by Anne Howkins
On the top floor, Lily’s rattling away at her sewing machine, hemming the wedding dress her cousin will wear at the weekend. She deftly removes pins as she feeds silk into the machine, swearing under her breath as one drops from her grasp. It takes her a while to find it, but when she does, she’s puzzled. All her pins have round coloured heads, but this one is a sliver of steel. She puts it to one side and gets back to the dress. The flat has become quiet, but she doesn’t notice. She’s too absorbed in her work.
*
Noise, white noise, black noise, transparent noise. Andrea’s head thrums, rattles, rolls, all day, every day. At work, the machines clatter in a productive ballyhoo, vibrating the walls, leaking the rumpus out into the street. She dreads the cacophonous trudge home, fighting her way through the crowds. Chatter snags her clothes like brambles, car horns reach for her, tugging her back, unattended burglar alarms tendril through her ears. Home is no better. Paper thin walls don’t absorb the sounds of her neighbours’ lives – TV, arguments, fist fights, radios turned up high to deaden the drudgery of life. She can’t remember what silence is. Her knees buckle as she drops overfilled carrier bags in the kitchen.
‘Bloody lift’s still not working, them stairs’ll be the death of me.’ Her voice echoes around the flat.
‘Lily, you there?’ No response.
Something is missing, something she can’t put her finger on.
Andrea switches the kettle on, goes into the lounge.
‘There you are. You OK?’
Lily, head bent over her lap, is engrossed in sewing rhinestones on to the veil. She looks at her mother, smiles and shushes her.
‘Lord it’s so quiet, couldn’t hear a thing on the stairs, you’d think everyone had gone away. You could hear a pin drop, ’ Andrea says.
‘Like this?’
Lily holds a silver pin at arm’s length, lets it slide through her pale fingers.
The pin spins as it drops. Lily’s eyes widen as it slips through the worn pile and vanishes.
*
Harjeet Chopra sits cross-legged on the floor of his third-floor flat, head bowed as he silently recites a prayer, thanking his god for today’s peculiarity of quiet neighbours. No shouts, cries, thuds. All seem to be at peace in their homes. A steaming bowl of dhal sits on the coffee table without its comforting notes of chilli, cumin and coriander infusing the air. The spices were stale. He knows the food will be tasteless. His beloved Mamī would have emptied the bag on the soil, ground it into the dirt with her heel, spitting on its stale pretence.
A hiss above his head, like a gas jet turned on for a nano-second, as something falls past his ear.
Gradually his head fills with the hubbub of a Delhi street market. His mother is chiding him for not keeping up, they must get him new jutis for his brother’s wedding, and she needs silk thread, the blue is wrong. He hears the rip as a beggar pulls at his mother’s fourth-best sari, the thud as her feet find their target. Mamī harangues the traders, not parting with her coins until she is sure she has the best deal. ‘Sirapha vadhī’ā kharīdō’ she bids him. ‘Buy only the best.’ Harjeet whispers his promise, ’Maiṁ māṁ baṇāṅgī’ as her voice fades.
A tiny thud marks the passing of a pin through the floor, taking the market with it.
He takes his dhal to the bin and scrapes it away, resolves to go to the market in the morning for fresh spices. Once he’s got them, he’ll pop upstairs to see Andrea and Lily, try and tempt them to come for a home-made curry. He’s always liked Andrea, such a hard-working lady, just like Mamī.
*
On the second floor, Mel stares at her maths book in the unfamiliar quiet, ponders over the maze of quadratic equations that blur in front of her eyes, knows she’s going to fail her maths GCSE. It’s her fault, daydreaming about Liam. He’s a wrong ‘un.
Mum hates him.
He works county lines.
He carries a knife.
He calls Harjeet awful names.
She could do better.
She’s a slut, according to Lily the night she caught them against the wall by the bins, her knickers round one ankle.
She doesn’t know how to solve equations any longer, or how to finish with Liam.
Running her fingers down the keyboard of his spine, watching his skin shiver. The exquisite cool of his exploring fingers, burying themselves in her hot flesh. His tobacco tainted tongue whispering obscenities that somehow become love songs. She just can’t. Mel rests her head on her forearms on the desk, wondering if there’s an equation for fixing your fifteen-year-old life.
A flicker in air pressure raises the hairs on her freckled arms, prickles inside her head. A movement above her splits the light as something intangible spins downwards.
A voice so low Mel hears as if by osmosis speaks against a chorus of rustling paper. It gets louder. Mr Bruce is talking about factoring, pulling all terms one side of the equals sign. Setting all terms to zero. He tells Mel to trust him, it works, try it.
She picks up a pen and tentatively starts on the first line.
Solve x 2 – 6 x = 16.
x 2 – 6 x – 16 = 0
( x – 8)( x + 2) = 0
x – 8 = 0 x + 2 = 0
x = 8 and x = -2
Yes, that’s right Mel, there are two answers, both are correct. His voice fades. Mel doesn’t think she’s asked a question, or the right question.
She fills the silence by writing Mel + LiamMel = 0.
She knows how to solve it.
A tiny thud marks the passing of a pin through a rag rug, taking thoughts of Liam with it.
Next time she’s sees Lily, she’ll apologise for that night, ask if she’d like to go for a walk or a coffee.
*
On the first floor, Violet wakes from her afternoon nap with one of those horrid starts, clattering her ribcage against scoliotic vertebrae. All she can hear is the thundering of her tired heart, the strumming dread it won’t last the long flight to see her great-granddaughter. After that it can do what it wants. All she wants is a cuddle with baby Flora.
