Between the Regions of Kindness

by Alice Jolly

  As he turns her against him, an image comes to her of some other room where a man and woman danced. To this same song – surely? And another man with Arthur’s lilting accent laughed and she, a tiny child, sat on his knee clapping her hands. The scent of wood smoke and pork chops, furniture all stacked up. The gramophone starting with a hiss, as the record glides under the needle. The woman’s hand pressed firmly against the man’s back as they dance. The place where happiness is for me. The carpet – patterned red and blue – flows under their feet. The sideboard, the bookcase, the mirror over the fireplace, all kaleidoscope into each other. The wall lights, shaped like swans’ necks, blink, the line of silver tankards on the mantelpiece swirls past. On the wallpaper pink rosebuds burst into bloom. And Mollie’s hands are no longer clapping but stretched out, motionless, as though ready to gather the dancers into her arms. Twisting and turning, the man and woman melt together. Floating away into the sky, the stars. Until the man stumbles and the image fades away. A fragment, lost.

  Mollie closes her eyes, feels the music lull away that loss, sinks into its cadences, as she twists and turns, her bare feet gliding over the parquet floor. She knows that soon he will drug her with laudanum and they will do something so disgusting that she can’t let her mind think about it. The peppermint brassière with the black lace is printed into her mind, and the spectral eyes of the old woman in the house next door. Ludo swings her away from him and back, away and back. And then as he turns away again, the scarf at his neck unravels.

  A splash of red appears – a patch of skin, vivid and raw. A wound, a scar which covers the side of his neck. The skin is bright red, thin and furrowed, the edges jagged. Ludo sees her staring and, trying to laugh, raises his hand to cover the scar in a mock exclamation of horror. This moment must pass, the scar must not be significant, the dance must go on. But Mollie pulls away from him. The drink, the twists and turns of the dance have made her stomach clench. A rush of saliva fills her mouth. The redness of the scar waves like a flag in front of her eyes. She imagines herself touching it, blood breaking through the thin, damaged skin and pouring down his chest.

  His hands gather up the scarf, bunch it up against the scar. She knows that he wants to retie the scarf but if he does so then he’ll reveal it further. And so he steps away from her, back into the shadows of the room.

  You must go, he says. Your mother will be worried about you.

  Mollie’s head floats and spins as she grabs her stockings, pulls them on, picks up her school bag. She must go and never come back. When she looks up, Ludo has retied the scarf, pulling it up tight to his chin. She moves towards him, stares into his eyes, which glint like warning lights.

  Please, he says. Go.

  For a moment, she wonders if he might be about to weep. She steps forward, lays a finger on the green scarf, raises her other hand to touch the place where the hidden scar lies. Ludo is like Arthur. He’s been injured in the war and it’s her job to nurse him back to health. She wasn’t able to do that for Arthur but she’ll do it for Ludo. Bottles of disinfectant, beds made with hospital corners, night lamps burning low, her hand holding his, soothing away the pain.

  No, please, he says. Please go.

  She moves her hand away but his eyes still grip hers. Of course, she should go. She can do that now because her tenderness has trapped him. As she pulls on her coat, the floor rises up to meet her and she steadies herself against the arm of a chair. Stumbling down the stairs, she trips over an umbrella stand. Ludo has followed her but doesn’t come close. She feels the distance between them, knows he’s measuring it as well. He moves past her in the narrow hallway, pushes himself in against the wall so as not to touch her, unlocks the door, stands aside so that she can step out into the street, which sleeps in red-brick righteousness, unaware.

  37

  NOW

  Jay – Baghdad, April 2003

  Hi Mum, Granmollie, Grandad and all peace protesters,

  I’m sorry I didn’t write sooner. Just not enough time and didn’t know what to say. Thanks so much for the money and can you thank everyone else as well. You are amazing. Everyone here is really grateful. I’m at the Palestine right now on Greg’s computer. The thing is everyone thought this was just about a war, and then the war would stop and the problem would be solved, but maybe it was never going to be that simple. I suppose what I realise right now is the things that matter you can’t film and you can’t even explain to anyone. Like what happened earlier today which does need to be written down but not in some human rights report, written down in blood or carved in stone, or I don’t know what.

