I think she brought Mr Blowski to bed last night, I think they rolled together in the flowers, dark red sheets and white lilies. They are so old and … it doesn’t bear thinking about but … Richard and I have never had such an exotic, erotic time of it.
And what she told me … I don’t know what to think. Well it’s true, there’s proof, the mark on her skin. She came back upstairs when I’d been here maybe an hour, locked the door, put the key in her cardigan pocket, stood with her back to the door, her arms folded.
‘Trixie, please let me out,’ I said.
‘Since you want to know,’ she said, quite fiercely.
‘Know what?’
‘Since you will not keep your nose out I will tell you.’
I shivered. Her face was frightening.
‘Since you are so fascinated. Curiosity killed the cat.’
‘Please let me out, now, I want to phone my husband.’ I’d decided I wouldn’t wait, I’d ring him at work, I’d get him somewhere. After all he is a doctor, other people can get him when they want him so why not me? ‘Trixie, please …’
‘My name is Ada. A.D.A.’
‘Yes … Palindrome, I know.’
She snorted. ‘Oh knows it all does she …’
‘Trixie …’
‘Trixie is a waste of space with her watery tea and her television, forever banging away at that bleeding silly tambourine, forever singing, if you can call it singing, “Oh Jesus, Jesus!” as if her life depended on it.’
‘Yes.’ I sat back down on the bed. I thought if I let her talk, it would be over and she would let me go. I wanted to ring Richard to ask him what to do, she was obviously completely off her head. He’d know what to do.
‘And you think I’m Trixie! Are you absolutely blind? She stopped and looked at herself in the dusty mirror. ‘Oh I see … yes, I am wearing Trixie’s dress … I don’t have the choice … hardly have a chance … Do you think I would wear a sack like this from choice?’
She struggled to unbutton her brown cardigan but the buttons slithered between her hasty fingers.
‘I am Ada,’ she said, peering closer at the mirror. ‘Can’t you see?’ She rubbed a space clear in the dust. ‘See, it’s Ada.’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I do see, but I don’t understand.’
‘What is there to understand? Oh the weather!’ She looked up at the skylight, rain had started falling, making a fidgety sighing sound. ‘How I long for the sun. I swear I have Mediterranean blood in my veins … you can see it in my lovely skin, and my eyes … almost black …’ She pushed her face into mine and I gazed into the watery blue.
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I see.’
‘Oh the stories I could tell you! How I have longed to tell you!’ She wandered round the room as she spoke, her breath white in the air. She wrapped a purple feather boa round her shoulders and I thought I caught, in the look she gave the mirror, a snatched impression of what she saw, a sultry, sulking beauty – but when she turned to face me again there was the same puffy old face.
I had a painful surge of longing for Richard. I felt lost in her mind, nothing real, it was as if her craziness was contagious. I did want to hear, but in safety, on my own territory. ‘Trix … Ada, I need to go and make a phone call. It’s urgent. I’d love to hear your story, but I must make the call first.’
‘Why? Why now? Who is it you have to phone? The police, isn’t it? Oh no. That you will not do.’
‘Why the police?’
‘Then who?’
‘My husband, my children.’
‘Oh yes … the so-called husband and children. Can’t you do better than that? Suddenly there is a husband and children.’
‘I told you before.’
‘I’ve thought it over. It’s a lie.’
‘I do have children, two.’
‘And I’m the Queen of Sheba.’ She came close and put her hands heavily on my shoulders, pushed her face into mine so that I could smell her powdery skin, her sour breath: ‘I have listened to you, Inis. I have listened to every word you ever spoke to Trixie and you never mentioned children, not a husband or children. Don’t give me that rubbish. Husband and children, Ha!’
‘I ran away from them,’ I said, ‘and now I want to go back.’
‘To call the police,’ she said. ‘Was I born yesterday?’
‘Why should I want to call the police?’
