The Girl With Glass Feet (26 page)

‘It’s… still quite a sweet place,’ she said.

Carl was drawing on a cigarette while he waited for them on the wooden deck outside Enghem Stead’s door. As soon as they’d parked he trotted down the steps of the deck to the car and helped Ida climb out. She’d hoped Midas would fight his instincts and do this, but instead he was left portering the luggage behind
them. Back over her shoulder the vast sweep of the cove could be better appreciated. It was a colossal dent in the white hill-line, as if one night the sea had risen up and raged against the island until the coast cowered back for miles.

Jerky snow fell as they thumped up the steps of the deck, Ida’s arm linked with Carl’s to keep her steady, the other pressing the crutch Midas had given her hard into the damp wood. Slush dropped in lumps from the house’s gutters and one end of Ida’s scarf came loose and fluttered in the wind, so that she had to reel it back in and wrap it tighter around her neck. A robin flapped off the fence of the deck. She thought how brown its red breast looked.

The door opened after a short wait. Hot air rushed out to greet them. A glamorous woman followed.

Emiliana Stallows had black hair and a tan that looked real enough, even in winter. Heavy mascara, a hip-hugging skirt and gracefully cut blouse all went some way to creating an impression of exoticism in the cold expanse of Enghem Cove. It was hard to judge her age, but she looked like she’d faded out of beauty and glamour not so long ago. Ida put her at the end of her forties. The whiteness of her scalp emphasized how her jet-black hair had thinned.

She clasped her fingers together, nails dark as bluebottles, and flashed them a girlish grin.

‘You must be Ida,’ she said. ‘And you must be the photographer, is that correct?’ She blinked dark eyelids. ‘I shall have to look my best around you.’

Carl helped Ida up a step into a wide, whitewashed hall with a high wooden ceiling and bare light bulbs. From here they proceeded into a dining room with a rustic wooden table at its centre. The walls were off-white and grey rugs overlaid the floorboards. Midas jumped in alarm when he stepped on a board and a snoring creak echoed in the room.

Emiliana laughed. ‘It wasn’t you, silly. It’s the house creaking in the wind. You get used to it.’

Ida closed her eyes and listened to another long creak coming out of the wall, like the lowest note of a cello, and smiled. It was a peaceful noise, in keeping with a house built at the ocean’s mercy.

‘I know Enghem Stead looks bare and Spartan,’ apologized Emiliana. ‘But it’s the way Hector likes it. Through this door is my guest room. You’ll be more comfortable in here.’

She took an iron key from her blouse pocket, unlocked and pushed open the door on to a cool room that smelled of Turkish delight. Giant azure and gold cushions were piled up on rugs. Complex North African patterns of topaz and diamonds tiled the walls. A fireplace made flaky ash from logs.

Only, thought Ida, it hadn’t worked. The distance between this wall and that, and the loftiness of the ceiling, overpowered the restful space Emiliana had tried to create. This kind of room could only be filled with a hymn or a prayer.

Soon they were eating bowls of couscous made floral with herbs; plates of Parma ham and purple chorizo; pots full of olives; trays of peppers and aubergines stuffed with still-bubbling cheese; boards of bread drizzled with olive oil. The other three were surprised to learn that Midas had never tried any of it before.

‘What do you normally eat?’ asked Emiliana, as he chased an olive around his plate with his fork.

‘Fish fingers,’ he admitted. ‘Can-o-Soup.’

He forked the olive and put it on his tongue.

‘Like it?’ asked Carl with a readied smirk.

His mouth felt so full of acid he might as well have kissed a snake. ‘Mm,’ he managed.

The others piled their plates up while Midas remained cautious, suspiciously analysing the stuffed peppers. Strands of cheese dribbled from the dish to his plate as he served himself one. It smelt of goat.

They chatted while they ate, or rather, the other three chatted and Midas sat in baffled silence, hearing Emiliana’s views on an orchestra, or Carl’s on a man called Hemingway. When they had finished eating, Carl ceremoniously laid down his knife and fork and said, ‘I think everyone would appreciate getting straight to the point of this visit.’

Ida blushed and spoke very quietly. ‘You’re right. It’s because of me we’re here. To hell with it, perhaps I should just take my boots off.’

Emiliana leant forward among the cushions, stretching her long legs in front of her.

Fingers aflutter, Ida reached down to her boots. She untied the buckles, then the laces. Her boots slid off gently and she rolled off her socks.

There was a pattern on the rug beneath her like the map of a labyrinth. Her toes moved across it like magnifying glasses, warping the pattern into a three-dimensional maze. The glass had become worse in the week since Midas had first seen it. Ida’s metatarsals, which he had witnessed half visible before, had now vanished in the crystal-clear bodies of her feet. Strands of blood tapered out like frayed cotton around her ankles. Her heel, which had still been made of skin before, was a hard lump with foggy white insides. Aside from these, her feet were now entirely transparent. Raised veins pulsed at the bottom of her shins and calves, as if the blood there were evacuating ahead of what was to come. Hairs on her lower leg trembled as if they were on the back of her neck.

Her inanimate feet, he realized, were no longer a part of her. All the foreign tastes of the night’s meal came back and filled his
gullet. Those blocks of glass, though gracefully shaped, were amputations.

Somewhere above him, another floor lowed and creaked.

The others hadn’t moved or made a sound, apart from the noise of Emiliana’s lips parting. She looked as if she’d heard news of a terrible bereavement. Astonishment paused her body and puzzled her eyes. He was surprised because Carl had said she’d seen something like this before. She couldn’t speak until Ida broke the spell by pulling on her socks.

‘Ida,’ she said eventually, locking her fingers together, ‘I’ll… try my very best to help you.’

