Holes for Faces Read online

  “You go, then,” says Gerald, and his sister giggles in agreement.

  “Let grandpa have the bathroom first,” says their mother.

  Does she honestly believe I was referring to myself? “I won’t be long,” I promise, not least because I’ve had enough of mirrors. Having found my toothbrush amid the visiting clutter, I close my eyes while wielding it. “Empty now,” I announce on the way to my room. In due course a squabble migrates from the bathroom to the bunks next door and eventually trails into silence. Once I’ve heard Paula and her husband share the bathroom, which is more than her mother and I ever did, there are just my thoughts to keep me awake.

  I don’t want to think about the last time I saw Beryl, but I can’t help remembering when her playfulness turned unpleasant. It was Christmas Eve, and she’d helped or overseen my mother in making dozens of mince pies, which may have been why my mother was sharper than usual with me. She told me not to touch the pies after she gave me one to taste. I was the twins’ age and unable to resist. Halfway through a comedy show full of jokes I didn’t understand I sneaked back to the kitchen. I’d taken just one surreptitious bite when I saw Beryl’s face leaning around the night outside the window. She was at the door behind me, and I hid the pie in my mouth before turning to her. Her puffy whitish porous face that always put me in mind of dough seemed to widen with a grin that for a moment I imagined was affectionate. “Peep,” she said.

  Though it sounded almost playful, it was a warning or a threat of worse. Why did it daunt me so much when my offence had been so trivial? Perhaps I was simply aware that my parents had to put up with my mother’s sister while wishing she didn’t live so close. She always came to us on Christmas Day, and that year I spent it fearing that she might surprise me at some other crime, which made me feel in danger of committing one out of sheer nervousness. “Remember,” she said that night, having delivered a doughy kiss that smeared me with lipstick and face powder. “Peep.”

  Either my parents found this amusing or they felt compelled to pretend. I tried to take refuge in bed and forget about Beryl, and so it seems little has changed in more than sixty years. At least I’m no longer walking to school past her house, apprehensive that she may peer around the spidery net curtains or inch the front door open like a lid. If I didn’t see her in the house I grew afraid that she was hiding somewhere else, so that even encountering her in the street felt like a trap she’d set. Surely all this is too childish to bother me now, and when sleep abandons me to daylight I don’t immediately know why I’m nervous.

  It’s the family, of course. I’ve been wakened by the twins quarrelling outside my room over who should waken me for breakfast. “You both did,” I call and hurry to the bathroom to speed through my ablutions. Once the twins have begun to toy with the extravagant remains of their food I risk giving them an excuse to finish. “What shall we do today?” I ask, and meet their expectant gazes by adding “You used to like the beach.”

  That’s phrased to let them claim to have outgrown it, but Gerald says “I’ve got no spade or bucket.”

  “I haven’t,” Geraldine competes.

  “I’m sure replacements can be obtained if you’re both going to make me proud to be seen out with you,” I say and tell their parents “I’ll be in charge if you’ve better things to do.”

  Bertie purses his thin prim lips and raises his pale eyebrows. “Nothing’s better than bringing up your children.”

  I’m not sure how many rebukes this incorporates. Too often the way he and Paula are raising the twins seems designed to reprove how she was brought up. “I know my dad wouldn’t have meant it like that,” she says. “We could go and look at some properties, Bertie.”

  “You’re thinking of moving closer,” I urge.

  Her husband seems surprised to have to donate even a word of explanation. “Investments.”

  “Just say if you don’t see enough of us,” says Paula.

  Since I suspect she isn’t speaking for all of them, I revert to silence. Once the twins have been prevailed upon to take turns loading the dishwasher so that nothing is broken, I usher them out of the house. “Be good for grandpa,” Paula says, which earns her a husbandly frown. “Text if you need to,” he tells them.

  I should have thought mobile phones were too expensive for young children to take to the beach. I don’t want to begin the outing with an argument, and so I lead them downhill by their impatient hands. I see the scrawny windmills twirling on the bay until we turn down the road that slopes to the beach. If I don’t revive my question now I may never have the opportunity or the nerve. “You were going to tell me who taught you that game.”

  Gerald’s small hot sticky hand wriggles in my fist. “What game?”

  “You know.” I’m not about to release their hands while we’re passing a supermarket car park. I raise one shoulder and then the other to peer above them at the twins. “Peep,” I remind them.

  Once they’ve had enough of giggling Geraldine splutters “Mummy said we mustn’t say.”

  “I don’t think she quite meant that, do you? I’m sure she won’t mind if you just say it to me when I’ve asked.”

  “I’ll tell if you tell,” Gerald informs his sister.

  “That’s a good idea, then you’ll each just have done half. Do it in chorus if you like.”

  He gives me a derisive look of the kind I’ve too often seen his father turn on Paula. “I’ll tell mummy if you say,” he warns Geraldine.

  I mustn’t cause any more strife. I’m only reviving an issue that will surely go away if it’s ignored. I escort the twins into a newsagent’s shop hung with buckets and spades and associated paraphernalia, the sole establishment to preserve any sense of the seaside among the pubs and wine bars and charity shops. Once we’ve agreed on items the twins can bear to own I lead them to the beach.

