Kissing Alice Page 17

  He sat back. Maggie had stopped her dance and was silent. A blackbird sang in the hedge by the window. He could hear the stutter of his own breathing. And then, with his fingers drumming a hornpipe on the worn arms of his chair, he read for the first time the love letter that was inked into the blank paper of the book. When he had finished, he read it again, sitting in the dimming light by the bay window of the sitting room and, later, when he had eaten his toast and drunk his tea, he read it sitting on the stool by the draining board and then again, before bed, although he did not take it into the bedroom with him.

  Florrie never had the words for such a thing, he knew that, even before he saw her sister’s name signed at the bottom. Alice. It was written with a flourish, bold, the ends of the letters peeling away like promises. Eddie ran his finger over the shape of it and tried to find a face to match, but he could not picture her. He had last seen her over twenty years ago, picking at the curls of wedding-cake icing, her eyes down, quiet, her face turned away. Now all he could summon was a sense of her, something like a taste, and the words she had once tempted him with on their walk around the reservoir. These were still bright.

  That Alice had written to him in this way was somehow not a surprise. But the anger and regret of not having known about it until now kept Eddie awake, gloating in his half-dreams and tossing him towards morning in the tangled sheets. The thought that he might have lived the years differently tormented him. He whimpered in the dawn hours at the unkindness of fate and found many ways to blame Florrie.

  ‘Did you ever hear, Mags, what became of your Auntie Alice?’ he asked his daughter fiercely the next day, not entirely sure that Maggie, too, was not guilty somehow.

  Maggie was sitting on the kitchen stool, peeling an apple and swinging her legs. She was more surprised by his tone than by the question. She tugged at the rising hem of her skirt, presuming that might be something to do with it. ‘She wasn’t at the funeral,’ she said, ‘nor at Nanny’s.’

  ‘She wasn’t,’ said Eddie. ‘But maybe she’s not well. Or maybe she’s dead herself. I’ve not heard anything of her all these years. I just didn’t know whether your mother—’

  Maggie interrupted. ‘She’s not dead, Dad. She’s just peculiar. That’s what Nanny said. With all the… you know.’

  Her shoulders and eyebrows flicked, but Eddie did not understand the code. It had been like this since the moment he had stepped on shore for the final time, Florrie waiting for him at the dock with Maggie alongside, always somehow daring him to catch up. He had to ask.

  ‘All the what? What do you mean?’

  ‘She’s had a lot of men,’ muttered Maggie, blushing, and slicing into the apple.

  Eddie looked away. ‘Oh, I see.’

  ‘They used to talk about them.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Mum and Nanny and Auntie Mary. They said there were all sorts – some of them were, you know, darkies, foreign, sailors.’ Maggie saw no incongruity in this. ‘It’s disgusting, that’s what Auntie Mary says. Auntie Alice threw herself away, that’s what she says, getting mixed up with people like that.’

  ‘But you never saw any of them?’

  ‘The men? Dad! How would I see the men? I’ve never even seen Auntie Alice. It’s just things I heard, at Nanny’s funeral – before Mum died. And anyway, you wouldn’t want to, would you?’

  Again, Eddie did not understand. ‘Wouldn’t want what?’

  ‘To see them. Or her. Not after that. Not a woman like that.’ Maggie was sure of this. She slid off the stool. ‘Why do you want to know for?’

  ‘I just wondered,’ said Eddie, cowed by her certainty.

  He could have just torn Alice’s letter from the book, but he wanted to make a neat job of it. So later that morning, when Maggie had gone off to the post office where she had started work, he took it out to the pebble-dashed shed in the shadowed, green-walled corner of the yard, and he cleared a space for it on the workbench. In the bright strip lighting of the shed, it took him some time to uncut the binding and ease back the cover. He worked slowly, with careful precision, using a magnifying glass to bring close the weft of the stitches. More than once he changed the blade on his knife to be sure of slicing cleanly. He was surprised at the quality of the workmanship. It pleased him. He enjoyed the dissection.

