Free Puccini's Ghosts by Morag Joss Page A

figlia del Cielo!
             
    I am the daughter of Heaven!
             
    ‘I told you, it’s
Turandot
.’
    ‘
No. That.
BAST.’
    Lila turned back to the garage.
‘B A S T?’
She spoke casually. ‘Oh, the
B A S T
? It’s this new thing, have you not heard?’
    ‘
What
new thing?’
    ‘This thing my mum’s doing. She’s doing this thing for opera singing. It’s the Burnhead Association for Singing
Turandot
. It’s for people that want to sing
Turandot
.’
    Enid gazed at the garage door, dropping her bottom lip so that it hung free of the top one and revealed the bulge of her tongue, today stained violet. Lila had often seen her do this and she intended never to tell her how stupid it made her look.
    ‘So why’s it on the garage?’
    ‘Because…because that’s to be the headquarters. They’re going to do it up inside.’
    Enid’s mind was clumsy with anything new. Lila watched her weigh up what she could see and hear against the reliability, or otherwise, of her explanation. For a moment she felt a secret joy in the speed of her own mind, until the difference between them filled her with loneliness.
    ‘In a
garage
?’
    ‘To begin with,’ Lila said. ‘Just to begin with.’
    ‘Let me see.’
    ‘No! You can’t. It’s not done yet. There’s still clearing up to do.’
    ‘Okay, I don’t care,’ Enid said. ‘So what, anyway.’
    ‘So
what,
what?’
    ‘So what your mum’s an opera singer, so what she’s started a stupid singing
Turandot
thing. Who wants to sing, anyway?’
    Lila said lightly, ‘Well, actually, lots of people.’
    ‘Not me. Senga neither. Wait till I tell her. And Linda. They’ll die laughing. Want more violets?’ She fished for the bag.
    ‘You’re just ignorant.’
    ‘Who cares? Want to go down the shore?’
    Lila didn’t, but they went. She couldn’t let Enid near the house.
    They loitered for a while around the beach not far from the tip, kicking over piles of seaweed and the usual washed-up tangles of rope, bottle fragments, broken plastic and pulpy rags. Lila always half looked for treasure, hoping for something to glint through the green-black weed that she would spy before Enid did, but the gleam of silver or gold always turned out to be foil from a cigarette packet, a milk top, a tin can. They found the bumper of a car and a broken lobster creel, a table top and the remains of an armchair; they sniggered at the shreds of tampons lying ragged in the debris, bleached by salt water. Further on they found an upturned rear car seat and hauled it over and set it facing the sea next to a bare, washed-up tree trunk. Enid suggested collecting empty herring crates to use as little tables and making a fireplace in front of it with rocks, but after ten minutes neither of them could be bothered anymore.
    It rained again half-heartedly, in large, isolated drops that pocked the beach like silent gunfire and made a field of tiny craters all the way down to the sea, whose surface swallowed the rain with grey calm. Soon after that Lila fell mute and Enid, resentful at finding herself no less bored than when she arrived, sulked all the way back to the house to pick up her bike, and went home.
    Lila saw her off from the driveway and wandered round to the back. The ruined green dressing gown was stuffed in a paper bag next to the dustbin. She fetched turpentine and rags from the shed and did her best with the paint marks on the kitchen floor and then she stood, becalmed in a turpentine haze mixed with the tarry smell from the Rayburn that filled the kitchen whenever rain got in the chimney.
Turandot
was still playing. She wondered if the volume of the stereogram had been turned down a little or if she were at last growing deaf. Exhausted, she climbed the stairs on shaking legs that she hardly trusted to get her to the top, collapsed onto her bed and fell asleep.
    Later from her window she saw her father arrive, looking like a soft, battered grey bell under the