The Best Contemporary Women's Fiction: Six Novels

by Jenna Blum

  Her brother, she'd said. When Esme first saw him there, standing in the doorway, she wondered for a moment if he might be the lover. But then she looked back at Iris and saw that he wasn't. Not a proper brother, though, not a real one. A kind of half-attached one.

  Esme bends her legs so that her knees break the surface of the bathwater, like islands in a lagoon. She has run the bath so hot that her skin is pinked, livid. Stay in as long as you like, Iris said to her, so she is. Steam has swarmed up the walls, the mirror, the inside of the window, the sides of the bottles on the shelf. Esme has no memory of this room. What would it have been in her day? The other rooms she can transpose, pull a photographic plate down over them, see them as they were: her room as the maid's bedroom, the sitting room as a place under the eaves where summer clothes were stored in cedarwood chests. Iris's bedroom used to be filled along one wall with glass jars for preserves. But for this room, she has no recall. The whole space she remembers as terribly dim and low-ceilinged when in fact the rooms are high enough, and airy. Just goes to show how fallible memory is.

  She takes the soap from its dish and rubs it between her hands, like Aladdin with his lamp. A delicious sweet scent rises from it and she brings it up to her face and inhales. She wonders what the pair next door would say if she told them that this was her first unsupervised bath for over sixty years. She eyes the razor on the bath edge and smiles. The girl has left it there so casually. Esme has forgotten what it is like to be among unsuspicious people. She picks it up and touches the tip of her finger to its cool edge, and as she does so, it suddenly comes to her what used to be in this room.

  Baby things. A wooden cot, with ribs like an animal skeleton. A high-chair with a string of coloured beads tied to the tray. And boxes full of tiny nightgowns, bonnets, booties, the sharp stink of mothballs.

  Who would have been the last baby in this house? For whom were those jackets knitted, those gowns stitched? Who strung the beads on the high-chair? Her grandmother for her father, she would guess, but she cannot imagine it. The thought makes her want to giggle. Then she takes a breath, holds it and sinks under the water, letting her hair float around her like weeds.

  She lay under the restraints. She watched a fly crawl with inching progress up the sickly green wall. She counted the number of noises she could hear: the drone of a car outside, the chatter of starlings, the wind tugging at a sash window, the mumble-mumble of the woman in the corner, the squeal of wheels from the corridor, the rustle of bedclothes, the sighs and grunts of the other women. She accepted spoonfuls of glutinous, tepid porridge from a nurse, swallowed them, even though her stomach rebelled, seemed to close at every mouthful.

  In the middle of the morning, two women got into an argument.

  'It's mine.'

  'It never is.'

  'It's mine. Give us it.'

  'Get off it, it's mine.'

  Esme raised her head to see them, pulling and yanking at something. Then the taller one, with greying hair scraped back into a messy bun, reached out and smacked the other's cheek. She immediately yelped, let go of whatever it was they were fighting over, then reared up, like an animal on its hind legs, and hurled herself at the other woman. Over they went, on to the floor, a strange eight-limbed creature, tussling and screaming, overturning a table, a basket of clothes. Nurses appeared from nowhere, shouting, calling to each other, blowing whistles.

  'Stop that!' the ward sister shouted. 'Stop it at once.'

  The nurses dragged them apart. The grey-haired woman went limp, sat down meekly on the bed. The other still fought, screaming, yelling, clawing at the ward sister's face. Her gown rode up and Esme saw her buttocks, pale and round as mushrooms, the folds of her stomach. The ward sister caught her wrist, twisted it until the woman cried out.

  'I'll put you in straits,' the nurse threatened. 'I will. You know I will.'

  Esme saw the woman think about this and, for a moment, it seemed as though she would be calm. But then she bucked like a horse, kicking out, catching the ward sister on the knee, screaming a string of obscenities. The sister gave a short puff of breath and then, at some signal, the nurses bundled the woman off, down the ward, through a door and Esme listened as the noise grew fainter and fainter.

  'Ward Four,' she heard someone whisper. 'She'll be taken to Ward Four.' And Esme turned her head to see who was speaking, but everyone was sitting on the beds, bolt upright, heads bowed.

