The Other Mrs Walker

by Mary Paulson-Ellis

  ‘Are you doing whatever Mrs Hamill says?’ Barbara’s voice had an edge to it, as though she knew Margaret must already have disobeyed (which, of course, she had).

  ‘Yes,’ said Margaret, hoping there was no sign that she hadn’t eaten anything but chips for the last four days. ‘Does it hurt?’ she ventured, because what else was there to ask, other than a question that might open up the past?

  Barbara’s eyes were like two piss holes in a pile of grey snow. ‘A little,’ she said, shifting her body as though it too was made out of the same china as the grubby cherub. ‘But it’ll be better soon.’

  Margaret handed over a bar of Fruit and Nut that she had bought with the remains of the pound note. ‘Would you like some?’

  ‘Thank you, dear.’ Barbara broke off a square before handing it back. ‘You have the rest.’

  Together they ate their small pieces of chocolate while contemplating the gauzy yellow curtain that surrounded the bed. Margaret swallowed hers and wondered if it would be OK to have another piece. ‘Will you be home soon?’

  ‘Soon enough.’ Barbara seemed wistful for a moment, as though five days in a hospital bed was the only holiday she had ever had. ‘Then it will be a new beginning.’

  Margaret wasn’t sure what that meant. She held up a crumpled paper bag containing another treat bought with her pocket money from the little Pakistani grocer that was new to the street. ‘Would you like an orange?’

  ‘No, thank you, dear.’ Her mother grimaced then, skin carved out about her mouth. ‘Too difficult to peel.’

  When they showed Margaret her birth certificate several years later in the foyer of Somerset House, there was a great blank in the space where the father’s name should be. So it had been the immaculate conception after all. Our father who art in heaven. Or over the hills and far away, just as her mother had said. Though by then Margaret knew that whatever had gone on, it had definitely been far removed from God.

  ‘What does it mean if his name’s not on it?’ she asked, just to be sure.

  ‘Oh, all sorts, dear. It’s very common.’ The woman had smiled at her in a way that suggested she had heard this question many times and knew what was at stake. ‘The man might have died, perhaps. Or maybe he and your mother were never married. Have you asked her?’

  Barbara, womb still intact, pulling the Hoover out, pressing her foot to the red button, starting up the vacuum’s roar once more. ‘Good riddance to bad rubbish.’ The only other piece of information about her father Margaret ever got.

  ‘No,’ she said.

  ‘Or he might have been married already,’ the woman smiled. ‘To someone else instead.’

  So Margaret asked them to look up Barbara’s marriage certificate too, just in case. But that didn’t exist either. ‘So sorry,’ said the woman, a pussycat bow made out of rayon drooping from her neck. ‘Sometimes that’s just the way it is.’

  ‘It’s fine,’ said Margaret. And in some ways it was. She’d never had a father, so what was there to miss? Besides, she’d been brought up in Edinburgh. In that city, ‘Mrs’ was as much a statement of intent as a matter of fact.

  Margaret left Somerset House with nothing but her black boots and a borrowed satchel swinging across her hip, walking out into a wave of London traffic, a city full of chatter and smoke. She knew then that just like the excising of her mother’s womb a few years before, this was the end of something. But also a beginning, perhaps. She looked about, to her left and her right, then took a large brown penny from her pocket and prepared to toss. Heads to the east. Tails to the west. Either way, she was seventeen now. Time to start life afresh.

  Back down in London thirty years hence, and Margaret continued her pursuit of the dead. Moyra. Anne. Rose. Or Mary. A daughter for Clementine Walker, perhaps. Someone out there who had no idea that the woman who gave birth to her was now lying dead in the north.

  As she searched, Margaret wondered if she ought to ring Barbara, let her know that she was safe. Then she remembered her mother’s expression when Mr Wingrove had called from West Leith about the indigent funeral rota. Outraged. As though to answer the phone would be to invite the Apocalypse into her life – a troublesome daughter, perhaps, returned from the south, neither of them able to admit to the mistakes of the past. Besides, Margaret knew that Barbara had always been ex-directory, in more ways than one. So what difference would this time make? Also, Margaret understood something else now that she had never understood before. Children were easily acquired. And just as easily sloughed off. Two silver-haired strangers in crumpled Technicolor had taught her that.

