The Private Parts of Women

by Lesley Glaister

  When Robin was two and a bit, Richard arranged a surprise for me. It was the middle of August, a Saturday, my birthday. Hot sunlight glowed through the red curtains on to our bed. Richard brought me coffee and the room was filled with its scent and that of a sheaf of red carnations. Robin gave me a card with a picture of a tractor on it that he’d drawn himself and a box of chocolates. Richard gave me a long, expensive-looking box. Inside was the most fantastic watch: a silver bracelet, each section set with a fleck of glittering stone, two glittering claws holding the oval face, as tiny as my little fingernail.

  ‘I love you,’ Richard said. ‘Old woman, thirty-two eh?’ he kissed me. Robin bounced on the edge of the bed, his pyjamas wet, his nappy all skew-whiff. Two faces pressed against mine, one stiff and scratchy, the other cool and soft.

  ‘Granny coming,’ Robin announced.

  ‘Is that the surprise?’ I asked, for a surprise had been promised. I had been told to keep the weekend free.

  ‘An essential part of it,’ Richard said. He was sitting on the bed beside me, wearing only a crumpled pair of pale blue boxer-shorts.’ I looked at the line of hair on his belly like the tail of a butterfly, its wings of hair on his chest. He had a smile on his face as if a secret was pressing against his lips and I was afraid. I was afraid that I would not want the surprise, and I did not want to hurt him. I pulled Robin on to my lap. ‘Happy birfday to you,’ he sang. He smelled of small boy and sleep and pee.

  ‘Robin needs a bath,’ I said.

  ‘Put it on,’ Robin said, picking up the watch.

  ‘Yes,’ said Richard, ‘put it on and I’ll tell you.’

  I fiddled with the clasp and he had to do it up for me. It was a beautiful watch and I hated it. The claws that held the watch-face were sinister, pointed, greedy. Little hairs on the back of my wrist caught between the silver segments. I held it up to my ear to hear its tick, a tiny tutting tongue.

  ‘I thought it would be nice for evenings,’ Richard said.

  ‘It’s lovely.’

  ‘Thirty-two,’ Richard said again, looking at me with his head on one side. ‘You look … eighteen, twenty-one at most.’ He touched my cheek. I was glad Robin was there, I could see the stirring in Richard’s shorts, knew the look he was giving me.

  ‘Let me drink my coffee,’ I said.

  Robin climbed off the bed and began to fiddle with my earrings which were hooked through a long scarf hanging on the wall. He liked to unhook them and put them back.

  ‘So,’ Richard said, sliding his hand under the quilt and up my thigh, ‘don’t you want to know?’ He settled his hand between my legs but kept it still. It felt nice, felt friendly though it was proprietorial of course. He was saying with his hand that I was his and later on he’d have me. But that was all right because it was safely later on.

  ‘Go on then,’ I said. ‘I’m all ears.’

  ‘And a face and a tummy,’ Robin corrected.

  ‘And a bottom,’ Richard added giving me a squeeze.

  Robin giggled. ‘Bottom!’ I sipped my coffee. ‘Two parrots,’ Robin said to the earrings, ‘two paceshits.’

  ‘Not spaceships, silly,’ I said, but when Robin held up the two long silver earrings, I saw that he was right, they were spaceships.

  ‘Mum should arrive around twelve,’ Richard said. ‘We’ll have a bit of lunch with her – I’ve got chicken and salad-stuff. And then, darling, I’m spiriting you away for the night. To pastures new.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Where?’

  ‘Derbyshire, the Peaks. I’ve booked a night in a great hotel, recommended by Lucy. She and Dick keep going back.’

  The sun was very hot in the bedroom. We’d bought thick red curtains to keep it out but still it got in, thick and oily and choking.

  ‘That’s a nice thought,’ I said, ‘thanks Richard … so Pauline’s coming all this way … just for lunch? She’s not coming with us?’

  ‘No, dope, she’s staying here.’

  ‘But why …?’ I began. But I knew why. Robin wasn’t included. Richard had been threatening to ‘get me away from it all’ as he said, as if all I wanted wasn’t here at home. ‘Just the two of us,’ he was always saying, ‘an affirmation. Romantic.’

