The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox

by Maggie O'Farrell

'By marriage?'

  'Most women are. You see it all the time. Pretty young girls who become matronly bores the minute they get a ring on their finger. You wouldn't be like that. You wouldn't be changed at all. I can't imagine you being changed by anything. And that's what I want. That's why I want you.'

  The hand on her waist tightened and she was drawn towards him and she felt him press his lips to her skin, at the place where her blouse ended and her neck began. The shock was electrifying. It was the most intimate thing anyone had ever done to her. She turned to look at him in amazement and he was laughing at her, his chest pressed to her shoulder, and she wanted to say: is it that, is that what it is, is that what it would be like, like that? But she heard the door to the parlour open and the voice of Jamie's mother could be heard: 'Why don't you go and join them, Kitty, dear?'

  She pulled her gaze from Jamie just in time to see her sister step into the room. Kitty came through the door and raised her head. Esme saw her blink, very slowly, then look away. Esme put the flat of her hands to the wood of the piano stool and pushed herself into a standing position. She went to her sister's side and linked her arm through hers but Kitty kept her face averted and her arm felt heavy, lifeless.

  In real time, Esme is in the car, being driven back from the sea to Edinburgh. She has decided to pretend to fall asleep. Not because she's tired. Because she needs to think. She lets her head fall back and she closes her eyes. After a few moments, the girl, Iris, leans over and turns off the radio. The orchestral music, which in truth Esme had been enjoying, is silenced.

  This is the single nicest act Esme has witnessed in a long time. It almost makes her cry, which is something that never happens any more. She is overcome by an urge to open her eyes and take the girl's hand. But she doesn't. The girl is unsure of her, she wishes she weren't there—Esme knows this. But imagine. She was still worried about the radio music disturbing her sleep. Imagine that.

  In order not to cry, she thinks. She concentrates.

  On New Year's Eve afternoon, her mother and Kitty go out to the dressmaker, a small woman with a bun, to pick up the dresses. While they are out, Esme wanders into her mother's room. She peers into her jewellery box, she opens the pots on her dressing-table, she tries on a felt hat. She is sixteen.

  She checks the street. Empty. She cocks her head and listens to the house. Empty. She twists her hair into a rope and pins it high on her head. She opens her mother's wardrobe. Tweed, fur, wool, tartan, cashmere. She knows what she is looking for. She has known since she came in here, since she heard the front door click shut. She has glimpsed it only a handful of times, at night, her mother gliding along the corridor between her father's room and hers. A négligé in aquamarine silk. She wants to know if the hem will swish round her ankles. She wants to know if the narrow straps will lie against her shoulders, just so. She wants to see the self she will be under all that sea-coloured lace. She is sixteen.

  She feels it before she sees it – the cold caress of silk. It is right at the back, behind her mother's second-best suit. Esme slips it off its hanger, and it tries to escape her, slithering through her fingers to the floor. But she catches it round its waist and flings it to the bed. She pulls off her sweater, keeping her eyes on the pool of silk. She is about to dive in. Does she dare?

  But she turns her head towards the car window. She opens her eyes. She does not want to think of this. She does not. Why should she? When the sun shines? When she is with the girl who cares if she sleeps well or not? When she is being driven along a road she doesn't recognise? The city she knows, the buildings, the line of roofs, but nothing else. Not the road, not the strings of orange lights, not the shopfronts. Why should she think of this?

  —no small amount of shame in it, I can tell you. It has never happened in our family, ever. And for it to befall my own son. Times have changed, he said to me, and I said, you have to work at a marriage, God knows, your father and I did, thinking, if he only knew. But. Is it absolutely necessary to divorce, couldn't you—and he interrupted me. We're not married, he said, so technically it's not a divorce. Well. Of course I've kept that quiet in our circle. For the sake of the child. I never liked the wife or whatever she is. Shapeless clothes and unkempt hair. He says it is amicable. And I must say he is very good about keeping in touch with the child. A pretty little thing, she is, she has a look of my mother but in terms of character I think she reminds me most of—

