Crow face doll face, p.14
Crow Face, Doll Face, page 14
Kitty nudged Leila slightly with the tip of her elbow and they peeled away from each other in perfect unity, each dancing across the stage and then back to the centre, ankles kicking out from the knee joint like prancing ponies. Their hands rested with mannequin stiffness on their not-yet hips. The performance was no worse than anything else I’d seen tonight, a cute enough routine, but I was somehow disappointed. Was this what I’d spent hours knitting and sewing for? Was this why I’d left the house this evening? I’d expected better.
When they came back together they were perfectly still for a moment, eyes locked. I wasn’t sure if it was momentary hesitation or dramatic pause. Then Leila spun around so that she was facing away from her sister and Kitty half crouched behind her, holding her arms out rigid, her hands palm up. Leila lifted a leg gropingly and planted a foot on Kitty’s palm, swaying slightly to keep her balance. My senses were flooded with the smells of sun-warmed moss and cheap lager, the sleepy contentment of an afternoon spring picnic. I knew what they were going to do, and if it was a magic trick that had seemed impossible back then it was surely beyond impossible now, with my stolid Leila as tall as her petite sister and probably not weighing much less.
Peter and I had not seen the preliminary effort that had gone into the trick those years ago, hidden as the girls had been behind their screen of coat, and I winced for them now and wished the graceless scaffolding could have been similarly concealed tonight. Kitty grunted as she took Leila’s lopsided weight, her face contorted with strain. Her arms dipped before rising and straightening again, her elbows now pulled into her sides to shorten her reach and reduce the pressure. Leila’s struggle to step up and back had her flailing for a second, her hands a pinwheeling blur before she found her balance. The whole thing was creaky and slow. I could feel the collective wrist-jerk of people checking their watches in the rows behind me, all of them feeling as though they’d been sitting in the hall for days now, all wondering how much longer before they could go home.
Once Leila was atop her palms, Kitty straightened carefully and the pair of them stood, tiered and stiff-limbed. Kitty turned her head to face the audience and grinned. I could see the tremble in her shoulders and grimaced for her, imagining the pain. The lipstick had smeared over her teeth in bloody clots and she looked vampiric. I was still leaning forward but not with alarm now; I wanted to watch every movement of their magic trick and finally work it out, lay the years-long puzzle to rest.
It was over quickly. Kitty tried to raise her arms but couldn’t lift them more than a couple of inches. I saw her face falter into childish dismay, a ripple of panic across her brow as she wondered how much longer she’d be able to support Leila. I saw her hiss something urgent to her sister, I saw the desperation and I hoped nobody else had. Leila let out a throbbing battle cry – clever girl, let the audience think this is all part of the show – flung her arms upwards, and then leapt as high as she could into the air, tumbling Kitty backwards. She bounced lightly on the balls of her feet as she landed and then flipped neatly into a handstand. The hat fell off as she walked a few steps this way and that, legs a pair of scissors slicing the air, and then she flipped herself back onto her feet. She swept the hat up and onto her head, jigged back to Kitty who had recovered her feet and her poise. They clasped hands and turned to the rows of shadowy adults who fidgeted before them.
The applause was heartfelt and enthusiastic. The collective relief at what surely had to be the finale brought people surging to their feet. Some still clapped but others began to swipe around them for gloves and handbags, plunging fists in pockets to rattle car keys. I stayed seated, gripping my shins with brittle fingers and rocking myself back and forth. I had eyes for nothing else but my two girls, curtseying now and giggling at the reception they were receiving. The other performers skipped alongside to join them, teachers hovering discreetly in the background. There were pats on the back and whoops, cries of Mummy! from the smaller children. Parents waved and called their offspring down from the stage, taking matters into their own hands, ignoring the too-soft speech one of the teachers was attempting to make, the flimsy piece of paper trembling in the breeze of rushing bodies.
