The Writing on the Wall and Other Stories

by Penny Edwards

  “You should, you should. I think you’d enjoy it, especially with all your interest in make-up. I’m a bit old for that sort of thing, but if I were young…” and she smiled at the thought of what that might be.

  Martha, despite occasional lapses in concentration, felt she’d understood most of what Madame Maes was saying, more than the last time they had met, which surprised her as she felt she was so unreceptive to just about anything at the moment. She watched madame smile to herself and knew her French friend would have been up as early as the film crew, no problem.

  “You like films, then, madame?”

  “I do, I do. But, for goodness’s sake, call me Sybille. Yes, I fell in love with them after the war and have enjoyed them ever since. The first film I saw was, well, it was all about… well, I just loved it and was hooked from that point on. I used to go with a friend and we’d swoon over the male leads, how we’d swoon,” and she clasped a spidery hand on her chest and looked skywards. “I also love your films and the American ones. That was when I started to take an interest in English.” She took a sip of English breakfast tea. “Ooh, that’s lovely. Goes down a treat,” and she put the cup back on the saucer. “How’s the make-up going?”

  “OK,” Martha replied, grimacing slightly to indicate this wasn’t entirely the case. “I’m practising on friends, but I haven’t been to college for a couple of weeks. Can’t face it. But I know I have to go back.”

  Sybille could hardly wait to intervene. “Too blooming right, you do. You’re very talented. I’ve seen some of the work you’ve done. You’re not going to let that… that… so-and-so get the better of you, are you? I hope not. What a waste, you trundling back to England, with nothing to show for it. Just a few conversations with a silly old woman in a tea shop. No, my girl. That is not going to happen,” and she wagged a wrinkly finger in Martha’s direction, as if casting a spell. “By hook or by crook” was almost in the air. “What are you supposed to be working on at the moment?” Sybille continued and Martha, shaken slightly by this sudden directness of her companion, said one of her friends had given her their latest assignment, which was dolls. She had to find a model and make them up as some kind of doll. “Well?” Sybille pursued.

  God, this was hard work. She just didn’t have any enthusiasm for the assignment. She was sure it wasn’t going to happen. But one idea had come her way.

  “Well?” Sybille offered a smile this time.

  “I have this idea of a Russian doll. Is that the right word?”

  “Yes, yes,” and Sybille said, “Russian,” in English to confirm what they were both talking about.

  “I think it might work quite well.”

  “Oh, yes,” replied Sybille. She smiled. “Yes, very well.” She took another sip of tea. “I used to have a set. Beautiful they were. Eight of them. I can see them now. Smiley faces. Black hair peeping out from yellow scarves. Red dresses and flowery aprons. The smallest was so tiny. You wouldn’t believe it. I loved taking them apart, then putting them back, one inside the other, again. I used to put them on my windowsill and my mother, she used to say, ‘Sybille, why do you put them there? They get so dusty in the sun. And it’s not you who has to do the dusting, is it?’ Eventually, she gave up and said, ‘You can do your windowsill, my girl. All those dolls. Don’t know why your grandmother gave you them.’ But I was glad she had.”

  Martha’s mind transported itself to another grandmother, the one who belonged to her ex-boyfriend. She hated that. She hated how one word could re-awaken heartbreak, just at a moment when it seemed to have temporarily taken a backseat.

  “Don’t let him sit at that computer so long,” she’d say to anyone who was listening. “Sometimes I wonder if he’ll wake up one day and forget how to string a sentence together. The world was meant for all of us to get along, find out things from one another, get along, have conversations. I can’t think why we all bothered to spend so much time talking to him when he was a little boy.” Yes, she hated people gate-crashing her head, particularly when she was so fond of them.

  “You know,” said Sybille, “I swear I’m going to have to bring a whole box of tissues every time I meet you.” She smiled and scrabbled in her bag for a tiny, unopened packet she knew she had somewhere. “Here,” she said, “you’re welcome to all of these.”

