The Jeweller's Skin (28 page)

1934

When there was enough steam to warm the room, she took off her dressing-gown and nightie, and clambered in over the side of the bath.  The Ascot grunted and throbbed above the taps.  There was only just enough water to lie down in; it lapped over her hip-bones and left her stomach and breasts bobbing.  She slid further down, her head pushed awkwardly forward, the bath-cap threatening to come off her heavy hair.  The thing was to get as much warmth inside you, right through the flesh and deep into the bones, before the water started to cool down and sitting up to wash became a torture.

She stretched out her hand and looked at the wedding-ring.  The steam had misted up the broad surface.  The gold made her hand look pale, almost elegant.  She rubbed at the callus on her index finger.  If she buffed her nails…

The black-haired man had asked, ‘You’re not married, are you?’  Brian.  On the grass beside her, playing with her hand.  Quiet, the little clearing on the Heath, brambles and some kind of undergrowth all around, cool air amazing on her exposed thighs.  (She flapped more water over her breasts to warm them).  Her sallow hand spread flat against his chest.  His skin white like china.

‘Course I’m not married.  It’s the wrong hand, anyway.’

Wanting to lean forward and kiss his chest, right in the centre where it was flat and lean; but she couldn’t.

‘What’s the ring for, then?’

She brought it up into view.  Surprised herself, touching the gold to her lips.  ‘It was my mum’s.  She gave it me.’  Lying back, his arm under her neck.  A branch dipping up and down above her.  His hand stroking her arm over and over.

‘How come? Had your dad left her, or something?’

Why did he want to spoilt it all with questions?  ‘It’s too complicated.’  A bird hovering, a thin rag of cloud behind it.  She closed her eyes.  ‘She’s dead now.  I don’t want to talk about it.’  Pushing herself up and on top of him, biting his ear, daring her hand on his cock, till he held her hard.

She sat up and reached for the soap.  The water sucked back around her shins.  She must have left her flannel in her room.  She soaped herself quickly, the lather cooling, chilling each piece of skin.  Leaned forward to wash between her toes.  The water clouded up and as usual she didn’t want to lie down in it again.  She splashed with her hands to get rid of the soap.  Washing her fanny, she thought again of the man, Brian, in the summer on Hampstead Heath.  When he’d finished he’d run his finger up and down between her legs, and found the place where he could make her gasp, till she couldn’t stand it and pulled at his wrist to stop.  ‘What’s the matter?’ he sounded hurt.  ‘Don’t you want to?’

She got out of the bath and wrapped the thin towel around her.  The plug came out with a squelch and the water spiralled away, the soap-scum thinning out and disappearing.  The towel wasn’t big enough; she started with it like a cloak over her shoulders, then moved it down to tie across her breasts.  There was still just enough warmth for standing around, till the water had all gone down and she could sprinkle Vim on the tide-mark and scour the enamel clean.  The powder caked under her ring; it started to rub.  She held her finger under the cold tap, till the Vim ran off, then rubbed hard with the towel to warm it up again.

1947

The entrance hall needed some work, she noticed.  A number of the black and white floor tiles were chipped; one was missing, replaced by a square of plywood.  There was a long crack in the wall beside the door, beginning just below the picture rail, beside a dark print of a landscape painting; it ended, branching once, a yard off the floor.  The transom above the left-hand window had suffered, the pattern of pale green and amber glass patched over with cardboard.  And it’s none too clean, she thought, looking around.  The floor was smeared; there was a footprint over by the door, the heavy treads of a man’s boot drawn in dark mud, and cobwebs in the far corner beneath the cornice.

She had come down early, in the yellow dress and jacket she’d made the summer before and hardly worn.  It had suddenly seemed important to look good: to feel she was looking good, a middle-aged woman but smart, taking care.  It must be months since she had thought like this.  Even with Anthony: she remembered once getting changed and thinking: Oh, he can put up with it, as if her appearance were a punishment for him.  The dress and jacket had been in the bottom of the chest of drawers, folded in paper.  Fortunately they hadn’t creased too much.  She stroked down the skirt.  It was a good colour. 

Her hand was shaking.  She looked at the clock: just gone half past one.

I can’t wait here for half an hour, she thought.  Anyway, it’s not nice for Violeta.  The high-backed chair was quite uncomfortable, and too tall; her toes just reached the ground.  She stood and went over to the window.  The tiles felt slightly sticky as she walked.  It is Easter Day, she thought, someone will come.  Dr Bosanquet might have visitors, or Dr Whitchurch.  She dreaded the thought of having to answer questions.  I’ll wait out of doors.

She shook herself free and opened the heavy door.  She had left the asylum, in spring it must have been, hotter than this, the sun suddenly striking the side of her face.  But I have been back here eleven years, she thought.

She walked slowly down the drive to the main gate.  The yellow roses - from the buds they seemed still to be yellow - were not yet out, the bushes neatly pruned, with small new dark-green leaves and a few buds.  The white cat that lived in the maintenance sheds stalked across the gravel in front of her.  At the flower-bed it turned to stare with light-blue eyes.  ‘Puss,’ she called softly, and held out her hand.  It looked intently for a minute, then went on at its deliberate pace towards the trees.

