Kissing Alice Read online

  ‘Well, go on,’ prompted Queenie May, and Florrie noticed the excitement in her voice. Alice, too, must have heard it. She got up from where she had been lying with her eyes closed on top of the counterpane and leaned over her mother’s shoulder while they watched Florrie reach inside the drawstring opening of the velvet pouch.

  It was Alice who spoke first. ‘What’s that?’ she said, as Florrie held in her palm the twisted green glass beads, looped on a brass chain. ‘She’ll not be able to wear that, not with her uniform. They’ll not let her.’

  ‘It’s not a necklace, Ally, my love.’

  Florrie held up the beads by one end, and Alice could see the careful, symmetrical arrangement of them.

  ‘It’s a rosary,’ Florrie said, amazed.

  She tried to look into Queenie May’s face, but her mother was embarrassed and was fiddling with the button on Alice’s pinafore.

  ‘Ma? A rosary?’ Florrie said again.

  Alice went to speak, but Queenie May wouldn’t let her.

  ‘It’s like a prayer card,’ she explained. ‘For Catholics. Isn’t that right, Florrie?’

  ‘Where did you get it, Ma?’ was all Florrie could think.

  ‘From Mrs O’Malley.’

  Alice went back to the bed.

  ‘Do you see that, Pa? I’ve got a rosary,’ said Florrie, reaching with her arm across the room and dangling the beads in his direction. He did not raise his head.

  ‘Best not to bother your father with it,’ said Queenie May.

  The doctor tried to help Arthur, first with a thick black mixture and then with pills, but everything was vomited up within minutes, which struck them all as a waste of expensive medicine. So they stopped the doctor coming, presuming things would calm down naturally. Queenie May held on to the idea that there was simply an errant strand of rotten meat slowly and spitefully making its way through her husband’s gut, and no one quite discounted the possibility that he was grieving for Florrie. So that when, not long after Florrie left, Arthur woke feeling better and began to get himself dressed for work, it would have been right for things to be resolved. He asked Queenie May to make him some breakfast. He shaved carefully and he cleaned his shoes. But before he left the house he felt breathless and dizzy and sat for a moment on the bed, and by the time the siren sounded for the shift, he was kneeling on the bare floor retching into a bowl.

  Alice stayed home from school to look after her father. To pass the time, she read to him from his Bible, and wrote lists, ordering and re-ordering all the little jobs that could be done and choosing the sparse groceries they could afford on Queenie May’s part-time wages. With Arthur unable to raise his head from the bed, there was no one but Alice who could read the lists, but still she kept on writing them. At the end of each day she tore them up into tiny pieces and threw the paper on the fire, beginning again the next morning as soon as the dawn spilt enough light to see by.

  ‘It’s a waste of good paper, my girl,’ complained Queenie May, but Alice just made her writing smaller so as to take up less space.

  On the night of the spring hailstorm, Queenie May came home from the laundry smelling of wet soap and with her hands raw, her scarf moulded to her head by the fierce rain. Protecting her face from the sting of the hail, she did not see Alice watching for her from the front window.

  ‘Is he all right, Ally?’ she whispered, routinely, as she took off her coat by the door.

  ‘Look at him,’ was all Alice said. He was curled on his side, knotted within himself, his knees and arms wrapped tightly across his abdomen and his head buried. There was something so stiff about him, so concentrated, that even his skin seemed rigid. The tight greyness of him was enough for Queenie May to know.

  ‘Get Mary back,’ she said. ‘I saw her at Dyson’s corner just now. Tell her to go and find Dr Walters. And go for Florrie. Tell them they have to let her come. Tell them her father’s dying.’

  It was the first time any of them had said the word. Alice flinched. Queenie May gave her some coins for the fare.

  ‘And be quick, my girl. Or you’ll be too late,’ she said.

  But as Alice was going out of the door, Queenie May thought of something else. ‘Wait,’ she said. ‘You’ll have to go for Father Durphy, too.’

  ‘I don’t know where, Ma.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know. Go to the yard and ask them where the chapel is.’

  ‘But he doesn’t live there, does he, at the chapel? All the time?’

