by Lily Hammond
Eliza nodded vigorously, and Clemency let herself smile widely. She opened the Model A’s door and went around to do the same for Eliza.
‘I can answer that one better by showing you,’ she said and held out a hand for Eliza.
Eliza looked at her, looked at the hand hovering in the air waiting for her to take it, and found herself pausing, momentarily overwhelmed.
I’m getting out of a motor car, she thought to herself. And not a taxi-cab, which she’d never taken either, but a very nice, sleek motor car, which had a roof that pulled back to let the sky in, and she was here at a big white house, and a lady was holding her hand out to help her from the motor like she was someone special, not just a girl with nothing to her name but an empty red purse, but someone who meant something.
Tears sprang to her eyes, and she leaned over her legs, jamming the heels of her hands to her eyes to hold back the salty water.
‘Oh,’ Clemency said, dropping her hand and sinking to her haunches in the open door instead. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered. ‘I’m so sorry.’ She touched Eliza’s shaking shoulder and cursed herself. She’d gone too far, too fast. Of course she had. Only a little while ago Eliza had been on the beach, starving, hopeless, friendless. It would be too much for anyone.
Eliza shook her head, fiercely, ashamed of her tears, not knowing why they were springing from her eyes. She sucked in a watery breath and looked at Clemency, crouched down gazing at her with worry and apologies in her eyes. She shook her head and found a tremulous smile. Held a hand to her chest and breathed in.
‘I’m sorry,’ Clemency said. ‘Everything must be so new and strange to you.’
Eliza nodded, and took Clemency’s hand, held it for a moment, then parted her lips and nodded again, more firmly this time.
Clemency read Eliza’s body language, and knew she was putting the moment behind her. She stood up and stepped back, smiling gently, and this time when she held out her hand for Eliza to step from the car, Eliza took it and climbed out.
Clemency took her out from the shade in front of the garage to stand under the sheer blue sky.
The sun shone hotly down on her, sinking into her skin and into her blood and her cells and organs until everything inside her glowed in a fierce and simple pleasure.
Clemency led Eliza around to the entrance to the house, every nerve-ending humming.
Chapter Twenty-Two
‘So,’ Clemency said. ‘My studio is a photographic studio. The card you have gives the address of the studio I have in town – where you and I met that day, or near enough.’ She glanced at Eliza, whose wide eyes were taking in the entranceway to the house, the smooth expanse of porch, the pretty bay window. Clemency led her up the steps, crossed the porch, and took her inside.
‘It’s not really any bigger than Maxine’s house,’ Clemency said, then felt like an idiot when Eliza turned her gaze on her.
It was very different to Maxine and Ruth’s house, and Eliza shook her head. Maxine’s house was large, but scuffed from use, the carpets showing their threads, the bannisters nicked where children had bumped their toys against them as they ran up and down the stairs. Everything was clean at Maxine and Ruth’s house and Eliza loved it all very much for its homely warmth and the haven it gave the busy household, but she shook her head as she wandered from doorway to doorway, peering in at the rooms where Clemency lived.
Here, she thought, everything shone. The furniture gleamed, the surfaces polished, never a nick or dent in sight. She stepped hesitantly into what must be a sitting room, but one the likes of which she’d never seen before. She pressed her fingers to the fabric on the settee, feeling the richness of it, then let her gaze flick from painting to gilded mirror, to vase, to fresh flowers that stood in the cut glass, their blooms luminescent in the light from the bay window. She shook her head, marvelling upon it all. She wanted to examine every beautiful thing in the room, and then go to all the other rooms and do the same, soaking it all in, the sights, the smells, the textures, as though she was a sponge. She glanced back at Clemency, who stood awkwardly in the doorway, glancing around the room as though she’d never looked at it properly before. Eliza went over to her and touched her fingers lightly to Clemency’s eyes. She spread her hand out at the room. Look at it, she said.
Clemency nodded, as though she’d heard the words inside Eliza’s head. ‘I don’t spend a great deal of time in here,’ she said, wincing at the luxury of the room she’d always taken for granted.
