Tarnished (5 page)

But the voice recorder had cost thirty quid, and, even if she didn’t use it all that much, she had – partly out of the hate of waste she had also learned from Doll – elevated it to a sort of totemic level. If she wasn’t going to use it, at least it might provide a sort of prop to spur her on. So she kept it constantly in her pocket, more to stroke than to use.

Her breathing took on the rhythm of the train, then grew slower and deeper. Almost magically, the boy’s horrible music became little more than a background hum: hardly troubling at all.

She felt the recorder’s comforting weight in her pocket. From a position of scepticism about the process, she had now moved on to holding out great hope. She even had an idea it might be starting to work. Not that she felt any more defined, but her childhood – which had been a foreign land to her – had started, albeit tentatively, to reveal itself.

She took out her red notebook and started to write.

Then

‘I was a nurse in the war.’

This is another of Nan’s stories.

I’m about eight, I suppose, and again she’s tucked up beside me in my bed.

‘I was a nurse in the war,’ she says, her voice rumbling in my ear. I’m resting my head on her chest, and her arm is round me. It’s so comforting, this feeling. Anything could happen, but I’m safe against my nan, here in my little attic bedroom with its stars on the walls which are also ceiling.

‘I was a nurse in the war. I was younger than I should have been when I signed up for the training. I loved it, Meggy. They saw how excellent I was as a nurse, so very soon they put me into surgical, and I was in theatre throughout all the bombings, helping with all the poor boys back from the front and the people burned in the Blitz. We mended people whose whole bodies were covered in burns, put smashed jaws back together, cut off blood-poisoned legs.’

‘Yerk,’ I go.

‘You see this?’

She pulls a hair from her head and holds it up in front of me.

‘My hair is very fine, see. And it was long back then, too – I had it pinned up most of the time under my hat. It was perfect for stitching up the delicate work on the nerves and such. They sterilised it first, of course. Keep the germs off.’

‘Would mine work for stitches?’ I ask Nan, pulling out one of my own hairs and holding it up against her straight one.

‘Yours is much thicker than mine, see, and a bit curly.’ She holds them up together and I see that she’s right.

‘Oh,’ I say, disappointed.

‘But never mind,’ Nan says. ‘They could have used yours for the outside skin, where they needed really strong thread to stop it bursting open.’

I wind my hair tightly round my finger. She’s right. It’s really strong. So strong it makes the tip go white.

‘Did you get to be a doctor in the end?’ I ask Nan, thinking that’s how it goes: you work your way up through nursing then you become a doctor.

‘No, dear. Girls weren’t doctors back then. Not girls like me, anyway. You had to be posh. But I’d have
loved
to have been a doctor. I could have been. I worked hard at it, you know.

‘At the end of each day I’d sit up at the desk in the nurse’s dorm and write down in my Commonplace what I’d seen being done, with diagrams and that. It’s like I always say to you, Meggy. If you want to remember something, write it down. By the end of the war, if the surgeon had dropped down dead in the middle of an operation, I’d have been able to step in and finish it off!’

‘So why aren’t you a nurse any more, then?’ I ask.

‘Oh, I’m much too old now to be anything,’ Nan says. ‘And of course we girls didn’t work back in those days after we got married.’

‘That’s not fair,’ I say.

‘But we had to look after our husbands and children,’ Nan says. ‘And quite right too. It’s better than nowadays, when everyone feels the need to go out and work all the time and dump the poor children with strangers.’

‘But your nursing comes in handy with Aunty Jean, doesn’t it?’ I say.

‘Oh yes. It comes in very handy,’ Nan says. ‘I’m lucky I’ve got her, and she’s lucky she’s got me.’

‘And I’m lucky I’ve got both of you,’ I say, squeezing her tight.

Four

Much later, Peg stood under the restaurant awning at Seed – the first vegan fine-dining restaurant in the West End – stamping her cold feet on the hard pavement, waiting for Loz’s shift to end.

She needed to talk.

From behind the cover of a baytree in a chained planter, she watched Gemma the Kiwi waitress as she wearily toured the dining room, blowing out candles and putting chairs upside down on tables ready for the cleaner in the morning. Gemma was pretty, like a little imp, but tonight she looked exhausted. Even though it was only a November Wednesday, the party season had already begun to kick in. Seed’s owner Cara was working the staff into the ground, and every night Loz staggered home with news of mutinous rumbles in the kitchen.