  The expanse of sand at the foot of the slipway from the promenade borders the mouth of the river. Except for us it’s deserted, but not for long. The twins are seeing who can dump the most castles on the sand when it starts to grow populated. Bald youths tapestried with tattoos let their bullish dogs roam while children not much older than the twins drink cans of lager or roll some kind of cigarette to share, and boys who are barely teenage if even that race motorcycles along the muddy edge of the water. As the twins begin to argue over who’s winning the sandcastle competition I reflect that at least they’re behaving better than anybody else in sight. I feel as if I’m directing the thought at someone who’s judging them, but nobody is peering over or under the railings on the promenade or out of the apartments across it. Nevertheless I feel overheard in declaring “I think you’ve both done very well. I couldn’t choose between you.”

  I’ve assumed the principle must be to treat them as equally as possible—even their names seem to try—but just now dissatisfaction is all they’re sharing. “I’m bored of this,” Gerald says and demolishes several of his rickety castles. “I want to swim.”

  “Have you brought your costumes?”

  “They’re in our room,” says Geraldine. “I want to swim in a pool, not a mucky river.”

  “We haven’t got a pool here any more. We’d have to go on the train.”

  “You can take us,” Gerald says. “Dad and mum won’t mind.”

  I’m undismayed to give up sitting on the insidiously damp sand or indeed to leave the loudly peopled beach once I’ve persuaded the twins not to abandon their buckets and spades. I feel as if the children are straining to lug me uphill except when they mime more exhaustion than I can afford to admit. They drop the beach toys in my hall together with a generous bounty of sand on the way to thundering upstairs. After a brief altercation they reappear and I lead them down to the train.

  Before it leaves the two-platformed terminus we’re joined by half a dozen rudely pubertal drinkers. At least they’re at the far end of the carriage, but their uproar might as well not be. They’re fondest of a terse all-purpose word. I ignore the performance as an
example to the twins, but when they continue giggling I attempt to distract them with a game of I Spy: s for the sea on the bare horizon, though they’re so tardy in participating that I let it stand for the next station; f for a field behind a suburban school, even if I’m fleetingly afraid that Gerald will reveal it represents the teenagers’ favourite word; c for cars in their thousands occupying a retail park beside a motorway, because surely Geraldine could never have been thinking of the other syllable the drinkers favour; b for the banks that rise up on both sides of the train as it begins to burrow into Birkenhead… I don’t mean it for Beryl, but here is her house.

  Just one window is visible above the embankment on our side of the carriage: her bedroom window. I don’t know if I’m more disturbed by this glimpse of the room where she died or by having forgotten that we would pass the house. Of course it’s someone else’s room now—I imagine that the house has been converted into flats—and the room has acquired a window box; the reddish tuft that sprouts above the sill must belong to a plant, however dusty it looks. That’s all I’ve time to see through the grimy window before the bridge I used to cross on the way to school blocks the view. Soon a station lets the drinkers loose, and a tunnel conducts us to our stop.

  The lift to the street is open at both ends. It shuts them when Geraldine pushes the button, her brother having been promised that he can operate the lift on our return, and then it gapes afresh. Since nobody appears I suspect Gerald, but he’s too far from the controls. “Must have been having a yawn,” I say, and the twins gaze at me as if I’m the cause. No wonder I’m relieved when the doors close and we’re hoisted into daylight.

  As we turn the corner that brings the swimming pool into view the twins are diverted by a cinema. “I want to see a film,” Gerald announces.

  “You’ll have to make your minds up. I can’t be in two places at once. I’m just me.”

  Once she and her brother have done giggling at some element of this Geraldine says “Grumpo.”

  I’m saddened to think she means me, especially since Gerald agrees, until I see it’s the title of a film that’s showing in the complex. “You need to be twelve to go in.”

  “No we don’t,” they duet, and Gerald adds “You can take us.”

  Because they’re so insistent I seek support from the girl in the pay booth, only to be told I’m mistaken. She watches me ask “What would your parents say?”

  “They’d let us,” Geraldine assures me, and Gerald says “We watch fifteens at home.”

  Wouldn’t the girl advise me if the film weren’t suitable? I buy tickets and lead the way into a large dark auditorium. We’re just in time to see the screen exhort the audience to switch off mobile phones, and I have the twins do so once they’ve used theirs to light the way along a row in the absence of an usherette. The certificate that precedes the film doesn’t tell me why it bears that rating, but that’s apparent soon enough. An irascible grandfather embarrasses his offspring with his forgetfulness and the class of his behaviour and especially his language, which even features two appearances of the word I ignored most often on the train. The twins find him hilarious, as do all the children in the cinema except for one that keeps poking its head over the back of a seat several rows ahead. Or is it a child? It doesn’t seem to be with anyone, and now it has stopped trying to surprise me with its antics and settles on peering at me over the seat. Just its pale fat face above the nose is visible, crowned and surrounded by an unkempt mass of hair. The flickering of the dimness makes it look eager to jerk up and reveal more of its features, though the light is insufficient to touch off the slightest glimmer in the eyes, which I can’t distinguish. At last the oldster in the film saves his children from robbers with a display of martial arts, and his family accepts that he’s as loveable as I presume we’re expected to have found him. The lights go up as the credits start to climb the screen, and I crane forward for a good look at the child who’s been troubling me. It has ducked into hiding, and I sidle past Geraldine to find it. “You’re going the wrong way, grandpa,” she calls, but neither this nor Gerald’s mirth can distract me from the sight of the row, which is deserted.

