9

Tilly

The empty cherry brandy bottle was lying on its side on the kitchen table like a lost boat washed up on the shore, and what used to be a tumbler was strewn in a sparkle of smashed glass across the floor. It was Tilly’s seventh birthday, and this was definitely not how it was supposed to be. She fetched the dustpan and brush from the cupboard under the sink, and began to sweep up the mess, but the broken glass was tricky, and flicked and skittered away from the dustpan across the tiled floor. Tilly was hungry, and as it was her birthday and there was no sign of her mother, she decided to make her own breakfast. She hadn’t learned very much cooking yet, and her small fingers still struggled to get to grips with the tin opener, so her options were pretty limited, but Tilly was determined to have something special to mark her birthday properly. Having searched the shelves in the pantry, she decided on a mashed jam tart and cornflake sandwich. The idea tasted lovely in Tilly’s head, but the actual sandwich in her mouth was not so good. Still, at least she had made the effort. She left the remains on a plate on the draining board, in case her mother felt like some breakfast when she eventually got out of bed. She would have given it to the dog, but she had never seen him eat anything. Tilly had woken up one morning a few weeks ago to find him sitting at the foot of the bed, watching her. He was a serious-looking dog, completely black, and one of his ears stood up and the other flopped over. Tilly didn’t know where he had come from and he wasn’t wearing a collar or a name tag. She would have liked to stroke him, but he never let her touch him, moving just out of reach every time she tried. But he listened when she spoke to him, tipping his head to one side and occasionally wagging his tail. A week after he had first appeared, Tilly decided that she had better give him a name. She remembered her daddy telling her that he had had a dog when he was about her age called Eli. He had explained that in the Bible, a priest called Eli took care of a little boy, and that his dog looked after him, so it seemed like a good name. Tilly hoped that her Eli would look after her too. At first, she thought that perhaps her mother had gotten the dog for her, but when she asked her, her mother said she didn’t know what Tilly was talking about, and that of course she hadn’t brought a dog into the house. She even said he wasn’t there, when Tilly could quite clearly see him in the room. Now, she got really cross if he was even mentioned. Tilly thought that perhaps her mother was afraid of dogs or going a bit mad, or maybe both. Anyhow, she was very happy to have Eli as a new friend. She felt as though, somehow, he was on her side.

Tilly wondered if the postman would come before she had to set off for school. It seemed a shame to have to go to school on her birthday, but she didn’t really mind, because today they were making pictures of Bonfire Night and fireworks, and had been promised glitter and glue, and, of course, when she got home, her daddy would be here. Nothing had been said, but she knew that he wouldn’t miss her birthday. She wondered what presents she would get. When her mother had asked her what she would like, Tilly had asked for a packet of Daz. She had planned to secretly swap the contents with her mother’s usual soap powder to see if it would make any difference, but her mother had told her not to be so silly, so Tilly had asked for a flashlight instead. She had seen a program once on television, where a girl had read books at night under the bedclothes using a flashlight, when she was supposed to have been asleep. She liked the idea of that, and also of holding it under her chin and switching it on in the dark when she was pulling a horrible face, to frighten people. And, if there was an emergency, she could use it to signal S.O.S., something she had learned to do while watching an old war film with her daddy. A flashlight had lots of possibilities. She had also asked for a doll, to keep her mother happy. She could always cut its hair off and bury it in the garden later. She poked around in the kitchen junk drawer for a bit, pinging a couple of elastic bands across the room and rummaging in the button tin to see if she could find any ha’pennies. She looked up at the clock on the wall above the fridge. It was half past eight. She would have to leave in five minutes. The quiet clut of the letterbox was followed by the flutter of envelopes falling onto the doormat. There were several cards for Tilly, and one brown envelope addressed to her mother. Tilly shoved the cards into her satchel and left the house to walk to school. She would open them on the way. She didn’t bother calling out to her mother as she left; she knew she wouldn’t get an answer. Tilly had woken in the middle of the night needing to use the toilet. As she padded carefully across the landing, she had heard her mother downstairs talking to herself and crying. She sounded angry and upset. It frightened Tilly, but made her sad at the same time. She wanted to go and give her a hug and tell her that everything would be all right. But she couldn’t because she didn’t know what was wrong, and if it was something really bad, then maybe it wouldn’t be all right. And anyway, her mother didn’t seem to like hugs very much. Since his mysterious appearance in her bedroom, Eli walked with Tilly to the school gate every morning and was waiting for her there every afternoon at going-home time. Today he trotted along beside her, occasionally glancing up at her as though something was bothering him. Tilly tore the envelopes open as she wandered along, and read the cards inside. One of them worried her. It had a picture of an elephant holding a balloon in his trunk on the front, and inside someone had written:

“Happy birthday to the queen of the land!”

