Burning Bright

by Helen Dunmore

  You need your memories when you get to my age.

  Yes, Enid needs them; but I don’t. I’ve got other things.

  The carrier-bag crackles expensively as it bumps against Kai’s leg.

  ‘What have you got there?’ asks Nadine.

  ‘Don’t talk, you’ll make yourself dizzy. Wait until we’re downstairs.’

  She wishes they could be forever descending the stairs together, touching the walls lightly, putting one foot down on the next wide shallow tread, then the other, then a pause, and again down. Nadine would never tire of it. Their heels sound soft and firm in the silence of the house. Down they go, down and down, half-circle by half-circle, fitted to one another, side against side, breath matched to breath, the breeze gently flattening their clothes against them. They are two and they are one. This is like the old days, before they came to this house, when she used to meet Kai in places which belonged to neither of them. They met in parks, in underpasses, in restaurants, in other people’s flats, in country pubs where they left together to surge down country lanes in Kai’s old van. The verges were white with cow-parsley, heavy with the weight of new leaves, insects, sap, nests. All the weight of summer. The old days when they were always just on the point of leaving for somewhere else. When she was glad to feel that Kai’s silences held something that he knew and she did not. When it was such a simple matter for Kai to say goodbye and go, and leave her in his bare little flat where the telephone was always ringing. She didn’t wonder where he’d gone, or how long it would be before he came back. She was unsuspicious. You can’t get it back once it’s gone, that stupor of trust.

  *

  In their room Kai switches on the light. The green and gold carrier-bag spills pale tissue on to their bed, and he guides Nadine’s hand into the folds. Surprise. Don’t look. See if you can guess what it is. The material feels like skin. She knows that touch: washed silk. The dress is creamy white, not pure white, and sleeveless, with a plain round neckline, short, shaped to skim breasts and waist and hips.

  ‘Put it on,’ says Kai.

  Nadine peels off her top and leggings and kicks them into a heap. She lifts up her arms and the cool heavy silk slithers into place. She moves and the dress moves with her, caressing shoulders and thighs, coming close, swinging out. Her arms and legs feel as if the silk has polished them. Kai looks.

  ‘You need tights. Those fine lycra tights. Or if you tan your legs more…;’

  ‘I could try a sunbed. Maybe there’s one at the sauna. Vicki said –’

  He tenses. His eyes flick from the dress to Nadine’s face.

  ‘Vicki? How do you know Vicki?’

  ‘She called round this morning. She left you a message. It’s downstairs somewhere. I wonder whether you can wash this, or does it have to be dry-cleaned? White’s awkward…;’

  He puffs out his lips impatiently. ‘Don’t fuss about that. Do you think I can’t afford dry-cleaners? What did she say – Vicki?’

  ‘Nothing, really. I just thought of her because her tan looked like a sunbed tan. I could ask her,’ says Nadine, looking straight at him. Don’t make me know things, and I won’t ask about them.

  ‘I don’t want you treating your skin like Vicki does. She’s going to have a neck like a tortoise in a couple of years. Florida’s full of women like that. Look at her skin when you see her.’ He reaches out, traces the fine knob of bone on Nadine’s wrist.

  ‘We’re going to go for a sauna. And I’m going to meet a friend of hers – someone called Lila.’

  ‘My God, well, make it a short sauna. Lila’d bore the pants off anyone. Gab gab gab about her kid all the time.’

  ‘Oh, it’s only a sauna,’ says Nadine lightly. His right hand is playing with the winder of his watch. Fiddle, fiddle, fiddle. ‘I might not bother,’ she says, walking around the room for the pleasure of feeling the dress move against her legs and breasts. He smiles, stops fiddling. So he didn’t want her to meet Vicki. No need to think about that now.

  ‘With a dress like that you need jewellery to set it off,’ says Kai.

  ‘A serious dress,’ mocks Nadine.

  ‘Plain gold. Nothing flashy. Though you can almost get away without anything. Turn around.’

  Nadine turns like a statue on a plinth. At this moment she knows she’s beautiful. Her beauty burns into Kai and leaves him weaker than she is. For once. She looks at him. He laughs at the sight of her, his mouth half open as if he’s in pain. The way animals look when we say they’re laughing.

