Golden Deeds

by Chidgey, Catherine

  ‘In summer you could watch for your fireflies from your bed,’ his mother said, but Patrick, who had just seen Faye walking past in her nightdress, didn’t answer.

  On Christmas Day, Faye smoothed the damask cloth over the table, tweaking each corner so the folds were even. Then she took six matching napkins—as big as kites, Patrick thought—and folded them into elaborate flowers. She placed one on each plate; water lilies adrift on fluted ponds.

  Aunt Joyce sat at the head of the table, with Ronnie to her right. Outside, the winter sun caught on the lilies and made them transparent as paper. Patrick’s mother had made a lily centrepiece—her little contribution to the dinner, she said—and the scent mingled with the smell of roast beef and goose.

  ‘I’m not very hungry,’ she said as she sat down. ‘It seems silly, doesn’t it, to have all this food for only six people.’ She took a few thin slices of meat, a dribble of gravy, one potato. ‘You’ve gone to so much trouble, Joyce,’ she said, ‘but I don’t have much of an appetite, I’m afraid.’

  Ronnie filled four goblets with wine. ‘You’ll like this, Graham,’ he said. ‘Good and full on the tongue.’

  ‘Marvellous, yes,’ said Patrick’s father, taking a tiny sip.

  ‘Can we have some?’ said Faye. ‘Because it’s Christmas?’

  Patrick’s mother said, ‘Oh, I don’t think—’ but Aunt Joyce said, ‘Half and half, then,’ and brought a jug of water and two more goblets.

  ‘This is what they do in France,’ said Faye. ‘They’re allowed to drink it from the time they start school.’

  Aunt Joyce’s wine goblets were silver on the outside and gold on the inside. The stems were turned and grooved like the legs of a chair, and swelled in the middle to a fat bead. The wine made the goblets fog up like winter windows. Patrick held his by the stem, like a pen, but it tipped forward and spilled all over the tablecloth.

  ‘Well that was clever, wasn’t it,’ said his mother.

  Faye laughed.

  ‘No harm done,’ said Ronnie. ‘At least it wasn’t the really good stuff.’ He winked. ‘We’ll have that later, Graham,’ he said, and he mopped away the excess.

  Patrick’s mother dabbed her mouth with her napkin, then began folding the white damask into smaller and smaller rectangles. Her face was very solemn, as if there had been some sort of disaster and she was preparing a bandage. She lifted the tablecloth and slid the napkin underneath. ‘To stop the wood from marking,’ she said, and Patrick knew she was right to do so but for the rest of the meal all he could see was the mound under the cloth, upsetting Faye’s careful smoothing. Nobody refilled his goblet.

  As they ate, Faye talked about a restaurant they’d been to for her last birthday. It was French, and the chef had presented her with a special pudding just because she was turning thirteen. He’d made her a basket from sugar and water—imagine, she said, just sugar and water—and filled it with cherries and chocolate mousse. Around the edge of the plate, piped in chocolate, were the words Bon Anniversaire Faye. ‘That means happy birthday Faye in French,’ she said, and reached for the platter of roast beef.

  ‘I think you’ve got enough on your plate, dear,’ said Aunt Joyce, catching her daughter’s arm. ‘She’s grown so much this last term,’ she said. ‘She hardly fits any of her clothes. Ronnie almost didn’t recognise her when he met her from the train, did you Ronnie?’

  Patrick wished he could be taken to a restaurant on his birthday, and presented with a pudding in his honour. He tried to picture the basket. Was it solid and crunchy, the way sugar went when left in the bowl too long? Was it clear, like toffee, and dotted with tiny air bubbles? Thick and rough, sparkling like morning frost? As Faye spoke, he watched her cup her hands to make the shape of the basket, twirl her finger above her palm to indicate the sweet filling. Perhaps, he thought, Faye’s special pudding, made for her because she was turning thirteen, resembled a spider’s web, the clear threads snapping on the tongue like glass.

  ‘This is very good, Joyce,’ said Patrick’s father, helping himself to a little more, arranging the food in neat sections on his plate. When eating, Graham Mercer liked to include a portion of everything with each mouthful. He often recommended the method to guests.

