Read Online Under My Skin by Alison Jameson - Free Book Online Page A

the horses pull it and some of his stray hairs away. They take them away to Comb Mountain and then they make a giant haystack with his hair. He runs a bath at 7.15 and when he sits down in the steaming water, he holds his wet knees and talks quietly to himself. Through the thin walls, his voice travels up and down, light and soft, in and out, on and on. Pappy is persuading, he is coaxing, he is laughing, he is teasing, and he is praying my mother will come back home. I know this because he sounds so kind and sweet and gentle about it and now and then he will say her name.
    ‘Leonora,’ he says and the sigh hangs in the air with the steam – but she could be in the water with him. She could be sunbathing on the flat kitchen roof. She could be standing on the wardrobe – wearing a yellow ballgown with a diamond tiara. She could be flying. She could be gliding. She could be driving a red bubble car around his bed. She can be anything she wants to be now. My mother is invisible. She is a spirit. Since last summer, she is with the angels – also known as ‘
Dead
’.
    Pappy puts on a fresh cotton vest. He does not say any prayers. Every week he buys a new white shirt and these are the sounds that wake us. The comb in the bin, the squeak of the bath taps, the cellophane wrapping – and lastly his footsteps and a little fart on the stairs. Even though he has the depression Pappy still makes farts. And they sound like Noddy’s car – ‘parp-parp’.
    His room is at the end of the back landing, a long narrow stretch of dusty oak, and there is a rose-covered rug and a brass fruit bowl on the windowsill. We also have a jar in the kitchen that still has Mum’s handwriting on it. ‘
Lemon
Marmalade
’ it says. Pappy eats his All Bran at ten minutes to eight. After that he makes his tea and has one slice of wholewheat toast. His braces make a snapping sound on his shoulders and then he puts on a long white apron and he opens up the shop.
    On Saturdays we help him. Standing in a row and waiting for the first customer to come in. Only Pappy wears the white apron, Daniel wears his lumberjack hat and this year we are twelve. We were born on 2 March – but Daniel is fifteen minutes older than me. We have a grandmother too who lives in the country. She lives thirty miles from us in a place called Devlin in Westmeath. So far we have never met but we know her name is Djuna, which she spells with a ‘J’. She’s my pappy’s mother and he says she has snow-white hair now and that she was a famous swimmer ‘in her day’.
    Pappy keeps the notes in a box under the counter. The loose change goes into an old red OXO tin. I ask him if we can have an ice cream for breakfast and he says, ‘Go ahead.’
    Daniel has an Orange Split and I have a Gollywog. Then we sit on the front step eating them and making fingerprints on the soft tar in the sun.
    Mrs Deegan crosses the street. She is old and does not have to look left and right. She always walks with her chin stuck out in front of her, like she’s being led on a rope. She lives in the blue house on the corner. When she opens her front door she steps right on to the street. Her only son, Martin, is now called Martina. He had a ‘
S-e-x C-h-a-n-g-e
’ but no one is supposed to know this. Everyone has a secret, Pappy says, something they keep inside – something that they stay really quiet about and still everyone else seems to know. Mrs Deegan steps over us and goes into the shop. She buys tomatoes, four slices of cooked ham and a loaf of white bread.She speaks very slowly and chews over each word before it comes out.

    There is a white suit in Pappy’s wardrobe. It hangs on a wooden hanger and it is covered in a clear plastic sheet. It is a large one-piece outfit with long sleeves, and trousers with flares. There is also a wide pointed collar, high up at the back, and a beautiful sparkly belt. The suit has gold sequins all over the shoulders and silver glitter that runs down the legs.