Peter was silent. The music was definable. A muted, big band sound.
He leant forward, imagining Marianne Shearer waltzing across the room. Did they roll back the carpet? Did anyone hear? Did she laugh at their charade? Did they laugh at one another, did she tease him and which of them dictated what they did?
‘What did you talk about?’
‘Ah. There was an unspoken rule that we didn’t dwell on anything unpleasant. Bar gossip, a little character assassination here and there, the nicer things we had seen and done. Music, news, clothes, the latest abominable fashions. I would find her something new to take home with her sometimes, to wear next time. She was a collector, so was I; I collected for her and paid in clothes. She really was the most glorious undemanding mistress. She was a reason to shop. Every evening a joy, a respite from ugliness for both of us. I’m sure you can understand. You must need it yourself, don’t you?’
Yes, not quite like that, a walk in the park.
Peter took another covert look around. Other than the sound system there was no machinery, no TV: no doubt the Lover abhorred such things, too.
‘How did you make contact between times?’
The Lover looked surprised.
‘Contact? Why should I want regular contact? I wanted nothing to do with the ghastly criminal side of her life. We made the next appointment before we parted and always kept it. She had my number for emergencies. There was only once, I think.’
‘Did she ever talk about her work?’
‘Rarely. Sometimes. Mostly she left it behind. Sometimes we danced for hours and that was all. I was her thing of beauty and she was mine. It was as if when we were here, we had all the time in the world.’
Ugliness banned. Peter recognised the tempo of the music just before it drew to an end. A quickstep, dancing music. Somehow he imagined it would be Strauss, for waltzing. He was in the wrong century and the Lover was addicted to the decades of his youth. The reverie and the storytelling ended with the music. Peter wondered if at the end of her weekly star turn, Ms Shearer took herself home in a taxi, or was sent away with a new dress. It sounded to him like a peculiar, repressive abusive fantasy, but what did he know, only that he pitied her when perhaps he should not. Old Moses here would return to his fuller life, restored and benign. She might return to hers refreshed and dignified, still precious, desired and cherished, a creature of loveliness. Perhaps these were moments of glory and perfection that could make her immune to need. Enough. She would go back to fighting and winning and guarding a collection of clothes, and, once a week, she would be beautifully perfect. Each to his own. It made him sad. What about the joy of talking in bed about anything and everything, planning a future with five children? Daring to love someone surely meant venturing out and shouting about it.
I was her thing of beauty and she was mine.
The Lover seemed to sense that the narrative had come to an end and with it his self-indulgence. He could see Peter struggling to absorb what he might not be able to comprehend.
‘Please don’t judge, Mr Friel, you’re far too young and it’s so unbecoming. We all find our moments of contentment, whichever way we can. Don’t judge her or me by your own, cheap standards. We had ours, and kept them. Thank you for listening.’
Peter bowed his head. He was a born listener, hated to be thanked for listening, because being invited to listen was a privilege. It occurred to him that the narrative was unique. Marianne could never have told anyone about these glamorous moments; nor could the Lover. He was not judging, except that such necessary, lonely secretiveness appalled him.
‘I should like to come back, sir, if I may, and I wouldn’t be indulging you, only myself. But for the moment, I need to know what Marianne Shearer left with you. I need to know what she was like before she killed herself.’
The mood changed in the absence of the music. The Lover turned his leonine head towards the mirror on the wall and ran his fingers through his magnificent white hair. Did these two exist to admire one another, or simply to admire him? Plain Jane with sculpted body, brushed up nicely in sophisticated frocks, kneeling to suck cock of an old Adonis? Could do worse. There must have been Love, there must have been. Peter could not bear it otherwise.
The Lover was suddenly businesslike and efficient, but still retaining his place, centre stage, the designer not only of clothes, but of his own life. Colder than an ice sculpture, equally impressive. A man resuming his alter ego as lawyer, albeit reluctantly.
