My Name Is Echo

by Marguerite Valentine

  ‘Fuck off.’

  ‘I will. I plan to see Theo.’

  Maddy stood up. We eyeballed each other.

  ‘I keep telling you. Stick to your own age. It’s safer.’

  I sighed deeply and said, ‘I wish I was as sensible as you.’

  ‘Don’t take the piss, Annie. I’m trying to get you to look after yourself. But you’re like Sisyphus.’

  ‘Great. You’ve just reminded me of my mum. Every time she says that, I say, like pushing shit uphill? It drives her mad.’

  ‘I’m going now. Think about it. I’ll see you Friday.’

  What Maddy had said was interesting. Interesting but irrelevant. It was a kind of abstraction to me. I was as determined as ever to follow through with my plan but what I didn’t realise at the time, a kind of self-destructive wildness had taken hold of me.

  Part Four

  After Easter, my mother began planning the summer visit to Ffridd. She gave me a choice; I could stay in London if I wanted. She’d noticed how bored I got in Wales and I was old enough now to look after myself, she said. I thought the real reason was she didn’t want me with her because it was the year of the exhibition in Chepstow, the one they’d called ‘Women Surrealists: Then and Now’. I would have been interested in that but I knew her tolerance level would be zilch, and I’d rather put my head in a lion’s mouth than share the time with her.

  Besides, going back to Ffridd would bring back memories of Ifan’s disappearance, and that still hurt. I wasn’t sure, so I told her I’d think about it. For years I’d loved those holidays, but now I was older, I didn’t want to leave London. It’s true I liked Wales, but not every summer. London to the Welsh Borders, they were always in my head but not my heart. I lived in both, but belonged to neither. But – I wanted to see Gareth. Desperately. Time was passing and the longer I waited, the more I wanted to see him.

  One night, I was by myself at home and bored. My mother was out and I’d been idly trawling through eBay and I saw a bag that I had to have.

  You probably know about eBay. It’s a world of its own, a market inside a computer and the buyers and sellers call themselves ebayers, but you need to wise up if you use eBay.

  It’s a tricky place to do business and when I bought that bag, I was still under the influence of surrealism and I could have a weird take on things. Why was that? Who knows, but life is full of wackos and weirdos as well as the normal and the nice, and you have to be careful. I wasn’t so careful, or at least that’s one way of looking at it. It’s the way I prefer because, even now, I think there are forces beyond our comprehension. Even scientists know that. Bridges fall down, planes crash, and boats sink, despite the engineers’ mathematical equations. What does it all mean, I ask myself. You can call it magic, god, angels, the devil, nature, imagination, the spirit world, or the unconscious. You choose. But whatever you choose, for me it was the bag and with that bag I wreaked havoc.

  Before the bag, things were normal. After the bag, they definitely were not. Before the bag, I was a child. After the bag, I became a woman. It was like eBay was a kind of fairy godmother. It took a while before I realised what was going on but I was young then. Now when I look at it, I just see a bag, but I’ll never throw it away. It got me through a bad patch so it’s still special in my eyes.

  When I first saw it, it was like falling in love. I stared at it. It was perfect. It had been used but was described ‘as new’ and in ‘vintage style’ but something about it captured me. It was up for auction but the bidding was about to end so I put in a really high bid. I sat over my computer for two hours. I was prepared to snipe to get that bag, although, generally speaking, I don’t approve of snipers. But it was worth it. I won it and when that happened I was pleased as a cat thrown a fresh sardine.

  I could hardly wait to hold it in my hands. I looked for the postman everyday and when it arrived, I opened the parcel straight away. I unwrapped the bag from its tissue paper and I knew I’d made the right decision as soon as I saw it. It was the most beautiful bag I’d ever seen. It was large, pouchy, and made of soft squashy leather the colour of the night sky and it was lined in emerald green, watered silk. It described itself as a catwalk tote bag. The colour, the look, the feel and the enigmatic smell of perfume drifting out as I opened it, was wonderful. I’ll never forget that moment.

