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I skip across the floor, ears buzzing, fingertips shooting sparks as though I’ve brought the fireworks home. ‘No it won’t.’
‘It’s usually you who is the sensible one.’ He tries to be stern, but I can hear glee at the back of his words.
‘How can I sleep after such an adventure? It is quite impossible.’
‘No, you are quite impossible. Hurry up. Get out of these britches,’ he says, fumbling with the buttons. I try to help but I’m all fingers and thumbs. ‘Leave off,’ he cries. ‘I’ll be quicker.’
He wrestles with the fly and wins. The trousers fall to my ankles. I take a step, trip and fall flat upon the mattress. Marbles scatter across the rug. He seizes his opportunity, pins me down and endeavours to drag the shirt over my head.
‘We’ve got to fold the trousers and put them away tidily,’ I mumble.
‘No time,’ he says with an odd urgency. He sounds an awfully long way off, as if he has turned into a gnat and is whining in my ear. I flap my hand but it is stuck half in and half out of the shirt. ‘Stay still,’ he says, so grave and unlike his usual self I can’t help tittering.
All my clothes are off. The blanket is scratchy, coarse.
‘Tell me a bedtime story, Gnome,’ I say, halfway gone.
Breath close to my ear, hot and stifling. He folds his hand in mine. My hand in his. I think of Nana folding butter into flour. I flutter my fingers and hear Gnome giggle.
‘That tickles.’
Perhaps I say it. Perhaps it is Gnome. I’m so sleepy I’m no longer sure where he ends and I begin. Nor does it matter: I have never known such bliss and I know he feels it also. I know everything he has ever known, feel everything he has ever felt. It is so simple. I did not realise—
The door flies open. Ma stands against the light, her candle shivering the walls with shadow.
‘Come now, Edie,’ she says. ‘What’s all this noise?’
‘Ma!’ I cheer, still fizzing with excitement. I reach for her to gather me into her arms.
‘Why aren’t you asleep?’ She plonks down the candle, marches across the room and closes the window.
Shh, hisses Gnome. Don’t tell.
The space between my ears is spinning with red and yellow lights; rockets are bouncing off the walls of my ribs. I can’t help myself.
‘I’ve been to the fireworks!’ I crow. ‘It was wonderf—’
‘You naughty girl!’ she exclaims, pushing aside my grasping hands. ‘If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a hundred times. You’re too little to step out on your own.’
‘I didn’t. Gnome held my hand.’
Don’t say my name! says Gnome. Not to her.
‘What?’ Ma swallows so heavily I see the muscles in her neck clump together. ‘Who …?’
‘I told Gnome you’d be cross, but he wouldn’t listen …’
‘Gnome?’ she gulps. ‘No.’
Her eyes stretch so wide they look like they might pop out of her head. I hold my hand over my mouth to push the giggle back in.
That’s torn it, says Gnome.
‘No. No. No,’ she mutters, over and over, shaking her head from side to side. ‘I’ll not have it. There’s no such person.’
‘There is! He’s here every night.’
I don’t know why Ma is being so silly. The candle flame wobbles. Her expression twists from disbelief to belief, belief to shame, shame to fear, fear to anger. She slaps the back of my legs. Not hard, but it stings.
‘Ow! Ma, you’re hurting.’
‘Serves you right for telling lies.’
‘I’m not. Gnome!’ I cry. ‘Come back and tell Ma!’
I can’t see him. Maybe he’s hiding under the bed. But Gnome doesn’t need to hide. He’s not afraid of anyone.
‘Shut up!’ Ma cuffs the side of my head. My ears whistle. ‘He’s not real. He can’t be! When are you going to get it through that thick skull of yours?’
I shrink into the bed as far as I can, curl against the wall. There is no further I can go. I don’t know why Ma is so furious. She is strict, but not like this: wild, white-faced. I want the mattress to open its mouth and gobble me up.
‘It was all Gnome’s idea!’ I squeal. ‘He made me go with him!’
It’s a terrible lie. The air freezes, pushing ice so far down my throat I can’t breathe. Ma seizes my shoulders and shakes me.
‘He’s not real! Say it!’
‘No!’ I wail.
‘Say it!’ she roars.
My head jerks back and forth, my neck as brittle as a bit of straw.
‘Say it!’
Roaring in my ears. Dark, sucking.
‘He’s not real,’ I moan.
‘Louder!’
