My Husband's Wife(4)
‘My brothers would take me swimming,’ she had said in a dreamy voice. ‘Sometimes we would catch fish for supper and then we would sing and dance and drink wine.’
Carla, drunk with happiness at having escaped school, wove a strand of her mother’s dark hair round her little finger. ‘Was Papa there then too?’
Suddenly her mother’s black dancing eyes stopped dancing. ‘No, my little one. He was not.’ Then she started to gather the Thermos and the cheese from the red tartan rug on the ground. ‘Come. We must go home.’
And suddenly it wasn’t the best day of her life any more.
Today didn’t look too good either. There was to be a test first thing, the teacher had warned. Maths and spelling. Two of her worst subjects. Carla’s grip on her mother’s hand, as they neared the bus stop, grew stronger.
‘You might be small for your age,’ the man with the shiny car had said the other evening when she’d objected to going to bed early, ‘but you’re very determined, aren’t you?’
And why not? she nearly replied.
‘You must be nice to Larry,’ Mamma was always saying. ‘Without him, we could not live here.’
‘Please can we stay at home together? Please?’ she now begged.
But Mamma was having none of it. ‘I have to work.’
‘But why? Larry will understand if you can’t meet him for lunch.’
Usually she didn’t give him his name. It felt better to call him the man with the shiny car. It meant he wasn’t part of them.
Mamma turned round in the street, almost colliding with a lamp post. For a moment she looked almost angry. ‘Because, my little one, I still have some pride.’ Her eyes lightened. ‘Besides, I like my job.’
Mamma’s work was very important. She had to make plain women look pretty! She worked in a big shop that sold lipsticks and mascaras and special lotions that made your skin look ‘beautiful beige’ or ‘wistful white’ or something in between, depending on your colouring. Sometimes, Mamma would bring samples home and make up Carla’s face so that she looked much older than she was. It was all part of being beautiful, so that one day she would find a man with a shiny car who would dance with her round the sitting room.
That’s how Mamma had found Larry. She’d been on the perfume counter that day because someone was off sick. Sick was good, Mamma had said, if it meant you could step in instead. Larry had come to the shop to buy perfume for his wife. She was sick too. And now Mamma was doing the wife a favour because she was making Larry happy again. He was good to Carla as well, wasn’t he? He brought her sweets.
But right now, as they walked towards the bus stop where the woman with golden hair was waiting (the neighbour who, according to Mamma, must eat too many cakes), Carla wanted something else.
‘Can I ask Larry for a caterpillar pencil case?’
‘No.’ Mamma made a sweeping gesture with her long arms and red fingernails. ‘You cannot.’
It wasn’t fair. Carla could almost feel its soft fur as she stroked it in her mind. She could almost hear it too: I should belong to you. Then everyone will like us. Come on, Carla. You can find a way.
3
Lily
The prison is at the end of the District line, followed by a long bus ride. Its gentle woody-green on the Underground map makes me feel safe; not like the Central red, which is brash and shrieks of danger. Right now, my train is stopping at Barking and I stiffen, searching the platform through rain-streaked windows, seeking familiar faces from my childhood.
But there are none. Only flocks of baggy-eyed commuters like wrinkled crows in raincoats, and a woman, shepherding a small boy in a smart red and grey uniform.
Once upon a time, I had a normal life not far from here. I can still see the house in my head: pebble-dash,1950s build with primrose-yellow window frames that argued with its neighbour’s more orthodox cream. Still remember trotting down the high street, hand in hand with my mother on the way to the library. I recall with startling clarity my father telling me that soon I was going to have a new brother or sister. At last! Now I would be like all the others in class; the ones from exciting, noisy, bustling families. So different from our own quiet threesome.
For some reason, I am reminded of the whining little girl in the navy-blue uniform from our block this morning, and her mother with those bee-stung lips, black mane and perfect white teeth. They’d been speaking in Italian. I’d been half tempted to stop and tell them we’d just been there on honeymoon.
Often, I wonder about other people’s lives. What kind of job does that beautiful woman do? A model perhaps? But today I can’t stop my thoughts from turning back to myself. To my own life. What would my life be like if I’d become that social worker instead of a lawyer? What if, just after moving to London, I hadn’t gone to that party with my new flatmate, something I’d normally always say no to? What if I hadn’t spilled my wine on the beige carpet? What if the kindly sandy-haired man (‘Hi, I’m Ed’) with the navy cravat and well-educated voice hadn’t helped me to mop it up, telling me that in his view the carpet was very dull anyway and needed ‘livening up’. What if I hadn’t been so drunk (out of nerves) that I told him about my brother’s death when he’d asked about my own family? What if this funny man who made me laugh, but listened at the same time, hadn’t proposed on the second date? What if his arty, privileged world (so clearly different from mine) hadn’t represented an escape from all the horrors of my past …