The Girl in the Red Coat

29

The morning after the baptising I don’t get out of bed.

I can still taste the river in my mouth. The bump on my head is bigger: it makes my eye half close up and I can’t stop longing for what I saw down there.

I don’t hear Melody tiptoeing up to the truck. The first thing that makes me know she’s there is her voice floating in.

‘Carmel, aren’t you going to get up today?’

I open my eyes. She’s standing outside, looking in and twisting her hands together. I can’t see the scrapes on her body now she’s dressed. There’s only one I can see that goes all the way from her hair to her chin. It looks like someone’s felt-penned her face.

‘Don’t you have to call me Mercy now unless it’s secret?’

‘No. Pa said we’ll keep it for special occasions. For the time being.’

I sit up in bed. ‘Oh.’

‘He’s scared you’ll run off again.’

I lie back on the pillows. It feels like I’ve been in a fight with Gramps and that I might have won, though it’s not certain.

She starts twisting her skirt around in her hands, holding onto the hem and sticking her fingers through the holes in the lace.

‘We were wondering about the school?’

‘Silver too?’

‘Yeah. Silver wants to do it. More than me even. She just won’t say, that’s all.’

My eyelids feel heavy, they’re going to drop down over my eyes any second now. I touch the bump on my head gently. There’s crusty stuff in the middle.

‘Maybe not today.’

‘Oh.’ She sounds disappointed. ‘What about tomorrow?’

‘Sure. Tomorrow …’

Then my eyelids clang down.

*

But it’s tomorrow and now Melody’s sick too but much, much worse than me. Gramps lays her on my bed.

‘It’s lockjaw,’ Dorothy wails. ‘It must have entered her body through the thorns. She needs a hospital, Dennis.’

He says, ‘No insurance.’ Then, ‘God will look over her. God will look after her. Don’t doubt it.’

Dorothy wails some more but he goes to the shore and reads his Bible. ‘If only I could drive this heap of junk,’ she mutters and wipes the sweat off Melody’s face. ‘I’d kill us if I tried.’ She looks with knives in her eyes towards Gramps’s big back, then flies out to him and their voices spill out over the water that’s flat today and smooth.

I wrap myself up in the crochet — pink, purple, blue squares — and kneel next to Melody in bed. When her eyelids flitter bright amber shows like two wet beads. Her jaw goes into a clamp, pushing out the scab lined down her face that’s ugly pink.

There’s a little wind blowing inside me. It goes into my mouth and blows around in there. My palms start to itch so I scratch them, trying to make it stop.

I lean over her and call Melody all the words my mum called me: ‘Sweetheart. Angel. Darling. Love. Pumpkin Pie.’ The wind in my mouth blows on her face and I add another one, ‘Nutter,’ because with us that was always a good word too.

‘I love you, Melody.’ I breathe it over her face.

Her hair is in black ribbons over the pillow and her face and arms are stiff like she’s trying to turn herself into a doll. I climb under the quilts with her, it’s fiery hot and I hold her in my arms and she feels like a doll too, until my eyelids clang shut.

Melody wakes me up sitting bolt upright. ‘School, Carmel. When are we doing school?’

‘Ugh.’ I’m half asleep.

Her face has stopped trying to turn into a doll’s. She’s pushing off the bedclothes and I try to sit up, but I’m so tired I have to do it with my elbows. It’s still the day outside.

Melody jumps over me and down the steps.

‘Child, child.’ Dorothy laughs and wipes her eyes and hugs Melody tight. ‘Look at you. Let me get you something to drink.’

‘You better, Melody?’ Silver smiles at her.

I notice Gramps is standing quiet and serious. ‘You know what this means, don’t you, Dorothy?’

‘What, Dennis?’

He looks to me and then to them. ‘Only two hours ago Melody was a very sick little girl. In fact she could not move from her sick bed …’

‘But kids get better all the time, Dennis.’

‘See, I knew you doubted the truth of it. I know, woman, your thoughts.’

