by Emma Morgan
When she saw the woman sitting on a low wall by the bus stop near the park reading, Grace had been thinking about her so much that she almost didn’t recognize her. Grace felt slightly disappointed – she was still beautiful but she looked like the ‘making of’ documentary rather than the film itself. But maybe, thought Grace, this might be a good thing, and it allowed her to stop her car a hundred metres down the road and park. Before she could think about it too much she took a deep breath and walked back to the woman, although the temptation to pretend she hadn’t seen her and hurry past turning her collar up like an undercover detective was strong.
‘Hello,’ Grace said, which seemed a normal sort of opener. What should she do with her hands? She put them in her pockets like a guilty schoolboy. There was sweat starting on her lower back under her jeans and more on her upper lip and her pulse was accelerating. This was strange. She was used to getting to know strangers and finding out their darkest secrets. Why should talking to this person on an ordinary street on an ordinary day make her anxious? And yet, if this was so very ordinary, why hadn’t she told her sisters about this woman as she always did about anyone who was interesting.
‘Hi,’ the woman said, barely glancing up.
‘I met you at Dolores’s party the other day,’ Grace said.
The woman had long earrings on again, this time with tiny silver beads at the ends. Grace wanted a gust of wind to make them swing.
‘I don’t remember,’ the woman said. She was chewing gum. Grace hated gum.
‘The party or me?’
There was no smile from the woman.
‘You. I remember the party,’ she said and kept on reading.
Grace was perturbed by her bluntness. She couldn’t think of anything else to say for a while, so she stood there waiting for the woman to say something herself; but this tactic failed because she didn’t seem bothered by the silence, she never even looked up. Grace, after some mental floundering, eventually managed, ‘How’s the book?’ And she pointed at it as though they were in a bookshop and she had to distinguish it from all the others.
The woman finally looked at her properly. She had barely-there plucked eyebrows and Grace wanted to trace them with her fingers. She had a wide mouth and Grace wanted to reach forward and place her own mouth on it to see if they fitted together. Once again, she had to put her hands behind her back to stop herself reaching out. Why did she want to touch this woman so much? She didn’t even know her name and yet she wanted to stroke her wrists and the undersides of her arms. She wanted to put her head into the crook of the woman’s neck and her mouth on her clavicle. She didn’t normally like tall blondes who looked vaguely Swedish. She went for the short and dark. And yet she felt as giddy as if she had just stumbled off the dodgems at a fairground.
‘Do you read much?’ said the woman, and Grace tried to remember how to speak.
‘Is it a novel? I don’t read them much. I mean I do like to read what I do read but I don’t read novels. I like to read what I do read though.’ If she had had an available hard surface to knock her inarticulate brain against she would have.
‘That’s a shame,’ the woman said, and finally looked at Grace as though she was a human entity and not a piece of litter.
‘Is it?’ Grace asked, delighted that she’d got a response.
‘Yes, I think so. Novels are realer than non-fiction, I think. I like reading about other people’s ideas, all these strange ideas that then become your own. And later you can’t remember where you got them from or if they’re yours or not because everything gets all muddled up in your head.’
‘It sounds confusing,’ said Grace. It was approaching a conversation!
‘I think it’s magical,’ said the woman.
‘You’re very convincing,’ Grace said, although she wasn’t sure if she was because she was too busy looking at her to listen properly. ‘Perhaps I should try reading some novels.’
‘I’ll lend you this when I’ve finished if you want. It’s the umpteenth time I’ve read it but I can’t give it to you now, I’ve got to get to the end.’
Was this a real offer? wondered Grace. Does it mean she wants to see me again?
‘I’ve never read anything twice. Don’t you get bored?’
‘No. Never. It’s my favourite book.’
And then, just when Grace thought the woman might be interested in what they were talking about, she went back to her book as if Grace was no longer there in front of her. Grace didn’t know what to do now. She didn’t want the conversation to end, although it hardly classed as a conversation, more an awkwardness. She wasn’t ready to give up yet, though. I have social skills, she thought. I have social skills.
‘What’s it called then? The book?’ she asked.
‘The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera,’ and the woman showed her the front of the book, perhaps to test if it was true that Grace did know how to read.
‘He sounds Italian. Or Indian.’
‘He was born Czech but then he moved to France.’
‘Right.’
The woman started reading again. Grace found that she was standing on only one leg. She put her foot down.
‘Are you waiting for somebody or are you getting the bus?’ she said.
‘Neither.’
The woman didn’t look at her and Grace gave up.
‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt. Bye.’
‘Bye,’ said the woman with no enthusiasm.
Grace turned away thinking, I am a mature individual, I am not a teenager, so this cannot be a crush. This is not an embarrassing incident but a case of an unfriendly and borderline rude person who it is better I have nothing to do with. I have a job and a house and admittedly my life assurance is in favour of my sisters because I don’t have anyone else to leave my life to but that does not make me an altogether pathetic person, just a sensible one. I am too old for this crap. She started off back to her car in her walk of shame, timing her steps to the refrain of the rejected, the stupid, the sad – idiot, idiot, I’m an idiot. She wasn’t used to being rejected, let alone being rejected twice. Why had she tried again?
