Weathering (10 page)

There was a low rumble of thunder. ‘Come up here and watch,’ her mother called down.

The house stank of wet paint and Pepper could taste it in the back of her throat. She went upstairs and into the room her mother was sleeping in. The wind shook the window. ‘I got born in a storm,’ she said.

‘Just after,’ her mother said. She was holding a paintbrush with cream paint on it, the same boring colour the walls were anyway.

‘And the nurse said I cried louder than all the thunder.’

Her mother picked out bits of brush that had stuck to the wet paint on the wall. ‘I don’t think she did. All that woman talked about was her apple tree; how she had crates of apples all over her house that were rotting.’

‘Louder than all the thunder,’ Pepper said. It was better to be born in a storm than just after one.

They leaned against the window and watched. Huge thundery booms and gusts of wind. White sheets of lightning. The reflection of the rain rippled over their skin. The thunder was right above their heads – it sounded like the sky was cracking. More lightning, then more, and Pepper didn’t want it to stop, crack after crack of thunder. But there were longer gaps in between now, and the thunder was quieter, the lightning flashed less bright. She willed the storm to come back but the clouds moved apart, the sky turned grey again and the quiet was almost too much to bear.

‘You can do some painting if you want,’ her mother said. She turned away from the window and went back over to the wall.

Pepper pressed her forehead against the cold glass. The paint was sour in her throat, the horrible rasping of the brush against plaster, just so that man could come and see if he wanted to buy the house.

‘It’s not going to be for much longer,’ her mother said. ‘OK?’

A shivery feeling rushed over Pepper. She covered her ears, la la la. If only the storm would come back. She closed her eyes and then opened them again. The sky was the same old grey and the wind had calmed right down. She went over to the wall and stood in front of the bit her mother was painting.

‘I’ve got to get this done,’ her mother said.

Pepper stayed where she was and when her mother tried to lift her she made herself as heavy as she could. It was easy: all you had to do was go completely slack and imagine your legs were made of the heaviest metal in the world, whatever that was.

‘You’re a bloody lump.’

‘You are,’ Pepper said. ‘You are.’

Her mother tried to move her again. ‘Stop being boring,’ she said. She touched the paintbrush lightly against Pepper’s cheek.

Pepper clutched at her face. ‘My eye,’ she said. ‘I can’t see anything.’ She staggered around and bumped into the wet wall, then she lay down on the floor and covered her face with her hands.

Her mother sighed and went over to the window. She tucked her hair behind her ears, tucking and tucking over and over. There was the faintest rumble of thunder in the distance.

Pepper stayed on the floor and watched her mother from between her fingers. They both knew she was faking it. After a while, Pepper went over and stood next to her. Very close but not touching.

‘Maybe we should play the hiding game,’ her mother said.

‘We probably should,’ Pepper told her. Already running through her mind where she could hide. She always found the good places. She had hidden in the loft of one house and stayed there all afternoon – her mother hadn’t even known there was a loft. And another time, in another house, she’d balled herself up in a deep drawer with a sieve on her head. Her mother was terrible at hiding. She would stand behind a door that had glass panes in it. Or she would hide in a curtain with her feet sticking out.

‘You go and hide,’ her mother said. ‘I’ll count here.’ She covered her eyes and started to count slowly.

Pepper ran out of the room and stopped, looked left, then right. Panicky laughter bubbling up. The house sprawled in front of her. She looked back at the bedroom then ran, skidding, along the corridor. Went halfway down the stairs then tiptoed back up, hand over her mouth and snuck into the bathroom. Looked around and heard her mother saying she was coming. It was too late to find somewhere else so she stood in the bath and pulled the curtain around. Hunched up, her shoulders shaking and her stomach all tight and sloshy.

Her mother walked past, paused outside the bathroom. ‘Muuhhuuuha ha ha,’ she said in the deep scary voice. ‘I’m going to find you.’

Pepper stuffed the shower curtain in her mouth but still a squeaky laugh came out. Her mother came into the bathroom and stopped. Then she pretended to give up and leave the room but at the last minute she turned and pounced on Pepper, who shrieked and thrashed around in the curtain, the shower dribbling onto their shoulders.

