The Artificial Wife

by Rachael Eyre

  She was right, of course. “Nothing,” I muttered, conscious of the others nudging one another and whispering.

  The bell in the corner started to peal. Without looking at one another, we slid into our set formation: dainty Aja at the front, gawky Iman at the back. I desperately wanted to hide behind her but couldn't now Leda had pointed it out. I glared at the back of my enemy’s bobbed chestnut head, but she was too busy scandalising Rosalie.

  We went down the stairs in single file. Ms Adelaide peered up at us, a peculiar expression on her face. Usually she regarded us with love and pride; that day she was fearful, almost. Or am I embroidering after the event?

  The two gentlemen looked up also. The taller one we dismissed at once. The other was the handsomest man I had seen: dark skinned with a ready smile and wonderful eyes. We all noticed him in the same instant. The other girls pushed themselves forwards, tried to attract his attention. Rather than gawp, like many of the visitors, he kept talking to Ms Adelaide. He was all charm and affability, so why was she worried?

  We reached the bottom of the stairs and arranged ourselves before them. I was in the centre and felt wretchedly conspicuous.

  “Remarkable!” the taller one whispered. His companion frowned.

  The itinerary was familiar from previous visits. We stood so we were shown to our best advantage, the guest patrolled the group and asked questions. This one wasn't like the others - he seemed genuinely interested in what we had to say.

  “What do you like to do in your spare time?” he asked Rosalie.

  She coloured. “I - I don't know, sir. I like to listen to music and weave.”

  Ms Adelaide gestured to a sample of Rosalie’s work. He seemed honestly impressed. The girls seethed with jealousy; some less than charitable remarks were exchanged at the back. Rosalie was a nice girl, but she wasn't very clever. With her thick wavy hair and sweetly pretty face, was he likely to notice or care about this?

  His friend lurked in the background, continually coughing. Or clearing his throat - it was difficult to tell which. The gentleman stopped at Mitsouko, asked her what kinds of art she liked, but his companion waved him on.

  Leda was being so blatant, it was embarrassing. She cackled at a vaguely funny thing the gentleman said and waggled her hips from side to side. She looked like Ms Adelaide’s cat on heat. The gentleman looked over her head at his friend - they were both aghast.

  “Hello. What's your name?”

  I was so busy cringing at Leda, I hadn't noticed him approach. He watched me in a kindly, amused way, as though this whole rigmarole was ridiculous. His companion showed more interest than he had so far; he stopped lounging by the fireplace and came over for a closer look.

  “Summer,” I said.

  “What can you see yourself doing in a few years, Summer?”

  I felt rather than saw the others’ heads turn towards me. “I've always liked the thought of working in an office, sir. I think I would be good at it. It'd make use of my skills.”

  Ms Adelaide was dismayed. “A lady does not work,” she had emphasised in our lessons, her nose twitching as though at a foul odour, but somehow the idea had always appealed to me.

  “Which are?”

  “I like to be punctual and organised. I keep minutes, take dictation -”

  Everybody was staring now. I'd flouted another of Ms Adelaide’s maxims, “Self praise is no recommendation -” we’d transcribed it and picked it out in samplers often enough. Although we’re encouraged to take pride in our accomplishments, talking about them is considered the height of bad taste. If it hadn't seemed so unlikely, I would have sworn that the gentleman’s friend winked at him.

  Ms Adelaide gazed at me with no small horror. She moved swiftly towards the wall and pressed a concealed button. A bell jangled somewhere in the house.

  “The ladies are needed upstairs,” she said. “If you would like to come to my office for refreshment?”

  She sailed ahead of them, stately with indignation. The gentleman seemed confused, his friend oddly satisfied. As soon as they were out of ear shot, babble broke out.

  “Nice one, Summer!” Leda sneered.

  “What were you thinking of?” someone else demanded.

  “Ms Adelaide was furious.”

  “They're not going to pick anyone now.”

  “Is that what you wanted to do, wreck everyone’s chances?”

  I was surrounded by angry faces, shrill voices. I couldn't stand it any more. I covered my ears and ran upstairs.

  My favourite spot at Ms Adelaide’s was the window that looked onto the drive. It was surrounded by a flamboyant set of crimson tasselled curtains, rather like the proscenium arch at a theatre. I liked to sit on the window seat and watch the seasons change.

  The external staff came and went below; I'd wonder about their lives in the outside world. The errand boy smuggled in newspapers and magazines, meaning we weren't entirely ignorant, but otherwise it might have been a land from a fairy tale. A factory hulked on the horizon, belching acerbic smoke. It was the one blot on the idyllic landscape.

  I searched my conscience for guilt. I found none. I wouldn't deny that I was good at things. Why should I?

  “Ms Summer?”

  I started. One of the menials was standing on the lower steps; I forgot that I wasn't supposed to look at her. It was difficult not to stare. In essentials she was like a person, but all wrong: her hair was stiff and unnatural, her eyes weren't level, her skin was waxy and mottled. Going by her jerky movements, I wouldn't have been surprised if there were wheels underneath her skirt.

