The Private Parts of Women

by Lesley Glaister

  I cannot bear to think this, I cannot bear to remember. Move Trixie shift your bones, do something.

  Our Father, who art in heaven.

  Oh no no no.

  What is it that is wrong, dear Jesus what is it?

  The next day, the baby was gone. Just gone. I woke in the early morning to the sound of a scream downstairs. I stumbled from my bed and hurried down. Ivy was in the hall in her outside clothes and the pram was empty. She stood by it, pointing and wailing. The little blankets were flat as if there had never been a baby and when I put my hand in, the sheets were cold.

  All was confusion. The police were called. We were all questioned over and over. That was a terrible day for we all feared for the life of little Harold.

  Who would take a baby, a newborn baby? Who would steal him from his mother?

  The house and the garden were searched. And on the evening of that day, while the police and the Salvation Army were still searching, questioning, trawling the river, Ivy made her accusation. We were sitting round the fire, Ivy wrapped in a blanket was staring into the flames. She had not spoken for an hour. Mary, Harold and I had been talking in low voices and praying.

  ‘We must eat,’ Mary said, for we had not touched a morsel all day in our fright and confusion. Nobody answered but she got up and went out to the kitchen. When the door had shut, Ivy turned her head slowly and looked at me.

  ‘You took him,’ she said. ‘You took my baby.’

  ‘Ivy!’ Harold stood up. ‘We are all with you in your suffering but you cannot make wild …’

  ‘She took him.’ Her voice was calm. She gave me a still, cold, narrow look.

  ‘You simply cannot say such a thing!’

  Mary came back into the room with a tray of bread and cheese and tea.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked, feeling at once the atmosphere, seeing the way looks travelled like blades across the room.

  ‘She took my baby,’ Ivy said again. She lifted her bony index finger and pointed.

  ‘Ivy,’ Mary put down the tray and went across to her. ‘I think it’s time for bed. I’ve got the drops the doctor brought to help you sleep.’

  ‘She must apologise,’ Harold said.

  ‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘She’s not in her right mind … Ivy, it’s all right.’ For that moment I was filled with love and compassion, not hurt by her accusation. I walked across and took her pointing hand in my own. ‘It’s all right,’ I said.

  She spat at me. So quickly that I hardly understood the puckering of her lips, the jerk, until I saw the little ball of white spittle on my sleeve.

  ‘Ivy!’ Harold was outraged. I stepped back, wiped my sleeve on my skirt.

  ‘First she stole my Jim’s things,’ Ivy said, subsiding, tears coming to her eyes, ‘his gold watch, his money, his good boots …’

  ‘There was nothing,’ soothed Mary. ‘And Trixie would never …’

  ‘Then she even took me bleeding baby …’

  ‘Let’s get you to bed,’ Mary said. Together, Mary and I coaxed Ivy up the stairs, gave her her sleeping draught and stayed with her until her eyes closed.

  Of course it was a lie, or a sick fantasy, but Ivy did continue to accuse me. Of course it was not true. That doesn’t need to be said. But one thing shocks and shames me. A coincidence only. On the night of baby Harold’s disappearance, before being woken by Ivy’s cry, I’d been dreaming. I’d put on my dressing-gown and stumbled downstairs into the chaotic intolerable day and all thoughts of my dream had been driven from my head. But it had hung over me like a bad taste, the flavour of dread. It was only later that night, after Ivy had fallen asleep and Harold had gone home, only as I knelt on the gravelly floor by my bed to pray for the baby’s recovery, that it came back to me, with a swift, sick shock the dream I’d had the night before. I had dreamt about Benjamin Charles. It was the dream I’d had since early childhood, the hot, cramped, slithery struggle in which I killed Benjamin Charles who was not separate at all but was a part of me.

  It was coincidence only, that that dream had come to me on the night of baby Harold’s disappearance, coincidence, or the Devil’s work, but it hurt me. It made a terrible, secret wound in my mind, my memory, I don’t know, in some hidden, fragile part of me. Maybe my soul.

