‘How d’you figure that one out?’ Valentine’s still befuddled.
‘I read somewhere once how women often develop agoraphobia as a kind of unconscious protest …’
Valentine shakes her head, instantly resistant.
‘… a way of striking out against the social and sexual straitjackets that society imposes on them,’ Sheila persists, ‘and most of those pressures tend to originate in the home, with the family.’
‘Trust me, I’ve never needed any extra help in screwing up my life.’ Valentine smiles, darkly. ‘I generally seem to manage that all by myself.’
‘I find that hard to believe.’ Sheila tuts.
‘And anyway,’ Valentine continues (embarrassed by Sheila’s quick show of loyalty), ‘Dad and Noel’s grief only really turned to anger – I mean so far as I can remember – once money entered the equation; all the hassle with the insurance people – the fight for compensation – the good publicity, the bad publicity.’ She grimaces. ‘As if the sum total of Mum’s former life had a specific figure you could attach to it …’ she sighs, frustrated. ‘I never had much time for that approach. “Happiness is the path of least resistance” – at least that’s what I keep trying to tell myself.’
‘I was sitting at my computer this morning’ – Sheila nods, encouraged – ‘and I suddenly thought: She should tattoo him! She should tattoo Stuart Ransom! Put this whole thing – this awful feud – to bed, once and for all. Start a fresh chapter! It came to me in a flash.’
‘Like a divine intervention,’ Valentine deadpans.
‘I just thought: She needs to define herself as an individual in the world. Strike out! Take a stand! Do what she does best! Reclaim her life …’ Sheila pauses, conscience-stricken. ‘Does that sound crazy to you?’
Valentine gazes at her for a while, perplexed.
‘A little,’ she confesses, keen not to offend. ‘I mean what could I possibly hope to gain by …?’
‘The publicity for one thing,’ Sheila quickly steps in. ‘From what I can tell, Ransom’s very smart at using the media – good and bad – to his own advantage, so why not play him at his own game? I mean if you can’t beat him –’
‘That sounds dangerously like my brother Noel’s philosophy,’ Valentine interrupts, ‘and it’s ended in nothing but misery. Stuart Ransom has this clever way of twisting things.’
‘But it’s also a grand gesture, don’t you see?’ Sheila persists. ‘An act of public reconciliation. A rising above. A shaking free.’
‘Sounds fine when you put it that way,’ Valentine concedes, ‘but the logistical problems alone …’
‘Well he’s staying in the local area, for starters’ – Sheila tries to look at the positives – ‘so travel wouldn’t be too much of an issue. And while Gene’s working as his caddie …’
‘Sorry?’
Valentine frowns.
‘Gene’s caddying for him this week,’ Sheila blithely repeats.
The temperature in the room suddenly drops by several degrees.
‘He didn’t mention that,’ Valentine murmurs.
‘Oh. Okay …’ Sheila rapidly reassesses the situation, slightly panicked, trying to think on her feet. She draws a deep breath. ‘Gene told me about the problem with the electricity meter,’ she confesses.
Valentine’s face stiffens.
‘And not just the meter …’ Sheila haltingly continues.
‘What else did he tell you?’ The colour drains from Valentine’s cheeks.
‘The letter,’ Sheila murmurs, apologetic, ‘from the bank. He read it by accident.’
‘Letter?’ Valentine scowls (this isn’t quite what she was expecting).
‘The letter threatening to foreclose on the house,’ Sheila explains. ‘I just thought …’
‘Foreclose on the house?’ Valentine repeats. ‘Whose house?’
‘He said it was propping the thing up – the meter – all the screws had come loose. It fell out while he was doing the reading. He thought it was just a random scrap of …’
‘A letter from the bank?’ Valentine mumbles. ‘But why would …?’
Her grip on the child becomes so tight that Nessa squeals a sharp complaint. Valentine places her down, gently, on to the floor, then slowly straightens up again.
‘He honestly didn’t realize …’ Sheila backtracks.
‘You’re starting to scare me, now,’ Valentine warns her, her jaw tensing, fists clenching, as if readying herself for sudden combat. ‘You say he’s working for Ransom – there’s a problem with the meter – you want me to do a tattoo – there’s some … some letter?’