‘Of course. I have something here. Not her goods and chattels, you understand, she kept nothing with me, there simply isn’t room – she came and she went, that was the arrangement. She brought herself and left no trace of herself. That was what we both wanted.’
‘Both’ . . . I hope it was both.
‘And didn’t talk about ugliness? About cases, clients, winning, losing, rapists, paedophiles, gangsters, drug runners, pornographers, her stock-in-trade?’
‘Very little. She alluded to it, sometimes. Said there was nothing she wouldn’t defend, as long as there was the slightest chance of winning. I applauded her for it. I liked her craftiness, her lack of sentimental morality and her good, thick skin. All I know is that the last big case upset her. When was that? Last summer, it was hot and she was cold. She was distraite. Not herself. It was as if,’ he said, laughingly, ‘as if she had acquired the inconvenience of a conscience.’
‘Does conscience have obvious symptoms?’ Peter asked.
‘Like a rash, or a pimple on the nose? I don’t think so. I would have seen, since she would always expose every inch of herself. It was the fact that she was so preoccupied.’
‘You told Thomas Noble she was doing research into her own family history, and it upset her.’
‘Yes, so I did. What an attentive little queer he is.’
‘There was talk that she was going to write a book. That she was commissioned to write one about her cases, dishing the dirt on everyone.’
‘She would never have done it,’ the Lover said. ‘No one wants the truth, especially her.’
He took a deep gulp of the wine, moved across and turned on the music again. This time it was Cole Porter.
‘She was silent in my arms for six months. Thinner, easier to dress. I know she was moving house. I know she hoped I would come to her, rather than her always to me. I said no, and then she said, there’s something I want you to do for me. I said why? She said, because the child I once said was yours was never terminated, It was born and given away. Adopted, but alive. Marianne said she kept dreaming that she had seen It. Or, someone who was exactly like what she imagined that child would have become. I have no idea if she approved of this spectre, or if it was a vision that appalled her. I suspect the latter, hoped it was the former. In any event, it distressed her mightily. She was convinced she had done this person great harm.’
The Lover gazed at Peter intently, taking in every detail he might have missed on the initial inspection, although this time his regard was almost fond.
‘I did think that the creature of her imagining might be you, although I now see it’s impossible.’ He smiled. ‘I can’t see any son of Marianne’s, or indeed mine, wearing a suit as ill-fitting as that. No insult intended: I appreciate the effort you made to wear it. Nor does she appear to have done you any harm. Don’t lawyers wear decent suits these days?’
Peter laughed, amazed by such attention to detail. Very Marianne Shearer. These two would have had such fun sitting out in public, watching the passers-by, but instead hid away and merely reported to one another the stylistic horrors of the ugly present.
‘There’s a huge advantage in a wig and gown, sir. It doesn’t much matter what you wear beneath; a suit, yes, but any old suit will do. This one was borrowed, but I’m told the cloth is good. This baby . . . this child, how old would it be now? And did you believe her?’
Two questions in one. He could tell it was irritating and watched the Lover pausing to arrange his answers in order.
/> ‘The child would be about your age, thirtyish, I suppose? Hence my optimism about your identity. Yes, I believed her, because she believed herself, but whether said infant still existed or had ever existed except in her mind, was another matter. I also considered that she might well have reached the age of fantasising about what might have been. There comes a discontented stage when one’s achievements, however considerable, are simply not enough and one dwells on what one cannot have.’ He shrugged. ‘Both sexes have these menopausal morbidities. Latterly, she kept asking me about my children, what they were like; she’d never have done that before. It was none of her business.’
‘Just as this . . . child, was none of yours?’
Peter had moved his chair to sit nearer. They could have touched.
‘No. Except for the fact that I wanted to establish beyond doubt that the child was not mine. I encouraged her to trace it, and she had all the means to do so. I believe she did exactly that, over several months. Getting closer, she would say, getting closer, and then I would change the subject. The last time I saw her, she said she had found two distinct possibilities. She refused to say more. She looked exquisite. A Jean Muir dress, early seventies, not my favourite epoch, but quite wonderful. We danced, Mr Friel, we had better things to do.’
