Why wouldn’t they go away? Surely someone collecting for charity or delivering a parcel would have given up by now.
Then a loud clattering shook Marion’s bones; the person was rattling the letterbox. She would have to answer, or they would never leave her in peace. Steeling herself, she crept down to the hallway. A shadowy shape was hunched behind the glass panel. When she opened the door, she found Mr. Weinberg standing on the step, his ancient face creased with anger. He was wearing a hat and overcoat even though it was a sunny day. A blob of egg yolk stained his collar.
“Vy didn’t you answer the door?” His accent was a thick soup of German and Northport. He looked at her dressing gown. “In bed at nearly eleven o’clock?”
“No—no—not in bed—I was busy doing something,” insisted Marion, affronted by the accusation despite it being true. “Is there something I can help you with, Mr. Weinberg?”
“Have you seen Polly? My little dog, she is missing.”
“Your dog? No, I haven’t seen her.”
Mr. Weinberg was trying to push his way into the house, but she stopped him by keeping her weight behind the half-opened door.
“She ran away yesterday morning ven I took her for valk. Maybe she is in your garden.”
“No, no she isn’t.”
“How can you be sure?” Eyebrow hairs, thick as electrical wiring, poked over the top of his huge glasses. “Did you check already, before I came? You have psychic powers? Perhaps that is vat you were doing when I ring the bell. You get psychic message that Mr. Weinberg’s dog is missing, so you think I go and look for it before he comes even.”
Anger heated the soup of his accents, so Marion found it almost impossible to understand what he was saying. Even though Mr. Weinberg was being really quite rude, since he was elderly, she had no choice but to be polite to him.
“Well, I haven’t looked yet, of course, but I will look and I’ll let you know if I find him,” she promised.
“Her—Polly is girl,” he said, pronouncing her like “herrr” and girl “gurrl” in his funny way.
“Her, I’m sorry.”
“Perhaps you should let me check. That vill be the best, I think.”
“No, I don’t think so. It’s not convenient. I promise I will let you know if I see her.”
Then Marion practically had to shut the door in the old man’s face to get rid of him. She waited until his hunched silhouette had gone from behind the door before going back upstairs to lie down on her bed and recover.
? ? ?
AS A CHILD, Marion would often stay with her aunt in the flat overlooking Northport Beach. They would have midnight feasts of crisp sandwiches and fizzy orange pop, feeding titbits to her aunt’s poodle, Bunty. Before they went to sleep her aunt would tell stories about when she and Mother were girls. The sisters were taught to play the piano by an Italian lady who had lost a limb during the war. She was called Mrs. Morello, like the cherries, and used to stamp her wooden leg in time to the music. As teenagers the two girls had entered a beauty contest on Northport Pier, but before the judges even made a decision, Grandma Carter arrived and dragged them home by their hair, still wearing only swimsuits and sashes.
One story in particular gripped Marion. It had happened when Mother was just fifteen in the Grange Road house the family still lived in; she had been carrying her newborn brother downstairs when she tripped on the fourth stair from the bottom and fell, crushing the infant beneath her body. The baby had been called John. Mother must have named her own firstborn in honor of him. Marion longed to ask Mother about the tragedy. Did she still feel torn up with guilt? Had Grandma Carter ever forgiven her? Did the poor little baby scream and cry, or just go silent in her arms? But Agnes swore her to secrecy. “You can’t say a word, Marion, not on your life. My sister would never speak to me again if she knew I’d told you that.” And Marion would put her hand on her heart and promise.
? ? ?
BUNTY’S ACCIDENT HAPPENED one Saturday afternoon when Marion was twelve. Agnes had invited the whole family over to the flat for lunch. John, who didn’t like visiting his aunt, was in a sulky mood. While they were still in the middle of eating their iceberg lettuce, cold chicken, and boiled eggs, John took a book out to read. Agnes told him quite firmly to put the book away, as it was rude to read in company. Mother, who always seemed a little afraid of John, didn’t say anything, but Dad agreed with Agnes.
When John shoved his plate of food away from him, knocking over a jar of Hellmann’s mayonnaise, Marion went cold inside. Then he said he had a stomachache and needed to go to the toilet. After he had been gone about five minutes they heard a funny sound like something heavy being knocked over. Then John came back into the room, picked up a boiled egg with his fork, and shoved it into his mouth whole.
It wasn’t until they were about to leave that Agnes noticed Bunty was missing. They searched everywhere for her, then Aunt Agnes went out onto the balcony and screamed. Bunty was lying dead on the pavement below.
Agnes just couldn’t understand how it happened. She said she was sure the balcony door had been closed. Even if it had been left open, Bunty was too big to squeeze through the railings, and they were too high for her to jump over. Then Agnes got it into her head that John had lifted the dog over the railings and let her fall. She said it must have happened when he went to the toilet. But John swore he had nothing to do with it. Even when Agnes screamed at him to admit what he’d done, John’s face stayed smooth as a saucer of milk.
Agnes said she didn’t trust John as far as she could spit. She called him a cruel, nasty little boy and she was as sure he had killed Bunty as if she had seen him do it with her own eyes. These words cut Marion in two. Her brother and her aunt were her favorite people in the world and she wanted them to love each other as much as she loved them.
Mother refused to believe that John was responsible and was furious that her own sister could accuse him of such a terrible thing. After that day, the two of them never spoke a word to each other. Marion was forbidden to visit her aunt or accept the presents she sent at Christmas and birthdays. She cried for weeks and even considered poisoning herself with the bad berries one more time. Then she remembered Dad’s promise that the doctors wouldn’t bother to pump her stomach if she tried that malarkey again.
? ? ?
ONE MORNING OVER breakfast, Dad read the announcement from his copy of the Northport Herald:
“Agnes Carter, Aged 57. Died from ovarian cancer in Saint Anne’s Hospice, Northport.”
He said it with the exact same tone of voice he had used to inform them of the closure of the little train that ran from Pleasure Beach to the boating marina. When no one commented on the news, Dad just folded up the paper, then carried on eating his scrambled eggs and black pudding.
SHOPPING