Puccini's Ghosts (38 page)

You’ll no mind, she tells me, you’ll no mind only I’ve got my mum coming later to give me a hand?

She disappears to get her microwave in from the van.

Anyway, Christine says, turning her attention to me, look at you, where in God’s name have you been now? Have you been down the shore? It’s time you were getting ready. Goodness sake.

I lie in a bath that she runs for me and I feel that there is a smudge in me that I shall fail to wash away before this afternoon’s performance of the funeral; the purpose of this bath is not to cleanse but to obliterate myself, smudge and all. I dress carefully. The clothes Christine has kindly cleaned and pressed are costume. I have not worn makeup for days and it does me good to paint some pride back on my face, to dab over my consternation with a subtle, daytime, all-over base tone for the maturer complexion. Since I have not managed since I came here either to wash or to sleep away my stained self, it helps me to hide. I must hide in broad daylight, in the guise of his blameless daughter. I want to step out of this room at least looking like a worthy mourner of the last of my gentle, immaculate ghosts.

But this last funeral, my father’s, goes off with more than a touch of grace. Odd how the most fugitive quality in a person may be the one that asserts itself just as he is leaving, when it’s too late for speeches because you might choke on all you should have said long ago. At the Evangelical Lutherans’ hall there is a sombre courtesy present among us that withstands the falling and swooping of Luke’s voice and the furrowing and lifting of his brow. We let him tell us there is no emotion inapplicable and no response inappropriate ‘at this time’ and that we may share ‘all that is in our hearts’. There may be a moment when I almost believe it. Whatever we feel, Luke will flush it from us and wring it out, he will hang it up to dry and bless it. We are to look back with gratitude, smile beaming smiles for my father’s remembered quirks and nod with nostalgic respect for the dutiful, stoic times he represents. And take our tears to Jesus. Nobody seems to notice that there is no music. The part with the prayers and the box is over soon and before I know it we’re back here at Seaview Villas, right about where I started. Luke seems satisfied. We accept, we trivialise and we wipe our eyes.

Today must be the first day since the
Turandot
meeting that the house has been full. I stand in the hall and listen to the decorous sway of conversation in the music room where for so long the air has been still. Luke and Christine and Mrs Foley and Dr Chowdry are here, plus two couples from Seaview Villas, perfect strangers whom Christine tells me I have met. They came to pay respects some days ago only I was not just at my best, one of them says. There are others, a few pew-fillers, Luke’s church mainstays, but also quiet old gents who say they always held my father in high regard. One says they very seldom spoke but they used to nod to each other at the surgery.

A party of fifteen or twenty or so will have its lapses into silence; there are pauses in conversation while people get tea and a dram down them, not to mention the finger sandwiches. The place is ripe with the smell of elderly bodies in winter clothes and the whiff of toasted cheese from Sheena’s pizza bites. She comes and goes from the kitchen with plates and cups, and through the open door I see her mother stationed at the sink with her back to the gathering. Sheena’s five-year-old is here too, for reasons that were apologetically explained and I have forgotten. Her name is Jordan. She and Paris have been stuffing themselves and are now sugar-fuelled, snickering and hyperactive, running around groups of people and poking out tongues stained bright pink from the muck they’ve been eating. Jordan crashes into my legs, looks up and gasps; her breath smells like hot plastic and raspberries. I turn her round and steer her back up the hall.

I observe a general absence of solemnity. It is not the presence of the children that dispels it. Funerals used to be what they were meant to be, drab and frugal. People would take a dram like a tonic to bring them round after an unpleasantness, but they don’t anymore; they propose quiet toasts, eyes already tracking the whereabouts of the bottle, working out how long till the next snootful. They raise and clink glasses in a display of enjoyment that once the dead had the power to constrain. Not even for the afternoon of their disposal may the dear departed be anything but celebrated. Mourning may no longer show. It has joined grief in grief’s true place, weeping and pacing an empty room in the small hours, face hidden in the hands. We may not even say dear departed anymore, it’s all first names now. But I don’t feel like celebrating. The obligation is being foisted on me, as if I’m a child given a flag on a stick and commanded to wave it while something she doesn’t recognise goes by. Here I am, doubtful, with the stick cutting into my hand, standing on the edge of the parade.

