The Other Ida (20 page)

If she could just concentrate hard enough, have enough belief, she was pretty sure she could bring Bridie back to the car, trance-like and happy, to drive them home. Things like that were always happening in the Bible, and in the new-age healing books her mother sometimes secretly bought. She wished she found it easier to believe.

Bridie walked over to the railing, took a ten pence piece from her pocket and put it into the green telescope. “Here, look,” she told Ida.

“I don't want to,” said Ida and, with surprising force, Bridie grabbed her hair and manoeuvred her head.

“Look. Don't make me waste 10p. Try to make out our house. I'll never be able to with my eyesight,” Bridie said.

Ida opened one eye and angled the telescope towards Branksome Beach.

It seemed alarmingly close.

It was only at the end of her mother's road, but she hadn't been since they had made that stupid film. She imagined seeing them there now, two girls with their arms out as they stood in the sea. One of them pushing the other under the waves…

A gull flew in front of the lens and Ida screamed. “Please, Ma. Please can we go home?”

She hated birds. People thought she was scared, but it wasn't that. They reminded her of that day on the beach, they reminded her how evil she was, deep down.

“No,” said Bridie calmly.

Ida was close to tears as her mother led her further along the pier. They didn't speak and soon passed the theatre. So there weren't going in there. There were only the shut-up amusements left ahead of them, the teacup rides and the shooting gallery, before they'd reach the end.

Ida felt scared. “Please Ma, tell me then. Tell me why we're here.”

“Hurry up,” Bridie said.

Ida followed a few steps behind, unwilling to encourage whatever was happening. She watched her mother's small shape against the sky; such a small body, such a small person, really.

Bridie reached the railing at the end, put her bag down and stepped up onto the bottom rung.

“No!” screamed Ida. She suddenly knew why they were there. She ran towards her mother, grabbed her tiny waist and lifted her down.

“What the hell do you think you're doing? Did you think I was going to top myself? Give me some credit. Suicide from Bournemouth Pier. Do you think that's my style?” Bridie asked.

“I don't know. I thought… ”

“Fine. Fine. You don't want to hear. Let's go home. You're just the same as the others. Scared. Stupid. With no imagination.”

Ida followed behind as Bridie walked, quickly. She felt miserable as she watched her mother, felt terrible about it all, and her arms were covered in goosebumps.

Bridie didn't speak on the drive home.

Confused, tired and stubborn, Ida pretended to sleep while she tried to make sense of the events of the day and think about what it could possibly mean. There was a poem in all of it somewhere, a real, prize winning poem about the sea. She stroked the sleeve of her new jacket, pleased that she'd stolen it and that her mother didn't know. At least she had secrets too.

“That's it then, you stupid girl,” Bridie said as they reached their road, her voice full of glass again. “You missed your chance. You'll regret that, my darling heart, you wait and see.”

They pulled into the drive and saw Alice's worried face peering at them through the sitting room window. As they parked she disappeared and Ida knew she would be running to meet them. Then the door opened and there she was in her uniform, her face pink and puffy from crying as Ida had known it would be.

They got out of the car and walked up towards her, Bridie leading, pretending to look at flowers and plants to disguise the fact she found the steps a struggle. To Alice it must have seemed as though she was being deliberately slow, as though she wasn't pleased to see her and her lips trembled. Ida tried to meet her gaze to make her understand, but there was no use. Alice wasn't great at subtlety and began to cry again.

Bridie reached the top, looked down at her sobbing daughter and held on to the doorframe, pulling Alice towards her and grasping the back of her head. “You poor little thing, you poor, pretty little thing,” Bridie said over and over again in a strange voice that Ida didn't recognise.

Alice caught Ida's eye and for perhaps the first time, Ida could tell they were both properly scared.

Bridie spent the rest of the afternoon lying on the sofa and drinking ginger wine while Alice sat on a footstool taking an occasional sip. Ginger wine was medicinal in Bridie's book, and allowed however ill or however young you were. They were playing gin rummy – or rather Bridie was attempting to teach her. Ida wasn't allowed to play, Ida was too good. They still didn't talk about the time Bridie had drunkenly bet her last seven pounds and Ida had cleaned her out. Ida had tried to give it back – they hardly had money for food – but Bridie wouldn't take it. She took gambling very seriously indeed.

