The Incomers Page 7

  She hears the Landrover return when she is clearing away his plate. A glorious smell of hot vinegar drifts in from outside, and James carries a bundle wrapped in newspaper and lays it on the table. Ellie is scared to look up and see anger on his face, but he lifts her chin and kisses her nose.

  ‘Come on, woman, there is only one way to learn how to make the best fish and chips and that is to taste the Master’s: one Lorenzo’s breaded fish supper and one normal fish supper.’ He opens the newspaper parcel to reveal two separate newspaper packs.

  ‘Quick, get some plates; we don’t want it to get cold.’

  He places one packet on a plate and shoves it towards Ellie. Her belly rumbles like distant thunder. She picks at the paper; it is warm and covers her fingers in gritty news print. She peels it back further and gasps at the golden sticks and the bright orange fish that lies limp on top.

  James lifts one chip and holds it in front of her. ‘These are chips; you cut the potato up into fingers and deep-fry them.’

  Ellie copies her husband and lifts up a chip between finger and thumb and bites the end off. It is cool on the outside and hot in the middle. Vinegar vapours tickle her nose. She then flakes a piece of fish as she sees her husband do, and pops a piece in her mouth. It is smooth with a crunchy edge. This food she finds to her liking.

  James jumps up and begins to rummage around in the pot cupboard. He almost disappears before he comes out dragging a large pan that is streaked around all sides with heavy dark lines. Ellie feels her face warm. This cupboard she intended to clean the day before, but the sky was bright and she chose to walk in the forest with Nat. Now her husband truly knows what a lazy wife she is. But he is still smiling as he takes the lid off the pan and tugs out a yellow-coloured wire basket and sniffs inside. He holds up his prize with a grin.

  ‘This is a chip pan. I knew there would be one. It’s a bit grotty, I admit, but that is what it is. It is filled with lard. You know, cooking fat.’

  ‘Animal fat?’ Ellie asks.

  He washes his hands and comes to the table and opens his packet.

  ‘Yes, and you heat it high, but not so high it goes on fire.’

  ‘Will I be able to cook this food?’

  ‘It will be fine as long as you don’t let it heat too long.’ He shovels some of the food in his mouth, then picks up a single chip and blows on it before handing it to Nat. Nat shakes his head; his belly is full of oats.

  ‘Tell you what, Ellie, you scrub that pan and I will buy lard from the butcher van when he comes to the big hoose, and tomorrow evening you and I will cook up some chips.’

  He looks over at the open cupboard door. ‘You might want to clean out some of those cupboards. It’s filthy under there. The people who had this house before us must have been living in a pig sty.’

  The tongue in Ellie’s mouth moves to protest in her defence. She had tried to work hard in her first week, but still has much to do.

  They make their chips the next day, but Ellie remains unhappy about the way fat needs to be so hot and she hates the way her belly bloats when she has eaten. The packets of meat are easier; she knows how to cook chicken and the larger pieces of meat she treats like goat and hog. But there is only so much she can do with the vegetables; every meal tastes the same.

  Now he wants fish on a Wednesday too.

  With the baby strapped snug to her back against the late afternoon chill, Ellie struggles at the hill. When she reaches the house by the road sign she stops and pushes the bike, hoping to see the girl again, hoping for that smile, but it is only the skinny woman she sees. With no hope of a smile, Ellie watches the woman scrubbing at the brick wall bordering the house and wonders what she gains. Then she sees the words, daubed with red paint. ‘English Bas go home’ seems to scream hatred from the bricks, and Ellie thinks that this is perhaps not nice for the skinny woman who is making no headway at removing the words. Underneath the red paint, in smaller white letters, Ellie reads: ‘fuck the pope’.

  ‘You will need to paint that out,’ Ellie says, almost to herself.

  The woman turns and points her sharp face in Ellie’s direction. Her eyes widen then narrow in defence. Her chin lifts up and with the look of a lion towards a hyena, she turns back to her work. Ellie shrugs and walks on and wonders how such a woman can give birth to a butterfly daughter.

