Isabel's Skin

by Peter Benson

  I strolled up the drive, opened and closed a gate and, ignoring her warning, walked through the orchard. The apple trees were loaded with ripening fruit and some of the chickens followed me. They clucked and bubbled, and then I was in the fields that sloped below the house.

  The land was like a sponge, and I was forced to pick a crooked path towards the woods. Fat brown flies chased me, and the birds in the hedges were too tired to fly.

  When I had walked half a mile, I turned to look back at Belmont. Its battlements shone and the bolted windows winked. The shelves of beautiful books waited for Miss Watson’s duster, and they waited for me. I rolled up my sleeves and carried on down the path, over a fence and into the woods.

  Maybe the old stories are true, the ones about hatted goblins stealing goats and children and hiding them in the cellars of damp houses in the woods. When I was a child my mother used to read fairy stories to me, and when she had tucked me in and blown the light out, I would lie in bed and worry myself to sleep. I would imagine the goblins lived in my wardrobe and would come out when I was not expecting them, and magic me to their black trees. And they would take me to secret dungeons in hidden hollows, tie me to a wall and threaten me with buckets of weasels. I was an only child and spent too much time frightened. The imaginary friends I created always turned out not to be friends at all, and would betray me to the worst characters in the stories I heard. So long ago – I thought – and then I thought it was no time at all. You carry the terror of childhood all your life, and nothing warns you that your mind is about to drop a bucket into its well. Old stories, big woods and dreams that fleece you.

  Like the stories, the woods gave me a feeling of unease, as though I was being watched and my footsteps counted. The trees were tall and old, and away from the slippery path I could see patches of bramble. As I passed, birds stopped singing, mice stopped scurrying and the temperature dipped. The path dropped towards a stream in spate before climbing again, through trees that grew closer together. Their branches linked high above me and thick vines hung down, heavy with bearded seeds.

  I tried to whistle, but my lips were too dry and the noise I made sounded like a slow puncture. The dipping sun splashed pools of light onto the ground, but these were overwhelmed by shadows. I reached a twitch on the path which seemed to be the place where I should turn and go back, but I could see the edge of the woods ahead, and a gate that led into a corn field.

  So I carried on, under the last trees, through the gate and up to a narrow crest that gave me a view of the west. The course of the stream wound below me, and other patches of woodland filled the gaps between the fields and meadows.

  At first sight, I did not see any sign of life, but as my eyes adjusted to the glare I saw the roof of a thatched house, partly hidden by the trees that surrounded it. The thatch was old and ragged, and its walls were unpainted. I sat down, and although I spent my time enjoying the view and wondering how long it would take to ride to the moors that cut the horizon, my eyes returned to the thatched house. Its windows were dark and a low wall surrounded a small garden. A ruined barn stood to one side and a gig stood in the drive. A cockerel crowed, and as I watched, one of the upstairs windows opened. The pane winked, a hand appeared, flicked a duster at the sky and then another hand closed the window. A dog barked a couple of times, then stopped, and for a moment the peace was absolute, as though spirits had come and taken a level of sense away. I do not know where the spirits went. Some hollow? Some cave? Some marsh where the water swallows itself and the sky comes down?

  I waited for an answer but heard nothing, and waited for five more minutes before a bird called, another answered, and I turned around and walked back into the woods, under the trees and past the goblins’ holes, over the stream until I reached the fields and the track to Belmont. The sun showed an edge of its disk through a cloud, then disappeared for good, and as the evening began to thicken towards the night, flies clouded around my head. And when I reached the house, the cats were standing by the front door with cruel looks in their eyes, and their tails up.

  The library was dusted, the curtains drawn, candles lit and a long table had been cleared for me. An oak writing slope had been set up, and pens and paper arranged in a walnut tray. A beautiful silver ink well was filled. A leather-backed chair was by the table, and a studded wastepaper basket. The air smelt of lavender polish, and the peace of the room was only interrupted by the soft tick-tock of an old clock that stood on the mantelpiece.

