The Private Parts of Women

by Lesley Glaister

  Louise, who lived in, extended her duties and helped me get Mother up and washed, and later, put her to bed. I don’t know what made Louise stay as long as she did. Father paid her very little and it must have been like living in an asylum. She was what you might call ‘strapping’, very matter-of-fact. Her face was pale and pitted as a crumpet. ‘She’ll never marry,’ Father used to say with satisfaction, ‘not with all the young men of her class shot to smithereens in France. Not with a face like that.’

  I wish I had been more friendly to her. Though she didn’t encourage it. She was pleasant enough but … well because of Father probably … she knew her place. She would never criticise them, never side with me. She did her job, cooked piles of plain food, was polite and helpful. I can’t complain.

  One day, I found myself outside. There was the familiar and sickening lurch back into consciousness like the moment of falling in a dream. Another absence, another frantic looking round to find myself. I don’t think I’d done anything bad except walk out alone with no coat or hat, quite normal as far as the world was concerned. There was nothing strange in my pockets, no dirt or damage to my clothes. I asked directions back to Holloway – and found I’d walked miles. I was in Stratford, an area I didn’t know. I was full of the sick, startled sensation that always followed a significant absence.

  I hurried along, troubled and tired, anxious that I might have been missed, when I came to an ugly square red-brick building. Something made me stop and look instead of hurrying past. Inside, someone was playing a trombone. Above the door it said: CURRY STREET CITADEL. I hesitated. I felt unwell, faint and weak and torn. What I should do was hurry home. I didn’t know what state Mother would be in, what trouble I’d get into from Father. But the trombone sounded like a message, reaching out especially to me. Years before I had heard a Sally Army band and believed that it beckoned me. I had almost forgotten, but the rich brass slither brought it back to me. I looked around but there was no one on the street to see. I went through the front door into a lobby, and looked through another door into the main hall.

  A young man in shirt-sleeves was standing with one foot on a chair, a beam of sunshine from a high window shone down and lit up his trombone like gold. He was laughing down at a young woman in Salvation Army uniform. She held her bonnet in her hand and was looking up at him, smiling and scolding. She looked utterly happy and herself. I wanted quite suddenly and badly to be her. To laugh. To scold flirtatiously. I wanted that young man with his trombone and his floppy black hair to be smiling down at me.

  They noticed me at the same instant. The woman smoothed down her wavy hair and with it her expression. She replaced her bonnet. The man took his foot off the chair.

  ‘Can we help you?’ the woman asked.

  ‘I was just walking past,’ I said. ‘I didn’t feel well … I heard the trombone … Oh I don’t know …’

  ‘Sit down a minute,’ the man said brushing the chair with his hand. The woman took my arm and sat me down.

  ‘You’re very pale. Water,’ she offered, ‘or tea?’

  ‘Just water,’ I said. I could hardly look at them, they were so kind.

  ‘What’s your name?’ the man drew up a chair and sat close beside me.

  ‘Trixie … Trixie Bell.’

  ‘I’m Harold Brown, Lieutenant,’ he added with a grin, ‘and this,’ he indicated the woman who returned with my drink, ‘is Lieutenant Mary Bright.’

  ‘I heard a Salvation Army band once, at Harrogate,’ I said. I sipped the water. I could feel the blood returning to my head. The hall was lofty, full of echoes and splinters, the windows so high you could see nothing out of them but sky. There were posters on the walls advertising meetings, Battles for Souls. There were texts in great black letters, some I recognised from my own reading, that almost made me feel at home.

  Harold had a narrow face, a long nose, shadowy, speckled cheeks. He was a big heavy man and he smelled slightly of sweat.

  ‘I thought they were wonderful,’ I continued. ‘But my father doesn’t approve…’

  ‘We thrive on disapproval,’ Harold said, grinning.

  ‘Have you been to a meeting?’ Mary asked.

  ‘No, I was only a child then and I … well it would be impossible, I care for my mother, you see, I don’t get much time.’

  ‘Could you not make a little time?’ Harold leant towards me.

  ‘I don’t know … perhaps … one day.’

  ‘Do you feel better?’ Mary asked. ‘You looked like a ghost when you came in, I thought you were going to pass out.’

  I nodded. ‘Yes, thank you … I came over tired … just a funny turn.’

  ‘Where do you live?’