  The sky is dreary and a persistent dark cloud shadows Ellie as if she is the only one in the village to be rained on. She sees little boys in green and white shirts playing soccer in a school playground; it is a single storey hut which looks more like a workshop than a school, she thinks. Goalposts lie in a corner of the park waiting for someone to erect them, but the boys do not care; they have jumpers piled up. Ellie climbs back onto her bike and starts to cross the bridge spanning the burn which gives its name to the village. ‘FTP’ is painted red on the bridge too.

  There are more boys, this time in blue jumpers, playing outside a bigger double storey building. Their goal posts are standing tall and gleaming. Brilliant white.

  Two girls walk down the street pushing a miniature baby carriage, one hand each on the handle bar. The sun is shining on their heads. When they see Ellie they turn and trundle into a side street.

  Up ahead of her, Ellie spots the curly head of a little girl. It could be the butterfly but she cannot be sure. The girl is skipping along, one sock at her ankle, the other pulled to her knee. A grey skirt hangs down below her brown suede coat but Ellie can see, even at a distance, that this child is dressed differently from the other children here. She has proper shoes the colour of her coat; she is not clumping about in those horrible black Wellington boots the rest of them wear.

  The little curly mop flutters into the shop and Ellie is sure it is her.

  A white van, with a smiling fish painted on the side panel, is parked at the corner of the street and five women queue on the pavement beside it, clucking and smoking whilst clutching their huge purses to their chests like Bibles. What do they carry in these monstrosities? Ellie watches a man in a white coat lift slabs of yellow fish and throw them on the weighing machine. He laughs and chats and the woman he is serving digs him in the ribs with her elbow and hoots like a barn owl. They seem established. Ellie decides she will not stand outside to wait her turn, she will use her time to go into the shop to buy rice; she always needs rice.

  She holds her breath as she opens the door and hears the tinkle of the bell above her head. The girl is standing with her head down. She is tugging at the front of her hair as if she wants it to grow quicker. The green-apron lady is filling shelves with blue tins and the funny-hair-man comes from the back shop and hands the girl a box.

  ‘Here you go, hen, Ruskoline.’ His voice is low and not shouting like before.

  ‘Can I have the penny tray, please?’ The girl asks in a crisp clear voice, an accent like Sister Philomena who came from somewhere near Robin Hood’s Sherwood Forest. Ellie remembers being told the story of the green man who robs from the rich and gives to the poor, something that surely will never happen in her own country.

  The tray is a palate of colours. Thin, red strips like string, rainbow-sprinkled discs, paper-covered squares of orange and black. The black ones have the face of a black boy grinning. The man looks up at Ellie as he holds open a white paper bag for the child to drop in her selection from the tray: two black boy sweets, some red string and a pastel-coloured disc. He takes the money the child hands him in exchange for her bag of sweets and scuttles to the till with one eye still on Ellie. As he hands over change he says,

  ‘Oh wait, ye’ve got something on yer forehead.’ He moves his hand forward as if to touch her but the girl springs back.

  ‘No,’ she shouts, ‘you can’t!’ She clutches the box and the bag of sweets and looks round the shop. Her eyes are moist when she turns to Ellie.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she says, to no one in particular, before running out.

  She only faces her for a second, but in that time Ellie sees the dark smudge
on the girl’s forehead, like the symbolic chalk her people ceremoniously put on their face and toes during festival.

  ‘Well what wis a’ that aboot?’ Funny-hair says.

  ‘Are ye blind or just stupit?’ Green-apron asks him from the shelves, still, it seems, with no intention of serving Ellie. ‘They’ve been in and oot aw day wi’ their heathen marks.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The Papes. It’s Ash Wednesday, remember. Father Grattan dabs them aw wi’ ash oot his grate and it’s suppose tae send them tae heaven.’ She thumbs at the door. ‘That new family, the Pit Manager and his tribe - another bunch o’ Papes.’

  Funny-hair shrugs and turns towards Ellie.

  ‘What can ah get you, hen?’

  It takes the man too long to find the rice in his back room and when Ellie leaves the shop the fish van has gone. She can hear his horn blast from further into the village but the rows of houses, in criss-cross streets joined with paths and walkways, stand in her way like a bush where a machete cannot clear a path. Ellie knows she will not penetrate that part of the jungle.

