Page 47 of The Show Woman

46

Locket

The hard earth begins to soften, snowdrops peeking through the gloom. Lena is down to her last few pennies, counts them every night, wonders if she too should take a job at the factory with Rosie, drown her grief in the clatter of the machines, the steady methodical work.

She sees little of Harry, who has got himself a few shows at one of the Glasgow music halls. He invites her along one night, but she cannot face it. Instead she sits alone in the dark, searching the sky for single stars. Proof that somewhere out there, far beyond her understanding, someone who loved her is still awake.

She worries about Rosie, who is terrified and on edge now that Jennifer has returned home, and sometimes comes to her wagon to sleep, bringing an old battered pillow filled with straw. They are long, fearful nights, and they bolt the door, just in case. But Rosie’s pa has made no appearance.

Lena thinks of Serena, trapped in a body that will no longer do her bidding, surrounded by memories she would rather not have. How could this woman be her flesh and blood? Her own aunt? She had been four when her grandaddy on her father’s side died, a big man who even into his fifties had the sinewy physique of a boxer who’d made his living punching other men for show. That she had another grandfather had rarely occurred to her. That it could be Serena’s own father seemed inconceivable.

One night she looks out her mammy’s old box, searching for clues to this strange new family. The picture, her mother’s face sad and serene. The buds of lavender and the old Linden’s ticket stub. The letter. And her pendant. Lena picks it up, runs the thin chain through her fingers, rubs her thumb over its smooth oval shape.

To her surprise, she finds a tiny catch on the side. All these years, and she had never realised that it wasn’t a pendant, but a locket. She flips it open, hoping to find another picture of her mammy, or perhaps her daddy, gazing up at her. But when she sees the face staring back, she drops the box in shock.

The floor of Glasgow Central Station is hard and smooth, but Lena feels as though she is adrift on shifting sands. She blunders past men in smart suits and ladies in frilled coats and elegant hats, scrunching her eyes up at the clinking departures board, the high glass ceiling.

Queuing in the ticket office, a group of ladies eye her shabby dress, elbow each other, mouth ‘traveller’ with their painted lips.

‘Where to?’ The man behind the counter is wearing a smart navy-blue cap with gold brocade.

‘Galston,’ says Lena.

‘Return or one-way?’

‘What’s the difference?’

‘Well,’ he says with exaggerated slowness, ‘return means you want to return, today of course; one-way means you’re thinking about moving all your worldly goods to Galston and planning never to come back.’ His eyes shift up and down her body. ‘Got some friends down the mines, have you?’

She hears the titters of ladies’ laughter behind her.

‘Return,’ she says.

‘Third class, I presume?’

She nods, handing over her pennies.

He shoves the ticket at her and she pockets it, avoiding the gaze of the women behind her. She will not give them the satisfaction of seeing her smarting eyes.

She heads towards the platform, thoughts swirling. She was ten when her mother disappeared, thought she could do no wrong, but now, nothing seems the same any more. Perhaps her whole life is a lie. Perhaps she should never have been born.

Into the carriage now and she finds a window seat, is soon joined by a mother and her crying baby. As the train chugs out of the city, across the bridge and over the river – oh, Violet, she thinks, as its darkening tide rushes towards the sea – she makes faces at the bairn until, entranced, he laughs, reaches out one chubby hand to touch her cheek.

‘Sorry,’ says the mother. She looks exhausted, great sooty rings under her eyes.

‘It’s no bother,’ says Lena.

‘What’s his name?’

‘Harry,’ says the woman, and Lena falls silent again.

At Galston she hurries over the bridge and into the town. She would never have thought of the train had it not been for Jennifer. It seems miraculous to her now that she can get here so quickly, when it would have taken days by horse, or wagon. It’s a year or two now since she was last here but she knows where the showground is. Down the main street, past the miners’ cottages, into the wide expanse of park.

It is empty and silent as the grave. A lone building – the stables, she realises – stands in a corner. Beside it a single tree, bare of leaves. And, past that, a winding stream, its water levels high after the recent rain. She makes for the tree, crying now, sobbing out loud, louder and louder, because who will hear her in this barren place where her mammy once came, where she vanished all those years ago during the thrum and the noise of the fair, amid the smell of toffee apples and the fizz of excitement, the place Lena always considered her home.

A tree, that was what Harry had said all those months ago. As Lena reaches it, a single magpie watches her from a high branch. She scrabbles at the hard bark, its jagged edges cutting her fingers, slicing at them. There is blood. A strange smell rises from the tree, as though it were waking up from a long sleep, emitting an ancient earthy breath into the cold air.

There is nothing here. She has felt all round the bark, along its branches, down by the thick, twisting roots. But then, deep inside the tree’s heart, she finds a little hole, just big enough for her fingers to squeeze in. They clasp something hard, metallic. No wonder her father never found anything. His large, showman’s hands would never have been able to reach in this far.

Lena brings the object out into the fading light. It is another locket. And she knows, without even looking, whose picture will be inside.