Dear Doctor Lily (6 page)

‘Sleep good?' she asked Ida over the radio and other noises. ‘Coffee's on the stove.'

Ida had planned to ask for tea, but lost her nerve. She picked up the pot to pour coffee into a mottled enamel mug. Mrs Legge shot a look sideways at the high-necked jersey, which did not hide the red grazes on the side of Ida's chin from Buddy's beard stubble.

Would she be angry? Let her. Curiously, now that she knew about the boozing monster side of Buddy, Ida felt more confident, more in charge. America was a treacherous jungle, but this was a situation she could cope with. She knew where she was now. She had Lily's address in England. She would write to her when she had the chance to buy postcards and say, ‘Iceland was nothing – this is really an adventure, Lil, but I'm surviving.'

Mr Legge went off up the hill on a motor-bike. Billy and Phyllis went off to school down the hill in a long yellow bus filled with children fighting and waving their arms and legs about behind the elderly driver who ignored them. Ida would have liked to unpack some of her clothes and hang them up, but there was nowhere, so she refolded some of the stuff in the suitcases, put her short white wedding dress on a wire hanger she found in the yard and hung it over the trailer door. When the yellow bus ground up the hill in the afternoon, Phyllis came flouncing into Ida's caravan and knocked the dress to the floor and trod over it in boots.

Ida snatched it up and held it, furious.

‘What's that?' Phyllis made a face at it.

‘What I'm going to get married in. What's it to you?'

‘When Sis got married she had a long white gown and white veil.' When Phyllis stood with her stomach out under the stiff petticoats, there wasn't much room for her in the small space at the end of the trailer.

‘Well, I haven't.'

Ida had not even wanted to wear white, but her mother had set her face. ‘We're not having those people over there think we
don't know how it's done,' and bought this dress in a sale for her. It turned out the sale had ended the day before, so Ida had had to make up the difference in price.

‘Lemme see what all else you got in your bags.'

‘No.' This one had to be stopped before she started.

‘Hey, not fair! Mom!' She threw her shrill voice over her shoulder towards the house.

‘C'mon back in!' Her mother threw the shout back.

‘You're a pig,' Phyllis told Ida.

‘Ditto.'

When Phyllis had jumped out, shrieking, Ida shut the door and hung the dress up again. There was no lock on the door, so Billy knocked the dress down when he came to say ‘Hullo,' blinking shyly and jerking his mouth, and Mr Legge knocked it down again when he came to call Ida for supper.

‘Settled in okay?'

He looked hollow under his overalls. His long jaw was dark blue.

‘I'm all right, thanks.'

‘Is that so?'

Whatever you told him, he answered, ‘Is that so?' and sometimes ‘Could have knocked me down,' or ‘Could have fooled me.'

Life at the Legges' was hardly worth flying the Atlantic for, let alone a detour to Iceland, but the wedding was only a week away, and then Ida would be able to hang out her clothes in the semi-detached at Watkins Air Force Base and lock the doors and wash herself in a bathroom where the bath wasn't full of old newspapers and potatoes, and no dogs shouldered in to have a go at the broken bag of biscuits. She could have a pee without someone pounding on the door, and cook sausages and pies and custards in a kitchen she would keep clean as her mother's. Here in Leggeland, the stove was too far gone to tackle, and she was not allowed to scrub out the sink on the grounds that it was going to be used again before she could turn around. Verna Legge produced mostly frozen food from a huge freezer chest in an outside shed, thawing it out at full
power, so that the outside was burned and the inside ice-cold.

Ida helped as much as she could with the children and the baby Vernon and the washing-up and throwing away – cartons and tins went out of the back door in the vague direction of some old oil drums – and there didn't seem to be any sweeping, nor a broom to do it with.

She went shopping with Mrs Legge. ‘Downtown,' Verna said. She was stuffing dirty clothes into a heavy cotton bag that was stencilled USAF.

‘I could clear out the sink and wash some of those,' Ida offered. ‘I have some things of my own to do.'

‘By hand?' Verna was alarmed. ‘This is America, girl. We don't wash our own clothes here.'