I sat alone, the hall emptying around me, and waited for Kitty and Leila as they ran around and made a banquet of their last moments of fame, hugging a straggle of classmates and teachers, losing their hats and gathering them up again, shaking them above their heads to make the bells protest. They’d turn to point at me every so often – See! We do have a mother! – and I’d lift a hand to acknowledge the attention, but I didn’t try standing up. I was exhausted now, trembling with cold. I thought I’d have to take a crowbar to my sweat-stiffened blouse to prise it away from my body when it came to bedtime. The walk home would be hard, but the fire would still be glowing and there’d be hot chocolate and biscuits. I watched them dashing around, disappearing to fetch their coats and then reappearing, Kitty’s mouth now wiped clean of that gruesome lipstick.
I was glad I’d come, despite the fear I had that the effort would mean a week or more confined to bed, clasping myself close to stay anchored. It had stunned me, seeing my daughters toiling through their magic trick, watching them struggle as anyone would struggle with a feat that defied logic or capability. But it shouldn’t have been a struggle for them, as special as they were. It wouldn’t have been, if they were really so special.
I’d thought I’d witnessed true magic that day in the woods. I’d thought I’d seen Leila float up from the loving platform of her sister’s palms, sunlight searing a halo beneath her, and then land again as if she were weightless or winged. And Leila’s night-time disappearances from her cot; their mind-reading duets of songs they couldn’t possibly have ever heard. Their shared pain when one of them was hurt. Together, they’d always achieved something they wouldn’t have been able to achieve apart, because they were special. We’d none of us ever spoken about it – Peter had just made laughing, dismissive comments the couple of times I’d raised the subject with him in private, had tipped an imaginary can to his lips and reeled a little on his feet, raised his eyebrows at me. But then the fortune teller had visited and told me, urgently, that they were special and needed protecting. I’d accepted the blessing and the curse of having these strange, otherworldly daughters under my protection.
But maybe they were just ordinary little girls. Maybe I’d been wrong and there was nothing magical about them after all. Maybe letting them abandon Elsa on our way to our new home – for their own good, to keep them safe – hadn’t been the vital, necessary act they had led me to believe at the time. Maybe it had been a normal act of casual, childhood cruelty. And maybe my need for them to be special was a part of this mess that was now my life.
There was such relief in letting go of this version of them; in accepting them honestly for what they were and not what I’d thought they might be.
How I would come to terms with it, how I would be able to digest the queasy realisation that I’d based so many decisions on a belief that they were extraordinary, and it had been my role to protect that; I wouldn’t think about that now.
I finally stood and pulled my coat on, stumbling again and again as I threaded through the chairs, blinkered by a nauseous yearning for home and trying for as direct a line as possible to the exit door. Kitty and Leila appeared either side of me and took my elbows, helping me stay on my feet. They swung my arms lightly and led me outside, steered us all past the green and the angry growl of stranded cars. Away from the glow of the village, back down the dark lane towards our cottage, the pair of them chattering all the way. I was silent, letting them tow me, trusting them to get us all safely home. With every step I was lighter, my spine straighter. The horror of my depression flaked from me and floated off to lie on the lane, flake after flake, until there was more of it strewn behind me than left clinging to my skin. Still heartsore, yes, still grieving, but able now to do something about that. I was going to fetch my girl home. As I’d warned Peter I would.
The fire was still glowing when we walked into the living room, the room warm and cosy. I rested the milk pan on the gas ring of the cooker and made us all hot chocolate, standing alone in the kitchen while it heated, staring into and past the negative print of my reflection thrown back from the blank window. Then I curled up in my armchair by the fire and listened to their joyful rehashing of the night, smiling over my steaming mug as I watched them. They didn’t mention their failure to achieve once more what I’d thought they’d achieved in the woods long ago, they seemed to have forgotten all about that. I briefly considered reminding them, gently prodding to see how they’d react, but I didn’t want to embarrass them or make them think I was less than fulsomely proud.