  Queenie May was wetting a cloth for Arthur’s face. Having Alice there seemed a distraction.

  ‘Just ask, Ally. Find someone who knows. Ask the ruddy Irish.’

  Alice pulled on her coat but still had not fastened it when she found Mary, trying to catch the drips from the baker’s shop awning in her mouth. Together they rehearsed, out loud, the route to the doctor’s and what Mary should say. The hail throbbed around them. Alice stuffed her hands in her pockets and ran as fast as she could down the hill and all the way to the yard, stopping only when her breath refused to come at all, and panting, when she had to wait for traffic to pass. She asked for the chapel and found it quickly, but although the door was open and a little red light burnt in the dark at the far end, it was empty. She had to ask three other men before someone could direct her to the presbytery. One of the men winked at her. And when she found the priest he had just boiled the kettle for a pot of tea, and was only half dressed. Alice did not cross the threshold. She gave her message briskly, shaking the water from her coat, and set off again to catch the bus to the city, the sky clearing above her, a shaft of sunlight pouring green-gold on to the railway bridge.

  Father Durphy made an effort to be quick, putting a small jar of oil, a plastic bottle of holy water and a silver-cased communion host in his pocket before leaving. He arrived at the house barely half an hour after Alice had first roused him, and, seeing Arthur coiled on the bed, smiled wanly at Queenie May and began at once with the prayers.

  ‘You’d best wait outside,’ he said to Queenie May, ‘until I’ve heard his confession. I’ll call you back.’

  Arthur started at the priest’s voice so close to his ear and turned his head. Queenie May heard him speak as she left the room, closing the door behind her, but his voice was strangled and strange.

  ‘Father?’

  The priest nodded, as if that were enough.

  ‘I don’t want it,’ said Arthur.

  Father Durphy was trying to loosen the cap on the bottle of holy water, and was not paying good attention. He had begun flicking the drops around the room, and particularly over the bed, before Arthur managed to speak again.

  ‘I don’t want extreme unction, Father.’

  This time the priest heard. It did not surprise him. ‘Be brave, man, and the Lord will comfort you. It’s no good pretending.’ He had learned to be strict about death. ‘Take time now to listen to God, or it may be too late.’

  ‘I don’t want it.’

  Father Durphy had his prayer book open, although he knew the rite by heart. He took a breath to begin, but before he could, Arthur, with unexpected strength, threw out an arm and swatted the missal to the floor. The bottle, which had been lying on the covers, was thrown too by the force of it, and spilt drops of holy water down the bedspread and on to the priest’s worn shoes.

  ‘You won’t confess?’

  Father Durphy picked up his missal to begin again. He expected Arthur to submit and sounded tired.

  ‘I want none of it. Where’s Queen?’

  Arthur thought he was speaking loudly. He hoped his wife might hear him, but she was at the front door, on the lookout for the doctor and her daughters.

  The priest tried again, because it was his duty. ‘Confess to me, Arthur. Take communion and the oil of the sick. Make peace with God and yourself. Our help is in the name of the Lord.’

  Arthur knew the priest would not understand. ‘It’s too much just now,’ was all he said. ‘I can’t do it, Father.’

  ‘But Ar
thur…’ Father Durphy wanted to say the thing that would bring Arthur round, but he did not know much at all about the man in the bed. ‘There’s young Florrie to think of,’ he said. ‘She’ll want to know her father made a good death.’

  Arthur groaned.

  ‘Let’s begin, Arthur. Let us pray.’

  Arthur let out a scream that Queenie May heard sharply and that woke the baby who had been sleeping in the attic room of the house next door. It exhausted him completely. Father Durphy, knowing he was beaten, slipped his missal back into his pocket, laid a hand briefly on the lump of body that sweated beneath the covers, and left quietly.

  ‘God forgive me,’ whispered Arthur to the empty room as he heard the priest shut the door.

  Father Durphy passed Queenie May on his way out of the house and told her she could go back to her husband.

  ‘That’s it then, Father?’ she said, thinking the scream had been part of the rite, some kind of purging, the exorcism of life.

  ‘He did not want to confess,’ he said.