  Holding it in my arms I danced round the room. It was beautiful, it was classy, it was stylish and it was called Anya. I knew that because her name was in brass on a separate little leather tag attached to one of the plaited handles. It said ‘Made by Anya’.

  I stared at her name and the bag. I remembered Gareth telling me I could change my name. My name was Echo but with this bag I was about to transform into Anya. I felt an affinity with Anya even though I’d never met her. I wanted to be her. Someone who could make a bag like that, a bag with attitude, must be special. It sulked, it pouted, it wanted to go places with me. That bag and its enigmatic fragrance seemed real and it had more meaning to me than anything or anybody. At the time, it seemed normal that I should think like that but that was because of my summers in Wales. I’d been told that the bizarre and myths were part of us all.

  I became obsessed with this bag. I looked at it all the time and I began thinking it came from a spirit world and the fragrance from the bag was a way of communicating with me. I decided that Anya, the woman who’d made the bag, liked this perfume because it expressed her personality, or putting it another way, Anya is the perfume, the perfume is Anya and I wanted to be Anya. I became more and more fascinated with what the perfume meant and the more I thought about it, the more I thought it was an escaped wild female spirit. It got so every time I opened the bag, it felt like I was letting Anya out.

  I had to know more about this fragrance and eventually I did, though it took a while. I’d been walking down Bond Street one afternoon, escaping the crowds along Oxford Street and as I passed a French perfumery, I thought I’d go in and ask. Someone might know. The French after all are known for their sophistication.

  I walked inside and was almost blinded. There was enough light bouncing off the glass display cabinets to make me feel the second coming was imminent, but I didn’t let that put me off. I walked over to the nearest sales assistant, opened my bag, and asked if he recognised the perfume. He saw my question as a challenge to his profession as a perfumier and to him as a man. You know how some men pretend they know even if they don’t, but in this case he did know.

  I was intrigued by his accent, the way he talked, his gestures, the way he looked. He had dark hair, a deep tan, a well-cut suit, a French accent and a theatrical manner. He took the bag, turned it round in his hands. He had quite a supercilious manner, it has to be said. He put it to his nose. He looked up towards the lights as if for inspiration. He drummed his fingers on his lips and, after a long pause, he said it was chypre with an undertone of sandalwood and bergamot. I was impressed. Then he pulled open a drawer and started showing me perfumes. He said I might like them because they were in the same fragrance category.

  Neat, I thought. Nothing comes free, but I’d been captivated by his performance. It was better than watching Kenneth Branagh doing a takeoff of Laurence Olivier.

  An hour later I walked out having bought an expensive bottle of ‘Coco Mademoiselle’ and from that moment on, for very special occasions I began to wear ‘Coco’. It was my perfume of choice for what became my special missions. It was perfect because it was pervasive and a powerful reminder after I’d gone. My presence was still there.

  I was ready now to change my name too. It was something I’d thought about for a long time so, inspired by the bag, I began calling myself Anya and told everybody I knew to call me by that name.

  Six months later, I was still waiting for Gareth. Every now and again I’d drop him a line to ask how things were going at Ffridd and what he was doing. He always wrote back although it took him a whi
le. I wondered whether he and Chloe were still lovers, but I didn’t ask. I didn’t want Philomena seeing my letter and after the row with him on the way to the slate quarry, it was still a no-go area.

  I was still obsessed with him. I used to imagine him making love to me and for this occasion I planned to wear a vintage outfit. I’d got that idea from eBay too and, although I wasn’t sure what it would look like, when I saw it, I’d know it was right.

  Eventually he wrote to say he’d got the date for his book launch in London. It would be in the middle of August and he was coming on his own. He enclosed an invite, asking if I’d like to attend and hear him read, but after thinking about it, I thought not. I’d feel shy on my own amongst all those poets and publishers, and although Maddy had offered to come with me, I wasn’t going to ask her, not after she’d gone on about avoiding married older men. Gareth scored on both these counts, but unlike Maddy, when it came to Gareth, for me, an older married man was a turn on.