  Ivy left. Baby Harold was never found, and one morning she was gone and her children with her. She stole a few items – silverware, a clock, Mary’s purse. She left her Bible behind and I don’t suppose she missed it. She fled before the truth could be discovered. The scale of her evil. She was fully dressed that morning, the morning of the baby’s disappearance, dressed and in her boots as if she was going out. Or had been out. Why was she dressed so early in the morning? The house was quiet after her departure. And though she was searched for, she was never found. She never went to another Salvation Army Corps for help or we would have heard. What she did and where she went remained a mystery.

  And after her departure, the weather changed. Not the weather so much, it remained fine, but the atmosphere. The sky was as blue, the leaves as green, but in the air, scarcely detectable, was a faint tang of decay. The sensation of something nearing its end. Not only summer. They changed towards me, everyone, even my friends, especially my friends.

  Nobody said they believed Ivy’s accusations because they were preposterous. The woman was a liar and a fraud. She had never set eyes on the poor dead drunkard, of that I am certain. There never was a watch and chain, there never was a good pair of boots with money in their soles. Every claim she made was a lie, every accusation. A woman like that could sell her child. Why was she dressed, why was she fully dressed so early, if that was not the case? Where did she get enough money to spirit herself and her children away? Can anyone tell me?

  That was my reasoning. The only explanation I can think of. The only rational thing. And others agreed, the police even, agreed that it was an explanation. And nobody suggested anything else, not to my face. But what if Ivy didn’t sell her baby, what if the woman was telling the truth for once in her life? What if Trixie Bell stole the baby? What if … Nobody said it, nobody even thought it, of that I am quite convinced. And yet … and yet the weather changed.

  Mary was even more formal with me after Ivy’s departure than before. There was no spontaneity, no warmth. She spent most of her free time with Harold. They talked endlessly about their wedding, and Mary about the children she would have, almost as if they existed and sometimes I felt they did, in spirit, they were there already clinging to her skirt, trailing up the stairs behind her, awaiting only the bodies she would give them.

  One afternoon. A coal fire in the grate, the curtains half drawn against the lashing rain, the lamp lit. The three of us harmoniously together for once, drinking tea and making toast on the fire.

  ‘It’s like winter,’ I said.

  ‘In the winter we will be married.’ Mary smiled at Harold with her eyes. ‘In our own little house.’ They had found a small place in Islington that would be free in December. ‘Trixie, you must come and look at it. We like to walk past don’t we Harold? If it stops raining we could go this evening.’

  ‘Not this evening,’ I said quickly, ‘I’ve got things …’ I trailed off. In truth, there was nothing.

  ‘Well, another day then. She must come, mustn’t she Harry?’

  He nodded. He looked like a giant sitting on the low stool by the fire, his knees bent up, his hands with their long fingers too big for the cup. I liked to look at his hands. I’d like to have stroked the little black hairs on their backs. He smiled at me but it was a snatched away smile. His eyes were dark under the flop of black hair and I could not read them.

  ‘Oh!’ My toast had blackened in the flames.

  ‘Give it to me.’ With a knife, Harold scraped away the black crumbs. ‘There.’ I took it and as his hand touched mine I felt a jump of something live … something that could have been love given half a chance but was only regret and sorrow. For a second I hated Mary, sitting there, so rosy
and smiling and confident. She had him now, for sure, and quite right. She would be a good wife, a good mother. While I could never be either, never, that I knew.

  ‘Trixie,’ Mary cleared her throat and looked at Harold for support and I knew that something was planned, that they had something to say. ‘Harold and I have been talking …’ She looked at him, waited for him to take over, but he was unprepared, opened his mouth in a rather stupid cod-like way. ‘You have not given testimony lately, Trixie,’ Mary continued, ‘you are silent at the meetings.’

  ‘I … I have not been strong,’ I said. I don’t know what I meant.

  ‘We both love you, you know that … in Jesus Christ,’ Mary continued. ‘Our duty has been to help you in your fight against sin.’

  I nodded. My mouth had gone dry, I could not swallow. But my hands were wet. I could not make myself ask what she meant, what sin?

