Joanna Cannon - The Trouble with Goats and Sheep

‘Someone is very much at home.’

Mrs Forbes appeared on the path which ran down the side of house. She wore the kind of clothes my mother saved for doctor’s appointments, and under her arm was a large roll of dustbin bags. She snapped one free, and a small group of pigeons tumbled from the roof in shock.

She asked us what we wanted. Tilly stared into the chippings and I folded my arms and stood on one leg, and tried to take up a very small amount of room on the doorstep.

‘We’re Brownies,’ I said, as soon as I remembered.

‘We’re Brownie Guides. We’re here to lend a hand,’ said Tilly, although she managed to stop herself from singing.

‘You don’t look like Brownies.’ Mrs Forbes narrowed her eyes.

‘We’re being casual.’ I narrowed my eyes back.

I said that we needed help from our neighbourhood, and Mrs Forbes agreed that she was, indeed, our neighbourhood, and suggested we might like to come inside, out of the heat. Behind Mrs Forbes’ cardigan, Tilly waved her arms around in excitement, and I waved my arms around back again to try and calm her down.

We followed Mrs Forbes’ heels down the side of the house, as they clicked a neat path on the concrete, and our sandals smacked and squabbled behind her in a tangle of keeping up. After a moment, she turned, and as Tilly and I were both still waving our arms around, we almost fell into her.

‘Does your mother know you’re here, Grace?’ she said. She held her hands up, as though she were directing traffic.

‘We told her, Mrs Forbes,’ I said.

Her hands dropped back, and the tap of her heels began again.

I wondered if Mrs Forbes realized that telling my mother something and my mother knowing about it were usually two very different things, that my mother’s fingers would often fly to her throat and she would strongly deny ever being told anything of the sort – even when my father presented her with witnesses (me) and a word-by-word account of the entire conversation.

‘She never asked about my mum,’ Tilly whispered.

Tilly’s mother was usually considered too unpredictable to ask after.

I straightened the back of her jumper. ‘It’s all right. Asking about my mum will cover both of us. You are always welcome to borrow her.’

Tilly smiled and linked her arm through mine.

I sometimes wondered if there was ever a time when she wasn’t there.

*

Mrs Forbes’ carpet was the colour of cough syrup. It ran along the hall and into the sitting room, and when I looked back, I saw it climb all the way up the stairs. There were still lines where the vacuum cleaner had sailed across, and as we walked into the sitting room, there was an extra square of syrup, just in case you were to discover that a whole houseful wasn’t quite enough.

Mrs Forbes asked if we’d like some cordial, and I said yes, and I wouldn’t say no to a custard cream, and she’d made an oh shape with her mouth, and left us to sit on a dark pink sofa, which had twisty arms and its own set of dimples. I decided to balance on the edge. Tilly had sat down first. The seats were so deep, her legs didn’t reach the floor, and they stretched out in front of her, like a doll.

She rolled across and peered into the gap between the sofa and the wall.

‘Can you see Him yet?’ she said, from near the carpet.

‘Who?’

She rolled back, her face crimson with effort. ‘God,’ she said.

‘I don’t think He’s simply going to pop out of the sideboard, Tilly.’

We both looked at the sideboard, just in case.

‘But shouldn’t we make a start?’ she said. ‘Mrs Creasy might be in peril.’

I stared at the room. It looked as though someone might have served it into the house with an ice-cream scoop. Even the things that weren’t pink had a mention of it, as if they hadn’t been allowed through the door without making a firm commitment. There were twists of salmon rope holding back the curtains, fuchsia tassels on each of the cushions, and the pot dogs guarding the mantelpiece had garlands of rosebuds around their necks. Between the pot dogs was a line of photographs: Mr and Mrs Forbes sitting on deckchairs at a beach, and Mr Forbes standing next to a motor car, and Mrs and Mrs Forbes with a group of people, having a picnic. Right in the centre was a girl with her hair pinned into waves. All the people in the other photographs looked away from the lens with serious eyes, but the girl stared straight into the camera and smiled, and it was so honest and so unprotected, it made me want to smile straight back.

‘I wonder who she is,’ I said.

But Tilly was examining the space behind the settee. ‘Do you think He’s down here somewhere?’ She lifted a cushion and peered at the back of it.

I looked up at the champagne teardrops which spilled from the light fitting. ‘I think it might be a bit too pink, even for Jesus,’ I said.

*

Mrs Forbes returned with a tray and a selection of biscuits.

‘I’m afraid I don’t have any custard creams,’ she said.

I took three fig rolls and a garibaldi. ‘That’s all right, Mrs Forbes. I’ll just have to manage.’

I could hear the noise of a television in the room next door, and Mr Forbes’ voice shouting instructions at it. It sounded like a football match. Even though the sounds were just the other side of the wall, they seemed very far away, and the rest of the world played itself out beyond the pink insulation, leaving us wrapped in Dralon and cushions, protected by china dogs and cellophaned in an ice-cream silence.

‘You have a very nice house, Mrs Forbes,’ said Tilly.

‘Thank you, dear.’

I bit into my garibaldi and she rushed a paper doily on to my knee.

‘The key to a tidy house is anticipation. And lists. Lots of lists.’

‘Lists?’ I said.

‘Oh yes, lists. That way, nothing ever gets forgotten.’

She pulled a piece of paper from the pocket of her cardigan.

‘This is today’s list,’ she said. ‘I’m up to the dustbins.’

It was a long list. It crossed over two pages in loops of blue ink, which thickened and smudged where the pen had stopped to think. As well as vacuuming the hall and putting out the dustbins, it had entries like clean teeth and eat breakfast .

‘Do you put everything on your list, Mrs Forbes?’ I started on my first fig roll.

‘Oh yes, best not to leave anything to chance. It was Harold’s idea. He says it stops me being slapdash.’

‘Could you not remember things without writing them down?’ said Tilly.

‘Heavens, no.’ Mrs Forbes shrank back in her chair, and she faded into a pink landscape. ‘That wouldn’t do at all. Harold says I’d get in a terrible mess.’

She folded the piece of paper exactly in half, and returned it to her pocket.

‘So how long have you two been in the Brownies?’

‘Ages,’ I said. ‘Who’s the girl in the photograph?’

She frowned at me and then looked over at the fireplace and frowned again. ‘Oh, that’s me,’ she said, in a surprised voice, as though she had temporarily forgotten all about herself.

I studied Mrs Forbes and the girl in the photograph, and tried to find something that matched. There was nothing.

‘Don’t look so shocked,’ she said, ‘I wasn’t born old, you know.’

My mother used this saying quite frequently. I had learned from experience not to say one word in reply, and I sipped my cordial to avoid having to make a comment.

She walked over to the mantelpiece. I always thought of Mrs Forbes as being solid and blustery, but close up she became diluted. Her posture was a slight apology, the folds of her clothes measuring out the end of a story. Even her hands looked small, trapped by arthritis and livered with time.