Eliza shook her head, moved away to stand in the middle of the room and spread her arms, as if to gather it all to herself. She gave Clemency a radiant smile.
‘You like it?’ Clemency asked and listened to her heart sing when Eliza nodded, and nodded again, harder. ‘I’m glad,’ she said. ‘I can show you around the whole house, if you like?’
But Eliza gazed once more around the room, and shook her head, coming over and taking Clemency’s arm. She gave it a gentle tug, wanting to be told more about the studio and the photography. She’d always liked the pictures in the newspapers and magazines, but she’d never met anyone before who made them. She took the card out of her pocket again to make her point, and the card was softer under her fingers from the handling.
Clemency understood easily and nodded. ‘I have a studio – of sorts – here too,’ she told Eliza. ‘Would you like to see it? I have something to show you, if you would.’
Eliza nodded enthusiastically, gave a last glance at the beautiful room and left with a wistful sigh. So many treasures there, she thought to herself. The whole house was full of treasure. She looked sidelong at Clemency, taking in the oval face, the wide mouth, and the shadows under the green eyes that weren’t caused by the long lashes, but by something else. Eliza wondered what that something else could be, as she gazed around the house again. Surely someone who lived in a house as beautiful as this would be happy all the moments of the day? Of course, she amended inside her head – if you were to live even here when both your parents were dead, it could get terribly quiet. She glanced again at Clemency and wondered if that was the cause of the shadows in her eyes.
They went up the staircase, Eliza letting her hand glide over the bannister, which was polished with use and oiled to a satin gleaming.
‘This is my suite of private rooms up here,’ Clemency said, with a smile over her shoulder at Eliza. ‘Riley, my housekeeper has a room on the second floor, and so does Dot, now.’ Clemency knew she was almost babbling, but a nervousness had set up in her, making her tremble. The words tumbled from her. ‘Dot came here from Maxine and Ruth’s to help out. She stayed there just like you are.’ The landing gave way to a wide hallway, and Clemency opened the first door on her right.
But Eliza had stopped moving. She looked at Clemency, checking with herself that she’d heard properly. Someone called Dot was living here? Someone who once had lived with Maxine and Ruth, just the way she herself did?
That was possible?
Immediately, she chided herself. She loved it at Maxine and Ruth’s. She never wanted to be anywhere else. She wanted to live there and help Ruth with whatever she needed, and she wanted to pick peas in the garden every day, and she wanted to get a job at a hospital laundry and bring home her money to give to Ruth at the end of every week. She gnawed at her lip and moved again to follow Clemency, who had stepped into a room off to the side. But there was a big window at the end of the hallway, and Eliza paused to look at it, caught off guard by the picture in it made of coloured pieces of glass. Forgetting about Clemency disappearing into another room, she walked up the hallway to it and reached out to touch the green and blue glass.
‘It’s stunning, isn’t it?’ Clemency said, coming up to stand behind Eliza, looking at the stained-glass window with renewed appreciation. ‘My grandfather had it commissioned when he built the house. He made his money in shipping, you see.’
Eliza reached up over the glass ocean and traced her fingers over the figure seated on a craggy brown glass roc
k. She touched the sweep of the fish tail, the pale skin of the woman’s body, then lastly, stretched on her toes to touch the tumble of red hair that curled over the creature’s shoulders and down to her waist.
‘She looks like you,’ Clemency mused, noticing the resemblance.
But Eliza shook her head. She was thinking about her mother, the way her mother’s long red hair – so similar to her own – had escaped the linen shroud and floated out around her as the waves pulled her down to the bottom of the ocean. She touched the tail again, scaled like a fish, and turned a questioning eye to Clemency.
‘She’s a mermaid,’ Clemency said.
Eliza turned back to the glass. A mermaid?
