WRITE ACROSS SUSSEX: Worm Food

Another entry in our Write Across Sussex competition.

They were old now, but I would have known them anywhere. Those faces, dented with age. Wrinkled apples beneath straw boaters tied with colourful ribbons. Clusters of pearls decorating their ears, dripping down their necks to the sagging skin of their jaws. Canary yellow dresses, carefully stitched with pink flowers. Little white ankle socks over shiny, liver spotted skin. They were sitting as they always did, beneath the willow tree, in the place where the sunlight turns golden and buttery. They were smoking, I could smell it from where I stood, downwind of them. Sobranies, pastel coloured cigarettes with gold tips. There was a large old fashioned lighter on the table of green marble, and a china ashtray beside their afternoon drinks. Gin and tonic for Madja, iced tea for Linka, served in tall glasses.

No-one could tell them apart except me. I knew the secret. I knew that Madja had a tiny birthmark on her temple, plum coloured. She covered it with the careful rolls of her hair but you could see it if you knew to look for it.

I approach them carefully for arthritis stiffens my knees, my elbows, all the places I bend. I have learned I am not immutable, that I too am moulded unfashionable by time, but in that moment I am right back there outside the old grammar school, my hair tied into two strict plaits, not yet coming undone. My shadow stretches over the hot macadam like spilt ink. I see them coming together as they always are, pale and milky faced, the Von Teagle twins.

“You should be in class,” one of them tells me, and because I do not yet know about the little birthmark I do not know if this is Madja or Linka. I tell them that I am ill, that I am waiting for my mother to pick me up. I know when she gets here she will be cross, that her hair will be dusted white with the flour from the bakery, that she will have clots of icing on the collar of her summer dress. She will be annoyed that she had to leave work to come and get me; the loss of wages making her shrewish, thin lipped. But for now she is not yet here, and I am alone with the Von Teagle twins and my stomach knots itself into a fist.

One of them, maybe Linka, pokes me in the arm with a stubby finger. Her breath is hot and sour with aniseed.

“What’s your name, kid?”

She says ‘kid’ likes she spitting gum. I tell them it’s Lucy. I tell them I’m just standing here, just waiting for my mother because I’m sick. I tell them she is going to show up any minute so they’d better keep walking.

“Lucy? More like ‘pukey,’” Madja laughs nastily and then, “what’s in the bag, Pukey?”