The Inward Word

I steadied the ladder while Nella loosened the bolts above Mallow Street.

Rain had darkened the brickwork and filled the gutter with yellow leaves. Somewhere behind us, a woman shut a piano. The last note remained in the air longer than it should have, thin and silver, while Nella leaned her weight against the spanner.

“Nearly,” she said.

The sign had hung there since before either of us was born. Blue enamel, white lettering, one corner chipped to rust. Its replacement lay wrapped in brown paper beside the curb, clean enough to reflect the low clouds.

The upper bolt gave with a soft crack. Nella caught the sign against her chest.

“Mind the ladder.”

“I have it.”

“You said that before.”

“I haven’t said it yet.”

She looked down at me, then laughed without much conviction.

Together we lowered the old sign. It was heavier than its size suggested. Water ran from its lower edge, though the rain had stopped. As Nella turned it over, I smelled coal smoke, boiled cabbage, and the lavender soap my mother kept in the airing cupboard.

There was a word painted on the back.

Not stencilled. Not part of any maker’s mark. The letters were small and careful, written in cream paint that had not faded.

REMEMBER

Nella rubbed the first letter with her thumb. Nothing came away.

“Odd place for it,” she said.

The woman behind us opened her piano. The same last note sounded, followed this time by the beginning of the tune.

At number fourteen, a boy in short trousers ran through a front gate that had been replaced by a low wall. He passed through the bricks without noticing them. A terrier followed, dragging a red lead. Both vanished where the parked cars began.

Nella did not move.

Across the street, washing appeared on a line between two upstairs windows. White shirts bellied in a wind we could not feel. A butcher’s bicycle rested against a lamppost, its basket full of parcels tied with string. For a moment the wet road shone with tram rails.

Then my mother came around the corner.

She was younger than I ever knew her, but I recognized the way she carried oranges, three in each hand, pressed to her coat. She looked directly at me.

“You’ll drop those,” I said.

She smiled, as though I had warned her many times.

“Not until you’re ready.”

A bus passed between us without sound. When it was gone, the corner was empty.

Nella crouched beside the old sign. Her face had gone pale, but her hand remained on the painted word as tenderly as if it were the forehead of a sleeping child.

“We should put it back,” she said.

I reached for the wrapped replacement. The paper had softened in the rain and tore beneath my fingers. The new sign read MALLOW COURT, the name chosen for the rebuilt houses at the far end. On its reverse was another word, pressed faintly into the metal.

Nella read it before I could stop her.

FORGET.

Every door on the street clicked open.

Not wide. Only the width of a held breath.

The tram rails vanished. The washing fell empty. From number fourteen came the small, bewildered whine of a dog that had lost the shape of its master.

Nella turned the new sign face down.

We lifted the old one together and set it beneath the fresh enamel, back to back, the two hidden words touching. As I tightened the first bolt, all along Mallow Street people stepped quietly into their doorways. Some wore slippers. Some wore uniforms from wars no one mentioned. Some had soil on their hands.

None of them looked at us.

They were watching the corner where my mother had disappeared.

The piano began the tune again, but now the houses hummed with it, brick and pipe and window glass. Nella tightened the second bolt. Beneath our hands, between the signs, something spoke a third word.

We could not hear it clearly.

The street did.