  Queenie May knew this to be a bad thing. She was cross with Arthur, after all the trouble of fetching the priest, until she got back to the bedroom and saw him again, crying, his head thrown back on the pillow and his fists tight. She damped her cloth in the cold water, and ran it over Arthur’s forehead. He caught hold of her hand and held it. She did not pull away.

  ‘It didn’t seem right, in the end, not to die the same way you will,’ he said, rasping.

  She squeezed his hand. ‘I knew you wouldn’t want to be like that, apart from me. I knew you’d come back,’ she said.

  ‘I had to send him away,’ said Arthur, very quietly. ‘It’s better that way. We’ll both be sinners – the two of us – all of us. Like the boys. That’s the thing, isn’t it?’

  Queenie May kissed him. His skin was sticky.

  ‘Yes, Arthur,’ she said.

  The doctor who came with Mary did not stay a long time, and shook his head at Queenie May as he left. Mary saw this, and began to cry. Alice, who had been lucky with the run of the buses, was in time in the end, but the message she had left with the housekeeper where Florrie worked was not passed on until the evening duties were complete. So Florrie never saw Arthur’s dying moments, and often wondered about them. She never quite thought it could be as they said.

  Arthur made an effort to die well. He wanted to leave a mark somehow.

  ‘Be proud of me, won’t you?’ he said, and of course Queenie May nodded. ‘I won a war for you, you know.’

  This was a surprise; she had forgotten. She touched the flaking skin of his cheek with gentle fingers, and then there was a long pause, when nothing was said. There were just the sounds of the house, uncomfortably loud, and the still, quiet passing of time, and Arthur’s desperation. When he next stirred, his face was tighter than ever, his grip more anxious. He sat up to kiss Mary and he took Alice by the hand.

  ‘You must have the book, Ally,’ he said. ‘To read.’

  Alice thought he would say more. She waited.

  ‘When I’m gone,’ he said. ‘Have it as yours.’

  And that was all. There was nothing else he could have said. And they all heard him bequeath the book to her; they all accepted it as a dying man’s wish. So that afterwards, when Florrie objected to the unfairness of the legacy, there was no room for vacillation.

  Queenie May had seen several deaths, but Arthur’s seemed strange to her and barren. She could not be sure that he had known each of them for who they were.

  ‘I wanted so much to love him,’ she said to Florrie, as they stood by the bed, the sheets pulled tight now, neat. They did not notice its slight lopsidedness, even when Queenie May leaned over to touch Arthur’s forehead gently, and the bed tipped. They did not realize that Alice, taking advantage of the distractions of Florrie’s late arrival, had eased out the book, pushing it hard with her feet, feeling the weight of her father’s body and the jolt of it as the bed fell on to the bricks. It was only later that Florrie, picking up the scattered bottle of holy water as a keepsake, caught sight of Alice sitting by the dark window, with her hand stuffed hard between her legs, her skirt peeled back and Arthur’s legacy firm on her knee, only partly concealing the rub of her fingers.

  2. Florrie

  ALICE CLIMBED THROUGH the streets towards the candy-striped lighthouse. It was a fine hot August Sunday, with the breeze from the sea hardly stirring the flags along the Hoe and the horizon hanging flat. Crowds flopped in the sun, sprawled across the grass, and on the long quay at the harbour there was the smell of tar and hot engines, the rope laid out for the tug-of-war. Even before she got to their meeting place at Smeaton’s Tower, Alice wished she hadn’t come. The heat was making her breathing tight, and her new shoes bit her heels. When she spotted her sister pushing through the crowds in a pretty floral dress, a dark pink hat tight to her sleek hair and slightly tipped, she was already irritated.

  ‘It’s very busy, Florrie,’ she said.

  ‘Isn’t it lovely?’ Florrie flung out her arms, wanting to take everything in, feeling the sun and the noise and thick summer air and wanting to laugh at it all.

  ‘But there’s so many people, Flor.’

  ‘There’s more, down the other paths and out to the pier. I could see from my room. I could see them all coming. We’ll hardly get a place to stand, Ally, if we don’t hurry. We’ll miss the racing.’

  ‘You still want to see it then?’

