The Other Mrs Walker

by Mary Paulson-Ellis

  Rape of Lucrece. How apt. Though it was the girl’s eyes that really made the point.

  Another young woman standing next to him turned with a frown. He hadn’t meant to speak out loud, but it seemed he had. The young woman was shorter than the model on display, with a rounder face and hips, pink spots already visible on her cheeks. Her hair was set in a perm, though she couldn’t have been much more than twenty-five herself. ‘Sorry, did you say something?’

  ‘Shakespeare,’ Mr Nye said, giving a slight dip of his head.

  The young woman blushed, then blinked. ‘I don’t . . .’

  ‘Never did it at school, eh?’

  The young woman was about to reply, but Mr Nye Senior had already turned to look the other way.

  School had been dull. School had been regimented. School had been a place to bear, day after day, like home now, until she could work out how to get away. Barbara, also dressed in her best but unremarked upon and dull, gazed for a moment at this vibrant man with his vibrant hair and then, like him, at her twin.

  ‘Come to the opening,’ Ruby had said when they met on their usual bench, in the usual rain. ‘It will be fun.’

  ‘I don’t know, Mrs Penny might not like it.’ Barbara had sat with her coat all buttoned and her handbag clipped shut.

  ‘Who cares what Mrs Penny thinks!’ Ruby wore a mackintosh with a belt, a black jumper rolled high up her neck. Even in the drizzle she still managed to dazzle, her slender fingers parsing an orange as though they were one and the same. ‘You’ve got to have some fun, Barbara. I’ve said so a thousand times. Come and work for Mrs Withers. I’m sure she won’t mind.’

  Barbara watched the long curl of orange peel as it fell, unregarded, to the wet ground. Out, out, she thought, into the light, into the world, where one can eat an orange whenever and however one likes. ‘I can’t,’ she said. ‘Mrs Penny doesn’t have anyone else.’

  ‘She has Tony.’

  ‘Tony won’t last forever.’

  ‘Neither will you.’

  Barbara blinked as a raindrop caught her eyelash, the world suddenly blurred. She could imagine what Mrs Penny might say if she went to join the opposition. ‘Good riddance to bad rubbish!’ Just as she had done all those years before when they discovered Ruby had gone east, preferring to carry buckets at Mrs Withers’ behest rather than their own.

  Even then, Barbara had wondered if Mrs Penny meant her too.

  ‘What’s she ever done for you, anyway?’ Ruby was sucking at a segment of orange as though it was a lollipop.

  Barbara stared at the fruit between Ruby’s lips. Mrs Penny had never left, that’s what she had done for Barbara. Three storeys and a coal-hole, all still intact. The only person who actually needed Barbara, whereas Ruby had never needed anyone but herself.

  Still, where had it actually got Barbara now that she was grown? A job opening the door to stricken women, taking their coats and carrying out buckets of their left-overs that they couldn’t face themselves. For a moment, sitting in the rain with a piece of orange sticky in her hand, Barbara felt all hot and clumsy. Ruby was right. What was she, after all, but the recipient of a lucky coronation penny that only ever fell to tails.

  ‘All right then,’ she said to her sister. ‘I will.’

  When the night came Barbara sat in her room on the highest, furthest floor and unscrewed the lid of a shiny bottle of nail polish as though it was the most precious thing of all. Barbara didn’t normally wear nail polish. It always rubbed off with the wash. But this time she painted her fingertips one by one, three careful strokes in a fashionable shade – Pink Goddess – to match the pink of her cheeks. When she was finished she sat on the edge of the narrow bed waving her hands to dry the nails off, before going downstairs to iron the best dress that she had.

  ‘Where do you think you’re going?’ Mrs Penny sat by the kitchen table sorting buttons into one box and spools of cotton into the next. She still expected to know everything about anything happening in the house in Elm Row, even though there were hardly any of the original Walker family left.

  ‘Out,’ said Barbara pressing the iron down onto more self-sewn pleats.

  ‘Who with?’

  ‘A friend.’

  Mrs Penny paused in her sorting and leaned forward in the chair to rub at her legs. ‘It’s not a boy, is it?’ She had varicose veins now, dark threads stitched through her skin.

  Barbara lifted the heavy iron and stood it on end. ‘A boy?’ she said.

  ‘A young man then. You know fine what I mean.’

