by Bryony Doran
‘Soaking it all in,’ she would say, ‘Storing a bit of beauty for later.’
When Rachel’s brother Ruben was born their secret visits stopped and her father stopped grumbling about her mother getting behind with work.
Her mother had never told her not to tell anyone where they’d been but Rachel knew, even as a young child, that she didn’t want to tell her father or anyone else of her favourite picture: a canal bronzed by the sinking sun, and her mother’s favourite, a dimly lit street of winter trees, a carriage waiting, the horse fretting. Her mother told her how it reminded her of her childhood in Russia, and how much she missed her homeland, and how Rachel’s granddad had been a furrier, making coats for all the rich ladies, and how she imagined them in the carriage wrapped in the fur coats her father had made for them.’
‘Why did you come to Leeds,’ Rachel had asked.
‘By mistake,’ her mother had replied. ‘We were going to America but when we got off the boat at Hull my parents thought we had arrived in New York. When grandfather realised his mistake he wanted to go on but your grandmother was already three months pregnant with your Uncle Jack and had been very ill just crossing the North Sea. She begged him to wait until after the baby was born. He agreed as long as they moved to Leeds where he had heard there was plenty of work for furriers and tailors, and that they would stay only until after the birth.
It had felt so delicious sharing these secrets with her mother.
She wonders which of the pictures were Edward’s favourites. Why had she never thought to take him as a child? She has a sudden pang of regret and then she remembers his comments about her modelling. How dare he pry into her private life?
No, she won’t go to Henry’s to see the girl.
Once home, Rachel places her sandwich box and flask on the small table next to her chair. The table had been the largest of a nest of three, and the next size down was now her bedside table. When George was alive, he had made a matching pair of white Formica bedside cabinets. She threw them out the week after he died. Hers had been stacked with books, his empty, except for a few balls of grey fluff, one gardening magazine, and a pink plastic mug containing his top set of teeth. The undertaker asked her for them but she feigned ignorance. The smallest table had been George’s. It was charred with black lines around the edge, where he had rested his burning cigarette while reading his paper. She had thrown that table out with the cabinets.
She lowers herself slowly into her chair and exhales, glad to be home. Turning, she twists the top off her flask and pours hot milk into the lid. She places the lunch box on her lap to act as a plate and peels back the lid, picking up one of the small triangular sandwiches. Her lunch and her tea can be as one, she thinks, as she places Edward’s unopened letter that she had found lying on the mat, on the table beside her.
The envelope for some reason reminds her of her brother Ruben and, for the first time in years, she yearns to see him again. To see his crooked smile.
A movement against the French window distracts her. She looks up to see the cat pressing its body against the distorted old glass, meowing to be let in. Rachel ignores him and stares up at the one remaining blood red rose. She had not had the heart to cut it back last winter and it had become crystallized by the frost. The branch must have worked its way loose from the trellis, the thorns scratching gently against the glass. She looks down the garden and notes that the few stray bells on the wild fuchsia bush are a softer red than the rose. She hadn’t had the strength to cut it back properly and now it is flowering early. In the past she had always been impatient to cut away the dead wood, knowing, as George had taught her, that if she cuts it back before March, then the flowers the following summer would be sparse against the green foliage. Maybe that was the only thing they eventually grew to have in common, the garden. He taught her that she could not have the garden as tidy as the house, that you had to wait, let nature take its course. They would argue about it when, bored with the house, she would start to tidy the garden, cutting back the dishevelled daffodil leaves.
He had shaken his head. ‘You’ll spoil it for next year, lass,’ was all he’d said. She laughed at him, told him not to be so daft, but each spring, her daffodils, that he had so lovingly planted for her one cold October day, became less and less until one year they disappeared altogether. He said nothing, just bought some more bulbs in the market and went out on a cold October day to plant them. She had helped him that year. Edward had stayed inside. She could see his face now, pressed up against the French windows, wondering what his parents were doing out together in the cold, working in silence.