‘He’s not real!’ I whimper, the thin squeal of a doll with a voice box in its chest.
‘What’s all this to-do?’ booms Nana. She can barely fit into the tiny room beside Ma, but fit she does. She throws a quick glance the length of my body and turns to Ma. ‘Well, Cissy?’
Ma’s face contorts. ‘Lies. Nightmares,’ she spits. ‘She says she’s been to the fireworks. With – no. No! Her and her wretched imaginings. It’s enough to try the patience of a saint.’
‘Stuff and nonsense,’ says Nana pertly. She lowers herself on to the mattress and huffs a sigh that matches the springs in weary music. She pats the blanket. ‘Come here, Edie.’
I shake my head the smallest fraction and cling to the bedstead.
‘No one is going to punish you.’
‘I’ll be the judge of that,’ growls Ma.
‘Pipe down,’ snaps Nana, throwing her a glance that could burn toast. ‘Now then, Edie,’ she says very carefully. ‘Why aren’t you in your nightdress? You’ve not a stitch on.’
I shake my head again. It seems to be the only thing of which I am capable.
‘Filthy little heathen,’ says Ma.
Nana continues in her soft burr, coaxing me out of my funk. ‘You’ll catch your death. Here.’ She plucks my nightdress out of thin air, or so it seems to my fuddled brain. I clutch it to my chest. ‘I think we could all do with some sleep,’ she adds.
I nod. My head bounces, broken and empty. Nana turns to Ma and frowns.
‘Look at her. She doesn’t know whether she’s coming or going. Be gentle with her. As I was with you.’
‘Since when did any of that nonsense do any good? She’s tapped. I’ll have her taken away, I will.’
‘Hush. You’ll do no such thing. You’re frightening the child. If you let her play out rather than keeping her cooped up, she wouldn’t need to make up stories.’
‘Who cares about her? What about my nerves?’
Nana ignores her and returns her attention to me. ‘You’re a good girl, aren’t you, Edie love?’
‘Yes?’ I say uncertainly.
‘So you haven’t really been to the fireworks, have you?’
Ma glares over Nana’s shoulder, eyes threatening dire punishment. I am afraid of lying, terrified of the truth. My heart gallops like a stampede of coal horses.
‘No,’ I squeak.
Ma smirks; Nana does not. I have satisfied one and not the other. I have no idea how to please them both.
‘Was it a nightmare, Edie?’ Nana purrs.
I can tell the truth, if that’s what she wants. But I no longer know what anyone wants. ‘Yes,’ I lie.
‘Well, then,’ she says. ‘You were dreaming. That’s all.’
Ma storms out of the room, grumbling about my disobedience. Nana pauses, screws up her eyes until they are slits. I have the oddest notion she’s trying to see through me and find Gnome. She leans close.
‘Herbert?’ she whispers.
‘Shh,’ I hiss. ‘He hates that name.’ She gives me a startled glance. ‘I’m sorry, Nana. I didn’t mean to be rude. But he likes to be called Gnome.’
She looks over her shoulder, as though worried Ma is watching. I did not think grandmothers were afraid of their own children.
‘Quiet now,’ she murmurs. She kisses my brow. ‘Let’s have no more of this talk. Not in front of your mother. You can see how it riles her.’
‘But he’s my brother.’
‘No, he’s not.’ She rolls her eyes. ‘I can’t explain. You’re too little. One day. Just don’t say his name again. A quiet life. That’s what we all want.’
‘Can we run away, Nana?’
‘Hush, my pet. Do you want your ma to come back in here?’
She pinches my cheek. It is affectionate, but her eyes are desperate. She slides away, taking the light of the candle with her. I lie in a darkness greater than the absence of flame. I’m afraid. If Nana is too, there’s nowhere I can turn. Through the wall I hear them argue, voices muffled by brick.
‘This wasn’t supposed to happen,’ wails Ma. ‘She’s ruined everything.’
‘She’s ruined nothing. She’s the same as you and me, that’s all.’
‘That’s all? I raised her to be normal.’
‘Cissy, for goodness’ sake …’
‘It can’t be true. I won’t let it be.’
‘You can’t alter facts. We are what we are,’ says Nana, over and over. ‘We are what we are.’
I smell home in all its familiarity: a stew of spilt beer, pipe smoke and damp sawdust. And something else: my hair, reeking of gunpowder. I crawl out of bed. Underneath is a pair of britches, ghostly with warmth from the body that wore them. Beside them are my boots, mud clumped under the heel. I press my finger to it: fresh, damp. Ma says I was lying. Nana says I was dreaming. If I didn’t go out, I must be imagining this as well.
