The back room had been converted into a bedroom for my mother since it was too hard to get her up and down stairs. Louise helped me get her through there and we sat her on the commode. She did nothing.
‘All right?’ Louise asked. ‘Can you manage, only I’m meeting Roddy tonight.’ Despite Father’s prediction, Louise had found herself a young man, as plain and steady as herself. She was quite preoccupied with him, and had become unusually sloppy with the cooking. Not that Mother noticed, and I hardly cared.
‘You go and have fun,’ I said.
Mother had grown very light. I realised I had not fed her. I thought I’d get Louise to scramble her some eggs in the morning and make sure she ate them, every scrap. Her chest was rattly and she panted a little as I moved her.
‘Tomorrow we’ll have the doctor back,’ I said. I spooned a little water into her mouth and then some of the thick black linctus that had been prescribed. Some of it went down but most of it ran stickily down her chin and on to her chest. While I undressed her, I tried not to breathe in the smell of her body, something familiar gone stale. She was burning hot. I tried not to look at the flat skin bags of her breasts. Or, rather, I did look, with compassion. I was still wearing my uniform and it seemed to be the only thing holding me upright, reminding me of what I was now, a grown-up soldier for the Lord not a child.
I lay Mother on her side in bed. She was bent into a sort of sitting position. I covered her up. I don’t think the sheets were damp, that is just an idea that has crept into my head from somewhere. I looked down at her, her poor old face, the skin thin and slack. I considered kissing her. ‘Goodnight Mother,’ I whispered and then I pinched her. I don’t know why. But I pinched her. Hard. I pinched the flesh on her wrist. Only once. It was hot and loose. She made not a sound. I turned out the light and left the room.
I did not go out that night. I could not bring myself to face anyone. I went early to bed and lay sleeplessly gazing at my uniform that hung on the back of the door. It looked like a dwarfed me: the waist of the skirt inside the shoulders of the jacket, the bonnet hanging on a hook above, tipped down to hide the empty face. I was afraid I would have an absence and there was only me in the house. Me and Mother. I could not rid myself of the memory of her skin between my fingers, hot, loose, ill skin sliding between the pads of my finger and thumb. I pinched my own wrist but the skin was firm and warm, wedded to the flesh beneath.
I lay all night with the lamp lit beside my bed, watching the shadows, listening to the night. I did not want to sleep. I wanted to make sure I stayed with it, stayed myself. I averted my eyes from the dwarfish mockery of myself on the back of the door that wagged and nodded its head knowingly when I did look. I thought I should get up and make a pot of tea, sit and read the Bible until daybreak. I could go and sit with Mother, turn her so that she did not get sore, read soothing Psalms to her. But I did not go to Mother.
I thought I should give up the money in order to be free. When I thought Father had cut me off I had felt relieved and free. It was the happiest time in my life, looking back I believe that to be true, so why could I not give it up again? Regain that freedom. I do not know, though during the creeping hours of that long, long night, I almost vowed to do so.
I fell asleep towards dawn and I had a Benjamin Charles dream. The struggle, the suffocation, the kill. I woke as always sweating and whimpering but not in bed this time, not in bed but in the sitting-room, the brown curtains pulled back, my face pressed against the window so that condensation wet my face and my fingers scrabbled squeakily against the glass as if trying to get through, to get out, trying to be born out of the place where I murdered Benjamin Charles. Only it was not murder, of course it was not, Auntie Ba said it was not. I was only an innocent baby and anyway, I loved him, I would have loved him, my brother, the one I was meant to be, I loved him so why would I kill him? It was not me. It was not my fault.
I went back to bed and this time, since it was nearly day, I slept quite calmly and peacefully. I was woken by a knocking at the door. Louise put her head inside.
‘Trixie, are you awake?’ she asked.
‘What is it?’ I could see that she was distressed.
‘It’s Mrs Bell … I went to do her fire first thing and …’
‘All right. I’ll come.’ I climbed out of bed and put on my dressing-gown.
Louise stood by the door wringing her hands together. ‘I think, I don’t rightly know, but oh Trixie, I think she’s passed on.’ Her voice ended in a wail. My heart pounded with excitement and terror.
