The judge thought again of the importer of pornography. “Most of them are rather mundane, when it comes to the point.”
“But you must get to know so much about people.” She was looking very directly at him, with large eyes; a handsome woman, the judge conceded, rather a knock-out as a girl, no doubt. He agreed that yes, one did get a few insights into the ways in which people carry on.
“Fascinating,” said Moira Lukes again. “I expect you have the most marvellous stories to tell. I envy your wife no end.” The large eyes creased humorously at the corners; a practised device, though the judge did not recognise this. “In fact I think she’s a lucky woman – I still remember that interesting chat you and I had last year.” And she laid on his arm a hand, which was almost instantly removed – come and gone as briefly as though a bird had alighted for a fleeting second. The judge, startled in several ways, tried to recall this chat: something about when Peter Grimes was first performed, or was it The Turn of the Screw? The interest of it, now, escaped him. He cast a quick glance across the foyer in search of Marjorie, who seemed to be taking an awfully long time. Moira Lukes was talking now about the area of Sussex in which she lived. Do, she was saying, look in and have lunch, both of you, if you’re ever in that part of the world. The judge murmured that yes, of course if ever they were… He noticed the rings on her hand and wondered vaguely what had become of Mr Lukes; somehow one knew that he was no longer around, one way or the other.
“The only time,” she said, “I’ve ever personally had anything to do with the law was over my rather wretched divorce.” The judge took a swig of his drink. “And then actually the lawyer was most awfully sweet, in fact he kept my head above water through it all.” She sighed, a whiff of a sigh, almost imperceptible; thereby, she implied most delicately, hung a tale. “So I’ve got rather a soft spot for legal people.”
“Good,” said the judge heartily. “I’m glad to hear you’ve been well treated by the profession.”
“Oh, very well treated.”
No sign of Marjorie, still. Actually, the judge was thinking, this Moira Whatshername wasn’t perhaps quite so bad after all, behind that rather tiresome manner; appearances, inevitably, deceive. One got the impression, too, of someone who’d maybe had a bit of a rough time. “Well, it’s a world that includes all sorts, like most. And it brings you up against life, I suppose, with all that that implies.”
The respect with which these banalities were received made him feel a little cheap. In compensation, he told her an anecdote about a case in which he had once been involved; a crime passionel involving an apparently wronged husband who had turned out in fact to be the villain of the piece. “A mealy-mouthed fellow, and as plausible as you like, but apparently he’d been systematically persecuting her for years.” Moira Lukes nodded sagely. “People absolutely are not what they seem to be.”
“Well,” said the judge. “Yes and no. On the other hand, plenty of people give themselves away as soon as they open their mouths.”
“Oh, goodness,” said Moira Lukes. “Now I’ll feel I daren’t utter a word ever again.”
“I had in mind those I come across professionally rather than in private life.”
“Ah, then you think I’m safe?”
“Now, whatever could you have to conceal?” said the judge amiably. A bell went. “I wonder where Marjorie’s got to. I suppose we’d better start going back in.”
Moira Lukes sighed. She turned those large eyes upon him and creased them once again at the corners. “Well, this has been so nice. I’m sure we’ll run into each other again over the weekend. But do bear in mind that I’m in the East Sussex phone book. I remember that case I read about was in Brighton – if you’re ever judging there again and want a few hours’ retreat on your own, do pop over and have a drink.” She smiled once more, and walked quickly away into the crowd.
The judge stood for a moment, looking after her. He realised with surprise that he had been on the receiving end of what is generally known as a pass. He realised also that he was finding it difficult to sort out exactly what he felt about this; a rational response and his natural judgement of people (he didn’t in fact all that much care for the woman) fought with more reprehensible feelings and a certain complacency (so one wasn’t a total old buffer just yet). In this state of internal conflict he made his way back into the concert hall, where he found Marjorie already in her seat.
“What on earth happened to you?”
“Sorry,” she said cheerfully. “There was an awful queue in the Ladies and by the time I got out it wasn’t worth coming to find you. How did you make out with our friend?”
