by Lisa Moore
It was a room that bullied you into hard work. Sitting in an uncomfortable ugly green chair, the cursor blinking on the blank page of her document, Cait felt the whole long history of British scholarship and the weight of its responsibility.
She had come to England to research the mercurial genius Dante Gabriel Rossetti, but had fallen under the spell of his melancholy mistress, Lizzie Siddal. Lizzie worked in a hat shop off Leicester Square when they met. Rossetti said she was his destiny, that they had been doomed lovers in a previous life. They read Tennyson out loud by candlelight and called each other Guggum.
Guggum. Cait said the word then couldn’t stop laughing. Every face in the reading room scowled in her direction.
Lizzie was a stunner and all the artists wanted her to model for their paintings. Her hair was long and loose, unlucky red.
Cait grew her own hair long. She let the natural waves come out, then pinned them all up away from her ears so they would cascade down late-nineteenth-century style. She grew fascinated by the word languorous, the way the vowels tumbled over each other, and repeated it to herself over and over.
Other words came back to her. She would wake up and her first thoughts would be in Tamil—the word for butterfly or blue materializing. She had once, as a child, been entirely fluent but now she could comprehend but not speak—remember, the word door, say, but never recall the verb to go. When Do spoke Tamil her voice jangled like bangles on a wrist. The language limped back to Cait, like an atrophied muscle reawakened after a coma.
When I came to London, a loaf of bread was five pence, Do said.
She arranged a plate and a water glass on a placemat as Cait pulled out a chair. Do sat across the table and watched Cait spoon dhal onto her plate. She made her dhal the way Cait liked it—thick and substantial, speckled with mustard seeds. The deal was room and half-board: breakfast and three curries for dinner. Cait never saw Do eat.
It was Friday, a vegetarian day. There were string hoppers and pol sambol made with fresh coconut that Cait had scraped that morning, one hand on the hairy brown shell and the other turning the crank, listening to the blades grate against the cored-out husk. She’d left the coconut halves on the counter, one on top of the other like helmets, and a mound of white flakes on a plate.
You moved to London alone? Cait asked.
Yes, yes, Do said. I knew only my husband.
So there had been a husband. Cait pulled apart the spiderweb hopper, gathering a little pile of stringy noodles, dhal, and sambol in one hand. Turmeric stained her fingers yellow. The first mouthful had a satisfying capsicum burn.
Do had a bottle of baby oil—Johnson & Johnson, clear with a pink cap. The top corner of the label had peeled away and folded in on itself. Do flicked the lid up with her thumb. She poured oil onto her palm then rubbed it into her hair, root to tip until it looked wet.
Selva was taking a chemistry degree, Do said. At the University of London, same place you’re studying. I was a young girl then, your age. I had never seen so many white people.
To Cait, London was not especially white-washed. It might have been Vancouver—full of dark faces, lidless almond eyes, accents from the farthest colonial outposts.
Did you meet your husband in Sri Lanka? Cait asked. She never saw Do knitting booties. No one phoned on Sundays.
Do sectioned her hair into thirds and began to form a plait. She said, Yes, in Ceylon, but he was already studying here by then. Selva was so intelligent. She did the side-to-side head bob thing Cait had never mastered. And handsome, Do said. All my sisters were jealous when he chose me. They were a little big made. Do puffed out her cheeks as she said this and Cait imagined three portly sisters, saris billowing on the couch. Like something out of Austen.
Do tied the end of her braid into a knot and tossed it over her shoulder. I was slim in those days, she said. And fair, like you.
This crazy obsession with light skin when they were naturally disposed to being dark! Cait was glad her mother didn’t go in for any of that nonsense. It is because you put cream on your face, Do liked to say. Cait didn’t tell her the “cream” was foundation.
Do stood up. Tomorrow, I’ll make kothu. She stroked Cait’s hair as she left the table. Cait closed her eyes and felt the pressure of Do’s hand on the back of her head. She missed her mother. Take some more, Do said. Sappida. Eat.
How come we never speak Tamil? Cait asked her father that night, during a rare transatlantic call.