When I asked if they wanted to take baths and change into their pyjamas, they insisted on staying in their costumes for the rest of the night. I left them in front of the television while I went upstairs and ran a bath for myself. It was only after I’d slipped into the hot froth of bubbles and begun to rub shampoo into my hair that I realised this was the first bath in weeks that I’d drawn for myself. I shampooed my hair, rinsed, then lay back and reached an arm to pull the bathroom door ajar. I let in nothing but a rush of chilly air, though I was half-expecting to reveal the watchful figures of two ordinary little girls – not magical at all – haunting the landing. Ready with a towel and my dressing gown, working together with nods and gestures to guide me safely out onto the scarred linoleum and help me back to bed.
I closed my eyes and listened. The faint tinkling of bells rose above the drone of the television, and I could picture them perfectly: hot-chocolate moustaches shadowing their upper lips, hand in hand and nodding sleepily on the sag of the sofa, allowed at last to just be two little jesters relaxing on a Friday evening, taking a break from their duties.
FETCHING ELSA HOME
When we reached the outskirts of the town where I’d spent most of my life, I pressed my nose to the bus window and watched the familiar streets slide past. There, at the far end of that side road, was my mother’s house. I briefly glimpsed her front lawn, a stick figure standing gaunt and dark against the flaming autumn sky, coat flapping around her stooped frame, before the sight of it was snatched away and replaced by other houses, other paths leading to other front doors.
And there on the right was the park where I’d taken all the children a week or so before we left. The last time I’d seen Julian. It looked different somehow, the gates a bright bottle green as opposed to the peeling pale blue of memory. And had that stone statue of some long-dead man always swaggered at the entrance? So many things I’d never fully noticed until I moved away and returned as a visitor. As an outsider.
I was going back to get Elsa, maybe Julian too if he’d come – though I knew deep down that he wouldn’t ever contemplate giving up his plush life for our humble one. I was feeling strong now, more than capable of taking on Peter and the Spanish widow. I’d give Elsa the choice to stay with them, I’d negotiate with Peter if I had to – threaten to expose his criminal record if I had to – but I wasn’t going to leave without her. And I knew she’d come with me, because I was her mother, and in my home was where she belonged.
Kitty and Leila didn’t know where I was or what I was doing; Joshua was with them and had promised to look after them until I got home. He didn’t know what I was doing either. He didn’t even know I had another daughter.
We swept on through roads busier and louder than I remembered them being, stop-starting past lines of shops, pausing for a few long moments to let people on and off at the wide sweep of worn grass that skirted the neck of the estate where we’d all lived as a family. My once-home. I couldn’t see our old house, it was buried deep inside the tangle of cul-de-sacs and tarmac offshoots that made up this vast estate, and I didn’t think I wanted to. If it had been ruined by successive tenants, the cherry tree felled or the dainty nets and curtains I’d had to leave behind replaced with those ugly functional blinds that seemed to be so popular now, I would have cried.
We’d left so much, cramming years of family life into as many bags and cases as we could carry between us, taking just the essentials – mugs and bed sheets, cutlery and towels – and those things of such sentimental value they couldn’t be abandoned; me cravenly promising the girls we’d be back for the rest of it next weekend and persuading them to set aside this or that toy just for now, I haven’t seen you play with it for weeks. I’d left the house neat and tidy, everything I deemed non-essential packed into cardboard boxes and labelled in helpful felt tip; boxes and boxes piled in every room.
I’d opened the gate to the chicken pen on that last morning, just before we walked to catch the bus, pouring seed in a thick trail out across the garden in loops and zigzags so Clara, Bess and Stella would have plenty of food to see them through until they worked out what to do with their freedom.
I wondered what had happened to it all, the rugs and vases and cushions, the cabinet my father had made, and the pink wicker laundry basket that was always so stuffed full of clothes I’d never seen it fully closed. Had the council stored it all in some locked shed somewhere, or given it to Peter, or simply left it there for the next family to make use of? Maybe they had a policy where they took everything to the tip after a week, regardless of value, and shovelled it out of the back of the lorry into a hectic pile of torn fabric and chipped china, for strangers to pick over and decide whether anything was worth saving from its landfill destination.