  So Robin would be staying with Pauline, with his very nice granny who’d been plotting a way to get him to herself ever since she’d first clapped eyes on him. ‘The image of Richard,’ she’d said and I’d seen the greedy look in her eyes. Sometimes when she’d visited, she’d called him Richard by mistake as if she was the mother and he her son, and me? I was nobody. She got out photographs of Richard as a baby to show how uncanny the likeness was and yes … to some extent … both dark-haired, round-faced with wide dark eyes. But there was me in him too, no one could see it but me, there is a lot of me in him, but I have no parents left to point it out. Pauline is the only grandparent Robin’s got.

  Whenever I went quiet when Pauline was there, or whenever I criticised her, Richard sprang to her defence. Of course she loves Robin,’ he’d say. ‘He’s her only grandchild. It’s quite normal, you should be glad, relax. Don’t begrudge her this pleasure. She’s lonely.’

  But he couldn’t see what I could see, the criticism in her eyes when she watched me fumble with him. I only fumbled when she watched. And traitorous Robin lapped up her adoration, he took his first solo steps when she was there, toddling towards her with open arms and a big dribble-bright grin on his face.

  ‘I don’t want to leave Robin with Pauline.’

  Richard sighed. He removed his hand. ‘I know,’ he said, ‘I knew you’d say that, but you’ll be fine. Soon as we’re off …’

  ‘Can you open the curtains?’ I said.

  He got up and did so and the bright sunshine stung my eyes.

  ‘I don’t want to leave Robin,’ I said.

  ‘Not much of a romantic weekend then,’ Richard said.

  ‘Two moons, two wiggly worms,’ said Robin, oblivious.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Richard said. He has this way of lowering his voice when he’s angry instead of raising it. ‘But it’s all arranged. Mum’s on her way. The hotel’s booked. Robin’s looking forward to Granny minding him, aren’t you Robbie?’

  ‘Granny coming!’ Robin said and the scarf fell down scattering earrings on the floorboards and the rug. ‘Oops,’ he said, looking at me with a flinch in his eyes as if he thought I’d slap him which I never ever would.

  ‘It’s all right,’ I said, ‘never mind.’

  ‘Let’s pick them up again,’ Richard said, kneeling down. ‘The hotel is booked,’ he repeated to me.

  ‘A hotel can be unbooked,’ I muttered.

  ‘I’ll see to lunch,’ he said in rather a martyred voice. ‘I’ll tidy up. I’ll see to Robin. All you have to do is pack a nice dress for tonight.’

  I watched the two of them picking up the earrings, two dark curly napes bent at the same angle. I did not see how he could do this to me in the name of kindness, separate me from my son. Although, at Richard’s insistence. I had recently stopped breast-feeding Robin, my breasts smarted.

  Richard stood up and pinned the scarf back to the wall.

  ‘Dere,’ said Robin, rubbing his hands together.

  ‘Let’s do your bum then,’ Richard opened the door and Robin trotted out to the bathroom. Richard followed him then came and put his head back round the door. ‘Robin isn’t the only one who needs you,’ he said.

  COBBLER

  I wonder how old Inis is? Early thirties? I was settled here before I was her age. I had already fled. And here I’ve been ever since. Over fifty years, and haven’t I seen some changes? Changing faces behind shop counters, changing names, changing façades. What used to be the pork-butcher’s is a second-hand book shop now; the wet-fish shop is an insurance agent’s; the post-office is an Indian restaurant. Some nights the smell of curry seeps under my door, infecting my own food. I still eat like a Salvationist, simple wholesome food taken in moderation. Better to feel slightly empty than o
verstuffed. I have never eaten curry. Next-door does – some nights she nips out for a carton of something hot enough to burn her mouth and she drinks it with beer out of a tin. Must play havoc with her digestion. Still, modern times.

  She went to Blackpool! Yes, Blackpool, in February. I ask you! She came back glum and frozen and gave me a stick of rock. It’s on the mantelpiece in front of the clock. What a shocking pink. What a sticky present. I don’t get presents as a rule. I’m quite out of the way of it. Blowski and I manage each other a little token now and again but otherwise … There’s a card from ‘Gregory, Gayle and the Gang’, as they style themselves – Auntie Ba’s grandson and his family – at Christmas. And one from me to them. I bought a box of twenty Nostalgic Christmas Scenes, years ago now and there’s still ten left. But no presents. So the silly stick of rock is something a bit special. My eyes kept straying to it all last evening. I won’t eat it. I’ll keep it as a memento.