I tiptoe to the window. I can’t be sure if I opened it or not. I peer through the glass. I would never be brave enough to climb down the drainpipe, not in a hundred years. My thoughts stumble, stop in their tracks.
‘Where are you, Gnome?’ I sob. ‘I need you.’
However many times Ma’s told me off, I’ve always been able to find his hand in the dark and hang on. He’s always been there. But tonight, there’s no answer. Something emptier than silence.
I try to make sense of the senseless. Ma says Gnome is all in my head – a nightmare. Nana says he isn’t my brother, that he is imaginary. They would not lie to me. Grown-ups are always right. I am the one who is wrong. I am a naughty girl. I tell lies. I make things up.
I must have been asleep. I must have dreamed the whole thing. I will be a good girl. I will scrape his name from the slate of my memory. If I say what Ma wants then it will be the truth and she will be happy. She won’t be cross any more.
I double over in agony, as though I have been split in half and my heart torn out. I squeeze my nightdress, expecting to find it soaked with blood. All is dry. In the faint light I examine my chest, searching for wounds. My skin is whole, undamaged. I am just a girl, on my own.
I throw the marbles out of the window; hear them click as they roll down the privy roof, and the fainter thud as they fall into the dirt. There is no such thing as luck.
‘Gnome?’ I say his name for the last time.
The sound echoes off the ceiling. I have lost him. I do not know how to get him back. If he was ever here. For the first time in my life, I am alone.
PART ONE
MANCHESTER 1897–1904
EDIE
1897–1899
Stroll through Hulme of an evening and you will be forgiven for imagining it a den of drunkards. Brave the labyrinth of streets, row upon row of brick-built dwellings black as burned toast, and there, upon each and every corner, you will find it: haven for the weary traveller, fountain for the thirsty man – the beerhouse.
Hulme boasts a hundred of them; a hundred more besides. There’s the Dolphin, famed for its operatic landlord; the Duke of Brunswick with a ship’s bell clanged at closing time; the Hussar and its sword swiped at Peterloo. If you can ignore their glittering siren song and press on, only then will you find us, breasting the tip of Renshaw Street like a light-ship.
The Comet.
Sparkling Ales is etched upon one frosted window, Fine Stouts and Porter upon the other. A board stretches the width of our wall, announcing Empress Mild and Bitter Beer. Above the door and brightest of all, the gilt scroll of my mother’s name: Cecily Margaret Latchford, Licensed to sell Beers and Stouts. Come, it beckons. Enter, and be refreshed.
That is the full extent of our finery and flash. We are no glaring gin-palace for we boast neither piano room, spirit licence, nor free-and-easy on a Saturday night; we field no darts team, no skittle alley, no billiard table. You’d be forgiven for thinking us a temperance hall on account of the sober principles Ma polishes into the long oaken bar. We are so plain I scarcely understand why The Comet is full each evening; lunchtime too.
They said we’d not make a farthing, but Ma is forged of steely stuff and has proved them wrong. She gives neither short measure nor employs the long pull. A pint is a pint to the very drop. She never raises her voice, nor needs to. At closing time she glares at the clock. That’s all it takes for every glass in the room to be raised, every mouthful drained. By ten past the hour she slides the door-bolts into place and turns down the gas, with not so much as the shadow of a dog remaining under the tables.
For all that Ma will have no truck with nonsense, the walls of The Comet bulge with mysteries. Some are simple to plumb. Ma refuses to speak about Papa, a moustachioed fellow who hangs above the bar in a picture frame, only pointing to the black riband looped around the corner. That, I understand. Some things are less easy to explain: why Ma takes to her bed three days in every month; why my beloved Uncle Arthur only drops by when she’s laid up.
Then there are my nightmares. I can’t understand why people talk of sleep as a welcome undoing of strife and woe. They must mean something else entirely. I am hag-ridden. I tell no one of the night-voice that shrieks so piercingly the whole street ought to hear. I dare not. I tell no one how I wake with fingernails grimed as black as soot, knots in my hair and scraps of bacon rind wedged in my teeth. I dare not.
The only person with whom I share my stories is Papa, behind his glass. Sometimes I wish he’d speak one word, give one nod of encouragement, but his face is stiff. He keeps my secrets well.
