‘Yes. And I said you were too young.’
‘Well, I’m not too young now, am I?’ We laugh, which was the one thing we always managed to do together. I shared a bed with my sister for longer than I did with any man. I sit down at the foot of her bed and try to ignore the stench. Lizzie’s face is a Clapham Junction of lines, wrinkles, shadows and tunnelling dirt. Her shiny scalp has a frizz of fluffy white like an ancient baby. At sixty-seven she looks a hundred; she doesn’t need to tell me she’s had a hard life. But the longer I sit there the easier it is to see the girl’s face. I want to wash and iron and starch her, give her back her long, pale features, black curly hair and hooked nose. That nose used to stick into me in the middle of the night. Even when Lizzie was young it came into the room a few seconds before she did, and now it’s worthy of Mr Punch. The dark eyes that used to smoulder at me are peering suspiciously as she reaches out and touches my cheek. ‘What they got over there in Italy? Magic face cream?’
‘I wouldn’t be surprised. What happened to your eyes, Lizzie?’
‘Cataracts. Forty years sewing. Bloody immigrants buying up all the sweatshops now.’
‘So what happened to you after you got back from South Africa?’
‘After Ma died Spencer went all posh. Didn’t want me around. So I come back here. Thought of going out to Italy to see you, but I didn’t think you’d want me neither.’
‘Oh, Lizzie, I would! You don’t know how lonely I was.’
‘Still, you done all right for yourself. Did ya marry any of your fellas?’
‘No. Did you?’
‘Nah. Sometimes thought it’d be lovely to have a baby. You did. I got a letter. Daughter? Granddaughter? Thought she said you was dead, but I get confused.’
‘So you never had any children?’
‘Nah. I was too frightened of doing to them what Ma done to us.’
‘So you’re all alone, too. What do you live on?’
‘Living? This isn’t living. Let’s talk about when we was young and beautiful.’
I smile because she’s awarded herself a retrospective beauty she never had. But she can’t see my smile anyway. ‘What was Ma like, Lizzie, when you finally got to Jo’burg? I always wondered.’
‘She met me off the boat. Funny, I can remember her hat but not what I had for dinner today. All ostrich feathers and flowers and grapes, like a bloody great fruit salad – a good ten years out of date. We was all in short skirts by then. Still, it suited her. Lovely face she had, even then.’
‘I wish I could remember her. Have you got any photographs?’
‘Nah. She took me back to Spencer’s house, where she was living, and I could see he wanted an unmarried sister like a swarm of locusts. Jo’burg was full of English girls come over looking for husbands, and all the young men was dead in the war. Spencer was married himself by then, to a South African woman, Joyce. Ever so bossy she was, hard, even Ma was afraid of her. They had two girls and a boy, and they at least was pleased to see me. I loved them children. Used to play with them, do their washing and sewing, took ’em out. Spencer was busy making money and Joyce was entertaining important people. Me and Ma didn’t get a look in. Didn’t mind being an unpaid nursemaid ’cause the children loved me and that was better than what I had in London. Ma was pickled in gin, miserable as Satan. When I saw her wiv her grandchildren I could see she really hated kids. Couldn’t help it, just did. Told me to my face she couldn’t stand little girls. Seemed to forget she’d left me and you behind.’
‘Did she ask about me?’
‘Don’t think she even remembered you.’
I’m glad she can’t see my face. I had always believed my glamorous mother loved and missed me and wanted to send for me. It was like that moment when George said I’d never been any good on the stage, a lifetime of illusion melted into nothingness.
‘Ma was desperate to marry again, though she never stopped complaining about Pa. Said he knocked her about. Went on and on about how he drank, but she was drinking herself. In her room, thought nobody noticed.’
‘How did she die?’
‘Fell downstairs one night when she’d bin drinking. Found an empty bottle of gin on her bedside table and a jar of pickled walnuts. That was her diet the last few months. She wouldn’t talk to any of us. If you ask me, Jenny, we was lucky to have Flo.’
‘And what happened to her?’