  Barbara flushed, an ugly shade, curling her freshly glossed nails in towards her palms. ‘No,’ she said.

  But Mrs Penny sat back, satisfied that she had understood. ‘As long as you’re here for the morning appointments. Don’t want to have to answer the door myself.’

  Mrs Penny might be running a house for desperate women. But she didn’t want anyone to think she was desperate herself.

  Barbara lifted the dress from the ironing board and shook it out carefully. They both regarded the handmade garment: pinched waist, flared skirt, modest neckline. Not that much different from the one she’d made for the coronation all those years before. Both of them noticed that the hem was not as regular as it might have been.

  ‘You’ll need a cardigan.’ Mrs Penny always wore a cardigan. Brown, two pockets dangling by her hips. ‘Freeze to death otherwise.’

  Barbara folded the dress over her arm, taking care not to crease the skirt. ‘I won’t. I’ll be fine.’

  ‘Don’t say I didn’t warn you.’ Mrs Penny still liked to have the last word. ‘And don’t be late back, or the door’ll be locked.’

  When she left the house at 14 Elm Row that night, Barbara took a cardigan after all. Best to be prepared. She hurried to the bus stop, gloves on, coat buttoned to the neck. In her hand she clutched a purse. On her mouth she had applied her lipstick with care. Barbara had never been to an art opening before, or anything of that nature. She wasn’t sure what to expect. Either way, when she finally arrived, she had never imagined what she would see. A thousand naked Rubys staring down from every wall.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ The man next to her turned now to where she stood, a brief touch of his fingers on her arm. ‘I didn’t mean to offend.’ His lips glistened for a moment in the sparkle of the gallery spotlights as though he had been licking them clean.

  Heat prickled up and down Barbara’s arm where his fingers met her sleeve. She wished she hadn’t worn a cardigan after all. ‘No,’ she said, the small spots on her round cheeks colouring up. ‘It’s just . . .’ She waved a hand in Ruby’s direction. ‘My sister.’

  ‘Oh.’ The man was surprised.

  ‘Yes.’ Barbara took a sip from the wine glass clutched in her hand. It tasted sour. All men were surprised, one way or the other.

  ‘And you are?’ The man had removed his hand from Barbara’s arm now.

  ‘Barbara,’ she murmured into her glass. ‘Barbara Penny.’

  ‘And she is?’ The man gestured to the paintings on the wall.

  Barbara angled her head towards her naked sister, then back to where a young woman in a green dress shone bright in the centre of the room. ‘Ruby,’ she replied.

  Mr Nye Senior blinked, raised a hand to his vibrant hair to smooth down its vibrant curl. Then he began to smile. Not a matter of luck, but the right place at the right time. Such was the way of Mr Nye’s life. For he had met these girls before, in another time, at another place, their faces like small moons staring down at him from the highest, furthest floor of a tall, narrow house. And another child too, screaming, ‘Mummy! Mummy! Mummy!’ as his father (the original Nye Senior) shouted instructions in his turn. ‘Not like that. Like this. Like this!’ The woman’s bare feet twisting in his hands.

  The girls’ mother had been screaming too as they carried her out, nightgown dragging in the dust. She almost bit his father on the wrist. ‘God damn it!’ As she called out over and over, ‘No! No! No!’ until they got her into
the car.

  He had been a young man then, barely eighteen, not yet pierced by searing metal and the knowledge that one must grasp life when it came. He had just been following his father’s orders as he helped manoeuvre the woman into the back seat.

  But he did remember this. How her nightgown had concertinaed up. The revelation of her long, pale limbs. The shock of the cleft at the top, hair all curled and coarse, and that slice of flesh all glistening and pink, exposed between the crevice of her legs. William Nye had never seen beneath a woman’s clothes before then, and certainly not like that.

  As instructed, he had tried to hold the woman still against the car’s leather seats as she writhed and twisted. Blood had raced through every part of his body as he gripped on tight, pressing a crescent of small, white tattoos into her flesh. She flailed and kicked like a wild thing, hair all this way and that. He hadn’t been able to contain her, thought she must get loose, until someone at the open car door gave a slap, smack-crack, and then the woman had flopped like a dead thing, her head all crooked, her limbs all slack.

  The car door had slammed shut and they’d driven through the darkness, him sitting with the woman’s feet limp in his lap. He hadn’t tried to pull down her nightgown, or smooth her hair. Or cover up the crevice of her flesh. Instead he rode with her as she was. Exposed.

