3
Tuesday, 19 April 1966
The noise made her ears hurt. She clapped her hands over them but it got louder. Around her sandals dots of light sparkled, white and blue and pink.
‘I told you not to touch them!’ her mum cried. ‘That’s all our crockery!’
Mary Thornton stayed perfectly still in the hallway while her mother scrabbled about on the parquet floor, shuffling broken china and bits of glass on to newspaper which she wrapped up into a parcel.
‘Don’t stand there. Get the dustpan and brush!’
‘Where from?’
‘Where it usually is, under the sink.’ She shook her head at Mary.
‘Will it be there already?’ They had only moved to the house that day.
‘No it won’t.’ Her mother sighed. ‘Look in the box labelled “Under Sink”. Don’t try to carry the whole thing this time. Lord knows what we’ll drink out of.’
Mary pushed open the door to the new kitchen and found her brother Michael sitting at the table. He was eating yoghurt out of a glass jar. She walked over to him and saw that somehow amongst all the boxes, wooden cases and newspapers he had got his special spoon. He eyed her, the spoon suspended; then, evidently considering it safe to do so, he resumed eating.
‘Who said you could have that?’
‘Mummy did. Are you in trouble again?’
‘No,’ she asserted, although Michael, three years her junior and never in trouble, must have heard her drop the box and listened to everything that happened afterwards.
‘Give me some,’ she demanded, even though she wasn’t hungry.
‘You hate yoghurt.’ The small boy snatched away the jar and cupped it on his lap when his sister lunged for it. He opened his mouth to shout and she halted her hand in the air.
‘If you say anything I’ll get you later,’ she hissed. ‘Give. It. Here.’
Mary pulled Michael’s wrist. Her brother wriggled free and, kneeling up on his chair, crouched over the table shielding the jar. Both children were engaged in the struggle for its own sake. After tugging and shoving, Mary detached herself and wandered over to a box by the back door. She had written the words ‘Under Sink’ on its side herself. She knelt on the lino and, lifting the flaps, rummaged inside.
‘You’re bad,’ Michael uttered, apparently arbitrarily, now that he had a clear route to the door.
‘I’m not.’ She was bad. This had not occurred properly to her before. Dimly she pondered that ever since the buried children had been dug up on the Moor she had been bad. That was why she had a new name.
Despite her labelling, the box was full of pans, the rolling pin, her nan’s cheese grater and the metal measuring jug for making Michael’s favourite cakes. Mary could not see the dustpan and brush. She wrapped her arms around the cardboard and, disobeying her mum, hauled it up and staggered to the sink. She dumped it on to the draining board with a terrible clang and whipped around. Michael was smearing out the last of the yoghurt from the jar with his finger. Her mum did not appear.
‘Will our milkman come here?’ he asked conversationally.
‘How do I know?’ Mary barked at him. ‘No, of course not, we’ve moved miles and miles away. Go and wash your hands.’ With private triumph she fished out the dustpan and brush from another box also called ‘Under Sink’. She examined the galvanized dustpan, mildly perplexed that it looked the same in the new house where otherwise so much was different.
‘Where shall I wash them?’
‘Don’t be an idiot. In the bathroom.’
‘Where’s that?’
‘Stop asking me things. Go and see.’ Mary brandished the brush at her brother; he scampered out of the room. ‘Stop!’ Michael’s head bobbed back.
‘Wash them in the sink here.’ Mary did not want to be alone in the new kitchen.
Michael pattered to the tap and by going on tiptoe he could just reach it. Mary vaguely registered that in their proper house he stood on a chair. He must have grown. Wistfully she pictured that kitchen with the sunbeam that on some school mornings warmed her cheeks while she ate her Cornflakes and made her feel special. She did not feel special any more and the idea of the new school made her tummy ache.
Mary Thornton clasped the dustpan and brush and trotted back to the hall. Her mum had gone. She crouched down and played at housework. She took today’s paper from her father’s coat pocket and spread it out on the floor.
The little girl was momentarily unnerved by the photograph of a woman looking right at her. She read the headline above the image: ‘MOORS MURDER TRIAL OPENS’. She dabbed a thumb over the lady’s name, blotting it out.
She snatched up the brush, scooted the remaining tiny fragments into the dustpan and tipped them out on to the paper until the face of the glary lady had nearly disappeared and the floor was clean. She bundled the paper up the way her mother had and carried it like baby Jesus into the kitchen.
Michael had gone. The empty jar was on the table. Mary rinsed it in the sink and plonked it upside down on the draining board. There were round circles from cups on the silver top, which was strange because they had not had a drink in the new house. Michael had whispered there were ghosts. Stupid. She rubbed at one of the rings until it was gone. Daddy had been cross that her mum had packed the tea leaves in the wrong box and so there had been no tea. She looked in both ‘Under Sink’ boxes for a dishcloth but it must also be in the wrong box. It was not her fault, she said to herself. None of it was.
When Mrs Thornton breezed in twenty minutes later, straining with the weight of a bulging string bag, her daughter had filled the cupboard under the sink so that it looked the same as in their last house.
