The Best Contemporary Women's Fiction: Six Novels

by Jenna Blum

  Within a fortnight, Alex is back. George's new woman is a bitch from hell, he says, and Iris notices that Sadie does not tell him off for swearing. Can he live with them? Iris claps her hands, shrieks yes. But Sadie isn't sure. She'll have to check with George. But she isn't talking to George. Which is, she says, a problem.

  Alex calls his father and they have a long argument. Iris listens, sitting squashed into the same armchair with Alex as he shouts at his father. Alex stays. A week later George comes and takes him home. Alex comes back. George arrives again, in the car this time, and takes him away. Alex returns. George sends Alex to a boarding-school in the middle of the Highlands. Alex runs away, hitchhiking back to the city, turning up on Sadie's doorstep early in the morning. He is dragged back to the boarding-school. He escapes again. Sadie takes him in but warns him he must call his father. He doesn't. In the middle of the night, Iris wakes to find him beside her bed. He is dressed, his coat on, a bag beside him. He says he is going to run away to France and find his mother, who will let him live with her, he is sure. Will Iris come with him?

  They get as far as Newcastle before the police catch up with them. They are driven all the way back to Edinburgh in a police car, which Iris finds incredibly exciting. Alex says they'll have to handcuff him if they are to get him into his father's house. The policeman driving the car says, you've caused enough trouble for one day, sonny. Alex leans his head on Iris's shoulder and falls asleep.

  Sadie and George have a summit meeting in the City Art Gallery cafe. Head of the agenda: Alex. Everyone is terribly polite. The Stepmother from Hell sits at a table in the corner, eyeing Sadie. Sadie, Iris observes, has washed her hair and worn her blue dress with red contrast piping. George is having trouble keeping his eyes away from the low-cut, red-edged V at the front of the dress. In the opposite corner sit Iris and Alex. Half-way through Alex says, fuck this, and that he is going to look at the second-hand record shops on Cockburn Street. Iris says he has to stay. They'll just think you're running away again, she says.

  It is agreed that Alex will be allowed to switch to a boarding-school in Edinburgh on the proviso that he studies well and doesn't run away again. In return, he can live during his holidays with Iris and Sadie. But he must sit down with his father and stepmother once a week to eat dinner, during which – and George turns a steely eye on his son – Alexander will be expected to conduct himself in a courteous and orderly fashion. As George is saying this Alex mutters, up your arse, and Iris has to swallow hard so as not to laugh. But she doesn't think anyone else heard.

  So every Christmas, summer and Easter, Alex lives with them, in the windowless boxroom in their tenement flat in Newington. When he is sixteen and Iris is fifteen, Sadie says she thinks they are old enough and responsible enough to look after themselves for a while, and she goes off to Greece on a residential yoga course. They wave her off from the front door, and as her taxi disappears around the corner, turn to each other with glee.

  It doesn't take long. The first night Sadie is away, they have locked all the doors, pulled down the blinds, turned up the stereo, defrosted all the food in the freezer, opened out the sofa-bed in the living room, piled their bedding on to it and they lie there under a duvet, watching an old film.

  'Let's not go out again,' Alex says. 'Let's just stay here all week.'

  'OK.' Iris settles herself deeper into the pillows. Their limbs knock together under the duvet. Alex is wearing pyjama bottoms. Iris is wearing the matching top.

  The people onscreen are running up a mountainside that is a violent, radioactive shade of green when Alex reaches out. He takes Iris's hand. He lifts it. He places it slowly, very slowly, on his chest. Just above his heart. Iris can feel it jumping and jumping, as if it wants to be free. She keeps her eyes fixed on the screen. The people have reached the top of the hill and are pointing excitedly at a lake.

  'That's my heart,' Alex says, without moving his eyes from the television. He has kept his hand over Iris's, pressing it down into his chest. His voice is even, conversational. 'But it's yours, really' For a while longer they watch the people onscreen as they waltz through a meadow in strict formation. Then Alex moves towards her through the flickering dark and she turns to him and she finds that he is hesitating and she doesn't see any other option for them so she pulls him closer and then closer again.

