by Helen Slavin
Cleaning and patching the scrapes and cuts only highlighted the riot of colour swamping my eye. With clean skin as a backdrop the colours pulsed and hummed.
‘Ready to talk about it?’ Mrs Atkinson put away the first-aid box. I shook my head. What could I say? I beat up Professor Tierney in an alleyway? I wondered what he looked like—if, indeed, anyone had discovered him yet.
‘Anything in your make-up bag you can use to disguise that?’
She checked out my eyeball as she spoke. It was bloodshot.
‘No.’ I don’t wear make-up. Not any more.
She handed me another wad of cotton wool, steeped in cold water this time. ‘Hold that against it for a few minutes. You should see someone, Ruby…I could get Harvey to run you down to the sur…’
I was shaking my head slowly as she spoke. She took in a deep breath. ‘All right. I’ll see if Martha’s in. She’ll have something in her magic handbag I’m sure.’
‘No. Please. Don’t.’
It was my turn to touch her arm, only I wasn’t gentle, I clutched at her. Please don’t tell. Mrs Atkinson’s hand reached to cover mine.
‘Just to get you some cover-up. I won’t say anything. I understand, even if I don’t agree. Let’s see what Martha’s got and we’ll do our best.’
I saw the sense of it.
‘Do you want to go home Ruby? Harvey could…’
I was shaking my head again, it was beginning to look like a nervous tic, a side-effect of my set-to.
‘There’s no one waiting? No one worried? No one I can call?’
I thought of the phone box and I wanted to run there. To run and keep running. I felt lightheaded with the thought of it and the edge of the sink was cold under my fingers.
‘Do you need somewhere to stay?’
Don’t crack now Ruby, you’ve come such a long way to be here. So I shook my head and stood up straight.
‘I’m fine. At the flat.’
Mrs Atkinson borrowed some cover-up foundation from Martha and left me to do the best I could. Only a paper bag would have done the job.
I emerged to take up my wand at the desk. Clearly Mrs Atkinson had primed them all to say nothing. Martha, wearing a bronze-coloured mohair wrap cardigan over a deep green velvet vintage dress, was engaged in an uncharacteristic bout of librarianship. She stole a quick glance through the books as she reshelved.
Seated at the computer, Mrs Milligan managed to not even look at my face as she confessed, ‘I’ve buggered something up, Ruby. It’s frozen on me.’ She looked intently at the screen as I tapped at the keyboard ineffectually. Harvey wandered over.
‘I can sort it, Vanessa. Ruby, can you help Mrs Longden find what she wants in the newspaper archive?’
Harvey had addressed her as Vanessa. The name seemed to transform her into a different person, someone not Mrs Milligan. And as I looked back at her I realised that her haircut was new.
Other than that, it was all business as usual.
‘What happened to you?’ Mrs Longden, seated in front of the microfiche reader, peered over the tiny windscreens of her reading glasses.
‘I fell off the bus.’ My swollen eye giving the impression of a cheeky wink.
Shiranai uchi ni, inu ga heya ni haitte kimashita
While I was unaware, the dog came into the room
For most of the morning I was able to hide behind the display boards Mrs Atkinson and I were erecting in the exhibition space next to the media library. It’s a light room, a deep curved bay shape. Once that was under way, I was despatched to the print shop to drop off the text and photos that we were having enlarged and put onto display boards.
As I looked into the now-familiar faces I couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was missing. Had I brought all the selections from the archive? Had I left some image on the scanner bed? Something, someone important? Who was missing? And then I realised that I didn’t have any photos of Lady Breck. I had no idea, except in my own imagination, what she looked like.
Upstairs, Mrs Atkinson and I began to trawl through the myriad boxes that I hadn’t got to yet, with no success. It seemed she had photographed almost everyone in the town, her house parties, her Traveller portraits, her domestic staff were catalogued and captured in time. Only Lady Breck herself was absent.
After lunch Mrs Atkinson waylaid me.
‘I’ve had a word with Winn at the museum. She says you can come over and she’ll take you through their collection. She’s got a few ideas for you, and doubtless you can tie up some of her loose ends too. There are a few paintings that came from Kite House that they’ve had a struggle identifying.’