Ida had used the money to buy her bunk beds from Martin's mother. She'd lugged them, strut by strut, back to the house and spent two days putting them together. She still wasn't entirely sure they weren't going to collapse. Not that they were really dangerous – they were so small compared to her that she was able to put one foot flat on the floor while she lay on the top.

For a while Ida sat in the uncomfortable torn-leather armchair rereading
Jane Eyre
, or trying to, while Bridie changed the rules as she saw fit and Alice didn't notice and asked seemingly endless questions. Eventually it was too annoying and Ida went up to her room.

There were things she needed to think about anyway.

The problem with Bridie though, was that you couldn't just ask. She made things up wildly although she swore she didn't, and was especially likely to if you showed you were interested. If you could get her when she was just drunk enough, three bottles of wine and no spirits, you could sometimes get at what seemed like the truth.

Ida lay on her unmade bed. Her side-lamp was the only light in the room, casting a weak circle onto the flaking ceiling. The sheet had rolled up and an escaped mattress spring scratched her leg. It was all just too uncomfortable.

She gave up, jumped onto the floor, pulled the duvet onto the carpet and lay down there instead. Stretching out her arms she came across fag ends, bits of old sandwich and book after book. At her father and Terri's flat you could eat your supper off the carpet if you chose to. She picked up a few fag ends, chose the longest and lit it with a stray match that lay under the bed – smoking always helped her to think.

Maybe it didn't matter why'd they'd gone to the pier, it was bound to be disappointing anyway.

Ida finished her cigarette, got to her feet and climbed onto the small pine chair that stood by her desk. She had the evening off the pub and would use it to drink and smoke and write. Her fingers were tingling and she needed to do something productive. She reached up to the ceiling tile and pulled out her Magical Days Book. She could start by describing their day, or at least the little she could make of it.

Chapter twenty-two

~ 1999 ~

If she was going to look through her mother's things, properly and without distraction, she needed to do it alone.

Alice wittered on but Ida wouldn't be swayed and shut herself in their mother's bedroom, carrying up all the drawers from the dressing table in the study too. Alice was suspicious, Ida knew, worried she was looking for money or anything she could sell, and brought her cup of tea after cup of tea until Ida, frustrated, put an empty drawer up under the door handle, telling Alice that she should go downstairs and put her feet up. Ida could hear the shrill pitch of her sister's voice as she spoke to Tom in the kitchen. She was obviously annoyed but seemed to have decided this wasn't an argument worth having.

Ida was almost enjoying herself, surrounded by piles of clutter, the radio on, and a mug of strong tea still warm next to her. She was surprised to realise that perhaps it was the fear she would cry that had previously made her unwilling to sort through her mother's possessions. Fuck it, she thought. If she couldn't cry on her own then she was even madder than she'd thought. And she was pretty sure that there was nothing among these theatre programmes, faded photos and old lipsticks that could bring her to tears.

Ida began with the drawers under the bed. There were pink floral sheets in there, gnawed by mice or moths, and Ida removed them, remembering hating them when she was a child. If they hadn't been in such bad nick she would have almost liked them now, at least the fabric for a dress or a shirt. At the back of the drawers were empty bottles, receipts, tissues, and not much else. If there were any notes of her mother's, any interesting things, she didn't keep them there.

She pulled the drawers out and felt the space, shuddering as she found the skeleton of a long dead mouse. Steeling herself she replaced her hand and pulled out what felt like a magazine. She brushed off the dust with her palm and saw it was a catalogue, a Bonhams catalogue –
British and Irish Art Sale, 1989
. Inside was a folded letter and she opened it at the place it marked. On the page was a painting of her mother, the one they'd had when she was young. It had been a long time since she'd seen it and Ida ran her fingers over the shape of her ma, remembering the feel of the layers of paint and how she'd been both fascinated and embarrassed by the naked breasts. There was a caption underneath the image:

An important painting by Jacob Collins, ‘Untitled' is one of the highlights of the 20th Century British and Irish art sale, taking place on the 16th November at Bonhams New Bond Street.