‘Half fish, half woman. It’s said that their song was so beautiful it would tempt sailors from their ships to their doom.’ Clemency gazed not at the stained-glass window but at Eliza, at the thick plait of red hair that hung down her back in a time when almost every woman but the oldest among them had cut her hair short. She looked at the fine, pale features in the heart-shaped face, at the delicate red eyelashes and brows. At the lips, coral-coloured and expressive.
She licked her own lips and drew a breath. ‘That’s how we got the words siren song,’ she said. ‘Because the mermaids could sing so exquisitely. But it was the sailor’s doom, as the mermaids would use them up and the men would die.’ A slight smile curled upon Clemency’s lips. ‘I’ve always thought it might be different if the sailor was a woman – but that’s just my own fancy.’
Eliza gazed up at the picture in the glass, and her lips curved in a small smile at the thought of her mother turned to one of these, for surely that could be what had happened to her, way down deep in the emerald green of the ocean. She looked just like the picture, after all. Eliza dropped her hand from the cool glass and touched her own throat. Maybe too, that was why she couldn’t speak – because she needed to be under the green and blue waves of the ocean for her voice to work.
She turned to Clemency, her smile wide on her face at her idea, and Clemency couldn’t help it, she returned the smile, her breath catching in her chest at the similarity between Eliza and the mermaid in the window.
The little hairs on Clemency’s arms stood up, making her skin hum. She backed away a few steps, so that she couldn’t smell the sweet scent of Eliza’s light perspiration and the soap she’d used on her skin that morning.
‘Let me show you the studio,’ she said, clearing her throat.
Eliza looked after her as she moved down the hallway, then gave the mermaid another glance before following, the smile still on her lips, the story of the mermaid singing in her head.
‘This is where I do my work at home,’ Clemency said, ushering Eliza in through the door to the big room she’d long ago begun using as a studio. There was all her spare equipment, lights, tripods, and a variety of cameras. She pounced on the small Leica she’d so recently received from Europe – the latest thing. She held it up like the prize it was.
‘This is what I use mostly right now,’ she said, delighted with it all over again. ‘Look how small it is.’
She all but thrust it at Eliza, she who rarely let anyone near her equipment, let alone encouraged them to hold it. But she couldn’t help herself. She wanted Eliza to see and touch and feel what she did.
‘Look how well it works,’ she said, tugging Eliza by the elbow over to the long table in the room and pointing to a stack of photographs. ‘I took these the day I ran into you,’ she babbled, the words tripping from her mouth in their hurry. ‘The camera is so small no one really notices it, and so you can capture the most fleeting images. It’s especially good for photographing people on the street.’ She slowed, abashed suddenly, and stood still for a moment. ‘Wait here,’ she said, and dashed to the second door in the room, that adjoined her bedroom, wrenching it open and disappearing through it.
Eliza watched her vanish, then looked down at the haphazard pile of photographs, still holding the camera tucked against her breasts, afraid of dropping it. She sifted through the photographs, seeing the staring faces of the men that had swarmed the streets that terrible day, saw them clearly again on the paper, so clearly she could hear their shouts, smell their sweat, feel the rough cotton of their shirts as she’d tried to push past them to go back to the boarding house. Their faces stared out at her, stared past her at something she couldn’t see now, and she gasped at how real it all was, at the expressions on their faces, frozen there, caught in a moment that seemed to live on and on.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Clemency blew back into the room as though borne on the breeze from the open window, her head and body light and spinning with a wild excitement.
She stopped in front of Eliza who gazed at her with her wide blue eyes the colour of the summer sky. Clemency looked into them for a moment, and lost herself there, then blinked, pulled back, reeled in her own longings, and held the photograph out with a smile suddenly shy.
‘I snapped it when we met,’ she said. ‘You probably didn’t even know I did it.’ She glanced at the camera still in Eliza’s hand and nodded. ‘It’s a brilliant piece of engineering,’ she said, feeling her enthusiasms for her plans come back to her in a rush.
Eliza took the photograph and held it gingerly by the corner of the paper, squinting down at it, then, realising properly what it was, she huffed out a surprised breath and sank suddenly down on the stool that stood at the high table.
