Shape-Shifter

by Pauline Melville

  ‘She don’t want all those, silly,’ said Pistol-Man. He opened the wardrobe. Inside were half a drum-kit and a battered electric guitar. ‘Those are my instruments,’ he said proudly. ‘I’ll show you my room.’

  The three of them peeked into his room. Vera was made shy by the sight of his double bed, neatly made up with a plain coverlet. She glanced quickly round. On a shelf was another photograph of Avalon with two schoolfriends. There was not much else in the room. She backed out. They returned to the living-room.

  ‘I’ve got to go now,’ she said.

  ‘You’re shooting off then,’ said Pistol-Man. In his eagerness to do what she wanted he almost ran her out of the front door.

  ‘Call in any time you want,’ he said. ‘We’re always in from about six o’clock. Thanks again for the lift.’

  ‘Bye … Bye,’ said Avalon.

  Vera waved goodbye. It had stopped raining. As she drove through the cramped streets an immense and irreparable sense of loss overwhelmed her for the island where she had once lived with its whispering seas and the sound of women’s voices in the soft night air, dripping slowly and unevenly like molasses; for the people she had once known.

  Back in his flat, Pistol-Man slapped himself on the forehead:

  ‘Oh no! I forgot to ask her her name.’ Avalon pulled a face of commiseration. ‘Not that it matters.’ Pistol-Man no longer thought about women because of his dedication to the boy.

  ‘Did you like her?’ asked Pistol-Man. Avalon, his eyes shining, put his hands on his lips and then on his heart. He went back to his drawing on the floor. Pistol-Man sat on the settee and opened another can of lager. He felt good. He felt warm inside. Tomorrow, he decided, he would hoover the carpet and give the whole place a good clean-up. What luck, he thought, to get a lift home on a wet afternoon like that.

  Suddenly, he leant forward and grasped his son by the arm to attract his attention. He spoke in sign language only:

  ‘You see!’ he said to the child who looked intently at him. ‘Good things do happen.’

  About that Two Pounds, Mrs Parrish

  WHEN LILY JOHNSON OPENED HER FRONT DOOR, the woman on the doorstep was already smiling at her. The stranger’s eyes, set deep in a broad forehead, made Lily uncomfortable. They looked at her too directly. Altogether, the woman looked like a brown plant that had sprung up on her doorstep. A stained, fawn mackintosh hung loose, half-covering some dun-coloured slacks and an old, yellowish sweater. At her side stood a child with orange hair and green eyes who looked as if he had been fed on too much milk. From her accent, Lily knew the woman was posh.

  Across the street, Mrs O’Sullivan stood staring at the two women on Lily’s doorstep, her head cocked to one side. Two weeks ago when Lily and her husband rented the house opposite, Mrs O’Sullivan had been the first to call, offering assistance, dropping packages, her brown eyes anxious and curious, her cheap purple coat flapping open, her lop-sided features in a permanent gawp. Since then, Lily had seen her several times in the street, swaying from side to side as she walked, as if she were trying to catch somebody’s scent. Now, Lily’s attention was distracted from the well-spoken stranger because, over the woman’s shoulder, she could see Mrs O’Sullivan staring at them. She leaned sideways and gave Mrs O’Sullivan a small wave to indicate that she had caught her spying. As if released from a spell, Mrs O’Sullivan resumed motion, picked up a bottle of milk from the doorstep and retreated inside her terraced house.

  ‘So, if you’d like to bring her up to play …’ The woman was inviting Lily to bring her daughter, Gloria, to play with the orange-haired boy. They lived in the big white house on the corner. The boy stared down the street as if none of this had anything to do with him.

  ‘That’s so kind.’ Lily was flustered. ‘I’ll fetch her up later.’

  Blasted nuisance, thought Lily as she shut the door. She picked her way past the tea-chests in the dark passage and went into the back room that adjoined the tiny, cold scullery. In the back parlour, her sister Ruby’s broad frame balanced skew-whiff on the window-sill, arms outstretched as if to a sun-god. Between her hands drooped a tape measure.

  ‘Well, whadderyerknow.’ Lily whispered as if the visitor could still hear them. ‘That was the woman from the white house. What a sight! You’d never think she was a doctor’s wife in a million years. At least, that Irish woman over the road told me the house on the corner was a doctor’s house. Dirty old trousers she had on.’

