Blood From Stone

by Frances Fyfield

  ‘She always looked tanned. She liked the sun. Maybe she was just swarthy.’

  ‘Hmm. Maybe she was just sallow, like me. I think she’d have liked Christian Dior’s ‘new look’. Came in the nineteen fifties, deliberately extravagant, a reaction to austerity. Huge skirts and bows. Maybe not. More streamlined. She liked the colours in the skirt. I just don’t know.’

  They were in the fashion section of the Victoria and Albert Museum, a place where Peter had never ventured before, although he had been elsewhere in the place, like every London school child. Voluntarily to the British Galleries; he had been to see the throne of the Maharaja Ranjit Singh, the Sacred Silver and Stained Glass on Level 3 and the Asian Galleries on Level 1, lingering over carpets, wood and stone rather than the ephemera of clothes. The world divided on entry through the main doors, he supposed, between those who wandered and sat, rapt, and those herded through and those who took notes on the history of every kind of domestic sophistication from the humble to the palatial, to the fruits of industry to those of piracy. He could see why he had been forced on the school trip, in an attempt to see how history connects, all inventions lead to variations upon themselves and how everything, it seemed to him then, stemmed from a mysterious East. He regretted how bored he had been. He was not bored now.

  He could see a garment as a work of art, rather than a means to an end. Hen Joyce and everyone else in here looked equally drab when staring through glass at spotlit clothes designed by Givenchy and Calvin Klein. Personally, he liked the idea of crinolines. He was trying to think like a woman, and as a woman he would have liked big clothes because it would stop anyone coming too close. That would suit Marianne Shearer, too. Wig and gown had a similar effect.

  ‘Have you got a favourite in here?’ he asked Hen.

  She led him to it. From the other side of the glass, he saw a simple dress of sky-blue linen with short sleeves and artful seams delineating a high waist and a skirt falling to ankle length, with large pockets inset at the side. The only other detail was a lace collar and a floppy polka dot bow at the neck.

  ‘That’s my dress,’ Hen said. ‘It smells of summer and happy days on the beach. It’s a proper, useful frock for romping around in and playing hide and seek. The sort my mother made for me weren’t so different. My mum was influenced by the clothes she had, in the days when fashion was rationed after the war. Mass-produced, using minimal labour and cloth. You could feminise it with padded shoulders and nipped-in waists, but buttons were limited to three, and turn-back cuffs eliminated as wasteful. Hardy Amies specialised. My mother made a little material go a long way. You can see why the “new look” followed. I don’t think Shearer would have wanted to wear this linen dress. Too plain.’

  ‘You know so much,’ Peter said.

  ‘No, I don’t,’ Hen protested. ‘I’m reading the labels. I’m making it up as I go along. Look, here’s that cape I told you about. Similar colours to that skirt. The skirt’s a copy of the fabric. It’s better as a cape.’

  Peter stared through the glass and turned away, blinded by colour.

  ‘Nineteen forty-nine . . . American . . . They obviously didn’t have rationing.’

  The lifelike models unnerved him slightly. He wanted them to move.

  She led the way out of there, not to the grey daylight outside that he craved, but to another floor. She walked very fast and he had time to notice what she was wearing: cropped trousers, a cardigan with flowers for buttons. With her swift steps in soft, red boots, she looked like a pantomime boy, treating this as her own stage, taking him exactly where she wanted. Upstairs, downstairs, in my lady’s chamber.

  ‘This is the interactive bit,’ Hen said. ‘Just to give kids and people like you an idea of what a difference clothes can make. Here you can get an idea. They leave things for people to try on. Don’t worry, I won’t make you do it.’

  They were in a room with a stripped wood floor, displays of curios, turquoise walls, and free-standing mirrors, in which he could see himself looking rather down at heel. He ignored his own image and watched Hen. She was wrapping a boned bodice round her own torso, pulling in the laces at the front.