She put the camera on the table, but kept a hand curled protectively around it. She wanted to examine it.
In a moment.
The photograph stole her breath away and she leaned closer to it, laying it on the table and shaking her head over it, her eyes taking in every detail.
‘Do you like it?’ Clemency asked, twisting her hands around nervously. ‘I think it’s excellent. Your expression…’ She tailed off.
Eliza gave a tiny shake of the head and stared at the picture. She’d never seen herself anywhere but in a mirror, or reflected in window glass. She nudged the photograph with a finger. Was this how she looked?
Getting up, she swept her gaze around the room, didn’t find what she wanted, and frowned, looked through the door into the adjoining room. It was a bedroom and she pounced on the fact, picking up the picture of herself and all but running into the other room.
Clemency followed her, shaken by her response. ’Eliza?’ she asked. ‘What are you doing?’
But Eliza had found what she was looking for and stood in front of the mirror, holding the photograph up beside it and looking from it to her reflection. She shook her head, a bemused smile blooming on her face as she touched her own lips, cheekbones, put her fingers to her eyelids, brows, before turning to look at Clemency.
There were so many words inside her, tangled up, and she longed to be able to open her mouth and let them spill out – the questions, the observations, the delight, the confusion – all of it.
All of it.
But she could only shake her head. Moving past Clemency again, she snagged Clemency’s hand on the way by and almost dragged her back to the big table in the other room where she laid the photograph down again on the surface and stood gazing at it, shaking her head over and over.
Clemency’s mouth had dried, and her stomach soured, as though her earlier meal had turned to bile.
‘Don’t you like it?’ she asked. She wanted Eliza to like the photograph.
But Eliza lifted large eyes to Clemency and stopped shaking her head to nod vigorously instead. She placed a hand over her chest and breathed deeply in, closing her eyes, before opening them again and lifting both hands to press palms to temples, then lifting her hands in an arc out to the side, her lips parting in a smile.
Clemency’s limbs turned liquid with relief. ‘You’ve never seen a photograph of yourself?’ she asked.
No! Eliza shook her head again. No, no, and no. Never. She touched the image with her fingertip, gently, afraid of smudging it. Her mouth turned down and her shoulders r
ounded as she looked at it, then lifted her eyes to Clemency, her hand shaking at the thought that she’d been captured in such a moment, all her feelings there on her face, caught forever.
Clemency stood in the room, her hands by her side, watching Eliza, trying to read the thoughts that crossed her face.
Eliza was shaking her head again, thoughts spilling into her mind faster than she could take account of them. She nudged the photograph of herself to one side, then tugged forward the stack of others, the ones of the men that day.
Slowly, carefully, she looked through them again, one by one, taking her time, fascinated by their faces, by their expressions, frozen in the moment but still somehow, magically, alive. How was that possible? she wondered, glancing again at Clemency.
She paused over the ones taken of a group of women and bent closer over their worn and worried faces. And the women in the pictures spoke to her as she looked, and she heard their stories as she read their faces.
When she sat back up, Eliza was exhausted, despite the fire glowing in her eyes. Clemency saw it and touched her shoulder, smiling gently.
‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ she asked. ‘And something to eat?’
Eliza looked at her gratefully and nodded. Outside, the sun had moved farther along the sky and light slanted in the long window. She wondered how long she’d been sitting looking at the photographs and bit her lip, looking at Clemency.
But Clemency only smiled. She’d been more than content to watch Eliza sift through the photographs, examining every one of them. She’d almost passed her a magnifying glass, to see them all the better, but she’d not wanted to interrupt. She’d wanted too, to pick up the camera and take another series of photographs, seeing Eliza through the lens of her camera and capturing each play of expression across her face.
But she’d not done that either. ‘Shall I bring us something here, or would you like to come downstairs? We could sit in the garden, perhaps.’ A glance at the window. ‘It’s beautiful at this time of the year.’
