Lest you should be thinking she is some foolish innocent, this girl, I should tell you that she has campaign tactics of her own. This is the boss’s nephew, after all. And she’s ready. She’s seventeen, she’s a junior machinist, she has two younger sisters and a brother and she still lives at home — what else is she supposed to do? On Saturday mornings, when she walks past the stall selling bridal fabrics on Crisp St Market, Christine smiles a small, tight smile to herself. She’s the quiet one of the family, Christine is — but she’s pretty. She knows she is one of thousands, and she has her escape route planned. I don’t know if you remember the words of that song, the one that seemed to be on the radio all spring and summer that year, the Supremes I think it was — “You can’t hurry love; You’ll just have to wait”?; well, when Christine walks past the fabric stall on Saturday morning, and that song comes on the stall-holder’s transistor radio, and she smiles to herself like that, it’s because Christine doesn’t agree at all. In Christine’s mind, the future takes a very definite form; in fact, she can already see it. She can see a silver-framed, five-by-four-inch black and white photograph, and in this photograph, she is wearing a long white dress. She can see exactly what style of dress it is; she can even see how lovely the bouquet of white spray carnations and maidenhair will look against the duchess satin and broderie anglaise she’s chosen for her fabrics. She can see the shining silver of the photograph’s frame, and the polished veneer of the sideboard it’s standing on, and the whole brand spanking new living-room of the two-bedroomed flat where she’s installed it in pride of place. In the photograph, she’s holding on to the arm of her man respectfully, but firmly. He is slightly taller than she is, and strong-looking, and beautifully well-dressed — and she loves Beauty’s hair when it’s done like that.
Christine had thought she might refuse the boy when he finally asked her, at least the first time, might drive him crazy for a bit; but then, when it came to it — well, she couldn’t. In that moment when she looks down at the floor, she tells herself that she does love him, really — him and his suit and his lovely dark hair. So she ought to let him, if he wants to. After all, it’s nearly a month since she first let him open her mouth with his tongue; it’s not as if they’re just starting.
And fuck what her mother would say.
Just like Maureen, riding to Skin Lane to choose the furs for her coat in an older man’s black Daimler, Christine knows that she is breaking the rules. They know they are gambling, these young women, and this probably explains why they laugh so much — and why their laughter never quite sounds easy. They are never quite sure if they are safe.
The rendezvous agreed, Christine ran to catch her bus. The boy stayed on, however — partly so that they wouldn’t be seen walking down the Lane together, partly because he rather liked sitting on the bench in this empty cloakroom. He knew he was trespassing. He imagined the scene when the girls were all getting their coats on, chattering to each other and reaching behind their backs to untie their overalls. Saying things about him, he shouldn’t wonder. He imagined the secret look on his girl’s face when she heard them. Bet she wants to tell them they don’t know the half of it, he thought.
He gave it three minutes, then decided the coast was clear. He stood up, ran his hands through his hair, and then, just as he got to the front door, walked straight into Mrs Kesselman.
Quickly reorganising his face, Beauty told Mrs Kesselman he’d just been in the machine-room, checking to see if anyone was ready for the next lot of trimmed musquash from upstairs. She didn’t believe a word of it.
“Is that right, Mr Scheiner?” she said, “Well you can tell Mr Freeman we should be ready for it dinnertime.”
He knew he’d been caught, but was sure she hadn’t seen Christine leaving, otherwise she would have said so. Mrs Kesselman eyed the boy implacably, and then appeared to relent. She was never one to not speak her mind, Mrs Kesselman, but she had her ways of doing it.
“Still getting on alright up there with our Mr F, are you? A bit fierce with the juniors he can be, until you get to know him. Not an easy man always.”
“We’re getting on fine, thank you, Mrs Kesselman.”
“Like him, do you?”
The boy appeared to think carefully before answering, as if he didn’t quite know how to put it.
“Well, he’s always kindness itself to me, Mrs Kesselman — but then I suppose he’s got to be, being as how I’m his boss’s nephew. If I wasn’t, I should think he’d be as much of an old misery-guts in a suit to me as he is to the rest of the world.” He was beginning to overplay it a bit now, he knew that, but he just couldn’t resist it. “How come Mr F never married, Mrs Kesselman? I mean, Head Cutter, been with the firm almost as long as even you have, I should have thought he’d’ve made someone a lovely — ”
Before he could finish his sentence, the pretence of affability slid from Mrs Kesselman’s face like a cloud-shadow passing over rocky ground, and left her features their usual painted granite selves.
“On this subject I shouldn’t presume to think anything, Mr Scheiner, not if I was you. Time for me to shut up shop —and for you, I should think, to be home.”
She walked briskly across the hallway to where the light-switch was, and paused with her finger on the switch.
“And now your uncle has you upstairs, I shouldn’t think you’d want to be down here quite so often. I should hate one of my girls to get into any kind of confusion, Mr Scheiner. Farshtaist?”
The Yiddish was like a slap; it meant he’d better make sure he was never caught again, Alright? The boy wanted to smile when he heard her say that, because he thought that if this old woman reckoned part of her job was protecting her girls from the likes of him, then she wasn’t really very good at it. But he didn’t. He bid her a pointedly polite goodnight, and left her to lock the door behind him.