  The cobbler’s is still there, the Blowski’s still live over it but it is staffed by strangers. As well as mending shoes, they cut keys and sell bags, purses, key-rings and even slippers at Christmas. The mechanical man in the window is still there, hammering, hammering, the paint on his face all chipped.

  That is where I met Stefan Blowski. I didn’t go there often, one doesn’t have one’s shoes mended every day of the week. He had what I would call a nice cheek. I don’t chat. I’m not someone who hangs around the shops discussing the weather, making small talk. But Blowski used to tease me. He hardly spoke English at all, at first, but still he managed the cheek, the teasing. He’d been a lawyer in Poland, just qualified when Germany invaded, so he’d never actually practised law. He fought in the Middle East, then came to England at the end of the war. He didn’t fancy returning to Poland under Soviet control. ‘I’m political exile, me, not immigrant,’ he was always saying. He married Brenda and together they opened a cobbler’s shop – his Polish grandfather’s trade. He could not practise law in England, did not want to. ‘I had it with books,’ he said. ‘Now with my hands I work.’

  I came to Sheffield a couple of years before the war, Blowski just after it. I remember his shop opening, on the corner, the opposite end of the terrace to mine. It had been empty, windows boarded-up, since I’d been in Sheffield. HIGH CLASS BOOT AND SHOE REPAIRS, said the sign, with old fashioned, buttoned boots in shiny black painted on either side. Proprietors. S. & B. Blowski. In the middle of the window was a mechanical wooden cobbler, who jerked his hammer up above his head then down on the sole of a boot, paused and wobbled and did it again, all day, every day. Children loved to watch him. In those days before they’d seen and done everything like children today, he seemed something miraculous. They’d press their noses flat against the glass to watch him – and every Christmas, Blowski dressed him in red felt and tied tinsel to the head of his hammer.

  I met Blowski first, then Brenda. I did not take to her. A perfectly nice woman, I’m sure, bonny, all belly and bosom and unsuitable clothes – see-through places, under-arm dampness, drooping straps, that sort of parcel, lots of doings on her face. Harsh voice unlike Blowski’s which is soft. He was always slight. He wore a white apron in the shop scuffed at the front by dirty shoes. He had a fine face, dark eyes with long lashes. His teeth were bad though his smile was lovely. He was a wicked tease, still is. I suppose he teased all his customers the same.

  ‘What you been doing?’ he’d say, frowning at the heels of my shoes in disbelief, ‘tripping the light fantastic?’ And when I smiled he would go on about me dancing all night until the sun came up and call me young lady, and sometimes, a beautiful young lady, even when I was knocking forty. I ask you! I know it was a lark. I know he teased all his female customers like that, but still it gave me a sort of thrill. To be looked at, spoken to, like that, flirted with, you might say. Even as a joke. Funny that it didn’t offend me. It didn’t because Blowski was, and is, good.

  If she heard him, Brenda would come slopping forward from the back of the shop saying, ‘Take no notice, love. He’s all trousers, our Stefan, all talk and trousers aren’t you my cherub?’ and she’d pinch his cheek between her fingers and kiss him on the forehead – she was inches taller – as if he was some sort of pet when to me he seemed such a man.

  Yes, I don’t mind admitting I had a thing about Blowski for a while, I used to walk miles to wear my heels out so that I could get them mended. Not only for that, for exercise too. I had no real intentions. Him a Married Man, and me … well. I walked miles between the trees, following the river out through the parks, right out into the countryside sometimes. When I took my shoes to be mended, I’d walk past the shop once first, glance in, past the mechanical cobbler, just to be sure it was Blowski behind the counter. If he wasn’t there, I’d try again next day. Oh I did love the smell of that shop, pungent glue and rubber, the sort of smell you could get drunk on.

