‘What would make it even better?’ I ask. ‘Music? Tea?’
She opens her eyes. ‘This is as good as it’s going to get,’ she says. ‘Just let me be.’
I put my hand on the door-handle.
‘But don’t go.’
‘You can’t relax with me here. Thought I’d change your sheets.’
‘No, stay a bit.’
‘Course.’ I sit down on the lid of the toilet.
‘There’s things I want to say. There’s things you want to say, int there?’
I frown at the water. The turquoise of the bath and the pink oil cast a surreal sheen of rose and verdigris on her body. The heat has brought a tinge of colour to her cheeks. Her nipples are the colour of copper.
‘Things you want to know?’ She watches me, a half smile of pleasure on her face from the warmth of the cradling water.
‘Yes.’
She shifts herself, the water rocks around her and the candlelight blooms in it. There is a spatter of cold rain against the window. I am unnerved by the weird unworldly beauty of her, hairless, glossy, looking up at me from the watery capsule of the bath. She knows the things I want to know but suddenly I doubt it, doubt I do want to know, have any right.
‘Daddy didn’t tell me … I suppose he didn’t want me to know.’
‘Why do you reckon?’
‘I don’t … don’t understand.’
Her fingers move under the water as if she is trying to grasp something. There’s the glint of nine vivid nails. ‘Well, don’t you reckon he might … he sort of wanted to … protect you?’
‘Maybe.’
‘And your mum.’
‘But then … why would he talk to you … and Vassily?’ A childish whine in my voice I can’t quite suppress.
She waits, rolls her head against the back of the bath and a little trail of bubbles rise. ‘Well, this is what I reckon … He talked to me because I wasn’t as good as your mum in his eyes. I wasn’t as … as clean.’
‘Clean?’ I almost laugh at the irony of this from Wanda’s bath.
‘No … Mum says he …’
‘What?’
A drop of blue wax escapes from the candle and runs down the side of the bath, setting above a cluster of older runnels and drips. The flame is reflected in each tap, in the water, in its circle of melted wax, and, when I look back at Wanda, in her eyes.
‘What?’ What pleasure it might give her if I tell her that my mother said he loved her. But she continues before the words will gather on my tongue. ‘I think he was sort of overawed by your mum … and me!’ She laughs and the thin skin on her lower lip splits. She licks away the sudden bead of blood, I wince, thinking how sore that must be, how very fragile her skin. ‘I might be wrong. That wouldn’t be the first time. But anyway, what I reckon is, he wanted to keep her away from all that, her and you too, all that horrid stuff. Whereas me and Vass … well …’
‘But he came to you as a prostitute!’ I didn’t mean to shout. Looking at her sheeny body, utterly naked, utterly, utterly vulnerable, I feel a sudden surge of rage, the lovingness gone. Bodies. His purply penis, his woolly chest all gone now, up in smoke and hers a ruin. Vassily’s body. My ants … oh I don’t know. Fury. Foxy with her hands, her mouth, on someone else. Too angry to sit down any more I stand up; see at once how easy it would be to press her down under the water, no violence required, just the steady pressing of my hands until she breathed in the oily pink water and filled her lungs. No one would ever know it wasn’t an accident – or suicide.
Life so precious.
I leave the room before I can, run down the stairs. Think I will leave the house. Leave her to it. She can get herself out. I don’t trust the anger in my hands. Or maybe she’ll drown without me, drown or die of cold. Buttoning my coat, I catch my face in the mirror again, my hair a sight, a frown that will harden as I grow old, lines that will deepen, the corners of my mouth dragged down. I stop and make it pleasant, smile, see Vassily again, the little one, that small, snaggle-toothed face. Teeth straight now, must have worn braces after I knew him, must have looked worse before he looked better.
Some memory of a kiss: I think I must have dreamed it.
I cannot leave Wanda in the bath. As if I ever would. I take off my coat and go back upstairs.
‘Ready to get out?’
She looks at me warily. ‘That’s getting cold.’
‘Shall I just wash your back?’