  —I do not know if I like yoghurt. A woman is asking me and I don't know the answer. What shall I say? I'll say no. She'll take it away and I won't need to think about it. But she hasn't waited for my answer, she has left it beside my plate. I'll pick it up and that long shiny thing she has left with it, silver it is, with a round head, the name of it is—

  —he would always count them after a dinner party. Wrapping wet bundles of them in teacloths, polishing their ends and counting them back into the velvet-lined cutlery box. It used to drive me mad. I had to leave the room. I couldn't stand the sound of him murmuring the numbers under his breath, the way he stacked them into battalions of ten along the emptied table. Is there anything more likely to drive you completely out of your—

  —pebbles. I taught her to count with pebbles I collected from the garden in India. I found ten beautiful, even, smooth pebbles that I lined up on the path for her. Look, I said, one, two, three, do you see? She had bare feet, her hair tied in a ribbon. Onetwofree, she said back to me, and smiled. No, I said, look, one, two, three. She caught them up, the pebbles, four in one hand and six in the other. Before I could stop her, she hurled them up into the air. As they rained back down I ducked. Miraculous, really, that she wasn't hit, if you think about—

  —the mother brings the child to visit me. She and I don't have much to say to each other but I confess I have surprised myself by conceiving a fondness for the little girl. Grandma, she said to me the other day, and she was making these circles in the air with her arm, watching herself as she did it, when I do something my skeleton does it too. And I said, you are quite right, my dear. My son may have other children, who knows, he is still young. If he meets someone else, someone nice, someone more suitable. I would like that. It would be better for Iris not to be an only one and I should know because—

  —and when I found them, when I came upon them sitting together like that, the pair of them on the piano stool, and him gazing at her as if he was seeing something rare and precious and desirable, I wanted to stamp my foot, to shout, do you know what they call her, they call her the Oddbod, people laugh about her behind her back, don't you know that? I knew that it could not be, that it must not happen, that I had to—

  —I do not like yoghurt. It is cold, oversweet and there are hidden lumps of sloppy, slippery fruit. I do not like it. I let the spoon drop to the floor and the yoghurt makes an interesting fan-shape over the carpet and—

  There is a loud, sudden crack, like thunder, and she is thrown backwards. She feels the cold of the mirror against the bare skin of her arm. Her face is ringing with heat, with pain, and Esme realises that her father has slapped her.

  'Take it off!' he is shouting. 'Take it off this instant!'

  Esme's fingers are made slow with shock. She fumbles at the neckline for the buttons but they are tiny, silk-faced, and her hands are trembling. Her father bears down on her and tries to pull the négligé over her head. Esme is plunged into an ocean of silk, suffocated by it, drowning in it. Her hair and the silk are in her mouth, gagging her, she cannot see, she loses her balance and stumbles into a hard corner of furniture, and all the time her father is shouting words, horrible words, words she has never heard before.

  Suddenly her mother's voice cuts into the room. 'That's enough,' she says.

  Esme hears her shoes across the floor. The silk noose is loosened from around her head, yanked down. Her mother stands before her. She doesn't look at her. She unbuttons the négligé and, in one movement, strips it off her, and Esme is reminded of a man she once saw skinning a rabbit.


  She blinks and looks around her. Seconds ago, she was before the mirror, alone, the hem of the négligé in one hand, and she was turning sideways to see how it looked from the back. Now she is in her underwear, her hair pulled loose about her shoulders, her arms gripped round her. Kitty is by the door, still in her outdoor coat, her hands twisting at her gloves. Her father stands at the window, his back to them. No one speaks.

  Her mother gives the négligé a shake, and takes a long time to fold it, lining up the seams and smoothing out creases. She places it on the bed.

  'Kitty,' her mother says, without looking at anyone, 'would you please fetch your sister's dress?'

  They listen to Kitty's footsteps recede down the corridor.

  'Ishbel, she is not going to the party after this,' her father mutters. 'I really think—'

  Her mother interrupts. 'She is. She most certainly is.'

  'But what on earth for?' her father says, rooting for a handkerchief in his pocket. 'What is the point in sending a girl like that to such a gathering?'

