The Best Contemporary Women's Fiction: Six Novels

by Jenna Blum

  She turns to the girl standing next to her and this girl is so like Esme's mother, so very like, that it could be her – but her in strange, layered clothes and with her hair cropped and cut in an asymmetric slant across the forehead, so unlike how her mother's would ever have been, it makes her almost laugh to think it. And she sees that the girl is hers, too. What a thought. What a thing. She wants to take the girl's hand, to touch that flesh which is her flesh. She wants to hold on to her, fast, in case she might float off and up into the clouds, like a kite or a balloon. But she doesn't. Instead she takes two steps to a chair and sits down, the photograph on her knee.

  There is a moment, under sedation, before full unconsciousness swallows you, when your real surroundings leave an impression on that floating, imagistic delirium that holds you under. For a short period you inhabit two worlds, float between them. Esme wonders for a moment if the doctors know this.

  So, anyway, they hoisted her up from the floor of the corridor and she was inert, an outsized rag doll. Already, thousands of ants were boiling up out of the ceiling above her, and out of the corner of her eye, she could see a grey dog running along the wall of the corridor, muzzle to the ground.

  Two men were carrying her between them, she could be fairly sure of this. An arm and a leg each, her head lolling back on her neck, all the blood rushing cold there, what was left of her hair almost touching the ground. She knew where she was going. She'd been at Cauldstone long enough. The grey dog seemed to be following her, coming with her, but the next moment it had slunk across the corridor and leapt from a window. Could it be open, that window? Was it possible? Probably not. But she did seem to feel a breeze skimming across her skin, a warm breeze, flowing from somewhere, and she saw a person stepping out of a door. But this couldn't be real either because this person was her sister and she appeared upside-down, walking on the ceiling. And she was wearing Esme's jacket. Or a jacket that had been Esme's. One in fine red wool that her sister had always admired. She had her back to Esme and she was walking away. Esme watched with longing. Her sister. Imagine that. Here. She thought of trying to speak, trying to call her name, but the lips don't obey, the tongue won't work and, anyway, she couldn't be real. She never came. She would fly out of the window in a moment, like the grey dog, like all the ants, who were growing wings and crowding into her face with small, hooking feet.

  —seemed to fit. That is all. It seemed too good to be true. I did want a baby so much, so very much. It was as if an angel had descended from heaven and said, this could be yours. So I went to Father because nothing could be done without him, of course. I asked to speak to him in his study and he sat behind his desk, staring down at his blotting pad as I spoke. And I finished speaking and he did not reply. I waited, standing there in my good clothes because for some reason I had thought it fit to dress properly to make this request, as if that would help my case. I saw no other way, no other possible end to my torment, you see. I think I said this to him and my voice trembled. And he looked up sharply because he hated nothing more than women crying. He said so often enough. And he sighed. As you see fit, my dear, he said, and he gestured me out of the room. It was astonishing to me, that moment, as I stepped into the hall and I saw that it could happen, that it could be. But I should say quite clearly that I never meant to—

  —so remarkably easy. I said to people, I am going away for a few months, south. Yes, I'm going for the air. The doctors say the warmth is best in my condition. Yes, a baby. Yes, it's marvellous. No, Duncan is not coming with me. The office, you know. All so remarkably easy. The only problem with lying is that you have to remember what you've told whom. And this was easy because I told everyone the same thing. It was perfect. Gloriously, unutterably perfect. No one would be any the wiser. I said to Duncan: I'm having a baby, I'm going away. I didn't even look at him to see his reaction. I sometimes think that Mother worked it out. But I can't be sure. Perhaps Father said something although he maintained it was all for the best if she never knew. If she did realise, she never—

  —Jamie would come back to Edinburgh once in a while with his French wife and then a small Englishwoman and then, this was in much later years, a silly girl half his age. He held the baby once. He arrived unannounced and I was in the parlour with Robert on a rug on the floor. He was just crawling, I remember. And in he came, alone for once, and Duncan was out and there was the baby on the rug, between us, and he said, aha, the son and heir, and I could not speak. He bent and swept up the baby and held him high above his head and I could not speak and he said, a bonny lad, very bonny, and the baby looked at him. He looked at him very hard, the way babies do, then his lower lip went straight and square and he opened his mouth and howled. He howled and howled. He wriggled and fought and I had to take him back. I had to take him upstairs, away, away, and I was glad. I held him to me, as I climbed the stairs, and I whispered in his ear: I whispered the truth. The first time I'd ever said it. The only time. I said—