Because we’re Canadian, he said. If you want, we can speak in French.
My Tamil is an embarrassment, her mother said, on the other extension. It’s been too long.
This from the woman who had never bothered to learn the word broom and instead called it a sweeper.
They wanted to know about her cousin. Have you seen Nisha yet?
Ask me in Tamil, Cait said.
You’ve gone to England to become more Sri Lankan, her father said. Watch you don’t pick up the wrong accent.
Cait held the phone away from her ear. Her father still thought of overseas calls as happening in 1977.
The carpet was being replaced and Cait was stuck in the flat, listening to the builders bang about, because Do was terrified of being alone with them.
But I’m a stranger too, Cait wanted to say. You let strangers sleep in your room!
Imagine living your whole life as if one’s neighbours were foreigners.
Cait’s desk was covered in photocopies, hardcovers, and open notebooks. She was hunched over an exhibition guide she had borrowed from the museum, glossy pages bearing full-colour reproductions of Pre-Raphaelite paintings.
Lizzie had modelled for Ophelia. She’d floated, uncomplaining, in a tub of ice-cold water then caught pneumonia. Eyes half-closed, lips slightly parted, hands held out, Lizzie’s Ophelia was ethereal, a suicidal martyr.
Do’s head materialized in the doorway. She wore a cotton sari and a coat over top. Her blinding white trainers were already laced up. She made a furtive gesture, palm down, fingers pulling at the air in two quick scoops. Come, come, she said.
The drills and hammers were going hard in the lounge. A giant plastic sheet hung in front of the closed door. Cait and Do stood whispering in the hallway.
What’s wrong? Cait asked.
I’m going to Sainsbury’s, Do said. Stay here and watch them.
Here? Cait thought. In the hallway, like a spy?
She’d answered the doorbell that morning, Do cowering behind. There were two men in blue-jean coveralls. They brought their lunches in organ transplant cooler boxes and asked if it would be okay to use the microwave later.
What am I watching for? Cait asked.
Make sure they don’t get up to any funny business, Do said, reaching for her grocery cart.
After Do left, Cait thought she had better offer the men some tea. They asked for PG Tips with plenty of milk.
Cait leaned against the kitchen counter and read while she waited for the water to boil. Rossetti couldn’t bear the thought of sharing, so Lizzie began to model for him exclusively. He was the first to recognize her talent and took her on as a pupil.
The grout between the countertop tiles was crumbled with morning toast. Cait rolled a finger over a bit of rye and flattened the book covers down with her elbow as she read.
When Lizzie’s paintings didn’t sell, Rossetti wrote limericks to cheer her up, rhyming her name with tizzy and frizzy. Cait’s lips sounded out the poems mutely. She felt maternal and fond.
The phone in the kitchen was fire-engine red with a kinked up cord and a rotary dial face. Its high-pitched ringtone startled her, annoyed, out of the nineteenth century.
A man asked for Do. He called her Mrs. Selvarajah. At first Cait thought the caller was her father but then the disembodied voice demanded:Who are you?
Hey! Cait said.You’re the one who called here. She felt bold, on the safe end of the theatre-prop telephone.
May I ask when she’s due back? he said, at once haughty a
nd polite.
Cait tried to match a face to the diluted, familiar accent. Leave your name and I’ll tell her you rang, she said.
Water bubbled in the window of the plastic plug-in kettle. Steam rose from the spout.
Is she coming home today?
That’s none of your business! Cait slammed the receiver onto the cradle.
She brought the builders their tea and tried to make small talk but they had impossible Geordie accents and all she could think about was double-checking the locks. Who did that rude caller think he was—asking such intrusive questions?
By the time Do came home, the men were grunting in the bathroom. She hovered in Cait’s doorway with her hands on her head.
Aiyo! she said. Big noise!
Cait had decided there was no point telling Do about the call. It was probably a telemarketer. She felt chagrined now by her overreaction and regretted the melodramatic hang-up.
She raised her voice over the hammers: No funny business. She waited, then added, Come in.