  Through the wall, Esme is stepping slowly and sedately from the door to the shelves and back again. She touches the doorhandle – a round brass knob, slightly dented and smaller than she remembers. Or perhaps the ones downstairs were bigger? It doesn't matter because it has the same frilled brass surround and this pleases her. She counts the frills – petals, perhaps, but a flower made of brass is an ugly anomaly, an oxymoron, maybe – and there are nine. Which is an altogether likeable number. Three threes exactly.

  She is trying to remember the names of the maids who would have lived in this room, high up in the eaves of the house. She has not thought about this for years. If, indeed, she has ever thought about it. It seems ridiculous to be able to recall this but, to her astonishment, the names come. Maisie, Jean. Not, perhaps, in the right order. Martha. But come they do. It is like reception to a radio frequency. Janet. If you're in the right place at the right time, you can pick up the signal.

  Esme changes course. She leaves the door and the brass flower and goes to stand in the corner beside the lamp. She turns her head, first one way then the other. She wants to see what else she can tune in to.

  When Iris wakes, she gazes for a while at the blind pulled down over her bedroom window. She plucks at the duvet. She twirls a strand of hair. She is wondering why there is a knot of unease in her stomach. She glances round the room: all as it should be. Her clothes are strewn on the floor and the chairs, her books are stacked on the shelves, her clock glows at her from the wall. Then she frowns. The kitchen knives are sitting on her chest of drawers, alongside her makeup and jewellery.

  Iris sits bolt upright in bed, clutching the duvet to her chest. How could she have forgotten? Sleep can do that to you – erase the most important thing from your mind. Iris listens, straining for sound. Nothing. The hiss of plumbing, the jumbled murmur of a television in the flat below, a car outside in the street. Then Iris hears a strange scraping noise, quite close to her head. It stops for a moment, then begins again.

  She puts one foot to the floor, then the other. She pulls on her dressing-gown. She tiptoes out of her bedroom, across the hallway and stops at the door of the boxroom. The sound is louder. Iris raises her hand, hesitates, then makes herself knock. The scraping stops abruptly. Silence. Iris knocks again, more loudly, with her knuckles. Again, silence. Then a couple of footfalls, then silence again. 'Esme?' Iris calls.

  'Yes?' The answer is immediate and so clear that Iris realises that Esme is right behind the door.

  Iris hesitates. 'Can I come in?'

  There is a rapid shuffle of feet. 'Yes.'

  Iris waits for Esme to open the door but nothing happens. She puts her hand on the doorknob and turns it slowly. 'Good morning,' she says, as she does so, hoping she sounds more upbeat than she feels. She has no idea what she will see behind the door.

  Esme is standing in the middle of the room. She is fully dressed, her hair brushed and neatly clipped to one side. She is wearing her coat, for some reason, buttoned up to the neck. There is an armchair next to her and Iris realises that she must have been pushing it across the floor. The expression on her face, Iris is astonished to see, is one of absolute, abject terror. She is looking at her, Iris thinks, as if she is expecting Iris to strike her. Iris is so taken aback that she can't think what to say. She fiddles with her dressing-gown cord. 'Did you sleep all right?' she asks.

  'Yes,' Esme replies, 'thank you.'

  Her face is still full of fear, of uncertainty. One of her hands picks at a coat button. Does she know where she is? Iris wonders. Does she know who I am?

  'You're...' Iris begins '...you left Cauldstone. You're in my flat. In Lauder Road.
'

  Esme frowns. 'I know. The attic. The maid's room.'

  'Yes,' Iris says, relieved. 'Yes. We're going to find you somewhere else but ... but today's Saturday so we can't do that yet but on Monday...' She trails away. She has just noticed that, arranged on the small table beside Esme's bed, is the row of ivory elephants from the living room. Has Esme been wandering about in the night, moving things around?

  'On Monday?' Esme is prompting.

  'I'll make some calls,' Iris says distractedly. She glances round the room, trying to work out what else might have been changed, but sees only a hairbrush lined up with a handkerchief, three kirby-grips, a toothbrush and the tortoiseshell comb. There is something very dignified about the way these items are arranged. It occurs to Iris that they might be the only things Esme owns.

  She turns away. 'I'll make breakfast.'

