The Best Contemporary Women's Fiction: Six Novels

by Jenna Blum

  In the parlour, Esme wound the gramophone, stroked the velvet curtains, rearranged the chain of ivory elephants on the windowsill. She opened her mother's workbox and examined the threads of coloured silk. She rolled back the carpet and spent a long time sliding in her stockinged feet. She discovered that she could slide all the way from the claw-footed chest to the drinks cabinet. She unlocked the glass bookcase and took down the leather-bound volumes, sniffed them, felt their gold-edged pages. She opened the piano and performed glorious glissandos up and down the keys. In her parents' bedroom, she sifted through her mother's jewellery, eased the lid off a box of powder and dabbed some on her cheeks. Her features, when she looked up into the oval mirror, were still freckled, her hair still wild. Esme turned away.

  She climbed on to the polished end of her parents' bed, held out her arms and allowed herself to drop. The mattress came up to meet her – bouf! – her clothes billowing out, her hair flying. When the bed had stopped shaking, she lay there for a while, a disarray of skirts, pinafore, hair. She bit at a fingernail, frowning. She had felt something.

  Esme straightened up, climbed back on to the bed-end, raised her arms, closed her eyes, fell to the mattress and – there. There it was again. A soreness, a tenderness in two points on her chest, a strange, exquisite kind of pain. She rolled on to her back and looked down. Under the white of her pinafore, everything was as it always had been. Esme raised a hand and pressed it against her chest. The pain spread outwards, like ripples on a pond. It made her sit up, meet her own eyes in the mirror again and she saw her face, flushed and shocked.

  She wandered along the veranda, kicking at the dust that collected there every day. She would ask Kitty about it. The nursery, when she walked in, was dim and cold. Why weren't the lamps lit? There was a movement in the gloom, a rustle or a sigh. Esme could make out the muted white of the cot, the humped back of the settee. She stumbled forward into the dark, coming upon the daybed sooner than she'd expected. 'Jamila,' she said, and touched her arm. The ayah's skin was sticky with sweat. 'Jamila,' Esme said again.

  Jamila gave a slight jerk, sighed, and muttered something that contained 'Esme', and the name sounded as it always did when Jamila said it: Izme, Is Me.

  'What was that?' Esme leant closer.

  Jamila muttered again, a string of sounds in her own language. And there was something in those unfamiliar syllables that frightened Esme. She stood up. 'I'm going to get Pran,' she said. 'I'll be back in a minute.'

  Esme ran out of the door and down the veranda. 'Pran!' she called. 'Pran! Jamila's ill and—' On the threshold of the kitchen, she stopped. Something was smouldering and cracking in the low stove and an oblong of light filtered in through the back door.

  'Hello?' she said, one hand on the wall.

  She stepped into the room. There were pots on the floor, a heap of flour in a basin, a knife buried in a sheaf of coriander. A fish lay filleted and ready on its side. Dinner was being prepared but it was as if they had all stepped outside for a minute, or vanished into the dirt floor, like drops of ghee.

  She turned and walked back across the courtyard and, as she walked, it dawned on her that there were no voices. No sounds of servants calling to each other, no footfalls, no opening and slamming of doors. Nothing. Just the creaking of branches and a shutter banging somewhere on its hinges. The house, she realised, was empty. They had all gone.

  Esme hurtled down the driveway, her lungs burning. Darkness had fallen quickly and the branches overhead were black and restless in the sky. The gates were padlocked and beyond them she could see dense undergrowth, punctured by tiny lights moving in the dark.

  'Excuse me,' she shouted. 'Excuse me, please.'

  A group of men were standing in the distance, beside the road, the flare of a lamp illuminating their faces.

  'Can you hear me?' she shouted, and rattled the gates. 'I need help. My ayah is ill and—'

  They were moving off, muttering to each other, glancing back at her, and Esme was sure, she was absolutely certain, that one was the gardener's boy who used to give her rides on his shoulders.

  In the nursery, she fumbled with matches and the lamp. The glow spread from where she was standing across the floor, up to the ceiling, along the walls, picking out the pictures of the gospels, the nursing chair, the bed where Jamila lay, the stove, the table where they ate, the shelf of books.