Mother was lying on her back, her head flat on the sheet, her pillow on the floor. I drew back the curtains. In the soft morning sunlight her face was blue and her eyes wide open.
‘Go and fetch the doctor, Louise,’ I said. I put my hand on my mother’s cheek. Last night her skin had burned, now it was barely warm. I picked up the pillow, lifted her heavy rolling head and settled her. I went to the window and opened it wide. The sunshine smelled of the start of autumn, a blackbird sang from the birch tree on the front lawn.
I turned back to Mother. On her wrist was a pinched up ridge of skin. I pressed it flat with my thumb. I pressed down the lids of her eyes and knelt by her side, praying. When I opened my eyes again, one of hers had opened too, as if she was winking at me. I left the room.
Another funeral. Smaller this time. Less fuss made. Auntie Ba came again and stayed with me for two days. She was sad, of course, wept, reminisced about a person I never knew, a jolly girl, always joking, who loved to dance and sing. ‘Quite the little actress,’ Ba said. ‘My brother used to call her drama queen. Melodrama, more like. But she was funny. She was fun. I wish you could have known her as a girl.
‘I don’t entirely blame Charles for squashing the life out of her,’ she said. ‘Her mother … she was taken similarly in middle-age … Maybe it’s something hereditary. I do hope not.’ She looked at me. ‘I don’t know …’ She trailed off, then took my hand and squeezed it.
‘I hope I did right by you as a child,’ she said. ‘Sometimes I wanted so much to take you home with me. But I thought best leave well alone. Separating parent from child … well it’s not natural is it? Not that Charles would have let you go. Quite a one for appearances, your father.’
We travelled to King’s Cross by taxi. ‘You’re a rich young woman now,’ she said, as we kissed goodbye. ‘You look after yourself.’ She hugged me tight. ‘Life is a trial … but there is happiness too. She smiled to herself and I knew she was thinking of Bea’s new baby, Gregory – quite a little character already, she said. It was new life that preoccupied her rather than death.
‘You are … all right?’
‘Yes,’ I said. I thought she meant was I grief-stricken, was I coping with my double bereavement. Afterwards I remembered the look she gave me. Perhaps she was asking me more. But at that moment I did feel all right. I was sad but I was free. I thought now the absences had to stop completely and forever because now, my life was my own.
‘You’ve got your new friends, at least,’ Ba said, leaning out of the carriage window. ‘They’ll be a great support. Will you stay at home?’
I shook my head.
‘But it’s such a lovely house … and you could put others up … that nice girl, Mary – I didn’t say at the time but those lodgings of yours …’ she shuddered and pulled a face. The noise of the train filled the platform, clouds of steam swept back as the train began to creak forward.
I walked along beside the train. ‘Maybe,’ I mouthed, then blew a kiss and stood and watched it depart, thrilled to the core by the chugging roar, the taste of steam.
I walked all the way back to Holloway deep in thought. It hadn’t occurred to me that I could bring my friends into my parents’ – my – house. But I could see the sense in it. It was a big, spacious house. To confront my fear of it with my faith and my friends, to fill it with joy and song might banish the shadows and reflections of my childhood more soundly than simply running away.
WOMAN WITH A CROW
I suppose I will go home. Of course I will have to. Of course there was never any question that I would not. That is why Richard hasn’t come looking for me. He knows me. He allows me space. Even from a distance he is always right. Always bloody right. Which is better than always being wrong.
I haven’t worked today or for the past few days. Restless, ants in your pants, my dad would have said. Wandering round the shops, I found a couple of pounds in my pocket. Lovely, that surprise. Like winning something. I’d been thinking fondly of Richard and I wanted to buy him a special card. I chose a reproduction of Picasso’s Woman with a Crow. Against an intensely blue background a sad-faced woman holds a crow to her breast, her long fingers cup it most tenderly and her lips are against its black head as if she might kiss it. When I saw the card in the shop, I started. It seemed to apply to me somehow, as if it was a message. I am afraid of rooks and crows. To tell the truth I don’t know the difference between them, but it doesn’t matter, they stand for the same thing. They are all black, like scraps of the darkness that I do not understand come free, flapping like old gloves or rags and in raw voices crying out my pain. They are the badness in me which I should accept like Picasso’s woman. A sad face, hands that are strong yet tender holding a piece of darkness close to her heart.
