Girl With Dove

by Sally Bayley

  Dear Charles, I’m having a lovely time here in the Bahamas. The locals are very friendly, although they could do with covering up a bit more. Yesterday a lovely gel brought me the most delicious banana cake with my morning tea. I think I shall stay on another day or two. Be sure to water the cacti, dear – but not too much, they only need a drop or two.

  Soon after I was born the queen gave the Bahamas back to the Bahamians. The Bahamians were quite relieved; they liked the queen well enough, but the people of the Bahamas wanted to be in charge. Who could blame them? This was what James told me, anyway, James, who was my first best friend, James, whose dad shipped bananas from the Bahamas.

  ——————————

  James and I spent all our time together and when we were six we decided to get married. We sat in the concrete tubes all through playtime and discussed our future.

  James told me this: in the Bahamas they lived in bungalows, small white roofs surrounded by palm trees. I would go back to the Bahamas with James and live with him in his big white house. We’d plant plantains and palm trees; we’d build a plantation. At the end of the day we’d sit on our terrace and look out to sea. James would bring me tea with milk and on Sundays I’d get out a tall ladder and polish and wax the trees. Then a breeze would lift my hair and my legs and arms would turn brown and when I sat next to James no one would think I was white as the milk we drank in our tea.

  ——————————

  Later, when I read Jane Eyre, I thought of Bertha Mason and my friend James: if only James had married poor Bertha everything would have been all right! Bertha would have stayed in the Bahamas; she would never have come to England. Bertha would never have been sad and mad. Mr Rochester shouldn’t have taken her away from the sun and the sand. They say it’s cruel to move cats.

  But Bertha was taken to a big stone house full of rain and clouds. Bertha married a man who took her back to England; a man who told her that the sun shone at least once a week, and always at the weekend. But it didn’t, and Bertha missed the sun badly. After a while her hair fell out and she lay in bed all day and cried.

  Bertha began to turn wild. She longed for the sun and the soft breeze on her face; she longed for a glimpse of the sea. So Bertha pulled up the sash windows and climbed out of the stone house filled with clouds. She crawled along the window ledges and up over the roof. Bertha sat on top of the turrets and wailed for her banana trees and blue sea and palm trees. She lifted her hand to the sky and sighed. ‘Oo-leee-ooo-leee-laa-aaaaaa. Ooooo-eeee-waaaa-waaaaa, waaaa-waaa-waaa.’

  Bertha gnashed her teeth and turned her head to the sky, but the God of the Sun and the Stars, the God of the Wind and the Rain was nowhere to be found.

  ——————————

  When I first read Jane Eyre, I couldn’t sleep for months thinking of Bertha. I saw her everywhere. She was there when I closed my eyes and began to drift off to sleep. Bertha was there, crawling along my bedroom ceiling; she was sliding down the wall on her thick long hair; she was hanging upside down and turning somersaults. And when she turned towards me I saw her big gummy mouth and white teeth and they were dripping.

  But some nights I saw another face: she was thin and pale and her hair was shorn and when I looked into her eyes they were scared. Her hair was so thin I could see the pink skin on the scalp beneath, and when she turned her face towards me I saw nothing but a big black hole. In my sleep I watched her climb down off my bed and crawl towards the corner of my room. I watched as she began to lick herself, the small woman with thin brown fur, the woman with tiny brown wings.

  Something creaked: it was a door ajar; and that door was Mr. Rochester’s, and the smoke rushed in a cloud from thence … in an instant, I was within the chamber. Tongues of flame darted round the bed: the curtains were on fire. In the midst of blaze and vapour, Mr. Rochester lay stretched motionless, in deep sleep.

  (Jane Eyre)

  In another century, in a different world, Bertha Mason would have been sent to hospital for trying to set Mr Rochester’s bed alight. She would have been put on a side ward and kept under observation. Every fifteen minutes a nurse would come in and check her pulse, lift up her eyelids and make a note on the whites of her eyes. Twice a day Bertha Mason would have been given a dose of clozapine to keep her meek and mild and lying in bed in her white cotton gown.