At school, I hunger for mathematics and its security of two-times-two-equals-four; prefer geography and the massive consistency of mountains. Even the most determined friend despairs of my inability to engage in games of make-believe and I am left to the click of my abacus. What they cannot know is that I cling to logic with the dogged desperation of one drowning. I strive to make Ma smile.
Every night she stares as I undress, as though searching for something she does not want to find. I wonder if the removal of my petticoat will reveal me to be a bat, ready to squeak and burst out of the window.
‘Don’t you stir,’ she says.
‘No, Ma.’
‘You stay right there.’
‘Yes, Ma.’
She sits on the bed, stands up, sits again. It makes me dizzier than physick. At last, she leans close and I thrill that tonight she may kiss me.
‘I know you,’ she whispers, the words crawling into my ear. ‘You’re waiting for me to look away for one minute, aren’t you?’
‘No, Ma,’ I say.
‘Liar,’ she replies, exhaling heat upon my face. ‘I know what you’re thinking. Everything. Before you think it. I know you better than you know yourself.’
‘Ma?’ I don’t understand. I never do.
‘You can’t fool me. Don’t try,’ she hisses.
‘I won’t,’ I promise desperately. I close my eyes. Green lights dance behind my eyelids. The next time she speaks it is from further away.
‘I am watching. Always.’
‘Yes, Ma. Goodnight, Ma,’ I mumble as drowsily as I can manage.
The door clicks shut. I shake my head from side to side, but her words stick fast and refuse to tumble out on to the pillow. I climb out of bed, kneel under the picture of Jesus and Mary and press my palms together. I beg them to send me to sleep and not wander in wild dreams. They look down at me with sad expressions, pointing at their fiery hearts, eyes reproachful. Their insides are burning too, but they don’t complain. Not like me.
From below come the sounds of The Comet: clink of glass, rumble of voices, the percussion of Ma’s footsteps drumming back and forth. I stare at the ceiling until my eyes grow used to the dark. Tonight, perhaps, I will be spared.
It begins small, as always, like a dray rumbling over cobbles three streets distant. Street by street the thunder draws closer, gathering speed and vigour. I clap my hands over my ears to stave off the din, but the commotion is from inside, not out. The shadows thicken and in their depths I spy the glint of monstrous eyes, the flash of leviathan teeth, ready to devour me.
Edie. I’m here, roars the fiend. Let’s go out to play.
‘No!’ I howl, but the wail is trapped within the confines of my head. ‘I can’t hear you! I won’t!’
I strain to get away. If I can stir so much as my little finger, I will win and the beast will be vanquished. But all that is Edie has shrunk into a marble, tiny and lost.
You used to be so much more fun. Don’t you remember the fireworks?
‘No.’ It is a lie and I weep with the wickedness of telling it.
I can’t waste time chatting. Time presses. Let me in.
I fight to stay awake. The creature surges forwards, opens its jaws. Claws drag me into darkness and I do not rise again.
The next morning I wake with a fog of unknowing between my ears. My first thought is: Where am I? The second: Who am I? Gradually, the room resumes its familiar shape. This is home and I am in it. I lie abed, half-breathless from last night’s dream of bruised knees, slammed doors, thumped door-knockers and racing away. The curtain sways. The window stands half-open. Last night Ma closed it tight.
My hair is sticky with spiders’ web and I’m wearing muddy boots and britches. I daren’t let Ma see me like this. Before I go downstairs, I clean the boots and take the scrubbing brush to my hands. I stand before the mirror at the top of the stairs and rehearse my smile in preparation for breakfast. My face looks back, pallid and starved of sleep.
‘Did you sleep well?’ Ma asks as I pull my chair to the kitchen table.
‘Yes, Ma,’ I lisp and stretch my deceitful grin to the tips of my ears.
I am shepherding the last bit of porridge from bowl to mouth when Nana lays her hand on my forehead.
‘You look a bit peaky,’ she says.
I butt into the broad warmth of her palm. Half the porridge slips from the spoon back into the bowl. Her tenderness is my undoing.
‘Yes, Nana.’ I yawn. ‘It was that dream again: where I jump out of the window and get into all sorts of naughtiness.’
Her hand makes peaceful circles across my brow. My eyelids droop.
‘Dreams,’ she murmurs, half-statement, half-question.
I am more than halfway back to sleep. ‘I never know why I wake up with dirty hands and feet.’ The delicious massage ceases abruptly. ‘Nana?’ I mumble.