‘I just thought: She needs a quick injection of cash – and how better?’ Sheila runs on, alarmed. ‘I mean it’d be an amazing way of generating interest in your work – of creating a spectacle. Because art’s all about the gesture – the moment – the event … You know: the buzz – the chatter – the conversation …’
Valentine gazes at Sheila for a few seconds without responding, then turns and hastens from the room. Sheila gazes after her, flummoxed. She smiles down, brightly, at the child. After a moment or two she turns and follows. She finds Valentine in the hallway, reaching inside the small cupboard that houses the meter, her fingers scrabbling, clumsily, at the screws. Brick dust cascades on to the tiles below.
‘Will he go to the authorities?’ she demands, her voice much tighter and harder now.
‘I can’t … I’m not really in a position to answer that.’
Sheila quickly reaches forward to support the body of the meter as it clanks sideways, now barely still attached to the wall. ‘Careful!’ she warns her.
The folded-up letter drops into Valentine’s hand. She opens it and scans it.
‘They’re going to foreclose on the house,’ she murmurs, glancing up, horrified, holding it out towards Sheila for a second and then snatching it back again to double-check. ‘They sent this thing … God … weeks ago!’
‘You really had no idea?’ Sheila’s suitably appalled by the apparent magnitude of this revelation.
Valentine slowly shakes her head, her eyes glued to the text. ‘Noel has legal control over all of Mum’s assets. He hasn’t …’
She shakes her head again, her voice breaking. ‘That stupid, sneaky, double-crossing little …’
‘I’m incredibly sorry! I honestly thought …’
‘We’re all screwed!’ Valentine covers her face with her hands.
Sheila wants to embrace her – to comfort her – but she’s still supporting the meter. She tries to let go of it and it tilts dramatically to one side revealing the small, secret dug-out that’s hidden behind. She gazes at the neat rows of tiny boxes, astonished.
‘If they take away the house I’ll die,’ Valentine murmurs, half to herself, ‘I’ll just shrivel up and I’ll die. I’ll just …’
She drops a hand to her throat.
‘You won’t die,’ Sheila assures her, ‘you’ll be fine – you’ve still got plenty of options.’
‘What about Mum?’ Valentine gasps, the true horror of the situation gradually unfolding in her mind. ‘And Nessa? What will they do? Where will they go?’
‘I’m sure – if it comes down to the wire – then the council will provide temporary shelter.’
‘Temporary shelter?’ Valentine echoes, as if these two words are the most awful, the most chilling conjunction in the entire human lexicon.
‘You probably need to get in contact with the bank,’ Sheila counsels, ‘keep the lines of communication open. Give them a quick call. Set up a meeting and explain your circumstances. There may still be some wiggle-room …’
Sheila pauses for a second. She can’t quite believe she just used the phrase ‘wiggle-room’.
‘Am I being punished?’ Valentine covers her face again with a shudder. ‘Is God punishing me? Is it my fault? Is it bad karma? Have I been so evil, so disgusting, so bad ?’
‘Of course not!’ Sheila insists.
‘Ho
w can you say that?!’ Valentine drops her hands, tortured. ‘I’ve done so many terrible things – despicable things. Thought things – wished things …’ She gazes at Sheila, her pretty face crumpling. ‘Oh God,’ she groans, ‘you’ve no idea.’
She turns on her heel, the letter clutched to her chest, and charges upstairs with it.
Sheila is left standing, alone, with the meter in her hand. She stares at the collection of tiny packages. She adjusts the meter and a fresh cascade of brick dust descends from above. She curses, then senses a slight movement behind her. She glances over her shoulder. It is Nessa, the child.
‘What an awful mess!’ she exclaims, with a forced joviality. ‘I think we probably need a dustpan and brush, don’t you?’
Nessa nods.
‘D’you know where Valentine keeps them? In the kitchen, perhaps?’
The child nods, then promptly trots over, squats down and reaches her fingers into the dust.