‘When I come back from Jo’burg Flo was in the workhouse. Call it an ’orspital now. Went there last year to get my eyes seen to. Gave me the creeps going in there again. Flo lost the house; I dunno what happened. Saw her on the Monday and she was dead on the Friday. Only me at the funeral. She was good to us was old Flo.’
‘It must have been hard for you when you came back to London.’
‘Bit late to start worrying about me.’
‘Lizzie, honestly, if you’d got in touch I would have helped you. I had money then.’
‘Eugenie bloody Manette you called yourself. Didn’t know who the hell it was at first.’
‘When I heard about the Blitz in the East End I came over here, right across London, to search for you, Lizzie. Only it was all so chaotic I didn’t know where to start. But I never forgot about you. You should have –’
‘Now I know it’s really you, Jenny. I remember that voice. “Oh, I would like to be nice to you, only you’re so stupid and there are so many more important people to be charming to.” All the time we was girls I heard that voice. And when I saw Ma again I realized where you got it from.’
This is so true that I don’t bother to protest. ‘Can I come and see you again?’
‘Suit yourself. What happened to all the money then?’
‘I spent it.’
‘Might of known you’d only remember me when you was broke.’
We laugh, and I decide to leave before she remembers too much. ‘I will come again, Lizzie. It was wonderful to see you.’
‘Wonderful!’ she mimics my voice. ‘Look a little lovelier each day, don’t I? Awff you go then.’ Her voice implies that I’m leaving her for a frivolous and exciting alternative. In fact, as I descend the noxious stairs, I’ve no idea where to go next. I look around the bleak, dark, wet streets, searching for memories, for clues as to who I was before I met you, Leo. But there aren’t any. I wander down to a main road, Kings-land Road. I must have walked here a thousand times as a child, but it doesn’t look familiar.
I get on a bus where I sit upstairs in a comfortable fug of illuminated smoke and steam. I don’t know or care where I’m going, and there’s a kind of beauty in my blind passage through my city. I’m so alone that I can project myself on to the hissing traffic, rotting buildings and struggling crowds. The window is steamed up and dripping with beads of rain, I breathe on the glass and wipe a circle of clarity to press my nose against.
Molly
Molly’s alone in the drawing-room with the remains of the funeral tea. ‘Come and sit down. I’ll make you a hot drink. We missed you after the funeral. Where did you go?’
‘Don’t know.’
Molly plies me with tea and biscuits and leftover canapés. ‘Why, you’re half asleep. Take off your wet things. Is that a new jacket?’
‘Yes. I sold Grandma’s old coat. I wanted to feel young.’
‘Why, of course you’re young, you silly girl. Were you upset by the funeral? You were very fond of George, weren’t you?’
‘He was so kind.’
Suddenly we’re crying together, side by side on the couch. We share a box of tissues. ‘You know, when you first came I thought you were callous. Your grandmother – but I realize now you’re a very different character. You’ll really miss George, won’t you, dear? But you’ll soon find a boyfriend. You won’t be all on your own like me. David was frantically worried about you when you disappeared after the funeral. He’d marry you tomorrow, you know, if you wanted him to. But I don’t suppose you do. You could eat ten Davids before breakfast.’
‘Yes, I sup
pose I could. I don’t want to marry.’
‘Probably just as well. You’re young and beautiful, and you have no idea of the damage that inflicts.’ Haven’t I just. ‘In a few years you’ll be as much of a man-eater as your grandmother, and I want my David to be happy. Muriel’s different, she’s old-fashioned. Modern girls like you and Annette don’t understand the first thing about love. I would have looked after George for another ten years if he’d survived that heart attack, even if he had been paralysed and incontinent. That’s marriage; you don’t just walk away from it. You think it’s all about romance and sex and having a good time. A long marriage is something to be proud of. Forty years, and I do still love him. Have another tissue. And one of these little quiches. You can stay here until I sell the house.’
‘Thanks, Molly,’ I say when I can speak. ‘Look, I’ve been meaning to tell you, I know Julia’s your friend and I’m sure her college suits some girls, but I don’t want you to waste any more money on me. I’ll get a job.’
‘Doing what?’
‘I don’t know. And – sorry, but my shoes are worn out. Could I borrow the money for some new ones?’