  As though to prove her right, there was no sign of a child for Clementine Walker in the steady microfiche haze of the Chelsea Register Office computer log. Nor on any of Margaret’s searches that combined Mrs Walker’s name and date of birth. Just like Margaret’s own clouded past, the real substance of her client’s life was lost to the world in all its width and breadth. No husband or offspring. Not even a dog. Just two dead siblings, a father who vanished from the records, and a mother who went mad.

  The clerk just shrugged when she asked. ‘It was common, then,’ he said. ‘War, you know. Lots of people moved around. Records got destroyed. She might have been bombed out. She might have got married and changed her name. She might have gone abroad. Plenty of them did that.’

  Out of curiosity Margaret looked up the lost Walker twins too. They weren’t strictly relevant, of course, but there was something about those little deaths that she wanted to mark in some way. She found them in the third quarter of 1933, July–September. Two Walkers, initials A. and D. Lost one summer’s evening, never to return. Margaret stared at them for a moment, two little deaths recorded on a long list. Once here, now gone, the centre of a family scattered into a void.

  Then she turned the microfiche off with a blink.

  The Walker family – born, married, died – all complete now. A birth certificate for a Dorothea Stirling, dated 1900. A record of Dorothea and Alfred’s wedding in 1922. Two pieces of paper from 1933 registering the demise of two little twins. An admissions form consigning Dorothea to the madhouse and another to mark her death. And from 1925, a certificate marking the birth of a Clementine Amelia Walker. Margaret’s dead client, risen again.

  It was enough paperwork for Margaret to close the case for good. At least, that was what she thought. Just one more thing to do before she could claim her invoice for services rendered and begin her new life in the south.

  1963

  She arrived on the doorstep with a basket and a rug. Not much more than when she’d left over ten years before, except that now she was no longer slim enough to fit into any of Clementine’s clothes. Barbara opened the door expecting a hawker trying his luck. But in his place she found Ruby, trying her luck too.

  ‘What are you doing here, Ruby?’ she said. It wasn’t really a question.

  Ruby lounged in the shadows, a step or two below. ‘Well, that’s a nice welcome for your long-lost sister returned at last.’

  Barbara pulled the door behind her until it was nearly closed, nothing but a needle of light thrown out onto the step. ‘You know you can’t stay here. My landlady won’t allow visitors.’

  ‘What’s she got to do with it?’ Ruby shifted her basket from one arm to the other. ‘You pay your rent, don’t you?’ Ruby always had liked to argue. Nothing changed there.

  ‘What do you want, anyway?’ Barbara glanced up at the dark windows rising three floors to the top. She couldn’t see them, but she knew they were there. All the other single girls, their faces pressed to the glass.

  Ruby put a hand to her back as though it had begun to ache. ‘I need some help,’ she said, coat falling open. ‘I came to you first.’

  Ruby had fled to the artist first, a few streets away from Mrs Withers’ house, down a dirty alleyway and up a narrow stair. She had stood panting at the top, palm against plaster that crumbled at her touch, waiting for a man with paint embedded in his fingernails to answer her kn
ock. She heard him before she saw him, crossing bare floorboards on his paint-covered feet, a jangle of music trickling out from beneath the door, the scent of linseed oil trailing in his wake.

  ‘My bucket girl!’ The artist had laughed when he opened the door. ‘What brings you here?’ His beard had grown out. His hair was longer. A cigarette hung from his paint-stained fingers, burned almost to a stub.

  Ruby smoothed a rat’s tail of her own hair between finger and thumb. ‘I was wondering if you needed me to do some work.’

  The painter flicked ash towards where she stood, glancing at the swelling beneath Ruby’s dress. ‘I’m sorry, darling. I don’t do work like that any more.’

  Ruby’s cheeks flushed. ‘Well, perhaps I could stay for a while. Until you are ready to work again.’

  The artist shrugged. ‘But where would you sleep?’

  ‘On the chaise longue.’

  ‘The chaise longue is occupied at present.’ And the artist laughed again, the way he used to laugh over her.