  Instead, Edward Rochester keeps her in the attic above his bed under lock and key. There, he hopes, she will be quiet and timid as a mouse. Under lock and key.

  But Bertha Mason can’t be quieted and at night she begins to moan and roam. At night she starts to laugh, and once she starts, she just can’t stop. She laughs and laughs and laughs. She roars.

  It is her laugh that wakes Jane. Then it is Jane who roams down the long dark hallway, and up the stairs, up to another dark corridor, to another set of stairs, and then another and another. Jane keeps climbing until she reaches the top.

  At the foot of the highest stairs she freezes; the moaning sound is so close she can practically feel it on the back of her hand. It is coming from under the door; it is hot and sweaty, this moaning, the hot breath of a woman panting flames.

  Jane stands and shivers. Then she lifts her hand and reaches for the white door. But before she can reach the handle something hot touches her foot. A tunnel of flames chases her down the hall.

  PART THREE

  25

  On Her Small Brown Wings

  ‘Take her away to the Red Room, and lock her in there,’ says Aunt Reed after Jane boxes her ears. ‘The mood of the revolted slave was still bracing me with its vigour,’ says Jane. ‘Four hands were immediately laid upon me, and I was borne upstairs.’

  ‘No jail was ever more secure,’ says Jane to herself as she begins to look around her. She spies a white chair that looks like a throne. She goes over and sits in it, but the chair is icy cold. She shrieks. A moment later she catches sight of a mirror; the image in the mirror frightens her. Who is this strange person, this pale phantom staring back at her?

  The strange little figure there gazing at me, with a white face and arms specking the gloom, and glittering eyes of fear moving where all else was still, had the effect of a real spirit: I thought it looked like one of the tiny phantoms, half fairy, half imp.

  ——————————

  I can’t quite tell you how it all came about, but at some point something strange took over: a fairy person, a phantom, a revolting slave, and I was no longer myself but someone quite different and strange.

  I first noticed her when I was ill with measles and I spent all day lying around in the front room. I was tired and bored and couldn’t do anything at all. But every now and then I got up to look at myself in the mirror, because the thought of measles frightened me: those red spots all over my forehead and chin. What were they doing to me? How far would they go?

  Mirrors do strange things. Whatever you see in a mirror is bound to look peculiar. ‘Best not to pay too much attention,’ says Maze. ‘They never tell the truth.’ Mirrors distort and bend things out of shape. Mirrors tell lies. No matter how hard you look in a mirror you never see what is there. Not really.

  In my house there were no mirrors. There was a tiny one above the bathroom sink in the downstairs bathroom, but no one lingered there to look at themselves because it was always too cold. ‘Brrr!’ said my brother. ‘Brrrrr! It’s so bleeding cold in here you could build an igloo! Give me that towel!’

  ‘Bleeding?’ said Mum, who always heard rudeness a mile off. ‘There’s no bleeding about it. Mind your words. Now get a move on! You should be done by now. Get that towel over you.’

  After Fred’s Estate, an ornate gold mirror appeared in the sliver of space outside Mum’s bedroom. ‘French baroque,’ my aunt said with her eyebrows lifting towards the ceiling, her eyebrows flitting up and down like angry crows. ‘French baroque,’ she said to the mirror, as though it would speak. ‘Now, I don’t want any “Mirror, mirror on the wall” from any of y
ou lot. This is a mirror for adults. It’s there to create space. Mirrors bring space. They open things up. Now get off with you! You’re blocking off all the light. Give the mirror some space, for Pete’s sake. She’s only just gone up.’

  But the mirror didn’t really change anything, because behind that mirror lay our dark hallway with no lightbulb and the damp kitchen filled with cardboard boxes and the bathroom growing green mould. There, behind the mirror and the boxes stacked high, Mum was reciting her favourite Dylan Thomas poem, in the early-morning bathroom, with the blue light coming up and the window open on the latch and the wind poking through to clear out the steam.