I had always enjoyed the pictures in the museum, a huge collection assembled in the auction houses of Europe by Viscount Breck, and his father and grandfather before him. They had taste similar to my own. Others might find the choice dismal but I don’t care. I like to wander through Winter Landscape in Brittany and marvel at the glare of Sun on the Water. I know that as I climb the staircase that rises up beside the Bronze Age gallery there is a familiar face awaiting me at the turn of the stair.
She hangs on the wall beside a gypsy wagon bearing the sign No Entry. To some the portrait is probably garish; to me it is vibrant. I have always liked the palette of purples, umber and ochre. The old woman is posed in a mannish greatcoat beside a fire. There is a cauldron suspended over the flame and the woman is smoking a pipe, looking directly out at us through the thin gauzy haze of woodsmoke and pipe smoke from her small, white, clay pipe. The frame declares: ‘A Pipe of Baccy by Virginia Brett 1921’.
Each time I turn on the stair she seems to greet me. ‘Back, are you? Where’ve you been then?’ And the sky above her opens out, cerulean and ultramarine.
Now, following Winn through the card-swipe security system into the museum storehouse, I could glimpse other treasures that had not seen the light of exhibition. There were portals and doorways here, where just one look could transport you through time and landscape. I wasn’t paying any attention which is why Winn had to backtrack to find me.
The pictures she had for me had been salvaged from the sale of Kite House after the end of the First World War. They had been dumped at the museum and put away and no one had paid them much attention. As Winn tried to research their origin she’d discovered a few had been commissioned by Viscount Breck from a local artist, one Blaise Godwin, who had shown early talent until he travelled to Paris and vanished from view. It was rumoured that he found whores and gambling in lieu of inspiration.
‘Of course,’ sighed Winn as she set out the first few portraits and groups, ‘no one has any interest in him except me. I’m becoming a bit of an expert, a bit of an obsessive compulsive about our Blaise. I’m trying to blag some cash to go to Paris, follow a few leads.’
I looked at the pictures. One stood out instantly, a five foot by six foot canvas of a shooting party. On the back, in the artist’s hand were painted the words Hares and Hounds. The painting was set in the grounds of Kite House, the windows of the conservatory a blur of silver and titanium white in the background. The gentlemen were grouped standing, their shotguns all broken, except for one at the back whose gun aimed rebelliously skywards. They all wore serviceable tweeds and every variety of fashionable moustache, but there was something odd about it. Something other.
Winn clearly knew the secret and stood, waiting for me to see the magic. Suddenly it sprang out. Hares. Hidden. Amongst the earthen browns and greens of the tweeds, in the shapes and contortions of the shrubbery, in the knees and elbows of the hunters. Hares everywhere, woven into the fabric of the painting. I gasped. Winn grinned.
‘Every picture tells a story.’ And she began to slide out other paintings.
* * *
Lady Breck did not emerge from the stacks. Captain Whitside was there in a wedding portrait with his pink-and-white debutante bride. And there was a busy port seascape. A tall boat loomed into the sky. It was strange the way he had painted the crowds milling around, the por
ters and baggage. The traders and cabs.
In all of that melée two women stood out on deck. He had picked them out in different tones to the rest. One woman standing at the rail waving frantically at us. Another beside her, more restrained and dignified. Less self-assured. I looked at her for a long time. Her face was not clear, rather it was an impression of a face. It seemed familiar. I had that sense of déjà vu, of having viewed this scene before. And then I knew that she was not dignified or restrained. These were things she was pretending to be. What her face held was trepidation.
There were a few landscapes of Kite House and another of a house I didn’t recognise dated June 1889. It was titled A Luncheon and a well-to-do party were taking lunch in a lush and verdant garden. Maidservants carried trays from the background. Surely one of these seated ladies was Lady Breck? That one, at the far left, the shade of a cream coloured parasol obscuring half her face, a face turned towards the artist as others fussed over the food and the wine. Winn’s magnifying glass showed up the dark and light blotches of paint that made up the illusion of a face. At the other side, a tall thin young man was turned towards the maidservants in their black and white. I made a note to look in the journals and see if I could place the Brecks in June 1889.