  ‘I begin with the meat and I work clockwise around the plate,’ he would explain. He was able to judge perfectly the quantities of food and was never left with a mound of parsnip, say, or orphan beans. At the end of each meal he said, ‘Perfect,’ more pleased with himself and his rationed mouthfuls, it seemed, than with the food itself.

  When everyone had finished, Aunt Joyce produced a platter of chocolates. There were lemon baskets, scallop shells, cherry clusters, walnut swirls, white-on-dark cameos, all resting in crimped paper cases.

  ‘From Carnaby’s,’ she said, and Patrick’s father, who had been trying to pick a strand of goose meat from his teeth, stopped and said, ‘Well now.’

  ‘Just one for you, Faye,’ said Aunt Joyce.

  Carnaby’s Chocolatier sold handmade confectionery by the ounce, like gold. White-gloved women with covered hair weighed each customer’s selection, then folded the pieces into foil bags. Tongs were used at all times; left silver fingers that caused no melting, left no prints. In rows, in glass cabinets, the chocolates were displayed like pieces of jewellery intended for the décolletage, the wrist, the throat. Patrick had been with Aunt Joyce when she’d bought her Christmas selection. She’d held his hand on the way there and he didn’t mind, even though these days he shook away his mother’s fingers when they grasped for his.

  While Aunt Joyce waited at the counter, Patrick wandered towards the back of the shop and was surprised to find that it opened on to a dance floor. There were no windows, but the walls were covered with mirrors, bevelled and scalloped like pralines, and in one corner a bar curved, a beckoning finger. Sugary glass orchids and leaves formed chandeliers which shook as Patrick walked beneath them. He closed his eyes and breathed in the scent from the shop, and it was as if the whole place were made of sugar, and he imagined the people who came here to dance, the sweetnesses exchanged every night. He saw the costly glint of silver, gold, the slow unwrapping as coats were abandoned, gloves peeled away. He saw shoulders bared and glowing like marzipan. He didn’t like the taste of marzipan; it was sweet and bitter at the same time, like wine was: something adult, something acquired.

  ‘Come away now, Patrick,’ said Aunt Joyce, and she took his hand again and led him back to the street.

  ‘What was that room at the back of the shop?’ he asked on the way home, and she said, ‘It used to be a cocktail bar. Your mother liked going there.’

  When Christmas dinner was over and the grown-ups had slouched in their armchairs to let the afternoon pass, Faye said, ‘Be my hands.’ She led Patrick to her mother’s bedroom, opened the top drawer of the dressing-table and selected lipsticks, eyeshadows and small, heavy jars. At the back of the drawer, thin vials of perfume glinted: amber, topaz, citrine. ‘You have to keep it in the dark,’ said Faye, ‘otherwise it goes off. It starts to smell like cats’ piss.’

  Patrick had never seen so much make-up. His mother, he realised, used only the basics: pressed powder, mascara, red lipstick, and some cornflower-blue eyeshadow for special occasions. She called them her face, but here there was enough make-up for countless faces, a different one every day.

  ‘What’s this?’ he said, touching a metal device with his fingertip. It resembled a pair of scissors, but instead of straight blades it had a curved, sharp clamp. It was vaguely orthodontic.

  ‘Look,’ said Faye, and pressed it to her eye.

  Patrick gasped, snatched out his hand to stop her.

  It’s a lash-curler, silly. It makes your eyes bigger. It’s an optical illusion.’ She positioned herself in front of the full-length mirror. ‘Stand behind me,’ she said.

  She took Patrick’s hands and pulled them around her, then clasped her own hands behind him. He peered over her shoulder and was pleased to see how co
nvincing his arms looked attached to her body. He waved at the mirror, reached up and smoothed a finger over Faye’s eyebrow. She laughed, and he fluffed his hands through her hair, flicking it forward so it rested over her shoulders and chest.

  ‘You’ve got nice arms, for a boy. Not hairy’ She cocked her head to one side. ‘Do you think I’m fat?’

  ‘No,’ said Patrick.

  ‘Mum thinks I need to lose weight. She says I’ve inherited the Stratford thighs. Ronnie doesn’t like big women.’

  ‘I think your thighs,’ said Patrick and swallowed, feeling them against his own, ‘are very nice.’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Faye, ‘I wonder what make-up I should wear for my date tonight.’

