The Best Contemporary Women's Fiction: Six Novels

by Jenna Blum

  The laughter. Erupting behind her during lessons, following her like a dress train as she walked down a corridor. Esme could never really tell why, what it was about her that afforded them such hilarity. Does your hair curl naturally, they would ask, and then start giggling. Does your mother wear a sari? Do you eat curry at home? Who makes your clothes? When you leave school are you going to be an old maid like your sister?

  That had done it. Esme had turned at that one. She had snatched up the protractor of Catriona McFarlane, high priestess of the tittering club, and pointed it at her like a divining rod. 'You know what you are, Catriona McFarlane?' Esme had said. 'You are a sad creature. You are mean-spirited, soulless. You are going to die alone and lonely. Do you hear me?'

  Catriona was astonished, her mouth slightly open, and before she could say anything else, Esme had turned away.

  On the wooden decking, the girl Iris is shifting in her seat. A little uneasily. Has Esme been staring at her? She isn't sure. Two teacups, plumed with steam, have appeared on their table. Iris is sipping from one, holding it between both hands, which makes Esme smile because it is something her mother would never have allowed and Iris looks so like her: it is as if Esme has been given a vision of her mother in some idyllic afterlife, relaxing in the sunshine, with a new haircut, tilting a teacup towards her mouth with all expansive ten of her fingers. Esme smiles again and slaps the wooden barrier with her palm.

  It was Catriona who switched the blazer. She is sure of it. And the only possible person who could have told was—

  The girl is leaning forward in her chair, saying something, and the vision of Esme's mother enjoying a celestial cup of tea dissolves. It is just her and the girl, Iris, in a cafe by the sea, and all that was a long time ago. She must remember this.

  But she is certain that it was Catriona. When Esme had got to the cloakroom that evening, it was jammed with girls pulling hats and coats off their pegs. As she had walked out into the corridor, she struggled to put on her blazer, pushing one arm down the sleeve and trying to find the other armhole. It wasn't working. She couldn't find it. She put down her satchel and tried again but her fingers slipped on the lining, unable to find the opening. She will think later that at this point she saw, dimly, in the distance, Catriona flitting away along the corridor. Esme tore the blazer off her arm – horrible thing it was anyway, she didn't see why they had to wear them – and examined it. Had she picked up the right one? It looked the same, but then they all did. And there was her nametape, E. LENNOX, sewn into the collar. Esme hooked both arms into it and yanked it on to her back.

  The effect was instantaneous. She could barely move, barely breathe. The felt of the blazer was stretched over her shoulders, pinioning her arms to her sides, nipping her armpits. The sleeves were too short, showing the bones of her wrists. It looked like her blazer, it said it was her blazer, but it wasn't. It wouldn't close over her chest. A pair of younger girls stared at her as they passed.

  As Esme takes the seat at the table, Iris says, 'I ordered coffee for you but I don't know if you'd rather have tea.' She is gesturing towards the cup. Esme looks down at it. It is overflowing with white froth. A silver spoon sits in the curve of the saucer. And a small brown biscuit. Esme doesn't ordinarily drink either tea or coffee but thinks she will make an exception this time. She touches the fingertips of one hand to the scalding porcelain, then touches it with the other. 'No,' she says, 'coffee is fine.'

  Kitty was waiting for her as she stamped down off the tram, leaning against the wall by the corner.

  'What's the matter?' she'd said, as Esme approached.

  'This isn't my damn blazer,' Esme muttered, without stopping.

  'Don't swear.' Kitty tagged behind her. 'Are you sure it isn't yours? It looks like yours.'

  'It isn't, I tell you. Some stupid girl has swapped it, I don't know—'

  Kitty reached out and folded back the collar. 'It's got your name in it.'

  'Look at it!' Esme stopped in the middle of the pavement and held out her arms. The sleeves reached just below her elbows. 'Of course it's not mine.'

  'You've grown, that's all. You've grown so much recently'

  'It fitted me this morning.'