  One day, an icy day, years after we’d known each other slightly, maybe fifteen years, he knocked at my door. When I opened the door and found him there I was so surprised I was struck dumb. He held out my mended shoes. ‘Special delivery for special lady,’ he said. ‘We have no bloody boiler today so shop shut. So today, you understand Blowski have different hat. Delivery boy, today, me.’

  I asked him in and made tea. It was odd to have a man in the house, to have anyone in for that matter. I saw his eyes travelling round. Funny to see your house through someone else’s eyes. I was almost embarrassed although it was quite respectable, just dull and poky. Plenty good enough for me alone. But it was like a private bit of me all on show.

  ‘Aah,’ he breathed. ‘Piano. You play?’

  ‘Barely,’ I said. ‘It was my aunt’s, she left it to me in her will. She wanted me to learn but … I can pick out tunes, but not what you might call play.’

  ‘Me,’ said Blowski, taking off his gloves with a flourish. ‘I play. I may?’ I nodded. He lifted the cloth I keep draped over and folded it back. Then he sat down and stiffly at first, then more easily began to play. They were not tunes I’d heard before. It was dance music, waltzes, mazurkas. I went into the kitchen and poured the tea, smiling all over my face at the sound, the fact of him in my house. When I came back into the room he stopped playing, and I saw that his cheeks were wet. He didn’t mind me seeing, he wiped the tears away with the back of his hand.

  ‘I big baby, I know. I not play since …’ He sat on the stool with his back to the piano and accepted his cup of tea.

  ‘You don’t have a piano?’ I asked.

  ‘Brenda, she not to hear of piano in our house. “Ugly thing,” she say, “taking up so much space.” But I, “What we want more space for,” I say, “more bloody china dog?”’

  ‘You must come and play whenever you like,’ I said.

  ‘Maybe we get it tune?’ he suggested and I felt a softness inside my chest, a warmth at his use of the word ‘we’. I had not been part of a ‘we’ for so, so long. ‘Miss Bell, you funny,’ he said. ‘You mind me saying?’ I shook my head. ‘You are beautiful sometime, but you all alone. No children shoes, no man’s, only your little shoes with heels worn away.’

  ‘I prefer my own company,’ I said.

  He smiled at me in a quizzical way that made me uncomfortable, as he finished his tea and got up to go. ‘More shoes to take,’ he said. ‘Thank you for tea.’

  ‘You’ll come again and play for me?’

  ‘Ah … you not like so much always your own company?’ he said as he left. I sat down at the piano and picked out the tune of a hymn, feeling a bit put out as well as pleased. I was in two minds about him at first, just like I am about that Inis now. But I don’t know what I’d have done without Blowski, all these years, I really don’t.

  I can’t go out, not in the street. That fall in the garden has done for me. What if I was to go down like that out the front? Strangers helping me up and I don’t know what. Coming in, nosing into my business, invading. So I needed help – and help has come. Like the answer to a prayer, G
od has sent me Inis. Or has He? Was it God or was it the other one? I am not such a fool as to take anyone at face value. Not after my life. Is she real, this good neighbour of mine, or does she masquerade? Swap two letters of her name and what do you get: I sin. That floated into my head the other night. A devilish joke. Don’t think that’s escaped me.

  ‘Met your friend Mr Blowski,’ she said yesterday when she called with my vegetables, all sweetness and light. ‘Nice old fellow.’

  And what did he tell you about me? I wanted to say, poking her in the chest with my sharp finger because she has a nose on her. I see it when I let her in, like a bloodhound, snooping and sniffing, her eyes swivelling everywhere. But I didn’t say that, or poke her, of course. I was noncommittal. ‘Yes,’ I agreed, ‘very nice.’ I must be fair. Perhaps it is only neighbourly interest, concern. The second commandment incarnate – ha, I don’t think so. Well, whatever, I’m not having her camera in here. There, that’s a decision made. I’m not having her lens pointing, snapping, snipping moments away from me. I know what I said and I don’t go back on my word as a rule but I can’t be … compromised, that’s the word.

  What has happened to my Christian charity?

  I said nothing more to Inis on the subject of Blowski. I don’t want to encourage interest. I don’t want them putting their heads together behind my back, that’s the last thing I want. I want them separate. She can help me with the practical side of things. He can give me friendship. Blowski, arthritic old Pole.