It is that dark part of me that Richard doesn’t know. But that is stupid, how can he? How can I blame him for that?
Good grief. I think I must be feverish. I’ve written the card to Richard and put my address. No message other than that. I wanted to say I love you but my fingers would not let me write it, I am not ready. Before I go home I need a bit more time. For what? It is just a sense I have. For a sort of finishing off.
Trixie was weird this morning. I delivered her her shopping and there was a sort of atmosphere. Almost as if she doesn’t like me. I do like her, feel a sort of sympathy for her. But I do not know her.
I like to look at other people’s houses, the inside of them, they are so much more expressive than people themselves of their state of mind, of the inside of their heads. Once when I was babysitting for Jan I spent an evening searching for dirt and found none. Not even dust on top of the wardrobe or under the bed. I felt grubby just looking. Trixie’s bathroom made me sad, narrow and clean, smelling of damp and something she’d washed her underwear in. Above the bath hung a row of peach silky bloomers and thick brown stockings, pointy-toed, swaying in the draught from the window. All perfectly blameless. She has hard lavatory paper, I didn’t think anyone would use that from choice, slippery, useless squares out of a box on the wall. NOW WASH YOUR HANDS is printed on each sheet. Why that should have made me feel so melancholy, I don’t know. I don’t know what to do. What can I do? She is not my responsibility. The idea of leaving is difficult, but I have to go. My children need me more. Or at least, I need them.
This is an awful cold. My head feels stuffed full of something dry and hard; I can’t think straight; I’m shivery; when I lean over there’s a deep dizzy pain in my sinuses; when I lie down, I cough. I want to be rid of the cold before I go home. I’ve bought lemons, honey, whisky and I’ll stay in bed today and maybe tomorrow too. The heating is barely working and it’s got colder again. That’s why I hate this time of year, early spring or so you might think, you might just relax a bit, open out a bit – then blink and it’s winter once more. I bought a hot-water bottle when I was out and it’s rubbery and comforting to cuddle against my chest and sniff. Lemon pips float on the surface of my hot toddy. Now I’ve written the card to Richard, even though I haven’t posted it yet, he’s on my mind. How I have despised his strength. Oh he is annoying, no one could deny that, he is smug, he is never wrong. And I – I am often wrong. I act hastily. I give things up. What have I ever completed? It is just like me to leave my children. Just what you’d expect. Lacks application my school reports used to say. And what have I ever achieved?
There is this flight. If you can call that an achievement.
And my photographs.
SHELTER
Not a sound from her. Not a door’s bang, not a creak, not a stir. Is she ashamed? I haven’t had a wink of sleep. I knelt on the floor last night and prayed, never mind my throbbing shin. I put on my uniform and sang my songs loud and clear, right through the wall for her to hear. I sang ‘Oft Our Trust Has Known Betrayal’ and ‘Surrounded By A Host Of Foes’ – not only a message to her but also a plea to God to help me, to put my mind at rest so I could simmer down and watch my programmes, or get some sleep.
In bed, awake, I tried to soothe myself with a good memory. There are few enough of them. Good memories. Why doesn’t my Blowski come? He is a selfish, neglectful old blighter sometimes. I want to tell him what has happened. I want him to know her in her true colours.
The weather has had a change of heart; the cold has returned; the frost is like iron on the soil and buds are shrinking back into themselves. The petals of the flowering currant are blighted with the frost. And where is Blowski? It is too long since I saw him and in two days it is my birthday. He always comes on my birthday. If he did not come, I could not bear it.
I did take up Auntie Ba’s suggestion and open up my house to my friends. For the first time in my life I had friends. It was hard to know how to have them. I could hardly accept the open smiles, other people’s belief that what I seemed to be was what I was. I was overwhelmed. I did not know how to be with many, most of them. I was very shy and although I had found my singing voice and loved to sing more than anything, I still spoke too quietly and people had to ask me to repeat myself and when I repeated whatever I had said it sounded weak and hardly worth the saying. So I was not much of one for conversation. Mary was my real, my best, friend. Mary Bright. Just the right name – she had a bright face, quite ordinary but beautiful when she smiled or sang because it glowed like a rosy lamp with the light inside her. She was only six years my senior but it might have been twenty. She was mature at twenty-eight, capable and trustworthy and she liked me. Really, she did like me. And her liking was the first thing to make me like myself a little.