In another portrait a man sat in a wing chair dressed in evening attire. He was smoking a cigar and looking directly out at us as if to say, ‘Damned cheek’. The cigar and the extravagant moustache seemed to tag him as Monty, he of the duck hunting and poacher baiting. But no definite sighting of Lady Breck.
I took my leave of Winn and wandered out, across the footbridge and over the walkway, reading the information boards and biding my time. Then I could see Queen Victoria, looking out through the fanlight above the library doors. I reflected, not for the first time, that whoever put her there seemed to have thought about her outlook. She’s looking for him, isn’t she? Albert.
She held me in her gaze as there was shunt at the traffic lights, a grunch and screel of broken brake light and bent bumper. Horns beeped, like panic-stricken elephants. The chill breeze caught at my swollen eye and soothed it. I could go on. It would be fine.
I was on the verge of smiling by half past six. I had gone to the archives and sorted through the journal for a link to June 1889. It was missing from the ones I had already sifted, I would need to go back upstairs and dredge out some more of the journals and papers up there. I moved back to desk duties, picking up my computer wand, anticipating the search ahead, knowing that there would be some adventure of discovery waiting for me in the cardboard archive boxes.
I had it all planned. I would leave at seven when we closed. I would eat somewhere special and different, although possibly not the Thai Palace. Then, refreshed, I’d return with my keys and spend the rest of the evening time travelling. I could fall asleep over the boxes because even if everyone decided to come in early tomorrow, they would never think to look in that small roof room. I would fall asleep there and dreams would open the doorway, would let me find out what and who and how and where. I could visit.
I didn’t hear that the news was in. I hadn’t seen Heather come in with Mrs Atkinson. I was busy sorting out some reservations for a student who’d found that the university library copies of her books were always on loan to some other student. I was deep in a paper trail of specialised academic literature. I was enjoying myself. I remembered how to, it seemed. I was useful and helpful. I was a librarian. I was a System of Information.
What I did hear was the sound of ears pricking up and a whisper that began to run from the chicken-wire doorway over to the reference section. Tierney the whisper whispered. A whisper that was picked up and echoed by Mrs Milligan and then Joachim and then Harvey. I felt eyes turn upon me, not just the staff but one or two of the borrowers. Floored. Mugged. Down in Darley Cut. Don’t know. No one’s sure what happened… One or two had looked at my battered face although none had been as bold as Mrs Longden that morning.
Martha was in the office, a door between her and the whisper. Tierney. Have you heard about Tierney? Except that somewhere a telephone was beeping out. It matched the beep-beep of my wand as I despatched books. It matched the beep-beep of my heart, steady and measured for once.
But, as the last few pairs of eyes turned towards the desk, as the door to the office opened because Martha had had the news and had done the geography, as these things fell into their slots, I was not there.
I was three, four, five strides into the whiteout of the winter sunlight.
Tegami o kaknakute, denwa o shimashita
I didn’t write a letter; I telephoned
I was like a sad old druggie in the newsagent because she wouldn’t simply give me change. I heard the words ‘float’ ‘change’ ‘no’ but my brain was struggling to stop my hands from scrabbling into the till.
‘I just want to change the fiver. Not anything small. Pound coins will do.’ But it was pointless. She was not in the habit of giving change. She pointed to a sign. no change given for carpark.
‘It’s not for the carpark.’
I was almost weeping as I bought some chewing gum. Now, at last, she could give me change. I turned blindly, knocking into a beer belly behind me.
‘Hey! You forgot your gum,’ I heard as the door clumped shut and the street noise took over. Cars. Buses. The heartbeat beeping of the road sweeper buffing the kerb.
I didn’t look left or right. I knew exactly where I was going and the quickest way to get there. I was not going through the precinct with its bright commercial glare and its nosing cctv. I crossed quickly, dodging the cars rather than waiting for spaces. I cut down the side lane where the delivery trucks pulled in.