She paused. ‘Oh the rain, the rain, it is breaking my heart. Like soft little fingers against the glass, don’t you think? Scrabbling. No. You are a cunning bitch. I think you are a queer, that’s what. Else why cut your hair like that? You’re no more a mother than me. But you needn’t think I would look at you …’
‘Tr … Ada!’ I almost wanted to laugh. ‘Look … if you don’t believe me, come to the phone-box with me. You can listen. I will not phone the police. You can talk to my husband if you like, to Robin, he loves to talk on the phone. Then you can tell me your story.’
‘As if I am begging you to hear my story!’
‘Well not then, I don’t mind. But I do need to phone.’
‘Do you think I’m stupid?’
‘No, no, I don’t think you’re stupid.’ Trixie is an old woman, heavy but not strong. I knew I could easily force her to give me the key. I could see it in her cardigan pocket, the glint of it just peeping over the top. But I would wait, I did not want to hurt her. There was no need to panic. I tried to quell my exasperation. ‘Just tell me, why you think I’d want to call the police.’
‘Think you can trap me like that.’
‘What do you want?’ I asked. ‘You can’t keep me here against my will.’
‘No?’ Her face became dreamy. She pulled out the tapestry stool from under her dressing-table, and lowered herself on to it. For a moment I thought she was Trixie again, but no. She stared at me but with her eyes focused somewhere beyond. I decided to be patient, to be kind. She was confused, ‘senile dementia’ was what Richard would say, or else she was simply mad. Whatever, I thought, best to be kind.
‘I would love to hear your story,’ I said. I shivered and pulled the red chenille bedspread round my shoulders.
On her face was a faraway smile. ‘I never had a husband of my own, but if only you had seen my lover,’ she began. ‘His hands were …’ she stretched her own hands out and looked at them in awe. ‘His hands were … he could encircle my waist with his fingers. Where is he now … oh these people who vanish because I can’t hold on to them. His fingers were long and strong. Manicured nails with the moons so perfect … Sharp nails, hard hands. He was a cruel man, yes, but he worshipped my body and let me tell you that is a rare thing, you don’t need to tell me that no one has ever worshipped yours, not like that … but mine … Ah well it’s such a pretty body, if it wasn’t so blessed cold I would show you … oh no … not with your inclinations. I can see you think I’m vain, but there are worse things, my dear, than vain.’
She cupped her hands over her breasts and ran them slowly over her body as she spoke. ‘Shoulders smooth as … I don’t know what, breasts like little pink-beaked birds that’s what he said, don’t you think that’s poetic? Legs, long and slender. I always wear silk next to my skin, it is the only thing, my dear, the only thing. I like the warm cling of it, the slip. I like to look at my skin beside silk but best of all I like to look at my skin beside the skin of a man. I like the man to be darker than me. I like the man to have black hairs everywhere, fuzz and shadow. I like the man to be tattooed. My lover, the man with the cruel hands, he had tattoos.
‘He had an eagle on his back, big, with a hooked beak and staring black eyes. Its wings were his shoulder-blades, feathers curling round his shoulders, brushing the tops of his arms. It was brown, black, gold and yellow and his own skin was wonderful brown. Oh I can see it now! I liked to lie naked on his naked back and press the baby birds of my breasts against the eagle’s wings. His name was Frank. He was a gangster, he was a … he was a … but oh … he’s gone.’
; She paused, looked round the room as if surprised.
I had been looking at the floor as she spoke, embarrassed, afraid that she’d suddenly realise what she was saying and be humiliated. I did not know how to react.
‘You don’t believe me, do you?’ she said.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Well look here, just look.’ She pulled up her skirt. The plaster on her shin was a thick ridge under her brown stocking. Over her stockings she wore long peach-coloured bloomers. Grunting with the effort she rolled her left bloomer-leg up high, past the the stocking-top to the withered skin above. ‘There!’ she said triumphantly. I could see nothing more than discoloured skin until I bent closer and saw, half hidden in a crease, the red-brown edges of what might have been a tattoo, which otherwise I’d have taken for a birthmark or a bruise. ‘I don’t know where he went … people drift … you turn round and … where are they?’ She let her skirt fall down.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Let’s go downstairs now. I’ll make us some tea. You’ll be missing your programmes.’
