The Girl With Glass Feet (19 page)

In the last few years he had drifted out of using his old single lens reflex. He missed the long evenings in the darkroom, its smell of damp and developer fluid, the red light that made you feel you were looking at the room through your eyelids. Despite these pangs of nostalgia, he was in thrall to digital cameras these days. The lure of the next photo, coquettishly waiting, was too strong for him. Before digital cameras the end of a film had always been his temperance, leading him back to the darkroom to coax prints from silver nitrate. His eyes had adjusted and learnt to see the world in the half-light, the half-image forming in the basin.

Then there were the negatives. How he missed negatives. They were the actual rays of light, bounced straight off a landscape, an object, a person, and scarred on to the film. Photographic negatives were the hardest evidence you could get of your memories. They were the char left by the fire, the bruise left on your skin. The same light that carried to your eyes, on the day of your photograph, that image of your mother, or your father, or your close friend, had recorded itself on the film. And now, staring at the photo on the wall of Ida’s transparent toes against the bed sheets, he thought how similar her feet were to negatives: both subjects of that half-world between memory and the present. These were not real, flexible, treading toes, but a play of light that showed where toes had been.

The doorbell rang and he looked at his watch. Gustav was half an hour early.

He was surprised to find not Gustav but Carl Maulsen standing
at the door in a leather jacket, hands in his pockets and snow on his shoulders.

‘Hello,’ he said. ‘We haven’t met, but it’s Midas, right? My name’s Carl Maulsen. A friend of Ida’s.’

Midas remembered well the photograph of his father and Carl with their doctorates. In real life, the man had something the camera hadn’t captured: presence. Some kind of magnetic field like the air around a generator.

‘Yes, h-hello. She showed me your photo.’

‘I thought I might stop in. It’s funny, you see. I knew your father.’ He tried to peer past Midas into the house. ‘This a bad time?’

Which meant, Midas supposed,
Can I come in?

Midas backed up the hall. Carl came in and closed the door, helped himself to a coat hook, then followed Midas into the kitchen.

‘Denver, this is, um, Doctor Maulsen. Doctor Maulsen, this is my friend Denver.’

‘Hello, Doctor Maulsen.’

‘Don’t call me Doctor,’ said Carl, softly. ‘It’s self-important.’

Denver shrugged and returned to her drawing.

‘Do sit down,’ said Midas, pulling back a chair from the table. ‘Would you like a drink?’

‘I’ll share a pot of coffee with you.’

‘Right.’ He clicked the kettle on.

Carl studied the drawing Denver was working on, her narwhal in the depths of the ocean, wearing a seaweed harness and towing a carriage made from a shell she was colouring pink. A woman rode within. He pointed to her, taking care not to touch the pencil work. ‘Is this a mermaid?’

Denver shook her head and kept drawing.

He turned his attention to the walls of photographs. ‘So, Midas… you’ve turned out to be quite the artist. What did your father think of all this?’

Midas set down the coffee pot and the smallest pair of cups he owned. ‘He didn’t understand photography. He only thought a thing was beautiful if he read about it in a dead old book.’

Carl nodded, sipped his coffee and continued to look around at the photos. ‘I had the pleasure of working with him for a time, up at Wretchall College.’

Midas slouched in his chair. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘my father was an arsehole.’

Carl looked surprised. ‘I’d disagree. I was very fond of him. Did he ever mention me?’

‘No. Sorry. He wouldn’t have. He never talked about people, or what was going on in his life. He just rattled on about archetypes and stuff.’

Carl smiled fondly. ‘That sounds like the man I knew, yes. I didn’t expect him to have spoken about me. But your father said some admirable things. He opened a lot of eyes.’

‘Maybe.’

Denver yawned loudly. Her pencil scraped across the silence between the two men.

‘I can see your father in you, you know that? You have the same… how shall I put it? Composure. I was sorry when he died. That whole mess with the boat. It was a great loss.’

Midas shrugged.