Tilly didn’t need to read any further, because she already knew who had sent it and it made her doubt the one thing that she had started the day believing to be an absolute truth. It nagged away at her all day, like a tiny piece of grit in her shoe, pricking and chafing and spoiling the fun of glitter and glue and firework pictures. Her favorite lunch of shepherd’s pie, and pink sponge and custard was curdled by the lurching in her stomach each time she remembered the words that were written in the card. She managed to raise a smile when her class sang “Happy Birthday’ to her, but by going-home time she felt sick.

“Her eyes they shone like the diamonds,

You’d think she was queen of the land,

And her hair hung over her shoulders,

Tied up with a black velvet band.”

It was a song her daddy used to sing to her, and it was the only time she had heard those words. He had promised that he would buy her a black velvet band for her hair, but he hadn’t gotten around to it before he left. The card was from him. So, that must mean that he wasn’t coming home, because if he was, wouldn’t he have just brought it with him? How could he do this to her? How could he miss her birthday? It was a mystery, like a clue in a Famous Five story, but Tilly had a horrible feeling that this one was not going to end up with smiles all round, a slap-up tea, and a biscuit for Timmy.

Tilly dawdled home with Eli trailing at her heels. She went round to the back of the house, and saw through the window a group of people standing in the kitchen. A cruel jolt of hope quickened her step, but it was dashed as soon as she opened the door. Her mother was standing by the kitchen table, which was laid out with a birthday tea, looking like an understudy for the soap powder mummy; almost believable, but just missing something. Auntie Wendy was there with Karen, and even Mrs. O’Flaherty had popped in with a card and a little present in a box tied with a ribbon. Tilly had been to church several times now with Mrs. O’Flaherty, who had insisted that she ask her mother’s permission first. Tilly’s mother had seemed surprised that she wanted to go, but had raised no objections. As Tilly walked through the door, they had all shouted “Surprise!” and then sung “Happy Birthday.” She blew out the candles on the cake and tried to look as happy as they expected her to be. Tilly could see that her mother had really tried. The cake was chocolate and covered with Smarties. There were egg and cress, and fish-paste sandwiches; little sausages, and cheese and pineapple, on sticks; and a big bowl of crisps. Her mother was smiling, a frail, anxious smile, but a smile nonetheless. Tilly too presented a grin that far outshone her mother’s in appearance, but was bolstered by even less real happiness. What Tilly really wanted to do was cry. Her daddy was, of course, nowhere to be seen.

She opened her presents. There was a shiny red flashlight from her mother and a doll. The doll looked like a baby, and you fed it water from a bottle into a hole in its mouth, then it came out through its eyes like tears. The doll also weed the water out of a hole in its bottom. It was the most pointless thing that Tilly had ever seen, and was definitely heading for a short back and sides and a shallow grave, but she managed to coo over it enthusiastically by pretending to herself that it was a puppy. Eli was sitting under the table looking very unimpressed. There was a toy hairdressing kit from Auntie Wendy, and some coloring pens and a drawing book from Karen. The box from Mrs. O’Flaherty contained a smaller version of the necklace that she played with in church, only Tilly’s was made from pretty white beads of mother-of-pearl. It was Tilly’s favorite present, but young as she was, something told her that it would not be a good thing to say so. They all ate sandwiches and things on sticks and crisps, and Karen and Tilly drank fizzy pop while the grown-ups drank tea. Karen and Tilly inspected the presents one by one, and giggled about the doll that weed out of its bum.

“Didn’t your daddy send you anything?”

Karen’s question hit Tilly like a hammer on a thumbnail. The grown-ups all started talking at the same time, about nothing at all, as if to rub the question out, but it was too late. The fragile mood of jollity had been blown away like a dandelion clock in a puff of wind. Karen looked at her mother in bewilderment, an indignant “What?” etched on her pretty features. Auntie Wendy’s reply was a stern look that firmly discouraged any further mention of the subject.

Auntie Wendy and Mrs. O’Flaherty cleared away the tea things, and Tilly’s mother went into the garden to smoke a cigarette. Mrs. O’Flaherty was the only one brave enough to speak directly to Tilly. As she wiped her hands, still soapy from washing up, on the tea towel, she bent down and gently spoke to Tilly.