‘But, of course, my dear. George wouldn’t have wanted you to hobble around like an old tramp. Let me give you some money for fares, as well.’
‘It’s all right. I like to walk.’
‘I had no idea you were so hard up. You know, that caricature Beer-bohm did of your grandmother must be worth a fortune.’ Too late, Molly remembers she isn’t supposed to have seen it and lowers her gaze.
‘I couldn’t possibly sell that.’
She looks at me in surprise. ‘You’re the last girl I would have expected to be sentimental.’
‘I did love my grandmother.’
‘I hated her – and I never even met her. It’s strange, but I feel much closer to you than to Annette.’
‘Perhaps I am your granddaughter.’
‘Well, it’s quite possible. Now go upstairs, dear, before you fall asleep. We’ll – I’ll be fine.’ Molly gasps as if it has only just hit her that she’s in the first-person singular now. She looks incredulously at the green leather armchair where George used to sit every night under the green-shaded standard lamp, reading the Financial Times or Plays and Players.
Now it’s David’s turn to try to find something for me to do. Any excuse to see him. I adore our chaste, awkward meetings, and I’d follow him to the ends of the earth, even to the cavernous basement in Notting Hill Gate where his friend Barry lives. David sweetly chaperones me, as he’s afraid to leave me alone with this knowing, rather brash young man. In fact Barry’s not nearly as appealing as David. Innocence is the only really sexy thing.
While I dress and make up for the photographic session the two boys discuss me as if I’m not there, and I resent this. Even though I’ve set myself up as an object of desire I expect to be taken seriously. Isn’t it obvious that I’m not just a pretty face? Barry doesn’t even think I’m that. ‘Frankly, I don’t think she’ll get any work as a model. We’ll give it a try, anyway.’
‘But she’s so beautiful!’
‘Yes, but she’s an acquired taste. Pre-Raphaelite, not modern. What they all want now is straight blonde hair, regular features, white face, blue eyes, no tits or bum – maybe if she dyed her hair and wore a wig and lost a few pounds … ?’
‘But then she wouldn’t be the same person!’
‘Exactly. Sorry, David.’
I desperately try to look my best as I cavort in front of Barry’s camera. When I was a girl I was taught to mince and flounce and blush, to be a whore but act like a lady. Nowadays girls are expected to behave in public as they once would have done only in the bedroom. Walking the streets of London, I see girls who might be boys and boys who might be girls thrusting their tongues down each other’s throats in the middle of the pavement. I can’t wait to try it, but it’s all very confusing.
David and I meet for dinner in a bistro in the Finchley Road. He’s just come from work and looks hot and shiny, ridiculously young in his three-piece suit, like a child dressed up in his father’s clothes. At first I thought his face was an exact replica of his grandfather’s, but I was wrong. Well-brought-up young men of my generation were so thoroughly squashed during their education and childhood that they always looked a bit repressed, as if waiting for nanny or the Latin master to slap them. George had a couple of months in the Army right at the end of the Great War to make him look even more stiff and apprehensive. These children know they own the world, and that confidence is reflected in their faces. David is well on the way to joining the professional establishment but he’s just beginning to realize he can have a good time on the way, I can see it in his blue eyes, which stare at me with such flattering lust and devotion, and in his shy, tender smile. He’s so young that he still blushes, dark pink suffusing his slightly tanned, translucent skin. I thank you with all my heart, Leo, as I kiss David. He tastes so good.
He takes a sheet of photographs out of his briefcase and hands it to me. Here I am in rows of black-and-white windows, a strip cartoon, strutting my stuff. In one little box I swan in a long black dress, my hair piled on my head; in another I jump, wearing a halter-neck T-shirt and white bell-bottoms. I tried so hard to look modern, but Barry has caught an arch expression that belongs to another era. When I don’t look coy I look surprised and worried. Even these miniature images reveal my discomfort. The camera, plainly, hasn’t fallen in love with me.
But David has, and I’m moved by his concern for my feelings. ‘I’m awfully sorry, but Barry doesn’t think – I mean …’
‘I’m not Twiggy after all? Oh well.’ ‘You’re not too upset?’