  They turned into Lauder Road. The lamps had been lit, as they were at this time every day, and the lighter was passing on the other side of the street, his pole over his shoulder. Esme's sight seemed to close in at the sides and she thought she might faint.

  'Oh,' she burst out. 'I hate this – I hate it.'

  'What?'

  'Just – this. I feel as though I'm waiting for something and I'm getting scared it might never come.'

  Kitty stopped and stared at her, perplexed. 'What are you talking about?'

  Esme lowered herself on to a garden wall, flinging her satchel to the ground, and looked up at the yellow flare of the gas-light. 'I'm not sure.'

  Kitty scratched at the pavement with her toe. 'Listen, I came to tell you – Mr McFarlane's been to call. Mother's livid with you. He says ... he says you put a curse on his daughter.'

  Esme stared at her sister, then started to laugh.

  'It's not funny, Esme. He was really angry. Mother says that when we get home you've to go to Father's study and wait for him there. Mr McFarlane said that you prophesied Catriona's death. He said you flew at her like a wildcat and put a curse on her.'

  'A curse?' Esme wiped her eyes, still laughing. 'If only I could.'

  After lunch, Iris and Esme wander away from the cafe, down the path towards the town. Wind bullies them from both sides and Iris shivers, buttoning her jacket. She sees that Esme bends herself into it, face first. There is something about her, Iris reflects, that isn't quite right. You wouldn't necessarily think she'd been locked up for her whole life, but there is something – a certain wide-eyed quality, her lack of inhibition, perhaps – that marks her out from other people.

  Ha,' she is saying, with a grin, 'it's a long time since I felt wind like that.'

  They pass by a ruin, bedded into the grass like old teeth. Esme stops to look at it.

  'It's an old abbey,' Iris says, poking at a low, crumbling wall with her toe. Then, remembering something she'd read once, she says, 'The Devil is supposed to have appeared here to a congregation of witches and told them how to cast a spell to drown the King.'

  Esme turns to her. 'Is that so?'

  Iris is a little taken aback by her intensity. 'Well,' she dissembles, 'it was what one of them claimed.'

  'But why would she say it if it wasn't true?'

  Iris has to think for a moment, wondering how to put it. 'I think,' she begins carefully, 'that thumbscrews can make you pretty inventive.'

  'Oh,' Esme says. 'They were tortured, you mean?'

  Iris clears her throat, which makes her cough. Why had she begun this conversation? What had possessed her? 'I think so,' she mumbles, 'yes.'

  Esme walks along beside one of the walls, putting one foot in front of the other in a deliberate, rhythmic fashion, like a marionette. At a cornerstone, she stops. 'What happened to them?' she asks.

  'Er...' Iris looks around wildly for something to distract Esme. Tm not sure.' She gestures extravagantly out to sea. 'Look! Boats! Shall we go and see?'

  'Were they put to death?' Esme persists.

  'I ... um ... possibly.' Iris scratches her head. 'Do you want to go and see the boats? Or an ice-cream. Would you like an ice-cream?'

  Esme straightens up, weighing the pebble in her palm. 'No,' she says. 'Were they burnt or strangled? Witches were strangled to death in parts of Scotland, weren't they? Or buried alive.'

  Iris has to resist an urge to cover her face with her hands. Instead she takes Esme by the arm and leads her away from the abbey. 'Maybe we should head home. What do you think?'

  Esme nods. 'Very well.'

  Iris walks carefully, plotting their route back to the car in her head, taking care to avoid any further historical sites.