“Miss Tilly, wherever your daddy is, you know he loves you very much, every day, and not just on your birthday. And that matters more than all the presents in the world.”

Tilly was grateful for Mrs. O’Flaherty’s kind words, but worried for her knees. She struggled enough with the curtseying business at church, and she had bent much lower to cup Tilly’s face gently in her hands as she winked at her. When she was safely upright again, she smoothed her skirt down and met Auntie Wendy’s mildly irritated expression with a pleasant smile but defiantly raised eyebrows. Tilly was a quick child who saw that something had passed, unspoken, between the two women, but as was often the case with grown-ups, she had no idea what it meant. Mrs. O’Flaherty busied herself getting into her heavy winter coat, said her good-byes, and thanked Tilly’s mother, who had just come back in, shivering, from the garden, to drink the rest of her tea.

“We must be going too, Gracie, love,” said Auntie Wendy. “Bill will be wanting his dinner.”

She bundled the still rather puzzled Karen into her duffle coat, and kissed Tilly’s mother on the cheek.

“Happy Birthday, Tilly. I hope you like your presents.”

“Say ‘thank you’ to Auntie Wendy and Karen,” her mother reminded her, with forced brightness.

After all the bustle of hasty departures, the house felt still and cold, despite the flames of the gas fire and the cheery voices coming from the television. Tilly spent the rest of the evening quietly examining her presents, running the beads of her necklace through her fingers; counting the curlers and hairpins in the hairdressing kit; and trying out the coloring pens in the front cover of the drawing book. Her mother sat staring at a comedy program and drinking something brown. When the program finished she finally stirred and told Tilly to go and change into her nightdress. But as Tilly scrabbled to feet, her mother did something strange. She opened her arms and asked her daughter to give her a hug. Tilly stood hesitating by the door, awkward and uncertain. Such displays of affection between them were rare, and never normally initiated by her mother. Tilly’s bedtime was normally accompanied by a perfunctory peck on the cheek. She approached her mother reluctantly, warily, before placing her arms carefully around her neck. Her mother squeezed her so tightly that she thought her bones might break. Eventually released, Tilly was glad to go to bed.

Later, she did not know how much later, Tilly woke in her bed with tears pouring down her cheeks. Everywhere was quiet and dark, so it must have been very late. She moved around the familiar landmarks of her room without needing to turn on the light, and fetched something from behind one of the books on the bookshelf. She opened the door and crept downstairs. Eli padded silently behind her. The tiles on the kitchen floor were ice cold, but Tilly walked across them in her bare feet, unflinching. She could feel nothing but the gouging hurt that had woken her. It was worse than a million Chinese burns. Tilly thought she might be dying. She picked up her new flashlight from the kitchen table, unlocked the back door and stepped into the garden. The bitter November night snatched the air from her lungs. Her face was as white as her thick, cotton nightdress, and her lips were blue. Her fingers, crippled by the cold, struggled with the key in the lock of the shed door. Once inside, she switched on the flashlight: three quick flashes, three long, three quick. Over and over again. No one came. He wasn’t coming. Tilly opened the drawer where the matches were kept. There was one left. Tilly had been coming to the shed ever since he left, once, maybe twice a week. Every time she came, she lit a match, and now there was only one left. That’s how long he had been gone. She put the flashlight down carefully, and took the match in one hand and the box in the other. She was shivering so much that she could barely control her hands, but this was one thing that she was determined to finish. The whiff of sulphur bit the air; a flash and then a flame, left to flicker for just a second before Tilly dropped it into the drawer full of seed packets, brown string, and old newspapers.

The shed was just a broken silhouette, engulfed in crackling and spitting orange flames, by the time the shouts of the neighbors and the fire engines’ sirens had woken Tilly’s mother and brought her stumbling and panic-stricken into the garden. The sight of her daughter, standing as pale and still as a statue in a graveyard, drove the last remains of drink and sleep from her with the force of a lightning bolt. Tilly was clutching her flashlight, which shone upward onto her tear-streaked face, frozen into an expression of pitiful despair. She was staring at the huge plume of gray smoke, glowing sparks, and embers that was floating up into a black sky glittering with stars. Beside her, as close as he could be without touching her, sat Eli. Her mother ran across the lawn and gathered Tilly in her arms. Her touch broke the spell, and Tilly’s face melted into a wailing scream.

“Daddy. I want my daddy!”

Her mother hugged her tightly, rocking her back and forth and tenderly wiping the tears from her cheeks.

“Oh, Tilly. My darling, darling Tilly, Daddy’s dead.”