Peter felt hot in this room, a feverish reaction to the almost laughable callousness of the Lover, who had risen, busily, but as elegantly as ever, to fetch a small case from behind where he sat. The case was pigskin, with buckles. He sat back in his chair with the case on his lap, his left foot tapping in time to distant music.
‘The instructions,’ Peter murmured.
‘Arrived on the day she made the front page of the newspaper,’ the Lover said, without emotion. ‘We were supposed to meet that evening. I saw the newspaper first, came anyway because I thought it must be a mistake. The instructions were here when I arrived. The least I could do was follow them to the letter. It hasn’t been difficult. She was very precise.’
He handed Peter a photocopied, typed sheet, and then shut the satchel and fastened the buckles, as if to say, that’s all you’re going to get for the moment. Peter read a document that could have been written in code.
Sure now I know who it is who’s haunting me. I can’t bear it, Lover, I can’t.
There’s 2 of them.
Better be buried before anyone knows.
Wait a week before contacting Thos Noble @ L Inn Fields. (tel no on list, over.) Speak to Peter Friel re anything psonal. More dogged, might write the book, good at guessing.
All in transcript, one copy anyway. Can’t remember which one. I put the reasons in my own transcript.
U don’t want to know why. Only I know I’ve never done anything good, bt as bad things go, this takes the ticket.
The Storage place (no is on list) will wait for instructions from you to send things on where they belong. Quote ref QCANl/609, they had address. Do this 10th.
Bye, Lover. It was never yrs, but I was. Only one I can trust, because you’ve been as cruel as me.
Sorry, fgt you don’t do text. It gets into spelling.
PS. Don’t let man called R Boyd in. A life trasher. Give other parcel to PF, no, R wld kill him. Tell him to find good journalist? Tell the truth about Boyd. Get the bastard. Tell someone it wasn’t all my fault.
While Peter was reading, the Lover turned up the music. Peggy Lee, belting out I’m a WOMAN, W-O-M-A-N, Say it again. Say it AGAIN.
‘What other parcel?’ Peter shouted into the sudden volume of noise. He was looking for the bulky case out of which that single sheet had appeared, but it had vanished, and the Lover was waltzing all by himself, across the floor, his polished shoes gleaming.
‘It’s on the way to you,’ he said, with an over-the-shoulder smile. ‘Second class post. That’s all for now, dear lady, goodnight.’
To Peter’s embarrassment, the Lover bowed like a courtier. ‘Go away,’ he said, ‘and let me dream of her. Let me do a little cross-examination of myself to music.’
On that note, Peter left. He felt as if he was running away.
Henrietta Joyce was where she needed to be. Safe at home, doing what she wanted to do best. Making something out of nothing. Sewing, cleaning and mending, the most absorbing activities she had ever found, herself her mother’s daughter. She had let herself in through the front door, raced up to the top of the house, tearing off her grubby coat. She stashed the bag back in the kitchen. In the tiny bathroom, she scrubbed her whole body clean, found her favourite warm bathrobe, the one in Liberty print with a soft towel lining which made her feel dressed, descended the stairs to the dressing room with a bottle of wine. She locked the door to the room behind her. Hen hated locking doors. It was against nature, but natural this evening. Once she was seated at the table in her warm room, insulated by the comfort of colourful cloth, she breathed easier. She displaced the taste of whisky with a mouthful of warm red wine.
A failed errand, a mugging. A feeling of having escaped something which energised her. Hen wanted to work. If she did not get back to work soon, she would be bankrupt. A forgiving bank manager would only go so far. She had no money for stock, even the cheapest kind. Work was the panacea for all ills. Work with her hands gave permission for the thoughts in her mind to percolate and assemble themselves into something like order, possibly even to the extent of forming conclusions. Work cleared the mind and let it fill again at its own speed. Like draining dirty water out of a bath to fill it with clean, the equivalent of draining the solvent out of the tank downstairs to see what residue remained, discovering that it had done the work and given up the information about what had made the stain. The solvent was working, the dead moth eggs would drop out. Pacing up and down had the opposite effect. She was seriously sorry for anyone who could not take refuge in work. Get busy.