  ‘Do you like it?’ asks Nadine.

  He doesn’t touch her. She has the power now. If she lifted her finger…;

  ‘Do you like it?’ she asks again.

  ‘You look –’ he says, and the moment breaks. His attention snaps away from her, to the door. He’s heard something.

  ‘There’s Tony,’ he says. He goes to the door and calls down, ‘Tony! Hey! Come up here!’

  And there’s Tony coming up the steps lightly, so much more lightly than Kai, and the sound of footsteps isn’t frightening at all now that she’s in her own room, not Enid’s, dressed in the silk dress Kai has bought for her. Tony stands in the doorway, his eyes quick and sharp, going over her. This is how he likes a woman to look.

  ‘She needs something with it,’ he says finally. ‘A necklace, and maybe a bracelet? Something heavy, you know? And different earrings.’

  ‘Yeah, but it’s fantastic, isn’t it?’ urges Kai.

  ‘It’s really classy. I always thought you had class, Nadine, but you don’t make the best of yourself. It’s the haircut does it as well. You could be anyone.’

  She could go anywhere. She could be anyone. The dress slides over her body as intimately as a pair of hands. It’s alive with changing light and it takes its curves from her breasts and hips. But it’s subtle. It plays at making her unavailable and then she moves and there’s a ghost of a chance.

  ‘And shoes,’ says Kai, considering the dress again.

  ‘Yes. Nothing fancy. Her feet are a bit big, but in a classic style no one’ll notice. Princess Di’s got big feet.’

  The two men look at one another. There’s a charge in the air, but it’s not the same charge as there was between her and Kai before Tony came in. She was in control then. She was making him feel things.

  ‘Yeah,’ says Kai. ‘She could go anywhere like that. She’s got style. I should’ve seen it before.’

  Nadine wants to strip off the dress and put on the old leggings and singlet top she wears for juggling. Neither Kai nor Tony can juggle. But she also wants to wear the dress. She wants to find out more about what it does to her, and what she can do in it. It turns her into someone else entirely. She feels it herself, in the dress that is white but not too white, so that its folds hold a suggestion of candleglow, the dress that is short and sexy but also virginal, the dress that reveals the shape of her flesh for a moment at a time, so that each time it’s as if they’ve never been seen before. It must have cost a lot of money. No two human beings could have sharper noses for the presence of money than Kai and Tony. It not only costs money, it suggests money. It suggests that Nadine herself is a polished container into which money has spilt all her life until it overflows and leaks out through her pores.

  All this time she’s been wearing jeans and leggings and sleeveless cotton dresses and they’ve never picked up the scent of money and style. Kai must have had some idea, or else why would he ever have bought the dress for her? Unless it was part of a deal. This immaculate thing might have come straight from a beaten-up warehouse, like the wine. But it fits. It fits perfectly. To put it on is to walk straight into another life and find that she’s at home there. She’s been given the code which opens security gates and gets you past doormen at clubs and parties. The guards are to look after her, not to keep her out. Nadine sits down on the bed. The dress makes her sit in a quite different way from usual, with her legs pressed lightly together and poised to one side. Kai and Tony smile.

  ‘That old bitc
h up there in the attic, and Nadine here,’ says Kai. ‘What were you doing up there?’

  She shakes her head. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘She’s made for money,’ says Tony. ‘It’s a crime she hasn’t got any.’

  ‘She’s got everything she wants,’ says Kai, and turns to Nadine. ‘Haven’t you?’

  ‘No,’ she says. ‘I’m hungry. Bugger off, Tony. I’m going to get changed, then I’ll cook us something.’

  Later, as they lie tangled together, Kai rocks her gently.

  ‘My baby. My baby. Go to sleep. My lovely one. My baby.’ His hands cradle her skull, his fingers run through her feathery hair and touch her temples, smoothing lightly over the bruise which is forming there. ‘How’s your head now?’

  ‘Fine,’ she mumbles, ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘You must take care of yourself,’ he lulls her, and his arms tighten. ‘My baby, my lovely one.’

