The Jeweller's Skin (9 page)

Narcisa shifted slightly so as to see them.  The woman speaking had a black pillbox hat on marcelled hair; her friend, or perhaps it was her sister, was taller, with a pearl necklace and blue silk scarf.  The little girl, Patricia, sat between them, in a grey school uniform blazer and a white blouse, and played with her cake-fork.

She made herself look away, and poured more tea.  It was hard to relax.  It was true that she had been waiting for something to happen; and though it now seemed nothing would, she was cautious still.  As if I might see Violeta here, she thought, and looked abruptly at the child’s mother, so that the woman coughed and looked away.  How could I tell, that woman or anyone?

The little girl had left her table and come to the window, to watch a coal-lorry parked across the street, a man unloading, lifting the grey sacks one at a time on his shoulder and walking half-stooped along an alley.  The second time he vanished, the child turned back towards Narcisa and stared.

‘Hello,’ Narcisa said, feeling uncertain. The child was eight or nine, a little plump.

‘I’ve got bronchitis.’  She said it importantly, and waited.

‘Goodness,’ said Narcisa. ‘Isn’t it too cold for you, if you are ill?’

‘The doctor says I’m much better.  Our doctor’s called Dr Meadowcroft, do you know him?  He says I can go out but I can’t go back to school yet.’

She considered.  ‘Is that good, then, not to go back to school?  So you can come and have tea here instead?’

‘It’s all right.’  She came closer to Narcisa’s table.  ‘What I really like is playing with my friend.  She’s called Veronica but I call her Ronnie.  Why do you talk like that?  You know, funny?’

‘Because I’m not English.’  She smiled, awkward.  It was a long time since anyone had reminded her of her accent.

The child looked at her intently.  ‘Are you a German?’

‘No, I’m not German.’  But what could she say, that would make sense to a child?  ‘I come from another country, a long way away.’

‘I thought you were a German spy.’  She stared at the teapot.  ‘Were you on our side during the war?’

The doubt again.  ‘I have lived in this country a very long time.’

The child began to play with the tablecloth, pleating the starched edge between her fingers.  ‘You could always go to elocution,’ she said helpfully.  ‘I’m going to elocution next term.  And Ronnie is, if her Daddy will let her.’

‘Elocution?’ She was puzzled.

‘They teach you how to speak nicely.  Usually it’s children but I expect grown-ups can go too.’

‘Thank you,’ she began to say; but at once in spite of her there were tears in the back of her throat, and behind her eyes.  If I start to cry I’ll frighten her, she thought, and reached in her handbag for a handkerchief.  The child watched, curious, as she blew her nose.  ‘Well,’ she said, after what seemed a long time.  ‘It has been good to talk to you, but I must go.   It will be dark soon and I am walking.’  She turned and signalled to the waitress.  The little girl shrugged, and went back to her table.  As she closed the door, Narcisa heard the mother saying, ‘..and you mustn’t bother people.’  She hurried away, the tears already running down her cheeks, making ice-cold tracks that the wind then chilled further, in the half-dark of the alleys out of town.

*

I am going mad again.

She was sitting up in bed in the cold room, in the dark, an old cardigan round her shoulders, the bedclothes pulled up to her collar-bones.  A faint light bled in through the gap in the curtains.  The washbasin had a dull bluish sheen against the dark wall, next to the unlit mass that was the wardrobe.

I am losing my mind.  This is how it happens.

She had wept all the way back, in the bitter cold, with no idea why.  That was how it had been before.  That was how it had started, when she was young, with Edwin: days of crying, unable to stop or explain.  But was that what had happened?  So many years ago: thirty-three, thirty-four.  She was hardly the same person.  It was different, she told herself, hunched under the bedclothes.  He was out at work and I was all alone.  He was the only one who spoke any language that I could understand.  The tears came back but she rubbed them away: self-pity.

