The Jeweller's Skin (8 page)

There had been the concert with Anthony: the pianist hunched over the keyboard in her black dress, the melody that seemed to fall in gold chains.

I want a piano.

It was years since she’d played; not since Felix, the piano teacher, way back before she’d come to work at the asylum.  Still she knew now that that was what she needed, the pads of her fingers on the yellowed keys, her whole body filled with the music in her head that she had to press out through her fingertips, a kind of violence that flowed up her spine. 

A piano?  Here?  You are mad, she was saying to herself, even as she went through doors and along hallways towards the housekeeper’s office at the centre.  And if Miss Fleming is in there?  Or it’s locked?

She knocked at the door. Miss Fleming had stuck something against the glass, a chart perhaps.  She knocked again, then tried the china handle.

The door opened.  There was a wide desk, like her own, and cupboards and filing-cabinets, and in a jar on the desk chrysanthemums, little bright-yellow flowers they called button chrysanths.  The smell - it was like allspice, she recognised - reached her as she was closing the door behind her.

No time to stand in the middle of the floor, wondering about the bony Miss Fleming, who frequently reduced domestics to tears with her sarcasm, and nevertheless had flowers in her office.  Narcisa felt clear-headed and light.  Beside the desk there was the key-cupboard, its wooden door slightly greasy with finger-marks; then the rows of the keys and the numbered list at the side.

She peered at it in the dim light from the window.  There:
36 Chapel
.

She lifted the long key off its hook, and closed the cupboard.  Suppose at this moment Miss Fleming came in?  Or Dr Bosanquet in the corridor? 

They won’t.

It was snowing again as she went out to the chapel.  She ran along the gravel path and huddled against the door as she unlocked it, the iron key turning readily in her hand.

Inside she felt around for a light switch.  A pale grey snow-light was filtering through the windows, picking out the polished ends of the pews.  All this is going to be visible, she realised; as soon as I put on the light, they will all see it, everyone in the rooms at the front, and the nurses’ homes.

She gave up on the switch and walked slowly on the checkered black and white tiles towards the altar.  The piano was pushed to one side, a dusty green cloth thrown over it. 

She folded the cloth and laid it on a pew.  As she sat down and opened the lid her hands were trembling.

She played a tentative scale with her right hand.  The sound was not good, dull and a little tinny.

Never mind.

It seemed for a moment that there was no music in her, nothing to make her lifted hands come down and search out inflections amongst the keys that were blurred to grey in the half-light of the chapel.  Then something came back, not a title, a sensation, an impetus of sound, and she let it lift just as she remembered, up along her spine and through her shoulders and down the length of her arms.  The music unfurled itself steadily in her mind, just at the second when her hands were making it; there was no delay and yet she could make a choice, slow now and solemn, holding it back -

Her hand stumbled.  Stopped.

Is that all I can do? 
No,
she told herself, and stretched her arms to the side and began again, the start of the phrase just before she had faltered:
no,
as it happened again and she made herself open her hand and find the fingering in the right,
no, again,
like an insistent teacher, so the sound, louder now, repeated, opened out in the cold chapel with its smell of bleach and wax, her anger riding up through her into the phrasing till her hand would work and she started to play again, breathing out, leaning back.

After a while she stood up and stamped her feet.  I should have brought my coat and scarf, she thought.  She buffeted herself to get warm, to make sure the blood kept flowing into her fingers, the joints didn’t stiffen.  Then she sat down again.

Hold back here, soften it, she told herself, and the tone the piano offered her was kind, the notes fell through the air one at a time like snowflakes. 
Now:
and she leaned into it, her foot on the pedal, the sound expanding out all around her,
now. 
But then it sounded wrong, and she stopped again, upbraiding herself, telling herself she could do it, like a jockey in a long race, up in the stirrups, shouting and beating the horse at the same time.  Nothing for many years had mattered so much. 
Now:
and the chords crashed, she was an orchestra, occupying the air, jostling the people with noise, pushing at the lit windows of the main asylum buildings across the grass, a sound that was travelling over the grounds and flooding out the gate onto the lane, where one October day she had escaped, and pulled the young gardener down with her onto the leaf-mould, under the tree, and smoothed his worried face with the flat of her hand, saying to him in her own language, ‘Thank you.  Thank you
.’