  ‘Ooooooooer.’ Ruby shifted her weight to reach the other side of the window frame. The garish colours and unmatching patterns of her blouse and skirt zigzagged and clashed like tropical fish fighting in an aquarium. A petticoat hung way below her cotton skirt. Lily observed it critically:

  ‘That petticoat needs shortening.’

  Lily sat at the table. She wore a floral, crepe frock and old white sandals. Her dark hair was pinned in sausage curls round her head and held in place by a hairnet. Hooded lids drooped over eyes the same colour as the irises in the back yard. She picked out a pea with a maggot in it from the basin and tossed it in the paper bag with the rest of the pods. It annoyed her that Ruby was not that impressed by the caller:

  ‘Mind you, she had a lovely way of talking. I’ll bet their place is nice inside.’ Her eyes screwed up with cunning. ‘I think I will pop up later and ‘ave a snoop.’

  Ruby tried to disregard her sister’s snobbery. Lily was the only one of the family with pretensions. When the others teased her about it she would turn and retort, ‘You can always stoop and pick up nuffin!’

  ‘Toreador, bom bom ti bom ti bom,’ Ruby sang in tune with the radio as she lowered her bulk to the ground. ‘That’s that done!’ She sat in the low chair beneath the window, sipping at her lukewarm tea, trying to judge how much weight Lily had lost since the operation. Her sister’s skin looked clear but pale:

  ‘Lily’s a good name for you. You look like a bloody lily.’

  ‘Don’t be so daft.’ Lily threw a scornful look at her sister. ‘And I’m not having you come over here day after day unless you let me give you your fares.’

  ‘Don’t be so barmy. It’s only a couple of bob. What’s a couple of bob?’

  ‘It’s a couple of bob,’ said Lily firmly. She reached in her bag and took out the rough leather purse she’d made at evening classes. The teacher had cut out the shape and punched the holes in it and Lily had bound it together with brown plastic. Then the teacher had stamped the stud on the front. Lily took from it a two shilling piece. She placed it on the table as though she were making a careful chess move.

  ‘Put that back. What are sisters for if they can’t help each other out?’ said Ruby.

  Lily returned the money to her purse:

  ‘What in God’s world would I do without you, Ruby?’ She studied the floor. ‘What do you think of this lino? I dunno if I’m struck. D’you think he’ll mind it being red?’

  Ruby was putting on her make-up without looking in a mirror. She imagined where her eyebrows used to be – in much the same place as Marlene Dietrich’s – and then ran the eyebrow pencil over her forehead. She guessed roughly where her lips were, wielding the lipstick in close approximation to their shape and patted her face with a powder puff until the powder drifted into orange sand-dunes beneath her cheek bones.

  Four weeks earlier, Lily had been in hospital with peritonitis. She examined her arms:

  ‘I’ve got thin everywhere except these bloody arms. A horse would be proud of one of these arms for a leg. Wish I had refined arms.’

  The back door rattled. The sisters semaphored surprise to each other with their eyebrows and mouths.

  ‘That’s never school over, is it?’ asked Lily.

  Gloria hopped up the steps from the scullery into the back parlour. One plait was coming undone and she had the remains of a black eye from fighting with the dentist to stop the gas mask being put over her face. Ruby held out her arms like a colourful parrot and Gloria swooped into them, breathing in a cloud
of Devonshire Violet talcum powder. Aunty Ruby felt like a marshmallow.

  ‘Don’t take that coat off,’ said Lily. ‘You’re going to play with someone up the road.’

  ‘But I wanna stick me transfers on me arm.’ Gloria jutted out her pale, fierce little face.

  ‘You can do that after.’ Lily held the hairpins in her mouth as she fastened a loose strand of hair. Ruby glanced in the mirror to fix her felt hat at a more jaunty angle. As the two sisters and the child sauntered up the hill, Mrs O’Sullivan’s curtain moved.

  The inside of the doctor’s house astonished Lily. The floor of the large, airy living room was bare – dark, polished wooden boards. French windows looked out onto a long, unkempt garden. Half-way down the room was a baby grand piano and in the corner stood a display cabinet full of red, black and gold-patterned chinaware. There were no ornaments on the mantelpiece. There were no curtains at the windows. The only furniture in the room was a down-at-heel settee and an ancient, ungainly armchair. Lily stood in the centre of the room. The spaciousness of it made her feel agoraphobic. The room was too full of light. She became self-conscious. Her recent visitor leaned with her back to the fireplace, heels resting on the fireguard. Lily noticed that she wore plimsolls. But they must have money, thought Lily. It all seemed peculiar. She had thought there would be carpets.