  Patrick held a thoughtful finger to her cheek.

  ‘I don’t want to look common—a light dusting of powder, I think, to start with.’

  Patrick reached for the powder compact. It was gold, with a complicated geometric design engraved on the lid. Inside was a small velvet pad already caked with make-up. There was a ribbon across the back, and he hooked his fingers underneath it and began dabbing powder on Faye’s cheeks.

  ‘I mustn’t forget my jaw-line and my neck,’ she said. ‘It’s very important to blend, otherwise you get tidemarks.’

  He ran the pad up and down her throat.

  ‘Eyeshadow next. The gold will match my gown.’

  There was no applicator, so Patrick used his fingertip to apply the shimmering powder. It was like pollen, he thought. Faye’s eyelids felt so delicate he was afraid they would dissolve under his touch. At the small of his back he could feel her clasping and unclasping her hands.

  ‘Eyeliner completes the look,’ she said.

  Patrick’s hands groped across the dressing-table for the pencil. It was difficult to hold, almost too thin, and had been sharpened with a knife; he could feel the ridges where the blade had sliced at the wood. ‘It feels very sharp,’ he said, but Faye sighed and said, ‘It’s not a real pencil, silly, the lead’s soft, like crayon,’ so he rested his hand on her cheek and began to outline her eye. It was disorienting, watching himself draw in the mirror. Faye stood very still, and he could feel her breath on his fingers. His hand looked unfamiliar to him; he no longer recognised the curve of his wrist, his sharp knuckles. It was Faye who was holding the pencil, Faye who was deciding where to draw, where to add colour and shadow. She blinked, and the tip jabbed her eye.

  ‘You idiot! Why don’t you watch what you’re doing?’ She wriggled away from Patrick, and suddenly he was alone in Aunt Joyce’s bedroom, and there was powder spilled on the floor and on the pale ash dressing-table, and it was getting dark outside.

  Faye didn’t speak to him for, the rest of the day, and at the supper table she rubbed her eye and frowned a lot. Nobody else seemed to notice anything was wrong, and Aunt Joyce didn’t mention any tampering in her room. Patrick concentrated on his hands. He could see a residue of golden dust on his fingertip, embedded in the grain of his skin. He could still make it out that night in bed, if he held his finger under the light. He closed his eyes and imagined he was in the sweet-shop ballroom with Faye, and that the conservatory windows were mirrors. Light bounced off the glass as he danced with her, flickers of purple, licks of red and orange. By morning the eyeshadow had disappeared from his skin, lost somewhere in his sleep.

  Ruth had tried to ignore it. In warm weather, she’d told herself, it was normal; she was simply shedding her winter coat. As summer ended, though, as the evenings turned cooler and the leaves began to drop, she continued to find blond strands everywhere in the new house. They wove around the bristles on her hairbrush, they clogged the plugholes, clung to cushions and curtains, wound themselves so tightly around the vacuum-cleaner head that she had to cut them away with nail scissors.

  Her hairdresser told her not to worry. People lost up to eighty a day without even knowing, she said, waving her scissors through the air, and Ruth had plenty left to lose, and where had she bought her gorgeous earrings? Up to eighty hairs a day, thought Ruth. For a family of four, that was two thousand, two hundred and forty hairs a week. Almost ten thousand a month. She wondered where it all went, why the human race wasn’t knee-deep in hair. It didn’t decompose quickly. It was one of the last parts of a person to remain. Even bog bodies, buried for centuries, had hair.

  ‘Stress or poor nutrition is most often to blame,’ said the doctor. ‘Have you lost a lot of weight recently? Are you dieting?’

  ‘No,’ said Ruth. ‘We’ve got a beautiful kitchen in the new place. If anything, I’m eating better than I ever have.’

  ‘Shifting house is one of the most stressful activities we ever face, of course,’ said the doctor. ‘Quite apart from strangers traipsing through your home, and the packing and unpacking, and the whole financial side of things, it can be hard to part with a place that’s been an important part of your life.’