Peg chided herself: she should have just gone home and not bothered turning up at the restaurant. Poor Loz would be knackered. All she would be wanting after a night in the kitchen would be to cycle home quickly and quietly, then to shower and slip into bed. Why on earth should she want to be loaded up with Peg’s family baggage?

She was just thinking about quietly turning away to get the bus home when Loz appeared, coming out of the back store-cupboard and into the open-plan kitchen, looking as fresh as if she had just jumped out of bed on a good morning. She stopped and had a brief word with Gemma, who seemed to be apologising for something. Loz playfully tapped her knuckles on the weary waitress’s arm, then kissed her lightly on the cheek.

Peg was astounded by the flash of jealousy that grasped at her belly, rising and sticking in her throat. For a second she wanted to storm in and knock that Gemma flat to the ground. But she was being ridiculous. Loz was like that. She was a toucher, a kisser.

Rummaging in her bag for her bike-lock keys, Loz slid back the latch on the restaurant door and stepped out into the street, ready to cross the road to the cycle rack. But then she looked up and saw Peg standing there, right in front of her.

Without a beat, delight flooded her face. She reached up, took Peg’s face in her hands and kissed her full on the lips.

‘Peggo! How lovely! How are you? Fancy a drink? How’s poor Dolly?’

I am an idiot to doubt her, Peg thought, as Loz fetched her bike and they set off for the dingy little late-night drinking club.

A fucking idiot.

‘You’re such a
good
girl,’ Loz yelled as she placed two pints on the table in front of Peg. ‘You’re so
responsible
.’

‘There’s no one else.’

‘There’s social services.’

‘What?’ It was hard to hear what she was saying over the loud music thumping from the dance floor.

‘There’s social services,’ Loz said, sliding into the seat and putting her mouth up close to Peg’s ear.

‘She’d never have it. Charity, she calls it. And look: Julie’s great, but she’s always in a rush. Four other clients besides Jean and she has to get all of them up, all of them fed, all of them changed. It’s not a system for human beings.’

‘What other choice is there, though?’

‘I don’t know,’ Peg said, yawning and rubbing her fingers through her hair. ‘I could move back in with them?’

Loz snorted. Then she saw the look on Peg’s face.

‘You’re not serious?’

The club was the attic floor of a tall building down a greasy alley off Old Compton Street. It didn’t advertise itself – there wasn’t even a sign on the wall outside, just a discreet entry phone buzzer into which you whispered the current password. It was noisy, drab and dark, the floor was permanently sticky and, winter or summer, the whole place sweltered. But it stayed open till four and charged pub prices so didn’t really have to try all that hard. It was always busy, crammed with actors and restaurant staff letting off steam after a night’s work.

‘Yes. No. I don’t know,’ Peg said.

Loz bit her lip and looked away. Then she turned back to Peg and levelled her fierce green eyes at her.

‘Listen, Peg. You’ve had a rough time of it, a grim little childhood,’

‘It wasn’t
that
grim.’

‘How do you know? You’ve got great blank bits.’

‘I forgot.’ Peg smiled at her own weak joke.

‘Anything could have happened. And usually if you can’t remember something . . .’

‘I know. “You’re repressing something.”’

‘My momma knows, you know.’

‘But—’

‘No buts. I know it.’ Loz winked and wagged a stern finger at her. ‘Anything come to light yet, with the old “look into my eyes” thing?’

‘Not a lot yet. Only that I can’t remember my mother, which I knew anyway. And some stuff about Nan, but that’s hardly relevant.’

‘You’ve got to dig deep,’ Loz said. ‘Time will help, and other platitudes.’ She took a swig of her pint then laced her fingers with Peg’s. ‘But don’t move back in with them, Peggo. Don’t be such a wet blanket. They’re adults. One’s old and one’s disabled, but your responsibility stops with sorting them out with the best care you can find for them. You can’t do anything more than that. You have to live
your
life. It’s your turn now.’

‘But council care’s not good enough, and they can’t afford anything else. They’re as skint as we are.’

‘But
someone
isn’t skint,’ Loz said, sitting back and crossing her arms.

‘What do you mean?’

Loz muttered something that Peg couldn’t hear.

‘What?’ Peg said.

‘God, you’re so dense sometimes. I need a fag. Coming outside?’