  When they unbuckled the belts, Esme kept very still. She sat on the bed, her hands tucked beneath her. She thought of animals that can be motionless for hours, crouched, waiting. She thought of the party game where you have to pretend to be a dead lion.

  An orderly came round and dumped cloths and tubs of yellow, bitter-smelling polish on each bed. Esme slid off hers and stood, unsure, as the other women bent down to their knees as if about to pray, then began rubbing the polish into the floor, working backwards towards the door. Her legs felt stiff and immovable after the belts. She was just reaching for the cloth and polish on her bed when she saw one of the nurses point at her. 'Look at Madam,' she sniggered.

  'Euphemia!' Sister Stewart yelled. 'Get down on your knees.'

  Esme jumped at the shout. For a moment, she wondered why everyone was staring at her. Then she realised the sister meant her. 'Actually,' she began, 'I'm called—'

  'Get down on your knees and get to work!' Sister Stewart bawled. 'You're no better than anybody else, you know.'

  Esme knelt, shaking, wrapped the cloth round her fist and began rubbing at the floor.

  Later, the other women came to speak to her. There was Maudie, who married Donald and then Archibald when she was still married to Hector, even though the one she really loved was Frankie, who was killed in Flanders. In her good moments, she would regale everyone with stories of her wedding ceremonies; in her bad ones, Maudie skipped up and down the ward with a petticoat tied under her chin, until Sister Stewart pulled it off and told Maudie to sit down and be a good girl or else. In the next beds were Elizabeth, who had seen her child crushed by a cart, and Dorothy, who was occasionally moved to strip off all her clothes. At the far end was an old woman the nurses called Agnes but who always corrected them by saying, 'Mrs Dalgleish, if you please.' She, Maudie told Esme, wasn't able to have children and sometimes she and Elizabeth got into arguments.

  After a lunch of indeterminate grey soup, a Dr Naysmith appeared. He walked between their beds, Sister Stewart two steps behind him, nodding at them in turn, occasionally saying, How are you feeling today?' The women, Elizabeth especially, got very excited, either launching into garbled monologues or bursting into tears. Two were taken off for a cold bath.

  He stopped at Esme's bed, glanced at the name-tag on the wall beside her. Esme sat up, passed her tongue over her lips. She was going to tell him – she was going to tell him there had been a mistake, that she shouldn't be here. But Sister Stewart stood on tiptoe and whispered something into his ear.

  'Very good,' he said, and moved on.

  —and when he asked me, and here's me saying ask when what he said in the event was, I'd consider it a first-rate idea if we were wed. He said this on Lothian Road as we stood on the pavement. We had been to the pictures and I had waited and waited for him to take my hand. I'd dangled it over the arm of the seat, I'd removed my gloves, but he didn't seem to notice. I suppose I should have taken this as a—

  —an hourglass with red sand, kept on top of the—

  —and sometimes I take the little girl to the pictures. She is very grave. She sits with her hands laced in her lap, a slight frown on her face, attentive as the dwarfs go down into the mine, one by one, their little sticks over their backs. Someone made it by putting drawings together very fast, she said to me last time, and I said, yes, and she said, who, and I said, a clever man, darling, and she said, how do you know it was a man? It made me laugh because, of course, I didn't know but somehow you do—

  —watching the red sand falling through grain by grain and she said, does tha
t mean the gap is exactly one grain wide? And I had no idea. I'd never thought of it like that. Mother said—

  —the boy with them, I will never know. The changeling, I call him, but only to myself and the maid. The woman said to me, it would be lovely if you could be his grandma too. Well. There is no way on God's earth I would consider him any relation to me. A sullen, sulking child with mistrustful eyes. He is not of my blood. The little girl is very fond of him, though, and he has had a difficult life, by all accounts. A mother who upped and left, and how any woman can do that is beyond me. It goes against nature. The girl holds his hand, even though he is a year maybe two older than her, and he never leaves her side. I always want to pull her away from him, from his clammy boy clutches but of course you have to be the adult in these—

