Observatory Mansions (27 page)

The vet prescribed antibiotics: a bottle of white pills which were to be pushed into a piece of cheese and deviously fed to the unsuspecting Hope. The doctor prescribed steroids for Francis. The steroids made Francis sleepy, he spent the majority of days in bed, but after pulling back the bedcovers, the sheets were discovered to be speckled with blood. Hope was given a lampshade collar that stretched from her
shoulders like a funnel. The collar frightened and panicked her but did not stop her scratching. The doctor gave Francis a pair of white cotton gloves. For a while, Francis, he said, everything you touch will be monitored, everything you touch will leave a trace on those gloves, so that we will know what you have been up to. He was instructed to wear them all day and all night, that they were to remain white, that if there was even a hint of blood on them, no matter what the excuse, he would be beaten. To prevent him from simply taking these gloves off, irritating his sores and then replacing them, two lengths of string were tied around his gloved wrists so tightly and with such an array of complicated knots that he could not possibly undo them. Together the dog, with her preposterous collar, and Francis, with his immaculate gloves, walked pathetically, in complete frustration, around the garden, always on the same route stipulated by me that circled the house but was not so wide as to stretch up to the numerous outhouses and stable buildings where the unfortunate duo could perambulate unseen. But once these hours were ended by the sounding of a handbell, Francis dismissed himself from Hope and ventured to the upper landings of the house where he could, in all privacy, scrape himself against the back of a chair, the corner of a bookcase or with the aid of a stiff hairbrush.

On the day of his thirteenth birthday all scratching ceased entirely. Just as Francis was leaning on tiptoes over his birthday cake to blow out the candles the servants’ bell rang. Standing in the pantry corridor was a farmhand holding a newspaper parcel in which lay the wretched and bloody dog Hope. She had somehow wandered into one of the chicken runs to scratch herself against the wire fencing and the chickens, excited by the sight and smell of blood, had pecked her quite to death.

Francis, complete with a cortège consisting of maids, cook, the housekeeper and myself, buried her by the kitchen garden.
Francis took the old, chewed collar and the new lampshade collar and kept them in the nursery. Without his inspiration he stopped his itching. The string was cut off and he was invited to remove his gloves. He refused. He said that the white gloves had taught him too much about life for that. He said Hope’s death had been ugly and messy, he said the gloves had taught him to keep his distance from suffering. And also, he believed the gloves made him look smart. He found the clean white cotton comforting. He said he liked to monitor everything he touched, it would make him more cautious in the future.

In this way my son began his habit of wearing gloves. I found the following article in the nursery:

The Law of White Gloves
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1. White cotton gloves are your own skin, so treat them as you would your own. If they get torn it is as if you have been cut open.

2. The moment a glove, or a pair of gloves, are dirtied then it is as if they were a pair of hands that have been scarred for life. They can never be clean again.

3. The washing of gloves is not permissible.

4. The utmost care must be made never to dirty the gloves. However, we are quite prepared to accept that accidents do happen, but … (see 5)

5. The loss of a pair of gloves is a profound misdeed. When gloves are lost (loss = dirtied or scratched) the pain undergone in the loss is felt the same as if the careless wearer had chopped off his own hands (which is, in fact, exactly what he has done).

6. Dead gloves should then be put quietly to rest as a good, loyal friend who has excelled in service and has now earned his peace. It is forbidden to walk around with dirty gloves.

7. Dead gloves cannot function. The hands underneath them will never be able to pick up, touch or move at all. They are dead.

8. Dead gloves should immediately be changed for live, new ones.

9. When changing gloves it is not permissible to look at your own naked, former hands in their ugly state. Only when they are wearing, proudly, their new white skin is looking again permissible.

10. It is forbidden to let any person see your naked hands.

Observatory Mansions
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Mother, in the entrance hall: This used to have old oil portraits of dead Orme people all over it. Now look: a blue and white wallpapered wall. The chequered marble floor has been pulled up and sold, they’ve put in new floorboards and they’re going to place blue carpet over them. Newness is everywhere!

Tearsham Park
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Father, in Mother’s bedroom in flat six: Without fail, I told my wife my daily news as she sat absent from us, in her bed. Eyes closed. Lying still.

Today, though, I’m sitting by her bed and I tell her that I’ve had to sell some Orme land. Nothing else could be done. There are increasingly less farmhands. All the young are being encouraged to work in the city, where they are paid higher wages, they say there’s nothing in the country for them any more. They resent their parents and their old ways, they want to see more than fields and early mornings. The estate needs money, I don’t know how it could have got so bad. There’s
so much repair work to be done, and our machinery is terribly out of date. And there are rumours I heard from one farmhand that it is all my fault, that I am incapable of running a farm. I do not know how it happened, but it has; somehow we are in debt.

I can’t bear to look at the portraits. The people who bought the land promised me that they would not build on it. But they did not sign on that issue. They said, We’ll call it a gentleman’s agreement. I feel ashamed. I sit by my wife holding her hand and say – Alice, my darling, I’ve had to sell some land.

When I finish speaking I see my wife’s eyes flick open as if my sentence were the key to her lock.

I never go into the hall any more, I cannot bear to look at the portraits. I always leave by one of the side doors, through the kitchen or the pantry.

Observatory Mansions
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Mother, in the ruined observatory: My husband has been sheltering from the builders in here. He complains about the perpetual noise of the workmen. He yells down at them to turn off their radios and they laugh at him and raise the volume. He whispers: I have known the feel and the scent of grass. He looks over the parapet muttering: Oak, sycamore, ash, beech.

