Secret Scribbled Notebooks (11 page)

‘Which I suppose is the same as feeling at home nowhere, in the end,' he added.

He looked across at me so frankly, that I felt that in some extraordinary way he was only one atom separated from myself. And yet, we still knew hardly anything about each other.

‘My father and I,' he said, ‘We were so sad when she died. But we kept it inside ourselves. He never really allowed us to grieve. We got on with our lives.'

I didn't know what to say. I had no experience of death. I had no experience of mothers. He looked so dreadfully sad though, and I knew what that felt like. In my more dramatic moments I felt that I had been sad my whole life. Was that what drew me to Alex, then? Sadness calling to sadness?

He made us more coffee, and divvied up the newspaper so we could read some each. We sat out at a table under a frangipani tree and read and sipped coffee.

‘I know nothing about you, Kate,' he said. ‘Tell me something about you. The first thing that comes into your head.' He said it softly and casually, but in a way that implied that he really wanted to know. I felt startled. Alex was a dangerous person, asking questions like that. What if I started telling him? I couldn't; I was so used to keeping things to myself.

‘I'm an aunt,' I said. My voice sounded surprised, and I was surprised. I had no idea that would pop out.

‘An aunt. Really?'

‘Yes. My sister has a baby. A girl, she's only a few weeks old. Her name's Hetty. It used to be Anastasia . . .'

‘Ah, Anastasia. A Russian name.'

‘Yes, but it turned out that her name was Hetty all along.'

Alex nodded.

‘I love her,' I said. ‘And – that's it really.' I went back to reading my newspaper, and when I caught him looking at me, he turned away.

The Red Notebook

Living in this place is enough to drive you batty. For a start, there are almost always people here. Strangers. Strange strangers. All right, I know it's a guest house and it's our living but . . .

Here is an example of the type of people we attract. One man didn't come out of his room for an entire week (not even to go to the toilet, as far as we knew), and Lil thought he might be dead (of course he wasn't). So now, whenever we don't see a guest for a while, Sophie always says dramatically, ‘They must be dead!' to rile Lil. It turned out he'd been peeing out the window (we found the evidence on the windowsill –what else he'd done out there we don't like to imagine!). And he left behind a huge pile of chip packets and chocolate wrappers and empty bottles of Coke, so he'd obviously come prepared to seclude himself.

The guests always expect things to be perfect too, which is annoying, when it's so cheap. What do they expect? Frogs in the toilet is a frequent complaint (as if we're going to go plunging our hands into the bowl to get them out!). And they don't like the carpet snake that lives in the rafters of the verandah sometimes. Well, hello! This is the north coast! The carpet snakes were here before we were! (Lil says I should refrain from telling them we like the snakes because they catch the rats. We don't mention the R word around here.)

We rarely eat a meal without a guest wanting something. And because The Customer Is Always Right, we have to be polite all the time.

The things the guests leave behind tells you what they're like (this is just a partial list):

about twenty copies of Stephen King novels, dog-eared to various degrees, which Lil put in the bookshelves in the common lounge

and eight copies of
A Year in Tuscany
, at last count

Someone left
On The Road
by Jack Kerouac, which Sophie snaffled but to my knowledge has never read –it lies in one of the piles in her room

Also
The Joy of Sex
, much thumbed, which Lil threw in the bin with an expression on her face as if she'd just sucked a lemon (though it was retrieved by Sophie, who later tossed it out again).

And various personal items, including too many extremely ragged toothbrushes and almost-empty packets of Disprin to mention, an old leather motorbike jacket with zip-up pockets and a bright red lipstick (worn down to the base) in the pocket. There was a belt made of old Chinese coins, very beautiful, held in case the owner returned, three pairs of ear-rings and two single ones, an unopened packet of condoms (Savage Pleasure brand), a total of ten pots of Tiger Balm, a pair of cowboy boots worn down at the sides, a diary (which Lil wouldn't allow us to read, but which was also held in case the owner returned), and a love letter, which we did read, from someone called Tom, to Theo. It was still connected to its writing pad, and full of unrequited longing. It confirmed me in my determination never to fall in love.