  ‘Oh no, what will we do now, Nat?’ But no parrot answer comes back. She picks up her bike that has fallen over outside the shop and starts to freewheel down the road.

  James stares at the plate of food she places in front of him.

  ‘And what’s this?’

  ‘Macaroni and cheese.’ She holds up a small Macaroni Cook Book. ‘A little girl gave it to me, the macaroni too. It has lots and lots of recipes in it.’ She flicks through the pages.

  ‘Macaroni Supreme, Cameroni Macaroni, Chic’aroni Delight and one I think I will try on Friday, Macaroni Surprise.’ She slams the book shut and places it on top of her other book, she will soon have her own library. ‘S’great stuff, even Nat can eat it.’

  ‘And what happened to the fish?’

  Ellie stares at her plate.

  ‘No fish, just macaroni today.’

  When she starts down the hill Ellie sees the girl trail ahead of her. The skip has been replaced with a slow drag of feet. Her head is down and her shoulders slump; well shod feet scuff the ground like a boy returning from a fruitless hunting trip. Ellie peddles past her and stops by the kerbside.

  ‘Hello, little butterfly.’

  The girl looks up; her eyes are wet, her face streaked with dirt and her forehead mark has rubbed off leaving a red rash from a scrubbing.

  ‘I hate it here,’ the girl sobs, with more drama than is needed, Ellie thinks. A huge sigh exaggerates from the girl before she continues, ‘Everyone at school hates me. The people at the church hate us. They say we are English snobs, but we’re not. I was born in Scotland; it’s not my fault they moved when I was wee. My mum cries all the time, Dad is angry when he comes home from work, and I hate Ash Wednesday. I hate my mum for making me go to the shops.

  ‘Why did she have to make me go? She never goes out with the ash on. When Father Grattan put that big blob on me this morning I knew I would look stupid, even Eric Creighton laughed at me and he had more, and Carol is allowed to rub hers off because her mum doesn’t care, but it’s a sin to rub it off. Now my mum will kill me because I’ve rubbed it off.’

  She stops at last and takes a big gulp of air and Ellie hopes she doesn’t start again at the same speed because she wants to understand what this girl has just told her. She remembers Ash Wednesday in the mission, but there everyone had a mark and wore it with pride. Ellie did not realise today was that day and her husband did not tell her that his fasting was the reason for his request for fish. Like evenings in the mangrove the air within her marriage still swarms with many pests to be swatted away or killed.

  ‘I hate going to the shops too, you know, but ’s not that bad here,’ Ellie says.

  The girl shrugs and heaves another dramatic sigh.

  ‘I love the forest,’ Ellie says. ‘The birds are friendly there. A little red breast comes to say hello each morning.’ Ellie laughs and the girl snaps her head up and two bright intelligent eyes glisten with unshed tears, but a little smile tweaks at down-turned mouth and two dimples stud pale cheeks.

  Ellie can feel she is winning over the little girl. ‘But sometimes you meet some interesting people on the way to the shops, hey?’

  The little smile broadens.

  Ellie points to her bike basket with the solitary bag of rice.

  ‘And now I miss the fish van and my man will be angry, like this.’ She makes a fierce face. The girl laughs.

  ‘You tell me, girl, what I give my man to eat when he is not allowed to eat meat on Ash Wednesday.

  ‘We sometimes have macaroni and cheese.’

  ‘What is this macaroni?’

  ‘You don’t know what macaroni is?’ The girl giggles. ‘It’s the yummiest thing in the whole world. Mum’s is the best, but the stuff we get for school dinners is horrible and gunky.

  ‘And where will I get this macaroni, it grows on trees?’

  ‘Oh no, silly, from the shops.’ She stops and looks at Ellie and Ellie can feel her laugh rumble as the little girl looks towards the village then to Ellie and they both laugh at the same time. Then, like a veil being pulled down, the girl’s face turns upside down and she is sad again.

  ‘Mum’s going to kill me.’

  ‘Why?’

  She points to her forehead.

  ‘Ashes.’

  Ellie bends down to a puddle at the side of the pavement and picks up a marble of mud. She rolls it around between her finger and her thumb.

  ‘My people still use the earth’s gifts to mark our status. In my village we use chalk but ’s just the same.’