  Members of the audience stare at me as I trudge to the end of the aisle, where words rise up to tower over me, and plod back along the auditorium. By this time it’s empty except for the twins and me, and it’s ridiculous to fancy that if I glance over my shoulder I’ll catch a head in the act of taking cover. “Nothing,” I say like Grumpo, if less coarsely, when Gerald asks what I’m looking for. I bustle the twins out of the cinema, and as soon as they revive their phones Gerald’s goes off like an alarm.

  In a moment Geraldine’s restores equality. They read their messages, which consist of less than words, and return their calls. “Hello, mummy,” Geraldine says. “We were in a film.”

  Her brother conveys the information and hands me the mobile. “Dad wants to speak to you.”

  “Bertie. Forgive me, should we have—”

  “I hope you know we came to find you on the beach.”

  “Gerald didn’t say. I do apologise if you—”

  “I trust you’re bringing them home now. To your house.”

  I don’t understand why he thinks the addition is necessary. “I’m afraid we’re in trouble,” I inform the twins as Geraldine ends her call. I have to be reminded that it’s Gerald’s turn to control the lift at the railway station. At least our train reaches the platform as we do, and soon it emerges into the open, at which point I recall how close we are to Beryl’s house. As the train passes it I turn to look. There’s nothing at her window.

  The tenant must have moved the window box. It does no good to wonder where the item that I glimpsed is now. I’m nervous enough by the time we arrive at the end of the line and I lead the twins or am led by them uphill. They seem more eager than I feel, perhaps because they’ve me to blame. I’m fumbling to extract my keys when Paula’s husband opens the front door as if it’s his. Having given each of us a stare that settles on me, Bertie says “Dinner won’t be long.”

  It sounds so much like a rebuke, and is backed up by so many trespassing smells, that I retort “I could have made it, you know.”

  “Could you?” Before I can rise to this challenge he adds “Don’t you appreciate my cuisine and Paula’s?”

  “Your children don’t seem to all that much,” I’m provoked to respond and quote a favourite saying of Jo’s. “It isn’t seaside without fish and chips.”

  “I’m afraid we believe in raising them more healthily.”

  “Do you, Paula? In other words, not how your mother and I treated you?” When she only gazes sadly at me from the kitchen I say “It can’t be very healthy if they hardly touch their food.”

  “It isn’t very healthy for them to hear this kind of thing.”

  “Find something to watch for a few minutes,” her husband tells them. “Maybe your grandfather can choose something suitable.”

  I feel silenced and dismissed. I follow the children into the lounge and insist on selecting the wildlife show. “I’ve got to watch as well,” I say, even if it sounds like acknowledging a punishment. They greet the announcement of dinner without concealing their relief, although their enthusiasm falls short of the meal itself. When at last they’ve finished sprinkling cheese on their spaghetti they eat just the sauce, and hardly a leaf of their salad. Though I perform relishing all of mine, I have a sense of being held responsible for their abstinence. I try not to glance at the mirror of the dresser, but whenever I fail there appear to be only the reflections of the family and me.

  Once the twins have filled up with chocolate dessert, it’s time for games. I vote against reviving the one in which the pallid head pops up, which means that Gerald vetoes his sister’s choice of Monopoly. Eventually I remember the games stored in the cupboard under the stairs. The dark shape that rears up beyond the door is my shadow. As I take Snakes and Ladders off the pile I’m reminded of playing it with Paula and her mother, who would smile
whenever Paula clapped her hands at having climbed a ladder. I’ve brought the game into the dining-room before I recall playing it with Beryl.

  Was it our last game with her? It feels as if it should have been. Every time she cast a losing throw she moved one space ahead of it. “Can’t get me,” she would taunt the snakes. “You stay away from me, nasty squirmy things.” I thought she was forbidding them to gobble her up as if she were one of her snacks between meals, the powdered sponge cakes that she’d grown more and more to resemble. Whenever she avoided a snake by expanding a move she peered at me out of the concealment of her puffed-up face. I felt challenged to react, and eventually I stopped my counter short of a snake. “Can’t he count?” my aunt cried at once. “Go in the next box.”

  Once I’d descended the snake I complained “Auntie Beryl keeps going where she shouldn’t.”

  “Don’t you dare say I can’t count. They knew how to teach us when I was at school.” This was the start of a diatribe that left her panting and clutching her chest while her face tried on a range of shades of grey. “Look what you’ve done,” my father muttered in my ear while my mother tried to calm her down. When Beryl recaptured her wheezing breath she insisted on finishing the game, staring hard at me every time she was forced to land on a snake. She lost, and glared at me as she said “Better never do anything wrong, even the tiniest thing. You don’t know who’ll be watching.”