‘What’s your name?’ the woman shouted after her.
Grace turned around.
‘Grace.’
‘What?’
‘Grace!’
‘Where are you going?’
‘I was going to go home but I’ve just remembered my library books are overdue and I’ve lost my password and so I’ve got to go to the library. Do you want to come?’
It was a response she made without thinking. Dear God. Had any human being ever uttered such sad sentences? I am an altogether pathetic person and I never knew it, she thought.
‘Sure,’ the woman said, and jumped off the wall and came towards her.
‘I was going to go to the library, I didn’t make it up,’ said Grace to the woman as they sat on the sofa in the front of the tattoo parlour. There was a strong smell of antiseptic which Grace found extremely worrying because it was what she imagined an operating theatre might smell like. She envisioned the back room as mortuary clean and filled with sharp stainless steel implements like a serial killer’s preparation room and she shuddered. It wasn’t a good sign either that the shop went by the name of ‘House of Pain’. She didn’t consider it a good moment to be ironic. Although it probably wasn’t ironic at all.
‘And I thought you didn’t read,’ said the woman.
‘I didn’t say that,’ said Grace. ‘I read a lot for work.’
Grace waited for the woman to ask her about her job, which Grace was looking forward to because she always felt pride when she said her job title, even though she considered this vain.
‘I think you should get your ears pierced,’ said the woman.
‘Are you joking?’ asked Grace, and thought you must not know me at all and then remembered that the woman didn’t know her at all and what is more who was this woman anyway? She could just be someone paid to lure the innoce
nt into tattoo parlours and before you knew it you’d spent five hundred quid on having the Taj Mahal drilled into your back. It was a clever ruse, it had seemed such a casual decision on the woman’s part. Grace couldn’t decide if this place was interesting because it was unusual to her and because it would make a good story to tell her sisters or just frightening because of the possibility of serious mutilation involved. She remembered something she had read somewhere about people who got themselves ‘branded’ and felt sick.
‘No, I think it would look nice, you’ve got pretty ears,’ said the woman.
She leaned forward and gently pinched Grace’s left ear between finger and thumb in the place where an earring would go, and Grace felt a shock that went all the way through her ear and then her head and then straight down her neck and down through her spine, as if she had been in contact with an electric fence. Bazam! Like the time she had walked into one aged twelve, while putting the horses in the paddock, having forgotten it was on. Then the woman let go of her ear and returned to the plastic file of tattoo designs. Grace checked her ear was still attached to her head and edged away from the woman because it suddenly felt too dangerous to be near her. What if she touched her knee or her arm? Would there be an electric chair jolt? The woman didn’t seem to notice the effect she had had. She was flicking through the file.
‘A mermaid?’ she asked Grace, and Grace looked at the picture of a mermaid with enormous blue breasts to distract herself.
It was probably a good thing that the tattooist came out of the back at that moment because Grace had the urge to say something inappropriate about breasts, something seaside postcard smutty, to cover her discomfort. He looked like a tattooist should look – wiry, with plates in his ears and a vest that revealed his full sleeves of black skulls and crossbones to match the sofa. He was wearing shorts and up his legs the tattoos of mastiffs growled. Grace became acutely aware that she was wearing a raincoat from M&S. She wanted to tell him that she had, at least once, bought a drug, even if it had turned out to be oregano.
‘What can I do you ladies for?’ he said. ‘I’ve got a good two for one offer you should take advantage of.’
‘Only my nose pierced,’ said the woman, putting the file on the table. Grace was relieved in case the woman had decided to go for something more extreme and she might have been asked to watch.
‘Sure?’ said the man, looking put out. ‘I’ve got lovely flash. Have you looked at it all properly?’ And he picked up the file and started to flap through it. ‘Look at that one,’ he said, pointing at a picture of a boa constrictor eating a naked woman with enormous breasts. ‘That would look great on your arm.’
‘Just my nose,’ said the woman.
‘And what about you then, lady?’ said the tattooist to Grace.
‘My ears,’ said Grace. She was extremely surprised at herself – she had never considered having them pierced before. The tattooist seemed disappointed and Grace wanted to take back her request. What if he avenged himself on her by doing it wrong? What if she ended up deformed?
‘Gun or needle?’ he asked with a sigh.
‘Neither of those sounds like a good choice,’ Grace said.
‘It hardly hurts,’ said the woman. ‘It’ll be over in a second.’
‘Gun then,’ said the tattooist. ‘Marginally quicker. Come on, your friend can watch if she likes.’ And he walked towards the back room.
The woman stood up and Grace stood up too. What on earth am I doing, she thought, and went with them as reluctantly as she would have entered a slaughterhouse.
Grace thought that the woman looked even more beautiful with her nose pierced, as though she might right now spread her arms like an Indian goddess. She stared at her own strange reflection in the tattooist’s window and twiddled the small gold studs. It had hurt but not as much as she thought it was going to; at least, as they had told her, it had been quick. Now she would ask this woman out because this could hardly count as a date, could it?