Picking my way past the colour-coded dumpsters for the video shop, the bakery, the hideous home interiors shop with its black and brown furniture that looked as if someone had stapled pallets together. Past sodden cardboard, plastic sheeting, a flurry of pigeons. Down the thin straight passageway where the concrete of the sixties shopping precinct met with the rough red brick of the eighties multi-storey carpark. A smell of urine as if all the drunks in town had marked this out as their territory.
The phone box was a pocket of space and it seemed as I shut the door that all time and noise stopped. I thought that if I looked along to the street there would be coloured blurs where the people and the traffic had been halted in their tracks. As long as it seemed that way I would be safe so I didn’t look anywhere except at my fingers putting the money into the slot, the coins falling into the void and my fingers, working autonomously, tapping in the number.
It began to chirrup out and I was there instantly. The ochre coloured carpet and the draught from the front door because the postman or the milkman might be there handing over the post or a pint of milk and the gossip. The front garden through the window. The long rectangle of window. Behind me, not the urine sticky doors of the phone box but the French doors that led out into the garden. The French doors that he never seemed to shut until winter. The back garden beyond, green and forest-like. The Corsican pines that had been growing across the back boundary for nearly as long as he’d been there.
He might be outside now, raking through the pond with one of the old fishing nets. Or sitting in the shed with his binoculars watching the heron steal his fish. The heron, the only reason he puts fish in that pond.
‘Hello?’ he had let it ring for a long time. Ten rings. Maybe twenty. Now I was startled to hear his voice in my ear. He was not uncertain this time. Just listening. My silence. My money ticking down.
‘Hello?’ and the words I wanted to say came battering at the back of my lips but I couldn’t let them out.
‘Hello?’ the tone altered, there was something there that was subtly different. I can see his face at the piano and he’s intent on some music, some notes. It’s a pentatonic scale…and this is where it modulates and…there…hear it…just a semitone lower hut very beautiful…amazing what can be done in just five notes.
‘Hello again.’ There
is no question in his voice this time, just patience. The tears are washing down my face and I make a stupid hiccup sound. I clamp my hand over my mouth, trying to get a grip but the snot is sliding and sliming. I wipe at my face with my sleeve. I am rustling and crackling.
‘I’m already double-glazed. I internet bank. Am I getting warmer?’
No. But I am, just by the sound of his voice. The major third of it modulating in my head, moving around the semitones and demisemiquavers and semibreves of speech, reaching down the phone line to touch me. Amazing what can be done in just five notes.
And then he really reached. I could see his hand very clearly as it landed softly on my shoulder. ‘The heron’s not been around for a while.’
I stopped crying. He listened. I made a terrible snottling sound as I tried to stifle my noises. He spoke again, gentle, quiet.
‘There are so many fish in the damn thing.’
The tears that fell now felt cleansing against my face. My sleeve, soaked with snot and tears and relief.
‘I’ll have to use the net to clear a few.’
Another pause. No hurry.
‘I’m not sure if you can eat koi.’
He was listening again and I knew that even though I was silent, he heard me. He knew. He knows who it is.
‘Have to browse Amazon, see if I can find an eclectic Japanese cookbook.’
And the phone beeped in panic moremoneymoremoneymoremoney and I didn’t have any more. I looked out.
The street beyond was moving. Time began again.
* * *
The keys to the flat were in my handbag, under the desk at the library. There was nothing for it but to go round to the back, a gap in the Leylandii where the dogs and cats and badgers cut through. I lingered a while, checking that Miss Nudey Gardener wasn’t mooning at me as she clipped the weigela. On all fours I cut in through the gap, keeping low as if I was in a spy film, and scooted across the garden. Onto the plant trough, reaching up into the pergola. I hung there, monkey-like, for a moment, unable to hitch myself through the gap. My arms began to ache. There was a plastic water butt. I swung towards it, the toe of my shoe missed, I swung, caught. Levered at last, I pulled upwards through the squared slatting of the pergola. The bedroom window was jammed shut I knew, but the kitchen window was easily opened.