They put their coats back on and went out on to the club’s roof terrace, high above the Soho streets, where they stood shivering while Loz rolled a cigarette.

‘You know who I mean,’ Loz said at last, exhaling.

Peg matched the effect with the steam coming out of her own warm mouth into the cold night. Growing up in a bungalow full of stale cigarette fumes and dodgy lungs had rendered the idea of smoking herself utterly unappealing.

‘Look,’ she said. ‘I’ve got no idea where my father is and he doesn’t want anything to do with us anyway.’

‘How do you know that?’ Loz said. ‘HOW DO YOU KNOW THAT?’

‘He could be dead for all I know.’

‘And he could be alive and wondering about you.’

Peg shook her head, drew her hands tight round herself and looked away. The noise from inside the bar – Beyoncé’s ‘Crazy in Love’
,
almost entirely drowned by party-level shouting and laughter – made her feel like her head was going to explode. Loz leaned back on the parapet and looked at her, piling on the pressure with her extraordinary eyes.

‘And anyway, who’s to say he’s got money?’ Peg said at last.

‘He paid for that fancy-pants school of yours.’

‘That’s not definite.’ Peg tried to avoid Loz’s gaze.

‘You know he did.’

Peg shrugged.

‘See what I mean about being such a good little Meggy? Doll tells you
once
that asking who was paying was prying and your brain shuts down and you don’t ask
ever again
. For fuck’s sake! Look: I love you so much, Peg, but sometimes you drive me mad. You just always assume that everything’s going to be too difficult, so you never even try. You never even
try
to make things better.’

‘But things
are
so difficult,’ Peg said, fighting to stay in control, feeling the tears pricking at her eyes. The metallic tang of the cold London night seeped into her bones, making her feel so alone, despite Loz being right beside her. ‘And I
have
tried. I’ve looked for him. I’ve searched the Internet for him, but he’s nowhere. And if I did find him, then what? He’s hardly going to be delighted, me tracking him down. If he knows where Nan is – which he does – then he knows where
I
am. If he hasn’t found me, then he doesn’t want to find me.’

‘Jesus.’ Loz flung her cigarette over the wall and Peg hoped it wasn’t going to land on someone’s head in the street below. ‘
He’s
the one in the wrong, not you. Don’t you think it’s time he took some responsibility – for his mother at least, if not for you? He deserted you. I’m ninety-five per cent certain he’s at the root of why you feel so lost. He
deserves
to pay.’

‘It’s not like that,’ Peg said, hugging herself and gazing at the silent, sodium-lit street below, her eyes fogged with freezing tears.

Loz put both hands on Peg’s shoulders and pulled her round to face her. ‘If you go back to Tankerton, to your little room under the roof in the tiny bungalow, you’ll have let him off the hook, won’t you? It’ll be the end of you and the end of us. You’ll be like some sad old spinster, looking after sick elderly relatives, “never once thinking of meself”. Well, listen, Peg. If you’re going to get anywhere at all in your little don’t-worry-about-me life, you’re going to have to start putting yourself first. You need to find your father and look after Peg.’ She jabbed a finger at Peg’s chest. ‘Harsh but true.’

‘But—’

‘But what?’ Loz stood, and clicked her fingers repeatedly, waiting for it.

‘But I don’t know who that is.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I don’t know who “Peg” is.’ And, despite all her best intentions of holding back, she burst into tears.

‘Fuck’s sake, girl, c’mere,’ Loz said at last. She reached up, took her in her strong, wiry arms and let her cry there, holding her face against her nicotine-scented sleeve, until there were no tears left.

As she usually did when heading home with Peg, Loz left her bike tucked indoors, locked to the bottom of the stairs that led up to the club, with the arrangement that she would pick it up the following night.

As the chilly night-bus rattled through the deserted, diesel-scented South London streets, Peg told Loz the Keith story.

‘And they never mentioned him before?’ Loz said, astounded, her mouth open.

‘Not once,’ Peg said, looking at a pink bra that had somehow found its way on to the top of a bus shelter and wondering if it had been thrown from the ground or a passing bus, and whether the owner of the bra had been upset or in on the joke. ‘Well not that I remember, of course, given the gaps. I don’t suppose it’s the kind of thing you talk about all that much.’ She cradled the voice recorder in her pocket. It hadn’t occurred to her until now that she might have been told and had forgotten.