‘You don’t feel
anything
for him?’

Another shrug, less pronounced.

‘Do you even have a photo of him?’

‘There’s one on the wall there. I got rid of the rest.’

‘I understand,’ said Carl, carefully looking at the photo, ‘it’s an unwelcome topic.’

Midas stared into the coffee rings on the table’s surface as if they might become vortexes through which to escape this conversation. Under the table he was driving his fingernails into his kneecaps.

‘Well, all I’m saying is it’s a shame you hate him so.’ Carl lounged back in his chair. ‘And it’s interesting, don’t you think, that the two of you turned out to look so similar, but be so different? Anyway, I didn’t come here to talk about him.’

‘You said you were just stopping by,’ said Denver.

He glanced sideways at her, clearly having forgotten she was there. ‘Well,’ he said, taking a deep breath. ‘It’s true I came about something more. I came about Ida.’

‘Midas’s new girlfriend.’

‘Den!’

She shrugged.

Carl raised his eyebrows.

‘No!’ protested Midas. ‘No, no no, we’re just friends. Besides, we’ve only just met.’

There was a bent smirk on Carl’s lips, as if Midas’s behaviour was familiar to him. He looked almost nostalgic. ‘Ida’s ill, isn’t she?’ he asked.

Midas nodded dumbly.

‘But you and I will help her, won’t we? I’m glad she opened up to you.’

Midas supposed that he had just blurted out the same sort of embarrassed denial his father would have given. But he wasn’t practised at talking about feelings. He wanted to run upstairs and jump under a cold shower.

‘Did she tell you,’ said Carl, ‘about the thing that was wrong with her feet?’

Denver coughed. She was eyeballing Midas, trying to transmit something.

‘I, um,’ he mumbled, ‘I don’t think Ida told me
specifically
what was wrong with her.’

‘You don’t think so?’

Denver tapped her pencil on the table. ‘No,’ she said, ‘he doesn’t think so.’

‘Did she tell you how she and I know each other?’

‘Erm…’ He
could
remember, but Denver wagged her pencil, so he didn’t say anything.

‘I was her mother’s best friend. That puts me in an interesting position, as your father’s old colleague.’

‘Everyone knows each other on St Hauda’s Land,’ said Denver.

‘Not many people knew your father, Midas, and I’m the only one Ida knows on St Hauda’s Land.’

‘She knows Midas,’ contradicted Denver, ‘and my dad, and me.’

‘But you’ve all only just met. Ida and I go way back. Which is why I’m in this peculiar position, having known both your families.’

‘Midas isn’t like the rest of his family. He’s like… like God started again.’

Carl smiled sweetly. ‘She’d be surprised, wouldn’t she, Midas?’

Midas mumbled something.

Denver huffed and closed her sketchbook. ‘I can’t concentrate.’

Carl stood up. ‘And I’ve finished my coffee.’

They tailed him into the hallway, where he put on his leather jacket and opened the door, to stand for a moment on the step, posed as if admiring the loosely falling snow.

‘That’s an interesting photograph,’ he said, ‘on your kitchen wall. About five photos up from the photo of your father.’

‘Er,’ he racked his brains. ‘Is it?’

‘Yeah.’ Carl tossed his car keys in the air, caught them and sauntered down to where he had parked. He climbed inside and drove away without looking back.

‘That was horrible,’ said Midas.

Denver had her hands on her hips and was red-faced. ‘Stupid!’ she gasped. ‘Why are you so stupid?’

‘Wh-what do you mean?’

‘He saw something. When he was testing you. Like a teacher does in a test.’ She huffed and turned back to the kitchen. ‘It must
have been the photo you put up this morning.’

He scurried after her. His nerves were ahead of them both.

‘That one,’ she said, pointing to it on the kitchen wall, ‘but I can’t reach it.’

It was the photo of Ida’s glass feet. About five photos up from the photo of his father.