  She steps to the girl and with her finger dabs a mark on her forehead. The little girl closes her eyes and says,

  ‘Remember, man, that thou art dust, and unto dust thou shalt return.’

  ‘Amen,’ Ellie says and looks round to check no one is watching then looks up at the sky when a rumble begins in her belly again and she allow herself a laugh at her foolishness.

  ‘See we are still here, not struck down dead.’ She holds out her hand. ‘My name is Ellie.’

  The butterfly looks at it before taking it and shaking it up and down several times.

  ‘I’m Mary.’

  When she stops she turns Ellie’s hand over and traces her finger along her life line.

  ‘What a lovely colour your hand is, the colour of the pansies at our last house.’

  Ellie feels a tear form in her eye as if this is the nicest thing anyone has ever said to her, which is nonsense. James says many nice things to her; she just cannot recall them now.

  ‘Look.’ Mary holds her hand up. ‘Look at mine, all bony and white and pink.’ Then her eyes widen. ‘I know. I could get you some macaroni.’ She pulls Ellie’s hand. ‘Come on, I’ll ask Mum’

  Ellie thinks of the skinny woman scrubbing and pulls her hand free.

  ‘No, ’s ok.’

  A line of cars begin to pass Ellie as she picks up her bike and wheels it beside the girl. The occupants of the first stare out at Ellie and her new friend and she wonders how they must look, this black woman and the little white girl. Mary stands beside her and watches them file past. In the back of one car a girl with blonde hair and a face like a dried mango presses her nose against the window and stares. Ellie recognises her. She is the sniggering one from the front of the church. The girl lifts her hand and Mary waves back.

  ‘That’s Carol, she’s my best friend.’

  But by the grim look on Mary’s face Ellie is not so sure.

  ‘They will be going to church. I don’t need to go, I went at school this morning, Carol will go as many times as she can because she wants more stars than me.’

  Ellie has no idea what Mary is talking about. Mary scampers across the road.

  ‘Wait here.’

  After a couple of moments the girl comes rushing down the driveway clutching a blue and yellow box.

  ‘Mum’s gone to church, but she won’t mind, she has two packets and
it’s not stealing if you give it back, is it?’ She then hands over the book. ‘And I thought you might like this too. It’s mine, I sent away for it last year but I’m a rubbish cook and Mum is always too busy to help me. I just get in her road.’ Mary looks severe as she pushes it into Ellie’s hand.

  ‘Take it, it’s a present.’

  Ellie accepts her gift with a bow.

  ‘Thank you, Mary, you may have saved my marriage,’ she says as she opens the book at the first page.

  ‘Can you read it all right?’

  Ellie feels her face warm and her heart sinks but she can see the child knows no better. No doubt she is also in the Society of the Holy Childhood.

  ‘Yes, I can read, Mary. I will bring a new box of macaroni back to your mother tomorrow.’

  Only when Ellie cycles back through the estate gate does she realise she had not introduced Nat to Mary. No one, it seems, notices the sleeping baby strapped to her back.

  The Pairty Line

  ‘Jub, jub lips.’

  ‘Whit?’

  ‘That’s how ah heard that bitch Bunty in the shop describing the black lassie tae the Postie.’

  ‘Well, whit’s wrang wi’ that? You cry’d her a coon.’

  ‘Aye well, ah’ve decidit that’s no’ very nice. The lassie husnae din me ony herm. And huv ye seen her wee pick-a-ninny baby? He’s jist like a wee black doll. Shiny skin and tight curly hair. He’s a wee smasher, so he is.’

  ‘You’re goan soft in yir auld age.’

  ‘Aye well, mebbes ah huv, ah’m no gettin’ ony younger that’s fur sure.’

  ‘How’s yer piles?’

  ‘Dinnae ask – the doctor wants me tae get them done, but ah’m no keen on hospitals.’

  ‘Why no’ like?’

  ‘Ah went fur an oot patients and aw the dochtirs ur Pakis.’

  ‘No’ aw eh thum, shairly no?’

  ‘Aye, aw. Nice chaps mind, and braw tae look at as well, but ah couldnae unnerstaun a word they said.’

  ‘Goad, ye didnae want sumbudy like that rummaging aboot yer piles, eh?’