  'There is a rather great point.' The mother's voice is low and determined, and she takes Esme's arm and pulls her towards the dressing-table. 'Sit,' she commands, and pushes Esme on to the stool. 'We shall get her ready,' she says, picking up a hairbrush. 'We shall make her look pretty, we shall send her to the ball, and then,' she raises the hairbrush and brings it down in a vicious sweep through Esme's hair, 'we shall marry her off to the Dalziel boy'

  'Mother,' Esme begins tremulously, 'I don't want to—'

  Her mother brings her face down to hers. 'What you want,' she murmurs, almost lovingly, into her ear, 'does not come into this. The boy wants you. Goodness knows why, but he does. Your kind of behaviour has never been tolerated in this house and it never will be. So, we shall see if a few months as James Dalziel's wife will be enough to break your spirit. Now, stand up and get yourself dressed. Here's your sister with your frock.'

  Life can have odd confluences. Esme will not say serendipity: she loathes the word. But sometimes she thinks there must be something at work, some impulse, some collision of forces, some kinks in chronology.

  Here she is, thinking about this, and she suddenly sees that the girl is driving the car past the very house. A coincidence? Or something else?

  Esme twists in her seat to look at it. The stonework is dirty, stained dark in patches; a torn poster is pasted on the garden wall. Large brown plastic bins clog the path. The window paint is peeling and cracking.

  They walked there, in their party shoes. Kitty was so in love with her dress she wouldn't carry the wreath of holly, so Esme carried it for her. Kitty held Esme's bag, which she had decorated with sequins for her. When they arrived and they were standing in the hallway, taking off their coats, Esme reached out to take the bag and Kitty let her have it: she uncurled her fingers and released it. But she didn't look at her. Maybe Esme should have known then, she should have seen the invisible weft and weave taking shape round her, should have heard the tightening of the strings. What if, she always thinks. She has spent her life half strangled by what-ifs. But what if she had known then, if a kink had occurred in the chronology and she'd seen what was about to happen? What would she have done? Turned round and gone home again?

  It didn't and she didn't. She handed over her coat, she took her sequined bag from Kitty, she waited as her sister fiddled with her hair in the mirror, as she greeted a girl they knew. Then Kitty caught up with her and they went up the stairs, towards the lights, towards the music, towards the muffled roar of conversation.

  Two girls at a dance, then. One seated, one standing. It was late, almost midnight. The younger girl's dress was too tight round her ribs. The seams strained, threatening separation, if she breathed in too deeply. She tried slumping her back in a curve, but it was no use: the dress bunched up like loose skin round her neck. It wouldn't behave, wouldn't act as if it was really hers. Wearing it was like being in a three-legged race with someone you didn't like.

  She stood up to watch the dance. A complicated reel to which she didn't know the steps, the women getting passed from man to man, then returned to their partners. She turned to her sister. 'How long until midnight?'

  Kitty was sitting on a chair next to her, a dance-card open on her lap. She had the pencil gripped between her gloved fingers, poised above the page. Another hour or so?' Kitty said, absorbed in reading the names. 'I'm not sure. Go and look at the clock in the hall.'

  But Esme didn't go. She stood watching the reel until it spun to a standstill, until the music stopped, until the symmetrical formations of dancers broke down into a mêlée of people returning to their seats. When she saw the good-looking blond boy of the house making his way towards her, she quickly turned her back. But she was too late.

  May I have this dance?' he said, closing his fingers on hers.

  She pulled them away. 'Why don't you ask my sister?' she whispered.

  He frowned and said, loudly, too loudly so that Kitty heard, so that Esme saw Kitty hearing. 'Because I don't want to dance with your sister, I want to dance with you.'