  —a word for it, I know there is. I know it. I knew it
yesterday. It is a strange thing, suspended from the ceiling, a frame of wire over which is stretched a purple fabric. There is a light inside it, hanging inside it. A switch on the wall will illuminate it when it gets dark. But what is the word for it? I am sure I know it, I can almost see it, it begins with—

  —leen, Kathleen. There is a woman bending over me, too close to me, she is holding a wooden spoon. The spoon is dressed in a skirt and apron, with strands of wool stuck on in the place of hair, a face inked in with a huge red smile. It is a grotesque thing, a horrible thing, and why is she putting it in my lap? Everyone, I now see, has been given one and I do not know why. There is nothing for it but to dash it to the floor. The spoon's skirt flips up over its head and I see its single, pale limb as I—

  —so Mother stopped at the corner, made her go back to the house to fetch her gloves. You always had to wear a pair of gloves in those days when out, it didn't do to be barehanded, especially coming from a family like ours. Leather ones, fitted to your hands, everyone knew their size. She had exceptionally long fingers, the man at the glove counter in Maule's told us. An octave and two, she replied, with a smile, is my stretch. He had no idea what she was talking about. She was a good pianist but too undisciplined, our grandmother said. But Mother sent her back for the gloves and to fix her stocking, which had slipped down her leg, showing the skin between her hem and the stocking top, which, of course, wouldn't do. I went with her when I saw the thunderclouds in her face. I can't stand it, I can't stand it, she hissed to me, as we walked, and she was walking faster than usual so I had almost to run to keep up. These rules, these ridiculous rules, how is anyone supposed to remember them all? It's only a pair of gloves, I said, I did remind you as we were leaving the house. But she was furious, always chafing at the bit, she was. And we couldn't find the gloves, of course. Or we could find only one. I forget. I know we looked everywhere. I can't think of everything, I said to her, as we searched, because she was forever losing one or the other and it was always up to me to remember them for myself and for her and I had begun—

  —DAA-DUM, da-da-da-da-da-dum, de-de-de, de-de-de, DAA-DUM, da-da-da-da-dum. Chopin. She played it all the time. It rattled the stuffed meerkat on the piano lid. Mother hated it. Play something pretty, Esme, she would say, not that dreadful—

  —the word I definitely knew. Someone has been in and turned on the lights. The others are getting up and fiddling with the television switch and I would like to go back to my room but there is no one to help me just now so I will have to sit and wait and try to think of the word for the thing hanging from the ceiling. A structure of wire with material and a lightbulb inside, illuminated—

  —may have told about the blazer. Did 1? I forget. Esme. Is me. Esme. Wouldn't let go, they said. It's difficult to know whether—

  —and when I first saw him I thought I might dissolve, like sugar in water. We were getting off the tram at Tollcross, it had broken down, the contact and the cabling had come apart, and I had been helping Mother with her messages so she and I were laden with boxes and parcels. We made it over to the pavement and there he was. Next to his mother. With boxes and parcels. We could have been mirror images. Mother and Mrs Dalziel discussed the weather and the tram and the health of their husbands, in that order, and Mrs Dalziel introduced her son. This is my James, she said, but of course I knew that already. The name Jamie Dalziel was familiar to every girl in Edinburgh. James, I said, and he took my hand in his. Very nice to meet you, Kitty, he replied, and I loved the way he said Kitty, the way he winked at me when Mother was looking down the road for the next tram, the way he carried the boxes as if they weighed nothing. That night I slid the glove I'd been wearing under my pillow. As we were leaving Mrs Dalziel said that I must come to their Hogmanay party. You and your sister, she said. She called him Jamie as they left. Jamie, mind the messages. It was only a week after that when I met him on the Meadows. He was with a friend, Duncan Lockhart, but I didn't look twice at him, of course. And where are you off to, he said, as he fell into step beside me, and I said, I'm waiting for my sister. I have a little sister too, he said and I said, oh, mine is not so little any more, she's taller than me, she'll be leaving school soon. And as I said this I saw her walking down the road. She came towards us and, you know, she barely even glanced at him. Hello, she said to me and I said, this is my sister, Esme, and he smiled that smile of his, took her hand and said, charmed. That was what he said: charmed. And she laughed, she actually laughed, and she pulled her hand away. Will you listen to yourself, she said to him, and added, eejit, just loud enough for him to hear. When I looked back at him I saw that he was looking at her, I saw the way it was, that he might dissolve like sugar in water, and when I saw this I—