  When there was enough light, she walked to the cot and the movement seemed to hurt her legs, as if she'd been sitting for a long time. At the edge of the cot, she discovered she was still holding the matches. She had to put them down before she could pick Hugo up and there was nowhere to put them so she had to bend and place them on the floor. And when she tried to pick him up it was difficult. She had to lean over and there were so many wraps and blankets and his body seemed much heavier and he was so cold and so stiff that it was hard to get a grip on him. He was frozen into the shape in which he always slept: on his back, arms stretched out, as if seeking an embrace, as if falling through space.

  Later, Esme will tell people that she sat with him in the nursery all night. But they won't believe her. 'That's impossible,' they will say. 'You must have slept. You don't remember.' But she did. In the morning, as the light began to slide between the shutters, the matches were still on the floor next to her shoe, and the nappies were still drying beside the fire. She was never sure at what point Jamila died.

  They found her in the library. She had locked herself in.

  She remembers long hours of silence. A silence more absolute and powerful than anything she had ever imagined. The light fading and resurging. Birds passing through the trees like needles through fabric. Hugo's skin acquiring a delicate, pewter tinge. She thinks she just switched off, slowed down, an unwound clock. And then suddenly her mother was there, howling and screeching, and her father's face was pushed up close, shouting, where is everyone, where did they go. She'd been there for days, they said, but it felt longer to her, decades, or longer, infinitely long, several ice ages.

  She wouldn't let them take Hugo. They had to prise him from her. It took her father and a man they'd got from somewhere. Her mother stood by the window until it was all over.

  Iris, a nurse and the social worker descend in a lift. It seems to take a long time. Iris imagines they must be sinking into the bedrock that shores up the city. She steals a look at the social worker but her eyes are fixed on the illuminating floor numbers. In the nurse's pocket there is a small, boxed electronic device. Iris is wondering what it's for when she feels the lift do a gentle bounce and come to a stop. The doors open. There is a ribcage of bars before them. The nurse reaches out to tap in a code, but turns to Iris. 'Stay close,' she says. 'Don't stare.'

  Then they are outside the bars, on the other side of the bars, the bars sliding shut behind them, in a corridor with striplighting and red-brown linoleum. There is the prickling stink of bleach.

  The nurse sets off, the rubber grips on her shoe-soles squealing. They go through a set of swing doors, past rows and rows of locked rooms, a yellow-lit nurses' station, a pair of chairs screwed to the floor. On the ceiling, cameras blink and swivel to watch them go.

  It takes Iris a while to work out what's odd about this place. She doesn't know what she expected – gibbering Bedlamites? howling madmen? – but it wasn't this ruminative quiet. Every other hospital she's ever been in has been crowded, teeming, corridors full of people, walking, queuing, waiting. But Cauldstone is deserted, a ghost hospital. The green paint on the walls gleams like radium, the floors are polished to a mirror. She wants to ask, where is everyone, but the nurse is entering a code into another door and suddenly a new smell hits her.

  It's fetid, oppressive. Bodies left too long in the same clothes. Food reheated too many times. Rooms where the windows are never thrown wide. They pass the first open door and Iris sees a mattress propped on its side, a couch covered with paper. She looks away and sees, outside the reinforced glass of the corridor, an enclosed garden. Paper, pla
stic cups and other litter swirl about the concrete. As she turns back, she catches the eye of the social worker. Iris is the first to look away. They pass through another set of doors and the nurse stops.

  They enter a room with chairs lining the walls. Three women sit at a table playing cards. Weak sunlight trickles through narrow, high windows and a television mutters from the ceiling. Iris stands beneath it as the nurse confers with another nurse. A woman in a long, stretched grey cardigan comes up and stands before her, close, too close, shifting from foot to foot. 'Got a cigarette?' she says.

  Iris steals a glance at her. She is young, younger than her maybe, her hair black at the roots but straw-yellow at the ends. 'No,' Iris says, 'sorry.'

  A cigarette,' she repeats urgently, 'please.'

  'I haven't got any. I'm sorry.'

  The woman doesn't respond and doesn't move away. Iris can feel the sour breath on her neck. Across the room, an elderly woman in a crumpled dress walks from one chair to the next, saying, in a clear, high voice, 'He's always tired when he comes in, always tired, very tired, so I'll need to put the kettle on.' Someone else sits in a ball, fists clenched over her head.