I winch open my eyelids to see Ma shooting my grandmother a look of such blazing fury I am surprised she does not incinerate on the spot.
‘Cissy,’ says my grandmother in a soothing tone. ‘It’s only right. Let me tell—’
‘Not a word,’ rasps Ma, shaking her head. ‘Unless you wish to look for alternate lodgings.’
‘Cissy! I am your mother!’
‘And as long as it is my name upon the licence, you will abide by my rules. Remember who does everything around here. Everything!’
My spoon hovers between dish and lips. What species of imp prompts the next words I do not know.
‘Uncle Arthur,’ I pipe.
‘What?’ growls Ma, her eyes wide as saucers.
‘He helps.’
She lets loose a cry that could split firewood. ‘He does nothing, do you hear?’ she screams. ‘I work my fingers to the bone and he swans in once a month!’
I bow my head and let the storm rage. I think her ungrateful, but I’ll never be the one to say so. Uncle Arthur is a pearl of a man. Without him, who knows how we’d manage when Ma takes to her bed, regular and reliable as the full moon.
Life continues on its confusing path.
I grow into a swallowed voice of a girl. I speak when I am spoken to and often not even then. Ma says sufficient for the two of us, sharp as thistles and as bitter. I gulp down my words before they are born and they wedge in my throat like stones. If I lay my hand on my chest I feel them grinding together, locked up tight.
As soon as I’m old enough to stand without hanging on to the furniture Ma has me collecting glasses and washing them too, for she scorns the idea of squandering cash on a servant. I learn quick not to break one, having no desire to increase the number of times she takes out her wrath on my backside.
Year follows year until I reach my twelfth birthday. It is a proud day indeed, for I carry a jug of beer from the cellar without spilling a drop. It makes Ma happy. And when Ma is happy, well, so is everybody else.
Our customers have their little ways. There’s the temperance man who disappears for a fortnight at a time, only to reappear with a famished look, ready to spring to the defence of his porter at closing time. There’s Old Tom, who takes the same seat by the fire and woe betide anyone who tries to purloin it. There are the pipe-smokers, teeth stained brown as the benches they sit upon. There’s the bearded fellow, white stripes running from the corners of his mouth and lending him the appearance of a badger.
And there’s the charming man.
The hair on his head is black, but his eyebrows and moustache are copper-red, adding a streak of spice to his features. I find it difficult to like a man whose head disagrees with his face. Whenever I pass through the bar on one errand or another, he grabs me around the waist and pulls me close, squeezing out what little breath I have to spare. Every time he does so Ma ticks me off.
‘Stop annoying the customers,’ she growls.
‘She’s not bothering me,’ he replies.
One evening, after a particularly onerous spell of cuddles and pinches, I retreat to the privy. The night-soil collectors emptied the bucket the previous evening but it retains the fruity stink of human ordure. I consider the smell preferable to his unwanted attentions. There is no point in wasting a visit, so I hitch my skirt around my middle.
I hear a light cough, more of an apology.
The ginger-faced man slides into the doorway and hovers there. I stretch out my hand to pull the door shut, but he braces his foot against it.
‘I’ll make sure no ill befalls you,’ he says in his soft, polite way.
I want to tell him to turn around and leave, but something in the way he speaks smothers my protestations. I have the sensation of a pillow stuffed with goose down being held tenderly over my face.
I tug my skirt over my knees. It is tricky to keep my balance at the same time as preventing the hem from trailing in muck. My insides shrivel. I cannot go while he is watching. I pull up my drawers as modestly as I am able.
‘I didn’t hear you tinkle,’ he says, the loveliest of smiles lighting up his face.
‘I’ve changed my mind,’ I whisper. ‘I don’t need to.’
‘Oh, but you do,’ he purrs. He doesn’t shift aside to let me pass, nor does he lift his protective gaze from me for one instant.
‘I can’t.’
‘But you must.’ His voice is as sticky as barley malt. ‘Ah!’ he breathes. ‘You’re afraid someone will barge in, aren’t you? I’ll tell you what. Let your old friend help you. I’ll fight off any rough fellows who come this way.’
I can neither move nor speak.
He waggles his fingers, fanning the sickly air. ‘I’ll be your lookout. Carry on.’
A cry for help twists my innards. ‘No.’ It is less than a squeak. Barely an exhalation.
‘Do it,’ he says, a fraction sharper. ‘Now.’