She laughed. ‘You don’t get it, do you? You still don’t get it.’
‘I would like to phone.’
‘Ha ha ha!’
‘Please … look, I need to go to the toilet.’
‘Under the bed,’ she said and before I’d reached the door she was out and had slammed it behind her. I shook the handle, but she was quick to lock it. I was furious with myself for not snatching the key. Stupid, stupid, stupid. I banged on the door and shouted and stamped. But there was no point in that, no point at all.
Under the bed I found a white enamel chamber-pot. I pulled it out and some of the contents slopped over the side. It was full of dark yellow urine, covered with a dusty scum. Choking on the smell, I pushed it underneath. And sat back on the sagging bed.
Why didn’t I phone Richard when I had the chance? What was all that nonsense about waiting? I should have gone home. I could be there now. I want Richard. I want my children. There is no clock here, I’m not wearing my watch, but I know what time it is because Trixie’s turned her television up so loud. I can hear the theme from ‘Countdown’. If I was out I would telephone. I am decided. Only now I can’t. It seems too idiotic to be truly frightening.
But she is frightening because she is so … I don’t know. What is up with her? I don’t know. I’m no psychologist. What I do know is that I am better. That’s the funny thing, that’s why I want to laugh as well as scream. Trixie’s oddness has balanced me. The shock of the door slamming snapped me out of it. The oddness of her story, I’d say it was a fantasy if it wasn’t for the mark on her thigh.
If she doesn’t let me out soon, I’ll … well I’ll get out somehow. I don’t know how. It must be possible. I’m tired. It’s so bloody cold. The bed is very soft. The smell of crushed lilies is heady, quite sickly in the cold air – mixed with old pee. I cover myself in the bedspread. The sheets feel damp and they are stained over and over and over. There are patches of dark yellow pollen and stray grey hairs.
Robin and Billie will be eating their tea. Fish-fingers, maybe, or scrambled eggs with toast and Marmite. Billie loves cauliflower cheese but Robin hates anything in a sauce. I want to know what they’re eating. I want them. Oh this is stupid! I will have to shout and scream to drown the television. She will have to let me out.
SOMETHING SWEET
I don’t like to see my body. I don’t like it. It is a stranger to me and I try not to look. I lay a towel over my front. It soaks up the hot water and is a calming weight. A turquoise towel with lime-green stripes. Can’t think where I got it, I would never have chosen it, not turquoise, not with lime-green stripes.
This is good though, a bath. Some of the Epsom salts have not dissolved, still gritty on the bottom. They sting the wound on my leg, a good, healing sting. I couldn’t make my mind up about the bath so I put my finger in the Bible. Stolen waters are sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant. I don’t know what he’s getting at sometimes, Jesus. Stolen waters? Still a bath is water, and a warm bath is sweet when you are an old woman, stiff in the limbs and soft in the head.
Singing in the bathroom is most effective. Acoustics, wonderful.
Always cheerful, always cheerful,
All our words let love control:
Always cheerful, always cheerful,
Constant sunshine in the soul.
Acoustics wonderful, yes, loud, yes. But my voice sounds very shrill and lonely echoing against the tiles. And the wet towel presses down on my stomach like a big, flat hand and it is hard to sing with no air in my lungs.
I could fancy a bit of something sweet tonight, something in the pudding line. But I’ve got nothing like that in, only blessed biscuits. A suet pudding soaked in golden syrup, creamy custard made with eggs. Oh Trixie Bell pull yourself together, do.
I cannot quite be calm because I’ve a nagging, niggling feeling that something is not right in the house. As if a door is hanging open or a gate banging. But it is nothing like that. It could be nothing.
I think I fainted on the bridge. Next thing, a searing whiff of smelling-salts. People all round me, all looking down and a woman kneeling beside me holding the bottle.
‘She’s come round,’ she said in a deep, rough voice. ‘Here darlin’ …’ She held the bottle to my nose again but I turned my face away. The people loomed over me, a wall of dark cloth, so that I felt I would suffocate.
