze was now drifting over Lila’s head. Was he regretting coming out with her?

‘All right,’ she said, ‘come on, we’ll go this way!’ The carefree laugh she tagged onto the end of the words was lost on the wind.

When they emerged onto the road next to the bridge over the Pow Burn, Lila stopped. It was nearly a mile’s walk in one direction to Burnhead, a mile in the other to Monkton, where there was even less to see, and she was in her pointed court shoes. Joe wasn’t equipped for a walk either; he didn’t seem the type who ever would be. He was wearing pointed shoes too, come to that, black leather ones that curled up slightly at the toes, and the belt round his jeans pulled him in so stiffly it was hard to imagine him striding carelessly along the sea road. They loitered moodily for a minute or two.

She was about to suggest that maybe they should go up to Pow Farm after all, when Joe called out, ‘Hey, look, a bus!’

Lila looked up and saw it in the distance, rocking along the road from Burnhead towards Monkton, going the wrong way.

‘Quick! There’s the stop, come on!’ Joe yelled.

He grabbed her hand and suddenly Lila didn’t care where the bus was going. Even running with splayed feet, terrified she would lose a shoe, she was storing the moment away:
Do you remember the first time you took my hand?

The bus pulled to a halt. Joe clattered upstairs and Lila lurched behind, thrilled at how willingly she could abandon decency and follow him, for upstairs on a bus was a place where only a girl who wanted to mix with chain-smoking men playing with themselves would go. Joe marched up to the very front seat and slumped in it. A minute later they rumbled past Seaview Villas, almost level with the drawn curtains of Fleur’s bedroom window. Lila, laughing, sent the house a little wave.

‘Byesie-bye, Fleur, byesie-bye, George,’ Joe said, turning and wiggling his fingers. ‘Byesie-bye,
Turandot
.’

The conductress clumped upstairs and took their fares. Joe paid, as was only right on a date and besides, Lila had no money. Then he leaned across and gave the ends of her yellow chiffon bow a little tug.

‘You’re coming undone,’ he said. ‘You’ve come undone running for the bus. You’re falling to bits. Turn round.’

He took the ends of the scarf. ‘ “A sweet disorder in the dress…”’ he said over her shoulder, laughing. ‘D’you know the rest?’

‘The rest of what?’

Joe took his time adjusting the scarf, lifting it and fluffing the bow, primping the ends.

‘That’s better now,
la bella,
oops, just a minute…’ With one finger he lifted a loose tendril from her neck and pushed it upwards into the mass of dark hair under the scarf.

‘ “…kindles in clothes a wantonness.” Or so they say. Done—there you are!’

He patted the top of her head and turned back. Lila, breathless with the sensation of his finger on her neck, hardly heard what he had said. She sat letting memories form—already memories, already she was starving for more—of his hands touching her hair, grazing her skin. She had to fix them in her mind. She had to edit and interpret them too; that pat on the head, for instance, he must have meant to be tender rather than casual. There couldn’t have been anything brotherly in it. She turned to look at him. He was staring straight ahead now and lifting and lowering his eyebrows as if practising facial expressions or conducting a silent conversation. She must be patient. For the time being the rules confined them to gestures and looks. Words would come later. She saw a series of arches through which she and Joe would pass, gradually shedding the layers of rule-keeping—the pretence of indifference, the perfected indirectness—until their true feelings could be admitted. Soon after that they would be engaged and she would be able to say:
Do you remember the first time you touched my hair?