  In the kitchen, Iris fills the kettle, gets the butter out of the fridge, pushes bread into the toaster. It strikes her as peculiar that she is doing the things she always does, as if nothing is different. She just happens to have a mad old woman staying with her for the weekend. Iris has to turn round at one point to make sure she's really there. And there she is. Esme, the forgotten great-aunt, at her table, stroking the dog's head.

  'Do you live alone?' she is saying.

  Iris has to muffle a sigh. How has she got herself into this? 'Yes,' she replies.

  'Completely alone?'

  Iris sits at the table and hands Esme some toast on a plate. 'Well, there's the dog. But apart from him, yes, I live alone.'

  Esme lays her hand quickly on the toast, then the plate, the table edge, the napkin. She looks over the table, at the marmalade, the butter, the mugs of tea as if she's never seen these things before. She picks up a knife and turns it over in her hand.

  'I remember these,' she says. 'They came from Jenners, in a box with a velvet lining.'

  'Did they?' Iris looks at the old, discoloured bone-handled knife. She has no idea how it came into her possession.

  'And you work?' Esme says, as she spreads butter on her toast.

  She is doing everything, Iris notices, with an odd kind of reverence. How mad is she? Iris wonders. How do you measure these things? 'Of course. I have my own business, these days.'

  Esme looks up from her study of the marmalade-jar label. 'How marvellous,' she breathes.

  Iris laughs, surprised. 'Well, I don't know about that. It doesn't seem very marvellous to me.'

  'It doesn't?'

  'No. Not always. I was a translator for a bit, for a big company in Glasgow, but I hated it. And then I travelled for a while, saw the world, you know, waitressing along the way. And then somehow I ended up doing my shop.'

  Esme cuts her toast into small, geometric triangles. 'You're not married?' she says.

  Iris shakes her head, her mouth full of crumbs. 'No.'

  'You never married?'

  'No.'

  'And people don't mind?'

  'What people?'

  'Your family.'

  Iris has to think about this. 'I don't know if my mother minds or not. I've never asked her.'

  'Do you have lovers?'

  Iris coughs and has to gulp at her tea.

  Esme looks nonplussed. 'Is that an impolite question?' she asks.

  'No ... well, it can be. I don't mind you asking but some people might.' Iris swallows her tea. 'I do, yes ... I have had ... I do ... yes.'

  'And do you love them? These lovers?'

  'Um.' Iris frowns and drops a crust on to the floor for the dog, who darts towards it, paws scrabbling on the lino. 'I ... I don't know.' Iris pours herself more tea and tries to think. 'Actually, I do know. I loved some of them and I didn't love others.' She looks at Esme across the table and tries to imagine her at her own age. She'd have been fine-looking, with those cheekbones and those eyes, but by then she'd have spent half her life in an institution.

  'There is a man at the moment,' Iris hears herself saying and she is amazed at herself for doing so because no one except Alex knows about Luke and she likes to keep it that way, 'but ... it's complicated.'

  'Oh,' Esme says, and stares at her, hard.

  Iris averts her gaze. She stands, brushing the crumbs off her dressing-gown. She dumps the dirty plates on the draining-board. She sees by the clock on the oven door that it's only nine a.m. There are twelve, possibly thirteen hours to fill before she can decently expect Esme to go to bed again. How is Iris going to occupy her for an entire weekend? What on earth is she going to do with her?

  'So,' Iris says, turning back, 'I don't know what you would like to do today. Is there anything...?'

  Esme is looking at the bone-handled knife again, turning it over and over in her palm. Iris is hoping she might say something. She doesn't, of course.

  'We could...' Iris tries to think '...go for a drive. If you like. Around the city. Or ... a walk. Maybe you'd like to see some of the places you...' She loses conviction. Then she brightens with an idea. 'We could go and see your sister. Visiting hours start at—'

  'The sea,' Esme says, putting down the knife. 'I would like to go to the sea.'

  Esme propels herself through the water, breasting the dip and swell, her breath escaping in ragged gasps. She is beyond the breaking point of the waves, out in that queer, foam-less no man's land. Around her legs, she feels the cold clutch of deep, powerful water.

  She turns and looks back to land. The curve of Canty Bay, the brown-yellow of the sand, her parents on a rug, her grandmother sitting bolt upright on a folding chair, Kitty standing beside them, looking along the beach, her hand shading her eyes. Her father, Esme sees, is making a gesture that means she should come further in. She pretends not to see.

