Liz was one of the neighbours in our block of flats. She lived on the other side on the 5th floor, and had one eye. My mum somehow got the job of administering eyedrops into the empty socket and I would eagerly watch. It was like an inverted strawberry and surprisingly shallow.
More Nicella DeVille and Cruella, Liz was tall and skinny with short, slicked black and white hair, with a dog called Cleo who also had black and white hair. When it snowed me and my mum would take Cleo out for wees and ‘big jobs’. I think after a while, what with the eye and the snow, my mum began to find Liz a bit of a nuisance, but I liked what she said and how she was.
She had faded lampshade glamour. The essence of 30’s dust, tights, compact mirror, thick creamy red lipstick that smells of chemists, cigarettes and green lozenge, all morphed into 70’s mulberry terry towling, yellow cotton pencil skirts, thin black leather, fake white fur and fags, with the cold light of day on her humour and in her hair.
By the end she was dry earthy charm, harmless twigs, the Jarvis Cocker of aunties with a Dot Cotton elegance. Lived-in singledom. A perfected blend of discreet virtue and resigned vice; a lifetime’s maturation of personality.
We took Cleo out for a wee and ‘big jobs’ the night she went for a reunion dinner. She had served in the war, I think she might have been a Wren. One time when we were round her flat, my mum pointed out a photo on the wall of her in a wartime uniform. Her face seemed so right. For her, for the time, for what she did.
Her body was found one morning on the outside stairwell that led from the ground to the basement. She had been drinking in The White Horse pub next door when she fell that cold dark night. Her spleen ruptured and she died, with Cleo by her side.