But the work still had to be done.  There were new patients arriving every week, and new staff; and they all had to eat, breakfast and elevenses and lunch and supper, cooked food and coffee and tea and bread from the bakery and milk from the farm.  There were menus to plan and meat and fish to order and discussions about potatoes and kale and carrots.  The snow melted off the lawns and the trees, the paths glistened wet.  A little brown slush remained under the hedges, along the perimeter fence where it stayed dark, between the isolation huts and the dank brambles.  Then a few days later it was all white again.

A new Assistant Cook arrived, a tall broad-shouldered woman with short grey hair.  She opened the door of the kitchen at six o’clock on Monday morning, and held out her hand.  ‘Rosaleen Shaw,’ she said.  ‘From Australia.’  But what did that mean about her?  Narcisa wondered.  ‘Later,’ she said to the woman.  ‘We will speak later’; and left her standing, to go back to June Ragless who was mixing up egg-powder.  Behind her the woman whistled under her breath.  But later, there she was, in cap and apron, placing slices of bread flat on the grill with large reddish hands.

Once the breakfast was served and the girls were clearing up, Narcisa led Rosaleen Shaw through to the office.  The woman had already been hired; there was no point in questions.  ‘I don’t mind,’ she said, as the woman opened her handbag and took a certificate out of an envelope.  ‘You will work, we will see.’  She felt her English stripping itself bare, down to the simple verbs she had first learned.  The certificate lay awkwardly across the table.  Dear god, she thought, I had better be civil to her.  She managed to smile.  ‘Tell me where you worked before.’

‘Well, in fact, the place was very similar,’ the woman said, and went on, though Narcisa wasn’t listening.  The voice was nasal; it went up and down at unexpected times, as if the statements all turned into questions.  She had pale blue eyes beneath thick eyebrows.  She told her story with enthusiasm, half there still in her Australian hospital, feeling her competence appreciated.  She won’t see that anything’s wrong, Narcisa thought.  She’ll gossip, this woman, but she’s not observant.  Still the threat of being gossiped about made her shiver. 

The voice had stopped.  ‘Very good,’ Narcisa said.  What did you do if you had an Assistant Cook?  It was so long now since she’d had anyone: Theda Marshall, who’d gone to join the Wrens.  ‘This week,’ she said, making it up hastily, because if not she would have to talk to the woman, tell her something about herself: ‘This week you work with me.  Then we will divide, what I do and what you do.’ 

‘That will be fine.’  The woman sounded relieved.

It was like having someone there to stop her thinking.  She woke in the night and found herself in panic, imagining Violeta looking for her, walking up the path to the main door.  In her cold room, huddled under the blankets, she would see her daughter, tall and strong with long black hair, enraged with her, lifting a hand to hit her.  I couldn’t help it, Narcisa told herself, trying to stave off a kind of fear she had thought belonged only on the wards, on the far side of the curved corridor.  What else could I have done?  She made herself lie flat on her back, arms by her sides, willing heaviness into her feet, her legs, her torso; then found herself anyway whimpering again, curled up on her side on the cold stretch of sheet.  It was a release when five o’clock came and she had to dress.

In the kitchen there was the woman, Rosaleen Shaw, with her large impassive face and powerful arms, waiting to be told, watching.  Narcisa soon could see she was capable.  She watched respectfully and asked a few questions; and the next day she was saying ‘May I do that?’ organising tea and biscuits for mid-morning, even suggesting one or two minor changes, a way to cook sprouts that made sure the stems weren’t hard.  I can leave things to her, Narcisa thought, and thawed a little.  Still she had some sense that the woman might break out, and laugh raucously one morning, or dance perhaps. 

