23
Tuesday, 14 June 1966
‘Shut your eyes and don’t look till I say.’
Clifford Hunt blocked Mary’s view of the Infants’ gate. She would miss Michael coming out. She screwed her eyes up tight.
‘…commit his body to the ground, earth to earth, ashes…’
‘Hold out your hand,’ Clifford said. ‘It’s a surprise.’
Mary had a fleeting image of Clifford slapping her palm with a ruler as Mr Sparrow had done to him for talking. Clifford hadn’t cried. Mary would not have cried either. Nor would she have been caught talking because she had no one to talk to.
She splayed out her hand and felt a butterfly land on her palm. She heard footsteps, but she did as Clifford said and did not peep. After a very long time she said ‘I like surprises’. Although she did not.
Birds twittered in the plane trees by the viaduct. More moments passed.
‘Could I please see?’
She heard laughing and dared to open her eyes. A group of girls were clustered around the Infants’ gate. They were in Michael’s class and treated him like a doll, brushing his hair and sticking up for him when she was in charge. Michael was not with them.
‘…In that it has pleased our heavenly Father, who loaned these little ones to us for this short time, to take them back to Himself…’
She looked down at her hand, still outstretched. There, face up, lay a Brooke Bond tea card with a picture of two brown circles like squashed conkers and a branch with leaves. She turned it over. Number 42.
The Sweet Chestnut cannot in any way be confused with the Horse Chestnut…
The voice in her head was Michael’s even though he couldn’t read.
Clifford had given her a card that she already had. She could not swap it because there was no one to swap with.
‘Cliff’s escaped.’ One of the girls sniffed through giggles.
‘Mind your own business.’ Mary said.
…its flowers are attractive erect catkins, conspicuous for the bright yellow anthers of the male…
The girls took off. Satchels swinging and bumping against their backs, they scattered past the Sunken Garden where Michael had sat, past the drain cover where Michael was marble champion and out of the gate to Ravenscourt Park.
Mary was pleased that Clifford Hunt had remembered her birthday but cross that he had not asked what she needed. She pulled out the Trees of Britain album from her satchel and flicked through it. She did not need the Holm or Evergreen Oak: Number 43. She had the full set, he only had to ask.
She looked again at one of the pages in her album: there was a space. It was for number 43. Mary couldn’t make sense of this. She flicked through the pages. It must have fallen out. She knelt on the ground and tipped out her satchel but it was not there. A feeling crept over her. It started at the back of her neck and went to her tummy. There were back-to-front words in the square for number 42. Mary could do mirror writing: …crown is heavily and densely leafy, giving a deep shade…
The card Clifford Hunt had given her was not the brilliant white and dark blue of the brand-new cards in the tea leaves. It was bent and the writing missing on the card was there in reverse on the album page.
Mary dropped the card into the album and slipped it into her bag next to her pencil case. Michael’s voice chattered gaily at her.
He’s given you what was yours anyway!
Mary rushed out of the school gate. The faster she ran the less she could hear Michael. He stole it from you. She stopped at the kerb – nothing coming – she belted across the road into the park.
He didn’t get you a real present. He knows your name’s not Mary.
A train rumbled above but the sound did not block out Michael.
Mummy said you have to make our tea.
The rule about Mary making tea had disappeared since the day she swapped cards with Douglas Ford. ‘I can do what I like,’ she shouted at Michael and ducked along the path by the arches.
The girls from Michael’s class were on the slide.
It’s only me having tea, and I don’t care. She marched over to the ladder to wait her turn. To her astonishment all the children stood back.
‘You can go next.’ It was Jacqueline, the kind girl with plaits.
No one moved or argued with Mary. Maybe they liked her after all? Mary looked up at the pretend house at the top of the ladder. Michael wasn’t there. She slipped her satchel around to her back and placed one sandalled foot on the first rung. She expected someone to shout that she had pushed in, but it was quiet. Everyone wanted to see her perform her incredible feat. She climbed fast and clumsily, banging her knee on the metal. She would not cry. From the doorway of the house she looked down. The girls had gone.
Mary stood alone in the little house where her brother had crouched with chattering teeth and trembling knees. He had held her tight around the middle. She touched her tummy. His hands had gone. Without Michael the slide would be easier, but she still wished he were there to see her.