The judge grunted, and applied himself to the programme. The lights went down, the conductor reappeared, the audience sank into silence… But the music, somehow, had lost its compulsion; he was aware now of too much that was external – that he could achieve no satisfactory position for his legs, that he had slight indigestion, that the chap in front of him kept moving his head. Beside him, he could see Marjorie’s face, rapt. The evening, somehow, had been corrupted.
The next morning was even more seraphic than the one before. “Today,” said Marjorie, “we are going to sit on the beach and bask. We may even venture into the sea.”
“That sounds a nice idea.” The judge had thought during the night of the little episode with that woman and, in the process, a normal balance of mind had returned; he felt irritated – though more with himself than with her – that it had interfered with his enjoyment of the concert. It was with some annoyance, therefore, that he spotted her now across the hotel dining-room, with the sister, lifting her hand in a little finger-waggling wave of greeting.
“What’s the matter?” said Marjorie, with marital insight. “Oh… Her. Well, I’ll leave you to hide behind the paper. I’m going upstairs to get sorted out for the beach.”
He was half-way through the Home News page when he felt her standing over him. Alone. The sister, evidently, had been disposed of.
“Another heavenly day. Aren’t we lucky! All on your own? I saw your wife bustling off…” She continued to stand, her glance drifting now towards the coffee pot at the judge’s elbow.
I am supposed, he thought, to say sit down and join me – have a cup of coffee. And he felt again that quiver of the antennae and knew now the reason. Marjorie does indeed bustle, her walk is rather inelegant, but it is not for you to say so, or to subtly denigrate a person I happen to love. He rattled, slightly, his newspaper. “We’re off to the beach shortly.”
“Oh, lovely. I daresay we’ll go down there later. I wonder… Goodness, I don’t know if I ought to ask you this or not…” She hesitated, prettily, seized, it seemed, with sudden difference. “Oh, I’ll be brave. The thing is, I have this tiresome problem about a flat in London I’m buying, something to do with the leasehold that I simply do not follow, and I just do not have absolute faith in the man who’s dealing with it for me – the solicitor, you know – could I pick your brains about it at some point?”
The judge, impassive, gazed up at her.
“I don’t mean now – not in the middle of your holiday weekend. My sister was noticing your address in the hotel register and believe it or not my present flat is only a few minutes away. What would be lovely would be if you could spare an hour or so to look in for a drink on your way home one evening – and your wife too of course, only it might be awfully boring for her if you’re going to brief me. Is that the right word? Would it be an imposition? When you’re on your own like I am you are so very much at the mercy of…” – she sighed – “people, the system, I don’t know what… Sometimes I get quite panic-stricken.”
I doubt that, thought the judge. He put the newspaper down. “Mrs Lukes…”
“Oh, Moira… please.”
He cleared his throat. “Conveyancing, as it happens, is not my field. Anything I said might quite possibly be misleading. The only sensible advice I can give is to change your solicitor if you feel lack of confiden
ce in him.”
Her eyes flickered; that look of honest appeal dimmed, suddenly. “Oh… I see. Well, I daresay you’re right. I must do that, then. I shouldn’t have asked. But of course the invitation stands, whenever you’re free.”
“How kind,” said the judge coolly. He picked up his paper again and looked at her over the top of it; their eyes met in understanding. And he flinched a little at her expression; it was the look of hatred he had seen from time to time, over the years, across a courtroom, on the face in the dock.
“Have a lovely day,” said Moira Lukes. Composure had returned; she gleamed, and wrinkled her eyes, and was gone. Well, thought the judge, there’s no love lost there, now. But it had to be done, once and for all. He folded the paper and went in search of Marjorie.
She was packing a beach-bag with costumes and towels. The judge, unlocking the suitcase, took out a stack of the pornographic magazines and pushed them into the bottom of the bag. “Oh, lor,” said Marjorie, “I’d forgotten about them. Must you?”
“’Fraid so. The case resumes tomorrow. It’s the usual business of going through them for degrees of obscenity. There are some books too.”