The Wild Typewritten Pages 12

When I arrived back
from visiting Alex that day, there was no one at home. Two people had booked in earlier, but had probably gone out again, and so had Lil. Sophie and Hetty weren't there either. There was a note from Lil on the front door saying,
Gone shopping etc.
Back soon
.

Houses without people in them have a particular feel. It is as though you have caught them in the act of being entirely themselves. They resist re-entry, insisting on retaining an uninhabited atmosphere, so that you feel you need to creep about. Only gradually will they begin to warm to you again.

I listened to my own footsteps sounding down the hallway, hollow and questioning. In the kitchen I found the remains of an apple teacake, which I scoffed standing at the sink in order to catch any crumbs, washing it down with orange juice and staring out through the panes of coloured glass.

I went on a tour of the house. Sophie's room was awash with books and baby's clothes.
Anaïs Nin
was splayed on the floor next to the bed, the author gazing towards the ceiling.

Lil's room was neater, her bed made, with a bed doll in a garish mauve and silver crinoline dress sitting at its centre. I once adored this doll; its hair was all frizzy from when I used to comb it.

On the bedside table were two photograph frames. One held two pictures of Lil's son, Alan. In one he was a small boy with slicked-back hair and neatly pressed shorts and shirt, with a tie. In the other he was a young man with long shining hair and a beard, wearing jeans and a hippy shirt. In both he smiled confidently into the camera as if he loved himself and the whole world.

The other frame contained a picture of me and Sophie together, when I was about five and Sophie eight. We were dressed in beautiful little frocks (how Lil had loved dressing us up! Now she always grumbled that neither of us had any regard for our looks. ‘Girls these days just have no idea,' she said, ‘of how to dress nicely.')

I flopped onto my back on Lil's bed and picked up the doll. It was a difficult doll to hug, with a prickly skirt that warded you off. I lay there and thought about my visit to Alex. His mother had died, and now he lived next door to her childhood home in an old garage. Is that why he had come to this place? To be close to the house where his mother had grown up?

I seldom admitted it to myself, but I did feel an intense curiosity at times about my own mother. This Margaret Thomas, with the ordinary name and the wild reputation among the daughters who barely knew her. How could she leave us like that? Why would she do it? I thought of Sophie's description of the dark, gypsy-like woman wearing the red dress. Were children too constricting to her? Did she go off in search of adventure? Was that what she wanted? A life without the constraints of
us
?

Unlike Alex, I wouldn't know where to even begin looking for memories of my mother.

I tossed the doll back onto the bed and got to my feet. Opening the drawer of the dressing-table, I looked at the cosmetics that Lil kept tumbled inside it –face powder and something she called ‘rouge', though it was really blusher, and endless lipsticks, many of which had worn right down. It seemed that Lil threw nothing out. When she died, Sophie and I would have to spend years clearing out her things.

When she died.
There had been times in her life when I'd feared Lil's death, and thought that it was imminent, but now I couldn't believe that she would ever die. She was like one of those everlasting daisies, all dried out and crinkly even while they were alive. She'd last forever.

I took the lid off one of the lipsticks and shaded in my mouth, staring at my reflection in the mirror. The bright red was startling against my white skin; I looked like a vampire after a recent meal. I found a black eyebrow pencil and licked the tip of it, then used it to make a dark spot on my cheek, near my mouth –what Lil called a
beauty spot
, though what was beautiful about it I couldn't imagine. It was some old-fashioned thing that women did, apparently –perhaps the hideousness of the mark made the rest of you look quite beautiful in contrast.

Going to the wardrobe, I opened it and ran my hands through Lil's dresses. They had the smell of a second-hand clothes shop; the scent of fabric had been overwhelmed by the faint rancid odour of people, which couldn't be erased from even the cleanest clothes.

We used to love going through Lil's wardrobe on dull afternoons, and Lil had never minded. I knew every dress by heart –the glittery blackish-silver sheath that Lil wore to the funerals of her friends, the one with the red roses and gathered skirt, the white jersey with the cowl neck, the plain shift with Pop Art patterns on it, the red dress with batwing sleeves . . . Lil had owned these dresses for hundreds of years and it was almost a library of every dress style that had ever existed.