‘Although a Hoover might be better,’ Sheila muses, half to herself, idly noticing that a thin layer of brick dust has settled on to a couple of the – formerly pristine – boxes. She instinctively leans forward to blow it off, and the next instant the meter comes away from the wall completely, crashing down, scarcely supported now, its wires ripping loose as it descends.
Sheila’s first priority is to shield the crouching child from its impact, so she doesn’t jump back – as is her initial instinct – but interposes her body between them, taking the bulk of the meter’s weight on the front of her shin, then somehow conniving to catch it again before it smashes into the floor tiles below. Several tiny packages and boxes also cascade down in the ensuing chaos and scatter on to the floor around them.
The pain in her leg is quick and sharp. She squeezes her eyes tight shut, places the meter on to the tiles and remains, bent double, gasping, applying a steady pressure to the painful area with the palms of both hands.
Her head starts to swim.
‘Balls, balls, balls,’ she mutters. ‘Balls, balls, balls, balls, balls!’
She sits down, heavily, in the dust.
‘That really hurt,’ she says. ‘Balls,’ she adds. She continues to apply pressure to the throbbing area.
‘Maybe I’ve chipped my shin,’ she muses, tiny fireworks exploding in the black at the back of her eyes. Her mouth suddenly feels dry. She wants to pull up her trouser to inspect the area but is fearful of what she might find. Blood? A jutting shard of bone? A lump the size of a duck egg? She commences to rock back and forth, muttering ow, ow, ow under her breath.
Behind her the child is playing with the fallen boxes. Inside one she has found a signet ring, inside another, a medal. She picks up a third, slightly larger package wrapped in a layer of brown paper and a layer of greaseproof. She pulls them off, squeaking excitedly, like she’s unwrapping a birthday present.
Sheila turns – still clutching at her leg – and opens her eyes just in time to see the child producing a plain but well-made pigskin wallet from the greaseproof layer.
‘Nessa! Drop that!’
Sheila starts. It’s Valentine, who has returned – sans letter – and stands apprehending the chaotic scene before her in a state of advanced agitation. She leans forward and snatches the wallet from the child’s grasp, then exclaims, in disgust, and lets it fall to the floor again. It lands in a thin layer of brick dust.
‘Screw it!’ she exclaims, then promptly bursts into tears, grabs the stray sheet of greaseproof and picks it up again, clumsily – fastidiously – like it’s the corpse of a poisoned mouse or a dog turd.
Sheila watches on, confused, her eyes returning to the child’s other booty which she immediately notices is decorated with Nazi regalia.
‘Bloody hell – is this stuff real?’ she wonders (her voice – to her own ears – sounding like its original source is the distant aspidistra).
‘Are you hurt?’ Valentine sniffs, through a startling Rorschach test of cascading mascara.
‘My shin got a bit of a bash, but I’m sure it’ll be fine,’ the aspidistra responds, calmly. Sheila is impressed by how serene and dispassionate the aspidistra seems.
‘Should I take a look?’
Valentine is promptly on her knees beside her. She is still holding the wallet, gingerly, in her palm, where it sits – blonde and innocuous – in its little square of greaseproof as a child’s portion of chips at a country fair.
Sheila inspects it, quizzically, as Valentine carefully places it down on to the tiles again – well clear of the brick dust. She then rolls up Sheila’s trouser leg to inspect the dented shin. Sheila gingerly un-peels her hands from the painful area. She can’t bring herself to look.
‘Is it bad?’ she wonders.
A short pause follows.
‘Perhaps I should take a quick look at the other one, for comparison …’
Sheila’s eyes widen.
Valentine rolls up Sheila’s other trouser leg and compares the two shins in close conjunction.
Then: ‘It’s pretty nasty. There’s a lump, a kind of graze standing up all bluey-white, and this big, black blood blister all the way along …’
‘Any bone?’
‘Nope.’ Valentine shakes her head. ‘Does it hurt?’
‘Like hell. It throbs; sharp throbs – like I’m being repeatedly stabbed by a little dagger.’
‘We need some antiseptic and a packet of peas to bring down the swelling. Wait here.’
Valentine springs up and charges off down the hallway.
Nessa, meanwhile – in the wake of Valentine’s sudden absence – takes the opportunity to shunt herself across the tiles to take another look at the wallet. She prods it with her finger.