  The pages fell loosely on to the workbench, releasing the accumulated dust of quiet years. He separated the one at the front on which the letter was written and cut carefully between the small pin-prick holes where the stitches had been, joining them with sharp-pointed scissors like dot-to-dot and finally cutting the sheet into perfect halves. He put the letter on to the window ledge, making room between a packet of cabbage seeds and a jar half-full of turpentine. Then he spent a long time scrupulously collecting together the rest of the loose pages and putting them in order. When they were done he stacked them at the end of the workbench and covered them with a cloth. He had enjoyed being so close to the book and had touched it with tenderness. It was a beautiful thing, even in pieces.

  He took the separated letter inside. He put the kettle on the stove to boil, switched on the radio for the lunchtime news, rolled himself a cigarette, and then read it again. The voice he heard speaking the lines was breathy and light. He did not know if it was Alice’s, but it made the words pulse and sparkle, and he read them over and over, their meaning dissolving even as they became written into him, the kettle singing on the hob, his head throbbing and his hand pumping hard inside the flies of his trousers until he was completely free of Florrie.

  Eddie climbed the hill from the dockyard, the wind from the sea on his back. He had the evening paper rolled in his hand and a new tin of tobacco in his pocket. He nodded at the neighbours and stopped on the front path to pick up a scrap of litter that had wedged itself into a gap in the paving. It was only when he felt the scratch of the key against the lock that he got a tingle of nerves.

  ‘I’m going to find your Auntie Alice,’ he said to Maggie, as soon as they were quiet together. They were watching tele vision, though Eddie had the newspaper open too on the arm of his chair and Maggie, her legs bent underneath her, was picking at something on her bare knee. ‘In case she doesn’t know. She needs to know, my love. She’s Florrie’s sister, after all. Family. It’s only right she knows that your mother’s dead.’

  It made Maggie look up, but she didn’t say anything. Eddie saw the shadow of Florrie around her eyes.

  ‘It’ll be a shock to her; it’ll be strange – I know that,’ he went on. ‘And there’s Queenie May, too. She may not even know her mother’s dead. But anyway, I think it’s only right, you see.’

  Maggie went back to her worn knee. Eddie’s hands trembled.

  ‘Well then? What do you think, Mags?’

  She looked across at him. There was the intimation, suddenly, of all the things she might want to say, but she did not have the courage to begin and her eyes flopped from his face.

  ‘You’ll never find her. She’s not been heard of for years. What can you do, go to the police?’

  ‘I’ll look her up in the phone book,’ said Eddie.

  But Alice lived away from the sea now, in a small estate of prefabs on the edge of the moors, so she was not in the Plymouth city phone book that Eddie consulted at the library. There were no other Craythornes listed.

  ‘Are there other ways of tracing people? Family,’ Eddie asked the high-haired librarian behind the counter.

  She looked at him for a moment before deciding there was nothing unpleasant about the question.

  ‘There’re war records,’ she said, ‘if it was someone who fought or died in the war. And there’s the electoral roll, but you’d have to have an idea whereabouts they might be. If you know the parish, for example. And it’s only any good for people registered to vote, so…’

  ‘I don’t suppose she’s done that. From what I’ve heard,’ said Eddie.

  The librarian nodded. ‘If someone doesn’t want to be found…’ she said.
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  Eddie nodded back, without actually agreeing. ‘I could hire a private detective,’ he joked.

  The librarian laughed, bubbling spit through her teeth. She picked up the directory and turned to take it through to the back room. ‘Good luck,’ she said, over her shoulder.

  Eddie did not, of course, hire a private detective. He would not have known how to do such a thing. But over the months that followed, he consulted the electoral roll; the war records (just in case); Queenie May’s old friends and neighbours; the former teacher at the girls’ school (who was too sick to remember anything); and the registers for all the parishes he could think of within a reasonable radius. When nothing came of these he had to ask Mary.

  ‘Oh my good Lord, Eddie. What are you bothering with that for now?’ was the first thing Mary said, taking his coat from him and shaking it, though it was a clear dry day. She steered him through to the lounge.

  ‘Charlie and the boys are out, cycling,’ she said then, as if the thing about Alice was decided and there was nothing more to say. ‘You can stay though, if you like, and wait for them. They won’t be long.’ She smiled hard at him, her eyes fixed diligently above his head.