An eight-by-eleven print was propped against the wall, one of Lizzie’s watercolours that Cait had found in a charity shop for fifty pence. Do picked it up, holding the bottom corner with a thumb and index finger. The paper was stiff; it held itself up.
A group of women and children huddled together on the beach, watching for a ship that would never come. The painting had a smudged quality, as if coloured in with pastels.
It’s called The Ladies’ Lament. Cait pointed.That’s the artist.
Lizzie had painted herself as the only standing figure, upright and stiff, braced for impact.
It is a true story? Do asked.
It’s based on a ballad about a shipwreck. This is the moment the women realize what’s happened.
So sad. Do’s glasses hung from a string around her neck. When she put them on, they sat huge and plastic, dwarfing her whole face. Do said, Their husbands are not coming back. She nodded to herself.
Do’s nails were jagged, in need of a trim. The hand holding the print was arthritic and claw-like.This lady artist, she said. Was she very famous?
Not for her art. She died pretty young.
Do tilted her head left and right, peering at the image from different angles. Cait waited.
I was also young when I lost my husband, Do said.
Somehow Cait had already known this. Whenever she pictured Selva, he was always in his twenties. Shy and studious, he wore his hair parted down the middle and had John Lennon glasses.
He was taken from me, Do said. As if Shiva or a demon had absconded with him in the night.
Cait imagined him walking in the front door with daisies in cellophane. He hugged his bride from behind as she washed the dishes.
From down the hall, the builders conferred with each other in shouts. The drill was a shrieking banshee. Cait pictured a white van clipping a corner, Selva looking left instead of right.
Well I think it was brave of you to stay, Cait said. If it was me, I’d have packed it in and gone straight home.
Do took off her glasses. She put the print down and turned away from the desk. What to do? I chose England. Only option was to stay.
Do had a subscription to News of theWorld.
They found that poor girl’s body, she said. Aiyo!
Cait poured boiling water into the Bodum. She watched steam settle against the glass. Coffee grounds hurricaned around her spoon. Do sat at the table with the tabloid spread out in front of her. She followed the newsprint with a crooked finger.
Cait pressed the plunger down, trapping the coffee grounds, and made a non-committal noise.
That child from Oxfordshire, Do said. They found her in the woods. No clothes. Rape.
There was something unseemly about hearing the word rape come out of Do’s mouth. Like seeing one’s grandmother naked.
Cait twisted the cap on her travel mug. Okay, Auntie. I’m off.
Do looked up. Without eating?
I had toast.
Do held a banana by the stem and said, Take it. She followed Cait into the hallway, the open newspaper hiding half her body, and read: Identification was made using dental records. The body was found five miles from the family’s home in Headington.
Cait bent to zip up her boots. Auntie, she said. I’m going to be late.
Be careful, Do said. Stay on the main road. Don’t go in all these lonely, lonely alleys. Don’t take short cuts, especially at night. Not safe in this city.
Waiting at the crosswalk, Cait felt the trains vibrating under her feet. Her head was full of dental records; corpses lurked, decomposing and naked, in autumn leaves. No wonder Do was terrified of strangers. She spent her whole life peering through peep holes and keeping vigil between curtains.
What are you looking at? Cait had once asked.
Nothing. Just to make sure.
Make sure of what? Cait wondered. Do’s behaviour reminded Cait of an old family pet—a neurotic Jack Russell with the pretensions of a guard dog, all fifteen pounds at the ready to bark with moral indignation at unsuspecting cats and joggers.
On Fulham Road, Cait thought about Lizzie passing under the same awnings, past the same brown brick facades. The sky hung low and close, a milky white. Fried batter wafted out of the chippy. Lizzie’s London would have smelled like effluent and industry, chimneys belching coal smoke, the air thick as pea soup.
Cait walked behind a trio—a tall man with a pony tail and two little girls in navy pinafores and matching rucksacks. She glanced down as she stepped off the curb. Lizzie would have done the same and also raised her skirts. In Southwark, where Lizzie grew up, tailings from the butcher ran bloody over the paving stones. As a child she was doted on by a neighbour called Greenacre, a giant of a man who hoisted her up on his shoulders and sang as he ferried her across the filthy streets.
