My Little Blue Dress (3 page)

But my epiphany didn't stop there, reader. Not by a long chalk. It got deeper, more profound. In fact, it stopped even feeling like an epiphany and started to feel like a memory, a memory, believe it or not, of an old man's finger, gnarled and stained . . . tracing a patient, tender course across a great white expanse like a bedsheet or a piece of paper or the sail ofaship . . .

And I was also remembering a voice, a voice rather like my own, though even shriller and more feeble, if that were possible: a clear voice, a supple voice, a voice of great range and adaptability which, as I stood on that duct-tape
X
in the grip of my great epiphany, sprang suddenly forth within me like a clear mountain stream bursting through a sheet of old gray rock!

“Just stop,” I heard myself say, looking the butcher straight in the eye. “This guy here.” I gestured. “This Jack guy. He's utterly and totally right. I do talk funny. In fact, I talk funnier than any of you realize.
This
is how I talk, do you see?” I pointed at the air in front of my mouth. “Like
this
. I've only just realized it and to save you asking, no, I have no explanation. But I do know one thing. Like Jack says, I am the absolutely last person you want serving as the symbolic figurehead of your springtime fayre. All that stuff I said
before? About the gluelike importance of ritual to rustic communities? I stand by those words, if not by the voice in which I said them. I'd make the worst Queen of the May in history and so for everyone's sake I am withdrawing my name.”

Jack looked flabbergasted, as did they all. I walked to the trestle and laid my hand on his. “Thank you,” I said. “Thank you for seeing whatever it is you just saw in me.”

And with those words I exited, leaving a golden but unwanted future that I had never been without to bleed itself dry onto those dusty floorboards, and stepping into a life I knew nothing about—except that with any luck it might involve me one day finding out what the hell had just happened to me.

W
HICH DIDN'T TAKE
very long, as it happened. Halfway up the hill toward home, still feeling utterly surreal, I spied me grand-da through a thin patch of foliage in the hedgerow and decided to pay him a visit. A little human contact might steady my nerves, I reckoned, and like many retired sailors me grand-da wasn't the sort of person who felt the need to fill the air with idle chatter.

The old man was sitting on the wall of the retired animals' enclosure in the lower slopes of our sprawling garden, smoking his pipe and staring into space.

“Hail, me grand-da,” said I, approaching from the side.

“Hail there, me lubbly,” said me grand-da, never shifting his gaze from the distant hills as I clambered up on the wall beside him. “ 'Ow were thine preinterbiew for Queen o' t'May?”

I blew out my cheeks. “Alright I suppose. Slightly bizarre. I don't know.”

I was still talking funny, I realized, and there was nothing I could do about it. For a while we sat in silence, watching Mrs. Featherface the old hen as she pecked for some reason at a puddle. “Why's she doing that?” I wondered aloud, turning to squint up at me grand-da.

He was crying, or seemed to be. He'd pulled his cap down over his face, but I could see his shoulders shaking.

“Me grand-da . . . ?”

“Oh what a
fool
I am!” he wailed suddenly, menacing the sky with a fist. On his cheek I saw a single tear, nosing its way down his wrinkles like a mouse in a scientist's maze. “What an old stupid
fool
!
Why
Lord? Why didn't Tha stop me? Why did Tha let me do what I did?
Oh
, me lubbly. Oh me poor tiny lass. Oh me
smallest
lubbly . . .”

“Yes?”

“Me lubbly . . .”

“Yes?”

“Me lubbly . . . it weren't no ‘preinterbiew' tha attended this mornin'.”

“Um, yes it was.”

“Nay, lass.” He grimly examined his cap's interior. “ 'Ere in Murb'ry Billage, t'phrase for what tha went through jus' now is ‘first quick checkin'.”

I frowned. “Well,
some
people call it that, me grand-da, but . . . I thought the two terms were interchangeable. You can say
preinterview
or you can say
first quick checking
. Right?”

“Nay, me lubbly. Wrong. Tha only knows t'phrase ‘preinterbiew' because o' what I did to thee as a nipper.”

I turned and stared up at him. “Excuse me?”

“Me lubbly . . .” He shifted round to face me. Our eyes locked. “Me lubbly I used to
read
to thee.”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, I nebber meant to
'arm
,” he grimaced. “It were reet around the time tha were birthed an' I were just back from t'sea wi' the wound in me leg. What wi' me a cripple and tha still a tiny babe, t'pair o' us would pass our days by t'fire in t'main room, readin' from some o' t' bollumes I'ad left ober from when thine mam were a lass. Jus' standard infant material to start wi'. Tales o' pixies and fairies and animal fables etcet'ra. But oh me lubbly! Me lubbly tha showed such
aptitude
! Wi'in a few weeks tha were readin' the stories
all by thaself
, wi' no promptin' or assistance! Those lickle blue orbs o' thine . . . scurryin' 'cross the pages . . . I'd nebber seen 'owt like it! Quickly tha exhausted me tiny bookshelf an' so I whittled meself a cane an' made a journey up t'coastal road to Bliffin'ton, the booksmiths there, where I loaded up me satchel wi' t'mos
' difficult
books I could find, lass: dictionaries, instruction manuals, works o' reference by scientists and professors and t'like. But did it slow thee down one single iota? Nay lass! Tha tore through thine new librey in less than a week!”

