Poppyland Read Free Page B

easy.’
    â€˜But you’re good at it, Lucy, you always have been.’ A childhood memory floated past me containing Lucy with neat hair and clean hands brushing the cat, kneeling on the floor in the hall with sunlight shaftingon to her hair. I was there, sitting next to Lucy, my favourite toy, a one-eyed doll named Blue in my arms, waiting for her to finish with the brush. Maybe it’s not a memory, just a bad dream, but I think the next thing that happened was that the front door opened and Mum walked in. In my memory I held my breath, but I doubt I did in real life.
    â€˜What are you doing?’ she asked.
    â€˜Nothing yet, but I am about to brush Blue,’ I answered.
    â€˜Blue’s got fleas, she’ll ruin the hairbrush.’ Mum picked up my doll by the head and, opening the door, flung it out into the garden. She turned and smiled, a small, sharp flash in her eyes as she looked at Lucy and me and sighed.
    â€˜Find something nice to play with, darling,’ she urged, and walked briskly past us into the kitchen. I waited until she turned the radio on before I opened the front door and tiptoed out into the garden to find Blue and bring her back in. I hid her from Mum after that.
    Lucy had sighed on the phone. ‘Maybe one day you and Mum will sort it out,’ she had said.
    â€˜I’ll try when I come this time. I want us to get on, Luce, I really do.’
    But Mum pre-empted my plan to see her, and let slip the vestiges of lucidity, sinking into breathless death behind her kitchen door on the day before I was to arrive. Lucy telephoned early. A call before seven in the morning can never be good news. Climbing out of sleep I heard the phone and I swallowed, a drylump in my throat. I think I knew already when I heard Lucy’s voice, brittle and tight, staccato with confusion and strain.
    â€˜Oh Grace. Oh God. Oh shit. The thing is, Mum died.’
    â€˜Oh.’ I felt my heart stop for a beat too many, then race away, while a desolate bell chimed in my head. ‘Good timing.’ I realised I had said it out loud. Accidentally. Me and my big mouth. I found myself staring into the earpiece of the phone as if hoping my words would come back unsaid.
    Luckily Lucy was still talking, she knew I hadn’t meant it as it sounded. ‘Yes, but the thing is, they found her all folded up and crumpled like she had fallen off a towel rail behind the door into the kitchen. She was very thin.’
    My ear was hot. I pressed the telephone tighter to it, wanting to feel something solid no matter how insubstantial. I couldn’t tell if the quaver in Lucy’s voice was grief or laughter.
    â€˜Like Peter Pan’s shadow,’ I said.
    â€˜What?’ said Lucy. ‘What are you talking about, Sis?’
    â€˜You know, he kept it rolled up in the drawer.’
    Lucy gasped. ‘Oh, I see. Yes, I suppose so.’ She began to laugh, I began to laugh as well, and somehow we were both giggling and gasping across five hours of time difference and our shock. Even when we stopped, the energy of laughing stayed inside us, propelling the first untested steps we had to take to begin our lives without our mother.
    * * *
    The taxi pulls up in an industrial part of the harbour. The sea glitters and slaps against the keel of a dark ship and the skimpy petals on the moon unfurl to cover it fully. It is as if a fall of soot has dropped through the cavern of a vast chimney and blanketed the surface of the sea. A moment of darkness exists, then a thin ribbon of light from further down the harbour brings back the dancing movement of the water. In that unlit moment, my skin crawls, and I shiver, the impenetrable blackness of night hooking me out of my reverie of displacement. On the street a taste of salt in the air hits the back of my throat, and the damp night is like a splash of cold water on my skin. Knotting the belt on my coat more tightly makes me feel pulled together. Better.