Rosaleen was there all day long in the kitchen, and though she made few demands, her presence made it impossible to daydream.  I have left my daughter upstairs in my room, Narcisa thought one morning as she unlocked the kitchen; and imagined the young woman she had never met, at a first floor window, leaning both hands on the window-frame, locked in.  She shook her head and entered her safe domain, the earthenware crocks lined up on the shelf, the pans hanging.  Almost at once Rosaleen Shaw came in, her skin shiny, her powerful voice suppressed to a courteous murmur.  She has become the guard of my sanity, Narcisa thought, and focussed with relief on the question of lard.

She had done nothing.  It was three weeks since Dr Bosanquet had told her, and she had neither replied to the letter nor asked him to.  It seemed to her that there was no point in action; that just as the endless eggs and roasts had to be prepared for the hungry asylum, so this other thing would roll on, the search that had started already somewhere in London and would end with her, unable to forestall it, standing face to face with her thirty-year-old daughter.  By day, in the brief times that she was alone, the horror came back to her, that she had done nothing to find her child and claim her.  When she finds me I will have nothing to say.  I have no defence.  In the kitchens, working, she suddenly felt old, her shoulders aching, her body heavy beneath the overall and apron.  By the end of the working day she was exhausted, a dull throbbing ache behind her eyes; but still she sat on till late in her office, planning the menu or adding up the accounts.  Back in her room was the image of Violeta, abandoned again.

*

The letter came, in a thick white envelope without a stamp, along with the outside post.  She was too busy that morning to be curious, June and one of the working patients off sick.  A letter from the other butcher, in Raynes Park, to inform her of their competitive prices, and that East Hill and St Botolph’s were more than satisfied.  Instructions from the London County Council about nutrition and the need for vegetables.  A hand-written note from the bakery; she’d come back to it.  She stood up, ready to get back to the kitchens, thinking already how she would change the rota to get everything done, and slit the white envelope open with her thumb.

It was on the hospital’s good headed paper.

He is dismissing me after all.

She leaned back against her desk and made herself read it.  The type was fuzzy with too much ink.  The paper smelled she thought of hospital soap.

Dear Mrs Humphreys

Further to our discussion of 3
rd
December,

Further to: what does that mean?  These stupid phrases.

I am writing to confirm my strong disapproval of your conduct heretofore in the matter discussed.

She looked up at the office door, her eyes smarting.  He has told me already how much he disapproves.  Of course it was not only her lying, as he saw it, nor that she had been mad and might be again; it was the disgrace, the illegitimate child.  She wondered if he had looked up the hospital records.  He would think her immoral, an unsuitable influence.

As I emphasised, an employer has the right, not only morally but in English law, to expect the honesty of his staff at all times.  The fact that the act of deception took place some years ago is of no relevance.

Yes, yes, she thought, hearing him pronounce the clumsy English words in his throaty voice.  He breathed thickly, she remembered, between sentences.  She skimmed down, impatient to know his verdict.

...I think it important to put this in writing to you..

...should there be any further instances, at any level at all, of dishonest conduct…

Dishonest! she thought indignantly, and put the letter behind her on the desk.  Dishonest!  I have been responsible for hundreds, thousands of pounds-worth of supplies.  I could have stolen enough to keep a whole family, and no-one would have known.  He has no idea.

She picked up the letter.  

...
of dishonest conduct brought to my attention, I shall have no alternative but to recommend to the Committee your immediate dismissal.

She sat down and pushed both hands up through her hair.  The weight of the words, their ponderous contempt, made her feel heavy herself, and middle-aged.

So if anybody chooses to go to him.  If one of the kitchen assistants turns against me.  Or the baker, if I complain about the bread.

She read through to the end of the letter, but there was nothing more that seemed important.

I would rather be dismissed outright than this.  To be spied on; to wait for something to happen.

She looked at the clock. Twenty past ten, and the morning tea to do.

I told Anthony I might leave.  Perhaps I should.  Dr Bosanquet waiting for me to make a mistake.  And then Violeta.

I cannot think about her, while this goes on.

