Skin Deep

by Liz Nugent

  Peter did everything he could to pay off the people he had defrauded, but it wasn’t enough. In the end, the Russells had to put Carrowbeg Manor and their beautiful home in Westport on the market and downsize to a smaller house, and were no doubt forced to move back a few pews at Sunday Mass, if they were still accepted there. Elizabeth told me tearfully in one of her weekly phone calls, ‘That’s what you do for your son. You will do anything you can to protect him.’

  Peter’s father, Declan, took another view. He arrived in London a week after Peter told him the catastrophic news, and out of Peter’s earshot told me, ‘This family was doing fine until you walked into it. You’re a fucking hex.’

  20

  Peter laughed at the idea that we could live on my Debenhams’ salary if I went full-time. ‘Did you ever look at the price of rent in this city, Delia? Do you even know how much our mortgage repayments were?’ Peter, despite his track record, had a better earning capacity than me because of his degree and experience, he said, but he would have to move into a different area of work. His choices were limited and he would have to start at the bottom, so, he insisted, I would have to do the childminding myself. James was taken out of the expensive prep school and installed in the local primary near our new home. By the end of November 1988, we were renting a three-room ground-floor flat in Cricklewood with a shared bathroom, below a man with a spider’s web tattooed across his face. Peter told me I should drop the accent now. Cricklewood was an Irish ghetto. I thought that was all the more reason to keep it.

  I had not told Moira anything, until I wrote to tell them our new address. I knew from her previous letters that she and Alan were living separately now, and that it was all because of me. Her letters had been infrequent. I knew she begrudged me the high lifestyle I’d been leading. This time, she replied promptly, asking if I knew what was going on, and why Carrowbeg Manor was up for sale. Westport was rife, she said, with gossip about Declan Russell and his sudden drink problem. ‘And Harry’s no better,’ she said, ‘father and son rolling around the streets at all times of the day and night, making a disgrace of themselves.’

  I feigned ignorance and suggested that Declan was approaching retirement age and wanted a break. But Moira was shrewd in her reply: ‘Why is he selling in such a hurry then? And why wouldn’t he pass it on to Harry?’

  Debenhams would not work around my son’s school schedule and I could no longer afford the weekly Tube ticket that took me into Zone 1, so I was forced to give up my job. We lived hand to mouth on social welfare, trying to eke the money out over the two weeks between giros. We had no luxuries now, but we had food on the table, a solid roof over our heads and central heating. Peter kept apologizing to me. I couldn’t tell him that I had lived in far worse conditions than this, and I was happier then. We talked about selling our clothes. I had a few designer pieces and he had some Savile Row suits, but thankfully Peter insisted that we could still look the part if we wanted.

  Because we had to cut back on all expenditure, I had to cook every meal on the cheap, with the most basic of ingredients. Chips and frozen burgers from Tesco instead of fresh produce at Waitrose. The tiny, badly ventilated flat smelled of cooking oil and sour milk. Now that he was unemployed, Peter pulled his weight in the parenting department and I was more than happy to hand James over. When Peter was out of the house on his endless job hunt, and James was home from school, I left him to amuse himself and ignored his constant demands for attention. He wailed for Chiara. When was she coming back? He went from being a fairly placid child to a child with freakish temper tantrums. I stuffed cotton wool into my ears and went to bed and left him in the kitchen cum sitting room cum dining room with the knives and the hot taps. My headaches returned with a vengeance. I was clearly allergic to my son. Peter would no longer listen to these complaints. ‘Stop it, Delia, that’s ridiculous!’

  Despite everything, Peter never stopped loving me, though I made it difficult for him, and I never warmed to our child. My fleeting love for Peter disappeared too. I turned my back to him in bed. There were no more trips to the coast. Just constant drudgery – washing, ironing, cooking, cleaning, feeding – interrupted sleep and cramped conditions.