  The walls were lined with shelves and, where space allowed, dark paintings were hung. There were a pair of covetable seascapes – ships in distress, men clinging to rafts, waves lashing black cliffs – and some mountain views. A few portraits of severe men and women looked down at me, a fine copy of Largillière’s Voltaire as a Young Man hung over the door, and a bust of the philosopher stood on a plinth by the window. He stared at me, his thin lips curled into a smile that dared me to put a price on his work. I looked back but said nothing to him. He was dead and buried, last words echoing, generous in his rot. Price or no price – I did not imagine he would have cared for polish.

  Miss Watson was intimidated by the room, and the cats waited outside. They scowled at me, licked their lips and made low, growling noises. She spoke with a reverential voice. “His Lordship was not a religious man,” she said, “but this was his church. He loved his books, loved them more than anything else in the world,” and for a moment her eyes drifted away from mine. They fixed on some point on the other side of the room, and as she slipped into a sort of reverie, I pulled on my handling gloves, stepped to the nearest shelf, ran my fingers along the spines and stopped. The hair on the back of my neck froze. I was touching an edition of Nouvelles probabilités en fait de justice, published in Lausanne in 1772. I pulled it out, stroked its cover and held it to my nose. It smelt of cherries, and when I opened it at a random page, it gave a sigh, like it was waking from a long sleep and wanted to bathe, breakfast and enjoy conversation with an interesting person. A woman, maybe, someone who had lived in Geneva and Dublin, spoke five languages and had won and lost a few times. Swishing dresses, perfect hair, pink lips, rosy cheeks. Velvet and polished wood, wide linen sheets and the sound of water running into a bathtub. Steam rising, the promise of a glass of wine, candles, love, all these things. I sighed back at the book and said, “This is amazing. Incredible. As far as I know, there are less than a dozen copies of this edition. I had no idea. It’s miraculous…”

  Miss Watson went to the window, ran her fingers down the curtains and looked out. “Yes. His Lordship used to spend all day in here – towards the end he had me make up a bed in the corner.” She pointed. “He couldn’t bear to be away from his books.”

  I slid the book back onto the shelf, scanned the other volumes and said, “This is going to take me a while, longer than I thought.”

  Miss Watson inclined her head and said, “You must take as long as you need.” She pulled a duster from her apron and flicked it at Voltaire’s bust. Motes rose and fell, and the smell of furniture wax burst like a flower opening. “I must say, it is a pity you never met His Lordship. You two would have had such a lot to talk about. He knew so much about these books. He used to say there was more wisdom in this room than in any other room in the world; that made him happier than anything.”

  “Have you any pictures of him?”

  “Oh yes,” she said, “one or two,” and she disappeared for a moment and came back with an envelope. She took out a photograph, stared at it for a moment and handed it to me. “This was made that last year. We visited the coast. It was such a lovely day.”

  Lord Malcolm was sitting on a bench. There was a gull in the sky above his head and he was staring at the sea. He had a small head, a splash of white hair emerging from his hat and a bright smile. He wore a smart coat, a scarf was wrapped around his neck, he was cradling a book in his arms, and although he looked relaxed there was an edginess to his appearance. Maybe he was there under duress, and all he wanted to
do was go back to Ashbrittle and his library. But he had promised Miss Watson, and she would be disappointed if he cancelled the trip. She took the photograph back, touched the image with the tips of her fingers and said, “He was such a gentleman. So kind, so very distinguished,” and a single tear formed in the corner of her right eye. “So distinguished…” she said again. I opened my mouth to say something, but nothing came out, so she turned and left the room, and I was alone with the ticking, the polish and the dead man’s books.

  I worked for two hours. I say I worked, but this work was pure pleasure. When I discovered a copy of the rare first Irish printing of Candide (Dublin, 1759) I yelled with joy, and Miss Watson came running to see what the problem was, strands of hair escaping from her bun, wiping her hands on her apron.