  Ruby made it through the crowd to them at last – an older man with a gleam in his face and her twin sister standing awkward in a home-made frock. She bent towards Barbara and kissed her on the cheek. Barbara started, almost pulled away. Since when did they do that? Then Ruby stood back up and waited to be introduced. ‘Barbara,’ she said. ‘How nice of you to come.’ As though she hadn’t been the one who invited her sister in the first place. ‘And this is . . . ?’ She let the sentence trickle away. All along the bottom of her frock a row of sequins winked and blinked like a thousand tiny eyes to match the startle of Ruby’s own. She smelled of oranges. And beneath that, the lingering scent of linseed oil.

  Barbara turned to introduce the man in return, but he had failed to tell her his name. ‘I’m sorry . . .’

  ‘Mr William Nye,’ he interrupted now. ‘Solicitor.’ And he held out an elegant hand.

  ‘Charmed.’ Ruby slid her own small hand into his palm, letting it rest there for a moment like an injured bird.

  Mr Nye raised Ruby’s hand to his lips and said, ‘The pleasure’s all mine.’

  Then Ruby slipped her hand away and turned to her sister once more. ‘Come outside, Barbara,’ she said. ‘I want to smoke.’

  ‘You can smoke in here.’ Mr Nye was already holding out a packet, the white tip of two cigarettes pulled clear. One for him. One for Ruby. None for Barbara with her crooked hem.

  Ruby frowned, then linked her arm through Barbara’s as though they did it every day. ‘No thanks,’ she said. ‘My sister and I prefer to be alone.’

  Outside, away from the gallery’s bright glare, down a side alley that felt much more like home, Barbara pulled out a packet of Craven A from her bag and lit two cigarettes at once. She sucked hard at the pale filters, then handed one to Ruby where she was lounging against a rough wall. ‘I didn’t know you smoked, Ruby.’ Barbara pulled the cardigan closer around her shoulders and glanced at her sister’s fingernails, where a neat neutral slick shone in the dark compared to the garish gloss of her own.

  ‘Everyone smokes.’ Ruby held the cigarette to her mouth for a small sup, before letting it hang loose at her side. ‘Besides, you never asked.’

  Barbara pulled at her own cigarette, eager for the rush. Ruby was right. Smoking was everywhere. Even Mrs Penny enjoyed an occasional Kensitas now and then when she thought there was no one to see.

  The two sisters stood side by side in the darkness, Ruby trickling smoke from her nostrils. ‘What do you think of the show?’ she said.

  Barbara flicked some ash onto the dirty ground. ‘It’s all right.’

  ‘All right?’

  ‘There’s a lot of you on display.’

  Ruby laughed. Rule number 23 – modesty in all things. ‘Does Mrs Penny know you’re here?’ she asked.

  Barbara ignored the question. ‘Does the artist pay you?’

  Ruby’s cigarette gave a gentle crackle as she inhaled. ‘That’s one way of putting it.’

  Barbara frowned and inhaled too. Rule number 5 – always make sure one is paid the going rate.

  ‘He said I could have one of his new paintings, though.’ Ruby tapped ash away to her right, a small shower of grey.

  ‘What are they like?’

  ‘Small. And brown.’

  This time they both laughed. No one who had ever met Ruby could possibly describe her in such a way.

  ‘Are they valuable?’ Barbara couldn’t imagine art being anything but the province of the rich.

  ‘I shouldn’t think so. He’s devastatingly poor.’

  ‘Why do you do it then?’

  ‘Because he asked me.’

  Barbara shivered inside her cardigan. This was forever the difference between them. She would always say ‘No’; Ruby would always say ‘Yes’.

  ‘Besides, he might be useful in the future.’ Ruby blew a small cloud of smoke up into the night air. ‘Anyway, enough about him. What do you think of Mr Nye?’

  ‘Mr Nye?’ Barbara shrugged. But she could still feel the tingle of his fingers where they had pressed through wool to her skin.

  ‘I’ve met him before, you know.’ Ruby rubbed at the sprinkle of ash on the ground with the tip of her green shoe.

  Barbara drew smoke hard into her lungs. ‘He didn’t say.’

  ‘He probably doesn’t remember.’

  ‘Where was it then?’

  ‘At Mrs Withers’, of course.’