  —a terrible thing, to want a—

  —on Lothian Road, I snapped the clasp of my bag shut. I wanted to close my eyes for a moment. The lights of the carriages and trams were very tiring, especially after the picture we had just seen. He stood waiting and I looked at him and I saw the way his collar was pinched too tight, the way there was a dropped stitch in the scarf he was wearing and I wondered who knitted it for him, who loved him that much. His mother, at a guess, but I wanted to ask him. I wanted to know who loved him. I said yes, of course. I breathed it out, the way you are supposed to, I smiled shyly as I said it, as if it was all perfect, as if he'd gone down on his knee with roses in one hand and a diamond in the other. I couldn't bear any more nights in that room without—

  —had gone away, everybody said. To Paris, one girl told me. To South America, another said. There was a rumour that Mrs Dalziel had sent him away to his uncle's house in England. And even though I rarely saw him anyway, the idea that I might not run into him, that the streets of the city did not contain him was enough to—

  —and I found a clutch of letters, nesting in the bottom of a hat-box. This was perhaps months later. I was married by this time and I was looking for a hat to wear to a christening. Mother and Father had said one night, just before my wedding, that her name would not be mentioned again and that they would thank me if I would act accordingly. And I did, act accordingly, that is, although I thought about her a great deal more than they realised. So I pulled out the letters and—

  —never meant it to be for ever. I would like to make that perfectly clear. I just meant for a while. I came into the parlour when my mother called for me and the doctor was there. She was upstairs, still shouting and carrying on. And they were whispering together and I caught the word away'. Kitty knows her best, my mother said, and the doctor from the hospital looked at me and he said, is there anything about your sister that concerns you? Anything she has confided in you that you think you should tell us? And I thought, I thought, and then I raised my head and I made my face a little sad, a little uncertain, and I said, well, she does think she saw herself once on the beach, when she was standing in the sea. And I could tell by the look on the doctor's face that I had done well, that I had—

  —the way it snapped shut, that bag. I liked that. I always carried it half-way up my wrist, never too—

  Iris carries the salad to the table and places it half-way between Esme and Alex. The salad servers she angles towards Esme. She allows herself a small, private smile at the idea that it would be almost impossible to find two more different dining companions.

  'Where do you live?' Esme is saying.

  'In Stockbridge,' Alex says. 'Before that, I lived in New York.'

  'In the United States of America?' Esme asks, leaning forward over her plate.

  Alex smiles. 'Absolutely correct.'

  'How did you get there?'

  'On a plane.'

  'A plane,' she repeats, and she seems to consider the word. Then: 'I have seen planes.'

  Alex leans over and chinks his glass against hers. 'You know, you're nothing like your sister.'

  Esme, who is examining the salad in its bowl, turning it one way then the other, stops. 'You know my sister?'

  Alex see-saws his hand in the air. 'I wouldn't go so far as to say I know her. I've met her. Many times. She didn't like me.'

  'That's not true,' Iris protests. 'She just never—'

  He leans conspiratorially towards Esme. 'She didn't. When my father and Sadie, Iris's mother, were together, Sadie thought it would be a good idea for me to come along on Iris's visits to her grandmother. God knows why. Her grandmother obviously wondered what I was doing there. She thought I was the cuckoo in the nest. She didn't like me fraternising with her precious granddaughter. Mind you, there wasn't an awful lot of love lost between her and Sadie, either, if you ask me.'

  Esme takes a long look at Alex. 'Well, I like you,' she says finally. 'I think you're funny.'

  'When did you last see her, anyway?'

  'Who?'

  'Your sister.' Alex is busy mopping his plate with a hunk of bread so it is only Iris who sees the look on Esme's face.

  'Sixty-one years,' she says, 'five months and six days.'

  Alex's hand with the bread is halted half-way to his mouth. 'You mean—'

  'She never came to visit you?' Iris says.

  Esme shakes her head, staring at her plate. 'I did see her once, a while after I went in, but...'

  'But what?' Alex prompts, and Iris wants to shush him but also wants to hear the answer.