Dorothy has a plastic cup and rests it against the side of her face and taps it with her nail. She’s thinking. Tap, tap, tap, tap. I wonder if Gramps knows these thoughts. They’re going in and out, in and out.

‘I believed you believed and that was good enough for me. You are the expert in these matters.’

‘Can you not see it now with your own two eyes? Melody was too sick to move and look at her now. Will you look at her?’

Tap, tap, tap, tap. She smiles like she’s just had something sweet and lovely to eat. ‘Yes, yes. It could be …’

He stays serious. ‘Carmel laid her hands on her and now she is well.’

Out of the corner of my eye I can see my hands pink and resting on the crochet cover, with the soft insides showing upwards. The fingers are shaking like there’s shocks going through them. Is it possible? Gramps thinks it is, he’s sunk onto his knees and started praying.

Dorothy cries out and her orange juice flies out of the cup in the shape of McDonald’s golden arches as she opens up her arms. ‘Oh, Dennis. True or no, I can see it now. How it can be — you clever, clever man — we’re going to make our fortune.’

But he doesn’t hear her. He’s too busy praying.

*

‘So who’s gonna be teacher then?’ Silver’s sitting on my bed.

‘What about taking turns? You can go first,’ I say.

‘Mmmm. I think it should be …’ She points right at my chest. ‘… you.’

‘Oh, OK.’ I frown. Now I’ll have to think of something to teach.

We’ve made the inside of the truck look as much like a classroom as we can. I had the idea of putting books around but the only books are Gramps’s Bibles and books with prayers. And we’re not allowed to touch those so that’s not going to work. Instead, we got out the drawing pad and sellotaped our drawings to the walls. It looks quite good. Dorothy’s gone to walk to the shop. She left without telling anyone but Gramps. He told us it’s five miles away and she’s crazy, he would’ve driven her, but that she’s used to tramping all over God’s earth. She likes to.

The twins are excited: like something’s really going to happen. I hope they won’t be disappointed. I think hard for something to teach them. I remember. Just before, before — Mrs Buckfast was teaching us about the Tudors.

‘OK. We’ll do a history lesson. It’s about the king.’ I look over to Gramps. He’s sitting miles away in one of the foldout chairs.

‘What’s his name?’ asks Silver.

‘Henry. Henry the Eighth.’

‘Was he a good king?’ Melody’s brushing her hands up and down the crochet bed cover, fast. The line down her face is pink biro now.

‘No. He was not. He was a very, very bad king.’

Both of them breathe out together, an ‘ooooh’.

‘He had a red beard. And he used to feast. He used to eat a lot and that made him very, very fat.’

‘Is that what made him bad?’ asks Silver.

‘No. Not that. It was because of his wives. He had six of them …’

‘That’s not possible,’ Silver cries out. ‘How can you have six wives?’

‘No, not all together.’

‘It’s still not possible.’

‘Look, what about your dad? I mean before Gramps.’

‘Yeah, but he’s gone. Not died. Just gone,’ says Silver.

‘See. So —’

‘Mom says he was a work-shy Mexican pig. He got drunk so hard we used to hear him smashing the bowls downstairs. So Mom ran us away in the night, she said she was going to get a divorce. She said America is the land of milk and honey and if you’re clever dollars will rain on you. Then she met Gramps.’

I black over the clothes flying through the air in my mind so I don’t have to think about them. ‘Yes, so you can get, um — a divorce. But Henry the Eighth didn’t always get a divorce.’

‘No?’ Melody’s hands are brushing up and down at super speed now.

‘No. Some of them — some of them he had killed.’

‘Are you making this all up?’ Silver says it like she’s hoping I’m not.

‘I’m not.’ I go quiet. Next term we were going on a school trip to one of King Henry’s palaces called Hampton Court. Me and Sara were really looking forward to it because there’s a maze and I told her what they’re like. They’ve probably been by now. For a moment it’s almost like I’m back home and I really did go to the maze with Sara and I’m remembering what it was like. Then I blink and it goes away and Melody and Silver are waiting, staring at me.