Tearsham Park
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Father, in flat one, formerly one part of the drawing room: My wife spends her time reading books about foreign climates. Sell all the land, she tells me, sell everything, Francis, and we can start again. She says: I can’t live here! Everything is suffocating me! You. Our son. Everything looks so old! It’s making me old. Look at me, I’m wrinkling already! Sell
everything before it turns me into an old hag. Send me on holiday. Divorce me. Murder me!

My wife finds my son, naked, playing with my mother’s porcelain dolls. She confiscates the dolls. Days later she talks to him, she orders him to take off his gloves. My son runs away and will not speak to her again for many months. When my son asks me to buy him new gloves, I look at him sadly and nod. I am a weak man. I send the housemaid into the city with him to buy them. I will do anything to get the boy away from me.

Today Francis has found a till receipt on the driveway. It is a warning from the city. It says: I am coming.

Observatory Mansions
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Mother, in the entrance hall: Today our porter arrived. He has settled into his basement flat and wears his uniform proudly. There are no residents here yet, save me, my husband and my son, but already he is prepared for his work. He holds a great bunch of keys. What is your name? I ask him. He says: Porter. Call me Porter.

Tearsham Park
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Father, looking through the window of flat three: Today our servants left. I watched them leave from this window. They walked away and did not look back. They blame me. I know they blame me. They would not even say goodbye.

My wife dismissed them all. She has had lawyers around and lawyers’ doctors too. She says I’m incapable of looking after anything. She says she should be allowed to take charge. The lawyers interviewed me. I started crying. The lawyers watched as my wife pulled me into the hall of Tearsham Park where the portraits are hung. I ran from the place. The
lawyers called in their doctors. The doctors asked me such stupid questions that I refused to answer them and started crying. The doctors tugged me into the hall. I started screaming. The doctors went away. The lawyers went away. My wife has taken charge of my bank books.

Observatory Mansions
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Mother, restless in the entrance hall: The builders say their work will take them another six months. When I tell them about my bedroom, they say that they’ve been given orders not to change that room, that it’s to stay the same. The room remains a bedroom on their plans, they say, best to leave it as it is. But I want it changed, I scream! It has to be different. No, it’s not changing they say, it’s staying the same, exactly the same. Even this hideous crimson wallpaper is going to stay.

Mother and her wallpaper dance
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Here my mother began clawing at the wallpaper, making fresh wounds next to those old scars where she had ripped the wallpaper for exactly the same reason years ago. As before, only a little yielded and it cut into the skin beneath her nails. Then she spat at the walls and kicked them, but finally she slumped to the floor. I knew she would do this, I had seen it before, it surprised me then. But I was ready the second time, and when Mother had stopped moving I gave her a handkerchief, which I had taken out of my drawer for her exclusive use, and went in search of Father.

Tearsham Park
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Father, in flat four: I have grown into the habit of looking out of the window with a pair of field binoculars before my
eyes. I am watching the trees: Oak, sycamore, ash, beech, poplar, fir, yew, lime.

Upstairs, from a window in the attic, I can see the city. It is closer now. Tearsham, just beyond the parkland, is more of a town than a village.

Observatory Mansions
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Mother rushed out of Observatory Mansions and returned with a plastic shopping bag full of boxes of teabags and jars of coffee. All afternoon Mother made mugs of tea and coffee for her imagined workmen and ran around the abandoned flats depositing them in front of plasterboard walls, by bricked-up fireplaces, in the basement by the new boiler, by the lift shaft. She took away all the mugs from our flat and all of Claire Higg’s too. She kept the kettle boiling all day. At night we fetched the mugs and emptied the cold, undrunk teas and coffees down the sink.

Mother, just before she went to sleep: They’ve put a door next to my old dressing room and labelled it six. But they still haven’t changed my bedroom, though I do keep reminding them.

Tearsham Park
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Father, looking out from a window of flat four: Oak, sycamore, ash, beech … the rest have gone.

Observatory Mansions
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Mother, in the entrance hall: I dance to the builders’ music from their radios, sometimes they dance with me. They smoke roll-up cigarettes. They have stored sheets and sheets of plasterboard and chipboard in the cellar. They say that they will divide up the rooms of Tearsham Park with them. They
say ideally the divisions should be made with brick, but their orders were to use board, they say boards don’t last that long, they can be dislodged fairly easily, but they’re much cheaper.

They’ve pulled out my old round enamel bath and halved the room. Half will be a much smaller bathroom, the other half will be a small bedroom. They’re making my dressing room into a kitchen and sitting room. It’s all so new. They’ve only to change my bedroom now.

Tearsham Park
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Father, through a window of flat four: Oak.

Observatory Mansions
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Mother, in the entrance hall: My husband says he can hear the house screaming. I tell him that it’s the workmen sawing and drilling but he won’t believe me. They have begun knocking the outhouses and stable blocks down. How easily they fall, it’s as if that’s all they’ve ever been longing to do.

Tearsham Park
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Father, in the observatory: I am happy here. I have been allowed to spend much money and I am happy. My wife says that if we keep spending money, something ultimately will happen to us. I try not to think of it. Not up here, not here in the observatory. Not while I’m with my telescope. At night I watch the stars and the planets, in the day I sleep or consult my astrological charts. In this way I can keep sane. In this way I only look upwards. I dare not look down. Beneath me they are building on old Ormeland. Beneath me they are pouring asphalt on to the grass.

Observatory Mansions
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Mother, in the entrance hall: Here are the architectural surveyors. Proud and stout! I have arranged that we will stay in the house, the new house – how wonderful that sounds. We will live in that part that smells least of the Orme history, by which I mean, of course, that part which I have been living in, my apartment. A smaller bedroom will be made for little Francis. My husband asks me where he is to sleep. When I tell him that, of course, he will sleep with me, he looks horrified and even starts to cry.