  She took her place opposite Jamie, in a set for Strip the Willow. They were the first couple, so as the music struck up, he came towards her, took her hands and whirled her about. She felt the stuff of her dress inflate, the room veer around her. The music beat thick and fast and Jamie took her hand and passed her along the row of men and whenever she came out of a spin, there he was, ready for her, his arm outstretched to take her. And at the last moment of their turn, when they had to join hands and dance to the end of the line, people clap-clapping them on their way, Jamie danced so fast and so far that they burst out of the room, on to the landing and it made Esme laugh and he whirled her round so that she felt dizzy and had to clutch his arm for balance and she was still laughing, and so was he, when he caught her to him, when he turned her more slowly, as if for a waltz, round and round under the chandelier, and she threw back her head to see the points of light kaleidoscoping above her.

  Where does the hand become the wrist? Where does the shoulder become the neck? She will often think that this was the moment that tipped it, that if there was ever a point at which she could have changed things, this was it, when she was turning round and round beneath a chandelier on New Year's Eve.

  He was propelling her in circles, still holding her tightly. She felt a wall brush against her back and this wall seemed to give way and they were overtaken by darkness, in some kind of small room, the music suddenly far away. Esme saw the looming shapes of furniture, heaps of coats, hats. Jamie had his arms round her and he was whispering her name. She could feel that he was about to kiss her, that one of his hands was touching her hair, and it occurred to her that she was curious to know what it was like, that a kiss from a man was something one ought to experience, that it could do no harm, either way, and as Jamie's face came down on hers, she waited, she held still.

  It was a curious sensation. A mouth brushing hers, pressing hers, his arms tight round her. His lips were slippery and tasted vaguely meaty and she was struck by the ridiculousness of the situation. Two people in a cupboard, pressing their mouths together. Esme giggled; she turned her head away. But he was murmuring something in her ear. I beg your pardon, she said. Then he pressed her backwards, gradually, tenderly, and she felt herself topple, her feet losing their hold on the floor, and they landed on something soft and yielding, a pile of clothing of some sort. He was laughing softly and she was getting up and he was pulling her back and saying, you do love me, don't you, and they were both still smiling at this point, she thinks. But then it was different and she was really wanting to get up, she really thought she should, and he wouldn't let go. She was pushing at him, saying, Jamie, please, let's go back to the dance. His hands were on her neck, then, flailing with her skirts, on her legs.

  She pushed at him again, this time with all her strength. She said, no. She said, stop. Then, when he grappled at the neckline of her dress, kneading at her breasts, fury flared in her and fea
r as well, and she kicked, she hit out at him. He jammed a hand over her mouth, said, wee bitch, in her ear and the pain of it, then, was so astonishing, she thought she was splitting, that he was burning her, tearing her in two. What was happening was unthinkable. She hadn't known it was possible. His hand over her mouth, his head ramming against her chin. Esme thought about how, perhaps, she would cut her hair after all, the sound of the rubber trees, how she must just keep breathing, a box she and Kitty kept under the bed with programmes of films, the number of sharps in F minor diminished.

  And what seemed like a long time afterwards, they were on the landing again. Jamie was holding her wrist. He was leading her back towards the music. And, incredibly, the set for Strip the Willow was still going on. Did he think they were going to rejoin the dance? Esme looked at him. She looked at the candles, melting in pools of themselves, at the people circling and jumping in the dance, their faces tight with concentration, with pleasure.

  She wrenched his hand off her wrist. It hurt her skin to do it but she was free. She stretched her fingers into the air. She took two, three steps towards the doorway and there she had to stop. She had to lean her forehead against the wood. The edges of her vision wavered, like the line of a horizon in heat. A face swam up to hers and said something but the music was thick in her ears. The person took hold of her arm, gave her a shake, twitched her dress straight. It was, she saw, Mrs Dalziel. Esme parted her lips to say that she would like to see her sister, please, but what came out was a high-pitched noise that she couldn't stop, that she had no power over.

  Then Esme was in the back of a car with Mrs Dalziel driving, and then they were home and Mrs Dalziel was telling her mother that Esme had had a wee bit too much to drink, made a fool of herself, and that she might feel better in the morning.

  In the morning, though, Esme did not feel better. She did not feel better at all. When her mother came in through the door and said, exactly what happened last night, young lady, Esme sat up in bed and the noise came again. She opened her mouth and she screamed, she screamed, she screamed.