  Then Iris hears the shout: 'Euphemia.'

  A nurse waits in a doorway, hands on hips. Iris follows her gaze to the far end of the room. A tall woman stands on tiptoe at the high window, her back to them.

  'Euphemia!' the nurse calls again, and rolls her eyes at Iris. 'I know she can hear me. Euphemia, you've got a visitor.'

  Iris sees the woman turn, first her head, then her neck, then her body. It seems to take an extraordinarily long time and Iris is reminded of an animal uncurling from sleep. Euphemia lifts her eyes to Iris and regards her, the length of the room between them. She looks at the nurse, then back to Iris. She has one hand laced into the grille over the window. Her lips part but no sound comes out and, for a moment, it seems that she will not speak, after all. Then she clears her throat.

  'Who are you?' Euphemia says.

  'Charming!' the nurse interrupts loudly, so loudly that Iris wonders if Euphemia might be a little deaf. 'She doesn't get many visitors, do you, Euphemia?'

  Iris starts walking towards her. 'I'm Iris,' she says. Behind her, she can hear the cigarette girl hiss Iris, Iris, to herself. 'You don't know me. I'm ... I'm your sister's granddaughter.'

  Euphemia frowns. They examine each other. Iris had, she realises, been expecting someone frail or infirm, a tiny geriatric, a witch from a fairytale. But this woman is tall, with an angular face and searching eyes. She has an air of slight hauteur, the expression arch, the brows raised. Although she must be in her seventies, there is something incongruously childlike about her. Her hair is held to one side with a clip and the dress she wears is flowered, with a full skirt – not an old woman's dress.

  'Kathleen Lockhart is my grandmother,' Iris says, when she reaches her. 'Your sister. Kathleen Lennox?'

  The hand at the window gives a small jerk. 'Kitty?'

  'Yes. I suppose—'

  'You are Kitty's granddaughter?'

  'That's right.'

  Without warning, Euphemia's hand shoots out and seizes her wrist. Iris cannot help herself: she jumps back, turning to look for the nurse, the social worker. Immediately Euphemia lets go. 'Don't worry,' she says, with an odd smile. 'I don't bite. Sit down, Kitty's granddaughter.' She lowers herself into a chair and points to the one next to her. 'I didn't mean to frighten you.'

  'I wasn't frightened.'

  She smiles again. 'Yes, you were.'

  'Euphemia, I—'

  'Esme,' she corrects.

  'Sorry?'

  She closes her eyes. 'My name,' she says, 'is Esme.'

  Iris glances towards the nurses. Has there been a mistake?

  'If you look at them once more,' Euphemia says, in a steady voice, 'just once more, they will come over and take me away. I shall be locked in solitary for a day, perhaps more. I would like to avoid this for reasons that I'm certain must be obvious to you, and I repeat to you that I won't hurt you and I promise that I mean it, so please don't look at them again.'

  Iris swivels her gaze to the floor, to the woman's hands smoothing her dress over her knees, to her own feet laced into her shoes. 'OK. I'm sorry.'

  'I have always been Esme,' she continues, in the same tone. 'Unfortunately, they only have my official name, the name on my records and notes, which is Euphemia. Euphemia Esme. But I was always Esme. My sister,' she gives Iris a sideways glance, 'used to say that "Euphemia" sounded like someone sneezing.'

  'You haven't told them?' Iris asks. 'About being Esme?'

  Esme smiles, her eyes locked on Iris's. 'You think they listen to me?'

  Iris tries to meet her gaze but finds herself looking at the frayed neckline of the dress, the deep-set eyes, the fingers clutching the chair arms.

  Esme leans towards her. 'You must excuse me,' she murmurs. 'I am not used to speaking so much. I have rather fallen out of the habit of late and now I find I cannot stop. So,' she says, 'you must tell me. Kitty had children.'

  'Yes,' Iris says, puzzled. 'One. My father. You ... you didn't know?'

  'Me? No.' Her eyes glitter as they move about the dim room. 'I have, as you can see, been away a long time.'

  'He's dead,' Iris blurts out.

  'Who?'

  'My father. He died when I was very young.'

  'And Kitty?'