  Mum said the window must always be open because otherwise the damp would creep in and take over. But the damp had already taken over. Mum just didn’t notice. She was too busy saying her poem, which sounded like prayers, prayers spoken to the angels.

  I stood in the dark hallway and I watched Mum’s mouth opening and closing on the words that hurt her, the words that brought tears to her eyes, the words that never brought angels.

  ‘The conversation of prayers about to be said by the child going to bed and the man on the stairs who climbs to his dying love in her high room, the one not caring to whom in his sleep he will move and the other full of tears that she will be dead, dead, dead … turns in the dark on the sound …’

  But when Mum turned there was no one there. No one, no one, no one, except me, creeping down the hallway towards the bathroom door waiting for the bath and hoping that soon it would all be over. The poem, I mean.

  Still, Mum kept going, right to the end, to the top of the stairs and back down again, because once you start saying a poem it is hard to stop. Your mouth just keeps moving. Or maybe it’s your soul pushing you on. Anyway, Mum went round and round, up and down and up and down, pouring water over her head and shoulders and down her neck until she lay down in the water, lay down as though she were dead, washing off the soap and giving herself a good rinse, she said, rinsing herself off properly, because you didn’t want to get a rash, so you had to lay dead for a while until you had got rid of the soap which might cling to your skin and never go away. Never. And then you’d be in trouble. So you lay beneath the water until you could feel yourself clean all over, clean and tingling, even if it meant you had to lie like the one who lies dead.

  Mornings, very early, before the light came up, Mum sat in the bath and practised her Dylan Thomas poem about the woman in her high room and the man on the stairs and the child not caring to whom in his sleep he will move. The poem about the woman dying in the tower and the man on the stairs moving up to her like the tide coming in to cover up her dead body and wash her away. And the child who drowns as the tide washes him away, and the man standing on the stair crying and looking on and the woman in her high room sleeping, for ever and ever amen. And all without God watching, or maybe all with God watching, I couldn’t tell. I could only see Mum’s face as she rinsed off the tears with her favourite Pears soap which doesn’t hurt your eyes, so don’t be such a baby. Now hurry up and get out. The water’s getting cold!

  And when she had finished, Mum pulled herself out of the bath, dragged all of her white thighs and legs and arms and belly to the top of the stairs, to the high room where the woman lies sleeping. She lifted her leg over the bath edge and looked for one quick moment in the bathroom mirror and then looked away.

  ——————————

  There was only one full-length mirror in the house. It was in the small hallway outside the upstairs kitchen, and it was white with a gold rim. One day I stopped to look at myself in the mirror. I looked and I saw a silent face staring back at me.

  ‘Mirror-gazing will lead to vanity, and vanity is a sin! Don’t be such a vain creature. Get away from there!’

  I jumped. Dark hair reared up behind me. Dark hair filled the mirror. Dark hair was breathing down my neck. She was speaking.

  ‘There is no need to spend all that time admiring yourself. Now get away. Vanity is one of the seven deadly sins!’

  Vanity. What did it mean? ‘Vanity’ – it had sharp edges, and the edges went straight into my stomach. ‘Vanity, vanity, vanity’. Vanity was a long white van you drove around full of mirrors. Before long the van crashed because the mirrors at the back distracted you. Vanity was a crushed white van with a smashed face and a bleeding body. Vanity was a broken and bleeding mirror. Vanity was a dead body with sharp glass stuck in it. Vanity was what led to the police. Vanity would get you a life sentence. Vanity would lock you away for the rest of your life in a cold and draughty attic room.

  What a consternation of soul was mine … how all my brain was in tumult, and all my heart in insurrection!

  (Jane Eyre)

  Sometimes the things you do are a mystery, to yourself, to anyone, even to God. Sometimes people are a mystery to you, those special others you cannot quite pass as blank. Jane Eyre was a mystery to me: she was my mystery and she kept drawing me back. Now, years later, I know for sure – it was Jane Eyre who led me away, Jane on her small brown wings.