She settles at the oak escritoire, sips Earl Grey from bone china, checks again that everything is filed, all her affairs in order. She used the last drops from her fountain pen when she’d labelled each folder in her spidery copperplate. She thinks of all the things she can’t get in the local shops any longer: Quink ink, blotting paper, Elizabeth Arden Pink Violet lipstick, just for your sweet lips, George always said, Lily of the Valley perfume. Mel, who comes in to help, she’s a good girl, gets it all on-line for her. Keeps offering to help her Facetime Nigel too, but Violet distrusts all this cloud stuff. What she misses most is the chat, the How are you Mrs James? Family well?
The ghost of something silvery whistles past her ear.
A light flashes through the half-closed bedroom curtains. Her bedroom in the old house, not this dreary flat. It’s car headlights tracking across the ceiling as Nigel pulls into the drive, his Jag purring away. Hearing the thud of the car door makes her jump. His baritone ascending the stairs as he yells that Helen said ‘yes, she will.’ Her beloved George thundering downstairs before she can find her dressing gown. Then George singing in the garden as he deadheads the roses, calling her name, picking a posy of heavenly blooms, ‘Violets for my Violet,’ for her dressing table. At his wedding, Nigel whispering that he loves his mum, wiping tears away from her powdery cheek while the organist blasted out the the Queen of Sheba. The same organist tipping his head to her as a lamentable Jerusalem marked George’s passing. Noises kaleidoscope through her head, all those voices, all that music, fading now. She wonders if the sounds could be bottled, something to give baby Flora. A tiny thud marks the passing of a pin through the floor. Violet reaches out for Nigel and Helen’s faces in the pewter frame, beaming at her from Bondi Beach. Thinks she’ll ask Mel about this Face time thing.
*
On the ground floor, Andy lurches from bedroom to bathroom, then to the cupboard laughingly called a kitchen by the bastard landlord. These night shifts are killing him. Roll on next week. He takes a bowl of cereal to the lounge, slumps on the sofa and rummages for the remote amongst the empty beer cans and pizza boxes on the floor. Hunger distracts him. He abandons the search.
He spoons cereal into his mouth, promptly sprays it over the detritus as the rancid taste of past its useby date milk hits his throat. Blinked saline of self-pity joins the dribble of saliva running down his chin as he surveys the room. He couldn’t bring the kids here. Fran would have a fit, or more of a fit than she’s already had. She’s right. He’s not fit to look after a rodent, let alone his children. Andy pulls his grubby T-shirt up above a belly that used to be flat, wipes the drool away without noticing the fetid smell seeping from his armpits.
There’s a metallic plinking sound. He fumbles for his phone. Must be a ringtone the kids set up for a joke.
‘What?’
Nothing. No point calling Fran after the last time. He drops the phone, returns to his hopelessness, bent double on the sofa, arms wrapped round his head, pushing his world away.
‘Dad. Dad. Daddy!’ Keira’s voice breaks the silence. That’s what’s wrong, everything’s quiet in the flat. Violet’s not got the telly on at full volume.
‘I need to practice. You have to be the innkeeper.’ She’s rummaging in her school bag for the script, Fran’s busy with Billy’s history project. She knows he’s had a shit day, just shrugs her shoulders when he looks at her.
‘OK.’
‘Do you have a room and a lovely warm bed for me and my wife?’ Keira shouts.
‘I thought you were Mary?’
‘No Daddy, I’m Josephine.’ Fran shaking her head at him, cutting off the What the fuck she knew was coming.
‘Daddy, come on.’ Keira nudging him.
‘I’m sorry but no, you’ll have to go.’ His voice is tight.
‘Please, we must find somewhere for the night. Look at Mary, can you help us?’
‘The rooms are all full. You can sleep in the cattle shed.’
‘See Daddy, it’s easy.’
‘Come on superstar, time for a bath.’ Fran’s leaning in the doorframe. Wearing that top again, showing her curves, curvier after the kids, even more fuckable. Maybe once the kids are asleep…
‘Nooo, I need to practice. There’s lots more, Daddy can be a shepherd.’
‘Go with Mum, she can be a shepherd, they’re bound to be…’
‘What are they bound to be? Come on Keira, Billy. Bath and story while Daddy puts his feet up.’ She sticks her tongue out at him. Winks.
Christ, what he’d give to read a nativity play with Kiera now. What he’d give to have Fran wrap her legs around him again.
A tiny thud marks the passing of a pin through the floor.
Andy thinks about the silence from above. Violet’s all right really, she always remembers the kid’s birthdays. He’ll go and check on her, after he’s changed his T-shirt and had a wash.
*
Andrea and Lily sit side by side on the tatty sofa with their eyes closed, holding hands, the slight rise and fall of their chests synchronised. Andrea can’t remember this feeling of calm, the silence wrapping them in something that feels like velvet on her skin.
A tiny thud marks the landing of a pin on the floor.
‘Mum.’
‘What?’
‘Did you hear that?’
‘What?’
‘Look.’
Lily points to the pin. She reaches down to pick it up before she forgets. It might be needed again.
Anne mainly writes flash, but sometimes manages a short story. Recent stories have appeared at WestWord, Flash 500, Free Flash Fiction, National Flash Fiction Day, Cranked Anvil, The Hoolets Nook and TrashCatLit. When not writing, Anne looks after the finances of a charity, walks, sings and dances, and spends as much time as possible with her adored grandson.