That night, for the first time in years, they’d had sex. She had awoken to find him fumbling up her nightie. Is that what had aroused him, her silent submission with the bulbs? She’d felt for him, pulled him towards her.
‘Steady lass, steady.’
He began to slacken in her hand. She turned away and let him continue, after a pause, with his fumblings.
The garden had gradually become hers. That summer he had applied to the council for an allotment. They gave him one, high on the hill, south facing. In the summer, he’d told her, he could see the peaks far in the distance, and in the winter he would watch the weather roll in off the Pennines.
George had been an ordinary man, a very ordinary man. She had not wanted to be ordinary herself but, as his wife, she supposed she had become ordinary by association. He’d died one July, twenty-six years ago. An odd time of the year to die, when all the rest of the world was bursting with life. He had gone to sleep as normal, while she read her book. She had not even said goodnight to him. In the morning when she awoke, he was lying still beside her. He had always been an early riser, even in retirement. She sensed immediately that something was wrong and slowly, very slowly, put her hand out to touch him. His flesh was stone cold. She jumped out of bed and ran from the room.
She found some of her old clothes she’d put out for jumble in the spare bedroom and put them on over her nightie before ringing the doctor. She remembered thinking how quickly the doctor had arrived to see a dead body, as if it had been an emergency. When Rachel stripped the bed later, she wondered, as she threw all the bedding in the bin and turned and scrubbed the mattress, why she had felt so afraid, why she had been so frightened of a body that she had slept next to for all those years. It was still George after all. But the fact that his body was no longer warm seemed to have changed everything.
There were some things about George that she missed; the cabbages from his allotment, the neatly folded hankies in the drawer, his half-done crosswords that she would finish. But gradually, the space that he had occupied filled up, and the house, the cat, and she herself, breathed a single sigh of parting.
She took to visiting the art gallery every day, just for something to do, to get her out of the house. There was a bench in the centre of the main hall where she could gradually shift along the outer edge of the black leather circle, feeling the piping under her fingers, studying the pictures. Sometimes, she would stand up close to a painting to study a detail, a shipwreck; waves high and white, a wicker basket being carried out to sea. She wanted to know what was inside the wicker basket. Some days she imagined it was just a woman’s sewing basket, but on others it contained a baby lost at sea, to be washed up, days later, on a strange shore.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Edward has placed his chair under the skylight and, like a lizard on a rock, is basking in the sun. He lets out a soft moan,
‘I love sitting in the sun. I wish I’d been born a cat.’
Angela closes the door. ‘A stripy ginger tom?’
‘Marmalade. I would like to be called, Marmalade.’
‘Thick cut or thin?’
‘Just old-fashioned 1864 variety.’
‘Are you a connoisseur of marmalade?’ Angela tilts her head sideways, ‘Yes, I can just see you in the morning, china rack full of toast triangles, white I think, and a newspaper and a pat of butter in a small
white dish, the butter indented with a clover leaf shape, of course, and a china bowl with a lid on it and a silver spoon and inside, glowing orange marmalade with thin strips, like little goldfish in jelly. And a china cup and saucer filled with real coffee, with maybe hot milk or cream and, of course, a crisp linen napkin rolled in a silver ring.’
Edward gets up and pulls his tie to one side. ‘Oh, I wish, I wish. Mrs Ingram wouldn’t know class like that if she fell over it in the street. I have to have the mandatory egg, scrambled or poached, every day. Yes, every day.’
‘You’re only supposed to eat three eggs a week.’
‘And cornflakes.’
‘No toast?’
‘She can’t ever do it without burning it, so I’ve given up on the toast, and we don’t get butter, we have something that ‘spreads straight from the fridge’.’
Angela takes off her coat and places it on the back of her chair. She crosses her arms over and, clutching the ribbed border of her jumper, pulls it off over her head.
Edward had expected to see a cotton tee shirt, and then that peeled away too, revealing a bra, but, no, not today – just skin.