  ‘Holloway.’

  ‘You’ve walked all that way?’

  ‘I like to walk,’ I said.

  ‘Evidently.’ She looked down at my dusty shoes and smiled.

  ‘We’ll go a little way with you,’ Harold said standing up. ‘We could walk in that direction.’

  ‘No,’ I said. I handed Mary the cup. ‘Thank you. I must go. Mother might miss me. Thank you again. I will try and come to a meeting.’

  I fled. I was not used to people or to making conversation. I could not believe my nerve. The idea that I might attend one of their meetings seemed preposterous, seemed a lie. I hurried through the streets towards home, head down, terrified that I would be seen, or that Father would have returned home unexpectedly and discovered Mother alone.

  But as I hurried I knew that that is what I wanted. That it was not really preposterous, not a lie. One day I could be one of them. I could be a Salvationist. I could wear a uniform like Mary’s. Maybe I could even be called Lieutenant. Lieutenant Bell. It was a glorious thought.

  I opened the door cautiously and crept inside, terrified that I had been missed. But it was all right. It was as if I had never left. The grandfather-clock ticked sluggishly in the hall. Mother still sat in her chair: that her chest was dark with dribble was the only sign of neglect. The dreary smell of braising liver floated from the kitchen. I went to fetch a cup of tea. Louise, chopping carrots, only looked up and smiled.

  BINDWEED

  I have got myself involved. Christ knows I didn’t mean to but what can you do when someone needs help and you are there?

  First thing, I was coming back from a walk yesterday. I’d walked through the parks taking pictures of the wintery trees, the mill-dam, branches, leaves frozen into the ice and the ducks waddling and sliding. Now it was getting dusky, I was tired and wanted only to get inside and drink coffee. But when I got back, there was a man standing in the passage between my front door and Trixie’s. He was standing facing her door as if he’d knocked and was waiting for an answer, a small man in an overcoat and trilby.

  ‘Hello?’ I said.

  ‘Ah!’ He raised his hand and shook mine. ‘You are Inis, yes? The new neighbour.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Honoured to meet you.’ He took off his trilby and executed a little bow. ‘I am Blowski, Stefan.’ He looked as if he expected that I knew of him.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘A friend of Trixie Bell.’

  ‘Pleased to meet you,’ I said. I moved towards my door and he moved reluctantly aside.

  ‘I want you to know it is relief to me that Trixie have neighbour, nice neighbour. I worry about her, alone.’

  ‘She’s OK,’ I said, fumbling in my bag for my key. ‘She knows I’m here.’ I just wanted to get inside, switch on the gas-fire and drink coffee. I found my key and put it in the lock.

  ‘She keep herself to herself,’ he said, ‘but she need …’

  ‘Me too,’ I said opening the door. ‘I keep myself to myself too.’ I stepped inside and was enveloped by the cold smell of new paint. I flicked on the light and it shone out on Mr Blowski, a quite charming old man, I saw, with a wizened monkey face, wild wiry white eyebrows and a most glamorous puff of silvery hair. ‘Goodbye,’ I said.

  ‘She no ordinary woman,’ Mr Blow
ski was saying as I shut the door.

  I made a jug of coffee and crouched beside the gas-fire drinking mug after mug, scorching my face, feeling guilty that I had been so rude. The flowers loomed through the white paint like faces through fog. It was too quiet. I wondered if Mr Bloswski was still standing in the passage, waiting for Trixie to open her door. No ordinary woman. Funny, I had thought she was just that, an ordinary old woman, wandering a bit perhaps, but that’s normal surely at her age. Though there were the hymns she bellowed out at night. I shook myself, irritated to feel that she had got her hooks into me, only soft ones, more like the tendrils of a creeper – bindweed – tendrils that seem so slight and tender but will never let go once they have a grip, unless you break them.

  When I’d drained the last drop of coffee, I went up to my darkroom and switched on the red light. Some other photographers I know hate this part of the job, find it tedious, the processing, but I love it almost more than taking the photographs, the small space, the red light making rosy shadows, even the vinegary whiff of the chemicals.