‘No, of course not.’ But I am. After seventy years of narcissism you’d think I could manage to dress up and parade around in front of a camera successfully.
‘Oh, Jenny!’ He reaches across the table to grip my hand in both his. ‘I think he’s crazy. If I was him I’d want to take photographs of you all day. And all night.’
I stand outside Molly’s bedroom and watch her undress through a crack in the door. Off comes the black suit and the white blouse. She stands in her pink silk slip, the bat wings of her upper arms wobbling in the soft light of her bedside lamp. Naked, she swells and quivers like a Rubens goddess. No, a natural woman. She puts on a pink satin nightdress, heaves herself into the double bed, reaches out to the empty space beside her and mutters to herself. I move closer so that I can hear what she’s saying.
‘Well, I don’t see why I shouldn’t have read your letters to her. I’m going back tomorrow to have another look, and if any of them are dated after we got married I’ll give you hell. I don’t blame Jenny, poor little thing. I thought you’d want me to give her some money. But I don’t know what you saw in that bitch, her grandmother. I do wish you hadn’t gone off like that, darling. I can’t help thinking you’re just in the bathroom and you’re going to come in any minute in your paisley dressing-gown smelling of Floris aftershave.’
Just before Molly is due to move to her new flat near Holland Park I tell her I’ve found a job.
‘Well done! What sort of job?’
‘It’s a boutique in High Street Kensington. Terribly swish, I mean groovy, lots of pretty girls wearing practically nothing.’
‘How much will they pay you?’
‘Eight pounds a week – I think I can just about manage to pay for my rent and food out of that. It won’t be very interesting, of course.’
‘Nonsense, you’ll have great fun with the other girls. I envy you. I shall have a very dull life all alone in my little flat. I do hope you’ll come and see me sometimes. I’ll miss you.’
On the Make
I miss you, too, Molly. How about a swap? You can have my lousy boring job; I’ll take your new flat in Holland Park Avenue and all the investments and annuities.
This living for ever is all very well, but how to do it with any dignity and meaning? Perhaps I should be truthful about my age in o
rder to get a pension. But I lost my birth certificate years ago, and I’ve no documents except a passport forged by a crook in the back streets of Genoa, describing me as Jennifer Mankowitz, born in London in 1945. Nobody would believe my real age – and I couldn’t live on a pension anyway.
Is this it then? That reality I’ve been threatened with all my life. London has shrunk to a few streets around West Kensington and the black-and-purple mirrored gloom of the fashion temple where I work. Only half a step up from the kind of job I might have got if I’d stayed in Hoxton. These girls in the shop are working class, with a bit of spirit and more ambition than brains, just like me and Lizzie half a century ago.
Reminded of my sister, I go to see her, loaded with presents: yoghurt and salmon mousse – which can be eaten comfortably without teeth – a new tape recorder and some tapes of music-hall and wartime songs. I want us to have a sing-song, like when we were girls, and I’ve brought a blank tape to record our memories. I’ll be able to play it when I wake, as I often do, in the middle of the night, feeling unreal and hollow, as if I’ve imagined myself but forgotten to give myself a heart. I also buy some flowers from a kiosk near Old Street Station. When we were children Lizzie and I used to pass that flower stall every morning on our way to school, and my pulse used to race at the sight of that unattainable brilliance, blazing in the mass of grey. The old woman who kept the stall in those days was filthy, almost mummified in layers of ancient clothes. Sixty years later I smile at her clean successor and choose a bouquet of crimson and golden roses for my sister.
But Lizzie’s door is answered by a stranger, the new tenant, who tells me my sister died last month.
Flee down the concrete stairs and through unfamiliar streets: running takes me back to childhood, when I was always in a hurry, my heart pounding, gasping for breath. But my childhood is out of reach now, demolished like the tenements and alleys and courtyards. All that Lizziescape vanished for ever. She was as unattractive as the old slums but familiar, my only family. Anguish grips me as I stand on a street corner, my arms crossed over my breast to hug the sister I never knew I loved. Several passers-by stop to stare at me as I stand there weeping in the Friday evening rush-hour.
Loving Mephistopeles Page 10