  ‘A bustier, for someone without a lady’s maid,’ she said before putting on a hooped skirt and tying it round her waist. The skirt had seven hoops of cane sewn inside the cotton, the broadest hoop at the bottom. It fell in a circle round her feet, swaying and moving as she walked round the room.

  ‘These are the undergarments of an early Victorian lady,’ Hen said. ‘They were designed to make her walk upright. See?’

  He could see. A lady would walk upright with her skirts moving in front and behind. She would flow, she would glide on invisible feet with easy grace.

  ‘Not suitable for trains,’ Hen said. ‘But it does make a lady walk tall, and turns a woman into a lady. If you couldn’t add to your own height or status, you could always use volume to make an entrance.’

  ‘What’s the modern equivalent of making a statement like that? I mean making an entrance purely by using your clothes?’

  ‘Nudity, I suppose,’ Hen said. ‘That’s the only way left.’

  ‘Works for me. Would you like to demonstrate that,

  too?’

  She grinned at him. He thought for a moment she would respond to the merest suggestion of a dare, strip off her clothes and run through the august halls of the Victoria and Albert Museum naked as a rose. The idea was appealing: he could see her taking the challenge. Hen grinned wider. Then the phone in his pocket rang, in tune with the one in her bag. Both fumbled; each of them walked to opposite corners of the room and answered the summons, Peter because he could ignore his phone once or twice, but never indefinitely, Hen because hers never usually rang at all. It was strange and suddenly extremely funny to watch someone speak into a mobile phone while wearing a hooped petticoat. It was as if time had moved sideways, leaving them marooned somewhere in limbo. Murmured voices on mobiles in a panelled, Victorian room. Hen said, ‘Yes, I’m sorry. I’ll speak to you as soon as I get out of here.’ On his own phone, Peter thought Thomas Noble’s strident voice could be heard from the other end of the building, saying what the hell was he doing pissing about in the middle of the day and would he please go somewhere he didn’t have to talk in whispers? Where was he, in church or something?

  Of one accord, they listened and replaced their phones. Hen took off skirt and bodice, leaving it where she had found it for the next member of the public, and walked out of the room towards the exit. Both seemed in need of air; Peter was glad to follow her, otherwise he would have been lost. Got to go and see a lover. Come here first, it’s on the way. Wear clothes. What?

  Outside, winter drizzle marred the view of Brompton Road. Hen looked bemused and upset. Peter wanted the grin back, took her arm and led her, unresisting, down the grand steps, across the deafening lanes of traffic to the other side. The sudden noise was disorientating after all the respectful silence of the museum, making him wonder which was the real world. Starbucks beckoned, a hundred yards away.

  Rain hung like glitter on her hair as she sat, waiting for coffee. Peter thought at least I’m good for something, waiting impatiently in line for the laborious making of a cappuccino. He added pastries: she looked as if she needed sugar.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked gently.

  ‘My father,’ she said. ‘My very angry father.’

  ‘Can I help?’

  She was tearing a croissant into very small pieces, spreading crumbs.

  ‘I don’t think so. You’re a stranger.’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m not. Not any more.’

  He had read too much.

  Continuation of cross-examination of Henrietta Joyce by Marianne Shearer, QC

  MS. I’d like to go into your family background, Miss Joyce. Not a lot, only a little.

  Interruption: Is this relevant?

  MS. Highly relevant, your Honour. It’s relevant to establish what exactly motivates this witness to co
nspire with her younger sister in the creation of a tissue of lies and false allegations against a man she did not know. Family relationships are the key to such motivations. I’ll be brief.

  All right, Miss Joyce. Angel was the favoured child, wasn’t she?

  HJ. I don’t see how this is relevant. I refuse to answer questions about our parents.

  MS. You must answer the questions I put to you. And you’re on oath. Angel was the favourite, wasn’t she?

  HJ. If she was, she deserved to be.

  MS. That’s not what I’m asking, Miss Joyce.