  ‘We’ve talked and talked and prayed, haven’t we Harold?’ She appealed to him again, more irritably. He sighed, cleared his throat almost apologetically before he began.

  ‘We’re concerned about your … behaviour.’ He blushed and I thought you may well blush, remembering, as I’m sure he was remembering, his behaviour, the way he had kissed me. ‘About your commitment to God and the Army.’

  ‘How can you say that!’ I burst out. I could not bear it.

  ‘But Trixie,’ Mary said, ‘though you work so hard and profess such dedication … you don’t speak up at meetings and you …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Harold and I both have knowledge of you that …’

  Harold looked into the fire and rolled bread-crumbs between his fingers.

  ‘That?’ I prompted. I could not bear the hesitation. The fire crackled and snapped.

  ‘That we cannot … you know that cases of gross misconduct must be reported to the C.O. That it is likely that your name will be removed from the Roll …’

  ‘You can appeal … you can request a court martial hearing,’ Harold said. ‘Trixie you must understand our position.’

  ‘My friends,’ I said bitterly.

  ‘No Trixie, don’t …’ began Mary.

  ‘I took no baby,’ I said, fiercely, ‘I know what they think, what they are saying. But I harmed no child.’

  Mary looked startled, darted an uneasy glance at Harold. ‘No, it is not that. We don’t believe that or else we …’ her voice trailed away.

  Harold struggled up from the low stool. He stood towering over me. ‘Do you inspect your soul and your actions every week, Trixie? What are the questions you ask yourself? Ask yourself the questions, Trixie. What are the questions?’

  The rug in front of the fire had an uneven fringe, grey where it had once been white. I kept my eyes on the fringe as I recited:

  ‘Am I guilty of any known sin?’

  ‘Well?’

  I shook my head and the shaking seemed to dislodge a shower of soot to blacken my heart.

  ‘Do I practise or allow myself to indulge in anything – in thought, word or deed – that I know to be wrong?’

  Again I shook my head. Mary gazed at me sadly. But it was true, I did not, do not know.

  ‘Am I the master of my bodily appetites so as to have no condemnation?’

  They waited for my reply but I was silent. Their eyes were hot on my down-turned face.

  ‘You are not telling the truth,’ Mary said softly. I got up and went to the window where it was cooler, I put my cheek against the cold glass. The rain had stopped and the sky was pearl between the thinning clouds. ‘I have seen you Trixie, I have seen what you do. And you know it.’

  ‘I do not know.’

  Mary sighed. ‘Trixie, we cannot hold our heads up as Salvation Soldiers and overlook or condone … we cannot … do you understand our position?’

  A thrush had picked up a snail and was smashing it on the stones that edged the path. A ray of sun came out and the garden glittered.

  ‘The rain has stopped,’ I said.

  ‘Turn round Trixie,’ Harold said. I turned. He stood beside the Salvation Army badge that I had so proudly and hopefully fixed to the mantelpiece. He looked hot and damp standing by the fire. Suddenly I thought of my father standing there, just where Harold stood in front of the hearth scolding or scorning me and I knew he was still there. And my mother sitting vacant in the chair beside him.

  ‘We have prayed. We have weighed our friendship for you in the balance with our integrity, our duty …’ Harold continued.

  ‘It’s all right, I understand.’ I experienced a sudden draining away of light and energy from my head as if I would faint. I sat down.

  It was at this moment that I knew I had to leave. The Army was my life but my life was a sham. The Army had given me every bit of self-respect I’d had. It had been like a uniform. The uniform was my self-respect and sometimes I almost believed in it myself. The uniform was me. I was a black bonnet of official dimensions with a scarlet band and ribbons not exceeding 2½ yards in length; I was a navy-blue serge speaking jacket with a stand-up collar; I was a black serge skirt; a crimson shirt, a white linen collar. I was a pair of plain black shoes, for patent leather, brown or white leather must not be worn. That is what I was.