  Martha gave a nod of gratitude and blew her nose. That she was sorry went without saying, which was good because she was unable to utter a syllable. She was sobbing now to the point where breathing was almost a problem.

  Sybille took her hands and held them in her spindly, arthritic digits and told her to take some deep breaths.

  “If you’re anything like me,” she said in perfect English, “you wish this had never happened and you were still with this James, but now he’s hurt you so badly you don’t want him back because you know deep down that’s not going to work. So, really, just at the moment, you can’t wish for anything. When my heart was in pieces I used to wish I was someone else. I’d look at other people and think, You don’t know the half of it, because I thought my pain was unique. No one else could have possibly experienced as much hurt as this because I’d have heard about it or someone would have told me.”

  She drank some more tea. Unburdening herself was thirsty work. There was silence for a few minutes as there can be between friends who know one another well enough. There were just the murmurs of others and the delicate sound of cups being carefully placed on saucers or the gentle stirring of tea. It took this quiet for her mind to deliver some painful memories she hadn’t experienced quite so sharply for a long while. It was as if heartbreak was contagious and she’d caught Martha’s, just as she might her cold. She turned them into a smile, though. Time could do that and she gave a little experience of the disease back because an old heartbreak, one that had seen its best days, could perhaps help a new one, could show its lack of fatality and here she was to prove it.

  She told of a boyfriend for whom one woman wasn’t enough and of the silliness of this old biddy who kept on forgiving in the hope that a generous spirit would be rewarded. It was three dalliances later when she finally realised if any reward was coming her way, it wasn’t from someone who looked at her and saw only what he could get away with.

  “All I can say is, you’re better off as you are. I know, I know, don’t look at me like that. But God forbid you should ever have to cope with heartbreak and a couple of children making demands on you.” She could see she wasn’t making any inroads, but she said this anyway. “The right man will never want to leave and nor will he take the you-know-what. He won’t believe his luck. Anyway,” she continued, this time in French; she needed to get Martha’s mind going again. “This make-up. Here’s a story for you.”

  She sat up in her chair, tall and straight, as if defying the forthcoming words and caught up in her little rebellion. As far as she could remember, she didn’t think she’d ever spoken of this before.

  “There was one time,” she started nervously in her own language, “I was still living at home, even though I was twenty-five; my brother and sister had left by then, they were both married with children. I was living at home and I’d just got in from work. The girls and I had been mucking about a bit, er, being silly, in our lunch hour and one of them said to me, ‘You know, Sybille, I think you’d look really nice in a bit of make-up. You have very nice eyes.’ I laughed. I’d never worn it, mainly because my parents took a very dim view of it. They didn’t approve, my dad in particular. And also, I suppose, because I didn’t think I had a face worth making up.”

  “That’s silly,” Martha interjected, blowing her nose. “You have a lovely face,” she said and wiped her eyes dry.

  Sybille smiled. “Well, thank you, but no amount of paint could improve things, I thought. But they were friendly girls…”

  “Where did you work?”

  “Oh, the town hall. Just office w
ork. Typewriters then, of course, clackety-clack. The noise, you wouldn’t believe it. The building was beautiful, though. Old, timbered-looking, like something out of a fairytale.”

  “Typewriters look such hard work.”

  “They were, they were. Your fingers ached. And your nails, well, you were always breaking them. Anyway, we’d always got on really well, so when they asked if they could do my face, I said, ‘Yes, OK, if you want,’ so they had a right old time putting this eye shadow on, that lipstick, trying out different colours and, I had to admit, I enjoyed the experience a lot more than I thought I would. I suppose I felt a bit pampered and that never does any harm, does it? And when they’d finished and I looked in the mirror, well, I couldn’t believe what I saw. Do you know, I didn’t look half-bad? We were all very giggly, very happy and this continued right into the afternoon, especially as others in the office passed me by looking as though they’d seen a ghost or something.”

  “So you enjoyed wearing make-up.”

