Alison Moore - The Pre-War House and Other Stories

She likes the boiled sweets herself. They are like fragments of stained glass through which the sunlight filters, making blue and yellow and raspberry-red puddles on the floor of the shop.

When the bell rings again, she glances over the shoulder of the liquorice man and sees Jason coming in. He comes to the counter and leans against it as if the liquorice man were not there. He does not even pretend to be there for the sweets. ‘Come for a walk,’ he says.

‘I can’t,’ says Nicola. ‘I’m minding the shop.’

She empties the steel tray into a paper bag which she gives to the man. The bag bulges in his hands, the contents soft and dark and sweet.

Nicola’s grandmother knew all about liquorice. She kept liquorice root in a wooden box in her bedroom and made liquorice tea and pennyroyal tea for the girls who went upstairs to see her. Nicola remembers wandering into her grandparents’ bedroom when one of these girls was visiting. The girl was sitting on the end of the bed, on the handmade bedspread, waiting while Nicola’s grandmother brewed the tea. Her grandmother put the liquorice root back in the box and, seeing Nicola as she closed the lid, said, ‘This is not for you.’ She steered Nicola out of the bedroom, shutting the door behind her.

A girl in Nicola’s year at school was pregnant at fourteen. At the time, Nicola had never even had a boyfriend, and instead followed her teen magazines’ instructions for divining the name of her future husband, combing her hair in front of a candlelit mirror so that she would see his face over her shoulder; eating salt at bedtime so that she would dream of him bringing her water. These things never worked.

‘Come on,’ says Jason. ‘Shut the shop early.’ He looks at the liquorice man, who ought to be leaving now but who is still there. Nicola, looking at Jason, would very much like to lock the door and let Jason take her to the fields, the same field in which she was lying with him on that one occasion when she was late home from school. While her granddad was waiting in the shop, doing his puzzles and expecting a break, Nicola was underneath Jason in the last remaining bit of countryside at the edge of the estate, a burst of green between this spreading estate and the next, flat on her back with her buttons undone and Jason’s head blocking her view of the vast blue sky.

‘My granddad might need me,’ she says, although she hears the floorboards creak overhead as her granddad goes from the bathroom into his bedroom.

‘He won’t,’ says Jason.

Nicola is waiting for the liquorice man to go. He is near the door now but still lingering, and in the end Nicola says it anyway, very quietly to Jason: ‘I think I’m pregnant.’

Jason seems not to have heard. He is looking at the two pence sweets in the tray on the counter. He chooses one and eats it standing there, and then he goes, saying that he has things to do. He leaves the wrapper and a two pence piece behind.

Her granddad will have closed his bedroom curtains. He will have taken off his shoes, and his trousers will be folded on a chair. He will be sleeping heavily in his underwear with Nicola’s grandmother’s handmade quilt pulled up to his chest. He won’t wake up until suppertime.

Soon, Nicola will lock the empty shop and go upstairs. She will go into her granddad’s room and check that he is sleeping soundly before looking through her grandmother’s things, perhaps trying on the slender fifties dress, leaving the zip undone. She will run her hands over the cool glass ball. She will look inside the wooden box containing the liquorice root and the pennyroyal.

In the warm, sugary air, Nicola feels nauseous. She wonders whether she really did say it. Maybe she thought about saying it but nothing came out. Maybe she said it too quietly for Jason to hear.

The jar of liquorice is still out on the counter. She takes a piece for herself and puts it in her mouth. She is not really allowed to do that, to help herself. But she does. She must be careful not to take too much. She will take some to bed with her. She is not allowed to do that either. It stains her tongue and her saliva. When she wakes in the morning, she will first put her hands on her queasy stomach and then she will lift her head and look at her bedding, looking for dark stains.

As the door slams shut, she wonders if she has her keys. Putting her hand in her pocket, wrapping her fingers around them, she thinks of the cold key her mother used to cure hiccups. She recalls the chill of it on her skin, going down her spine, stopping her breath.

Her head is aching but not as much as it might be and she wonders if she is still drunk. She is late. She needs to be at a meeting which has already started. Her alarm clock didn’t wake her. She hasn’t showered or had her breakfast. She hasn’t even brushed her teeth and is wearing yesterday’s clothes.

She hesitates on the doorstep, squinting in the sunshine like some subterranean creature suddenly finding itself in daylight, missing her bedroom, the darkness under the duvet. She takes the few steps to her car, the key in her hand. She can feel her organs shuddering, riddled with toxins. She knows that her breath must reek of alcohol. Unlocking the car, she gets into the driver’s seat and puts her face in her hands, her fingertips touching her eyelids, her breath warming her palms.

After a minute, she puts the key in the ignition and turns it but the engine only wheezes. She tries again but it will not start, and she tries again and again and again but still it will not start and once more she puts her head in her hands.

She gets out of the car, glancing up at the bedroom window, at the closed curtains. She goes to the bonnet and opens it up, looking hopelessly at the engine.

When she hears her neighbour’s front door opening, she turns around. He is in his dressing gown, fetching his milk from the doorstep. He calls out to her, ‘All right, Janie, love?’ She opens her mouth — she might say something, tell him what has happened, ask for his help, but her tongue feels like a pound of raw liver in her mouth, and already he is shutting the door again, not waiting for an answer, no longer looking her way.

As she closes the bonnet, she notices the dirt and oil on her hands and a stain on her blouse. She is right outside her house — she could go inside and wash her hands and change her clothes but she doesn’t. She locks her car and walks towards the bus stop. She is so late.

The bus, when it comes, is packed. She puts her fare in the driver’s tray and he prints out her ticket and drives off before she has found a vacant seat. A large man squeezes up to make space for her, if not enough. He smiles at her as she sits down and she hopes he will not try to start a conversation.

Every time the bus turns a corner, their bodies touch, bumping against one another while she looks straight ahead. People are talking and the noise of it makes her head throb. There is a hand on her arm and someone says, ‘Are you all right, dear?’ but she does not look to see who has spoken and after a moment the hand is withdrawn.

She feels wretched. She drank a vast amount, working her way, with Eric, through the little recipe book which came with his fiftieth-birthday cocktail shaker. She can’t begin to think how many units the two of them must have put away before she went into the bedroom and lay down without undressing. She has no idea what time that was but she knows Eric didn’t come with her.

The man beside her says, ‘Excuse me,’ and she thinks he is going to engage her in some way, but he wants to get past her, to get off the bus. She stands and lets him out and then, worried that she might be sick, goes down to the front of the bus herself, deciding to walk the last stop, hoping that fresh air and exercise will help.