  I stroked the book and said, “A miracle is the violation of mathematical, divine, immutable, eternal laws. By this very statement, a miracle is a contradiction in terms.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Voltaire,” I said. “And was he wrong?”

  “Wrong?” she said, and she gave me a look that could have been pitiful. “I have no idea if he was right or wrong. I have other things to concern me.”

  I shook my head, rubbed the spine and the perfect tooling, but when I tried to explain she put up a hand and said, “I don’t have to be told they’re wonderful, but to me they are simply a great deal of dusting,” and she shook her head and left me standing there with the book in my hand, the taste of a little triumph in my mouth and the long shadows of evening creeping across the garden.

  I could have worked through the night, but after the Irish Candide I could not continue. My eyes hurt and my head was spinning. I felt a mix of tiredness and elation that creates harmonic echoes in my bones and brighter colours in the things I see. I put my notes away, took off my gloves, closed my eyes and listened to the house.

  Candles fizzed, the windows twitched in their frames, and I heard the lazy pad of one of the cats as it crept down the corridor. The creak of a floorboard, a rustle of curtains, the squeak of a rusted hinge. All these noises came gently, swilled around and did not bother me. Although I loved my rooms in London, my life was dominated by noise. The rumble of traffic, the man downstairs playing his violin, another with a hacking cough. Stray dogs barking at the echoes of their own barking, angry men shouting at tearful women in the night. The indeterminate buzz in the city’s air, bugs in the carpet and bubbles popping on the surface of a bar of soap – sometimes the city filled me with anger and frustration, and the attractions of the country were overwhelming, but I did not visit it enough. In those days I did not do anything enough. I did not listen hard enough and I did not look. I did not touch or feel and I did not love. I think I thought I had loved and could, but it is too easy to fool yourself into thinking one thing when you do the other. And then, without knowing, you realize everything you used to believe means nothing. It did not have to be a lie – it could have been the truth – but it was still as hollow or full as all the sounds of London, known or not, real or unreal, alive or dead.

  My head was drowned in fatigue and Voltaire, and as I stood at the window to undress, the night slipped over the fields and the orchard below me and closed around the house. The moon was almost full and gave the land a milky, translucent glow. A few stars shone. I heard Miss Watson downstairs, talking to the cats. She scolded them like a mother would scold her children, instructed them to catch some mice and then closed the kitchen door and came upstairs. She walked slowly, and as she passed my room I heard her heavy breathing and the sound of her ankles clicking.

  I blew out my candle, and as my eyes adjusted, the land shifted into sharper relief. I stretched my arms over my head, took a deep breath, closed my eyes, let the breath out and relaxed.

  I listened to the air, stopped my thoughts, opened my eyes and focused. The land was still and quiet, steel-blue and grey. A cloud with the point of a knife drifted across the sky, and as it did a bird flapped out of a high tree. I watched it fly and turn and fall again, and it called out. Another bird replied and blew out of another tree. They circled for a moment and then started to climb into the sky, and as I watched them I felt myself drifting into the gap that lies between awake and dreams. Dreams of bats, days of books, dreams of wet boots lost in marshes, days of books. Sinking ships. Books. Father. School, terror. My legs were filled with wool and the palms of my hands were sweating. I blinked and rubbed my eyes, and when I looked again the birds were dots in the distance, far, far away.

  I went to my bag, took out a bottle of whisky, poured a glass and went back to the window. I was going to open it but remembered Miss Watson’s rule, so I rubbed the glass, downed the drink in one, said “sleep” to the window, turned and went to my bed. And after I had relaxed and the salt had drained from my mouth, I turned over, closed my eyes and drifted away to where the marshes and woods and books were illusions, and women rubbed their skin with honey.