  “Yes,” Sybille answered thoughtfully. “If I’m being honest, much more than I’d expected. It certainly gives you a bit of confidence, doesn’t it? Puts a layer between you and the world.”

  “It always makes me feel better, though at the moment probably not such a great idea.” She pointed to her tear-stained face that was gradually recovering and slightly smiled. Sybille touched her left hand and was pleased to see the glimmer of hope.

  “So,” she continued, “when I was walking home, I felt quite pleased with myself. It had been a good day and I was one of the girls in a way I hadn’t been before. But, sad to say, it didn’t last. As soon as my dad saw me, well, all hell let loose. He asked me what on earth I had plastered all over my face and ordered me to go and wipe it all off. He said it was disgusting. ‘Red lipstick,’ he shouted. ‘Do you know what sort of women wear red lipstick? Not the sort of woman I want anywhere near my family, let alone in it.’”

  “But he must’ve known his daughter wasn’t like that?”

  “Oh, I don’t think parents thought like that, certainly not my dad. There were just rules, ways of behaving…”

  “But the other women you worked with…”

  “Oh, he would’ve just dismissed them. Not worth bothering with, not from the right sort of family. I’m surprised, looking back, he didn’t demand that I leave the place when he realised what ‘sort’, as he described it, I was mixing with…”

  “Demand that you leave?”

  “Believe me, if he’d said I had to leave, that would’ve been it. I’d have had to go. Otherwise, I would’ve been out on my ear, nowhere to live…”

  “His own daughter?”

  “Oh yes. Those days, it was always, ‘while you’re under my roof’. I can’t tell you how many times I heard that one. And nine times out of ten I hadn’t done anything wrong. Not even by his standards. It was just his way of reminding everyone, and that included my mother, who was boss.”

  Martha was shocked that a young life could be so prescribed, probably because she hadn’t heard anyone of Sybille’s generation talk like this before. There had always been a silent acceptance coupled with a wry smile in both her grandmothers’ stories, but Sybille’s words encouraged a feeling of relief that her own birth had coincided with a different time.

  “I can’t imagine that,” she said.

  “What?”

  “I can’t imagine what it’s like to have a parent tell me what I can or can’t put on my face.”

  Sybille laughed. “Different times,” she said, echoing Martha’s exact thoughts. “Different times.” She sighed with a mixture of envy and pride that she’d had to reach for a courage young people nowadays didn’t have to but were nevertheless in awe of.

  She returned to her story.

  “He demanded to know if anyone had seen me walking home and even though I’d waved at the baker and said ‘Hello’ to someone in our street, I said they hadn’t because God alone knows what he’d have done if I had said ‘Yes’. By this time, I was crying so much I almost didn’t need to wash the make-up off,” and she smiled in recognition. “How quickly things change. It was horrible, and it was as if the lovely day I’d had hadn’t happened. I’ll always remember how he terrified the life out of me that evening. You never lose that.”

  She paused for a moment and felt the dark, dull colours of the living room where all this had happened.

  “Suffice to say, I never wore make-up again. Even after my mum and dad died, I still never did. I was frightened, I suppose, as to what would have happened if I had. It would have been like touching a hot plate.

  “But the dolls, dusty or not, now they were helpful. Often, I’d use them to help me sort something out so they could be the people in my life and I’d get them to have imaginary conversations with one another. Even at twenty-five I was still doing it, believe it or not. So that night, when I’d done all my crying, I unscrewed all the dolls and the ones I’d usually used for my brother and sister I put to one side – after all, they didn’t live with us anymore – and Mum I put a little away from my dad and me because that was where she was, quietly looking on. My dad and me, well, he was the biggest doll, and I, as usual, was the smallest and he was standing over me, but instead of all the unpleasant nonsense he’d come out with, he just said, ‘You look nice, Sybille. Are you and the girls going out tonight?’”