  ‘Oh, but we haven’t sold,’ said Ruth. ‘We’ve converted it into two flats and we ‘re renting them out. Malcolm did a lot of the work himself,’ She stopped, ran her hand through her hair. She didn’t say that Malcolm had worked on the house night after night. She didn’t say that he’d spent almost no time with Daniel, that they’d hardly seen him at all, he’d been so busy with the conversion. Splitting their old life in two. And she didn’t say how quickly it had happened.

  ‘Alterations,’ said the doctor, ‘can be very demanding.’

  Ruth said no to the pills he suggested, but promised to buy a relaxation tape which had, he assured her, worked wonders for his wife.

  That night, when Malcolm was reading the paper and Daniel had gone to bed, Ruth lay down on the lounge floor. She could hear the hiss and whine of the tape as it started to spool through the stereo. She hadn’t listened to a tape in a long time.

  ‘They won’t even be making them in a few years,’ Laura had told her once, and had explained to Ruth the miracle of the compact disc. ‘The CD,’ she’d said, holding one up to her mother, a full moon in her hands, ‘can’t be damaged or broken.’

  Ruth could feel the Persian rug against the backs of her legs, cool and silky. A woman’s voice emerged from the speakers.

  ‘Lie on the floor with your arms by your sides,’ said the voice. ‘Now close your eyes and take four deep breaths, letting any tension in your body flow away with each outward breath. Good,’ she said, as if she were in the room and watching. ‘Now I want you to think of a place you find relaxing. It might be a real place, or somewhere you’ve visited only in your imagination. It might be a meadow, a deserted beach, or a garden. Perhaps it’s a peaceful room. Once you’ve visualised your place, I want you to imagine you are there.’

  Ruth didn’t choose an outdoor location; the only ones she could see were the icy landscapes in Malcolm’s photographs. No, she wanted to be inside. And she was, she was inside their old house, in the lounge, and everything was the way it had been when Laura was still there.

  ‘What can you see around you?’ said the voice. ‘What can you smell? What sounds can you hear?’

  The sound Ruth heard was a knock at the door, twelve years earlier. It was a sound she’d been hearing for days, ever since Laura had been in the news. For a moment she didn’t move from her armchair. The house had been occupied by visitors all morning, most of whom, it seemed, had come only to tell her how awful she looked, what a terrible time she must be having, how they wished there was something they could do. Malcolm was still out searching. It was an arrangement they’d come to wordlessly: while he checked rivers, beaches, pockets of bush, she waited for news. Ruth didn’t mind being the one to wait. She knew that Malcolm needed to get his hands dirty, to turn over every log, lift every stone, find something that had been missed. But she also knew that someone needed to be at home. ‘In case there are any important phone calls,’ she explained to visitors, but meant something else. If Laura arrived home and found nobody there, who would wipe her face, run her a bath, apply sticking plaster?

  There was a
nother knock at the door.

  ‘Mrs Pearse?’ called a voice. ‘Anybody home?’

  Ruth stubbed out her cigarette. Malcolm hated her smoking; she’d stopped for him, just after they met. She knew he could smell the smoke in the house now, when he came home each day, but he hadn’t said anything.

  ‘Mrs Pearse, are you there?’

  She stood, smoothed her hair. She’d spoken to Joshua on the phone a couple of times since Laura had disappeared, but only to ask if he knew anything, whether Laura had contacted him. He hadn’t been round to the house at all.

  ‘I’ve got some of Laura’s CDs,’ he said. ‘I thought you might want them. I thought you might want to put them back in her room.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Ruth. There was a moment’s awkwardness, the two of them hesitating on the threshold as if on a first date.

  ‘Would you like a coffee?’ she said. ‘It’ll have to be black—’ She trailed off, flicked through the handful of CDs. She recognised one of them from Laura’s last birthday, a present from Joshua. Bon Jovi’s Slippery When Wet. ‘Hardly appropriate,’ Malcolm had remarked. Laura had played it over and over.

  Ruth put the CDs on the hall table. That was where she put all of Laura’s things; she’d stopped tidying her room months ago, when Laura had accused her of going through her desk.

  ‘How’s school?’

  ‘It’s okay,’ said Joshua, looking round the lounge at the flowers, the newspapers, the cards and letters, looking anywhere but at Ruth.

  ‘So you haven’t heard from—’