  Drunk, Nadine closes her eyes. His endearments pour over her like oil, soothing, healing, melting into her ears while she feigns sleep.

  Thirteen

  The InterCity diesel glides past the photograph booth, past buckets of plastic-wrapped roses, past a mail-trolley and a skinny girl waving her baby at the train. It picks up speed as the engine runs clear of the platform into the early evening sun. The sun is full in Nadine’s face. She shuts her eyes and leans back against the first-class seat. Just then the brakes come on hard. There’s a harsh wheeee of metal and a stink of asbestos as the force of the brakes pins her back to her seat. The carriage bucks and judders, then stops. There’s a second of silence. Everyone looks out of the windows. Someone starts to shout outside, a woman screams, ‘Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no.’

  A man in a suit gets up and strides down the aisle to the door. They hear the window go down, then more voices. The screaming sinks to low bubbling moans. A guard races past the window. The man in the grey suit comes back and looks down the train at the rows of faces, all turned to him. He knows the score.

  ‘A girl tried to jump off the train while it was moving. Thought it was going to Penzance and panicked when she found she was on the wrong train.’

  ‘Is she all right?’

  ‘Was that her screaming?’

  ‘Why didn’t she speak to the guard?’

  ‘No,’ says the man. ‘It was a woman who saw it happen.’

  ‘Jesus,’ says someone.

  ‘She could have got off at the next stop.’

  ‘It’s only ten minutes to Bath.’

  ‘How long are we going to be delayed? Did they say?’

  ‘There’ve been all these deaths recently, people falling out of train doors. They’ve got to be careful.’

  ‘Was she hurt?’

  ‘Did you see?’

  ‘It was a bit of a mess,’ says the man, and he sits down, unfolds his newspaper and disappears behind it. A woman half rises from her seat, gropes behind her for her handbag, says, ‘Oh, dear. Perhaps I ought to go and see…;’

  ‘Why? Are you a doctor?’

  ‘No, but I’ve done my Red Cross.’

  ‘The train door swung back and caught her head. I doubt if Red Cross is going to help.’ The man in the grey suit rattles his newspaper into shape. He is very pale. ‘They’ve sent for an ambulance. More harm’s done by unqualified people interfering in these situations.’

  The woman flushes. ‘Well, I know that. It’s the first thing we’re taught.’

  Tony catches Nadine’s eye and the corners of his mouth turn down in a quick grimace.

  ‘I’ll get us coffee. This is going to take for ever.’

  But it doesn’t. A few minutes later they hear the ambulance. Heads poke out of doors all down the train. The buffet window mirrors the ambulance’s revolving blue flash.

  ‘They’ll be taking her straight to the Infirmary,’ says the Red Cross woman confidently. Grey suit taps his newspaper. Further down the carriage a young man with a ponytail goes on talking into his portable telephone. It’s the same call he’s been making right through the accident. His voice is loud in the silent carriage.

  ‘Yeah, just a hold-up. Go on giving me the figures back to March. Yeah, yeah, give me March again. I lost week two.’

  The train squeaks, groans and begins to slide mousily along the platform. Nadine holds herself braced. Finger by finger, she makes her muscles relax until her hands are heavy as stones in her lap.

  ‘It’s the driver I feel sorry for,’ says Red Cross.

  Tony returns with a bag of plastic cups, plastic stirrers, small vials of milk, sugar sachets, coffee, brandy miniatures and a cartwheel chocolate-chip cookie. He lays the drinks out on the table between them, and folds Nadine’s cookie into a paper napkin for her. He pours a small bottle of brandy into his own black coffee and offers one to Nadine. She shakes her head.