‘Shall I fetch a doctor?’ somebody asked.
‘No … she’s all right.’ The woman had a big jaw, dark skin, greasy black hair and she looked kind.
‘What about the coppers?’
‘Now what’d we want with them gentlemen? You all right then?’
I nodded my head.
‘Get her to the Sally Army place,’ someone suggested. But I shook my head.
‘Tell you what, darlin’, you come back with me for a cup of tea … how’s that sound?’
‘Yes, thank you.’
She helped me to my feet. ‘Show’s over,’ she said.
I felt so strange. Not faint any more. It was like … one afternoon that woman next door showed me some of her photographs. Double exposures they were, one image overlaying another. Experiments, she said. And that is how I felt that evening, still myself but with another woman superimposed, the edges not quite together, quite experimental.
‘What do they call you?’ the woman asked as we walked off the bridge.
‘Ada,’ I said, without thinking, thinking only that I would not give my real name.
‘I’m Doll,’ the woman said. ‘You up to a bit of a walk?’
We walked along the Embankment where down-and-outs were congregating for the night and I looked away for fear that I should see a familiar face – or be recognised myself. We turned away from the River and in my strange state of mind, I thought I heard it sigh. The sun had been setting as we started and it got dark as we walked. A fine drizzle dampened my face. We walked north between wet, black buildings. I was in a daze. Sometimes I came to for a minute to discover we were still walking and it was as if we had been walking for ever.
Near Liverpool Street we stopped at a tall, cramped house. I did not like the smell: perfume, beer, cinders. I was not innocent of the world, my Salvation Army experience had seen to that, and it didn’t take me long to realise that I was in what once I would have called ‘a house of ill-repute’, that Doll was a madam, a soul ripe for, crying out for, saving. Not only that, but through the house ran a constant stream of such souls. Once I would have rubbed my hands and thanked God for this opportunity to do battle on His behalf.
But.
This is the worst of it because I did know what I was doing.
It was really me.
And yet it was not me, not entirely. I was not myself. Oh those words, how they have echoed down my years. Not myself. Not yourself, dear. Not yourself.
I was myself but not myself.
There is a thread of dusty spider’s web hanging from the li
ght-fitting. I never think to clean the ceiling. It twizzles in the heat from the bath, twizzles and floats. The tap drips and it sounds like the ticking of a clock, but not regular. Like time, the space between the drip ticks varies.
I do not feel alone. But that is good Trixie Bell, that is good, not bad. God is here in the dripping of the tap, the cobweb, the pressing weight of the towel. Do not be afraid. God is with you. Do not be afraid of your own self.
BOY
I am here
I am going to be out
I will out of her
She can almost feel me now
Because I am getting the strongest
Because boys simply do have this thing that is strong about them
And bad and all that
Will not be kept in
So do not make me angry
Crawling out of a heavy thing
Asleep for years
But now awake
And sleep do make me strong
I have outed
And I will out
MOTHER’S RUIN
It’s bloody freezing up here and my throat is sore with shouting. There are two things I can do. Try to escape or wait. I have tried the door but it is solidly locked with a mortice lock. What kind of person has mortice locks on their inner doors? A crazy person, that’s what. The only window is the little skylight. It doesn’t appear to open, I can see no way of opening it. I could smash the glass – but then what? I’m not squeezing out of a jagged glass hole on to a slippery slate roof in the rain. The situation is not so desperate. I’d break my neck.
I wish I had my watch on. It’s gone quiet downstairs now. She switched off the television, then there was a break during which I shouted and even screamed, then she began to sing. She sang one I did not know and then fighting hymns: ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’; ‘Fight the Good Fight’; I stamped and shouted but my voice was tired and my feet would keep stamping in time with the hymns, however hard I resisted. She’s been quiet for ages now but snatches of ‘Fight the Good Fight’ keep floating into my head. I haven’t heard it since I was at school.
The Private Parts of Women Page 21