  On Christmas Day, we ate tinned ham and had pineapple chunks for dessert and watched Chitty Chitty Bang Bang on the small television that sat on top of the fridge. Peter had made a mechanical toy for James by hand. It was a clever piece, a robotic puppet of sorts. But he had nothing for me. ‘Sorry, my love, but Santa Claus is more important to him, don’t you think?’

  I had nothing for either of them, except jealousy. Why should James get a gift before me?

  Peter, more aware now of my estrangement from my son, nagged me about how I was neglecting him, how I never looked at him. We rowed about this constantly. James was a chatterer and would tell Peter exactly what happened during the day when he wasn’t home. Two days previously, Peter had given me money to take James to see Santa Claus at a shopping centre while he went for a job interview. I couldn’t stand the thought of being in a shopping centre full of things I could not afford, surrounded by my own and other people’s overexcited children. I had used the money to put James into a crèche while I went to a wine bar. Now Peter was asking James about Santa Claus. James said he hadn’t seen him. I told Peter our child was a liar, but I could see that Peter believed him over me. I left, slamming the door behind me, leaving them both in tears. I walked down to the high street and found an open pub. I sat at the bar and drank whatever I could get with the few pounds I had in my purse, and enjoyed being the centre of attention again, as drunken locals, mostly old Irishmen, tried to make my acquaintance. I slipped back to my old accent, and before long they were buying me drinks and arguing over who was going to walk me home. In the end, I slipped out a side door when an actual fight broke out and chairs went flying.

  When I got home, Peter was waiting up. ‘I can’t believe you walked out, tonight of all nights,’ he said.

  I wasn’t ready for Round Two. But I was drunk enough to tell the truth. ‘I don’t like him,’ I said.

  Peter blamed himself. ‘I should never have agreed to hiring Chiara. You and James never got a chance to bond. And I never noticed.’

  I let Peter believe what he wanted to believe. He put his hand out to touch my face. ‘We’ll fix this, together. We are a family and we must start to act like one.’ Peter thought he could fix everything. Poor Peter.

  Some weeks later, I got a postal order for five hundred pounds from Moira. She told me what she had learned from Elizabeth. Elizabeth’s version of events was that Peter’s business partner had embezzled money and the company had gone bust, leaving the extended Russell family in financial jeopardy. I don’t know what Moira must have sold to get the money, but it coincided with Peter finally getting a job as a photocopy machine salesman for IBM, so I didn’t feel the need to tell him about the postal order. At first, he had resisted taking such a menial job. He had sought out his other old Oxford friends, but maybe they had never seen him as one of them either. Hannah had declared that we were both peasants. I had always thought that Peter was a cut above me, but now we were just another two Irish immigrants among thousands in London trying to scratch a living.

  Once he started the job, his mood improved. He was technically minded and was genuinely interested in the machines he was selling and their capabilities. His salary didn’t stretch to that much more than the dole, but his working meant that I was stuck with James when he wasn’t at school. I could take no joy from cooking either, now that we couldn’t afford the food I had learned to cook from Robert Carrier’s books.

  I had to be more careful with James, but there was one secret that James and I did not tell Peter. Even his young mind grasped that he had too much to lose by betraying it. We were co-conspirators, my son and I.

  One day, waiting at the school gates, I was surprised to meet Chiara. She asked me if she could see James, if she could take him to the park. I knew Peter would not approve, but th
en James emerged from the scrum of children and his face lit up with happiness when he saw her. It would have been cruel to deny them each other’s company, so I swore them both to secrecy. And we made an arrangement. Chiara was now caring for an elderly man in his home in Hampstead. She had two afternoons off a week, so on Tuesdays and Thursdays she would collect James from school and drop him back to the house before Peter was due home from work at 6.30. She even fed him sometimes. It was an agreement that suited all of us, and when James came home, excited by his afternoons with Chiara, I gave him stern reminders about how, if he told Daddy, the afternoons would be stopped. Sometimes he forgot and blabbed things about going to the zoo with Chiara or some such, but a sharp look or a pinch from me would shut him up and he would agree with me that he was just pretending. Peter was concerned. ‘I was hoping that after six months, he’d forget about her, but he still talks about her all the time.’