Oh
God
. Surely… out of context like that… just a pair of feet made from glass… nothing else… that wouldn’t mean anything…

‘That’s just…’ he stammered, ‘just special effects. Computers can, you know…’ He took the photo off the wall and put it face down on the table, as if that could make any difference. Denver went back to the front door and shoved it shut with both arms, keeping the cold out of the house.

Waking in the night offered moments when she forgot what was happening to her feet, only for the moment to spoil with a fog of pins and needles in her veins and the mute responses of dead nerves when she tried to flex her toes. Tonight sleep was hard to come by. She knew it was perverse but Carl, having returned to his own cottage, felt like an impostor. She’d slept the other night through with Midas an arm’s reach from her bedside and that had felt homely. The following morning with him, as the oil had spat in the pan, she’d felt something blissful.

She got up early, sick of lying still, and made herself some cereal that she watched turn to soggy blobs in the milk. She wasn’t hungry. She watched clumpy snowflakes fall against the window. After a quarter of an hour she heard footsteps outside and felt herself tense up. The kitchen door rattled and swung open, and Carl stepped in wearing a grey coat and thick scarf. His nose and ears were purple and he had sparkles of snow in his hair. Ida flinched at the lick of the cold that filled the room before he shut the door.

Carl smiled blearily and took a seat. ‘You couldn’t sleep either?’

‘No.’

‘Sometimes I just can’t stop thinking enough to turn off.’

She tried to look sympathetic. ‘For me it’s my feet.’

‘Ah.’ He fixed her in the eye and squared his shoulders. ‘Listen to me, Ida, I’m worried about you.’

She shrugged, poked at her dissolved cereal with her spoon. ‘There’s nothing to…’

‘Ida. I think I know a woman who can help you.’

‘Help me find Henry Fuwa?’

‘No. Help
cure
you.’

She narrowed her eyes, willed her hands not to do a telltale fidget. Without sleep, willpower was in short supply. Bits of snow blundered into the windowpane. ‘Carl… Please… There’s nothing…’

He slapped the table. It made her jump and the spoon rattle in the cereal bowl. ‘Bullshit, Ida. I’ve been up all night thinking about you. The way you move. Your timid steps. The way your head hangs when you think no one’s looking. I’ve never seen you this way.’

‘What… well… what do you mean, Carl?’

Dawn was hours away, but she felt like they were about to draw pistols. She tried to fathom what he knew, what he was trying to confirm in her expression. He drew a deep breath. ‘Your toes have turned to glass.’

She choked in surprise, felt the anger rushing into her. Her feet had been her tightly-kept secret for months. ‘Have you been snooping on me? Sneaking into my room at night?’

He was waving a hand dismissively. ‘I’m surprised you’d think me so wretched, Ida. I spoke to Midas Crook yesterday.’

It was impossible to bunch her fists tight enough. ‘He told you?’

‘Yes. And perhaps some good can come of it. A friend of mine lives in Enghem. She was involved with an… unusual case some years back. I went to visit her yesterday, and she’s promised she’ll do all she can to help you. I could drive you to her house.’

She slammed her fists down on the table. ‘You’ve already told someone else?’

He rolled his eyes. ‘Ida… this offer is something to take very seriously.’

‘I’ll
think
about it.’

‘Do that. And do it fast. You may have very little time.
Certainly not enough time to waste hunting for eccentrics or hanging about with loose-tongued boys. When I visited Midas he said himself he wasn’t ready for romance.’

‘He said that?’

‘Yes! And frankly, Ida, it hardly takes a psychologist to tell that about him. If you…’ He stopped. She’d covered her face in her hands. She screamed into her palms. After a minute she hobbled out of the room to run a bath.

Carl got up and stepped back outside, tying his scarf tighter. The woods were invisible in the dark, but the snow layering the fields emitted a faint blue glow. He looked up at the roof of the cottage, where tiles showed through their snowy coat like bite marks. The light came on at the bathroom window and he saw Ida’s figure silhouetted as she drew the blind.