‘Soft,’ she says, then tries to pick it up.
‘No, no – I don’t think you should touch that, Nessa,’ Sheila cautions her, ‘we don’t want it to get all dusty from your hands, do we? It’s very precious …’
The child ignores her. She continues to grapple with it.
‘Here’ – Sheila reaches out and takes the wallet from her – ‘let me have a look …’
She also grabs the greaseproof paper. ‘Valentine keeps it all wrapped up, like this, see?’
She starts folding the greaseproof around it, the child standing at her shoulder, watching on, fascinated.
‘There’s some dust on it already …’
Sheila blows on the wallet to try and shift some of the dust, then lightly polishes it with her shirtsleeve. She blows on it again. As she blows for the second time – front and back – her eye catches a slight imperfection in the hide. She scowls down at it, worriedly, then prods at it with her index finger, grimaces, draws it in still closer to her face, and is surprised to be able to delineate several digits of a number.
‘Leave it! Give it here!’
Valentine – who has just arrived back with the requisite bundle of medical provisions – swoops down and snatches the wallet from her.
‘It’s dirty!’ she pants. ‘You mustn’t …’
‘It’s just a bit of dust,’ Sheila explains, mildly defensive.
‘No, no, I mean it’s a dirty thing – a filthy thing … Part of my dad’s collection of war memorabilia.’
Sheila’s still none the wiser.
‘It’s made from human skin.’
Three-second pause.
‘Bloody hell!’ Sheila flinches, startled. Her face creases up with disgust.
‘I thought Gene had …’ Valentine’s confused. ‘When you said earlier …’
‘Gene definitely didn’t mention this.’
Sheila’s shaken. Her voice is shaking. She feels extraordinarily distressed by the mere fact of this object – the sheer, moral offence of its physical existence; by its dangerous proximity; its spiritual toxicity …
Valentine assesses her reaction, almost coldly.
‘The ones with numbers are obviously more valuable,’ she explains.
‘That’s revolting!’
Sheila inst
inctively wipes both hands on the front of her shirt.
‘There’s a whip, too,’ Valentine adds.
‘Whip?’ Sheila echoes.
‘From one of the camps – I forget which.’ She shrugs. ‘Auschwitz, Treblinka … He’d bring it out on special occasions when we were kids. Tell us stories. Show it off.’
Sheila says nothing. She’s momentarily lost for words. Flaccid. Sickened.
‘This is his real inheritance.’ Valentine smiles, her eyes hard as flint. ‘These are the things we took pleasure in together. His … his legacy? Isn’t that the word you used earlier?’
Sheila just shakes her head, appalled.
‘His legacy,’ Valentine repeats. ‘The skin. The ink. The tattoo. The gift. The pain. The artistry … Doesn’t seem quite so wonderful now, does it?’
‘This was your father’s collection,’ Sheila stolidly maintains.
Valentine concedes this point with a small tip of the head. ‘But I do love the skin,’ she muses, ‘just like he did. And the paler the skin, the stronger the mark – the brighter – the more indelible …’
‘It’s different.’ Sheila winces. ‘God – how can you bear to hold that thing?!’ she explodes. ‘How can you bear to sleep at night knowing that it’s just lying there, hidden, inside your home?’
‘I can’t.’ Valentine shrugs. ‘But I do.’ She slowly shakes her head. ‘It’s like you love something’ – she turns the wallet over in her hand, tracing the number with her finger, mesmerized – ‘and then you’re punished for loving it. I love tattooing but I’m my dad’s apprentice. I love the skin – I’m obsessed by it – it’s so magical and strong yet so unbelievably sensitive – it’s the thing that holds all the feelings in – the thing that touches the world; the mask, the source, the base, the surface …’
Sheila looks down at her watch. Even as she does so she can’t quite believe she’s doing it. She looks up again.
‘I have to go,’ she says, scrambling to her feet.
‘Of course.’
Valentine steps back, resigned. She half-smiles. Her eyes are dead.
‘No, I mean I really do have to go. I really do. I have a baptism at two …’
The Yips Page 36