  I don’t think I quite believed in this war until today. Just a great big fireworks display with things jumping off tables and windows shaking in their frames and nobody getting any sleep. Anyway, I went with these journalists to see a place which was hit this morning because there are still bombs going off but no one knows why or who is responsible. It’s hard to get anywhere because the streets are crowded with cars and lorries and people are just emptying out buildings – carrying washing machines out of launderettes, rolls of fabric out of shops, monkeys out of the zoo, boilers, doors and boxes of shoes – with no one to stop them. But eventually we arrive and everyone is arguing about whether this was an American bomb or an Iraqi shell. People are standing around shouting and crying. And three buildings have just gone missing from this street, like teeth punched out.

  And all these people come up to the journalists, wanting to tell their story. A man, who thinks I’m a journalist, explains the whole thing to me, except I don’t really understand. It’s hot and this sweaty wind blowing yellow dust into your eyes. And the journalists want to head back because they’ve got their story but I don’t want to go. I know enough Arabic to say I’m sorry, so I say it again and again. Because somebody needs to say – I’m from England and the vast majority of people in England never wanted this war. And you know they do understand. In fact, they know it even before I say it, clap me on the shoulder, thank me. They really don’t have any bitterness much. There is a fatalism here that is both heroic and depressing.

  Anyway, I stay there for quite a while and by the time I’m going it’s cooler and I don’t really know how I’m going to get home. So I just start walking and I’ve only gone a couple of streets when I see this woman sitting on a doorstep and she’s gesturing at me desperately. So I walk over and then – well, there’s all this blood on her but very dark, like almost black. And it’s then that I see the child. Or maybe it’s a baby. Small anyway and I can’t really see because there’s lot of black blood so I just want to run away because I feel like I’m going to throw up. But I understand she’s telling me she needs to get to a hospital.

  This woman is really calm and demure and she’s got this cloth arranged very neatly and tactfully over whatever it is that she’s holding in her lap. But I’m sure – Christ I really can’t write this – but this child – has almost certainly been dead for some while. I mean, like before I didn’t really know about what’s inside people – like ripped flesh and sinew – I can’t write about it – like something really nasty you’ve seen in a butcher’s shop window. Except this thing – must have been dead for some while – oh God I really can’t write this, it’s making me want to throw up. There’s flies and still the woman is asking me if I can help her get to a hospital.

  So I tell her yes, help her to her feet. And we walk to the end of the street, turn into the main road. And this part of Baghdad is really quite lovely – palms, buildings with patterns of tiles on the front, the river yellow and full of silt but flowing by – and she and I are just walking along, with the evening sun shining down and the wind has dropped for a while. I take hold of her arm to steady her. And I’ve no idea whether I should say to her that maybe it’s a bit late for the hospital.

  Then we’re lucky because this jeep goes past with an EU flag flying and when I wave it down the men stop because I look Western and harmless. So I start to try and explain, only the gu
ys in the jeep are Italian so they don’t understand but they open the door to let us in. And so we drive off with these guys singing and swigging down arak. In the back of this jeep there are three of us and so I’m pushed up really close to this woman and I’m keeping my hand on her arm because I want to comfort her. But there’s this really bad smell and probably it’s just the smell of people in the heat who need a shower but I have the idea that something is rotting and covered in flies.

  Then we get to the hospital and it’s like hell. Bleeding people everywhere and if there were huge fires and people being roasted on spits it really wouldn’t be that much worse. Then on top of that some kind of minor war is taking place at the entrance to the hospital with a machine gun and guys hurling rocks. Also this man standing shaking a chair with only three legs, like you can stop machine gun fire with a chair. All this is because the hospital is in danger of being looted and people are trying to defend it. Already all the other hospitals in Baghdad have had all the equipment taken out of them. I mean, can you believe that? Can you believe it?