I wander away to the kitchen. Sheena’s mum, a woman in trainers and aquamarine trousers and sweatshirt, is still at the sink. Her hair is cut so short the back of her neck looks like a man’s. She turns around looking for more cups to wash and I see that it’s Senga McMillan. Her hair is strangely dyed and the face and body are heavier but it’s her. We both break into smiles. She peels off her rubber gloves and plumps her hair.

You’re Sheena’s mother?

Aye, Sheena’s my second. I’ve just the three. Grown up now.

How wonderful.

Aye, see when Sheena says it’s a funeral tea for Duncan at Seaview Villas, here’s me thinking it must be the same Duncan.

She talks quickly, as if she’s nervous. And here it
is
you. Sorry about your father. So how’re you doing? You’re a stranger here these days, are you not?

Yes, well, it’s been such a long time! Life’s pretty hectic still. Actually, I
never
get back! I…I live in Antwerp. And how are
you
?

We chat for a time, two women in their late fifties talking safely of the usual subjects and each assessing what damage the years have done. I can hardly believe this is Senga who ripped the flowering currant bushes to shreds on the last day of school, who was the first to go all the way, who smoked and shoplifted and swore and is now Senga the grandmother, who breaks off mid-sentence at the sound of Jordan’s sudden wail from the next room and hurries to see what’s wrong.

One of the Seaview Villas neighbours has her hands clasped over both of Jordan’s and is trying to persuade her to give up what she’s holding.

No, dear, we don’t want that broken, do we, dear? Better let me have that.

Jordan protests and snivels and clutches her prize tighter. At the sight of her granny she wails even more, the neighbour lets go and Jordan dives wet nose first straight into Senga’s legs. She wants rid of what’s in her hands now and she allows her fingers to be eased away from the heavy glass paperweight she’s holding. It’s smeared with snot but it’s in one piece. Senga takes it carefully, breathes on it and rubs it on her sweatshirt. Jordan’s already over at the sideboard selecting another one from the two dozen or so set out in a row. Senga smiles apologetically and goes to reason with her.

No, Jordan, leave those, Nana says leave those alone. Those are the lady’s, they’re not yours. Want a marshmallow? Go and get a marshmallow, on you go and get one for Paris as well.

Jordan scowls and exits and for a long time Senga lets her gaze rest on the row of paperweights. When she looks at me her eyes are wet.

Oh my, she sighs. Oh my, there they all are. They take me back! I cleaned those for years.

Cleaned them? What do you mean?

Aye, I’d forgotten. Nice to see them again.

Forgotten what? What do you mean?

Oh, I’m talking about when they were still Audrey’s. Years ago, before she died. Not remember? Audrey Mathieson’s paperweights.

Audrey Mathieson’s? They were my father’s, I tell her. He kept them in the sideboard.

Oh aye, but they were Audrey’s before. I remember him getting them, I brought him them down myself in the car. Audrey Mathieson’s paperweights, not remember? You must have heard he got her paperweights.

I think I may have forgotten, I say. I assumed he bought them, over the years.

There may be a shade of the old Senga in the look she gives me, just the merest sly pleasure in being ahead with a piece of information that she knows and I don’t—like what really happens to a boy’s thing when he wants to do it to a girl—but it doesn’t last. She tells me that for eighteen years or so she has been a cleaner and general assistant at North Beach Court.

The sheltered flats. Where Mrs Foley stays now, she says. Nice wee flats. Anyway, Audrey Mathieson was there. She was there from when she was widowed till she died. Liked it well enough, and she’d no family to take her.

I didn’t know she’d died.

Oh, aye, a while ago now. Maybe eight years? Though it’s always longer than you think, isn’t it, could even be ten, eleven. Aye, more like ten. Anyway she left these to your dad.

They worked together for years, till he left the firm. They were work colleagues.

Aye, I know. But they were still friends after, weren’t they? They went about together from when she was widowed. Before I even went to work there, I’m talking years and years ago. You’d know that.

Oh, of course, certainly I did, I lie.

He was coming in every day to see her, right to the last. I mind he brought the paper and read to her. Oh, we saw an awful lot of Mr Duncan. They were close. He was awful good to her. You could say devoted.

Jordan reappears, wraps herself round Senga’s leg and stares up at me.

Jordan, I say, come with me. Would you like one of these to keep? One to take home and keep?

I lead her by the hand to the sideboard.