‘Your turn,’ Pepper said. ‘Your turn now.’

‘OK,’ her mother said. ‘Are you wearing shoes?’ She checked Pepper’s feet but she was only wearing socks. ‘There’s water and gritty stuff all over the hall.’

‘Come on,’ Pepper shouted. ‘Let’s play.’ She stayed in the bath and counted. Maybe peeked a bit. One, two, three, four. Miss a few, one hundred. ‘Ready or not,’ she called out. The first thing she did was whirl right round to check her mother wasn’t hiding behind her. Which had happened once before. Then she ran downstairs and checked the kitchen. Everywhere was quiet. Through the hall and all the downstairs rooms, pouncing on a coat that she thought had moved, pouncing on a curtain. Up the stairs and back into the bathroom, snatching back the shower curtain. Nothing. Under the beds in each bedroom. Down into the kitchen, across into the lounge, the study. ‘I know where you are,’ she called out, but minutes passed, then more minutes. She started upstairs again, looking under beds, flinging open wardrobes, but the house was quiet and she stood at the top of the stairs looking down. ‘I know where you are,’ she said softly, but she stayed hovering at the top of the stairs listening for any . . .

Chapter 12

Shuffling, crammed in the cupboard under the stairs between a mop and an ironing board. Ada heard Pepper go past the stairs and down the hall into the kitchen. ‘Got you,’ she said, and made a crashing sound. Ada stifled a giggle. Her palms sweaty and her stomach jittery. Just like when she was a kid hiding from Judy. Pepper went back upstairs and the shower curtain rattled on its plastic rings. ‘I know where you are,’ she called. For a tiny person she made the floorboards creak like trampolines.

Ada moved so that the mop handle wasn’t sticking into her back. The wall was cold and damp. Bits of limey paint flaked off. Pepper was laughing so much she was practically hysterical. But upstairs, stabbing at the wet paint with her finger, her face had suddenly become Pearl’s – the furrowed brow, the way her eyes darted when she was looking for a way out of doing something. Like the time Ada had come back from school and reminded her mother that she needed a costume for the next day – they were doing a play and the costume could be anything.

‘Anything,’ her mother had said. She’d looked around and then unhooked her coat and hat from the peg. ‘Wear this.’

‘What would I be?’ Ada asked. She put it on and the hat fell down over her eyes.

‘I don’t know,’ her mother said. ‘A scarecrow. I’d have to find some straw from somewhere, maybe take a handful from the Jamesons’.’

But Ada shook her head, said no, she didn’t want to be a scarecrow.

‘Well, what then?’ her mother said. Pacing, grabbing lampshades and colanders and putting them on Ada’s head.

‘A witch. I want to be a witch.’

‘That’s a bit obvious, isn’t it?’ Pearl hung the hat and coat back up and stared at them for a long moment. Then she went into her study and closed the door. There was no sound for a long time, then something thumped, there was a lot of rustling. Hours passed. Ada cooked spaghetti and grated in cheese but her mother didn’t come out to eat. The sound of a bottle clinking. Ada went to bed and lay awake listening. Something ripped, her mother murmured, ‘Go in there you bastard needle.’ One of the girls at school said her mother had sewn a white fur cloak and crown. Another girl said her father had spent all week making something out of colourful wool. At a school fete, someone had pointed to Pearl and asked Ada if she was her grandmother, and Ada had nodded. She lay in bed and listened. The thumps and clinks went on all night.

In the morning her mother held out a heap of bin bags and pins. A sagging bin-bag hat. A bin-bag dress with torn sleeves. Looked at Ada carefully as she tried it on. ‘It’s not too bad, is it?’ she said. She put in another pin so that the waist was tighter and then smoothed the plastic down over Ada’s back.

‘It’s just right,’ Ada told her. She put the costume on over her uniform and walked slowly up the road to meet the bus. Then, just as the bus came round the corner, she pulled it off and pushed it into the hedge. Told her teacher that she had forgotten to bring anything and was cast as the schoolgirl, watching the robots and fairies rampage over everything.