Always polite, young Mr Scheiner.
Mrs Kesselman turned the lights out.
And clever with it, she thought.
But then young people have to be, don’t they? The next Monday morning, Mrs Kesselman, just on the off-chance that Christine might be the guilty party whose laughter she’d heard coming up from downstairs that night, casually asked her if that was her she’d seen walking to Cannon Street station last Friday evening with young Mr Scheiner. The girl vehemently denied even the possibility of such a thing — catch her dead first, Mrs Kesselman, honestly. She didn’t fancy him at all. Not bloody likely, you might say.
People think they can tell from your face what you’ve been thinking, that it shows in your face; but it doesn’t, and they can’t — remember?
So you see, Mr F isn’t the only one in this story who’s trying to work out a way to love.
four
Imagine two very different Sunday afternoons taking place that weekend.
Here is Christine, in her best coat — powder blue, white buttons, three-quarter length. She tells her mother what time she will be home from the cinema, and then catches a bus which goes in the opposite direction, making sure that none of her neighbours see her do it. And here’s Beauty, standing sentinel by the park gates, waiting for her — for all his swagger, you can see by the way he combs his hair just once too often that he’s a bit nervous. Here she comes. Now the two of them are walking hand in hand across the park, across its wastes of tired, hard grass, absurdly smartly dressed and formal in their demeanour considering what they’re here for, taking the long way round to the rusting ironwork of the bandstand, to its dark trees and thickets. Once they’re there — well I’m sure you’ll have your own memories with which to complete the scene. The haste, the clumsy demands and negotiations, the clothing being hitched up or pulled down — the stinging dust of privet leaves in your eyes. All those things you have to endure when you’re young, and there is nowhere else you can go.
Meanwhile Mr F, who has more privacy than he knows what to do with, and no one to ask him what time he will be home or where he’s thinking of going this a
fternoon — here is Mr F, in his usual chair, in the living-room of his empty flat. He doesn’t want to go anywhere. He wants to stay in, thank you very much. Now that it’s the weekend, he wants to sit and roll one cigarette after another and let the cup of tea perched on the arm of the chair grow cold. He has things he wants to think about — that he needs to think about. He needs to think, for instance, about what it would be like to ask the boy to join him one weekend. To invite him along on one of his Sunday afternoon expeditions. For a walk. He isn’t ever going to actually do this, obviously, but he still needs to think it through. Or for a meal, perhaps — a meal like one of those he’s seen written up on the blackboard outside that Italian place half-way up Villiers Street. Except that they’re not open on a Sunday. Perhaps he could cook something for him here then. What, exactly? (He’s never even been inside that Italian café, though he always thinks it looks quite nice when he passes.) He’s not sure what sort of meal would be appropriate. Tea, or dinner? Never mind; he keeps going. He thinks about what it would be like coming back here to the flat with him on the train. Passing through South Bermondsey Station with the boy sitting next to him. Coming up the stairs with him. Walking past the window. Putting the key in the door with the boy standing just behind him.
He wouldn’t like that.
Never mind.
Once the front door is shut, he supposes it would be polite to show him round. But not the bathroom. And not the bedroom. He tries to imagine that — he even gets up and goes and stands in the hall and looks in through the open doorway at his bed — but it’s no use, he can’t. The counterpane is too smooth and tidy. Too ready to show the slightest disturbance. He goes back into the living-room, to carry on the tour, but then he thinks of something else. He picks up the spare dining-chair, the one he never uses, and carries it into the kitchen and sets it at the kitchen table, opposite the chair where he always sits when he’s eating. It looks nice there, and it fits quite well really — except that now he realises there isn’t space for him to get to the cooker, so he takes the chair back into the living-room and tries it in the vacant space on the other side of the gas fire to his chair, the armchair. He looks from one to the other; they sort of make a pair. He turns the radio on, but it’s an orchestra, and an orchestra doesn’t feel quite the right kind of music for the occasion, so he turns if off again. However, silence isn’t appropriate either — there’s too much of it (he can even hear the clock in the kitchen) — so he puts the radio back on, and tries changing the station for once. It doesn’t work; even with the sound turned down, the noise that starts coming out is too bright and too fast — too young, really, he thinks — so he turns it off again. He stands with his back to the gas fire (he can hear that sound too, the slight hiss of the gas) and looks at the two chairs again. They are angled slightly towards each other, as if the two people supposed to be sitting in them were going to have a conversation, or a smoke. Mr F looks first at the armchair, his chair, then at the other one. Then back at his chair. Then at his.
It’s getting dark now.
The lovers have left the park; the gates are being locked.
Mr F realises that he’s forgotten to make his dinner.