Christine is suddenly at my side, telling me that Mr and Mrs Lennox from number two are about to go. I thrust a paperweight into their hands and say I hope they will accept this as a…as what?

As a memento of my father, I say.

Oh I couldn’t, dear, says Mrs Lennox. It was your father’s. There’s no call.

Oh yes you could! You must, I cry. Here! Take another.

Jordan pulls at my skirt. Can I have this one? she asks, pointing.

I stoop down and hand it to her and say, Yes, this one is yours.

Senga says, What do you say, Jordan?

Mrs Lennox says, Seems a shame to break up the collection.

No, you’re wrong about that. It’s right to break up the collection, I tell her. Everyone’s to take one. Spread it out, spread the prettiness around. They’re all pretty, just pick one, any one you like.

This seems to prompt the putting aside of tea cups and a general exodus but I won’t let anyone go until they’re weighted down with one or two of these dubious lumps of the glassmaker’s art. A loose line-up forms; I shake hands and insist each person chooses a paperweight from the diminishing number on the table. An embarrassed quiet settles on us as the queue shuffles along but I am inwardly ecstatic, feeling I have found, quite by accident, a gesture to equal the day. Among all the objects in this house only the paperweights, crude as
objets d’art
perhaps, have a lustre that I think they owe to Raymond and Audrey, to the pair of them.

Two dozen Vasart paperweights: not much as a gift to the world goes, but I want to send them out beyond this dead house. I want to put them in careful hands of any age (this has nothing to do with posterity), hands in whose care they may shine. I want them gone from here and placed in lives not yet wearied as mine has become.

27

L
ila stepped through the back door. The kitchen looked sulky and abandoned as only an empty room painted red, sage and lemon could, its gaiety inadequate; bright, but abandoned anyway. She ran the cold tap and swallowed mouthful after mouthful of water. She let the water pour over her cut hands and dabbed some on her burning face.

She was aware of a five o’clock stillness; it was nearly half past. In the mirror inside the pantry door she saw that she didn’t look as ill as she felt. Her skin was rosy—dewy, even—as if the heat and pain pulsing through her had filled her cheeks out. Her eyes looked back brightly from the mirror and she paused, holding her breath. There was not a sound. Joe must have got back at least twenty minutes ago, found the house empty and gone up to the farm straightaway to get into his costume. Everyone would be there by now. Joe would tell Uncle George that she was coming later. He might even say he had seen her returning with the headdress. But should she go to the farm at once just to make sure he had come back?

No need. Joe had promised. And she was too altered and feverish and exhausted, too deep in this new strangeness about herself; if she slept for an hour or so, perhaps she would wake up more used to it all. A sleep would also help her hold off the tonsillitis long enough to sing, and if she stayed here to rest she wouldn’t have to see anyone before she was ready to go on stage; she could bath and change and go straight there and arrive just in time for the curtain. After the performance Uncle George wouldn’t dare be angry that she had cut it so fine, because after the performance everything would be different.

She sang a few notes and swallowed, and sang again, louder. The stinging and aching between her legs was worse, just at the moment, than her throat. But she would get over that. And now that it had happened, now that she and Joe were a couple, it was going to be even easier than she thought. Though she would put aside the costume when she left for London she would never quite put aside Liù. Liù would be somewhere inside her from now on, a strain of underground music that would ripple through her life, singing of love that did not fail.

Just then she heard the music room door and her father’s scraping footsteps along the hall. Why couldn’t he lift his feet? He stood in the doorway looking at her.

‘Well, Lizzie?’

Did it show? Lila had a sudden memory of Joe and the feel of it, the thick, weighty tube rubbing along her leg and pushing against and nearly, very nearly, right into her. It was an intolerable idea that her father had one, too. How could he have one and be standing there, looking at her so smoothly? But if he hadn’t, her mother wouldn’t live here like a bird trapped in his hands. Now she knew why her mother shuddered when she looked at her father’s hands. He had large fingers that moved too fast, and her mother must look at them and remember where she had let them go and how eager they had been, that one drunken night. And because she had allowed it, she was having to spend the rest of her life with someone she probably couldn’t even tolerate gloved. Lila blushed furiously.

‘Och, Lizzie. You all right?’

‘I’m just tired, I’m going for a sleep. Where is everybody?’