  ‘It’s all right. I just called by, quickly, to ask about Alice, that’s all. I won’t wait.’

  Eddie reached out a hand as if to lean on the fireplace, but immediately felt it odd, like standing at a public bar, and pulled back his arm uncertainly in mid-air. The clock ticked loudly from its niche in the stone-clad wall that twisted up from the electric fire. It insisted on drawing Eddie in.

  ‘Is that new, Mary, the fireplace?’

  Mary blushed. ‘A friend of Charlie’s did it for us,’ she said and just for a moment settled a flicking gaze on her brother-in-law.

  ‘It’s nice,’ Eddie said.

  Mary touched one of the grey-green bricks lightly with her hand. ‘It’s granite,’ she said. ‘Real stone, polished up.’

  ‘Is it? It’s nice.’

  ‘There’s a lot you can do, these days.’

  Eddie nodded. He wanted to leave. He could not tell her about the book or the letter in case she judged him by it. ‘Well, then, if there’s nothing… about Alice. If you can’t help…’

  Mary smiled again. ‘There’s nothing to say, Eddie. You know it all. Alice left home not long after you and Florrie were married, and that was it. She never bothered with me, or with Charlie and the boys; never came round or wrote or anything. At first Ma worried herself sick. She thought she’d had an asthma attack somewhere in some backstreet, but then we heard things – we heard she’d been seen with a man, doing something, behind a rock at Jennycliffe… Well, what can you do then?’

  Eddie did not know if he was expected to answer. ‘Something must have set her off,’ he said, hoping it was enough.

  ‘I think you can tell these things,’ said Mary. ‘I think you know when someone’s like that. Especially family. I think it shows.’

  ‘I meant something must have made her leave,’ said Eddie. He touched the edge of the fireplace. The stone was unexpectedly warm.

  Watching him, Mary reached out a hand as though to hold him back.

  ‘Is it local?’ Eddie asked, seeing the hand. ‘It looks local. From up on Dartmoor.’

  Mary retreated. ‘No one made her. She left. Just like that,’ she said. ‘She just went away.’

  ‘And you and Florrie, you never…’ He didn’t want to sound critical. ‘You didn’t try to find her? You never heard anything from her?’

  Mary shook her head. ‘She was a dirty slut, you know,’ she said firmly.

  Again, Eddie nodded. What Mary said did not surprise him. From what he could remember of Alice, he thought it might be true. It made no difference.

  There was a clatter of bicycles on the front step. Mary jerked back her head, stiff-necked, as though a chain had been tightened.

  ‘It’s the boys back. Are you sure you won’t stay, Eddie?’ Her tone was softer.

  ‘I’ll walk out over the bridge, I think, and get some fresh air,’ he said. ‘It’s a lovely day.’

  ‘It is,’ said Mary.

  Eddie got tangled with his nephews in the hallway as he tried to get his coat from the banister. They were rowdy, pushing each other and getting in the way. Charlie, stepping over them, shook Eddie’s hand.

  ‘It’s lovely out there.’

  ‘I’m off for a bit of a walk,’ replied Eddie.

  ‘Right you are then,’ said Charlie.

  Mary fussed with her sons’ dirty shoes and did not say goodbye to Eddie, though she waved to him, afterwards, as he went down the path. Charlie, feeling the sudden warmth of the house, lit his pipe by the open kitchen window. He watched the smoke squeeze out and unfurl over the yard. He saw Eddie, briefly, as he passed the gap in the broken fence. He was walking quickly, his head bowed. Something about the sight of him made Charlie purse his lips tightly around his pipe stem.

  Alice was untraceable. There was no clue as to where she might have gone and all Eddie had was the page from the book with the scalding words, drawing out the distance and taking her away from him. There was nothing more he could do. But in the way of these things, that just made it worse. He couldn’t stop thinking about her. Being alone seemed sharp now and sore, and so he found a face for her, somewhere from his past, from a conglomeration of likely faces, and he found her a wide-legged way of walking and dressed her in the pre-war fashions he remembered. He caught the scent of her, some kind of flower, skin-fresh, and he pulled her hair close to her head so that he could see the shape of it, broad and round, reminding him of Florrie. And every evening he read the letter after he had unplugged the television to prepare for bed, and he had her voice, unimagined, ringing in his ears through the night. It was as if he had always been in love with her.