Nothing came clean unless she was busy.
She was yearning to make something new, starting from scratch. She was a self-taught, mother-taught dressmaker, good at cobbling together something from nothing, not a trained designer, but she could try. She was a craftsperson who belonged in the back room, messing about. This time she was going to start at the beginning. Hen was imagining a garment that might have suited Marianne Shearer.
Supposing she was sitting over there, next to the tailor’s dummy, saying make me something. Make me a dress to die for, sorry, die in.
I would ask her what she wanted, Hen thought. That’s what I always do. Ask, and find out what they don’t want, in order to discover what they really do. Marianne Shearer was refusing to speak. Just something gorgeous then. Vintage cloth, definitely no frills, streamlined. Not a shroud. You know the colours. Fit for a Scorpio. Do you have a picture of what you want, a photograph, perhaps? You’ve been looking and admiring all your life, haven’t you? You dressed up as a child and spent all your adult life wearing a uniform. Hen jotted down the rough measurements she was guessing and then quickly started to cut the pattern of a bodice from brown paper. It would be simple, with all the detail round the neck. Not a costume, something dramatic to go with the skirt.
She laid the paper pattern on a flattened roll of lightweight cambric. Ideal for cutting a template for the customer to try for size. A pound a metre, different weights, Hen always had muslin for wrapping and cambric for cutting. The material was clean and stiff, like paper; it would hold line and shape without drooping, crisp enough to show errors in the shape which a drape would disguise. She dressed the dummy with one half of the cambric bodice and started to fashion a collar. The collar would be like a fan, which stood up at the back of the head, making a frame. It would be a foil for the pleated fabric of the bloodstained skirt, almost like the ruff framing the head of a medieval queen, but not white; red, purple, even black. Yes, a black ruff would work. She liked moulage, making something on the dummy rather than on a flat surface. The real designers would have a series of dummies tailor-made for each rich client. She was not a designer; she was messing about. By the early hours of
the morning, she had a cambric pattern for Ms Shearer’s jacket. The line was severe, the upstanding collar a piece of sheer frivolity. She would stiffen the cambric with starch.
Always make it in cambric, try it for size, make another paper pattern, do it again and again, fitting it to the body, the dummy, the body, long before taking scissors to cut into a priceless piece of cloth. A stiff satin would do well; a tight-fitting bodice above a free-flowing skirt. The customer would have to walk tall and hold her breath. A jacket for standing in rather than sitting, or eating. Hen had often thought there was a breed of designers who actually hated women and wished to punish them via the discomfort of their clothes. This garment was not designed for comfort, but then neither was the client who would want to wear it. It might never get further than cambric or paper.
She looked at the time, refreshed and weary. No thoughts had assembled themselves, but at least she was functioning. The ghost of Marianne Shearer melted away. Hen let herself out of the room and went downstairs. Soak the collar template in starch down there, check the place over the way she always did before sleep, even when she was aching for sleep. Wishing sometimes that moral dilemmas were soluble in chemical solvents and only presented the same problems as stains.
Ms Shearer’s skirt was where she had left it this morning. The tiny fragments she had cut from the inside of the hem had soaked all day without the slightest alteration in the colour; a successful experiment showing that this solvent was safe for the rest. The light in here was bright and the bare room was cold and cheerless after the warmth upstairs, despite the sweet antiseptic smell. The lace cleaned yesterday was dry. The skirt hung like a brilliant flag. She took a last look round, thinking the holiday is over, the work will be coming back soon.
The newly cleaned, de-infested teddy bears sat where they had sat drying for days. Angel’s old teddy bears, to be restored for Mum and Dad, if they wanted them, now nice and dry. She looked closer.
The teddy bears had no eyes.
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