  From inside the studio Ruby smelled turpentine and paint now. And underneath that something like jasmine wafting along the floor. The music tumbled towards them in a soft, continuous flow. She put her hand up against the doorframe. ‘What’s her name?’

  The painter stepped out and closed the door behind him so that Ruby could not see in, and the person inside could not see out. ‘Now you know I don’t do names,’ he said.

  ‘Could you lend me something then? Just enough for a couple of months.’ The curve of Ruby’s belly bulged between them, hard as a bell.

  The painter spread his fingers as though to show how money ran through them like water through a sieve. ‘You know me.’

  ‘I’ll give you back the painting.’ Ruby began to rummage in her basket. ‘You could sell it.’

  ‘That brown thing.’ The artist laughed again, flicked more ash to the floor in a small grey drift. ‘Not my best work.’

  Ruby stopped rummaging and stared at this man who had seen her with her legs all this way, then that. It was the artist who looked away first. ‘You should try your benefactor,’ he said, closing the door behind him. ‘He bought everything of yours that he could.’

  Mrs Withers had thrown Ruby out when she began to show. At least that was the story Ruby liked to tell. ‘The clients wouldn’t like it,’ Mrs Withers had said, pouring a large whisky and drinking it down in one toss.

  Ruby stood by the cold parlour fire and stared at the empty glass in Mrs Withers’ hand. She would have liked a large whisky – that tail of flame chasing down her throat.

  ‘When were you going to tell me?’ Mrs Withers dug for the string of pearls buried in the flesh around her throat. She had got much fatter over the years, ever since Ruby had arrived to carry all the buckets to and fro.

  Ruby shrugged and stared at where, beneath her floral wrap, Mrs Withers’ stomach spread out like dough. Under her own skirt Ruby’s skin stretched tight.

  Mrs Withers poured another slug of whisky and tossed that down in one go too. ‘I’m not a charity, you know.’ She wiped at her wet lips with the back of one hand. ‘If you’d told me sooner there might have been something we could do.’

  Mrs Withers probed at her neck with a delicate fingertip as though searching for something to hold on to against the bad luck coming her way. Somewhere inside Ruby something scrabbled for a moment: a small, blind creature exploring its new home.

  ‘Then again . . .’ Mrs Withers stopped digging, two fat fingers caressing a small pearl at last. ‘It might still be possible.’ She peered at Ruby, eyes glimmering in the evening light. ‘Even at your stage it can always be arranged.’

  Ruby departed the same night. Out of the front door, nothing left behind. She took with her the basket she had brought when she first arrived, a painting that was dirty in more ways than one and a tarnished silver teaspoon with an apostle attached to the end. Also a Brazil nut with the Ten Commandments etched into its shell. She arrived at her sister’s doorstep a few hours later, darkness pressing in on all sides.

  Barbara’s bedsit was tiny compared to the house where Mrs Penny and Tony still held sway. But unlike 14 Elm Row, it was all Barbara’s own. Smelling of bacon rind fried over gas rings, of cheap coffee and even cheaper scent, it was a haven of subdivided rooms and shallow baths twice a week. Every night, mice ran across every ceiling. Every morning the landlady began her assault on another bottle of brandy. Every evening young men in narrow trousers came to call. It wasn’t special, but it was Barbara’s own promised land, at last.

  Barbara’s wage as a drudge in a solicitor’s office was enough for one room and an alcove. What more could she need? In the alcove, behind a curtain, lay the bed with its damp and lumpen mattress. Above the fireplace, on the mantelpiece, there were two teacups stacked up alongside a bowl and a plate. Above them was a mirror, foxed and spotted, hanging from a chain. On the opposite side of the room, a double-ring hotplate and a sink for washing both dishes and clothes. The walls were papered with something that had once been patterned with roses, indiscernible now beneath a sheen of grease. The single gable window was surrounded by cracked and peeling paint, but the glass was bright and clear, polished with vinegar and newspaper by Barbara once a month. It was hung with a pair of net curtains, a startling white against the grey of everything else. From outside, far below, there was the constant sound of children echoing up from where they played in the street.