  Perched on the edge of the settee was another woman, a woman who seemed altogether a more suitable occupant for a doctor’s house. Mrs Parrish. Mrs Parrish stirred a cup of tea with a small silver spoon. Immediately, Lily was reminded of the Duchess of Windsor. Her silhouette was etched sharply against the light from the French windows. On her head was a neat, black hat with a spotted veil. Protruding from one side of the hat was a piece of stiffened felt the shape of a crow’s tail feathers. Immaculate was the word that came to Lily’s mind as they were introduced.

  ‘Does your husband have his surgery in this house?’ Lily enquired politely.

  ‘Oh, I’m the doctor,’ laughed the woman, still ih her brown raincoat.

  Lily suffered an attack of violent social vertigo. What a blunder. But how on earth was she supposed to know? – the blasted woman dressed as though she kept chickens. The colour rose in Lily’s cheeks. Dr Bartholomew, as she had turned out to be, appeared not to notice.

  ‘In fact, Mrs Parrish’s husband and I were medical students together. He has a surgery further up the hill. I work in the Public Health department.’

  ‘How nice it must be to have brains,’ stammered Lily.

  Mrs Parrish had turned her head and was smiling at her. Her cheeks were puffy. For a second she reminded Lily of a python.

  Outside in the garden, the orange-haired boy had been transformed into a maniac. He had Gloria pinned to the wall with a piece of fence beneath her ribs and was pushing as hard as he could with a fixed grimace. They both were silent. When she could barely breathe, Gloria spoke:

  ‘My dad is secetary to the Queen.’

  The boy suddenly dropped the piece of fence and stomped off down the path, awkwardly as if he was wearing frogman’s flippers, yelling, ‘YAH. YAH. YAH. YAH.’

  Dr Bartholomew looked at her watch: ‘I have to leave for a Labour Party meeting.’

  Every turn of the conversation left Lily more confused. Now the posh-sounding doctor appeared to be a supporter of the working man. Lily thanked God that she had had peritonitis. At least that was something medical to talk about, although Mrs Parrish, an obviously superior woman, had topped her by having had cancer and a miracle cure.

  Lily’s head was buzzing as she and Gloria walked home. Dr Bartholomew’s deep inset eyes reminded Lily of the green Mikon Man in Gloria’s comic books. Perhaps she was in touch with the other side. Or had fits. Mrs Parrish was another kettle of fish. Mrs Parrish was how Lily would like to be.

  ‘Not a piece of carpet on the floor. Not a shred.’

  Lily was shouting above the spitting of sausages in the pan as she stood by the stove in the dilapidated scullery. George Johnson sat quietly at the table waiting for his supper, his finger-nails still dirty from work at the power station although he had scrubbed his hands. Gloria bobbed up and down in front of the mirror putting beetroot juice on her lips for lipstick.

  ‘There was not.’ Lily continued as if some invisible person had contradicted her. ‘Not one stitch. Bare boards. No rugs. Nothing. Not even a mat to brighten the place up. She’s not a proper doctor with a surgery. She goes round schools or something. That Mrs Parrish is a lovely woman. She had one of those miracle cures for cancer. She was very ill and then all her genes got together and her blood changed and she got better.’

  Lily watched George as he ate. Strands of greasy, toffee-coloured hair hung over his forehead as he shovelled the food into his mouth. She wondered what it would be like to be sitting opposite Dr Parrish. There would probably be a glass of sherry, a white linen tablecloth and perhaps a silver entrée dish with some weird vegetable like broccoli.

  She pinned up Gloria’s plaits and put her in the tin bath in front of the Ideal boiler. Gloria kept her left arm sticking out so as not to let the transfers wash off. Soap turned the water milky. The side of the bath nearest to the fire was getting too hot. Gloria clung to the other side:

  ‘What do you want f’yer birthday, mum?’ she asked.

  ‘I want a packet of hairpins and a hairnet. That’s what I want more than anything else in God’s world.’ Lily winked at George who took out his wallet.