  That winter I pushed aside the thick velvet curtains and I stepped onto the ledge. I ruffled up my brown wings; I flapped and flapped. Then I flew, up into the sky towards the dark blue sea, where the Northern Ocean, in vast whirls, boils around the naked, melancholy isles; and the Atlantic surge pours in among the stormy Hebrides. I flew to the far-off place where the spirit of Jane Eyre lives and breathes.

  26

  Expert Opinions

  Soon after, I took myself to the doctor to ask his opinion on this pale person in the mirror. What a consternation of soul was mine! How all my brain was in tumult! Because I knew that doctors were forbidden in my family; no one in my family ever went to a doctor.

  But a doctor, I decided, would at least be someone with a different opinion. Doctors are experts with expert opinions. A doctor’s opinion counts for a lot, sometimes even for murder.

  Emma Crackenthorpe from 4.50 from Paddington knows this. Emma Crackenthorpe trusts doctors. She knows that a doctor is just as good as a policeman for dealing with a body. Doctors are discreet. They keep secrets. Doctors are polite and discreet and sometimes they are stimulating. Dr Quimper is interesting because of the way he crosses the hall. Dr Quimper is a stimulating visitor. He comes with something new and strange, with his expert opinion. He was a tall genial man, with a casual off-hand, cynical manner that his patients found very stimulating.

  ——————————

  As I walked towards the surgery on Maltravers Drive, I wondered whether the doctor would be casual or intimidating and whether I could trust him. What can you tell a doctor, I wondered, and what can’t you? How casual or stimulating should you be?

  Maltravers Drive was intimidating. It was full of large houses set back from the road. Big driveways and tall trees hid the houses so that people passing by couldn’t peer in.

  ‘Lovely and private,’ Mum said about Maltravers Drive, which was her favourite road. ‘Well positioned … nicely set back, and room. And those lovely established trees. The council needs to make more of an effort to plant trees. Why should the people on Maltravers Drive be the only people who can see trees from their front room?’

  The surgery was at the top of Maltravers Drive. It was a blank brick building with glass, hemmed in by trees. I went to the front reception and asked to see a doctor. A woman with a gold chain around her neck stared at me. She lifted a pencil from behind her ear and opened the large book in front of her. She leaned forward and I could see white, white bosoms. She leaned back and her mouth opened slowly and I saw white teeth flecked with bumpy red lipstick. The red lipstick was so thick it looked plastic. I wanted to poke it to make it crackle.

  ‘Do you have an appointment?’

  Of course I didn’t. How could I make an appointment?

  ‘No. I don’t have an appointment, but I’d like to see a doctor. I want to ask him some questions.’

  A piece of bacon flicked out from between th
e red plastic. The piece of bacon curled and uncurled then folded back inside.

  ‘We don’t have any free appointments until five. You’ll have to wait. You need an appointment to see a doctor, you know. You can’t just waltz in and expect to see someone, not on a Friday.’

  The gold chain dropped sharply and made a scratchy sound on the counter. The red lipstick disappeared inside a large white book. Then a shiny nose poked up. ‘You’ll have to wait. Go and sit in the waiting room. The doctor will call you when he’s ready.’ She pointed to the room across the hallway.

  The waiting room was covered in blotchy wallpaper. I wondered if it was supposed to remind you that you were ill. It was the colour of sick. If you didn’t feel ill looking at that wallpaper, then you weren’t really ill. That was the test. You had to be ill to go to the doctor, probably quite ill. I wasn’t ill, but I needed to ask some questions.

  There were magazines lying around on a table, but I didn’t bother to look at any of them. They looked boring, all about women’s hair and teeth and thighs and going on holiday. Instead, I thought about the doctor. I’d never met a doctor before. What were doctors like? In Agatha Christie, doctors are professional and pleasant. A dead body is unpleasant. Dr Quimper is unmoved by the sight of a dead body. Doctors mustn’t betray emotion. You might ask a doctor’s opinion, but you don’t expect him to take up too much space. Doctors are discreet. They arrive suddenly and they leave quickly. They carry a brown case and they keep their diagnoses to a minimum. Doctors are like the houses on Maltravers Drive: very private.