  'We didn't speak...' Esme says, and her voice is level, she sounds like an actress going over her lines '...on that occasion. I was in a different room. Behind a door. She didn't come in.'

  Alex looks over at Iris and Iris looks mutely back. He reaches for his wine glass, then seems to change his mind. He rests his hand on the table, then scratches his head. 'See?' he mutters. 'I always told you she was a bitch.'

  'Alex,' Iris says, 'please.' She stands, lifting the plates from the table.

  Esme sits at a table in the dayroom, feet curled round the chair legs. She mustn't cry, she mustn't cry. Never cry in public here. They'll threaten you with treatment or give you injections that make you sleep and wake up confused, disjointed.

  She clenches her hands together to hold back the tears and looks down at the piece of paper in front of her. Dear Kitty, she has written. Behind her, Agnes and Elizabeth are sniping at each other.

  Well, at least I had a child. Some women never—'

  'At least I didn't murder my child through neglect. Imagine letting your own flesh and blood wander under a cart.'

  To shut out their voices, Esme picks up her pencil. Please come, she puts. Visitors are allowed on Wednesdays. Please, she writes again, please please. She leans her forehead on her hand. Why does she never come? Esme doesn't believe that the nurses post her letters. Why else would she not come? What other explanation can there be? You are not well, the nurses tell her. You are not well, the doctor says. And Esme thinks she may be starting to believe this. There is a tremulousness to her suddenly. She can cry at nothing, at Maudie pinching her arm, at Dorothy stealing her afternoon biscuit. There are moments when she looks through the windows at the drop to the ground and thinks about the relief of the fall, the coolness of the air. And there is a soreness to her body, it aches, her head feels softened, muzzy. She has acquired a disturbingly acute sense of smell. The odour of print from a magazine someone is reading across a room can oppress her. She knows what will be on their plates at lunch just from sniffing the air. She can walk down the middle of the ward and can tell who has bathed this week and who has not.

  She stands, to try to clear her head, to try to put some space between her and the rest of them, and walks to the window. Outside, it is a still day. Oddly still. Not a single leaf moves on a tree and the flowers in the beds all stand up straight, motionless. And she sees that on the lawn the patients from Ward Four are having their exercise. Esme touches her brow to the pane, watching them. They are in gowns, pale gowns, and they are drifting about like clouds. It's hard to tell if they are men or women as the gowns are loose and their hair is cut short. Some of them stand
still, gazing ahead. One sobs into cupped hands. Another keeps giving a sharp, hoarse cry, which peters out in a mumble.

  She turns away and looks round the dayroom. At least they wear their own clothes, at least they brush their hair every morning. She is not ill. She knows she is not ill. She wants to run, she wants to burst through the doors out into the corridor, to sprint along it and never come back. She wants to scream, let me out, how dare you keep me here. She wants to break something, the window, that framed picture of cattle in the snow, anything. And although she wants all this, and more, Esme makes herself sit at the table again. She makes herself walk across the room, bend her legs and sit in a chair. Like a normal person. The effort of it leaves a tremble in her limbs. She breathes deeply, presses her hands to the tabletop in case anyone is looking. She has to get out of here, she has to make them let her go. She pretends to be reading through what she has written.

  And later, during her long-awaited appointment with the doctor, she tells him she is feeling better. Those are the words she has decided she must use. She must let them know that she, too, thinks she has been ill; she must acknowledge that they were right, after all. There had been something wrong with her but now she is mended. She tells herself this all the time, so that she can almost start to believe it, almost quell those shouts that say, there is nothing wrong with me, there was never anything wrong with me.

  'Better in what way?' Dr Naysmith asks, his pen poised, polished in the sunlight streaming on to his desk. Esme would like nothing more than to reach into its heat, to lay her head on his papers, to feel the burn of it on her face.

  'Just better,' she says, her mind racing. 'I ... I never cry, these days. I'm sleeping well. I'm looking forward to things.' What else, what else? 'My appetite is good. I'm ... I'm keen to get back to my studies.'

  She sees a frown appear on Dr Naysmith's face.

  'Or ... or...' she falls over herself '...or perhaps I should just like to ... to help my mother for a while. Around the house.'