  ‘’Ere Lil. Something for y’birthday.’ He pressed the money into her hand and squeezed it so tight she couldn’t tell how much was there. She looked down. Two pounds.

  ‘Oh you shouldn’t’ve.’ George looked embarrassed so Lily changed the subject.

  ‘What do you think to this red lino?’

  ‘Makes the place look like a slaughterhouse,’ said George.

  That night, Lily turned away from her husband’s body which was burning hot as he slept, like the furnaces he stoked all day, and moved to the cool edge of the bed. Once asleep, she dreamed she was standing in the middle of a road on top of a hill. She was holding with difficulty the entire front section of an ambulance. Speeding towards her, its emergency bell ringing, was an ambulance with no front. She knew she was supposed to fit the front on as it reached her. As the white vehicle loomed towards her she stepped forward and fitted the missing section into position. As she did so, the top of the ambulance flew open and out sprang Mrs Parrish, like a Jack-in-the-Box, swinging backwards and forwards and smiling bravely.

  The next day, Lily collected Gloria from school and they went straight to look in the window of Bon Marché Department Store which was already displaying autumn fashions. On one of the models was a red woollen coat with a trim belt to match and a snazzy black astrakhan collar. FOXY QUEEN COAT shouted the label. Two pounds ten shillings. Lily calculated that with the birthday money and what she would be able to save from the housekeeping she could afford it. They had told her at the hospital that she must not return to waitressing in the café for at least three months, but she should be able to get the extra ten shillings although it would mean Gloria doing without the patent leather shoes she wanted. A gust of hot wind blew grit into Gloria’s eye. Lily spat on her handkerchief and got it out. Then the two of them walked down Coldharbour Lane to the Golden Domes cinema where Gloria had lost her gloves the week before. Lily reckoned she couldn’t last the winter without a coat.

  ‘They were white cotton gloves with a strawberry pattern on them like little hearts. I dunno how she lost them. They were threaded on a bit of elastic through her coat.’ Lily was yelling through the plastic front of the kiosk to a hunch-back woman with thick pebble glasses who sat in a mountain of sweets, cigarettes and Kia-Ora orange juice. Lily threw a warning look at Gloria who was walking around in circles pretending she had a club foot. The woman opened a couple of drawers half-heartedly and shook her head.

  ‘You are a pest,’ said Lily outside the cinema. And suddenly, she spotted Mrs Parrish. M
rs Parrish stood at the bus stop across the road. She wore a navy-blue linen dress with a red and white striped collar. As she mounted the bus the dress fluttered like a spruce naval flag. Lily took Gloria into the greengrocer’s. It smelled of wood and old vegetables. All the women in there looked like the vegetables they were buying. One woman had the face of a parsnip, etched with the same fine parallel lines; another had a face as bland and thoughtless as a cabbage; a third stood there in a sad, beetroot-coloured coat. Once, in Harrods, Lily had seen women expensively packaged like boxes of Swiss chocolates or elegantly wrapped cakes; women with complexions like the waxed fruits in the Food Hall; women who walked in their own distinctive cloud of perfume. Mrs Parrish is a bit like that, she thought.

  Altogether, Lily’s head was so full of Mrs Parrish that it seemed the most natural thing in the world when, the next day, Mrs Parrish stood on Lily’s doorstep:

  ‘I am most dreadully sorry to ask you, but the bank has shut and I wondered if you could possibly lend me a couple of pounds. I could let you have it back on Monday as soon as the banks open again. I should be so grateful.’

  Lily almost ran to the back room for the two pounds she had hidden behind one of the plates on the dresser. What a bit of luck! Normally she would never have that sort of cash to spare.

  ‘I don’t know how to thank you.’ Mrs Parrish’s eyes were both bright and dull at the same time, as if they had been boiled.

  ‘Whenever you’re ready. No rush.’ Lily rapped Gloria on the head. Gloria had ducked under her mother’s loosened apron and was poking her head out of the top like a kangaroo in a pouch. The two women exchanged tiny, ladylike waves.

  On Monday Lily tidied the front room. She picked the best of the lupins from the back yard and arranged them in two vases. Then she baked a tray of rock cakes. She put them in the front room covered with a damp cloth so they would not dry out. Then she waited. Mrs Parrish did not come. Gloria came home from school and ate half the rock cakes. George arrived home from work. She won’t come this late, thought Lily. She’ll come tomorrow.