  But I was a sham. Ivy knew me for a sham. I searched my heart over and over, every night I had searched my heart and could find no trace of badness, hardly a trace. Just like the times when I was forced to stare in the mirror searching for evil as a child, I found none. I was only good intentions, no evil desires, no vices. But I could not answer the questions in the negative, not definitely because there was a sort of clamouring inside me that I could not hear; there was knowledge in me that I did not know; there was guilt for deeds I never did or had even heard of. I could not give testimony at meetings, I could not pray aloud. The Spirit simply wasn’t in me. I was all confusion. But it was not my fault.

  I had pledged my life, my self to Jesus and he did not want me. What more complete rejection could there be than that?

  I had never really been Saved. It had all been pretence.

  Like my father said, a monstrous charade.

  How was I supposed to stand it? I felt not only that my heart would break but my body too would smash – with the hurt and the pressure of the silent clamouring – like a vase, a mess of glass, water, petals.

  A weak beam of sunshine found its way into the room.

  I stood between the window and the hearth and I felt my childhood was still there skulking in the corners, fluttering in the shadows and the curtain folds, still there. And still there in me too.

  I hated that house. I did not want it. Mary and Harold could have it. Why not? What they did with it did not concern me. I didn’t want the house and I did not want my body either. I had had enough of myself.

  I felt almost happy. I tidied myself up, polished my shoes, put on my bonnet, tied the ribbon firmly under my chin. I left that house. The air was soft and kind, a clean-rinsed summer evening. The sun sent silver shafts to the earth that once I would have linked to God’s love or some such stuff. But it was only sun shining down on a late summer’s evening, only a physical phenomenon. Its beauty was meaningless. I walked very fast along dirty gleaming footpaths. I walked as fast as I could, my skirt flapping around my legs. I walked towards the river while my resolve was strong.

  ADA

  I should have kept us together.

  Poor Trixie but …

  Frank was killed.

  Nobody told me, who would tell me? I saw it in a newspaper.

  UNDERWORLD GANG BOSS MURDERED.

  I did not know what to do. I could not. What could I do?

  It was not even me that saw him last but Trixie. She was with some Army songsters, singing outside The Cross Cat. Frank walked past her. He didn’t look at Salvationists as a rule, dug his head down into his collar. But somehow this time he did. He looked up and saw Trixie and hesitated. I could read his eyes even under the shady brim of his hat. He thought it looked like me, remarkably like
me, but that it could not be me. Not his passionate Ada, not in a Salvation Army uniform, not shaking a tambourine.

  No, I do not know what he thought.

  Through a filter I saw him, through the filter of Trixie’s eyes. Poor Trixie was shaken by his look. How I wanted to reach out for him, go into the pub with him, to take him home like I had a couple of times, sneak him in past that interfering Mary. How I wanted to make love to him, my whole body tingled inside Trixie’s, frightening her with the feeling. But all I could do was mouth the stupid hymn. I was helpless. But the music died in Trixie with the shock of it with the force of my longing, lust, love, frustration.

  I was helpless.

  When I saw in the newspaper that he was dead, my Frank, I … I was not.

  That is all. I simply lost my strength to hold us together and we went into a spin and the boy, he … I was not in control. I let go of the reins in my weakness. It was my fault.

  Trixie was in despair because Mary knew about my doings and thought it was her. What a laugh! Trixie drinking and making love to a gangster in the most interesting of ways. Trixie enjoying herself. Ha!

  And then Ivy coming, and that baby, and me, in my torment, in my grief, letting go, letting the boy break through. I let us down. Trixie. I should have held us together.

  Because that boy is a monster.

  That boy will kill.

  SOAP

  Trixie was out in the street. I have never seen her out in the street before. I went to knock at her door and saw that it was ajar and that the room was empty. I walked out to the front and there she was, hesitating beside the road as if she was about to cross. She put one foot forward and then drew it back again, as if something was coming – but there was nothing. She wasn’t wearing her coat, she had no bag. Across the road outside the greengrocer’s back entrance, cauliflower leaves littered the path. I went to Trixie and caught her arm.

  ‘What a mess,’ I said, just for something to say.