“I’ll help you,” said Marjorie. “There – greater love hath no woman…”
The beach was agreeably uncrowded. Family parties were dotted in clumps about the sand; children and dogs skittered in and out of the surf; gulls floated above the water and a party of small wading birds scurried back and forth before the advancing waves like blown leaves. The judge, who enjoyed a bit of unstrenuous bird-watching, sat observing them with affection. The weather, this particularly delectable manifestation of the physical world and the uncomplicated relish of the people and animals around him had induced a state of general benignity. Marjorie, organising the rug and wind-screen, said, “All right?” “All right?” he replied. They smiled at each other, appreciating the understatement.
Marjorie, after a while, resolutely swam. The judge, more craven, followed her to the water’s edge and observed. As they walked back up the beach together he saw suddenly that Moira Lukes and her sister were encamped not for off. She glanced at him and then immediately away. Now, at midday, the beach was becoming more occupied, though not disturbingly so. A family had established itself close to the Braines’ pitch: young parents with a baby in a pram and a couple of older children now deeply engaged in the initial stages of sandcastle construction. The judge, who had also made a sandcastle or two in his time, felt an absurd urge to lend a hand; the basic design, he could see, was awry and would give trouble before long. The mother, a fresh-faced young woman, came padding across the sand to ask Marjorie for the loan of a tin-opener. They chatted for a moment; the young woman carried the baby on her hip. “That sort of thing,” said Marjorie, sitting down again, “can still make me broody, even at my time of life.” She too watched the sandcastle-building; presently she rummaged in the picnic basket and withdrew a plastic beaker. “Turrets,” she explained to the judge, a little guiltily. “You can never do a good job with a bucket…” The children received her offering with rewarding glee; the parents gratefully smiled; the sandcastle rose, more stylish.
The judge sighed, and delved in the beach bag. “To work, I suppose,” he said. Around them, the life of the beach had settled into a frieze, as though the day were eternal: little sprawled groups of people, the great arc of the horizon against which stood the grey shapes of two far-away ships, like cut-outs, the surface animation of running dogs and children and someone’s straw hat, tossed hither and thither by the breeze that had sprung up.
The judge and his wife sat with a pile of magazines each. Marjorie said, “This is a pretty gruesome collection. Can I borrow your hankie, my glasses keep getting salted over.”
The judge turned over pages, and occasionally made some notes. Nothing he saw surprised him; from time to time he found himself examining the faces that belonged to the bodies displayed, as though in search of explanations. But they seemed much like any other faces; so presumably were the bodies.
Marjorie said, “Cup of tea? Tell me, why are words capable of so much greater obscenity than pictures?” She was glancing through a book, or something that passed as such.
“That, I imagine, is why people have always gone in for burning them, though usually for quite other reasons.”
It was as the judge was reaching out to take the mug of tea from her that the wind came. It came in a great wholesome gust, flinging itself along the beach with a cloud of blown sand and flying plastic bags. It sent newspapers into the air like great flapping birds and spun a spotted football along the water’s edge as though it were a top. It lifted rugs and pushed over deck chairs. It snatched the magazines from the judge’s lap and from Marjorie’s and bore them away across the sand in a helter-skelter whirl of colourful pages, dropping them down only to grab them again and fling them here and there: at the feet of a stout lady snoozing in a deckchair, into the pram of the neighbouring family’s baby, onto people’s towels and Sunday newspapers.
Marjorie said, “Oh, lor…”
They got up. They began, separately, to tour the beach in pursuit of what the wind had taken. The judge found himself, absurdly, feeling foolish because he had left his jacket on his chair and was plodding along the sand in shirt-sleeves (no tie, either) and tweed trousers. The lady in the deck chair woke and put out a hand to quell the magazine that was wrapping itself around her leg. “Yours?” she said amiably, looking up at the judge, and as she handed him the thing it fell open and for a moment her eyes rested on the central spread, the pièce de resistance; her expression changed, rubbed out as it were by amazement, and she looked again at the judge for an instant, and became busy with the knitting on her lap.