‘Anyway, Mrs Buckfast told it to us, so it must be true. One had her head chopped off with an axe. And one had her head chopped off with a sword.’

Dorothy pops her head round the door and makes us jump. She’s got an orange rucksack on her back.

‘What are you kids doing?’

‘We’re having school.’

‘Oh, well, anything that keeps you quiet, I guess.’

She goes over to Gramps and I hear her saying, ‘Eleven dollars and fifty-one cents for your information.’ Even though he hasn’t asked.

We ask Dorothy if we can have our lunches wrapped up, like you would at school, and she agrees. Going out always seems to make her in a better mood. We help her make ham sandwiches and put them in three paper bags with an apple each. We have to have our cups in our hands, though, there’s no mini cartons of apple juice with a straw you stick through like I used to have at school. So we decide to have our lunches there and then. Melody rings the bell round the neck of her teddy because I told them there was always a bell before lunch. After our lunch we get back to our lesson.

‘We’ll do art now, related to the topic.’ It’s something Mrs Buckfast used to say a lot but I can see they don’t understand, so I say, ‘We’ll draw a picture about what we’ve been learning.’

‘You’re a good teacher, Carmel.’ Melody smiles. ‘Are you gonna be a teacher when you grow up?’

‘I don’t know. I might be.’ I thought I might like to once. But Mrs Buckfast is very neat and organised, and I know how my thoughts fly away from me, so sometimes I hardly know where I am. And I don’t think that would make me a good teacher. It might happen when I’m teaching with everybody looking at me.

We get out the drawing pad and have a sheet each. I’m drawing Henry, gobbling on a chicken leg. I put bits of food into his beard. When I look over at Melody’s drawing I see it’s the queen having her head chopped off with an axe. There’s blood everywhere.

*

We’re packing up this morning and leaving again so I’m looking out over the river and calling for Mum quietly, so no one can hear. It feels so sad leaving — like I’m leaving her here in this river. ‘Goodbye,’ I whisper ‘I love you.’

The twins are calling out from the back of the truck. ‘Hey Carmel, come and do school again.’

Inside, they’re ready and waiting. They love this school game.

‘Aren’t we leaving? Where’s Dorothy and Gramps?’

‘They’ve gone for a walk in the woods,’ says Silver.

‘To have an argument,’ adds Melody.

‘Oh. OK. Who wants to be teacher?’

‘Your turn again,’ says Silver. That doesn’t sound like a turn, but I don’t mind. Not really. What else is there to do?

‘Can we have the queens having their heads cut off again?’ Melody’s hands have started already, up and down over the cover.

‘Mmmm. We did that. Perhaps we should do writing today. Do you do joined-up?’

‘Not sure …’ says Silver.

We get the paper out and make the sheets into two halves so it’s smaller for writing. We have a pencil each and sharpen them so hard there’s a pointy tip.

‘Let’s each write our own story. We need a topic,’ I say. I guess it’s not quite fair — it’s what I want to do and I’m not sure teachers are supposed to do that — but the twins don’t seem to mind. Their pencils are sticking up into the air, waiting.

‘How about “all about me”?’ I’m copying Mrs Buckfast again — that’s one she gave us. ‘You have to put your name at the top and your class number.’

‘What’s our class number?’ says Silver.

‘Um, it can be 5b.’

We settle down to writing. Sometimes I suck the top of my pencil to help me think. Soon, though, my hand’s flying across the page. ‘My name is Carmel. I’m eight years old. My favourite thing is reading. I’ve read “Alice in Wonderland” five times and I wish I could read it again. My favourite animal is Sara’s Collie dog called Sheila. I also like small animals like bats and foxes.’

When we’re done, I say, ‘Let’s look at them all and then read them out aloud.’

The twins lay down their papers next to mine on the floor and I can hardly believe it. I don’t know what to say. Their writing is terrible — it looks like four-year-olds have done it — but good teachers shouldn’t hurt feelings. Only horrible ones do that.