Cait’s supervisor was not happy about the direction of her research. Siddal only sold one painting, he’d said at their last meeting.There’s very little scholarship.
All the more reason to research her, Cait said.
Humphreys had to be closing in on seventy. He removed his spectacles and rubbed his small, mole eyes. It’s only an MA, he had said. Don’t be a hero.
In movies, the heroine moves to a new place and is immediately recruited into a circle of quirky locals. Cait sat in lectures, surrounded by cliques that seemed to have arrived ready-made, as if there was a secret friend lottery she’d neglected to put her name in.
Cait sidestepped a homeless man with a Brillo-pad beard hawking a Big Issue. Offal trailed out of a rubbish bin. Homesickness was a palpable thing. It had the texture of failure.
Greenacre was hung for killing his fiancée. He hid her body parts all over London, a scavenger hunt for the police. The story made Lizzie morbid. Years later, she would ruminate on the sordid details, how he had sawn off the woman’s arms and legs before he killed her. How all this had happened steps from her home, while Lizzie and her sisters gossiped and darned stockings.
At the Hole in the Wall, Cait glanced around quickly before cupping a hand over the keypad. Do’s voice in her ear: They found her in the woods. No clothes. Rape.The machine beeped and her bank card slid out of the slit like a mocking tongue. A body sidled up, warm and foreign. Cait screamed, a harsh, ungainly sound, and spun around, clutching her card and a fist of twenty-pound notes. She looked down and saw a gypsy girl, her dirty brown hand held out. The stranger looked terrified. She couldn’t have been more than nine. Cait pressed a twenty into the girl’s hands and stammered:You shouldn’t…heart attack…
As she hurried toward the Tube station, she passed the father and his twin daughters. The girls were giggling.
Minor surgery was all Do would say. Varicose veins, Cait privately guessed. Appendix? Do walked in and out of rooms, picking up items, putting them down. She straightened the tablecloth, closed the curtain in the lounge, opened it again. She would be in hospital for the weekend. Just a small, small operation, she said, buttoning up her coat.<
br />
A biopsy, Cait thought. Her favourite uncle had had a biopsy once. They buried him six months later.
Ah! I’ve forgotten my baby oil, Do said.
It was half six and Cait’s cousin Nisha was arriving from Bristol in an hour. They were spending the weekend together and had the flat to themselves.
Cait picked up Do’s carpetbag. Why don’t I go with you, Auntie?
The hospital smelled of sickness and bleach. Cait stood in the hallway, watching a porter roll an empty wheelchair. At the nurses’ station, a doctor in a white coat stood with her hands on the small of her back, leaning on her heels, and said, Phillipa, how is Mrs. Murphy’s BP this evening? Her accent was like shards of glass.
For ten years, Rossetti courted her, inconstant, and Lizzie grew wan with waiting, a tight coil of suspicion whenever he was out of sight. She refused to eat, made herself sick, and he would abandon everything—paid commissions, other women, his father’s funeral—when summoned to her bedside. At Hastings, at Bath, at Sheffield, he thought he would lose her, again and again.
The surgeon patted Cait’s shoulder when he came out of Do’s room. Gall bladder removal, he said. Routine surgery. No reason at all for your granny to worry.
Okay, Cait said. Thank you.
Her relief was deflating. Typical Do: brewing tempests in tea cups.
Do sat up in bed with the sheets tucked around her. She wore a cotton nightgown and her jumper on top. She looked odd and out of place surrounded by an unhooked IV stand and silent heart monitor.
Do you want your cross-stitch? Cait asked.
Do’s bag sat unopened on a visitor’s chair. Her purse was on the moveable table where her meals would be laid out in their divided plastic containers.
No, no. Nothing. Do turned her hands around each other, as if she was cold. They made a swish, swish sound.
Cait wondered if she should move the bag and sit down, then decided if she did that, she’d never get out.
What time is the surgery? she asked.
Seven in the morning. So early. So early.
You should sleep, Cait said.