She grins at him, ‘Easy access.’
He frowns, ‘I don’t understand.’
‘I couldn’t be arsed putting it all on to take it all off again.’
He watches her. She is so uninhibited about her body. He stares in amazement at her breasts, so different from Tessa’s huge ones bulging with blue veins. These are tender, nubile.
Angela grins. ‘Are you observing?’
‘Yes.’ He looks up into her face. ‘Don’t take this the wrong way, but I was just thinking, well, how I’d like to cup your breasts in my hands.’ The words are out of his mouth before he can stop them.
He whispers, almost to himself. ‘Would it be like holding freshly-laid eggs?’
For a split second he sees the shock on her face, her hands automatically moving up to her breasts. He looks down at his shoes. Oh God, what has he done?
‘I shouldn’t have said that, sorry. It’s just that, well, all this,’ he gestures with his arms. ‘I just don’t know what to think anymore. I suppose I look at your body from an artistic point of view now,’ he lies.
She lets her hands drop to her sides, ‘Okay then.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘It’s only fair, I suppose. You let me touch your back last week.’
His voice sticks in his throat. ‘Slightly different, don’t you think.’
‘Not sure. They’re bumps too, aren’t they?’ She looks straight at him, goading him, daring him to take up the challenge.
He can feel the heat rising up his neck. Damn her. ‘Are you making fun of me?’ His voice is only just louder than a whisper.
‘Listen, Edward. Whoa, a minute. If you don’t want to, no hassle,’ she shrugs her shoulders. He sees her give a half smile.
He closes his eyes, wishing the floor would open and swallow him up.
‘Can I ask you something?’
He notes the curiosity in her voice. He opens his eyes.
‘It’s a bit personal,’ she adds.
He nods, ‘What?’
‘I just had a thought, have you never touched a woman’s breasts before?’
‘Of course I have.’ She knows he is lying, he can see this in her face.
She stands in front of him, looks straight into his eyes, reaches out and takes his hands, guides them to her breasts and holds them there. He wants to weep with joy, his whole body is singing.
‘Tell me how they feel?’ she whispers.
He closes his eyes, rubs his thumbs over the curved surface and almost instinctively catches her nipples between his thumb and forefinger. He can feel her warm breath on his shoulder. More than anything he wants to bend and place his lips to them. Instead, he opens his eyes and pulls his hands away, sits down heavily on the comfortable chair. He doesn’t want to speak. He wants to sit there with his eyes closed, hold the moment forever, but he feels that he must break the tension. He looks up at her, ‘Such a unique sensation. They have a weight all of their own, and such a pleasing shape. And they’re warm. For some reason that surprised me. I now know why I thought they’d feel like new-laid eggs. Have you ever put your hand under a sitting hen to collect an egg? That’s how it feels.’
She wraps her arms around her body, covering her breasts. ‘You have a lovely turn of phrase,’ she grins.
He suddenly feels emboldened, nods towards her, indicating her arms,
‘Feeling shy are we?’
She laughs, letting her arms fall to her sides, ‘I think we’d better get started.’
Oh God. He’d forgotten totally why he was here in the first place. He tries to sound light hearted, ‘And how would Madame like me today? Like lamb on lettuce?’
‘Not sure how to tell you this, but today I want to draw your manhood.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘How shall I put it politely, your groin! I want you to sit back in the chair with your legs open.’
This is the last thing he wants to hear. ‘And why, may I ask?’
‘When I said I wanted to draw your manhood, I wasn’t just being polite. The other night I was looking at what I’ve done so far and I realised I hadn’t done much in that area. Been trying to preserve your modesty.’ She gives him a little smile.
‘Hmm.’
‘What I’m trying to say is, part of you may be deformed, but you are a man, and your manhood is also a part of who you are. I’m not doing very well here, am I? Look, I don’t just want to draw pictures of your disability. I want to show you as a whole person. Your face, your genitals, all of you. So how about getting undressed?’