There were fields at my side now, flowing in ripe, muddy patches, lapping at the edges of the concrete. The sun bled its colours into the horizon, dripping them over the river as we crossed the bypass and turned inwards, heading back into the snarl of streets.
The roads on this side of town were wider and smoother, the rows of houses set further back. I didn’t really know the area, hadn’t ever had a reason to visit. Just once, one lonely weekend without any of the children, I’d braved the unfamiliar bus route and scurried timidly around the estate where Peter now lived with that woman, ravenous to see his new home for myself. It had taken an age to find the right property, crisscrossing a warren of cul-de-sacs and terraces, checking house numbers and then doubling back, retracing my steps and striking out again. Hunching into the collar of my cardigan, head down and face turned away, when a car passed. I’d imagined an estate similar to ours, maybe slightly more well-heeled but the same in essence. But there were no bus stops here, no strips of common land bookended with makeshift football goals. No grey-pink discs of spat bubblegum studding the pavements.
I’d counted four caravans on one small stretch of road alone, each bigger and more gleaming than the one that came before; driveways and garages jutted from the sides of properties. One small bungalow had had a stone lion two-foot high guarding the front step. Its expression was fierce but its very presence, a wild toothy roar beside such a diminutive property, lent it a shame-faced air. As I’d stopped to stare, I’d felt as bitter and inadequate as I knew my mother had felt every day of her married life, envying the neighbours who replaced their draughty windows with double-glazed ones, insisting the front fence was freshly painted every spring and autumn, the hinges oiled so that people could ease silently through. The pots of garish begonias she’d placed on every sill, and that shining fence, they were her equivalent of these caravans and double garages and ostentatious garden ornaments.
When I’d finally found the right row of houses – a small crescent tucked at the far end of the estate – I hadn’t been able to get close because Peter and Julian were out on the driveway cleaning the car. I’d huddled behind a bush and gazed at them for a few minutes as they wielded a hose and bent to pull huge dripping sponges from buckets. Beyond them, the house had stood sealed against the afternoon and prying eyes, the windows (double-glazed) closed and decorated with nets frothy as waterfalls. There had been a strange construction by the side door, a kind of wooden slatted porch partly covered with climbing plants. Beneath it had stood four cushioned armchairs, a table covered with a cloth the colour of sunshine. I’d felt that quick, vicious envy again, imagined myself relaxing in one of the chairs with a glass of iced squash or a lager while a tumble dryer churned somewhere indoors to spare me the sight of my own underwear drying on the line.
I got off the bus now and thanked the driver as I passed him, stared greedily into the faces of a gang of young men who crowded around me and jostled past, calling to each other loudly. None of them was Julian. I knew I’d be able to recognise him instantly – even across a crowded street. I’d feel that crimp in my womb from just a glimpse of his profile among a sea of other teenage boys. With my eyes shut, I thought, I’d be able to smell you, claim you as mine. Don’t ever forget that.
One of the group bumped against me and turned quickly to mutter an apology, head ducked down contritely. I wanted to frame his scratchy cheeks in my palms and kiss his face, tell him he was loved, but I just nodded quickly in acknowledgement and moved away. I stood on the pavement and watched as they swarmed onto the bus, claiming the back seats as theirs, lighting cigarettes and passing them around. The bus pulled away, the driver sour-faced and eyeing them in the rear-view mirror as he joined the line of traffic.
The sun had disappeared, the sky purpling with twilight and wide as a lake above me as I trudged through the estate and peered at signs to get my bearings. A fox darted past, sliding me a sideways look. I stopped to watch it burn its way along the street and remembered with a sudden, sharp pang the magical morning we’d freed our own fox from its tangled net, just after we’d moved. Those moments during that dawn rescue had gleamed with goodness, a sense of shared joy. There had been a rightness to everything we did, me and the girls, working together to save that small life.