  —times when it wasn't so easy. Who was it who couldn't keep a secret and had to whisper it to the river? I don't recall. There were days when it was very hard. If there had been just one other person with whom I could talk it over, could vent myself, it would have been better. I did go back, once, I felt it only right. And they took me down to this terrible place like a dungeon and instructed me to peep through this small hole in a door with iron locks. And in this camera obscura I saw a creature. A being. All wrapped up like a mummy but with a face that was bare and split and bleeding. It was creeping, creeping, its shoulder pressed into the softened wall, mumbling to itself. And I said, no, that's not her, and they said, yes, it is. I looked again and I saw that perhaps it was and I—

  —and so I said to the doctor, yes, adoption, that will be perfect. I will take it myself. And he said, admirable, Mrs Lockhart. And he said, we will keep Euphemia with us for a while afterwards, to see how she fares, and after that perhaps ... And I said yes. As simple as that. But I never meant for her to—

  Iris lurches into consciousness and lies for a moment, stunned, staring at the ceiling. Something has woken her. A noise, an unfamiliar movement in the house? It's still early, before dawn, the light grey and watery behind the blinds, much of the room in shadow.

  She twists on to her side, trying to find a comfortable, uncrushed part of the pillow, pulling the duvet up round her neck. She thinks about Esme, next door in her single bed, and Alex on the sofa. She is just reflecting that her flat is filling up by the day when it suddenly comes back to her what woke her.

  It was not so much a dream as a revisitation. Iris had been walking through the lower floors, through the house as it had been in her grandmother's day. Out of the heavy oak door of the parlour, across the hall, past the front door with its patterns of coloured glass, where daylight was pulled and stretched into red triangles, blue squares, up the stairs, her hem swishing round her bare legs, up to the landing. She was just passing the alcove where—

  Iris thrashes crossly on to her other side, pummelling and yanking at the pillow. She should read a book. To help get herself back to sleep. She should go to the loo. Or the kitchen to get a drink. But she doesn't want to go out there. She doesn't want to be wandering around in the middle of the night, just in case—

  Something else strikes her, making her almost sit up. In the dream, she had been wearing the same dress, a flimsy tea-dress, that she'd been wearing the time she—Iris flings herself on to her back, she scratches wildly at her hair, she kicks at the duvet, she's hot, she's so hot, why is she so hot, why is this bed so fucking uncomfortable? She squeezes her eyes shut and surprises herself by realising she is on the verge of tears. She does not, she absolutely does not, want to think about this.

  The same dress as when her grandmother had caught them. Iris covers her face with her hands. She has buried this so effectively, stopped herself thinking about this so efficiently for such a long time it's as if it never happened. She has managed to rewrite her own history, almost. The time Kitty caught th
em.

  Iris glances quickly at the wall separating her bedroom from the living room. She wants to spit at it, to hurl something at it, to shriek, how dare you? She has no doubt that him being here has cast some malign influence over her sleeping thoughts.

  The time Kitty caught them. Iris had been away; it was the end of her first year at university. Sadie and Alex had picked her up at the station and Sadie told her they were stopping at her grandmother's house for tea. Iris and Alex hadn't seen each other for what felt like ages. And, in the dim, brocade-heavy room her grandmother called the parlour, they had to sit next to each other in front of a tray of tiny sandwiches, scones and butter, tea in china cups. Her grandmother conversed about her neighbours, the changes in Edinburgh's one-way system, enquired about Iris's course, and remarked that she was looking rather unkempt.