Then there was nothing for it but to wait.  She stopped short of the lodge, not wanting to have to chat to the gate porter.  There was nowhere to sit.  She remembered from years back, when she’d first started, a decision to buy deckchairs for the use of the patients: invalids and the elderly, that was it, the chairs were strictly rationed.  No doubt they would be lying unused still somewhere. She checked her watch.  There was still plenty of time.

She found them in one of the potting sheds, a dozen deckchairs stacked against the wall, the striped canvas muted in the greenish light.  The first one she opened had dark mould over the seat.  She put it aside.  The next seemed cleaner, and she dragged it outside. 

Where shall I sit? she wondered, and looked round.  She chose a place a few yards from the drive, halfway between the fence and the back of the chapel, where she thought people were unlikely to pass.  The deckchair opened stiffly, with a creak.  The wood was grey, the canvas striped blue and a dingy white.

She had another idea.  Most of the other deckchairs were mildewed or broken; but finally she found one that seemed safe enough, and lugged it back to her place on the lawn.  It was very public; would that matter to Violeta?  She didn’t want to be alone with her daughter in some closed room.  They could sit here facing each other, turned away from the comings and goings, not interrupted but not isolated.

She sat in the blue and white chair, facing the gate, the sun warming her face, the sweat drying.  The white cat circled back to her right, as if assessing, and then veered off.  This is it, she thought.  It’s too late to run away.  She lay back on the cradling canvas and kept watch.

*

She felt it like a lurch; as if all the parts of her that had been disturbed in the last months, overlapping, piled up like rubble on a bomb-site, had fallen into place again, but a new place, a new arrangement, and how was she going to live in this new body?   She flexed her shoulders, standing already to face it.

A woman had emerged from beside the lodge, a young woman with dark bobbed hair, in a green coat.  She was walking up the drive, quite hesitant, or perhaps her shoes were unsteady on the gravel.  It was the coat, though, that Narcisa saw: apple-green, flaring out from the waist, probably new, the cloth a little shiny. 

She moved quickly across the grass to intercept.  She felt too light, the inside of her body empty as a balloon.  At the same time there was something new, in the few seconds of watching unobserved: a kind of fear or compassion for her daughter, treading carefully up the drive in her cheap coat.  If she had stopped it might have made her weep.

She reached the edge of the drive and paused a moment.  The face was narrow, and taut with apprehension.  Thick eyebrows, very dark, and deep-set eyes, with shadows on either side of the nose: a tired face.  Wide mouth, unexpected, with crimson lipstick.  A person; she could not have said what kind of person, only that she, Narcisa, would have to make it easier, would have to be kind, not least because she was older.

‘You are Violeta?’  She had no doubt, but still, she had to say it.

There was a closed expression, unfathomable, thinking.  Then the young woman said: ‘I’m sorry.  Are you.. ?’

‘Your mother.’  Impossible that she had said it.  ‘But please,’ she hurried on, ‘my name is Narcisa.  Of course, you know that.’

They stood facing each other in the drive.  Violeta was almost the same height, an inch taller perhaps, and very slim.  ‘I didn’t know how to say it.’

‘Narcisa.’  She pronounced it slowly, and waited, smiling.  She thought Violeta would perhaps repeat it, but instead she nodded, as if hearing it again.  Then she said, ‘I didn’t know how you said my name either.  But you said Vee, didn’t you, Vee-oleta.  My uncle - he wasn’t really an uncle, I was boarded with them - he said it like that.’

‘Why, how did other people say it?’

She gave a little shrug, dismissing them.  ‘Vi, mostly.  I’ve always been called Vi, or Violet if they had to.  I thought it was like Violet with an a, till I was boarded out, and he said it.’

The voice was deep, with an accent like Clara’s, but disconcertingly flat and inexpressive.  Already there were too many things to ask.  ‘Come,’ Narcisa said.  ‘I have found two chairs, very old but I think we are not too heavy.  I thought it is better if we stay outside.  Unless you are cold?’

They sat down.  I should have brought out some cake, Narcisa thought.  ‘But you have come a long way.  Would you like some tea?  I can go in and make it, it will not take long.’

Violeta shook her head.  ‘No, I’m all right, thanks.’  Of course, she wouldn’t want to be left alone.  There was a pause.  Violeta, facing the buildings, was looking round, taking in the flower-beds and the chestnut trees, the water-tower, the half-hidden wards and residential blocks.  After a while she said with a little laugh, ‘It’s quite nice, really, isn’t it?  I thought it would be, you know, grim.’

‘Were you afraid?’  But that was too abrupt; it would sound condescending.

‘I was a bit nervous.’  There was the laugh again, a chuckle that didn’t expect to be overheard.  ‘I mean, what they tell you.’  She glanced across at Narcisa and flushed slightly.  ‘But I reckoned, if you were working here, it couldn’t be that bad, could it.  And anyway..’

She wanted to meet me enough to make it worth it.  Narcisa sat very still.  Violeta was looking down at her hands, competent hands, callused like her own, the nails bitten. 