  Now jeeps pull up with big yellow TV notices taped up in the windows and a couple of journalists start filming some of this. I can tell that they’re kind of frustrated because although stuff is being chucked none of this is really quite dramatic enough for the evening news. But still they keep on filming instead of actually trying to defend the hospital. And by now this woman is really in despair so she leans down against a wall and then, under the cloth, I see this hairy leg. And there is no child or baby, instead a dog. The whole thing is just so gross and I can’t understand because the Iraqis don’t even like dogs. There are hundreds of strays here and no one cares.

  So I find myself collapsed against the wall, kind of laughing. I don’t know what this story is but it isn’t a story about a woman whose dog has died. But then a young guy I know, a medical student, comes up to me, and he’s pleading with me to try and find some American marines to save the hospital. And a rock gets thrown which narrowly misses his head. Both he and I know that all this is entirely hopeless because there are no Americans anywhere. No one can find them. Just shut up behind their roadblocks and locked up in their vehicles and letting this happen. This medical student says they’ll have to get another Saddam if they want to keep the peace.

  Anyway, I’m writing all this like you don’t know but I’m sure you do. I just don’t understand. I really, really don’t understand. We all campaigned against this war but still I did think it could actually work, like it could achieve its short-term aims. But now I just don’t understand. And right now I long to be home – not where I’m staying. Home, home. You and Granmollie and skateboarding on the Brighton seafront. I really long for that. Except this is permanent now, I think.

  Anyway, this medical student and me did actually find some American soldiers who were quite helpful, even though they’re the same age as me, drinking beer and thinking that Iraq is in Africa. They took us to see some more senior guy who says yeah sure and we can’t let equipment be taken from a hospital. No siree, we certainly can’t and action will be taken. And maybe it was and maybe it wasn’t.

  Anyway, when I got away from the hospital I realised that I should have taken photographs and written things down. No one would use the photographs anyway but still I found a pen and paper but I’d lost the ability to write and it just isn’t possible to turn what’s happened into a statistic. Now I have to go because I’m in Greg’s way. I don’t know what else to say. I love you.

  Jay.

  38

  BEFORE

  Mollie – Worcester, March 1954

  Mollie is wearing a pair of Ludo’s socks. He’s lent them to her because the streets are awash with March slush and so her feet were soaked as she walked from school. Her singing lesson is finished now and Ludo has lit the fire. Mollie lies on her stomach on the zebra sofa, swinging her socked feet, writing in the purple leather notebook which Ludo bought for her which has a pencil attached as well. On the front page it says – Mollie Mayeford. A name which should be written in neon italics outside a London theatre. A name for a girl with huge mascara-lined eyes, a dazzling white smile, a dress pinched in at the waist and square-toed court shoes.

  Gin and tonic? Ludo asks.

  Oooh. Yes please.

  Outside the rain smashes against the windows, thumps down on the roof. It’s been raining for three days now and the levels of the Severn are rising. Everyone says that when the water comes down from Wales, the city will flood once again, maybe as badly as in 1947. Mollie imagines cars, park benches, whole houses swept away by the black waters. Meanwhile, she and Ludo step out of his bedroom window onto their own private Noah’s Ark.

  Mrs Griffiths bangs on the wall and Ludo turns the music down. Mollie goes back to her purple notebook to make plans for when she and Ludo go to London. She notes down the addresses of theatres, draws designs for dresses, writes lists of plays she wants to see. When Ludo takes photographs of her she often sticks them into the back of the book – evidence of something, she can’t quite say what.

  Would we live right in the centre of London? Or Kensington?

  The centre, Ludo says, passing the gin and tonic and a plate of hot buttered toast sprinkled with cinnamon. Mollie sits up, makes room for him on the sofa, and they share the toast. Mollie shows him the map of tube stations in Central London which she’s copied out of a book belonging to her stepfather. The music which she sung earlier still echoes in her head. After five months of Ludo’s lessons, she knows how much she’s improved. She’s almost ready for a real audition now. She lays her head against Ludo’s shoulder and he wraps an arm around her.