She went back over the time since she’d had the news.  The first day it was shock, understandable.  But I was useless all day, she told herself; I had to make that girl take charge of lunch.  Was that more than shock?  Then Anthony, what she had made him do to her.  I have never wanted that before, never, she thought.  He had not objected, no; but would he object?  I am not his wife, she thought bitterly, only his mistress.  And in any case, men have different ideas, what is acceptable.  Even Anthony.

But that is not the point, she told herself, leaning forward under the covers to warm her feet in her hands.  It’s not whether other women do these things, but if I am suddenly behaving differently.  The thing she hadn’t told him came back, the vivid image that had come to her mind as he entered her: herself, in a white linen straitjacket, her arms tied down, her body open to him.  She bent her head to her knees and sobbed once, in shame.

I can’t be mad.  I will have to control myself.  There was a high-pitched yelp out in the grounds; she started, turning towards the curtained window.  Not human: some animal, out in the woodland.  Today I thought I was in control, she went on; as if winning the argument with her fearful self, her mad self, would mean she could stay sane.  Today I felt better and then look what happened.

It was the child; she supposed it was the child.  A plump little English girl with pale fine hair.  Nothing like Violeta.  Who anyway is thirty, not a child.  It was the child, asking about my accent.  More honest than adults, who think it but don’t remind you.  But why should I burst into tears when a sulky child says I sound peculiar?  I must be already in a dangerous state.  The old phrase came back to her from the time as a patient:
in a dangerous state.  In need of medication. 
And of course it is worse since Dr Bosanquet’s letter. 

Then what do I do, if I am in that kind of state?  She got out of bed and stood in front of the window, holding the curtains apart with both hands.  Her flannel nightdress flapped slightly in the draught.  Cold seeped into her feet from the polished boards.  How happy Dr Bosanquet would be, proved right: no more former patients on the staff.  I could go to his office and tell him I’m mad again.  Totally honest: that’s what he said he wanted.  She laughed in silence, a small desolate laugh.  They’d send me away, East Hill or even further.  There was that young nurse who started hearing voices; they sent her over to Hanwell, on principle.  Though what was the principle?  That patients must not know that staff can be ill?

I’m avoiding the issue, she told herself severely.  That fact was that it was too terrible to imagine; to remember at all how she had felt before, her five years as a patient.  She’d decided, long ago, to cancel the memories.  Otherwise how could I have worked here for so long?  Now for the first time it seemed to her terrible, that she’d come back, years after being discharged, to work in the same place where she’d been detained. 

Perhaps I always knew I’d go mad again. 

She shook her head, and went to the chest of drawers for some knitted bedsocks.  Who could I tell?  Not Matron, Miss Atkinson.  One of the ward sisters?  She pictured them lined up in the corridor, a dozen brisk unimaginative competent women.  No, none of them.  They would panic, or else try to reassure her; or go to Matron. 

She got back into bed and lay down stiffly, on her back on the now cold sheet.  What help do I want from them anyway? she wondered.  Drugs, or electric shock, or insulin?  The straitjacket?  Back in the padded room?  She lay still and waited till her body warmth spread out a little and warmed the thin bedclothes.  I will have to be careful.  It was all she could think of.  I will have to watch, and see if it gets worse.  And then I suppose I will just pack up and leave.

And then of course Violeta will never find me.

It was almost comfort; but not enough for sleep.  The animal, a fox perhaps, barked again.  She thought she heard a car rattling down the lane, but it could have been a milk-float, or something older, a horse and cart out of her memory, driving away, what she had once most feared.

‘
Go on, Cook,’ June Ragless was saying, speaking over her shoulder, leaning to scour inside a great black saucepan.  ‘Give yourself a night off for once.  It’ll do you good.’  Then a deep-pink flush spread up over her neck, and she turned back to work at the pan.

Rosaleen Shaw stood calmly by the table.  The patient, Esme, was at the draining-board, with a tall pile of white plates against her apron.

‘Very well.  You do not have to stop working,’ Narcisa said.  Esme moved carefully over to the crockery cupboard, holding the top plate in place with her chin.