  Alice was knocked by a man with a boy up high on his shoulders. He turned to smile an apology at her, but she looked away.

  ‘Of course. Don’t you?’ said Florrie, almost bouncing.

  ‘I suppose.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Ally, it’ll be handsome.’

  And Florrie led the way through the crowds, which thickened as they dropped down from the lighthouse, clotted into the narrow paths and sprawled wide on the grass banks. Boats were already working their way up and down in the shallows, the oarsmen trying out their strokes and shouting back at friends on the bank. Florrie took Alice’s hand, but resisted the impulse to pull her.

  ‘This’ll do, won’t it, here?’ said Alice.

  ‘But can you see, Ally, over all the heads? Can you see the water, and the boats, even in close?’ She didn’t wait for her sister to answer. ‘It’s no good. We can’t – we can’t see. We’ll have to go down on the rocks.’

  ‘Florrie, no. I’m not going down there.’

  But Florrie had already pressed on ahead, snaking through the crowd towards the boys perched on the rocks, above the white tideline, their jackets and caps thrown into piles. Some dipped in the deep water below, hauling themselves up by their elbows. Alice caught her sister hard by the sleeve.

  ‘Florrie, are you mad? We can’t go down there. By ourselves. We can’t. Everyone’ll look at us.’

  ‘Let them,’ said Florrie.

  And although she was ashamed of her sister, Alice couldn’t help following. She did not want to be left alone.

  Florrie tore a gash in her stockings climbing over the wall to the rocks. She laughed it off, jubilant, even though later, when things had calmed down, she spent a frustrating hour crouched by the low bed in her room trying to darn the tear with tiny stitches. The swimmers for the first race were getting into the water and no one paid much attention to the two girls. Alice, nonetheless, moved slowly, careful to keep her skirt tucked tight between her knees as she slid off the wall and crabbed sideways along the rocks, her cheeks burning.

  ‘There’s hardly anywhere to sit. It’s all taken,’ said Florrie, but not discouraged. The rocks sloped sharply down to the sea and only at the back of them, near the walls, were there any flat places to sit. Alice bent down to ease the pain from her heels. She saw she had scuffed one of her shoes.

  ‘Here! Here, Ally. These men have said we can sit here. Isn’t that kind?’

  Looking up, Alice saw that Florrie had moved away and was beckoning her with quick arms. She thought she could not bear the way he
r sister shouted, her brazen wave. She thought nothing could have been worse. But by the time she caught up, Florrie was chattering to the men, shrieking with laughter. She appeared to have no shame.

  ‘Ally, Ally, look! They’re off. They’re swimming. Oh, isn’t this just the best thing? Isn’t it marvellous sitting here, so close? Look at them all, how fast they go, even in the waves.’

  And they watched the races, one after the other, as the lines of sleek heads ploughed out to the breakwater, almost out of sight, before turning and swimming slowly back, making splashy, uneven clusters as they reached the shore. Florrie called out sometimes to the swimmers, took a sip of something from a small flask offered to her by the men standing now precariously behind them, put her hat on the rock beside her to get a better view and felt the sun full on her head. She smiled so widely at the way the day was turning out that she looked pretty in the light playing off the sea. Alice dabbed her bleeding heels with her handkerchief and wondered what it was that had made her sister so coarse.

  The men behind them, who turned out to work in the kitchens at the Continental Hotel, introduced them to Eddie. It was after the third race.

  ‘That one there, he works with us,’ one of them said, proud, even though Eddie was still pulling himself from the water while the winner was running up and down at the edge of the tide, splashing great arcs of spray with his feet and waving his arms to the crowd. The girls watched as Eddie made his way through the shallows at the edge of the bay, grinning and flicking the water out of his hair, his long-lashed eyes blinking up to where they were sitting. He could see his friends, perched alongside two sharp-faced girls, pink in the sun, and he clambered up to them, still dripping. He lay back on the hot rock, seeping dark around him, and he closed his eyes against the glare. He was sinewy, stick thin, his hair lank around his ears even as it dried.

  ‘Slip us me baccy,’ he pleaded, holding out his hand, his eyes still closed.