  A lipless gash of a mouth smiled. “You're wanted below.”

  A lecture from Ms Adelaide about my vanity and ingratitude, no doubt. I'd been expecting this, if not so soon. Though how could I act contrition when I wasn't sorry? “Thank you.”

  She struggled as she negotiated the steps. I winced on her behalf. “Are you sure you don't -”

  “I'm fine, miss,” she snapped. She clung to the banister and worked her way down, one step at a time.

  She seemed happier when she reached the bottom. She scuttled ahead and I had difficulty keeping up; I might have been chasing a clockwork toy. At last we were outside Ms Adelaide’s office, the dark wood embossed with her achievements. Apparently very learned people have lots of letters after their names. I tapped the door and waited.

  “Come in, Summer,” she said within.

  I'd never been in the office before. I was a model pupil, I'd never needed to. Wanting to look at anything but her, I took it in.

  My first thought was how crowded it was. Other rooms in the school were strictly functional: tables, chairs, the occasional piano, no other decoration. This was so overgilded, it seemed indecent: a painting or fancy ornament in every available space, and not the stuff we churned out in class either. This room smelled of money, from the heavy velvet drapes to the extravagant rug in front of Ms Adelaide’s desk. A clock with a polished moon face struck thirteen.

  Ms Adelaide was framed by the window, her cat on her lap. She didn't look angry as much as bewildered. The visitors were still there: the gentleman had risen as I came in, his friend a moment later, as though he didn't know the protocol.

  “Mr Percival has expressed a liking for you,” she said, as though she could scarcely believe it herself.

  I was astounded. I heated, cooled, struggled to speak. I took a step towards the gentleman. “Thank you, sir. Thank you for this opportunity.”

  He shook his head. “It's not me you should be thanking,” he said gently.

  Stupefied, I looked from him to the other man. I hadn't spared him a glance since his arrival. Now my future was in his hands.

  He was long and thin in an unhealthy way, and as pale as a corpse. His hair hung in lank sheets around his face - he obviously didn't wash it very often. He had a sweet, sickly scent, like something gone rotten. His face wasn't ugly, exactly, but there was something displeasing about it. The eyebrows were thick and wiry, his nos
e a lump of formless clay slapped on his face. His mouth was finely modelled, if on the petulant side, but the lips parted to show monstrous, uneven teeth.

  His eyes frightened me most of all. They were bright frigid blue with pinprick pupils. They held no warmth, sympathy or kindness. This wasn't a man. This was a wolf.

  I screamed. I continued to scream, even before the darkness claimed me.

  Vivaan: Collection

  It was one of the most distressing moments of my life. Who knows what we’d both imagined: the money changing hands, Summer eagerly accepting her new owner. She'd seemed happy enough when she thought it was me. But as realisation dawned, and she looked into Robbie’s eyes, she couldn't stop shrieking.

  “Make her stop!” Robbie implored, his hands over his ears. He wasn't the only one affected. The cat was halfway up the curtains, its eyes popping out of its head.

  I tried to soothe Summer but couldn't get through to her. She started to fit on the rug. With a strength and speed that belied her fragile build, Ms Adelaide seized her by the neck and squeezed hard. Summer fell still, limp.

  “Her off switch,” Ms Adelaide explained. “They have funny turns from time to time. It's the only thing that works.”

  She held the door open for the cat, which streaked outside. I wished I could do the same. She must have had similar thoughts - after she had closed the door and returned to her seat, she said, “Mr Percival, I beg you to reconsider.”

  Robbie was kneeling on the rug, looking at the hollow girl with scientific interest. “I see no reason for that.”

  “I have known Summer since her completion date. This behaviour is wholly out of character.” She took a deep breath, tried to soften the blow, but realised she couldn't. “She doesn't like you. I don't think that will change.”

  He was stroking Summer’s hair. I choked. “She's right, Robbie. We should give this up as a bad idea.”

  He tossed his head. “I've signed the contract. I've paid you a substantial sum of money.”

  Ms Adelaide was torn. She was a businesswoman and needed the cash - but she too was appalled. She mutely appealed to me, but I've never been able to save Robbie from himself.

  “I'll make you a deal,” Robbie said. “I'll take her home and have her with me for a few days. If it doesn't work out you can have her back.”

  “But - the other girls -”

  “They don't need to know.” And - reading her thoughts so accurately she blushed - “I'm not a highly sexed man, Ms Adelaide. She will be my companion, not my bedfellow. She won't be ‘ruined.’”

  She must have known that this was eyewash, that she would never see her charge again. Instead, a quiver in her voice, she said, “Take her before I change my mind.”

  He carried her down the drive, a slim, beautiful girl with the most extraordinary hair. In some lights it was gold, in others silver. It must have been the hair he noticed first, when he faked his coughing fit. He laid her on the backseat of his craft. I put a travelling rug over her.