  Iris tried to listen. She tried to eat more than a mouthful of the scone but she was coiled tight as a spring. Alex, next to her on the sofa, was apparently listening intently to everything Kitty said, yet all the time his hand brushed against her thigh, his knuckles grazed the thin fabric of her dress, his sleeve touched her bare arm, his foot knocked hers. Iris had to leave the room. She had to climb the stairs to calm herself, to take some deep breaths in the solitude of the bathroom. But when she came out, turning off the light behind her, she walked back across the landing and, just as she got to the top of the stairs, someone reached out for her, caught a handful of her dress and drew her into the alcove with the tall clock. She and Alex grappled with each other, roughly, quickly, their arms sliding and twining round each other, trying to find a hold that satisfied, that felt close enough. His breathing was hard in her ear and she bit down into the smooth muscle of his shoulder and one of them said, we can't, we have to get back. It was her, Iris thinks. Alex let out a small, desperate groan and he pushed her against the wall, his hands yanking at her dress and there was the ripping sound of seams coming apart, and as Iris heard this she heard something else. Feet coming up the stairs, getting closer and closer. She shoved Alex away just as her grandmother stepped on to the landing. She saw them, she looked at them both, she put one hand to her mouth, then she shut her eyes. For a moment, none of them moved. Then Kitty opened her eyes and her hands began to twist and twist in front of her. Alex cleared his throat, as if he was about to speak, but he said nothing. And Kitty looked at Iris. She looked at her hard and for a long time. It was so disconcerting, so penetrating a look that Iris had had to bite her lip so as not to cry out, so as not to say, please, Grandma, please, don't tell on us.

  Kitty had turned. She had gone back down the stairs, taking particular care with each step. Iris and Alex heard her heels tap-tap across the hall, then the parlour door open and shut, and they stood in the half-light of the landing, waiting for the next sound to come, the gasp, the shriek, for Sadie to come pounding up the stairs. They waited a long time, standing apart, not looking at one another. But nothing happened. They waited in the long days that followed, for a phone call, for a visit, for Sadie to say, I need to talk to you both. But, again, nothing. Without telling anyone, Iris switched her degree to include Russian, a decision that meant an imminent departure to Moscow for a year. While she was there, she received news that Alex had gone to work in New York and become engaged to a girl called Fran. One way or another, Iris never touched Alex again.

  Iris stares at the crazy paving of cracks in the ceiling above her, her teeth set. She snatches at the duvet, yanks it up, then thrusts it away again. She glares at the separating wall. You shit, she wants to shriek, get out of my house. She'll never get to sleep again now.

  But she must have done. Because what feels like a few seconds later, something that must be another dream—a panicked, stop-motion sequence about losing the dog in a crowded station – dissolves abruptly around her. Iris rolls into her pillow, moaning, trying to find her way back. Then, beyond the horizon of the duvet, she sees the hem of a cardigan, three buttons.

  Esme is standing beside the bed, arms folded, looking down at her. The room is filled with a vivid, yellow light. Iris raises her head, pushes her hair out of her eyes. For a moment, she cannot speak. She glances over at the dressing-table and is relieved to see that its surface is empty. She replaced the knives last night.

  'Esme,' she croaks, 'are you—'

  But Esme interrupts her. 'Can we visit Kitty today?'

  'Um.' Iris struggles to sit up. What time is it, anyway? Is she wearing anything? She looks down. Her top half, at least, is dressed – in something green. At this precise moment, Iris has no idea exactly what. 'Sure,' she says. She gropes under the pillow for her watch. 'If ... if that's what you want.'

  Esme nods, turns and leaves the room. Iris falls back to her pillows and pulls the duvet up to her neck. She closes her eyes and the bright morning sun glows red behind her eyelids. It's far too early to be awake on a Sunday morning.

  When she gets up, she finds Alex in the kitchen with Esme. They are both leaning over a map of the United States and Alex is talking about a road trip he and Iris took fifteen years ago.

  'You OK?' he says, without looking up, as Iris passes him on the way to the sink.

  She makes a slight noise of assent as she turns on the gas under the kettle. She leans against the hob. Alex is pointing out the location of a national park famous for its cacti.

  'You're up early,' she remarks.

  'Couldn't sleep. Your sofa's horribly uncomfortable, you know.' Alex stretches, his T-shirt riding up his body, displaying his navel, the line of hair disappearing into the low-slung waistband of his jeans. Iris looks away, looks at Esme, wondering if it might be a bit much for her. But Esme is still bent over the map.