Marjorie, stumping methodically along, picked up one magazine and then another, tucking them under her arm. She turned and saw that the children had observed the crisis, abandoned their sandcastle and were scurrying here and there, collecting as though involved in a treasure hunt. The mother, too, had risen and was shaking the sand from a magazine that had come to rest against the wheels of the pram. As Marjorie reached her the little girl ran up with an armful. “Good girl, Sharon,” said the mother, and the child – six, perhaps, or seven – virtuously beamed and held out to Marjorie the opened pages of the magazine she held. She looked at it and the mother looked at it and Marjorie looked and the child said, “Are those flowers?”. “No, my dear,” said Marjorie sadly. “They aren’t flowers,” and she turned away before she could meet the eyes of the young mother.
The judge collected a couple from a man who handed them over with a wink, and another from a boy who stared at him expressionless, and then he could not find any more. He walked back to their pitch. Marjorie was shoving things into the beach bag. “Shall we go?” she said, and the judge nodded.
It was as they were folding the rug that Moira Lukes came up. She wore neatly creased cotton trousers and walked with a spring. “Yours, apparently,” she said; she held the magazine out between a finger and thumb, as though with tongs, and dropped it onto the sand. She looked straight at the judge. “How awfully true,” she said, “that people are not what they seem to be.” Satisfaction flowed from her; she glanced for an instant, at Marjorie, as though checking that she had heard, and walked away.
The Braines, in silence, completed the assembly of their possessions. Marjorie carried the rug and the picnic basket and the judge bore the beach bag and the wind-screen. They trudged the long expanse of the beach, watched, now, with furtive interest by various eyes.
A Real Doll
A. M. Homes
A. M. Homes (b. 1961) is an American writer known for her controversial novels and unusual stories. She released her first collection of short stories, The Safety of Objects, in 1990. In 2013 she won the Women’s Prize for Fiction with her novel May We Be Forgiven.
I’m dating Barbie. Three afternoons a week, while my sister is at dance class, I take Barbie away from Ken. I’m practising for the future.
At first I sat in my sister’s room watching Barbie, who lived with Ken, on a doily, on top of the dresser.
I was looking at her but not really looking. I was looking, and all of the sudden realized she was staring at me.
She was sitting next to Ken, his khaki-covered thigh absently rubbing her bare leg. He was rubbing her, but she was staring at me.
“Hi,” she said.
“Hello,” I said.
“I’m Barbie,” she said, and Ken stopped rubbing her leg.
“I know.”
“You’re Jenny’s brother.”
I nodded. My head was bobbing up and down like a puppet on a weight.
“I really like your sister. She’s sweet,” Barbie said. “Such a good little girl. Especially lately, she makes herself so pretty, and she’s started doing her nails.”
I wondered if Barbie noticed that Miss Wonderful bit her nails and that when she smiled her front teeth were covered with little flecks of purple nail polish. I wondered if she knew Jennifer colored in the chipped chewed spots with purple magic marker, and then sometimes sucked on her fingers so that not only did she have purple flecks of polish on her teeth, but her tongue was the strangest shade of violet.
“So listen,” I said. “Would you like to go out for a while? Grab some fresh air, maybe take a spin around the backyard?”
“Sure,” she said.
I picked her up by her feet. It sounds unusual but I was too petrified to take her by the waist. I grabbed her by the ankles and carried her off like a Popsicle stick.
As soon as we were out back, sitting on the porch of what I used to call my fort, but which my sister and parents referred to as the playhouse, I started freaking. I was suddenly and incredibly aware that I was out with Barbie. I didn’t know what to say.
“So, what kind of a Barbie are you?” I asked.
“Excuse me?”
“Well, from listening to Jennifer I know there’s Day to Night Barbie, Magic Moves Barbie, Gift-Giving Barbie, Tropical Barbie, My First Barbie, and more.”
The Story: Love, Loss and the Lives of Women: 100 Great Short Stories Page 105