  I had several reels of film taken in Sheffield – roadworks, street scenes, shopping-complexes, trees – Sheffield is full of trees, I’m surprised to find. I’ve been wandering around shooting this and that, groping towards a theme. None of this is my usual style. I am a portrait photographer by trade and inclination. I work best with a long lens, a dense point of focus. Character in close up is my forte. I also had some rolls of undeveloped film I’d brought with me, some of the last I shot before I left. It was one of those I picked up first, rather numbly, scarcely thinking why. Wondering instead, as I tested the exposure, what Mr Blowski meant. No ordinary woman. Well nor am I. Who is?

  I filled the baths with stop and fix, rolled on my rubber-gloves and watched my family bloom up through the wet like Chinese water-flowers.

  Christmas day:

  A bulging stocking hanging at the bed-head of a sleeping boy.

  A tousled man sitting up in bed eating a chocolate snowman.

  A boy in a bear mask, his pyjama-trousers falling down.

  A baby half-buried in crumpled wrapping-paper.

  A boy building with new bricks. Expression of fierce concentration.

  A baby girl regarding a Christmas cracker with wonder.

  A man holding up a glass of wine, eyes shining love at the photographer.

  And more and more and more. I hardly even cried. I pegged the prints up to dry, like so much washing, and went to bed.

  I woke thinking I will not get involved, feeling cross with the little man who had presumed so much. Just because I live next door to Trixie doesn’t make her my responsibility. I don’t want responsibility, that is the point, that is why I am here. Just because I’m a woman he thinks I must care. How wrong about someone can you be?

  And then this morning I saw Trixie in her garden. I was about to go out to hang some knickers and T-shirts on the line, but when I saw she was out there, I waited. I didn’t want to talk to her or anyone. I wanted only to work, though I was losing heart with all the wandering and searching. I needed a subject.

  Trixie was wearing a pale green raincoat. As I watched from the back window, she knelt slowly and stiffly down on a cushion and began to weed her garden. There’s not a weed to be seen but she was pulling something like invisible hairs from the soil. And then she leant forward and stooped right down low with her face only inches from a clump of golden crocuses, glowing as if they had electric light-bulbs inside, grown so quickly from the little green spears she’d pointed out. She was quite still. I couldn’t see whether her eyes were shut or not but she looked as if she was engaged in an act of worship or devotion. Embarrassed to be spying on her in this attitude, I turned away from the window, wishing I could capture her like that, on film.

  Next thing, I heard a cry. I looked out again and saw that Trixie had fallen forward, her face in the flowers, her legs unfolding awkwardly behind her. I went out, through the gate. Her face had broken the crocuses.

  ‘Trixie …’ I was thinking about strokes, heart attacks, all the things that lie in wait for old people, the things that have punctuated so many of Richard’s (and my own) nights. ‘Are you all right?’

  She turned her head to the side. There was yellow pollen on her cheek and soil between her lips. ‘Perfectly, thank you,’ she said with such aplomb I almost laughed.

  ‘I heard you shout. Did you fall?’

  ‘Just trying to get up, dear. Always clumsy, always was.’

  I struggled to help her to her feet. I hadn’t realised how big she was, not tall, but solid and sturdy under her layers of clothes. When she was up I helped her inside, she was limping badly, when she was sitting down on a kitchen chair, I saw that she had scraped her shin and knee.

  ‘I’ll make some tea, shall I?’ I said. ‘But we’d better wash that.’ Her stocking was ruined and dark gritty blood was slowly oozing. I could feel my morning oozing away too and felt guilty for minding. She wouldn’t let me lift her skirt to unfasten her stocking so I cut it open with scissors. A child’s graze is different; tight, healthy skin skimmed off and bright healthy blood speckling underneath. Robin used to wriggle and scream while I bathed his grazed knees in warm water with TCP but as soon as he had a plaster on he’d be proud and happy.

  ‘Look,’ he’d say to anyone at all, ‘I’ve graved myself.’

  But old skin is loose. It tears and hangs in flimsy rags. The blood is thick and dark, it wells up sluggish and stubborn.

  ‘Perhaps you should go to A and E,’ I suggested.

  ‘What’s that when it’s at home?’

  ‘Accident and Emergency. You know, Casualty. I’ll go out and phone for a taxi…’

  ‘No, no.’

  I started dabbing at her knee with Dettol, since that’s all she had, and tissues. She made a strange quiet groan and I looked up to see that her face had turned the colour of putty and her eyelids were fluttering. I stuck a couple of pieces of lint over the grazes with some scraps of plaster. ‘I’d better make your tea,’ I said, frightened she was going to collapse on the floor, finding myself wishing that Richard was here, capable and confident, so I could slope off.