Her own outfit could have done with a soak and a scrub. Vast grey knitted trousers, as wide as they were long. A purple T-shirt over bellying breasts that fell to where her waist might be. Hairy black cardigan that rode her gross shoulders like an animal of prey, its loaded pockets swinging at the front, the back ending half-way up her back in a ragged arch, the T-shirt ending soon below that, and half a yard of bumpy flesh before you came to the stretched elastic of the elephantine trousers. When Verna moved about the small house, knocking things over or aside, she created a disturbance in the air, and the wind of it was sour.

On the way downtown where the shops and launderette were, Verna's great rustic car, whose back window was taped up with plastic, coughed up the hill and rattled down the other side into a valley of superb pine trees and scattered white or red farmhouses, swinging from side to side round the corners, kept on the road by Verna's powerful arms at the helm. Ida had to hold Vernon tightly on her lap to prevent his head bashing against the window. He was a passive little boy. Born to hubbub, he had decided not to compete.

At the foot of the hill the car crossed a wide river and slewed to a stop behind the grain mill, where Henry Legge worked.

‘Henry!' His wife leaned an arm and a squashed bosom out of the window. ‘C'mon out here!'

‘Shaker!' A man doing something outside called into a shed. Henry was called Shaker at work.

He hurried out, flapping long hands at his wife. ‘You'll like to get me fired. This place is full of visitors.'

‘Bunch of snots.' Verna put her finger under her spread nose, and pushed it into a pig's snout. ‘Why can't they buy their flour at Lefty's?'

The mill ground and sold earthy grains and cereals and special flour of all kinds from coarse to silky. Ida, yearning to the rustic like all city people, was entranced by the old waterwheel turning slowly in the swift river. Lunchers in the glass-walled restaurant above watched the great wheel dip and raise and spill the water as it had done for a hundred years, wet green whiskers dangling and dropping silver pearls, and floating soaked again to rise dripping.

Henry could not take her into the milling shed or the barn or the mill store, or anywhere the visitors went. The old waterwheel was believed to power the grinding, so Henry must be invisible in his oily overalls in which he ran the machinery that actually turned the grindstones.

Lefty's Market was a grocer's in a town no bigger than a large English village, but with many more shops. The shelves of the low-ceilinged market were crammed with things that Ida had never seen. She wanted to stay and explore, but Verna careered through the place like a lava flow, throwing tins and packets on top of Vernon in the trolley, criticizing, swearing at prices, smelling the pork chops.

‘This here is Ida that Buddy brought over from England to marry,' she told Lefty at the paying counter.

‘American girls not good enough for him?'

Ida was to hear this a lot until she lost her accent. It was an insult disguised as a joke.

‘So you're from jolly old England,' Lefty said, with a blue-lipped grin, and some shoppers turned to have a look. ‘How about a spot of tea?'

That was another joke Ida was to hear many times. Sometimes she tried saying, ‘We say “cup of tea”,' but the joker knew better.

There was a rack of dud-looking postcards at the front of the shop.
I'll get fat here,
she would write to Lily.
Jam doughnuts and everything is giant size, and six different kinds of tomato soup,
but
Verna pushed her past the cards and on to the No-name Laundromat, where Ida saw her pink nylon blouse going into the machine with the baby's dirty nappies. Mrs Legge sagged on to a chair to wait. Ida wanted to go back to Lefty's, but Verna pulled her down next to her and gave her a lecture on how to take care of Buddy.

‘Very sensitive boy, you can't cross him. It upsets his system. He's a free spirit, like I say, a free spirit. He shouldn't marry, really.'

Oh, thanks very much. Ida put her hand over her mouth. The hot dog she had eaten at lunch was getting back at her. ‘If you didn't put your hand over your mouth, no one would notice,' she heard Lily saying. Mrs Legge didn't notice anyway. You could die of a burst ulcer before she paid any attention.

Folding the pile of torn grey nappies, Mrs Legge sighed and said, ‘Isn't it always the way? I'll just get this one trained to do his jobs in the toilet like God meant him to do, and it'll be time to start all over again with the next.'

‘What?' Ida stood with a sock in each hand and stared at her among the tumbling washers, the soap and hot air, the waiting women with their feet planted parallel.

‘Didn't you know? Lookit.' Verna showed her profile.