  Martha tried to imagine Sybille’s face when it was its younger, ironed-out self. Her eyes would have still been warm and engaging and the twinkle as bright, but there would be a smooth canvas of skin showing off their rich colour, allowing them to be the first point of anyone’s attention. She could see what her colleagues must have meant. She imagined a smile that included a perfect set of teeth framed by a bright crimson lipstick and madame’s hair, thicker and curly, falling more tidily than it did now, in hope of a suitor, perhaps.

  “What I was going to say to you also was” – Sybille had changed the subject – “that apparently Hercule’s enjoying himself no end. Madame Laurent stands on the side, would you believe, doing as she’s told but, of course, smoking, nonchalantly, casually, the odd cigarette so she doesn’t look as if she’s obeying orders in any way. Monsieur De Clercq said it’s quite funny. It’s as if the poor dog’s finding his feet. Instead of lumbering along at madame’s side, he’s quickened his pace. He’s making the film crew work hard. He said to his mate, ‘I think Hercule’s taking that bloke for a walk.’ Aah. It must be so exciting, that world.” She paused before she said, “I’ve always loved the theatre. I loved going to puppet shows as a child, though, of course, there wasn’t much happening during the war, but then, after that, I was brought up in the north, Houlgate, by the sea, and we would go to Deauville occasionally, not far away, where there was sometimes a show. I loved it. Deauville has a film festival there now, for those who can’t get to Cannes. You must’ve gone to quite a lot of theatre. I always imagine everyone does in England.”

  “Not quite everyone,” Martha said, “but I do.”

  “There, I knew it, what with your interests and everything.”

  “It’s very expensive, though. Or it can be. There are some seats that aren’t too bad.”

  “Where have you seen it?”

  “London. Sometimes you can get cheap seats at the last minute. And I’ve seen Shakespeare,” she said with a question mark in her voice.

  “Oh, of course I know Shakespeare. Who doesn’t? What have you seen?” And she wore that very interested look she had the whole time Martha told her about a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream she’d seen a while ago, which was more like a nightmare than a dream in that it conjured up a strangeness that was almost frightening. And nobody wore very much.

  She smiled and Sybille burst out laughing. In French, Martha said, “Do you know what, Sybille? I think I should paint your face.”

  *

&nb
sp; Martha looked at the six dolls, with their identical expressions, standing attentively in a line on the table. They were like the physical representation of an unsuccessful therapeutic process, one that had been fiercely resisted and after many attempts to bring something to light had, in the final hour, shown little, if anything, that was new. How much more interesting it would be, she thought, if, in the opening up of each one, a layer of anger, despair or excitement could be found. She remembered Sybille rearranging her dolls to make sense of things that weren’t organising themselves well in her head, but the passive faces just made Martha angry and she couldn’t imagine them offering her the same support, though she agreed with Sybille that the polite, small smiles were true of much human interaction.

  *

  The hallway was dark, even though daylight was inviting itself in and Sybille, with her eyes to the ground, because a fall was always a good possibility these days, could only just make out a patterned floor, whose tiles, with their tiny yellow stars, belonged to another century and a time requiring something quite hardy. From what she could see, they were beautifully preserved and possibly polished, so she would need to take great care. She stood for a second or two in the darkness and her eyes took her to a small area of light at the back of the house that had found its way in from a small courtyard perhaps, with the help of an open door. It cast its warmth on a bicycle, nestled comfortably against a wall that propped it up as one would a drunken or troubled friend. Proud and dark wooden stairs led up to what she guessed must have been other flats and as she walked behind Martha to her friend’s place on the ground floor, she felt a shiver from the past and was thankful that her own modern apartment had never had to bear the stomping feet of occupying soldiers or the sharp bristle in the air when the door knocked and, with it, the sound of words nobody understood.

  Martha’s flat was surprisingly neat, she thought, not because her friend’s youth or personality determined it should be otherwise, more that it had been shown greater care than she would have expected from a broken heart. But then she remembered another friend from long ago who quite viciously plumped up cushions and swept floors whenever she was miserable or had had enough of the world.