  Ruby and Barbara, twins but not a bit alike, stood in the doorway – one young woman with thick arms, the other with a small creature fluttering inside. Ruby looked at Barbara’s room and saw what she could get. Barbara looked at Ruby and saw what she had lost. Two sisters on the threshold of a new life. Barbara had neglected a chance to help her sister once before when Ruby had asked. She didn’t need to be asked twice.

  Three months, give or take, to wash everything clean. Sing the songs their mother should have sung them. Cook the meals their mother should have cooked. Three months for them to lie together of a night once again, Barbara with her back pressed to the alcove wall, Ruby with her back pressed to her twin. Three months to build a new life together out of the old.

  It never was going to be enough time.

  One month in, and it was Barbara who went to work every day with her hat and her gloves, returning each evening with packages of food wrapped in greaseproof paper. Cream crackers and bottles of milk. A loaf of bread. Three tomatoes and some slices of ham. In return, Ruby spent all day lazing in the alcove or wandering in and out of all the other subdivided rooms, bringing home her own little gifts. Soap wrapped in paper. Perfume in a bottle with a glass stopper. A piece of patterned fabric for a tablecloth. Once even two oranges, peeled and segmented, laid out on a plate.

  One month, and Barbara hunched by the gas fire sewing at something that was meant to turn into a baby’s smock. ‘Will it be a boy or a girl, do you think?’ she said. Above her, on the mantelpiece, a small brown painting looked down at where she sat – the only thing Ruby had brought with her that she had not taken from someone else first.

  ‘It will be a girl,’ said Ruby, standing at the window, hand pressed to spine, gazing down at a circle of children skipping in the street. Beside her the table was strewn with breadcrumbs and puddles of tea, a magazine with a glossy cover, the corners all folded and ripped. Dirty cutlery clogged the sink. Toothbrushes stained with white stood in one of their only two mugs. The bed lay rumpled, pillows flung all about, a chiffon blouse in a crumple on the floor. Ruby was supposed to tidy the room each morning, but it only ever seemed to get more cluttered.

  ‘How do you know it will be a girl?’ Barbara wrestled with her needle. The fabric was stiff. Totally unsuited to anything a small child might need.

  Ruby ran a finger along the grimy windowsill, then rubbed the black spot of dirt onto the fabric of her skirt. ‘I just do.’

  ‘If it is a girl . . .’ Barbara was still a person who liked to be precise, ‘what will you call her?’

&
nbsp; ‘Clementine, of course.’

  ‘Clementine?’ Barbara looked up for a moment, frowning, came eye to eye with the small brown painting and looked quickly away. ‘Clementine Penny?’ Even to her this sounded odd.

  ‘Clementine Walker, of course,’ said Ruby. ‘We must reclaim our roots.’

  Barbara kept her head down. She poked hard with her needle through the stiff fabric, piercing her thumb. They didn’t have any roots except Mrs Penny, as far as she was concerned.

  Two months, and Ruby stood by the small gas ring burning some kind of soup when Barbara came in from work. ‘What is that smell?’ Barbara said, gloved hand to mouth, hair in disarray, that sick feeling she’d had for some weeks now in her stomach.

  ‘It’s French,’ said Ruby, frowning at the black specks rising to the top of the pan amongst a shimmer of hot fat. ‘Everyone’s making it.’

  ‘Where did you get the ingredients?’ A pot stuffed with onions and beef stock that made Barbara want to retch. It reminded her of someone crying in a distant room, no one coming to answer her call.

  Ruby waved a wooden spoon in the air, a small shower of brown droplets speckling everything they met. ‘Oh, here and there. I got a tin of Ambrosia for afters.’

  Barbara hated rice pudding. Mrs Penny always made them eat it cold when they were young. She peeled her gloves away from her sweaty hands and peered into the small cupboard that doubled as their food safe. It was empty, apart from a tin of peas she had bought some weeks before. There had been two oranges there only that morning. And half a loaf of bread.

  She stood up again, pressing a hand in towards her waist. ‘You know we can’t afford anything fancy,’ she said. Food was a source of anxiety for Barbara (along with everything else).

  ‘What’s life if it isn’t fancy?’ Ruby dipped a small, tarnished teaspoon into the pot. She blew across the surface of the thin liquid.

  ‘Where’s the bread?’ Barbara removed a pair of stockings from the back of a chair so that she could sit down.