  HJ. That’s what I’m answering.

  MS. Very well. I’ll ask another. Why did you keep your parents out of the loop after you brought Angel back to London? Why not enlist their help?

  HJ. Angel didn’t want that.

  MS. I’ll ask her, in due course. I suggest you didn’t want that. You knew that they would have made their favoured child tell the truth, didn’t you? Whereas you had no interest in that. You were using her to get your own back on them, weren’t you?

  HJ. That really is nonsense. If I wanted anything, I wanted to protect them all.

  MS. Oh yes, I can see that. Save Angel’s disgrace by crying rape and kidnap. Bit of a power kick, wasn’t it, keeping them in the dark?

  HJ. They weren’t kept in the dark.

  MS. They must have resented their exclusion, didn’t they?

  HJ. I was doing what Angel wanted. I did that as far as I could.

  MS. What you wanted. What made you feel the more important one, for once. The little dry-cleaning assistant takes charge . . .

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  William Joyce came back home from the storage warehouse that was the foundation of his modest fortunes, cold and hungry after an early start. He shared shifts with his manager. They had remarked on how the punters were already putting their unwanted Christmas presents in store. Mr Joyce told anyone who would listen that his business was based on the fact that people owned so many things without the space to keep them; it thrived on an insufficiency of attics in modern houses and a need for ownership. Things equal a sense of prosperity. As long as people dwelt in places too small, moved house, changed jobs, divorced, had temporary existences, worked overseas, renting space for storage provided that extra attic or garage. WJ’s self-storage units provided bigger space for vehicles, machinery, spare parts, heirlooms, furniture, redundant cookers awaiting further use, tricycles, three sets of county archives, endless book and record collections, surplus stocks and at least one set of prosthetic limbs, but the bulk of the customers stored rubbish. Hired space for it by the square foot, per week, month or year. Storing rubbish was good business. Will Joyce neither minded nor cared what people wished to store, provided it was legal and non-infectious. He liked to see them return, collect their keys and check on treasured possessions, even if he wondered why they valued them. He was proud of keeping things safe in the old hospital buildings converted for the purpose on the roundabout outside town; it had made a good living for three decades. He was pleased with his own business acumen, which had made him see the opportunity before anyone else did all those years ago when the place stood empty. We facilitate materialism and preservation, he would say. We rent out space in metal containers and that’s an honourable enough way to make a living, although not exactly a riveting subject of conversation. Except to Hen, he remembered. She considered the featureless, anonymous storage facility as a magic place where people stored dreams of how they wanted to live, silly child.

  The storage buildings maintained a cool temperature, with cold, concrete floors, painted grey. An industrial estate had grown up unpicturesquely around it. Privately, William enjoyed the place, but today he was cold to his bones and he wanted the warmth of his extraordinarily comfortable house.

  That was where Ellen Joyce had always excelled. Comfort: soft seats and good linen, thick towels, clean clothes and heavy curtains, colourful tapestries on the walls, a love of fabric and the homemade. No clutter or fussiness, nothing too precious to handle, everything durable, no sharp edges, always a relaxing place to land. Plus something ready to eat or something cooking, or at least that was the way it had been in their solid brick-built nest before the fledglings arrived and left. William Joyce wanted it back; he wanted to forget the in-betweens and enjoy it again. As long as Henrietta stayed away, they would surely come to enjoy it again. He worshipped Henrietta, but not when she was the reminder of all their failures.

  He went upstairs, feeling the warmth seep back into his bones. As long as everything stayed as it was for the time being, with no new reminders of old nightmares, no shocks or alarms, they would gradually accommodate themselves to their new freedoms and they would manage. The house was back in order without Hen in it. She could not live and let things alone. Hen ‘helping’ was a running sore. They were better by themselves with no more interruptions.