  The cigarette woman is still chanting Iris's name under her breath and somewhere the other woman is still talking about the tired man and the kettle. 'Kitty?' Iris repeats, distracted.

  'She is...' Esme leans closer, passes her tongue over her lips '...alive?'

  Iris wonders how to put it. 'Sort of,' she says cautiously.

  'Sort of?'

  'She has Alzheimer's.'

  Esme stares at her. 'Alzheimer's?'

  'It's a form of memory lo—'

  'I know what Alzheimer's is.'

  'Yes. Sorry.'

  Esme sits for a moment, looking out of the window. 'They are closing this place, aren't they?' she says abruptly.

  Iris hesitates, almost glances towards the nurses, then remembers she mustn't.

  'They deny it,' Esme says, 'but it's true. Isn't it?'

  Iris nods.

  Esme reaches out and laces both her hands round one of Iris's. 'You have come to take me away,' she says, in an urgent voice. 'That is why you are here.'

  Iris studies her face. Esme looks nothing like her grandmother. Can it really be possible that she and this woman are related? 'Esme, I didn't even know you existed until yesterday. I'd never even heard your name before. I would like to help you, I really would—'

  'Is that why you are here? Tell me yes or no.'

  'I will help you all I can—'

  'Yes or no,' Esme repeats.

  Iris swallows hard. 'No,' she says, 'I can't. I ... I haven't had the chance to—'

  But Esme is withdrawing her hands, turning her head away from her. And something about her changes, and Iris has to hold her breath because she has seen something passing over the woman's face, like a shadow cast on water. Iris stares, long after the impression has gone, long after Esme has got up and crossed the room and disappeared through one of the doors. Iris cannot believe it. In Esme's face, for a moment, she saw her father's.

  'I don't get it,' Alex is saying from the other side of the counter. It's a Saturday lunchtime and he and Fran have dropped into the shop, bringing Iris an inedible sandwich from an overpriced delicatessen. 'I don't understand.'

  'Alex, I've explained it to you four times now,' Iris says, leaning on the counter, fingering the thin pelt of a kid glove. Its softness is oddly distasteful and she shudders. 'How many more times do we have to go over it before it penetrates your skull that—'

  'I think Alex just means that it's hard to comprehend, Iris,' Fran interjects in a soft voice. 'That there are a lot of issues to deal with here.'

  Iris focuses briefly on her sister-in-law. She appears to be all one hue, a kind
of pale fawn. Her hair, her skin, her clothes. She sits on one of the chairs Iris has stationed near the changing room, her legs crossed and – is this Iris's imagination? – her raincoat held about her. She doesn't like second-hand clothes. She told Iris this once. What if someone died in them, she said. So what if they did, Iris replied.

  Alex is still going on about Euphemia Lennox. 'You're telling me that no one's ever heard of her?' he is saying. 'Not you, not your mum, not anyone?'

  Iris sighs. 'Yes. That's exactly what I'm saying. Mum says that Dad was definitely under the impression that Grandma was an only one, and that Grandma used to refer to it frequently. The fact that she had no siblings.'

  Alex takes an enormous bite of his own sandwich and speaks through it. 'Then who's to say these people haven't made a mistake?'

  Iris turns the glove over in her hand. It has three mother-of-pearl buttons at the narrow wrist. 'They haven't. I saw her, Alex, she...' She stops herself, glancing towards Fran. Then she leans forward briefly, so that her forehead makes contact with the cool glass of the counter. 'There are papers,' she says, straightening up again. 'Legal papers. Incontrovertible evidence. She's who they say she is. Grandma has a sister, alive and well and in a madhouse.'

  'It's so...' Fran takes a long time to search for the word she wants; she has to close her eyes with the effort of it. '...bizarre,' she comes up with eventually, pulling each and every vowel out of it. 'For that to happen in a family. It's very ... very...' She closes her eyes again, frowning, searching.

  'Bizarre?' Iris supplies. It is a word for which she has a particular dislike.

  'Yes.' Fran and Iris look at each other for a moment. Fran blinks. 'I don't mean that your family's bizarre, Iris, I just—'

  'You don't know my family'

  Fran laughs. 'Well, I know Alex.' She reaches out to touch his sleeve but he is standing just a little too far away so that her hand falls into the space between them.