  Can we look at the photos? she asks.

  He smiles at her but doesn’t answer. She gets up, pads across the floor in his socks, reaches down to pull the albums from the bottom shelf. They’re scuffed brown leather with a border of gold, much of which has rubbed away. Mollie carries them back to the low table by the sofa, spreads them out, feels the crumbly dust of their leather, imagines the crackle of the tissue paper inside. To her they speak of concert halls, dusty attics, foreign places, grief. Now they’re like a theatre before the curtain has gone up, hushed and expectant.

  Mollie knows that Ludo never looks at these albums with anyone else. Not Donna or any of the other theatre girls. No one except her. And she remembers when he first showed them to her, lifting them from the bottom shelf with infinite care. And then speaking slowly and precisely, as though the words themselves were precious, fragile. These are photographs of my home, where I lived when I was young in Austria. And then a pause, a snatch of breath. Photographs of my family, the people I thought of as my family.

  And then they had sat on the sofa together, looking at the photographs, as they will do now. Mollie reaches for an album, opens the first page, waits for the world inside to appear. A house by a lake like a miniature fairy-tale castle, the roof heavy with conical towers and dormer windows. Around it a geometrical garden of box hedges, fountains, stone steps, terraces. The photographs are shades of grey and brown, the edges furry. Beside it another photo shows people lined up formally in front of a fountain, the men dressed in boaters and bow ties, the women in white dresses. At the front of the photographs, two boys are dressed in sailor suits and three girls stand grouped together, their thin legs sticking out from beneath summer dresses, their dark hair held back by ribbons. Whippets with heavy, jewelled collars sit beside them. In the background, standard rose bushes are lined up like lollipops and statues of lions play beside the fountain.

  Tell me, Mollie says.

  And so Ludo tells it again. Here are the cousins, Elsa, Liesl and Freida – who played in a string quartet with their brother Max. Ludo was older and was studying music at the university in Vienna. He used to go and see them at the weekends. And here are their parents – wearing fur and velvet and standing amidst potted palms beside long glazed doors with brass handles. Ludo’s fingers move through the pages of the album with the same fluidity that they
move over the keys of the piano. Here are the girls standing in a line, wearing white lace. And here in their bathing costumes, sitting on a jetty, with their long legs hanging down and their arms linked around each other’s waists.

  In many of the photographs the lake is frozen, the landscape bulging white, the turreted house laden with snow. A photograph shows two of the girls skating, gliding across the ice, with their hands pushed into fur muffs. Mollie can feel the smoothness of their movements as theyr sail through their ice-enclosed world. The pages turn and turn, everyone in the photographs has the same shadowed eyes, the same smile – certain, eternal, invincible.

  Mollie longs for the day when she will go with Ludo to that house. They’ll go to Paris first, then take a night train across the Alps. And then she’ll walk by the lake with Viennese dance music playing. And she’ll attend those elaborate picnics with tea urns and china cups and sandwiches organised on three-tiered plates. Run her fingers over the skinny ribs of the whippets, take hold of their thick, jewelled collars. For this is the place where she was always intended to be – not the cardboard, balsa wood and glue of Langley Crescent but the eternal world of the house by the lake in Austria. Where she will be married to Ludo, and wake every morning in his arms, in a turret room with a view over the dark waters of the lake.

  Ludo lays the album down and Mollie moves closer to him, snuggling her head against his shoulder. He takes hold of a strand of her hair and twists it around his finger. Such beautiful hair, he says. Liesl had hair like yours. As he speaks, his voice falters. Mollie turns her head towards him. She feels the weight of the past lying heavy on him and some part of her wants to weep with him. But she’s also aware that now – at this moment – she may be able to control him. Surely now he will kiss her? Kiss her properly – not on her cheek or hand but her lips. She’s waited so long for him to do that. Months now, nearly six months.