  “That went well,” he said, as we buckled ourselves in.

  “Are you mad?” I shouted to be heard over the craft as it kicked into gear and started to hover. “That was a fucking disaster. She was terrified.”

  “She’ll get over it.”

  “Are you really so deluded, so -”

  He wasn't listening. If we hadn't been in the middle of nowhere, I would have jumped out and walked. Instead I sat in angry silence, ignoring all his attempts at conversation. He was speeding again - what if we were stopped? What if we crashed? How could we explain a switched off artie in the backseat?

  “Of course there'll have to be a back up.” He might have been talking about going for a coffee, not buying a sentient being. “That's why I said that to Ms Adelaide. I'm a man. I have needs.”

  I was shocked out of my sulk. “So you're going to have one for companionship, as you put it, and one for -”

  “Yes. An angel and a whore, so to speak.”

  “If you think I'm going to help with this one, think again.”

  “No,” he said mildly. “You're not going to help. You will, however, check up on me, because that's the sort of person you are. You like to live vicariously. An armchair voyeur.”

  ***

  It was nearly the end of our friendship. By rights it should have been. Had I been Thao, had I possessed her principles, I would have severed all ties and shopped him to the authorities. But Robbie was right. There's always been a certain something in my makeup, a kind of morbid curiosity. That's how I came to know him in the first place.

  We were neighbours in our first year of uni, sharing a wall. Then, as now, he had no trouble in finding girls to go home with him. Keeping them was another matter. I'd hear a few twangs, a grunt, then awkward silence as the girl dressed and left. I'll never forget the one who exclaimed, “Two bloody minutes! What a waste of time.”

  Everyone in our kitchen hated him. We could hardly ignore him, we lived in such close proximity, but the others let him know by a thousand small digs and slights that he wasn't wanted. While I could see that their criticisms weren't without basis - he was a self righteous, opinionated berk - I didn't feel easy about it. I was ostracised at school because of my colour and perceived paganism (in fact I didn't believe in anything). I knew how it felt.

  We were both insomniacs. Me due to homesickness, him due to an overactive brain. We'd sit and talk in the kitchen when everyone else was in bed; later we’d go for walks across campus, Robbie with a coat over his pyjamas. Soon people were noticing, commenting: “There's Khatri and his boyfriend.” It didn't bother me - I'm not gay - but Robbie reacted with such snarling hostility, it made you wonder.

  I was popular, he wasn't. That must be where the gay thing came from, they couldn't think why I'd put up with him otherwise. I didn't expect to stay in touch after uni - it was very much a relationship of its time and place. But somewhere along the line, he became the leader and I the follower.

  I didn't plan to call on him, I was still pissed off. But I was passing through his neighbourhood a few days later, and curiosity set in. How was his experiment going? Was Summer out cold in a guest room somewhere?

  Making sure I wasn't being followed, I crossed the road, elbowed through his untidy garden and rapped at the front door. He took his time answering, but then he always does. He acts as though it's a tremendous honour he's descending from his tower and bothering with mortal concerns.

  He opened the door, sleepy and cross. “Vivaan. What can I do for you?”

  “I wanted to see -" I jerked my head in the direction of the stairs. “You know.”

  “Oh. ‘You know.’” He was enjoying this, the bastard. “Why haven't you been before?”

  He was only trying to provoke me. Not waiting to be invited in, I stepped around him and made my way to the study, where I was sure he had stashed her. I was right.

  I stood in the doorway. Although her outfit at the finishing school hadn't been anything special - a purple pleated pinafore dress with a green blouse - this getup made it seem positively alluring. Her floor length cheesecloth smock left everything to the imagination; she might’ve been a piece of furniture under dust sheets. Even her hair, her best feature, was up in a prim bun.

  She was transcribing something Robbie had been saying moments before. I asked to read it but wasn't enlightened. It sounded like gibberish. Her handwriting was beautiful: exquisite copperplate.

  “It's that new field I was telling you about,” Robbie said. “What do you think, Audra?”

  I thought I'd misheard. But there were only three of us in the room, and he wasn’t talking to me.

  “I'm sure it's very insightful,” she said. Robbie seemed delighted, but it was the sort of thing Thao would say if she was hacked off. The cool white cheek betrayed no emotion. The same applied when he asked her to make tea or when she tidied up after him. The house had been decidedly squalid the last time I'd visited; she was already making her presence felt.

 
At last he dismissed her. I didn't know who I felt more embarrassed for, her or him.

  “Isn't she fantastic?” he crowed. He rubbed his spiky shins together, kicked off his socks. “It makes such a difference. I can think in here now. I can focus.”

  “What was wrong with Summer?”

  He scratched his nose. “I don't follow you.”

  “Her name was Summer. Why did you change It?”

  A graceless shrug. “It didn't suit her. If she's going to be my wife, I don't want her to have some inane, tambourine rattling sort of name. I want her to sound like a respectable woman of intelligence. That’s why I chose Audra.”