Lucy is a short story inspired by childhood and loosely based on real events.
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From the window at the end of the hall I can see down into the garden and I feel lucky to live in our house. We live on an estate where all the houses are identical; groups of five blocks of semi-detached houses with red brick bottoms and grey pebble-dashed tops. Some of our neighbours have painted their pebble-dashed houses with cream or terracotta, but we can’t paint ours because we don’t own it.
We’re not even allowed to paint our own front door. Then again, that hasn’t stopped Mum before. The council came one day and painted over our bright cobalt blue door with another blue just a few shades lighter, it was slightly dull and less spirited but more “in-keeping”apparently. Nobody liked it. The paint hadn’t even dried before Mum was there painting over it again.
We have the house on the corner so we have the largest garden. It backs on to a quiet side road and is perfect for the four of us to play in. Through the centre of the garden runs a driveway, which is level near the house and has a steep descent down to the gate. When there are no cars, we often play there, rolling our skateboards or rollerblades down the hill before smashing into the wooden gate.
Today, though, Dad’s car is sitting on the driveway, so there are no children playing.
It is a boxy old banger, but it’s his pride and joy. Dirty gold, with hard line-edges, it looks ancient compared to Mum’s new rounded hatchback. Dad’s Uncle Alf gave it to him as he is getting too old to drive it. Dad’s spent a lot of time getting it back on the road and now he has fixed it, he regularly drives it to work. It’s such an old car; a Lada. You don’t see them around much anymore, he says. When we are out in it (although we try to avoid it) he is always proud to tell strangers that it will be the only car running on a snowy day (not that it ever snows in Bournemouth). He calls it Lucy, Lucy Lada - his other woman. He says she’s a rare beauty, the last of her kind.
I can see Dad is out in the garden early this Saturday morning, but it’s not his car he’s working on. Standing against the side of the house, a great wooden cage-like structure masks the red brick half of the house below, dominating the space casting all sorts of strange shadows beneath it. Although at the moment it looks like a sort of prison, he has explained that eventually it will be home to hundred of leaves and flowers as the plants climb and grow all around it; a climbing frame for plants.
The gentle hum of the band saw cutting through wood sounds like an angry oversized bee passing as I venture outside to offer help.
“Is this a door or something?” I point to the piece he is focused on. He has always admired my inquisitive nature, even if it is obvious.
“Just stand in it,” he seems exhausted by my comment, although this isn’t unusual. He always sounds exhausted. I wonder how early it was that he started working out here.
I climb into the frame, glancing over to check it is okay, I continue to place my feet in between squares of wood on each side, mid-way up the frame. It’s a tall door, I am stretching as far as I can reach to hold on to each side.
“That’s it,” he says nodding. He turns to pick his camera up from the side, and takes a picture as I stand there like a starfish. He rolls the film on and takes a second one, for luck.
A wooden cage at the moment, I try to picture the trellis in a few months time, the next photos on the camera film. Next Summer, maybe, when the plants have taken over and bees are bouncing from flower to flower, a jungle surrounded by butterflies and birds. It will be beautiful. our garden will be a little oasis on the estate.
As I leave to go inside, I hear Mum hoovering. With each stride she hammers the edges of the room - the skirting boards, the furniture, anything that is in the way. Each movement is forced and heavy. I sit on the sofa and she hoovers around me. I am careful to lift my feet up hovering above the floor, to make sure she doesn’t hit my feet with the same force she is hitting everything else in the room.
“He nearly finished out there then?” I attempt to start a conversation once she has sat down with a cup of tea. Hoover safely stored away albeit with a few extra scuffs.
“Nearly? Where?” Her eyes staring at the telly, she barely acknowledges I am there.
“The trellis. I think it’s nearly done.”
“Done? He has been told to take it down.”
“Take it down?” I’m confused; he has been building it for weeks. “Who wants it taken down? Have the council said something?”
“He’s obsessed, just like with that car of his.” She never calls it by her proper name: Lucy.
“I like the trellis, it will be beautiful once the plants have grown around it.”
“It’s ugly, it’s ugly like that car, I want it taken down,” she pauses dramatically, leaving the last word to linger in the air like a nasty smell. “Or he can move out.”
She always says this. Poor Dad gets threatened with divorce almost twice a week.
When they do fight they normally make up and nothing comes of it. They are both guilty of using their matrimonial vowels as ammunition against one another. The other ammunition is of course us: the kids, but we have our own plans.
In event of divorce or temporary break-up, we have decided that two of us will stay with one parent, while two move out with the other. It is only fair we split up, no one parent can look after all of us. Logically we have decided we should split boy-girl, boy-girl because then we can’t share a room and this will maximise our chances of our own space.
I can’t help but fantasise about an alternate life without bunk beds as I ascend the stairs to my room, to take refuge in a book leaving the early rumble of arguing to brew below.
*
Some time later I am pulled from my book as I hear a loud smash, followed by the sound of glass falling onto the ground. I run to the upstairs window.
I see Lucy parked at the end of the drive, having moved down the drive from where she was parked earlier. The gate is poised open, glass around the passenger’s side, glittering atop the dark tarmac.
“What the hell?” I run downstairs and outside towards the car. There is glass everywhere.
“Get out of the way,” Dad shoos us away from the car. “Why aren’t you wearing any shoes you stupid mare?” I look down and realise I have forgotten my shoes in the rush downstairs. I freeze, careful not to move amongst the glass.
My sister is holding my little brother’s hand. He looks frightened. He is holding his toy, Hat, which he can’t sleep without. The forlorn looking knitted clown hangs by his leg from my brother’s hand.
“She came out of no where. The brick came through the window,” my sister stammers.
I look around, “Mum?”
“Yes, Mum.” She breathes deeply to calm herself, looking down to check on Sid, “Dad ran after her, begged her to stop.”
“I bet. This is his baby.”
“Yeah, that window won’t be cheap. That’s all he’s been saying.”
“Did he know you were in there?”
“No. We snuck in.” I look at them disappointed. They won’t do that again any time soon.
I look over to Dad he is talking to two police officers who have turned up promptly. The neighbours must have called them. Mum always says this estate is full of curtain twitchers wanting to stick their nose in other people’s business. I can hear him explaining that everything is okay and it’s just a misunderstanding. I’m sure they’ll believe him, this isn’t the first time they have been around to see us.
“Hit him right in the balls this time, hasn’t she?”
My sister nods.
“Is this about the trellis?” I think back to the beating the hoover took earlier at the hands of our angry mother.
“She tried to take an axe to it but she couldn’t lift it.” She pointed over to axe propped up in its usual place by the fire wood. “She couldn’t lift it so that’s why she came to the car with the brick.”
“Poor Lucy,” I said. “Why were you in the car anyway?”
“We were scared, Mum said she was going to divorce him.”
“She always says that, she doesn’t really mean it.” She sees me eye two overnight bags discarded on the back seat. “Were you going somewhere?”
She stares at me, blank.
“That wasn’t the plan though!” I shout. “You can’t have the richer parent and the quieter brother, that’s not fair.”
“We weren’t leaving. We were just going to the park.”
“Why lie?” I huff. “That wasn’t the plan and you know it.” I shuffle amongst the glass and grab my brother’s bag from the car. I take him by the wrist and turn to march him back towards the house. “Sid sticks with me.”