At the very end of the row was the Man's Suit. Sophie and I used to speculate about the suit. (Had it belonged to a lover of Lil, or to our father? Or had a guest simply forgotten it, and Lil kept it in case they returned?) We'd learned, when Lil overheard us discussing it, that it had belonged to her son Alan. Lil told us that she couldn't bear to throw it out after he died. And then her face had closed up. She hadn't wanted to talk about it.

Lil had so much stuff that if she did die (when she died . . .), there'd be no shortage of mementoes to remember her by. Whereas, of our own mother we had nothing: not a photograph, or a bracelet, or even one single worn-down lipstick.

When I was seven, I had walked home from school for the first time on my own.

This was an important milestone, for Lil had expressly forbidden me to do it. Sophie was meant to walk me to and from school each day.

Sophie hated having to do this –it stopped her running off immediately with her friends and doing whatever important things she was doing in those days. On this particular day, she said, ‘Kate. I have to go to Jane's house
right now
- I don't have time to take you home first. You can walk by yourself, can't you?
But don't tell Lil.
Tell her I saw you to the door first.'

I set off. The lollipop man helped us all cross the road near the school, and I had no other busy crossing to contend with after that. I ignored the boys on the corner who always teased me, and said
pooh!
to the black dog that lived behind a high timber fence, and it lunged towards me, barking, making the fence shudder with its weight. I took an apple from my bag to feed the goat with the hard demonic eyes that lived tethered on the empty block three houses from Samarkand. I was as good as home at that point, and as the goat took the fruit from my hand I savoured the feeling of having achieved something that I had been absolutely forbidden to do.

That walk had been a cinch, really, and I felt invincible. I was purple with importance by the time I reached Samarkand. I paused at the bottom of the steps that seemed to weave their way forever up the front, took a deep breath and toiled up them, knocking my school case against each step as I ascended.

The house was silent. There seemed to be no one there. This was unusual, because Lil was always there when we got home. It was usual for several of the guests to be milling about on the verandah or in the lounge room as well.

The kitchen was empty, so I went looking for Lil in all the usual places. She wasn't in the television room, and she wasn't hiding with a book on the overstuffed sofa on the verandah. The next most likely place for her to be was in her room, and that was dead silent. I crept to the doorway.

Lil's room was in darkness; the curtains drawn. I went up to the bed: Lil lay so still that I knew she was dead. Whatever had made her Lil had departed. The room had a feeling of absence in it. I pulled a chair over next to the bed and sat with her, not touching her, just gazing at her face in the faint light that came through the window. Lil kept a tin of lemon sweets on her bedside table. I reached over and removed one from its bed of powdered sugar, and sucked slowly on it, allowing it to dissolve on my tongue.

What would happen to us now that Lil was gone? Who would look after us? I missed Lil already. A hole had opened up inside me, but no tears came.

If one did creep in a ticklish track down my cheek, I just licked it away. Having finished the lemon sweet, I reached for the tin and sat with it opened on my lap, with my head bowed. I took another sweet and crunched savagely into it.

When I looked up, Lil's eyes had opened, and she was looking at me, though no other part of her had moved. It was like being observed by a statue.

‘Did you ask if you could have those, madam?'

I dropped the tin at once, and sweets rattled onto the floor.

I had tasted grief. It would always taste of sugary lemon. It would feel like the shard of a hard sweet against my tongue; a film of sugar across my teeth.

I took the
Anaïs Nin
(
my
Anaïs Nin) from Sophie's room, and lay on my back on the verandah floor, just near the front door, where I could read by the low rays of the sun that came slanting through the trees. I looked up at the pattern of the galvanised iron, and the old timber rafters, and imagined the house spinning about me –the rafters, the tin roof and the draughty timber walls, the gappy floorboards, and the doors and windows that let in all the light and sound from the world outside. The house was at once substantial and insubstantial; I thought that if it could spin fast enough, then it would all come apart and circle and circle me, and then just as easily settle into place again, every nail and board and bit of tin. I might be leaving soon, but I knew that for as long as I lived I would dream of Samarkand; in my sleep I would enter its walls and tread its worn floors, and wake filled with peace and foreboding. Samarkand was as much a part of me as my skin.