  The upshot of all this was that I told my mother I’d stay in London. She was pleased. She arranged for Maureen to keep an eye on me while she was away. I didn’t mind Maureen as long as she kept out of my face, so with my mother out of the way doing her thing in Wales, I concentrated on making plans for seeing Gareth.

  August arrived and I was alone in the flat. Maureen either rang or dropped by to check out everything was okay. She was no trouble. I did exactly what I liked and that suited me just fine. I kept the flat clean and tidy and put in extra hours working in the supermarket in Kentish Town. Buying ‘Coco Mademoiselle’ had set me back a bit but Gareth’s event would provide the perfect opportunity to try out its powers.

  I was prepared to find a hotel for Gareth, but when I mentioned this, he said his publisher had already booked him into a bed and breakfast – but I still went to check it. Just in case. I wanted him to stay somewhere smart. It was smart. It wasn’t an ordinary B&B but a beautiful, large, white house down an exclusive quiet side street in Chelsea. The garden was full of shrubs with different-coloured leaves and shapes, all untidily tumbling across the paved entrance to the front door. The windows had white shutters. There were carriage lamps each side of the door. The owners must have been millionaires.

  I phoned Gareth to tell him I’d seen where he was going to stay. I told him the house was beautiful from the outside and I was wondering what it looked like inside. It was a casual aside but he picked up on it and asked whether after his poetry reading, I’d like to come back with him, have coffee and catch up, as he put it. You can imagine how pleased I was. It would make my plans of seduction easier, but the feeling didn’t last.

  His suggestion might have been innocent but it made me anxious. What if, I thought, Gareth came on to me, like the ‘perv’ Uncle Harry? I didn’t want any more surprises. If I was going to be alone with a man, I wanted to do the coming on but the more I thought about it, the more apprehensive I became. Something was driving me though. I couldn’t stop myself. Eventually I decided not to think anymore about it, and with the exception of planning what I’d wear, I’d just see what happened.

  I started with my underwear. I needed some new stuff anyway including a bra. Maddy’s comment about ‘balcony bras’ intrigued me. I didn’t know what they were so I looked them up and having seen them on line, I decided against them. Not my scene at all. I didn’t need more uplift and my boobs were full already. I didn’t want them in his face.

  I decided to pay a visit to Marks & Spencer, the one in Marble Arch. I planned to spend an afternoon looking at underwear, but it turned out not to be such a good idea. There were too many and I got totally confused with the choice, the colours and the designs.

  There was a woman there called a bra fitter and she took my measurements to get the right size. I was a ‘full cup’ she said. She brought out five different ones for me to try on and said, ‘Take your time to choose.’ I did.

  One hour, ten bras later and I was still in the changing room. She stood by the cubicle door with the bras hanging over her arm. I’d just tried on a white and lilac flowery one with lace insets and matching pants, but I didn’t try the pants on.

  She said, ‘That looks very feminine. Is it for a special occasion?’

  I looked at her and wondered how to respond. She was getting on a bit but she had twinkly eyes. I asked her if she had children.

  ‘Why yes,’ she said. ‘Why do you ask?’ I noticed then she had an Irish accent.

  ‘Do you remember your first time? You know, when you made out?’ I could see she was taken aback but she made a quick recovery. ‘It’s a long time ago now, but yes, I do. It was quite memorable.’ She looked away with a slight smile on her face, but I didn’t follow through by asking her any more. I said, ‘Well, I’m planning for my first time.’

  ‘That’s nice. Someone at school, your first boyfriend?’

  ‘No, an older man. He’s a poet.’

  ‘A poet. How much older?’

  ‘Quite a bit. But I don’t mind. To me, age doesn’t matter.’ I smiled at her and said, ‘He doesn’t know I’m buying underwear for him. I want it to be a surprise.’

  ‘Have you talked about this with your mother?’

  ‘My mother? No way. She knows him. But she doesn’t know my plans.’

  ‘Wouldn’t it be a good idea to tell her?’

  ‘You don’t know my mother. She’s not like ordinary mothers. She lives in her own world. She paints. We don’t talk. She doesn’t like any of that stuff. Besides, she might tell him.’

  ‘So he doesn’t know either…it sounds like you want to seduce him.’ She seemed incredulous.