  His behaviour was better though when he was seeing her. I comforted Peter by telling him I was proud of our loyal and imaginative child.

  So, for two days a week, once I had dropped James at school, I was free for the day. I used Moira’s money wisely and eked it out for nearly a year. I took the train to Folkestone or to Dover and walked the cliffs or the piers and had a long lunch in a grand hotel somewhere overlooking the sea. When the weather was better, I brought my swimming togs and went for a dip, though the English Channel could not compete with the Mediterranean in the autumn for colour or temperature. I bought myself time and freedom. I assume Chiara thought I was having an affair, and in a way I was. A secret affair with myself.

  Often, I thought about not coming back. Looking back, it would have been better for everyone if I had just disappeared one day with Moira’s money, but I did not think that far ahead. All I worried about was how I would get to the sea when the money ran out. I think there must have been some bond between James and Peter and me. It is strange, I suppose, that I never thought of them as family. I never thought of Moira and Alan as family either, but giving birth to James should have changed that. I have been described as heartless so many times over the years, but if I was truly heartless I would have walked away from that child, and from Peter. I stayed until James was almost seven years old. And I didn’t leave. I was banished. What happened was an accident, though everyone holds me responsible.

  Peter’s technological skills were recognized. He moved from selling photocopiers to fixing them, and then into their design department, and then to designing computers for the same company. He was a quick learner and within two years his earnings had increased substantially. He had been honest with IBM about what had happened at Russell Wilkes and they told him that they would never put him in a finance position, but he was happy about that because he enjoyed the mechanical design work. They had him doing a diploma in electronic engineering, at night. He would come home talking about microchips and circuit boards and it made little sense to me, but he was genuinely enthusiastic about it, more so than he ever had been in the company that he co-founded. This time there was less responsibility and almost no risk.

  I got a part-time job on reception in a hair salon in Golders Green two mornings every week and all day Saturdays. We rented a bigger flat nearby. This one had two bedrooms like the last flat, but the kitchen and sitting room were two separate rooms and we could finally eat our dinner at the kitchen table rather than with our plates in our laps. We had our own bathroom.

  I should have been happier, but more than ever I felt the pull of the sea, and in the few hours when I did manage to sleep I dreamed of swimming and searching for something on the ocean floor, though I never knew what it was. As frustrating as those dreams were, it was worse to wake up to find Peter gazing at me and James pulling at him, demanding his breakfast. The money from Moira had run out. I had to survive on what Peter gave me and my own salon earnings. My secret day trips and daytime wine-tippling were no longer possible. While Chiara took James, I stayed home and watched Oprah Winfrey and Neighbours on the television. My salon job was merely respite from the stifling domesticity of home. I was still using my upper-crust accent, and while the manager thought it might bring class to the place, the other girls there distrusted me. They assumed that someone like me was working there as a hobby. I didn’t care. I wasn’t there to make friends.

  The best part about the hair salon was the magazines. Glossy ones filled with pages of impossibly expensive clothing and glamorous models and photos of society parties.

  One day in March, I came across a photograph of Hannah and Daniel at the Tynedale Hunt Ball in Welton Hall. Hannah’s hair was fashionably highlighted, considerably toned down from her peroxide days. Her trademark scarlet lipstick was intact and her slinky full-length gown showed off her curves. Clearly, she had not faded from society. Daniel, bekilted in the photo, was caught holding a handkerchief to his nose. Their lives hadn’t changed at all. I felt a surge of jealousy course through me. Hannah didn’t deserve any of this.

  I wasn’t jealous of her. I didn’t want money necessarily, I wanted to live a life in the fresh air with an open sky and the sound of waves to soothe me to sleep. I wanted isolation. That night, I begged Peter again to move somewhere else, anywhere closer to the sea. He shook his head in sorrow.