  'It feels weirdly like jet-lag,' Alex continues. 'But obviously it can't be. I don't know what it is. Lag of some sort. Life-lag, maybe. Sofa-lag.'

  Iris frowns. It's too early for conversations like this.

  There is still an hour or so to kill before visiting time starts at Kitty's home, so Iris takes Alex and Esme up Blackford Hill. Iris turns her head as she walks, taking in the glassy grey of the sea in the distance, the city spread between the hill and the coast, the straggling bushes of gorse, Esme, walking with her fingers splayed out, dress fluttering in the breeze like a curtain at a window, Alex, some distance off, throwing sticks for the dog, a red kite jerking in the breeze, the car park, a few cars, a woman pushing a pram, a man getting out of his car and Iris is thinking that he is attractive, good-looking, before she is thinking that there is something familiar about him, his hair, the way he is rubbing the back of his neck, the way he is taking that woman's hand.

  Iris stops in her tracks. Then she turns. She could run. He won't see her, they won't see her, maybe she can just sneak past to her car and they need never meet. But he is turning to put his arm round his wife and, as he does so, his gaze passes over Iris. Iris waits, immobile, turned to a pillar of salt. The instant he sees her, he removes his arm from his wife's shoulders. Then he is hesitating, wondering what to do, whether just to get into his car, with his wife, shut the doors and drive away.

  But the wife has seen her. It is too late. Iris watches as the wife says something to him, something questioning. They leave the car, with its doors open, ready for them, and come towards her. He has no choice, she can see that, but she is seized with an impulse to dart away, to escape. If she ran now, this wouldn't have to happen. But Esme is next to her, Alex is over there. How could she leave them?

  'Iris,' Luke says.

  Iris does a bad imitation of someone recognising someone else. 'Oh, hello.'

  Luke and his wife come to a stop before them. He may have taken his arm from round her but the wife has kept hold of his hand. Sensible woman, Iris thinks. There is a pause. She looks at Luke for guidance. How is he going to play this? Which way will he jump? But he is focusing on someone else, and she realises that Alex has materialised at her elbow, the dog's stick still in his hands.

  'Hi, Luke,' he says, flinging the stick high into
the air, making the dog race off at an angle. 'Haven't seen you for a while. How are you doing?'

  Iris sees Luke give a kind of flinch. 'Alexander,' Luke says, with a cough.

  'Alex,' Alex corrects.

  Luke manages a nod. 'It's good to see you.'

  Alex does a curious sideways movement of his head, which somehow manages to convey the message, I remember you, and also, I don't like you. 'Likewise,' he says.

  Luke raises himself up on his toes, then starts nodding. Iris finds that she is nodding too. They nod at each other for a moment. He cannot meet her eye and his face is heated, and Iris has never seen him flush before. She finds she cannot look at the wife. She tries, she tries to pull her gaze in that direction, but every time she gets near an odd thing happens and her eyes veer away, as if the wife exudes some negative forcefield too strong for her. The silence is growing, clouding the air between them all, and Iris is raking about for things to say, for excuses, for reasons they have to go when, to her horror, she realises that Alex is speaking: 'So,' he is saying, in a dangerously chatty tone, 'this must be your wife, Luke. Aren't you going to introduce us?'

  Luke turns to his wife, as if he'd forgotten all about her.

  'Gina,' he says, to the ground between them, 'this is ... Iris. She ... We, ah, we...' he falters. There is a gaping pause and Iris is curious about what he will say next. What could it possibly be? We fuck whenever we get the chance? We met at a wedding while you were in bed with flu? She wouldn't give me her number so I found out where she worked and went there every day until she agreed to go out with me? She's the one I'm planning to leave you for? 'She ... she has a shop,' he finishes, and there is a smothered, choked sound from Alex and Iris knows that he is trying not to laugh and she makes a mental note to make him sorry later, sorrier than he's ever been.

  But Gina is smiling and reaching out, and her face is empty of guile, empty of jealousy. As she takes her hand, Iris thinks: I could ruin your life. 'Nice to meet you,' she mutters, and she cannot look at this person, she cannot take in an image of the woman she is betraying, the woman who shares his house, his bed, his life. She would like to but she cannot.