Carl nodded like a wise old judge. ‘Get the film of Saffron Jeuck.’

Emiliana looked uncomfortable. ‘Are you sure you wouldn’t rather wait until morning, Carl? Do this bit by bit?’

‘If you’re worried about me,’ said Ida, ‘there’s no need. I can cope.’

‘It’s just…’

Carl glowered at her and she held up her hands. ‘I’ll go and get the tapes.’

As Emiliana left the room, Ida sighed and ran a hand through her hair. Carl put a heavy hand on her shoulder and patted her while Midas watched sullenly. He supposed they were going to see something to make them think how awful it would be, should Ida transform entirely into glass.

Emiliana returned with two chunky old video-tapes, and didn’t make eye contact as she plugged the first into a small television unit.

They all waited in awkward silence as the tape rewound. They could hear the faint squeal of the wheels whirring in the VCR. The house groaned a louder echo.

‘Now,’ said Emiliana, when the rewinding stopped with a clunk. A black screen danced with white bars, and then cut suddenly to a shaky picture.

A girl stood in a sepia field, squinting as she shielded her eyes from summer sunlight. The sky had probably been ultramarine when this was filmed on a doddery handheld recorder, but the age and quality of the film had saturated the colour to a greenish hue. Threads of dirt flickered across the footage.

‘Okay, Saffron,’ said Emiliana’s voice on tape, from behind the camera, ‘lift up your top.’

Saffron wore white shorts over chubby thighs. She was in her late teens, but her haircut indicated that this footage was filmed six or seven years back. She reached down and scrunched up the hem of her top, bunching it beneath her small breasts. Ida glanced warily at Carl, but at that point he sprang up and hit the Pause button, pointing at the screen. ‘See?’ he enthused. ‘Look at her midriff.’

Across Saffron’s belly ran what looked like an awful scar, but the details were lost in twitchy freeze-frame and horizons of interference descending the screen.

‘It zooms in,’ said Carl, pressing Play.

‘Now hold it,’ said Emiliana’s voice from out of shot. The wobbling camera approached Saffron’s belly.

This close, her entire stomach looked discoloured. It was hard to gauge depth on the video, but her abdomen, which was a blushed red, seemed to be set back an inch, as if she were holding her breath in. Midas realized suddenly that the surface of her belly had turned to glass. Her stomach was a glossy viewing screen on to the muscles and organs of her abdomen, although the details were hard to make out in the footage. Ida had covered her mouth with her hand. Midas wished suddenly that Carl had let Emiliana have her way and shown this in the morning, when daylight would comfort through the window.

Ida leant forward in her chair, fingers steepled and lips pursed, intent on the image. Saffron’s shadow on the corn had distended into a yellow wash. A deathly static tinged the audio.

Carl stopped the video again and ejected the tape from the machine. ‘Where’s the second tape, Mil? The one you filmed after you treated her.’

She had it on her lap. Instead of handing it to Carl, she affected a yawn. ‘I’m exhausted,’ she said. ‘Perhaps we should look in the morning?’

Midas liked her considerably for this.

‘No,’ said Carl, ‘Ida wants to get this over and done with.’

For her part Ida was staring at the blank television, expression impenetrable.

Carl took the tape from Emiliana’s lap and plugged it into the VCR. They waited again while it rewound, Carl’s fingers tapping against the chrome surface of the player. There was a clunk, and the tape started playing. After the curtains of static had lifted the picture settled on an indoor scene, although an open window showed an autumn orchard deep with leaves. The light was weak, and Saffron Jeuck, who sat in a rocking chair by the window with a tartan blanket over her lap, was ill-defined against the walls of the room. It was impossible to say where her hair, tied in a fraught bun, ended and the shadow of her rocking chair began.

‘Saffron,’ said the off-camera Emiliana. ‘Saffron, how are you feeling?’

Saffron took for ever to take her eyes off the loamy orchard and fix them on the camera. The footage was too grainy to define her pupils but Midas knew they were fixed on the lens. Other than to turn her head, she did not respond to the question. Midas chewed his fingernails while the others watched the video intently. He had always believed in a point where a photograph became like a headstone. The photos of the dead had a distant quality about them that the photos of the living didn’t possess. He had a gut feeling that this was a film about a dead woman.

‘Um,’ he began timidly, ‘Saffron is still with us, right?’

‘Of course,’ snapped Carl. ‘Shh!’

The Emiliana behind the camera repeated her question. ‘How are you feeling?’

Saffron opened her mouth. ‘I feel awful.’

‘Will you lift up your blouse?’

Slowly, Saffron’s fingers emerged from the blanket that covered her lap, to undo the bottom buttons of her blouse. She parted the cloth slowly, and the camera zoomed in on her belly as it had before.

Midas noticed two things at once. First, that the glass did not appear to have spread any further or deeper into her belly than it had in the previous, summertime video. Second, that every inch of skin visible around the edge of the glass was a raw red that defied the dim light of the day and the quality of the footage. Her flesh was blistered, wealed and peeling ragged in places, as if she had been flogged.

‘Is it any worse?’ asked the on-film Emiliana.

‘Not the glass,’ said Saffron, and turned back to the orchard.

‘You’re ready for another poultice?’

Saffron took a long breath, but as she did so the wind blew in through the open window, placing dead curled leaves on the carpet and making it hard to tell whether what could be heard was the noise of the air entering Saffron’s lungs, or merely the rustle of the weather. Either way, the filling up of her lungs could be seen through the glass plate of Saffron’s stomach.

The video camera turned off.

Even after Carl took out the tape, Ida’s eyes remained on the screen. Midas recognized that distant look, seen so many times on his mother’s face. An elsewhere look. Ida’s thoughts would be in some other year, no doubt, before all this began.