  Alice’s letter lay in the drawer alongside Eddie’s bed for several years. After the first few months, he did not read it. He gave up on the idea of searching for her and did not mention it to the family again. He let other ordinary things happen to him. As he walked to and from work, the pull of the tide was never exactly the same; this marked off the days. From the small oblong window at the top of the stairs, he looked along the coast, watching the light on the sea bring in the change of season. This seemed like enough.

  Closed into the late November streets, Eddie walked quickly, arriving first at the Continental Hotel. The city was grey and Victorian, the hotel quiet and shabby and old-fashioned. Eddie had not been there for well over twenty years, but the familiarity of it was exhilarating. He dropped down two stone steps from the street and along a narrow corridor. There was no one in the bar, and apparently no one serving. The door thudded shut behind him, and still no one came. He stood near the beer pumps, fingering the box of darts in his pocket. He waited. And then, as he expected, it all happened at once, two men from the home team arriving with a new board packed in a box, the barmaid coming up the steps from the cellar with a red crate of bottles, the dockyard team calling for beer, the stools and tables being pushed back and the oche unrolled, the quiet calm of the Sunday morning displaced. Someone chalked up the scoreboard and, while Eddie took a sip through the froth on the top of his pint, the team captains tossed the coin and shook hands. The blunt rhythmic thud-thud of the darts began.

  Eddie missed three darts at double sixteen and when the dockyard team lost, by one leg, he had to wonder if he had let them down. The defeated men left together, laughing and downhearted. They stood for a moment outside on the pavement, lifting their collars against the brisk cold wind, loosening their ties and looking up and down the quiet streets. Someone, kindly, invited Eddie to go along for more beer, but he did not want to be with them and used Maggie as an excuse.

  ‘She’s cooking. I’d better not,’ he said.

  They joked with him for a moment about this mysterious Maggie.

  ‘Maggie’s my daughter,’ said Eddie flatly, aware that he was disappointing them again. ‘Grown up now. Nearly.’

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bsp; They shuffled on the pavement and a taxi went by, spraying up dirty mist.

  ‘She’s a good girl,’ Eddie added. ‘I’d better be off.’

  But as he turned the corner to the front of the hotel the brisk pace of the competition drained suddenly from him, and his feet felt stiff. Maggie, he knew, would not be at home. She was having Sunday lunch with a friend, someone Eddie didn’t know, a girl from work. The ashen drizzle of the day, just about bearable in the city, would be denser if he headed back towards the house, the river flat and black, the bridge hidden, the streets oily. He would feel more alone. He looked up at the sky and could see nothing. A greasy damp slid across his skin and he wiped his face with the back of his hand. There was the chance, he knew, that he might disappear. Eddie turned across the front of the hotel and went into the faded womb-red entrance hall by the revolving door from the main street. If it had been a finer day, with the sun making the sea glisten and the breeze swinging in with the scent of spring, then he might have thrown off the disappointment of the morning for a stroll on the Hoe. It might have been different. But it was November, and cold, and deeply grey, and Eddie allowed the waitress in the tight black skirt to show him to a table in the half-empty dining room that smelt of Sunday greens.

  Eddie was given a thin, bright tomato soup with a single slice of buttered white bread, and shortly afterwards three wedges of muddy beef. He ate it all without looking up. He did not even think to order a beer until he had almost finished his main course. He turned then to try to catch the waitress’s eye but she had her back to him, serving a quiet family sitting in the window and he felt awkward looking at the bulge of her buttocks through her skirt, so he finished his meat and waited.

  Eddie pushed his plate back, rucking the dark cloth beneath it into folds. He looked around him for the first time at the brown and red dining room, the half-lit chandeliers yellow and heavy, a highly patterned carpet on the floor that he did not remember. He watched the other diners for a moment, discreetly. The family in the window was eating dessert, an elderly couple in woollen suits, a man of Eddie’s age who shared their sharp nose and chin and a woman who seemed apart from it. There were two other women on the table next to them, waiting like Eddie, looking around. He turned his eyes from them.