She would go head first. She lay on her tummy and with a swimming motion propelled herself over the edge and pitched downwards.
Everything was at top speed; the skimming metal burned her legs. She went faster and faster and jolted to a stop at the end of the slide, her head hanging over the side and the ground close to her nose.
Mary rolled off the chute and trotted out of the arch. The girls were up ahead at the end of the path. She wanted to run away, but they would know she was scared so she kept going. They were looking at her heart in the concrete. This gave her courage; she would tell them that Clifford had done it for her.
‘What are you lot doing?’ Mary tried to sound cheery, but her voice was shrill. She looked at the heart. The concrete had set hard so the ‘T’ was clear, but where Michael had dug at the ‘M’ the letter could have been anything.
A girl shoved her. ‘You spoilt it.’
‘We hate you.’ Another voice. More shoving.
The girl with plaits wasn’t there.
‘What have I done?’ Mary retreated and trod on someone’s foot. She felt a sharp kick on her leg.
‘You don’t care about your brother.’
‘He’s not your real brother. You don’t have a daddy!’
A girl with long blonde hair was pointing at the heart as if Michael was under there. For a moment this seemed possible, but no, Mary knew where he was.
‘…to the ground. Looking for that blessed hope; when the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel…’
She had told her parents that Michael had gone to his bedroom while she was making tea. He must have run out to get sweets. Mary could believe this had happened.
‘Michael hated you.’
Mary stared at the heart, uncomprehending. ‘He hated you.’ It was a chorus, the words flying around her ears. More kicks and punches.
‘No he didn’t.’ Mary got down on her knees. The letters were cold and hard as stone. Her fingers tore at the concrete; her nails split. She made no difference.
‘Michael wanted to rub it out because you made him a cissy. He hated you!’ A fireball rose in her chest.
‘You should be dead, not your brother!’
Mary clawed at a girl’s neck and rubbed her face into the heart until it and the girl crumbled to dust and ashes and there was nothing left.
Pigeons cooed in the arches; the sound might have been in her head along with Michael. Mary warily traced along the groove of the heart. Where Michael had tried to scrub out the ‘M’ was a lump of cement she could not break off.
‘…our Saviour Jesus Christ who shall change the body of our humiliation and fashion it anew in the likeness of His own body of glory…’
Michael had gone for good.
Clifford Hunt had not done the heart for her. Mary wandered along the path. At the arch where she had done the deal with Douglas Ford she pushed open the corrugated iron sheeting and went in. If the girls came back they would not find her.
There was no sun today; the curving brick was like the inside of a chimney. She crouched on the dusty ground. Dimly she knew it was tea-time. She wasn’t hungry. She wanted to sleep but it wasn’t bedtime. She unbuckled her satchel and drew out the Trees of Britain album. The red cover was crimson like blood and heavy with the weight of the cards. She licked her finger the way her dad did while he read his insurance reports. She flipped to the page with the spaces. She decided the card Clifford had given her had fallen out. He had found it and given it back, which was the same as a birthday present.
Your birthday is not till 29 February 1968. Soon I’ll be as old as you.
You will never be as old as me.
You only get a birthday every four years. I will catch up.
At her feet was a congealed mess stuck with flakes of bark and dead leaves. It was Michael’s sick. Leaning against the wall was a bundle of canes. She drew one out, like a sword from a scabbard, and poked the end into the crusted mixture. She drew an ‘M’ in the sick and unearthed smeary bright pink streaked with orange. Michael had gobbled up the Fruit Salad chews. Her daddy had found the crumpled bag in Michael’s shorts with one sweet left. She would have liked to have it. The bag proved Michael had gone out to buy sweets, she had said.
How could my sick be here when I have gone?
Don’t be stupid. But she didn’t know. How could the concrete heart with Michael’s crossings out be there when he was under the ground?
Mary Thornton brushed her cheeks dry with her sleeve and fitted the stick back with the others. Her bag swinging, she returned to the path and went under the arch to King Street as she and Michael had been told. Certain nothing was coming, she crossed at the zebra. Today she was not having a pretend birthday; because of Michael her mum and dad were not making a fuss.
‘I’m doing fish fingers and baked beans,’ she confided to Michael. ‘Your favourite.’