There was a noise outside the cupboard and Ada held her breath. The door creaked open and there was a wedge of dim light. Any second now Pepper would burst in shouting, got you, got you. But the door shut again. The floorboards upstairs creaked. Ada pressed herself against the wall and felt water dripping. Water splashed onto the floor by her foot. Her leg was cramping up and she stretched it out.

Her leg touched someone else’s leg. She sucked in her breath. Could hardly see anything in the dim cupboard. Another splash of water on the floor. ‘Pepper?’ she said. But she could hear Pepper at the top of the stairs. More water dripped down. There was a gritty pool by her feet and a scattering of small stones. A musty smell, like soaking clothes that couldn’t dry, wet leaves, standing water.

Outside the door, one of the clocks chimed and Ada jumped. The mop clattered to the floor.        

‘Shhhhh,’ a voice whispered. The familiar sound of a throat being cleared. ‘You’re going to ruin the game.’

Rain drummed on the roof. Pepper’s footsteps stopped, then came slowly back down the stairs. The air was so thick and wet it was hard to breathe. Water dripped onto the floor. ‘I know you’re here,’ Pepper called out. Her voice was trembly and thin. She came closer and the cupboard door opened. ‘Found you, found you,’ she said. She pushed herself into the cupboard, breathing hard and fast.

Ada climbed out slowly. She turned at the door and looked back; saw nothing but the mop and the ironing board, a damp box and a pool of water on the floor. Which she mopped away carefully.

Chapter 13

Who was it? They definitely seemed familiar, but she had been in the house alone, hadn’t she? Yes, now that she looked back over it – back past the chair and those final tangled months – she had been in the house alone for years. But at least more herself, whatever that was.

Those were the years when the work started to dry up. Pearl dusted off her desk and her tools. Told herself that it made her eyes sore, it paid about as much as a kid’s paper round. Less probably. The tools bankrupted her, the mechanisms fussy and arthritic. But she took to rubbing her thumbs over her index fingers until the skin turned shiny. Wanting to do something with her hands.

Snapped bracelets, brooches with broken pins, rings that needed resizing. Other people’s precious things. But less and less of them. Maybe one small package came through a week, then every month. The jewellery shop that used her to clear their backlog closed down. Replaced by a pharmacy – a window display of breast pumps and hair dye, the smell like a sweetshop and a graveyard.

But now and again there would be work and she would lean over her desk fitting chain links together, soldering clasps. Relishing the technical language: filigree, fob, locket bail. Completely opposite to the way people spoke about the things they sent her. ‘I couldn’t do without it,’ they would say. ‘I don’t know what I’d do if it stopped working.’ Even though it was only metal for Chrissakes. It was only bits of metal – melted and worked into casings and twists. And it was only stones – dead trees and animals subject to so much time and pressure that they buckled, turned unrecognisable. What happens to everyone, she thought.

She wore trousers people donated to charity shops – cord ones and probably men’s from the way the crotch bagged out. Possibly made her look like a pillock, but they were hard-wearing; she hardly ever had to wash them. She rolled the legs up and stuffed them into boots. She wore the same jumper every day each winter, because she loved the dark green colour and the soft wool around her neck. She wore shirts loose enough to cover her slumping belly and chest. Her skin determined to turn her into someone else, someone with pouchy cheeks and eyes, and a dry, pale mouth.

She was sent a watch to fix. It had a silver strap and gold engraving. Some heirloom or other. She spent weeks on it, the stiff gears like her stiff hands. Her fingers were calloused, seared from years of working with metal. Always the comforting smell of oil on them. The watch’s workings were delicate and Pearl took her time: cleaned them out, greased a new mainspring, fitted the parts carefully back in. She sent it off and then a note came back saying that the spring had been put on the wrong way, so that it had jammed. The mechanism busted and they would not be sending her any payment, and she was lucky that they’d decided not to take it any further.

She should have written back. She should have phoned them up. But instead she made excuses: her handwriting was illegible and getting worse; she hated using the phone, everyone sounded like a stranger, even people she knew very well. Her own voice echoing back, nasal and uncertain. And if it was so bloody precious they shouldn’t have burdened her with it in the first place.