‘It doesn't show.'

Where was the baby under all those layers of fat? How did Shaker ever find his way in? Ida had seen enough pregnant women, God knows, including herself before Jackson was sent down, but she was shocked.

Hot from the No-name, Verna smelled very bad. She put one bag of laundry over her shoulder and pulled up Vernon from among the fluff balls on the floor. Ida took the other bag and followed her out.

During the next days while Ida was waiting for Buddy to come back and marry her, a few women neighbours dropped into Legge Manor, to inspect the new recruit to the family. They talked a lot, so Ida didn't have to say much. They seemed quite pleasant, but almost before Verna Legge had shut the door behind
them with a thud that brought a nervous ‘ting' from the wall clock, she had started to find fault.

‘What did
she
come for? I know what she came for. Looking around. You see how she looked around? Three cups of coffee she drunk on me. Then I make a fresh pot and she takes but one sip. Well, they got a good look at you, so I hope it was worth it.'

‘They made me feel welcome,' Ida said. ‘They're very nice, your friends.'

‘They're not
friends,
they're neighbours,' Mrs Legge said firmly. ‘Shut up in there!' She slapped at her mounded stomach. ‘Lookit,' she laughed gleefully. ‘See the rascal? See him poundin' about?'

But the baby could no more make itself known to the world than if it had been inside a two-foot thick igloo.

The day before the wedding, they went downtown to buy a white hat. Ida had planned to pin a flower in her hair, but Mrs Legge said she had to wear a proper hat, like it or not. On the way back, they would ‘swing by' Buddy's married sister, ‘since she hasn't chosen to behave like a Christian woman and stop around and tell you hello. Put on them shiny spike heels, Hilda.' She sometimes called Ida that.

‘I thought she lived at a farm. I'll wear my flats. She won't mind.'

‘She's supposed to mind.' Verna made her frog face. ‘She's jealous of Buddy, see. Thinks she's something now because her husband went to college before he dropped out to farm a few ratty sheep. I want her to see my Buddy's done it again.'

‘Done what?' Had he been married before? One more surprise along with all the rest.

‘Gone one better than her.' Verna pulled out her gum, squinted at it, passed it as fit and sucked it back inside.

‘Can I have some gum?'

‘Help yourself.' Mrs Legge waved at the jar full of gum packets on the windowsill among the dirty mugs and dust-snagged cactus plants. ‘English people are so polite. It gets me down how they talk so polite.' She was getting sick of having Ida there.

The hat was a white felt with a wavy brim turned down all round. It rode rather high because of Ida's stiff hair, but Mrs Legge paid for it while Ida was still trying to come to terms with
it, and carried it out in a bag. Ida took it out in the car and turned it round on her fist; wondering about a bit of ribbon to hide the join where crown met brim.

‘Leave the price tag on.' Verna smiled, driving with straight arms to give herself room behind the wheel. ‘I want Sis to see it.'

Sis lived over another hill in a small farmhouse that sat comfortably by a stream in a valley, with a sheep pasture sloping up to a dark magnificent wood. In front of the house was a garden with flower-beds and a low uneven wall, and across the unpaved road, a big barn and some smaller sheds, old and weathered. There was a fenced yard with two cows in it and some speckled chickens. Ducks sat in wet grass at the edge of a muddy pond. Ida's heart rose.

A collie ran out barking, and a healthy-looking girl in a long skirt and boots came out of the house. The afternoon sun, shining low along the road, put coppery lights into the thick bush of hair that stood out round her head.

‘There she is,' Mrs Legge said gloomily.

A wiry little girl with a streamer of long fair hair ran out behind her mother and charged into her grandmother, who bent to pick her up with some fond pride, although she told Sis, ‘Looks as if she didn't have a square meal in weeks.'

Ida and Sis took to each other, which annoyed Mrs Legge. She had talked about Sis and Jeff as if they were on their beam ends, but they seemed to be living a fine life among animals and growing things in an airy, uncluttered house, warmed by a huge ornate wood stove.

Sis took Ida out to see the farm. You could hear the movement of the water in the stream behind the house. The wind came down the valley from the hill and rushed about in the trees. The smell of cow manure was sharp and oddly clean.