‘Mmmm.’ I help her sit up and she leans forward. There are red marks on her skin where the bath has pressed against her. The skin is loose. I put soap on a flannel and start rubbing roughly, not too roughly. She says nothing, but I see the marks I’m making. I’m sorry. The anger drips out of my fingers with the water from the flannel. I stroke gently from the nape of her neck down the bumpy ridge of her spine. Little moles on her shoulders, a couple of tiny scars, pearly soap bubbles clinging to her shoulder-blades that are sharp as wings. Goose-pimples rise on her arms. ‘I’ll fetch the towels,’ I say.
9
Dirty clouds are lumbering over the sea, but at least the rain has stopped. After her bath, Wanda was exhausted. I got her back into bed and then the district nurse arrived, so I left them and came for a walk by the sea. My stupid shoes are pinching but I’m warm – Wanda’s trousers that I borrowed, Vassily’s sweater, Wanda’s coat. I go into the Oxfam shop – out of habit – to see if there’s anything for Second Hand Rose. I find a pair of purple Doc Marten’s, Foxy would like them but they’re my size, not hers. I slide my feet into them, not my style, but I feel solid and rooted and my toes are happy. They spread out with relief. I hesitate over the purchase, but they’re cheap enough and anyway I can always sell them on. On my way out I spot a shawl, fine soft wool, a deep foggy green, a delicate lacy pattern, and I go back and buy that too. I stop again and get myself a pair of woollen socks.
Sitting on a bench on the promenade I remove my slim Italian shoes, withered and muddy from their soaking last night, put on the warm socks and the boots. It reminds me of being a little girl, cold from the sea, how tickly and wonderful when my mother dried between my toes and put my socks on me. The boots feel heavy and odd. Foxy bought me these shoes in Milan. My best shoes, narrow, fine tan leather – but they’ve never been comfortable. I’ve never admitted it to myself before now.
With an alarming rumble of wheels, two boys shoot past on skateboards and my heart is suddenly in my mouth. A fat gingery dog skitters past, followed by a man in a tweed overcoat and trilby. ‘Cold enough for you?’ he says. ‘Yes.’ I look after him, stunned, something about his voice – Daddy. Since he died I see him everywhere. In one man’s posture, another man’s voice, the smile of another. And sometimes, when I’m driving or being driven, I see him on the pavement, I’m sure I do, I really see him, really him. If I stopped and ran after him, called him, the man who turned would wear a stranger’s face. Of course I know that, but still, since he died, I do see him everywhere.
I put my hand in my bag, bury it in the cloudy softness of the shawl. I want to know what made Daddy scream in the night. I want to know what was in his dreams.
‘Nothing,’ Mummy used to say, ‘just the past.’ Just the past! And she didn’t know, he couldn’t tell her.
And is Foxy just my past?
Why should that sound like less than the future?
There is a public telephone near the pier. I could ring her. I could be speaking to her in a few minutes. I can picture her, at the other end, picking up the phone. By now she will be worried, but she will be working – nothing would put her off her work. Her hair will be knotted loosely back, her glasses on the end of her nose, a pencil, maybe, behind her ear, lipstick smudged. Does she wear lipstick when nobody’s there? I think, yes. In the early days I used to nip home from work unexpectedly and drag her into bed. She’d laugh and protest – but not too strongly. And once, I can scarcely believe this now, once she came to the shop when I was there alone and got me to shut the shop, pull down t
he blinds, and made love to me under my low wooden desk in a scramble of clothes she’d pulled from their hangers, and then she’d pinned up her hair, re-done her lips and sailed out like a snooty customer leaving me dozy and melting – with a pile of ironing to do. But nothing like that for a very long time.
I get up and walk away, leaving my shoes on the bench. Gulls are bobbing on the sullen sea that is the same grey as the sky so you can hardly see the line between them. I stalk, hands in pockets, towards the pier. No children on the big rippled slide. The candy-floss kiosk shut – but I can smell chips. Even though it is too early for lunch I am seized by a sudden urge for chips, more to warm my hands on than anything. They come not wrapped in real newspaper but in a cardboard cone printed to look like newspaper. That would make Foxy laugh and she’d hold the cone up to read the text, trying to work out whether it was genuine news or pastiche. Fancy that, she’d muse, fancy writing imaginary news stories to be printed on artificial newspaper for the sale of fish and chips. She might even use the word post-modern. Wanda wouldn’t think that, Wanda wouldn’t think anything, she’d just scoff the chips. She would have done, once. I douse them with vinegar and frost them with salt. Delicious.