‘I only thought you might like to consider,’ Rosaleen Shaw said at last, when they’d watched the plates safely restored to their shelf.  ‘The meal is quite straightforward, don’t you think?’

The girl whose name Narcisa could never remember came back from the bins, and stood beside June Ragless, who whispered to her.

Do they all think I need a rest?  Narcisa wondered.  She sat down at the table and looked over at the young cook in the picture tiles, kneading improbable pastry with slender hands.  Don’t be stupid, she told herself.  More likely the Shaw woman wants to prove herself.  She looked up at the Assistant Cook, large and capable, her white apron stretched tight over her stomach.  Perhaps she was reporting to Dr Bosanquet.  But what can she report?  That I am tired?

‘If you feel you are ready,’ she said, with some effort.

‘I reckon I can do it,’ the woman said; and Narcisa felt a familiar disquiet, the faint note of triumph in the careful voice.  ‘June here and Peg will put me right if needs be.  You go out and have yourself a good time.’

She is patronising me, Narcisa thought.  ‘What I will do does not matter.  It will be good practice for you, that is true.  We will see how you manage.  Now please go on working, all of you.’

The clatter restarted.  Rosaleen Shaw, avoiding Narcisa’s eye, sat down at the far end of the table with pencil and paper.  June Ragless rinsed out the pot and upended it to drain.  The patient Esme slid another pile of plates onto the dresser, and tucked a strand of colourless hair into her cap.  ‘I’ll tell you what, Cook,’ she said, in a high tense voice.  ‘If you don’t want a night out, I’ll go for you.’  She giggled, but there was something else in her lashless eyes.

*

Outside she started walking towards the bike-shed, but changed her mind and headed for the main gate.  Four or five nurses were going out, laughing and leaning against each other.  Narcisa passed them just before the gate-house.  ‘Good afternoon, Cook,’ one of them called; and another one, daring, ‘Going for a night on the town?’  She walked on, hearing the suppressed laughter behind her.

What would it have been like, she wondered, walking fast along the lane to keep warm, the dark already spreading across the fields: to go out giggling with other young women?  She hadn’t, not in Prizren.  Young women didn’t go out alone.  And when she came here there was always Edwin.  She wondered if Violeta had had that, a group of friends to go out with after work.  Though perhaps it was only working-class girls who did?

She passed the parade of shops and came to the station.  A poster showed a family staring at Big Ben.  Yes, that’s what I want, she thought, and waited at the window to buy a ticket. 

A cold wind off the Downs swept along the high platform.  A man in uniform came towards her.  ‘A good quarter of an hour yet, the Victoria train,’ he said.  ‘You’d best be waiting inside.’

She followed him, and he opened a door with
Ladies’ Waiting Room
engraved in the glass.  An iron stove with a great black pipestack was pushing heat into the bleak room.  A young woman sat in a corner reading a book.

Narcisa went up to the stove, and held her gloved hands close to the stack for heat.  Was it true that her daughter wasn’t working-class?  She had wanted to think that Violeta had been fostered by people with money and education.  But suppose she hadn’t been fostered at all?  Now she allowed the idea it was obvious.  Did all the workhouse children get boarded out?  That was what it was called, Clara had told her: boarded out
. 
Why had she been so sure Violeta would be?

She sat on a bench, away from the woman reading.  Or she could have been fostered by someone quite ordinary.  Someone like Clara.  A feeling of shame drained the warmth down out of her.  Clara is a good woman, she told herself.  She thought of the thin girl ironing opposite, taking on the ironing-room bully for her.  Clara was so poor.  When she left Holywell she had gone to live with her sister and brother-in-law, and shared a bed with the two children.  I wanted my daughter to have more.  More than I had, or Clara.  A proper school, and music, and an easy life.

I was too afraid to think anything else.

The man in uniform leaned in at the door.  ‘Five minutes,’ he said.  ‘It’s just left Sutton.’  The young woman opposite folded down the corner of a page, then closed her book.  She was tall and thin, a little like Clara, with a red scarf.  Like the one Anthony had tied her up with.  She saw the hotel room, the wallpaper, Anthony bending over to fasten her ankle.   