  Eight years since the young queen was crowned, and still Mrs Withers preferred to answer the door herself. ‘Just in case,’ she would say. ‘Should I wish to refuse.’

  Ruby’s job had always been to wait through the back, down the corridor in the dark, a shadow person holding coats one moment, scrubbing out stained enamel bowls the next. She would wait as the bell rang, watching Mrs Withers hurry to survey her guests as though she hadn’t expected them to call. ‘Mr and Mrs Smith,’ they would murmur as they entered.

  The difference with him had been the voice. Those elegant vowels, loud and precise. And the fact that he wasn’t afraid to announce himself as himself.

  ‘Mr Nye,’ he said.

  ‘Of course.’ Mrs Withers had even given a slight dip of her head as she stood aside to let him pass.

  Ruby knew at once what it meant. This man was money, from his thick hair to the polished tips of his shoes. Here was a man who paid – for inconvenience, for things best left unsaid. What mattered to him would not be the cost, but that he got what he wanted first.

  From where she stood in the dark Ruby could practically taste it, the banknotes passing from one hand to the next in the front room, followed by the ritual of whisky poured into cut glass. She had seen it through the keyhole many times, though she had never yet been invited inside. Eight years, and still Mrs Withers did not trust her with those grubby pieces of paper. Though she encouraged Ruby’s liking for spirits every single night.

  Just inside the front door on the cold tiles of the hall, the girl who had arrived with Mr Nye faltered as though afraid to progress. She was dressed as if she might be going to church, in pale-yellow gloves and a matching hat. Ruby emerged from her place in the shadows trying not to laugh. She couldn’t remember the last time she had worn a hat, if ever. It was more the kind of thing her sister Barbara might own.

  Ruby touched the girl on the arm. ‘Hello,’ she said. ‘I’m Ruby.’ The girl was trembling all over. She seemed even younger than Ruby had been when she first came to stay in Mrs Withers’ house, nothing to her name but a Brazil nut and a towel turned grey by the wash. Ruby held out her hand. ‘Shall I take your gloves?’ she said.

  The girl looked at her hands, startled, as though she hadn’t even
realized she had put the gloves on. Her face was bleached, nothing but shadows and shapes. She pressed a bag to her stomach as though to protect it. Too late, thought Ruby, too late. ‘Perhaps your hat?’ she said.

  The girl gave a quick shake of her head as though if Ruby took her gloves or hat she might take something else more precious too. Then she began to weep.

  ‘She was only sixteen.’ Ruby plucked a tiny strand of tobacco from her lip. ‘At least, that’s what Mrs Withers said. I thought she might have been even younger.’

  Barbara drew a thick slug of smoke into her lungs. ‘Mrs Penny wouldn’t allow it.’ Rule number 42 – married ladies only. Even those who had managed to get themselves pregnant in ways they wished they had not. Barbara had a sudden urge for a glass of rum to sweeten the filth as it all washed down.

  Ruby laughed. ‘I bet there’s not much money in that now Tony’s getting on. No one to charm them onto the chaise, either before or after.’

  Barbara shrugged. Ruby was right. Women didn’t come flocking to Elm Row in quite the way they once had. Tony was huge now. His fingers were stained. He drank too much. But he still threw winks at Barbara from his place by the stove – the only man who ever had.

  ‘You should ask him for a job, Barbara.’ Ruby took a last pull at her dwindling cigarette.

  ‘Who, Tony?’

  ‘Mr Nye, of course.’

  ‘Why would I do that?’

  ‘He’s a solicitor.’

  Barbara frowned. ‘What use would a solicitor have for me?’

  ‘You’re a drudge, aren’t you? Might as well drudge for him as for Mrs Penny. At least you’d get a desk.’

  ‘Why don’t you ask him?’

  Ruby tossed the remains of her cigarette into the gutter. ‘Maybe I will, but it won’t be about a job in his office.’

  Barbara dropped her cigarette as well, two bright little stubs rolling together in the dark. ‘What do you mean?’

  Ruby stretched out her elegant shoe, crushing out both little flares. ‘You’ll see. He’s worth much more than that to me.’

  Back inside the gallery, hot now and filled with a fug of alcohol and smoke, Mr William Nye Senior stood in front of a painting. Ruby with her arms all this way and that. Ruby with her legs thrown down. Ruby with her startling eyes staring right back. The kind of girl one could fall in love with, if one didn’t take care.