Much later, after he’s eaten, he tries the radio again. The paper says there’s going to be a programme on called Music Through Midnight — he would never listen to it normally, because it’s on much too late for a Sunday evening, but whenever he’s seen it, the title has always appealed to him for some reason. He’s always liked the idea of the music being there in the dark even if no one is listening. When he turns the radio on, however, and the man comes on and announces the title of the programme in that deliberately soothing, scotch-and-soda voice they always use, it brings him no comfort. It’s that word, Midnight; it reminds him that he has become one of those people for whom the dark brings no peace. He never sleeps properly now. Not like he used to. Even with his dream no longer coming to disturb him every other night, he’s often awake until gone twelve, or one, or sometimes even two — and even when he does finally get off, he often wakes up again later. He listens to the voice telling him to stay calm and drift off if he can, but he knows it’s no use.
Later, when he’s lying open-eyed in bed, he thinks he can hear screaming. He starts, but then relaxes; it isn’t a person screaming out there in the dark, but a fox, one of those city foxes that get into people’s back gardens along the railway tracks. He’s seen them from the train. She obviously doesn’t care who hears her, this one, because four times in succession he hears her call. She’s evidently not taking no for an answer — four times, she calls, with that unnervingly high-pitched yelp that is half-way to being human. The sound creeps into his bedroom through the gap under the curtains, and he can just see her, stretching her throat to the moon and screaming for her mate to come quickly. To come before the night ends. Screaming.
People think that it is in the tangle of bodies, in the actual congress, that one person invades another and takes possession of them; that it is on the bed that we give ourselves up. Well it is true that there is a surrender there that is unlike any other, but the real time they get under your skin is when you spend these hours alone preparing for them; imagining them. The hours when you find yourself wondering if these sheets would be too hot with two people under them. Or when you lie there on your back with both eyes open, as Mr F lies now, in the desperate early hours of that Monday morning, wishing that your nightmare would come back and plague you, just so that you can see your beloved one last time.
five
Mr F’s ability to be two people — one when he was on his own, one on Skin Lane — was remarkable. That Monday morning, he blinked hard in his mirror (no more bad dreams for him, thank you very much), splashed the previous night off his face with two handfuls of hot water, and then proceeded to scrub and shave and cuff-link himself back into his week-day self as if nothing could please him more than the chance to get promptly back to work. All the way from Peckham Rye to Bermondsey, he gave himself a proper Monday morning talking-to, telling himself all over again that all he had to do was concentrate on this bloody coat and he’d be fine. Never mind all these things he doesn’t know about; there’s one thing he knows more about than anybody else in London, and that’s cutting skin. These foxes, he told himself, are going to have to be perfect. This was his chance to turn out a really beautiful piece of work, something that he — no, something that they, he and the boy together — could be proud of. That was it. Thought the price-tag was everything, did he? (This was in reference to Mr Scheiner’s cigar-smoking cousin; not the sort of man Mr F had ever liked.) Well, he’d show him. There were other things besides money that made something worthwhile. It was all so easy for him, wasn’t it, bringing his girlfriend to Skin Lane like that, parading her in front of all and sundry, having it all approved of in public — whereas he, Mr F, he had to just stand there and — well, these were things which Mr F felt, but which he didn’t like to put into words, not even in the privacy of his own head. No; that’s definitely it— he thought to himself, as he felt the train slowing down for London Bridge — This coat (he stood up) is going to have to be (collecting his hat off the rack) bloody (smiling quietly to himself as he stepped down onto the platform) perfect. Since he was last out of the carriage, he slammed the door behind him. Like a full stop.
Five new strings of reputedly prime-quality Russian red foxes were lying all ready for inspection on the bench that morning; Mr F called Beauty to his side, and they set to work. Every single skin had to be checked twice — there were twenty-four in every bundle — and it soon became clear that not one of them was going to have an easy time getting past Mr F and the scrutiny of his expert eyes. Either the red of the under-fur on the flanks was too brassy, or the white of the stomach too yellow; if the under-fur was right, then Mr F would spot that the guard-hairs on the shoulders were too brittle-looking, or too sparse, or that their lustre wasn’t really anything special. On the rare occasions when the colour was judged
half-way decent, Mr F’s fingers would be sure to detect some hidden split or flaw in the skin itself; unimpressed by any considerations of beauty, his ruthless fingers stroked and probed every inch of belly, flank, neck and spine until it was found. At once, its weakness detected, the skin would be peremptorily thrown to one side.
As the day wore on, it began to seem as if nothing would ever satisfy him; if he uses the words “right and proper way of doing things” one more time, Beauty thought, this old man is in danger of making a fool of himself. Late in the afternoon, however, the very last of the strings began to show at least some signs of possibility. These skins were prime quality indeed; white-bellied, and with the soft, brick-dust-red under-fur of the flanks brushed over with garnet and mahogany as the pelt thickened towards the spine. Even Beauty could see that they were special; the guard-hairs across the shoulders and on the spine itself shone as if they’d been dipped in cochineal and then tipped in glittering Chinese black. Four of the skins in particular caught Mr F’s eye; laying them side by side on the bench, he wondered out loud if they might work as a set for the collar and revers. But he still wasn’t sure; running the palms of his hands again and again over the four pelts, up and down, restlessly, as if he was working the light into them like an oil, or a final wash of colour — he still couldn’t make up his mind. He needed help. Apparently completely absorbed in his task, he stepped back from the bench half a pace, and muttered, quietly, out of the side of his mouth,
“Do they belong together or not?”
Skin Lane Page 17