  I laughed. ‘That’s right. You’re spot on. You see, I want to be irresistible. I want him to be overtaken with passion, his breath hot on my neck, his hands all over my body. Know what I mean?’ I was winding her up. I winked at her.

  She gave me a faint smile and was clearly struggling to work out what was going on but she must have given up because she said in a disapproving voice, ‘Well, I hope it goes well for you.’ Then, ‘Are you any nearer to making a decision? Not that I’m putting pressure on you.’

  ‘I don’t know which one’s the best? What do you advise?’

  ‘These all fit you.’ And she pointed to the small pile I’d put in the corner, ‘And you have a pretty figure, but it depends how you want to look.’

  ‘Like I said, womanly, desirable, voluptuous. Not pretty, so nothing with flowers on them. I want to look older than I am.’

  She gave me a look, pursed her lips and said, ‘Wear the black mesh then, the ones with the polka dots.’

  I picked them up. ‘But they’re not padded.’

  ‘You don’t need your bra padded, your figure doesn’t need any further help.’ She was exasperated, but I pressed on.

  ‘Do you have a set like this, only padded?’

  ‘Yes, but it’s a balcony style and you said that’s what you didn’t want. What about a push-up bra? You might like those.’

  ‘I want one like this in red or black lace with matching pants, and padded. Do they come as push-up?’

  ‘They’re expensive.’

  ‘I don’t care. I’ll work longer hours.’

  ‘I hope he’s worth it.’

  ‘He is worth it.’

  She disappeared, returning with a stunning matching black lace and mesh bra and pants. When I put on the bra it covered only half my breasts, pushed them together and up. I had cleavage and they looked even bigger than they were. There was nothing subtle about them. I stood staring at myself in the mirror. I hardly recognised my body.

  ‘What do you think of those? We sell a lot to burlesque dancers.’

  I glanced at her. ‘I don’t know what a burlesque dancer is.’

  ‘Dancers who entice men with humour and style. They don’t strip off but look as if they might. They tease. Some men like that kind of thing.
Is that what you want?’ She said this as if she expected me to say no, how vulgar, but what I said was, ‘That’s exactly what I want.’

  I took the bra off and handed it to her. ‘I like this. I’ll have it with the matching pants. This is how I want to look.’ We stood looking at each other. ‘Thank you for all your help.’

  ‘That’s alright. I hope it goes well because…’ She stopped.

  ‘Because what?’

  ‘It’s strange to me, a pretty young girl like you going after an older man, but it takes all sorts. He must have something but I hope it’s not his money. You look after yourself. It’s a shame you have a mother who doesn’t talk to you. About life and men.’ She turned away picking up the bra debris, avoiding my eyes.

  I thanked her again and said, ‘It’s not money because he doesn’t have any. I don’t know what it is. Sex probably. Strange, isn’t it? Or maybe love? It’s a mystery to me.’ By now I was kidding her. ‘As for my mother, I was a virgin birth. She still doesn’t know what caused it. Pregnancy. It was a shock to her. Such a shame. She’s a bit simple.’

  She gave me a look. I don’t think she got me. She was too serious. Did she think I was a sex worker? If she did, that didn’t make me feel good at all. I walked out with my set of black lacy lingerie. I couldn’t wait to try them on when I got back home.

  When I did, I liked how I looked. I was transformed from a girl into a woman and she was right, I did have a good figure. When Maddy had told me that, I hadn’t believed her. My self-confidence was inching up despite my mother’s constant negative comments, or so I thought. I turned my attention to what dress I should wear. It had to be something bought for the occasion, and something grown up. The kind of thing that Gareth would like. When I’d first seen Chloe, she was wearing a vintage-style dress. I wanted something like that. I began combing Camden Lock and Camden High Street, but nothing appealed. Once more, I turned to eBay.

  There were hundreds of dresses to choose from in the vintage category, all conveniently labelled with their style so you’d know when to wear them; rockabilly, swing party, ‘boho’, ditsy floral, tea dance, land girl and so on. A blast from the past, their names made me smile and set my imagination going.