  ‘Want to lie down,’ she mumbled. There was no way I was going to get her up the steep stairs, heavy and faint as she was, so we went into the cold front room and she lay down on a sofa that was covered in crackly plastic. I tried to take it off before she lay down but she resisted. The curtains were drawn. ‘Shall I let a bit of light in?’ I suggested, but she shook her head and closed her eyes. I switched on the electric-fire that stood on the hearth and the dust on it fizzed.

  Waiting for the kettle to boil, I found myself blaming Mr Blowski for this; as if him asking me to keep an eye on her had caused it. I wandered round, looking at this and that, all the old-ladyish things. One of the photographs on the piano showed a little girl in a floppy white dress, a look almost of terror on her face. Another one was of a plump woman with unsuitably shingled hair with some older children and the same little girl. Trixie presumably, though not recognisably. Stuck into the edge of the frame was a photo-booth shot of Mr Blowski, baring his NHS teeth in a fierce smile.

  The kettle boiled and I made leaf tea in a pot, something I never bother with any more myself, a tea-bag in a cup does me, besides it’s hotter. I couldn’t find the china cups but there was a Bovril mug hanging on a hook so I poured it out in that with a couple of spoonfuls of sugar for shock. Trixie struggled to a sitting position when I went in, she looked much better.

  ‘I’m quite recovered now, thank you dear. Oh that’s Blowski’s mug – never mind. You get back to your …’

  ‘I have got some work on the go,’ I said. ‘I’m a photographer.’

  ‘Is that a job?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘For the newspapers?’

  ‘Not generally no … I do portraits commercially and …’ I don’t know what got into me then, I hadn’t meant to talk about it, but I found myself rambling on abou
t portraits of children and old people, making a kaleidoscope of images to make some sort of sense of life and death, oh I don’t know, talking rubbish.

  ‘Well I’m here, you could do me,’ she said, ‘that is if I’m the type …’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, surprised and almost touched. I thought that it was all right, this morning, this involvement, if it led me to a subject. ‘I might take you up on that.’

  ‘You get off then,’ Trixie said.

  ‘Sure you don’t want anything – maybe something from the shop?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ she said, ‘save me going out in this state.’

  ‘Put a list through my door,’ I said, ‘I’ll do it later. I’ll get some stuff for your leg.’

  When I got into my own house again my enthusiasm had diminished. I went and hung my washing on the line, though the sun has gone in. Trixie’s crocuses are smashed like a yellow sunburst on the soil. I feel cross that I’ve got myself involved. I feel the clinging tendrils of her need. Like bindweed, yes. Or babies’ fingers.

  SALVATION

  Trixie sits on the crackling plastic watching the dark blood soak through the lint on her leg. She almost never sits in this room. Television reception is best at the back and, anyway, people gawp right in here if the curtains are open, straight through the nets. That’s the worst of this house, that it has no front garden, so people pass within inches of the window and if they’re talking their voices even vibrate the glass. Sometimes things are left on the outside window-sill – a sill just begging for a window-box of trailing geraniums in another setting – fizzy-drinks cans, or curry-sauce-stained polystyrene dishes, or nuggets of spat-out chewing-gum. There’s no sense of privacy so she keeps this door shut and the best sofa that Blowski got her to buy how many years ago, twenty? is still pristine under its plastic cover.

  ‘So much money!’ he’d exclaimed when he’d seen her bank books. ‘My God, Trixie Bell you are a woman of fortune. Why you not spend?’ She’d bought the sofa to humour him but there was nothing she really wanted, not that money could buy. She sends money to charity. She likes appeals on television, for the blind and lifeboats and children struggling about with plastic limbs, she sits with her pen and pad ready, her cheque-book by her side. If she’s not sure about a particular cause, God helps her, via the Bible. She opens at random, circles her finger in the air and wherever it rests she takes advice. For instance she was doubtful about the worth of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds until her fingertip, guided by God’s own, picked out: I am become like a pelican in the wilderness and like an owl that is in the desert, and then she wrote a most generous cheque, for what could be clearer than that? But an appeal for Relate turned up Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel, and caused her to shut her cheque-book very firmly.