  William loved order, hated anything superfluous. Better to forget and move on. The Joyce family did not store rubbish because everything in their house was either pretty or necessary. He could see the clear lines of the place beginning to emerge, and the shadows ready to lift in the spring.

  There was a knock on the door.

  Delivery for a Miss Joyce, the man said.

  Henrietta’s father stood on the doorstep and said there must be some mistake. A Miss Joyce, or Miss A. Joyce? Failing to add that Miss A. Joyce was dead.

  A Miss Joyce, the man from Federal Express said. Sorry, misread it. Maybe to Ms H. Joyce, from Ms H. Joyce. Says so here, on this label, black and white. Where do you want it? I’ve been waiting five minutes and I can’t take it back.

  Where the hell am I supposed to put it? You’ve got the wrong address.

  No, I haven’t.

  The FedEx man had already wheeled it out of the back of his van. It was the size of a broad, squat coffin, which gave William a turn as soon as he had answered the door, still with his coat on. The van blocked the street going up to the sea; a car hooted behind it and another car which had turned right from the front began to reverse impatiently, so that out of a corner of the other ear which was not listening to the FedEx man, he heard the sound of a furious engine noise and found himself waiting for a crash. The van had a peculiar resemblance to an ambulance in size and stripes and emblazoned emblems announcing its own urgency, but was mercifully without a siren. William thanked the stars that Ellen was out, although he bitterly regretted it. Damn Henrietta, what kind of joke was she playing, getting stuff delivered here?

  The car behind the FedEx van hooted again and the delivery man said, Where do you want it, and without listening to William saying, I don’t want it at all, he hauled the thing up the steps and over the doorstep. Not a coffin, a trunk. It was too bulky for one man, and against his better judgement, Mr Joyce found himself helping. The trunk blocked the narrow hallway and bumped against Mrs Joyce’s framed tapestries: no one could pass either side. William panicked about her not being able to get in, panicked at the sight of it, so he and the angry delivery man hauled it upstairs and put it in the room on the left of the landing, which was Angel’s old room. The house was deceptive from the outside, looked small, but expanded like a TARDIS into many rooms leading off from narrow spaces on three floors. The trunk was more like a wardrobe, heavy but feeling lighter than Angel had been when they hauled her down on a stretcher – but somehow still similar. It was as if she was being delivered back in a container, still dead.

  Then the FedEx man said there was another couple of items. William was too stunned to reply and one way or another he dragged two, less heavy material-coated wardrobe bags upstairs as well. They seemed to fill the room. By this time, William was angry and breathless. He slammed the front door behind the man and listened as the van roared off up the street towards the sea, in the general direction of where his wife would be sitting in a bus shelter instead of being at the door and telling them where to put it. William was trembling with rage.

  Delivery for Ms Joyce
, meaning the one left alive. Hen, no doubt, interfering again, getting rid of the last of Angel’s things, sending stuff back, blocking up Angel’s room trying to shock them, was that it? He put on his anorak emblazoned with his own logo, ‘WJ Storage’, and went out to fetch his wife, as angry as he had ever been. She would be in that bus shelter at the other end, the one where he and she had their best conversations, ever since their first courtship there, forty years ago. There was nowhere else to go then, except the back seat of his Dad’s borrowed car. Hen didn’t know that.

  Right, who am I? He asked himself on the way. Will Joyce, likely lad, married young, soon after that looking for a business opportunity and a family. What did he get? A business, a marriage that wouldn’t produce babies, and a wife he would love for ever and ever. And there was Hen, making a point, blocking up Angel’s room. She must have meant it; she wanted to take over that room as if Angel had never been there, remind them of her own existence, show her resentment about not being needed, teach them something. He stood on the seafront, with the wind howling around him, and phoned her number on the mobile phone he hated. Heard her whispering and saying, Dad? Is that you, and him shouting back, come down and get all that crap out of here, and her saying, Can I call you back, as if it was nothing important and she hadn’t done that to them, had all that shit delivered to take up Angel’s room, how could she?