‘That’s very, very hard work you’ve done.’ I pick mine off the floor. I’m embarrassed to see my joined-up writing next to their baby words. I worry it’ll make them feel bad, or pick on me. I hold up Melody’s to look. She’s put her name at the top but after that it’s just some odd words that don’t really mean anything. Cat. Dog. Mom. Truck — except she’s spelt it truk.

‘Maybe we should do lots more writing lessons.’

Both girls are nodding, holding their pencils like they want to start already.

Then Silver says something.

‘You’re much nicer than the other Mercy, Carmel.’

I’m blowing the pencil dust off their sheets they’ve been pressing so hard.

‘What other Mercy?’

Silver goes to the end of the truck and looks out, checking we’re all alone. She puts her finger to her lips then climbs up on Gramps’s bed and gets something down from the shelf. It’s a tiny blue book with gold writing on the front.

‘This one.’

She opens up the book and there’s lots of typewriting in there and a tiny photo and some old bit of newspaper folded up inside. My hand flies up to my short curls.

‘She looks like me! Her hair does anyway … and her face a bit. A lot.’

‘She’s Mercy too,’ says Melody. ‘We didn’t like her, did we, Silver?’

Silver shakes her head.

‘Who is she?’ The prickles are back.

‘She was with Pa, when Mom first went with him.’

I touch her little face in the photograph. ‘What happened to her? Where is she now?’

They both shrug. Melody says, ‘She went off with Pa. Then he called Mom up on the phone and said she’s got to get on a plane and join him. Then you came back with them. We asked him where did Mercy go, and he tells us, “We’ve got Carmel now. We mustn’t talk about Mercy no more. Never ever.”’

Silver’s nodding away, agreeing with her.

‘So you mustn’t say we told.’

‘But.’ I’m not sure ‘but what’. I just know I’ve got my prickles back.

‘You mustn’t, Carmel. Honest, you promise? Or we can’t show you nothing again,’ says Silver.

‘Was she my sister?’ I don’t know why I asked that. Except she looks like me and all.

Silver shrugs. ‘We dunno.’

‘But, but … why didn’t you like her?’

‘So quiet and praying. Always on her knees with Pa. She was boring,’ says Silver.

Silver puts the little book with Mercy’s picture back in its place on the shelf.

‘Hey, I want to look some more, I want to read the paper in there.’

‘No, they’ll be back soon. We can’t get caught. Promise you won’t tell — or we won’t play with you any more.’

‘I need to look at her …’ My hand flies up to snatch at it but Silver grabs my arm.

‘No, I knew we shouldn’t have told.’ I start shoving her onto the bed but Melody is howling, ‘Don’t, don’t, don’t,’ and pulling my skirt so hard I shoot back and nearly land on her.

Both their faces have gone the colour of milk. ‘I knew you’d get us into trouble,’ says Silver. ‘If we even go near Pa’s stuff he gets mad. We should never have showed you.’

‘Promise you won’t look again,’ Melody says. ‘Please. You might get caught.’

We’re all panting hard. ‘OK, I won’t,’ I lie. ‘I promise.’

I walk down the steps and look over the bubbling river where I nearly drowned, thinking about the girl hidden on the shelf and who she is. She looks so much like me and now — now we have the same name.

Even from here, when I look back at the truck, it’s like I can see the book winking at me from the shelf. ‘One day,’ I say under my breath, ‘I’ll look at you properly. Detective Wakeford will come and find you.’ I’ll need to carry out a search of everything, I think, and my stomach tingles.

‘Mercy, who are you?’ I say, as if she could hear me. ‘I wish you were here now, so you could tell me. I’m Carmel.’

Then a kind of shaking inside happens because when I told her my real name everything was so quiet — just the river bubbling and the river doesn’t care. The sound disappeared in the air and I don’t feel sure at all any more that I’ve won about my name. I take out the biro from my pocket and bash it with a rock till I have a plastic dagger. I pick three rocks and scratch, scratch. When I’m done I put them in a row but they remind me of gravestones like that so I pile them one on top of the other in this order:

Wakeford

Summer

Carmel