  —problem had also been that whenever we went anywhere, she and I, and we did get invitations quite regularly, due to the family name, of course, even though she had refused to make friends with any of the girls at her school. Harpies, she said they were, that was the word. But whenever we went somewhere, a tennis party or tea or a dance, she would always do something strange, something unexpected. Rattling away on the piano, talking to a dog for the entire time, once climbing a tree and sitting there in the branches, staring into space and twiddling at that wild hair of hers. There were some people, I am certain, who stopped inviting us. Because of her behaviour. And I have to say I felt that very keenly. Mother said I was right to. That you, she said, who never conducts herself in any manner other than one of the utmost decorum, should suffer because of her. It is not right. There was one time I overheard—

  —mine was white organdie with an orange-blossom trim and I didn't want the holly to tear it so she carried the wreath. She cared little for her dress. Scarlet velvet, she'd wanted. Crimson. But she got burgundy taffeta. And she said it didn't fit properly, the seams weren't straight and even I could see that but such things mattered so much to her that—

  —a girl comes to crouch in front of me and I see that she is unlacing my shoes and taking them off and I say to her, I took it, I took it, and I've never told anyone. The girl looks up at me and she titters. You tell us every day, she says. I know she is lying so I say, it was my sister's, you know. And she just turns to speak to someone over her shoulder and—

  —overheard someone saying something about her, laughing at her. A girl in a seersucker blouse, lovely it was, pintucks all down the front. She was pointing at Esme and nudging the two men with her. Look at the Oddbod, she said. The Oddbod, they called her. So I looked and would you believe it she was in an armchair and she had one leg slung over the arm, a book in her lap, her legs wide apart under her skirt. It was a dance, for heaven's sake. I had been so pleased to be asked, it was a good family, and I knew that after this we should never be asked again. I had to go over and my face was burning and every person in the room was watching me and I said her name twice and she was so engrossed in whatever it was she was reading she didn't hear me and so I had to shake her by the arm. And she looked up at me and it was as if she was waking from sleep. She stretched. She actually stretched and she said, hello, Kit. And then she must have seen that I was on the verge of tears because her face fell and she said, what is it? And I said, you. You are ruining my chances. And, you know, she said, chances of what? And I realised that if I were to successfully—

  —the way he looked at her—

  —the meerkat shaking in its glass box. My grandfather had caught it, apparently. Our grandmother was very fond of it. It had a very aggrieved expression, that was the word she used, aggrieved. And no wonder, she would say, looking up at it as she played, who would want to be shut up inside a—

  —DAA-DUM, da-da-da-da-da-dum. I remember that—

  And they walk, Esme and Iris, Esme behind the girl, Iris, looking at the backs of her heels in their red shoes, the way they disappear, reappear, disappear as she moves along the pavement in North Berwick. Iris has told her they are going back to the car now and Esme is looking forward to getting into it, to folding herself into
the seat and perhaps the girl will put on the radio again and they will have music as they drive back.

  She is thinking, as she walks, about that argument with her father, on an evening just before bed when the fire was dying down, and Kitty, her mother and the grandmother were busy with what they called their handwork and her mother had just asked her where was the tapestry square shed given her. And Esme couldn't reply that she had hidden it, stuffed it down behind the chair cushions in her room.

  'Put the book away, Esme,' her mother had said. 'You have read enough for tonight.'

  But she couldn't because the people on the page and the room they were in were holding her fast but then her father was there in front of her and he snatched the book away, shut it without saving her page, and suddenly there was only the room she was in. Do as your mother asks,' he said, 'for God's sake.'

  She'd sat up and the fury was within her, and instead of saying, please give me my book, she said, I want to stay on at school.

  She hadn't meant to. She knew it wasn't the time to bring this up, that it would get nowhere, but it felt sore within her, this desire, and she couldn't help herself. The words came out from where they'd been hidden. Her hands felt strange and useless without the book and the need to stay at school had risen up and come out of her mouth without her knowing.