‘After what you’ve just told me?’
She laughs. ‘There is one advantage, you can talk and move your head around today, Mr. Fidget. Just keep your tackle still.’
‘I didn’t realise you saw me as a man.’ He watches for her reaction.
She gives him another smile, ‘I’m full of surprises, aren’t I?’
‘I think this is a conspiracy. Revenge.’
‘Would I do such a thing?’
‘Yes.’
He goes behind the screen, deciding it’s better to get undressed in privacy. He sits down to undo his shoelaces and wishes he could remain dressed today. Maybe he could say he isn’t feeling well.
‘Come on, Edward. Don’t take all day. I’ve got loads to do.’
‘How about fetching me a coffee then, bossy boots.’
‘Oh, all right,’ he hears her grumble. ‘I’ll have to put my top back on though.’
The door clicks shut. He breathes a sigh of relief. He has a few minutes to still his thoughts. He looks down at his penis nestling against his leg. She is going to draw his manhood. Why should he have a problem with that? In a certain way he is glad. He smiles to himself. It is one part of his body he should not be ashamed of. He sits back and waits, listening for her coming back along the corridor, all the while thinking … she had let him hold her breasts. In his wildest dreams he had never expected that. A sudden awful thought occurs to him, it wipes away the joy he had been feeling. Why had she done it? Why had she let an old crippled man touch her beautiful breasts? Out of pity? Of course, there could be no other reason.
Angela is looking at him, one eye closed. She nods. He sees her tentatively start. He wants her to talk. He doesn’t want to sit in silence again. He wants her voice to still the thoughts in his head,
‘Talk to me while you’re drawing. Describe to me what you’re doing.’
She gives him a quizzical look, ‘Okay, I’ll try.’
He sees her bite into her cheek, trying to concentrate.
‘Go on then.’
‘I’m starting at the indent of your waist, then working downwards along the outer thigh. The muscle there is slightly tensed, it appears rounded where the light catches.’ He looks down. Yes, she is right.
‘And then the inner thigh,’ she continues.
‘I’m now working back up, hatching fine shadows along the darker, denser areas, moulding up to the slight, bulbous shape of your testicles.’ He sees she is smirking to herself.
‘Now your penis, It’s similar to your leg in that it catches light on one side, shadows on the other; masses of tiny creased rings down to the head where it forms into a soft flap. And now the navel … an indented shadow … and up to your ribs; one side is placed like evenly splayed fingers, the other side a tangled wreck which distorts your nipple up and away from its twin … God, I’m exhausted.’ She sits back.
‘Have you finished? Can I have a look?’
He comes and stands behind her, wanting no further permission. He looks down at the drawing of himself, yet it is not quite him. This man has such assurance.
‘I look quite a stud, don’t I? If it wasn’t for that bit of twisted metal there,’ he points to his ribs, ‘you’d think I was a man in my prime. I think you haven’t caught me quite right.’
‘Edward, that’s exactly how you look. I admit, the languid pose helps. The assurance of the pose says: This is who I am. You may look at me in my entirety.’
He smiles, ‘You’re very good, you know.’
He feels suddenly awkward, standing naked beside her. He goes behind the screen and gets dressed. Seeing those drawings has given him courage.
‘Can I ask you something,’ he says, from behind the screen. He hears her still the rattle of her fixative can.
‘Yes?’
‘I want to know why you allowed me to hold your breasts. Was it out of pity?’ There, he has said it. He comes from behind the screen.
‘No.’ She shakes her head. ‘You’re strange.’
He looks her in the eye. She is telling the truth.
‘I was just wondering you see …’ he tails off.
‘Let me ask you a question then,’ she counters. ‘Do you come here to sit for me week after week out of pity?’
‘No,’ he laughs, ‘of course not.’
‘Then let me grant you that small request, eh? Out of pure gratitude for all you have done for me. Pity.’ She picks up her can and rattles it urgently.