Narcisa made herself speak.  ‘Can you tell me the reason why you tried to find me?’

‘You’re my mum, aren’t you?’  This was a different look, the dark eyes hooded. 

So simple.  Not for revenge, or vindication.  ‘I am sorry,’ she said.  ‘I did not want to offend you.  Of course, I can see: you want to find out who your mother is.’  I mustn’t spoil this, she thought, I must get this right.  ‘There is some special reason that you do it now?’

‘I didn’t know what to do before.  I mean, how to find out where you lived.’  She considered.  ‘I did try once.   When I was about fifteen.  I wrote to the address on my birth certificate.  Camberwell.’

‘You wrote to me there?’

‘I got an answer, too.  From Mr Humphreys.’  Again the quick cautious assessing glance.  ‘He was very polite.  But he said you hadn’t lived there for a long time, and I should get on with my life.’

Edwin, she thought.  Yes, that’s what he would think.  She breathed out slowly.  ‘It was very brave of you, when you were only fifteen.’  She wanted to say: It must have been important, but couldn’t, it was too boastful or too honest.

They sat silent.  A blackbird flew down to the grass by Narcisa’s feet, and pecked vigorously for a while with its yellow beak; then gave up and strutted away towards the flower-beds.

Violeta said, ‘Can I ask you something?’

‘I thought you would want to ask me many things.’

‘How come you work here?’  She corrected herself.  ‘I mean, I was really shocked when you wrote and said.  I thought someone might tell me where you went when you left, or maybe’ - she hesitated - ‘maybe you’d still be in here.  Well, you know, you do hear about people who’ve never got out.  But working..  Did you just come out and get straight into a job here?’

She smiled.  ‘No, not as bad as that.  But I have worked here a long time now, eleven, nearly twelve years.’  She paused: yes, go on, tell her the story.  ‘I was working not far away, as a housekeeper, and suddenly I thought I can’t do this any more, so I ran away.’

‘You ran away?  What, with a man or something?’

‘Not with a man, no; all on my own.  I went somewhere I had never been before, out in the country, and I stayed there for, I don’t know, several weeks.  Perhaps two months.  I was very happy.’  She looked up and found some kind of recognition, or amazement perhaps, on her daughter’s face, the crimson mouth half-open.   ‘Then I thought, well I cannot stay the rest of my life in a room in a pub.  Though now I think..  But I needed to do something, and I did not know who would employ me.  Of course I could not get a reference.  So I wrote to the asylum, and they took me on.

‘And you,’ she changed the focus, feeling awkward.  ‘I do not know anything about you.  You are working?’

‘I’ve always worked, since I was sixteen.  Well, before that really.  I used to be in service, in boarding-houses, I was a chambermaid.   Maid-of-all-work, more like.  Then when the war came, I got a job in a shop, a tobacconist’s, right in the West End.  And I’m still there.’

A shop assistant.  Perhaps that was a good thing, independent?  She could see her, that tense smile, behind a counter.  ‘You like it?’

‘It’s work.  Yes, tell the truth, it’s not bad.  Better than cleaning up after people, I’ll tell you.’

‘And friends, you have friends there, where you work?’  She wanted this, for there to be good people, women she would go out with, whatever they did, the cinema, dancing, friends she could confide in.  Violeta in the deckchair opposite was so slight, her coat open on a thin gingham dress.

‘Not at work.  There’s just me and the boss, Mr Van Wit he’s called, he’s Dutch.  I’ll tell you,’ she said, in a rush of confiding, ‘I’d rather work with a man than a woman, any day.  Even the ones that get up to something, you can handle them.’  She started to snigger and suppressed it quickly.  ‘But women, they don’t make allowances.  He’s all right, Mr Van Wit, he’s really old and he’s ever so polite, it’s Miss Humphreys, would you mind?  We get on all right, him and me.  He says I’m the first woman he’s taken on, and I’ve convinced him.’

Narcisa sat back, wondering what to say.  Violeta seemed to know so much - too much, she thought, and had to remind herself that the thin young woman with shadows under her eyes was thirty.  And probably she was right about men and women.  It was true, she expected hard work from her staff; perhaps a male cook would have been kinder to them.

‘But friends?’ she asked.  ‘You have friends, outside work?’

‘Yes, of course.’

The question must have seemed strange, too personal.  She apologised.  ‘I do not want to intrude.  But you see, I want to know if you are happy.’  She smiled sadly.   ‘Perhaps you will think it is too late.’

That was it, she had said it.  She waited for the answer.  I have no justification, she told herself.  I could have tried to find her at any time: in Pimlico, at Miss Ainsworth and Miss Grey’s, here even.  It would have made my life difficult, that is all.  The failure of courage was very clear to her.  She rested her head back and closed her eyes.  The afternoon sun was still warm on her eyelids. 

But Violeta was speaking.  ‘To tell you the truth, the girls I used to know have all got married, the ones I worked with, I mean.  I do go and visit.  I’m godmother to one of the little boys, Duncan he’s called. They live in Putney.’