  A wave is coming, gathering its strength, drawing all the water around it towards itself. It moves at her, soundless, an impassive ridge in the ocean. Esme braces herself, then feels the delicious lift as the wave takes her, buoys her up, bears her towards the sky, then passes on, lowering her gently down. She watches, treading water, as it crashes and breaks, rushing in a frenzy of white towards the sand. Kitty is waving at someone and Esme sees that strands of her hair are escaping from her bathing cap.

  They have taken a house in North Berwick for the summer. This is what people do, their grandmother told them. It is her job, she said, to see that Esme and Kitty are mixing with 'the right sort of folk'. They are taken to golfing lessons, which Esme detests beyond compare, to tea-dances at the Pavilion, to which Esme always ensures she brings a book, and every afternoon their grandmother gets them to dress in their best clothes and makes them walk up and down the sea front, saying how do you do to people. Especially families with sons. Esme refuses to go on these ridiculous walks. They make her feel like a horse at a show. Strangely, Kitty loves them. She spends hours getting ready, brushing her hair, patting cream into her face, threading ribbons into her gloves. Why are you doing that, Esme had asked yesterday, as Kitty sat before the mirror, pinching and pinching the skin of her cheeks. And Kitty had got up from the stool and walked from the room without replying. Her grandmother keeps announcing that Esme will never find a husband if she doesn't change her ways. Yesterday, when she said it at breakfast, Esme replied, good, and was sent to finish her meal in the kitchen.

  Another wave comes, and another. Esme sees that her grandmother has got out her knitting, that her father is reading a newspaper. Kitty is talking to some people. A mother and her two sons, by the look of it. Esme frowns. She cannot understand what has happened to her sister. The sons are lumpish, large-handed, and hang back from Kitty's eager enquiries. She cannot imagine what Kitty is finding to say to them. She is just about to shout for her to come in to swim when something changes. The deep cold water beneath her is shifting, dragging at her legs. She is being sucked backwards very fast, the water around her rushing towards open sea. Esme makes an attempt to swim against it, back to the shore, but it's as if chains are tied to her limbs. There is a roaring sound like the moment before a storm. S
he turns.

  Behind her is a green wall of water. The top of it is cresting, tipping over. She opens her mouth to scream but something heavy crashes on to her head. Esme is yanked under, dragged down. She can see nothing but a greenish blur and her mouth and lungs are filled with bitter water. She flails this way and that but has no idea which direction is the surface, where she must fight towards. Something bangs her on the head, something unyielding and hard, making her teeth clash together, and she realises that she has hit the bottom, that she has been turned upside-down, like St Catherine in her wheel, but the sense of orientation lasts only for a second because she is flung forwards, downwards, dragged inside the muscle of the wave. Then she feels sand and stones grating against her stomach. She pushes hard with her hands and – miraculously – her head breaks the surface.

  The light is white and jarring. She can hear the mourning cries of the gulls and her mother saying something about a gammon steak. Esme gulps at the air. She looks down and sees that she is kneeling in the shallows. Her bathing cap is gone and her hair sticks to her back in a wet rope. Tiny wavelets run past her to lap at the shore. There is a sharp pain in her forehead. Esme touches her fingers to it and when she looks at them, they are flecked with blood.

  She stumbles to her feet. Angular pebbles press up into her soles. She almost trips but manages to stay upright. She lifts her head and looks towards the beach. Will they be angry? Will they say they told her to keep further in?

  Her family are on the rug, passing round sandwiches and cuts of cold meat. Her grandmother's knitting needles work against each other, winding in the thread of wool. Her father has a handkerchief on his head. And there, sitting on the rug, is herself. There is Kitty, in her striped bathing-suit, her cap pulled down low, and there she is. Esme. Sitting next to Kitty, her sister, in her matching suit, accepting a cold chicken leg from her mother.

  Esme stares. The scene seems to tremble and break apart. She has the sensation of being pulled strongly towards it, as if drawn by a magnet, as if she is still in the clutch of the wave, but she knows she is standing still, in the shallows of the sea. She presses her hand to her eyes and looks again.