She swept the letter into her desk drawer.

*

The snow lay thick against the trunks of trees, across the expanse of grass, banked up in the lane beneath dull brown hedgerows.  The paths across the grounds were swept clear every morning by a work-gang of male patients, but iced over quickly, so that nurses running to be in time for the afternoon shift squealed together and staggered.  The sky was grey and low, the air raw-cold.  Narcisa began to long for her bicycle, to ride again down the alleys into Epsom, leaning into the wind, feeling strength in her thighs.  Or somewhere further than Epsom, she thought, and wondered why she had never ridden far; on the the Downs, say, where the race-horses were exercised.  She had seen them once, silhouetted on the horizon.  A long time ago, when she was a housekeeper.

The roads had not been gritted: that was the talk.  Well, she thought suddenly, coming back to her room with the afternoon free; I can still go on foot.  There must be something I need.  She looked round, but the room was plain and diffident as ever.  Some knitting-wool perhaps; she could make new gloves.

The lane was slippery, but her boots gripped well enough.  She walked quickly, along the edge where the snow was clean.  A car passed, wide of her, and hooted: perhaps someone she knew.  The damp cold air seemed to scrape at her cheekbones, her wrists when she took her hands out of her pockets.  Another car; she had to step back sharply, towards the hedge; her coat caught in the brambles.  Never mind, she told herself; better to be outdoors, moving.

Johnson’s the draper’s shop was almost empty.  The assistant, an elderly woman with a black built-up shoe, remembered her and seemed to want to chat.  ‘You still working over there, dear?’  A leery fascination on the powdered and lipsticked face.  Town people kept away; they didn’t want to know about the asylums.  And if I told her I was once a patient?  She looked at the older woman, curious; but there was no hint of compassion in the face.  ‘Double knitting, I think, for this weather,’ she said, pleasantly enough, and bought a skein of scarlet, and a set of double-pointed needles to do the fingers.

Here in the town centre more of the snow had melted, or turned to light-brown slush in the gutters and doorways.  It was still only three o’clock.  By four it would be getting dark; she should start back then.  She could go now; there was nothing else she needed.  Still there was some sense of adventure in being out, away from the hospital on this icy day.  She looked around.  There was Hartley the butcher’s shop; the ironmonger’s; the elaborate white facade of the car showroom; and there across the road the little tea-room where she had met Anthony.  A sign she’d never noticed, on the first floor between the narrow windows, offered CYCLISTS’ TEAS.

The waitress seemed to remember her, was friendly.  She ordered a scone and a pot of tea: ‘The other kind, very scented, what do you call it?’  The room was warm, a coal fire in the corner.  Left alone, she sat back and took off her gloves.  She was by the window; people passed, hunched and hurried, on the street.  She had a sense of shelter, privilege.

‘Patricia,’ a woman’s voice, pinched and offended.  ‘Patricia, I have told you, you mustn’t take so much jam all to yourself.  Put some of it back now.’

A clatter of cutlery.  Narcisa smiled, half-listening.  She had been feeling strange in the past week, aware that she should be worried and unable to think, even most of the time remember what it was.

‘That’s better.  No, she’s doing terribly well, she was top of her class last term, weren’t you, Patricia?’

But work had become straightforward again.  That was the relief, to go back to the competence she was used to, to manage the staff as she always did, a little severe perhaps, but fair, they knew she was fair.

The waitress brought a tray, and unloaded a teapot, milk-jug, hot water jug, glass dishes of jam and butter, a small blue-rimmed plate with two scones.  The table was crowded.  It’s the ritual, she told herself, suppressing astonishment.  This is how the rich have afternoon tea.  Not only the rich; anyone with a little money.  Or time.  Miss Grey and Miss Ainsworth, and I made the scones and jam.  Anthony and his wife, sitting at home.

‘We’re really lucky, Patricia loves school, don’t you?  She’s a clever girl.’

A mutter, presumably from the child.

‘Another piece?  Well, let’s see if Aunt Lizzie wants one first.’