  My father used to call the parish church of St Michael, Dover, his office, and he was not an ironic man. In those days he did not know the meaning of the word. In those days he believed beauty was the work of the devil, grey was the colour of God, and coffee was drunk by heathens. With his enormous head, his booming voice, his dark suits and the ancient black horse that he rode until it collapsed and died under his feet outside Deal, he was, for a long time, a domineering and aggressive man. Many of his parishioners called him the Jeremiah of Kent and said his sermons offered inspiration, but I was scared of him and dreaded his “talks”. These involved an invitation to his study, where I would be given a lecture on whatever subject was concerning him – the threat of dancing, the immorality of politicians, the danger of light operatics, the criminals who run banks – these are four examples of the subjects that vexed him, but there were more.

  My mother was a delicate woman, dedicated to providing my father with the support he needed, but when I was ten, she was killed while doing some polishing. No one knows exactly how it happened, but she must have tripped and lost her balance, because she fell through a window, cut her arms and bled to death in a rose bed. I was at school when the accident happened, and came home to find the doctor talking to my father in the front parlour. When they looked at me their faces were grey, and I could tell. I was never one to miss the obvious. The warmth had left the house, and as he told me the news, father’s eyes burned and his hair flared, and the doctor stared at the floor with his fingers turning white around the handle of his bag.

  After the funeral, her picture disappeared from his bedside table, her dressing table and collection of floral plates were sold, and her clothes given away to the poor. His mouth pinched if I mentioned her, and I imagined his memories hid their eyes behind their hands. He did tell me that when I laid in bed and the night cracked at the window, I should remember she gave me my life and the best years of her life, and God wanted her to be with him. He wanted to read the list of her sins and praise the depth of her virtue. His mysterious plans are beyond our understanding, although we can believe they are always arranged with us in mind. For God is everything and we are simply his dust. He watches as we pour through his fingers, and smiles at our duality. He does not brood, and this is an important lesson, one we should never forget: do not brood, my son.

  I did not think about brooding when I awoke. It was half-past seven and the light promised another damp, sucked day.

  Birds were singing, one hundred mad, bursting birds. I sat on the side of the bed and listened. I stood up, stretched, went to the window and opened the curtains. As I did, a gang of sparrows blew off the sill and disappeared over the roof. I put my hand on the latch and tried it. It moved a little. I looked over my shoulder, listened for Miss Watson and then carefully opened the window. It was stiff and squeaky, but when I had enough room I put my head out. Everything was as quiet as a quiet view of the country should be, like a picture on a wall or a plate in a book. I closed the window, dressed and went downstairs.

  Mis
s Watson had cooked me a breakfast, and as I sat down to eat she said, “I trust you slept well?”

  “I did, thank you.”

  She poured two cups of tea. “That would be Somerset air. Sweetest in the world.”

  I sliced a sausage, dipped it in the yolk of a fried egg and said, “Like a log.” I put the sausage in my mouth and ate it.

  Miss Watson turned away, went to the sink and began the washing up. She scrubbed a pan, rinsed it and dropped it on the draining board with a clatter. She picked up a plate and said, “Would you like more tea?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Fine?” she said, as if this was the first time she had heard the word.

  “Yes.”

  She started to wash the plate and clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth. She scrubbed the plate harder than she needed to, and when she had finished, put it on the draining board, turned towards me and wiped her hands on a dishcloth. I cut some bacon, laid it on a piece of fried bread and put it in my mouth. The fried bread was perfect.

  “Well,” she whispered, “if you say you are fine, then you must be,” and she turned back to the sink, and with a sharp cough announced she was going into the village, and if I wanted anything I should give her a list.

  “I have everything I need,” I said.

  “Well if you think of something…” she said, but I shook my head and turned to look at the cats. They were lying by the back door, and their cruel eyes stared at me as if they were planning murder, and all they needed was time and opportunity, and they did not care about fresh fish or any of the other foods people think they liked.

  After breakfast I went to the library, stood at the window for a moment and looked out at the world. It was dull and cool, and a pale sun was failing to shine through the clouds. I turned, sat at the table, spread out my notes and closed my eyes. I watched the spots swarming in the dark, counted to twenty, opened my eyes and then went back to work.