  ‘Yeah, better not,’ he says. ‘You’ll only go to sleep.’ Nadine picks up her cookie and bites. It explodes into crumbs all over her black linen coat. She stands up, wriggles, and the crumbs shower on to the carpet. Grey suit watches as she sits down again, spotless, smoothing out the coat behind her so as not to crush it. The black linen coat is her own. She bought it two days ago from an antique clothing shop, the day she got paid. It is cool and heavy and has the natural glassiness of linen. The collar is wide and embroidered with thick black corded silk and tiny jet beads. It’s an evening coat, thirties probably, to judge from the buttons. If she sits carefully it doesn’t crease too badly. Anyway, creasing is part of linen. Under it she wears the white silk dress. Tony’s taking her to a business dinner with one of his clients. They’ll dine late, and stay at an hotel overnight. Tony has a business meeting in the morning, and Nadine’s going to buy shirts for Kai with cash he has given her. Her hair is newly washed and shiny. The big collar of the coat loosely shadows her neck. She wears gold studs in her ears, and a plain round gold necklace, both bought by Kai two days ago. They are made of old dark gold. She’s spent most of the day getting ready, fixing elastoplast to her heels where her new shoes pinch, laddering tights and buying more, following step-by-step instructions in this month’s Vogue on the natural summer face. It has taken her more than an hour to achieve the effortless look of a woman who wears no make-up. She’s dredged her face with loose powder, then buffed almost all of it off; she’s lined her eyes with grey kohl and smudged away all but a trace; she’s plucked her eyebrows and thickened them with pencil. Her lashes are slicked with transparent lash-gloss, because mascara is too obvious. Nadine feels like a stranger to herself. She much prefers the kind of make-up Cathy wears when she goes to the Ring: a deliberate, dramatic mask.

  Tony wears a very plain charcoal suit. But he doesn’t look good today. He keeps yawning. His skin is waxy, faintly glistening with sweat. Still, he’s being nice to Nadine. He likes the look of her opposite, upright and elegant. He can talk to this Nadine as if he doesn’t know her, yet the whole thing’s spiced by the number of times he’s seen her stagger downstairs in the mornings to make coffee, rubbing sleep out of her eyes. It excites him to sit opposite her and know other men are looking at her, and also to know what her legs and arse look like in that big droopy t-shirt Kai has to put up with in bed at night. He can just see a slip of white in the neck of her coat where she’s unbuttoned it. Perfect. Dark and severe outside, virginal inside the coat, and underneath that a hint of sexiness which is a lot more than bridal. It’s going to work like magic. Nadine makes you think of money. The kind of girl you could take anywhere. She’s not his type. But he’s known for weeks that she’d be perfect, if he could only get the two of them together. Seeing her in the bedroom, in that white dress, he knew he’d got to move fast before someone else did. Kai’s been giving definite signals that it’s time Nadine started to pay her way. Of course it’s much better if it doesn’t come from Kai. Let Tony break the ice. Kai doesn’t have to spell it out, not after all the time we’ve been together, thinks Tony. Yeah, I can read him like a book.

  Tony believes in fate. Or why would
Nadine come to the house, just when Paul Parrett was getting restless? He’d known they weren’t keeping him happy. He wants a lot more than they’ve been able to come up with. He’ll be off elsewhere if they don’t watch it. Janine’s a nice kid, but that face of hers gets you down. Blank. Ready for anything, OK, but that’s because there’s nothing much there in the first place. There’s something a bit frightening about Janine, when you come down to it. You could tell her to do anything and she’d do it. Clients think that’s what they want, but two or three sessions is the most they can take of Janine. Who did he have before Janine? Oh, yeah, Susie. Susie was just starting off then, and she’d done very well. Very nicely. That portfolio of hers was mindblowing. She knew more about bondage than anyone in the business. Trouble with Susie was she had no imagination. To get a man like Paul Parrett really interested in you, you got to have a bit of imagination. A bit of mystery. He looks across at Nadine. She is looking out of the window, showing the pure line of her profile. God knows what she’s thinking about. He bought her a magazine, but she hasn’t opened it.

  There’s got to be something special about the girl, something that makes you watch her and not anyone else. It’s not really looks, or not just looks. Something that makes you think about her when she’s not there, till you’re hooked. And Nadine’s got it, whatever it is. He ought to know. So take the risk. Take Nadine. She doesn’t know anything – or not much anyway. This’ll be her first time. She’ll be able to give Paul Parrett something that just won’t be there in a couple of years. He’s seen it happen before. They go dead. They get like Janine.