The woman went out onto the platform, limping slightly.  As the train pulled in a man leant out of a window, and the young woman ran along, limping, waving to him.

Narcisa got in and found a seat by the window.  There was one other person in the compartment, a plump elderly woman, sitting in the centre of the bench-seat opposite.  ‘I hope you don’t mind,’ the woman said at once.  ‘I have to travel facing, or I get queasy.’

Narcisa nodded.

‘I was so relieved,’ the woman continued.  ‘Sometimes at Epsom the most unpleasant people get on.  When my poor husband was alive it was all right, of course.  But what can I do?  I’m not going to stop getting the train.’

She had a pale-green hat, tilted forward, and a coat a few shades darker, with a fox tippet.  All of the details seemed sharp and real to Narcisa, the carefully waved white hair beneath the hat, the plump feet pushed into court-shoes with brown leather bows. 

‘You make this journey often?’

‘Every Thursday I go and see my sister in Wimbledon.  She’s a widow, too, now, her poor dear husband passed away in June.  A sweet-natured man he was, nothing too much trouble, you know?’  She sighed.  ‘Do you have sisters?’

Narcisa hesitated.

‘Like that, is it?’ the woman said.  ‘Such a shame.  My sister Ellie and I, we’ve always stayed close.  Even when they were living up near Blackpool, we always wrote.’

‘My sister is far away,’ Narcisa said, with some effort, because who knew whether Alma was still alive, even.  ‘It must be very good to have your sister near.  Now you are both alone.’

‘She says she doesn’t know how she’d have managed,’ the woman said, with a smile.  ‘So every Thursday we have our tea in the Marlborough Tearooms.  Do you know it?  It’s very nice.  Sometimes we do some shopping, or have a little walk, and back to her house. Nothing very exciting but it suits us.’

The train slowed down and drew in to a station.  ‘Where are we?’  the woman asked, suddenly anxious.  ‘There I’ve been talking to you, I don’t want to miss my stop.’  She leaned forward ineffectually over a round stomach.

Narcisa went out to the corridor to look.  ‘Raynes Park,’ she said, coming back and closing the door.  ‘It is all right.’

‘Thank you, dear,’ the woman said, and took out a little hand-mirror with a carved handle.  ‘Well, I suppose I’ll do,’ she added, and pushed the hat a little to one side.  ‘No, but you know, I don’t move as fast as I did.  Now, where were we?’

‘Do you have any children?’  Narcisa asked.  The woman seemed so certain, her life so ordered.

There was a pause.  ‘I have one son,’ the woman said; but it seemed as if she was making her voice sound bright.  ‘Maurice.  He’s forty now, would you believe?  He’s a good boy, he comes to see me whenever he can.  He has a very responsible job, in shipping.’

‘You must be proud of him,’ Narcisa said.

‘Oh I am.  He was always the quiet one.  No trouble, ever, Maurice, since he was born.’  She paused.  ‘Well, I’ll tell you, I did have another son, Teddie, he was my youngest, but he was killed in the war.’  She sat upright and smiled at Narcisa.

‘That is terrible.’  Narcisa was shaken.  ‘Terrible.’

‘In Italy.  They did say he was a good soldier, he was very brave.  Well, he always was, he was fearless, my Ted.’

The train slowed again.  ‘Here I am,’ the woman said.  ‘See that spire over there?’  She buttoned her coat and pulled on brown fur gloves.  ‘It’s been very nice talking to you,’ she said brightly.  ‘Perhaps we’ll meet again?’

‘Wimbledon, this is Wimbledon,’ a man’s voice called.

The woman stood up.  ‘Would you mind reaching my stick down?  Thank you, dear.  - Wait a minute, guard,’ she called from the carriage door, and Narcisa saw the guard hurry to help her down to the platform, where another plump elderly woman, dressed in pastel blue, was waiting.