  ‘I can’t, Delia, you know I can’t. IBM has taken me on and trained me up. I’m doing well there. It would be crazy to leave now. Computers are the future and we’ll be in on the ground floor. This is a real chance, darling. We can make it again. Make it big.’

  ‘That’s what you said last time,’ I said, making no attempt to keep the bitterness from my voice. He reached for me, but I turned away. Peter was a relatively calm person, but he was a hard worker and emotionally strong. He never lost his temper, but this time he was annoyed.

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Delia, I have taken all the responsibility for this family. I’ve done everything for you, and you never acknowledge that!’

  ‘I share your bed.’

  ‘What? Are you saying you only have sex with me because I earn the money? Are you actually saying that?’

  I had to backtrack. ‘No, it’s not like that. I’m sorry.’ I allowed him to hug me.

  ‘Anyway, we haven’t had sex in months, you know?’ He kissed me on the mouth.

  I felt nothing and let my mouth go slack.

  ‘What is it, Delia? You know I’m not a magician. I can’t fix everything overnight, but things are getting better, aren’t they?’

  ‘I suppose.’

  ‘I think maybe if we had another baby, we could start over. A little brother or sister for James. You missed that bonding time with James because of Chiara, but it’s not too late to find that mothering instinct within you. What do you think?’

  I thought so many things, but mostly I thought about the fact that my husband knew me so little. How could he possibly think that another child would improve things?

  ‘No.’ I said it loud and firmly.

  ‘At least think about it?’

  ‘NO!’ I roared the word in his face.

  We had another major row that night. I slapped him and bit him and told him I felt like a prisoner. I said it was bad enough having one brat, without the thought of having another.

  That night he slept on the sofa and I was glad.

  The next day he got up and made James’s lunch and prepared to take him to school. I stayed in bed. Before he left, he came and stood at our bedroom door.

  ‘OK,’ he said, ‘we won’t have another baby. Please don’t leave me.’

  I did not respond.

  After he left, I dressed in my best clothes. I hadn’t had occasion to wear my Vivienne Westwood jacket for some time, but today I was on a mission. I took the Tube to Chelsea, stopping off to buy a copy of the Sun, and walked through the park to Carberry Gardens, to a house I had visited so many times before – for cocktails before we hit Annabel’s, for birthday parties, for afternoon wine and cocaine. I noticed that my boots were clogged with mud. I didn’t care
. Hannah opened the door, and a sly smile appeared on her face. ‘Well, look what the cat dragged in!’

  ‘May I come in?’

  She opened the door wide and stood back to let me enter. This time, I didn’t bother to wipe my feet to protect the cream woollen carpets, and she was about to scold me, to remind me, but I put my hand up. ‘I haven’t got all day, Hannah. Put the kettle on? Or open a bottle of wine? Let’s keep this as civilized as possible. I assume the children are at school?’

  She was taken aback and said nothing as she followed me into the kitchen. She didn’t open a bottle of wine or put the kettle on, but stood with her arms folded and her back to the kitchen table. ‘What is this all about? How dare you come swanning in here as if you own the place?’

  I decided not to pussyfoot around the situation.

  ‘It’s simple. You and I both know that Daniel used to supply half the City boys with cocaine. I have names, dates and places.’ This was a lie. ‘You were right about one thing, Hannah. I am a nobody. And that means I have nothing to lose.’ I threw the paper on to the table. ‘All I have to do is make one phone call to the editor.’

  I wish I’d had a camera to take a photograph of her face. It was, as they say, a picture.

  ‘I get it,’ she said. ‘He’s the embezzler and you’re the blackmailer. What a team. Daniel almost lost everything because of Peter. He’s landscape gardening now, trying to scratch a living because of your husband.’ She raised her voice to a shrill scream. ‘We haven’t got any money!’

  I gestured to my surroundings. The plush furnishings, the expensive paintings on the walls, the state-of-the-art designer kitchen. ‘Really, Hannah? I thought Mummy owned half of Aberdeenshire?’