My head was spinning. “And
that's
why I talk like this! Because you read to me as a kid and . . . and . . . inculcated me with a massive vocabulary!”

“Aye,” he said resignedly. “An' then one day thine da came 'ome early from work. I were fixin' meself an 'ot drink in t'kitchen. The pair o' ye exchanged greetin's an' t'next thin' I knew 'e were reet up in me face screamin' that I 'ad ruined 'is only lass, made thee all ‘fancy.' ”

“Jesus.”

“I tasted thine da's belt that day, me lubbly. 'E served me up a beritable
feast
o' t'thin'. An' when 'e were done I begged 'im to let me taste it sum more, I were that awash in
guilt
, lass, but 'e dragged me into t'main room and stood ober me while I burned all t'books in t'fireplace. Tha bawled thine tiny eyes out, lass, and from that day for'ard, tha nebber spoke a word. I'd' a' gibben me reet arm to undo what I did but t'were too late, lass. T'damage were done. An' it were only a matter o' time before this day arribed an' me trangressions were exposed. I've made o' thee an oddball, lass.” He buried his face in his hands. “So does tha 'ate me now, lass? Now that tha knows?”

I didn't answer him.

On top of the wall I had curled into a fetal position and had begun to weep myself, in the grip—if you can believe it—of yet another epiphany.

The social anxiety and the crippling self-consciousness that had plagued me all my life . . . I understood it now. The Queen of the May thing, the other girls' resentment, had been minor factors compared to the secret I'd been harboring all my life:

That I wasn't just better looking than a normal little Murbery girl.

I was also
far more articulate
.

K
AREN WAS THE
first one I told. Late that afternoon, drowsy from play and the springtime heat, we two girls lay on our fronts by the millpond, watching the ducks drag their Vs across the cold black skin of the water.

Bong. Bong. Bong. Bong. Bong.

Over in the village three judges would be exchanging helpless glances in that dusty room, or maybe Jack would be tasting the butcher's belt.

Preinterviews were over.

And the strongest Queen of the May candidate in several centuries hadn't survived them.

“By 'eck!” Karen sat up. “I forgot to ask! 'Ow were thine first quick checkin'?” Her voice set off a fresh round of sobbing from Wee Lickle Davey, who was fastened to a spruce on the far side of the millhouse.

“Fine. Fine-ish. I don't know. Look, Karen, I've decided not to go through with the whole Queen of the May thing.”

“Eh?”

“I'm not a candidate for Queen of the May this year. I withdrew my name.”

“Nay! Tha's messin' wi' me!”

“I'm not. I was down there this morning at my preinterview, and I was standing there and . . .”

“Thine what?”

“Sorry, my first quick checking.” I jerked my head. “Up above the grocer's, and I don't know. I was standing there in my little white pinafore and my shiny little shoes and suddenly . . . I don't know. Suddenly I felt like a piece of meat. A cow or something. Off to the slaughter. So I told them I'd changed my mind and went home.”

Karen's mouth fell open. “Jesus bless me eyes, I can't believe it! Tha was sure to win!”

“What can I tell you? I guess I've got better things to do than stick leaves in my hair and be ridiculous.”

“Aye,” she murmured admiringly. “I reckon tha must do!”

I turned to look at my friend, sweet simple Karen Travers, with her nut-brown pigtails and her smattering of
freckles, her hand-me-down floral-print pinafore and her tanned, sturdy calves, and felt a pulse of gratitude. Any other little girl in Murbery would have taken the pretentious-sounding announcement that I had finally Found My True Voice as an excuse to punch me in the face. Should I tell her the rest? Could she handle it?

“Karen?”

“Aye?”

“Have you noticed anything strange about the way I'm talking?”

She blushed. “Aye. I 'ave a bit. I weren't gonna say any-thin'.”

“Karen, I've had the
weirdest
day.”

“Oh aye?”

“Yeah, it started at my first quick checking. One of the judges accused me of talking funny and when I opened my mouth to speak the words came out . . . well, like this. All chatty and sophisticated, like you say. I had no idea what was happening. To tell you the truth that's why I walked out. I was panicking, pretty much.”

“
Aye
 . . .” said Karen thoughtfully.

“But then it was all
fine
! I went and talked to me grand-da and he explained he used to
read to me
when I was very, very young, from these
incredibly
difficult books, and it gave me this huge vocabulary and that's why I speak like this!”

“Really?” Karen scrunched up her nose. “Jus' because thine grand-da read to thee from books it's given thee an entirely diff'rent accent and . . . style o' speakin'?”

“Yes.”

“Well
that's
reet queer.”

I sniffed and looked out at the water.

Karen didn't have a point, did she?

Perhaps she did.