‘I couldn’t say. I’m, er, just five minutes back from Burnhead.’ He glanced behind him. ‘I’m just away to put the kettle on. Your mother was having her hair done, I believe. Moira Mather was giving her a lift straight from the hairdresser’s.’

Another pair of feet trotted down the hall and Mrs Mathieson appeared.

She said, ‘Hello, dear. We’re just looking over the production account. Getting a few costings for props jotted down. Then we’re away to the farm.’

‘Where’s Joe? Is he up there already?’

Her father said, ‘Joe? I couldn’t say. I suppose so. Is that there the headdress?’

‘Oh. Yes. Some bits came off.’

‘Oh, it’ll do,’ Mrs Mathieson said, coming forward and picking up the tattered parcel. ‘It’ll pass. I’ll take it up when we go. So your mum isn’t worrying about it.’

‘Sure you’re all right?’ Raymond asked.

‘I don’t feel very well. I need a sleep.’

‘Well, on you go up, lassie.’

Taking care to avoid his eyes, Lila moved past him to the stairs. He turned and watched her, stroking his moustache.

‘I’ll pour you a wee cup of tea and bring it up before I go.’

‘It’s all right, I just want to sleep.’

‘I won’t disturb you. I’ll leave it outside the door. Hot drink’s good for a throat.’

‘Oh, okay. Thank you. Maybe I should take some aspirin too.’

‘I’ll bring you some. Lizzie,’ he said, in a different voice. He was embarrassed.

‘What?’ Her heart was thumping. Did it show? How could he tell? Could he smell the whisky?

Mrs Mathieson smiled at him.

‘Lizzie,’ he went on, ‘I’m proud of you, lassie. You sing your best now, and I’ll see you later.’

Upstairs she dropped into sleep and was thrown out of it at intervals, hearing the sounds of trains and the waves of the sea and distressed cries. Shapes rose out of bright light and sank into darkness. She turned onto her back and tested her underarms again for the lumps—still there, more tender now—and she stroked her lips with one finger and found them warm and dry. Her mouth felt gluey. She assessed the ache between her legs and found it came back when she pressed herself, as if there were bones down there that were now bruised that she hadn’t known she had. The stinging had stopped but the heat in her face now seemed related to it; somehow that had more to do with it than the smear of blood on her knickers did, because nothing technical about what had happened was as important as what Joe had really done, which was to declare himself. She had been left in no doubt. Though he had got carried away (the way they will) he had not got carried quite all the way, and it was the greatest compliment that she aroused in him passion and respect equally. She lay in bed and imagined—or rather designed—the next time, which would take place magically without the obstruction of clothes and, she thought daringly, with more words from Joe, among which ‘passion’ and ‘respect’ would predominate.

She got up and went to the door and opened it. On the floor was a cup of tea, stone cold, a skin wrinkling its surface. There were aspirins in the saucer. Next to it was the blue and white Spode vase with another bunch of dark red and orange pansies in it. She picked them up and took them back to bed, placing the vase exactly where it had stood before. The cold tea was disgusting but she was parched again and drank it.
Thirsty work, eh?
Joe said. Her mind fought it. Her father had left the tea but he couldn’t have left the pansies, too. Or was it a coincidence that he had picked the very same flowers and put them in exactly the same vase as Joe had done the first time she had tonsillitis? It was Joe who, being of few words, left her flowers, smoothed her bed, brought her chocolates in a heart-shaped box. He did those things to tell her without words that he loved her.

She dozed for a while longer and woke to the sound of voices downstairs. Her head was clear. She smiled up at the ceiling, hearing Joe’s voice. Then it grew utterly quiet again. A mistake then, to think she had heard him.

But she got up and opened her door silently and stepped onto the landing. A disturbance of dust scurried and climbed and fell in the slant of light that bled down from the skylight in the attic stairwell. Joe was in the house. Lila could feel him somewhere near and if she wanted to she could sing out, shout his name and claim him. The forbidden things were permitted now.

More sounds came: of feet on the staircase below her and urgent laughter and someone falling against the wall. A lull, a murmur, and then the footsteps pounded upwards, nearer. One of the two voices was Joe’s. Lila darted back into her room and stood against the wall behind the door. She heard two people reach the top, breathless, drunk, excited; they must be holding one another up. As they lurched around on the landing Lila caught a sound that was animal, involuntary and male, and it was familiar but uttered out of place because it belonged—it could only belong—to what was theirs: to the afternoon, a car seat, their little survival raft on the wet shingle below the tip, their private wreckage, hers and Joe’s. The sound came again and this time it was more pressing. She heard two people stagger along the landing. A door opened but did not close.