‘It hurts,’ she said to the woman.
‘It’ll get better. Don’t mess around with them too much. They’ll heal soon and then you can wear nice earrings. I’ll give you some of mine. Got to go,’ said the woman. ‘It was good to meet you, Grace. See you later.’
She walked away from Grace, who was too slow to think about what was happening because she was thinking about the earrings offer and how the woman seemed to want to share her things. Was this kindness or was it a casual approach to personal objects? Coming from a house where the detritus of centuries accumulated, she had always been reluctant to part with things. She was a hoarder by nature. What was the opposite of hoarder? Discarder?
‘Oh,’ she said, coming out of her reverie and looking at the woman’s disappearing back. She was out of earshot and Grace had forgotten to ask for anything – name, phone number, where she lived, let alone a date. She didn’t want to run after her and so she stood still, once again close to embarrassing and unaccustomed tears, trying not to fiddle with her sore red ears.
This is Violet and the wandering about
In Violet’s knicker drawer, there were tucked eight pairs of vintage evening gloves. She had considered careers where they might come in useful. Torch singer. Hollywood starlet. Debutante. Unfortunately, none of these ever seemed to be advertised anywhere. Violet realized that she might well be many years out of date but she lived in hope that one day, if she ate all her vegetables, she would metamorphosize overnight into Rita Hayworth and then the gloves would be useful for her seductive piano-draping diva act. We all have dreams.
She had managed to get up and get dressed in leggings and an odd dress made out of blue felt, and she had eaten breakfast and washed her face and brushed her teeth and she felt a sense of achievement. Perhaps if she did things quickly enough ‘the fear’ wouldn’t be able to catch up with her. She went to buy gloves because it was a relief to do something that was easy and because the shop was near enough to the flat to be able to scurry to it with her head down and her hood up. That way she could pretend she wasn’t outside. It was the first time that she had left the house for a week. As she went down the road she rubbed her hand against the mossy wall to the side of her. Perhaps this had been a good decision. At least it was a start.
The glove shop sold vintage clothes too, mostly fifties stuff. Annie took her there the first time because she liked the clothes, although she was often too big for them, as most fifties clothes turned out to be surprisingly small.
Vera, who ran the shop, must have been in her sixties, and she dressed in her own stock, sporting pastel blue, moth-eaten twin sets with one button missing and stained yellow chiffon ball gowns. Since Violet was a regular, she made her Assam in a chipped bone china cup and saucer and told her about her youth. It always cheered Violet up to hear about youths.
‘And to think what we used to get up to. We used oil for tanning, actual oil. We were one step away from basting ourselves in lard. To think about it now. It’s a wonder we didn’t burn to a crisp. Never mind the cancerous implications.’
And her faded blue eyes shone.
Violet, as far as Annie was concerned, had no friends at all other than her but that was not how Violet saw it at all. She regarded her many older lady acquaintances as her friends and yes, her choices were a bit random and you couldn’t say that she was really close to any one of them, but so what? They were the only people she didn’t mind talking to apart from Annie. There was Vera and there was Mavis from the dry cleaner’s and Monica and Lorna in the hairdresser’s. The checkout ladies in the supermarket and the lady who smelt of soup in Oxfam. It seemed to her that a ‘friend’ was whoever you decided it to be and that Annie’s categorizations were much too stringent. True, she never went anywhere with them or visited their houses but she knew all about Lorna’s impetigo and the soup lady’s love of the later works of Trollope. Wasn’t that enough?
Vera patted her hand and said, ‘You’re looking peaky today. What you need is a chocolate bourbon,’
and went off into the back to fetch one. After Violet had eaten her biscuit and made use of a wet wipe that Vera had thoughtfully provided, she was very pleased to buy a pair of grey satin opera gloves with buttons all the way up that reached to her armpits, having been made to be elbow length for an average sized person. They cost twenty pounds even with her loyalty discount, which was pretty much all the money she had in the world apart from the change jar at home, but she felt better for her purchase, more solid and better able to deal with whatever life might throw at her outside the shop. Now she was protected. She put on the gloves, pushing them under her coat sleeves, and liked the contrast between the wool and the satin. She left the shop and stood on the pavement with her back to the wall and thought about what to do next.
Violet liked to do a lot of what Annie referred to as ‘aimless wandering about’. She liked to sit on benches or in the windows of cafés eating chocolate cupcakes and watch people go about their business. She had a small black notebook with thick white paper, in which she drew miniature interpretations of things she had seen – moustaches, leaves, shoes, noses, dogs, lamp-posts, coffee cups and manhole covers. She liked to look at things that nobody else seemed to be paying much attention to. Along with Annie these were the things that kept her in the world. She was often jealous of dog owners and the purpose that dogs gave to their days; she considered dog-napping, which, apparently, could be a lucrative business. There was one borzoi that she had her eye on but Annie would pass out if she brought it home because she thought dogs were unhygienic. She liked to make up names for the dogs too. Leon the bulldog with the white back, like the hitman in the film of the same name. That hideous drooling pug she had named Milly Molly Mandy after a childhood book she had particularly hated.