*

At Victoria there was a crowd pressed up close to the barrier, men in dark coats and bowler hats, a few women.  She looked around, bewildered, for an exit.  The people were streaming onto the station, walking fast, determined.  Rather than venturing through to where they came from, she set off to her right, a narrow gap between station offices.  It came out onto a side street.  But I know this, she realised after a moment, and walked more firmly.  It was almost dark, the streets with their corner pubs and tall houses glowing dully like cinders under the lamps.  If I turn left here.  There were signs of a street-market, empty stalls, a box with browning cauliflowers on the edge of the pavement.  Then this is the road that goes towards the river.

Who have I ever mourned for? she asked herself, remembering the woman on the train, in her carefully chosen clothes and her doubtful smile.  Violeta, of course; but was that the same?  This woman had had the news of her son’s death, and gone on, getting up in the morning on her own in the house, having tea with her sister, whatever you did if you were seventy, say, and living alone.  Have I ever done that?

On the embankment she turned her back to the water, and scanned, distracted, for the house she’d lived in.  People had died, of course, at the asylum.  Patients died, and if they had no family were buried in the field across the lane.  She remembered a plain little gathering, too awkward to be a procession: the chaplain, one of the doctors, two farmhands pushing the coffin on some sort of barrow.  You knew that it happened; sometimes even the details found their way into the kitchen, in patients’ gossip.  TB, of course; and once there was a girl, seventeen or so, who’d managed to hang herself.  Theda, her assistant at the time, full of shock and excitement, telling them.

Perhaps it was the street ahead of her.  She roused herself and crossed over the road.  It was hard to tell.  The houses were dark now with soot.  What was the number; was it seventeen?  A small boy slammed a brown front door behind him, and ran off down the street ahead of her.  There had been a shop, there where he went in, and the house was diagonally opposite.  Not number seventeen then: twenty or twenty-two.

She paused across the road from the two houses and stared; but there was nothing to recognise.  At number eighteen an upstairs sash window was pushed open with a creak, and a big woman with glasses leaned out and glared at her.  Did I know my neighbours? she wondered, moving on, as the woman shouted towards another window.  And if I did, or if they remembered.  After all this time.  Oh you were that tart - the word came to her out of the kitchen gossip - you were the tart with the fancy visitor.

She walked slowly, past the corner shop, a pub, a man carrying a heavy cardboard box.  Did I feel like a tart?  I didn’t know what to think.  How to live my life.  She was sitting in an office in the City - Mr Stokeley’s, her husband’s solicitor - and he was explaining.  Edwin would continue to pay her rent, as he had for the past six months, and the allowance; but only as long as she did not reclaim the child, ‘Who is not his, and he does not recognise.’  The voice expressionless, infuriating.  ‘Your husband believes that as he has been told the child is in the care of the authorities, this condition will be a formality, and should not cause you any difficulty.’

In French; all this had gone on in French.  She turned at the top of the street and walked back.  By the shop the small boy made a face at her.  In French, or she would not have understood, not been able to answer.  She had stood up; shouted.  ‘Then he is wrong.’  The pain was so terrible, so unexpected, she had to shout or she would have fallen down.  ‘He is English and so he has no idea.  She has a name.  Violeta.  She is my daughter.’  He stayed in his seat, leaning forward, listening.  ‘If my husband will not support me, very well.  On these conditions I will not accept his money.  I am not a spoilt English lady.  I have learned to work, in the asylum where he sent me.’

He had listened, and offered her lunch.  The next week he wrote, to say that a client of his had a small house, and wanted a respectable tenant.  ‘You will not have to concern yourself with the rent.’

She was back at the river.  The water was dark, the tide low.  I used to come down here and stare at the water.  Once or twice with Claud Stokeley.  We walked along, and he showed me the house where the Archbishop lived, a big brick house behind a high wall; but he’d said that area was one of the poorest in London.  ‘They hardly have the money to be buried.’  That was what he had said, and she had somehow remembered.