‘That’s nice, love.’ She pushed aside two empty boxes and laid down her shopping. ‘Fish fingers, lamb chops, baked beans, tea, bread and cornflakes. And some veg. Please start the tea for you and little Mikey. Daddy’s driving back for the last load and I’m doing the beds.’
‘Can I go in the van with Daddy?’
‘What did I just say?’
‘Is Michael going?’
‘No, My— Mary! For goodness’ sake, do I have to ask a thing twice?’ Mrs Thornton clapped her hands to shoo Mary along and whisked out of the room. From the hall, she called: ‘Use the fish fingers and beans, they’re your baby brother’s favourite and he must have a treat to get used to the house.’
‘I’m off.’ Her dad was in the doorway.
Mary grasped the chance. ‘Can I come?’ she pleaded.
‘You heard your mother. Don’t play games. No means no. Look after your brother.’
Mary stood alone in the room. She heard a bang and then silence. In their old home she knew all the noises, but this house was foreign to her; its corners were sharp and the floors cold and hard. She was not bad and would show them by doing what she was told or she might be buried on the moor too. Mary wished Michael would come back. He would come soon enough if she made his tea.
She counted out four fish fingers from the box. The cardboard was damp from where the food had thawed and she accidentally tore the flap; another fish finger fell out. She deserved an extra one. She lined up the tin of Heinz beans, the loaf of bread and a box of Brooke Bond tea beside three brown paper bags with twists for ears. She peered in each bag: carrots, potatoes and onions. Mary played being the greengrocer and announced each item out loud while tapping out the prices on the table with stubby fingers as if working the giant till. They would not see the nice greengrocer with the funny eyes who gave her penny snakes any more.
As Mary had anticipated, attracted by the cooking smells Michael slunk in while his sister was at the stove and slid on to a chair. He lolled over the table between his rabbit knife and fork, which she had found for him, and enquired chirpily: ‘Are you meant to use the frying pan?’
‘How else can I make fish fingers?’ she retorted, forking them out on to two plates. She scraped splodges of congealing beans out of the saucepan and ladled them next to the fish fingers, spilling some on the tabletop. Michael snapped them up.
‘You’re not allowed,’ she added with some triumph.
‘We’ve got a bedroom each.’ Michael tucked his hands between his knees happily. His hair stuck up at the back and his wrists poked out like white sticks from the jumper knitted for him by their nan, who liked boys best.
‘Take your elbows off the table.’ Mary was now their mother. She banged down a plastic beaker of milk. ‘Sit up.’
‘Yours is bigger, but I can see my new swing from mine.’
‘What new swing?’
‘The one Daddy’s going to make in the garden by the willow tree.’ As he chattered he lined up the fish fingers with his fork making a train with two carriages. ‘It’ll be very, very high so I can kick the sky.’ He chanted the phrase, obviously pleased with it. ‘It’ll be very, very—’
‘Be quiet, Michael!’
‘You don’t have a willow tree in your tree album.’ He kicked his legs against the chair as he chomped his food.
‘I do,’ Mary said without thinking, although she did not remember a page with a willow and certainly didn’t have the card.
‘It’s not a “Trees of Britain” tree.’ Michael smiled good-naturedly at his sister.
‘It is.’ Too late Mary sniffed a trap of her own making.
‘The weeping willow comes from China. It’s in my en-cyc-lop-paedia. You won’t get it from this tea.’ Michael lined up the last three beans on his fork and nudged the packet of Brooke Bond with his other hand.
‘Who says?’ Mary pulled at his hand. ‘Don’t play with your food.’
Michael shrugged and squirmed on his chair while he chewed. ‘I’ve never had my own bedroom. You’re always there.’ He looked suddenly less pleased.
‘Nor have I,’ Mary conceded. She sat down and gathering up a dainty forkful of beans popped it between her lips.
‘Yes you have.’ He slurped his milk. ‘Mare-ree.’
‘No, I have not and do not call me that. Close your mouth when you’re eating, I can see mashed-up food.’ She swallowed a bean without chewing and coughed.
‘You have, you had a bedroom by yourself before I was even born. For three years you had a bedroom.’
‘That doesn’t count.’
‘It does. It’s a very lo-ong time. In three years I’ll be ten like you. Except then you won’t be ten, you’ll—’
‘Shut up!’
Her brother reddened and pronging a bean on his fork nibbled it off ruminatively. ‘I want to go home,’ he muttered after a bit, so quietly Mary only just caught it.
‘This is home.’ Impatient with trying to eat politely in the strange kitchen, she heaped beans and fish fingers on to the convex side of her fork and shovelled them into her mouth. When she had finished she rinsed their plates without washing-up liquid because it was not in the ‘Under Sink’ boxes.
Neither child voiced what each had decided must be true, that although they had been told their father had a new job, the move to Hammersmith from Holloway, away from everything they knew, was in some way Mary’s fault.
‘I don’t like it here.’ Michael spoke to the lino with brimming eyes.
‘Nor do I,’ his sister replied without turning round.