It was Jesus that guided me to the Citadel that day when I first met Mary and Harold, of that I am convinced. Harold was a friend too. He was Mary’s fiancé. It had always been expected that they’d marry. They grew up together, the children of Salvation Army officers, he a year Mary’s junior. They were the two people I loved best in the world, apart from Auntie Ba. Apart from Jesus, of course.
Mary and Harold helped me after my parents’ death, prayed with me every night. I confided in them the problem of my inheritance. We decided that I could contribute to the Salvation Army by keeping the house. Mary stayed there and paid what she would have paid in rent to the Army and there was room for others too.
I was well nigh happy. The first thing I did was fix a red and gold Salvation Army badge in the centre of the mantelpiece, the first thing anyone would see when they entered the room. The house filled with my new friends, trooping up and down the stairs, laughing, singing, making a wonderful racket. Furniture was shifted so the rooms looked different. I was all right when the others were there but if I was ever alone I could hear the rustling of my parents’ disbelief, the creak of their outrage. Sometimes when the others were there and I felt strong inside I almost wanted to laugh at their helplessness in the face of what I was doing. But that was spite and I had to ask God’s forgiveness for the pleasure it gave me.
Mary chose the room with bars on the window. I had not been inside it for years. An almost bare room with an oval mirror hanging over the empty hearth.
‘Why the bars?’ Mary asked as she walked round. I stood with my back to the open door. She walked to the window and touched them. ‘It’s like a prison cell.’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Don’t choose this room, it’s gloomy, there are nicer rooms.’
The mirror hung on the wall like a wide oval eye. I tried to keep my own eye
s away from it.
‘I see what you mean,’ Mary said, ‘it does have a melancholy feel, but with a bit of fresh paint, some flowers … it’s got good light. If we get the bars removed from the window, I can’t be doing with them. I like it Trixie and we can leave the bigger rooms for others. I don’t need much space. I’ll ask Harry about the bars.’
She went to the mirror and looked at her own face. Just an ordinary unselfconscious look. I let my eyes travel to her reflection. I held my breath. Her face looked quite normal but vague. She gazed at herself as she continued speaking, saying the room needed airing, needed a fire lighting in the grate, probably the chimney sweeping, and my fast heart skittered. As she spoke and moved slightly, the glass warped her face, pulled her mouth askew. Even Mary, it even did it to Mary. She seemed not to notice, turned away, went back to the window and peered out.
‘Nice view of the street … plane trees … lime … Yes, Trixie, this will do me very well.’ She turned back to me and smiled. ‘It’s a good house,’ she said. ‘When can I move in?’
‘Now,’ I said, ‘as soon as you can, as you like.’
‘Tomorrow, after the meeting?’
‘Yes, let’s go down, I’ll make some tea.’
Louise had left after my mother’s death, left to marry her young man, so the kitchen was mine and I liked that. I liked the kitchen best of all because it didn’t feel like my parents’ territory. It had a warm and wholesome air. Mary and I drank our tea sitting close to the range.
‘It’s cosy,’ she said, and I was proud.
I really wanted to burn all the furniture, rip down the curtains, roll up the carpets and start again. But the house was well furnished, the curtains and carpets had years in them. Mary wouldn’t hear of it.
I did take down the lace curtains and I did open the windows, chipping away at thick layers of paint, to let air and light into the house. I took down the mirrors from the walls and stored them in the cellar. I removed some of the paintings. The one I loved, the two girls picking flowers, I put in my room by my bed so that I could gaze at it as I fell asleep and on waking. The sun shone from the frame as if the picture was a window opening on to another world, a happy childish world. Even with my new friends, even with my love of God, with music inside me, even with my parents dead, I would still have climbed through that frame, if it had been possible, to be one of those girls, bare-footed, with buttercup and daisy-chains in my hair.
The Private Parts of Women Page 14