I walk along past old couples, muffled and clinging to each other or to sticks; people in wheelchairs; mothers with push-chairs; the boys on the skateboards back again; scampering dogs. A wind is picking up, slits of cold sunshine escape from rips in the sky, glint on the sea.
I swap the chips from hand to hand to warm them both. The taste of vinegar is strong and withers the insides of my cheeks. The wind is in my face, icy, my eyes water. I turn back towards the pier, go into the amusement arcade. Dim inside, lights blink from the machines, an oily smell. Colours flash and pictures roll, dice and naked women, guns firing straight at me, lasers. The carpet is tacky under my feet. A cluster of teenagers round a machine, nudging. It’s a schoolday, so, a cluster of truants. I would never have dared. A man watches them, narrow-eyed, oil-slick hair pushed back, leather jacket, the sort of man that lurks in the nightmares of parents I should think.
I have ten pence change in my pocket from the chips. I put it in a slot. If I win I will go back to Foxy and we will try again. Everything will be all right. Colours, a siren noise, a roll of dice, buttons to press. I don’t know what I’m doing, I press something, a blast of noise, now and then a chunter, chunter, chunter as the coins spill out, spill and spill and the kids crowd round. ‘Fuckinell,’ they say in one voice. I fill my fists with silver but it is too much. I’m embarrassed by these sudden riches, find I didn’t want to win.
I hold out my hand to a girl in a mini-skirt and bare mottled legs. ‘Want it?’ I say, as some of the coins scatter to the ground. I breathe her smoky teenage cheap and glamorous smell. ‘Cool,’ she says, grinding out her fag on the carpet with her heel and holding out her hands. There’s a phone number written in Biro on her wrist and she wears a puzzle ring.
I blink in the brightness of outside. The sky is in shreds now, the sun blowing through the tatters. I walk back to my shoes, still poised, pigeon-toed, on their bench. An old pair of stranger’s shoes – who would want them? I could take them to the Oxfam shop. But instead, and with a sort of smile in my body, a burst of energy, I jump down on to the shingle, run and hurl them into the sea, one then the other, two twizzling arcs, two splashes. I walk faster in my new purple boots. I walk fast back to Wanda’s house, stopping to buy food to tempt her with, home-cured ham and fresh white bread, yoghurt, a tub of chocolate ice-cream.
After I’ve eaten my sandwich and Wanda has failed to eat hers but toyed with a tiny bowl of ice-cream, we sit by the fire. Wanda is done up ready for Stan, a different scarf on her head, her eyes made up, her lipstick glossy, some eau-de-Cologne on her wrists. Close up, I notice that she has drawn her eyebrows on in green, wonder whether or not it’s deliberate. She is snuggled in the shawl which suits her, as I knew it would. Sometimes a garment is just right for a person, you see it and you think of the person to whom it should belong. In the shop that happens, someone walks in and before they’ve said a word I know what they will go for. And Foxy too, of course, I always know what’s right for Foxy. Wanda wears red velvet leggings, too loose on her thin legs, but she looks good, quite sexy. She is excited about Stan’s return. I’ll stay until he comes.
The television is on, some old black-and-white film, but neither of us is concentrating on it.
‘I reckon that was just an excuse,’ Wanda says suddenly.
‘Sorry?’
‘The sex … I reckon that was a way of seeing me. What he really wanted was to talk.’
‘But you did …?’
She smiles and looks down. Is that a blush? Then angrily: ‘How could he do that? Top himself. I couldn’t could you? Even like this I couldn’t.’ Her hand goes gingerly to her swollen belly. ‘That’s such a shit thing to do. And if he were here I’d tell him.’
My stomach gives a startled flip at this outburst. If we cannot avoid referring to my father’s death – my family, even Foxy – we refer to it now as if it was somehow natural. The shocking violence of it, the self-inflicted violence, glossed over as if it was bad taste on his part which we have politely overlooked.