That spare room door won’t close. It swings open.

You just need to push it till it clicks. I’ll tell him he just needs to push it hard.

Lila moved closer to the threshold of her own room and stood listening to the murmurs and smothered grunts of soft, mutual attack.

Shsh…doesn’t matter, come on…

You’re drunk…hey, all right…

She heard one voice arguing gently and then the other came, floating underneath it. Joe’s voice.

Yes, there’s time…I want you to, you want to…oh, yes. Joey likes that. You like that.

She crept forward a step or two and stood like a rock in the stillness. Joe’s voice reached out beyond the room.

Unnhh…oh. Oh, God.

As his voice grew louder she made herself look across the landing and through the angle of the open door of the room opposite.

She thought it was a wonder she did not scream. But later it seemed a greater wonder that as she shrank back into her room they did not start up and follow, alerted to her presence somehow, for how could they inflict such lethal agony and be unaware? The annihilation she felt going on inside her should make a noise of some kind. How could love bleed away so silently?

l
ater I leave the house dressed in Liù’s creamy silk clothes and over them her disguise, a rough grey cloak. I am wearing the slippers and the sharp cinders of the track help me remember her exile and feel my own.

I do not go to the farmhouse, or to the marquees behind the shed where the chorus are getting ready in a twitter of noise and excitement. I come here, to a spot just behind one of the black drapes at the side of the stage. I will wait here in the wings until it is time for me to go on. I will not speak to anyone, and all they will think is that I am too nervous. Let them. I’m wearing Liù’s white pure face and looking through her black-rimmed eyes and my mouth is her perfect red; nobody can tell that what I am is a solitary girl cornered in a dream from which she does not expect to wake.

Behind me the wings are crowding with the chorus of guards, Chinese peasants, executioners’ servants; chorus members and stage crew drift and form knots, whisper, giggle, tense up, preen. The noise from out front swells and swells. I peep out now and then to see how the shed is filling up. The place is nearly full. The chairs were set out neatly but the rows are growing ragged as people shift round to talk and turn seats sideways for a better view and sprawl for extra legroom. Under the lights, with the chatter and the passing of programmes, the place has the air of a huge and crowded waiting room.

The orchestra is in place tuning to the oboe although the oboe sounds not all it might be. Both the Bergsma sisters are sitting like upright seals in tight black evening dresses. Joanna has taken out her plaits and her hair is wound into an obedient French roll underneath a black evening toque with a curling feather and a diamante pin. From my hiding place in the wings I watch Willy as she cranes round to get a proper look at the audience with her good eye, presenting her décolletage from all angles and revealing a cluster of moles that hang on her neck like a family of Rice Krispies.

Uncle George has cut Act I by several minutes to get us straight into the story. In his version, instead of milling about in the crowd first while the chorus sings at length about the imminent execution of Turandot’s latest unlucky suitor, Timur and Liù appear on stage after a few minutes and we’re straight into the rising of the moon and my first aria,
‘Signore, ascolta!’
It’ll have more impact that way, Uncle George says. You’ll have them in the palm of your hand right from the off.

I notice that Timur—Alec Gallagher—is lurking behind me in the wings, ready for our entrance about twelve minutes into the first act. My eyes are sore but I can see across the stage to the wings opposite, from where Enid sends me a large, circling wave. Billy is next to her and I also make out Senga, who seems to have opted back into the chorus and stands with her arms folded, wearing a homemade wig of black wool. I long to rub my eyes but dare not upset the makeup. My father waves across too and gives me a double thumbs-up. Then he signals to the man operating the stage lights, who nods to the lad at the shed door, who checks with Uncle George, and then switches off, one by one, all the overhead lights. The stage is in darkness. In the twilight of the shed the audience settles, murmurs, coughs, falls silent. From the very front, down the length of the shed strides Uncle George in bowtie and tails, baton in hand, nodding around in a way that prompts rapturous applause. He mounts the podium and stands swaying foolishly and bows so low he nearly loses his balance. His mouth must be very dry; when he grins his lips do not return to their proper place, they stick to his teeth.