Ida opened the letter. It was immaculately typewritten on heavy cream paper, the Bonhams logo raised at the top of the page.

2nd December 1989

Dear Ms Adair

I am writing regarding the recent sale of your painting ‘Untitled' by Jacob Collins.

As you are aware, the painting sold for £14,000 to a telephone bidder. Please find a statement attached, detailing our commission and charges, and a cheque enclosed.

The buyer, Mrs A. Simpson, requested that I pass on her telephone number, it is 01 552 439.

Many thanks for doing business with Bonhams.

Yours sincerely,

Joseph Hodder

Specialist – Contemporary British and Irish Art

£14,000. That should have been her bloody cash. She supposed her mother would have lived on it for a year or two, spending it on drink. Ida liked to think that if she'd had the money she would have bought a house or something sensible, but the truth was she may well have done the same. If she couldn't be trusted with fifty quid, what would she do with an amount like that?

Poor old Mrs A Simpson, whatever she'd wanted. She must have been very disappointed to discover that Bridie almost never spoke on the phone.

She felt the carpet behind the other drawer and pulled out a postcard from Peter, ‘The Girl with the Pearl Earring'. On the back was his beautiful, looping handwriting – Ida had forgotten his writing – and a message:

Bet she dropped the other pearl down the lav or swapped it for a G and T.

P x

Her mother had been renowned for losing things, though Ida could hardly imagine how, as Bridie never went anywhere. Ida wondered where all the things were, all those lost earrings and socks, and imagined for a moment that they were under the carpet she was sitting on, filling the gaps under the floor boards and the spaces behind the wallpaper – holding the house up.

She put the sheets and the catalogue back and slid them under the bed. She would leave the mouse there – no need to disturb him. She wiped her dusty hands on her trousers crawled over to the things she'd bought up from her mother's desk.

She would try not to be distracted by all the rubbish, just throw stuff away, and if she did happen to find anything interesting then there would be no need to share it with her sister. Alice had already had first dibs on most things after all.

There was the sound of a man's feet on the landing.

“What you doing in there? Wanking? Or are you dead? Shit, probably shouldn't make jokes.” It was Elliot.

Ida opened the door.

Elliot stood there, his hair messy, his face flushed from walking, the collar of his coat up by his cheeks. He looked sweet and eager and so happy to see her. Ida kissed him on the mouth and he stepped into the room, taking off his coat and dropping it on the bed.

“I thought you were going to leave me with those fucking squares talking about fucking chickpeas or some bollocks,” he said in a loud whisper.

Ida laughed, closed the door, and put the drawer back. “You can stay here and talk to me while I look through things,” she said, sitting on the floor.

“Got you some contraband to cheer you up,” Elliot said, sitting on the bed and reaching inside his coat. He bought out a pack of Lambert and Butler and two Peperamis.

“I thought you'd be cross with me after last night,” Ida said, and kissed his knee, breathing in his strong smell of tobacco and London air.

He lit a cigarette and Ida carried on making piles of the stuff on the floor. Every so often she would find a photograph and look at it for a second; hoping Elliot would express an interest in her as a child. She caught herself doing it and felt ashamed. No wonder he didn't love her, he could see straight through her. She was an attention-seeking twat.

The theatre programmes were different, as were the photos of her mother's friends; he was interested in them although he'd often take the piss.

“You could sell some of these for a few quid you know,” he said. “That's what Tom was saying when we were out.”

“Really?” Ida was surprised. Tom didn't seem the money-motivated type. “He did mention the original Ida script might be worth something. I don't want to sell it though. I told him that.” She knew she sounded annoyed and carried on leafing through papers, but couldn't concentrate. “God, he seems so right-on and responsible, but actually he's a fame-hungry, money-grabbing…”