I smile weakly, nod. ‘He used to have such terrible dreams,’ I say. ‘I mean, he used to wake us.’
She gives a little grunt. ‘He never knew that. “Fortunately they all sleep like logs” is what he used to say.’
I almost want to laugh, she mimics him so well. It never occurred to me that he might not know he woke us. But how could he have known since no one ever talked about it, no one ever said? Our eyes go back to the screen. Something about the heroine of this film is like Foxy – the way she holds herself, the way she tilts her chin. My heart contracts.
‘Let her go,’ Wanda says suddenly, sharply, making me start.
‘Sorry?’
‘Your …’
‘Foxy?’
‘First law of human nature … what you can’t have you want. If you really want it, of course.’
I snort at her sensible nonsense.
‘Me and Ralph…’ she looks wary, not sure if this is dangerous ground. I’m not sure either.
‘Yes?’
‘If … if he’d of had me, I mean split up with Astrid and left you all for me then odds on he would have …’
‘Regretted it?’
‘I would have lost my … my … allure.’ We are both quiet then simultaneously burst into laughter. ‘Allooooor,’ she repeats with relish.
‘But …’ I wipe my eyes, laughter feels perilously close to tears today, ‘but it wasn’t just your … allure … it was … he could talk to you.’
Her eyes shift back to the screen. The woman appears to be on her sick-bed now, firelight flickers dimly on her face, the background music is loaded with doom.
‘Let’s turn this over,’ I say, picking up the remote control, finding the end of some quiz.
She watches for a moment. ‘And you want to know what he said?’
I nod.
‘Why?’
‘You sound just like Mum. She doesn’t understand.’
‘I reckon she does.’
I consider. ‘I don’t know. She certainly doesn’t approve.’
She shifts in her chair, easing the elastic on the waistband of her leggings and wrapping her shawl more tightly around her.
‘Don’t you think it odd that I never wondered why he had such terrible dreams?’ I say. ‘I mean it was just … just part of him … like playing golf or wearing glasses. I was just beginning to wonder … and then he …’
‘Did away with himself, the bugger.’
Despite myself I’m laughing again, and crying too.
Wanda gives me a moment, then says, ‘I think we need a cup of tea.’
‘Yes.’ I stand up, pluck a tissue from the box on the table, wipe my eyes, blow my nose. ‘Anything else … you’ve hardly eaten …’
She sighs impatiently. ‘I don�
��t know what I do want any more. That’s the worst of this … that’s the worst of this, this … disease, you can’t fancy anything any more. You know what that’s like to fancy something, a bit of chocolate or a cake … how lovely that is …’
‘Yes.’ I think of the fat golden chips, how gorgeous it was to cram them in my mouth, to lick my salty lips. I pick up our plates, Wanda’s ham sandwich untouched, a pool of melted ice-cream in her bowl.
‘There’s nothing in the world that I could fancy. That’s the saddest thing,’ Wanda says. She draws her knees up to her chin once more and hugs them like a child. Her knee bones are sharp through the dark red velvet.
I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what to offer her. Something else. ‘I did see some bits of his diary …’ I begin.
‘No … from the war?’ Her green eyebrows rise. ‘He said he kept a diary but that got lost, or stolen or something.’
‘Yes.’ I grimace thinking of the fate of most of the diary. ‘Well it turned up, some of it – half-eaten by ants – you couldn’t make much out but there was something about a friend, a good friend …’
‘Ah, that’d be Vince.’
A juggernaut rumbles outside and the window trembles in its frame. On the television is an advertisement for dog food, red-setters bounding.
‘Yes, that’s right, Vince.’
I wait, breath held, the plates balanced on my hands but she says nothing else.
I go into the kitchen to make tea, camomile for Wanda, PG Tips for me. While it brews I run upstairs to the toilet. My stomach cramps, I don’t know why. Nothing she can say can make any difference to now. Whatever happened happened. And now he’s dead. The flushing cistern is a roaring in my ears. There’s a ring round the bath, I wipe it away, snap off a brittle nugget of blue wax.
Wanda’s tea is too hot, she puts it on the table beside her. I don’t know where her thoughts are now.
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