by Lee, Tanith
Liar, Rachaela thought.
Ruth looked blank. She held the seahorse out and gazed at it, as if searching its curves for an answer.
‘You must stay here,’ said Emma, ‘and look after Mummy.’
‘No,’ said Ruth, quietly.
‘Yes, Ruth. That’s how it’s meant to be. I’ve just been borrowing you. It’s been so lovely. And we’ll stay good friends. I’ll write to you every week. I promise. I’ll tell you all about Cheltenham.’
‘No,’ said Ruth. She had not screamed.
‘And I expect I’ll come and see you,’ said Emma. ‘I’ll bring you wonderful presents.’
‘No,’ said Ruth.
‘And maybe one day you can visit me. Rachaela can bring you on the train.’
‘No,’ said Ruth.
‘Oh dear,’ said Emma, ‘darling you must try to understand. It’s very hard I know. I’ll miss you dreadfully. But poor Liz, I have to go. She’s my daughter.’
Ruth said nothing.
She took her picture back with her behind the screen. The bells did not ring.
Emma looked at Rachaela.
‘I’d better leave,’ said Emma. She rubbed her forehead. Plainly she had a headache. ‘If she wants any of her things...’
‘When will you go?’ asked Rachaela.
Ruth must be listening behind the screen.
‘She did say as quickly as possible—Brian will pick me up at the station. Then he said he’d arrange to get my stuff moved out. Liz is pretty desperate.’
Desperate.
‘A month?’
‘More—more like a fortnight,’ Emma faltered. ‘Oh, dear,’ she said again, and went out.
She had not cried. Naturally. What had she to cry about? Ruth had not cried either. Perhaps the outburst would come.
Rachaela looked out at the dusk on the snow street, and the snow piled up against the walls, the pedestrians slipping and sidling along the ice.
The silence in the room was deafening.
The child no longer came home at lunch-time. She took sandwiches and ate them at the school. This was an extra task for Rachaela, the making of sandwiches for the child. Sometimes Emma had given Ruth breakfast too, but breakfast was fairly easy, cornflakes or toast. The evening tea was more irksome. The child required and was used to cooked food. She would let herself into the flat and be waiting for Rachaela behind her screen. She would never speak first.
‘Hallo, Ruth.’
‘Hallo, Mummy.’
Rachaela hated cooking Ruth’s teas. Usually they were not things she herself wanted and so two meals had to be arranged. Rachaela tried to give Ruth what she had had with Emma, things she liked or which would be good for her: sausages and chips, chicken and broccoli, real carrots, grilled fish with cheese and baked beans.
Ruth was used to a dessert too, and Rachaela bought her fruit pies and ice cream, but Emma had made plum tarts and custards, crumbles and baked apples.
Rachaela stocked a large blue bowl with apples, oranges, pears and bananas for the child to eat, as Emma had done.
There had to be orange juice, Lucozade and Pepsi in the fridge.
The fridge was crowded. It was costly, feeding the child.
Luckily the washing machine coped as adequately with Ruth’s clothes as it had been doing for the past six years. Emma had ironed Ruth’s blouses. Rachaela bought new ones which did not need ironing.
After the evening meal, Ruth would retire to her area. She would do her slight homework if she had been given any, or paint wild garish pictures, forests of lions and castles on fire, duels in deserts, ships in tempests. Her imagination was obviously being fed by the school and by the books. Twice a week she went to the library, usually on her own.
She caused, apart from the expensive, awkward food and the constant renewal of clothing, very little trouble.
She slept noiselessly. In the night it was difficult to know that she was there, but for the wall of the screen.
Emma’s flat stood empty for six months before anyone else moved in.
They were unfortunate arrivals: two young men who played loud pop music during the evening and sometimes had noisy rows—including the landing in their sphere of operations.
Ruth did not react to this alien influx. She had never cried over Emma.
At first, Emma’s notes, on brightly coloured paper, had come on every ninth or tenth day. Ruth would retire behind her screen to read them and stored them in one of her drawers. She never made any comment on the notes, seemed neither upset nor glad to receive them. After a couple of months, the notes dwindled. Neither had Ruth ever answered them.
‘If you want to write to Emma,’ said Rachaela, ‘just take some paper and an envelope from the cabinet.’ She had got them in specially. ‘There are plenty of stamps.’ Ruth said yes, she knew about the paper and the stamps. She did not use any.
After four months, Rachaela herself got a letter from Emma. Emma was in heaven, full of news of Liz, but she asked after Ruth. ‘Children are so bad at let ter-writing. I remember I used to be a horror.’ Rachaela answered the letter after a week. Ruth and she were well, nothing had happened, Ruth had a lot of homework just now. Ruth sent her love. Rachaela had not asked Ruth if she wished to send Emma her love. Probably Ruth did not. Emma was over.
This trite communication put an end to Emma’s overtures and she began to fade from their lives.
One day Rachaela found all the coloured letters from Emma to Ruth in the waste-bin under the sink.
In the very beginning she had sat down with Ruth at the small table.
‘I’m sorry about Emma having to go. It’s hard for you. But we’ll just have to do the best we can.’ Ruth had not replied, nor looked at her. She was making a drawing of a tall woman in flowing sleeves. ‘You know I can’t give you as much time as Emma. I’m at work. But if there are any problems, you’ll have to tell me, because Emma won’t be here. Do you understand?’
‘Yes,’ said Ruth after a gap.
Rachaela did not say she would leave the child alone as much as possible and that she in turn would expect to be left alone. It was tacitly agreed between them from long experience.
Rachaela thought that the mistake her own mother had made was in her brainwashed attempts to care for and become involved with a child she did not want.
Ruth and she had instead a disarmed neutrality.
They would never be friends, but by keeping a great distance, they might not become enemies.
Rachaela no longer hated Ruth. Ruth was now a sentient being, that could visit the lavatory alone, wash, feed and clothe itself, amuse itself without recourse to her.
Since Ruth had not cried, there had been no onus on Rachaela to extend a prosthesis of sympathy and warmth she could not feel.
For her part, Rachaela tried not to curb the child, but let her go her own wild, silent way.
Ruth never showed Rachaela anything—her art work, her homework or a book—but Rachaela gave her the use of the bookcase, overloaded now, and once or twice when money had been freer had bought Ruth books of fantastic art, Kay Nielsen, Vali Myers. Ruth took these gifts politely, but she pored over them in her burrow.
Emma had left her two glass paperweights and a blue glass cat. For her eighth birthday Rachaela bought Ruth something from the local Sunday market, with misgiving and a knowledge of unassailable rightness. It was a mirror inset with purple iris flowers, peacocks’ feathers, shells of pink opaque glass. ‘Oh,’ said Ruth when she saw it. She thanked Rachaela coolly and bore the glass into her cubby.
The plant, David, had died although Rachaela had put it in a window. Now Ruth began to collect, with saved-up pocket money, false flowers of enamel, and finally a birdcage with a painted wooden linnet.
Glimpsing into her daughter’s area—the strip of wall now hung with strange prints in clip frames and Ruth’s own latest exotic work, the mirror, the bells and shawls, flowers and cage and even, just above the chest, the white face of a clock which did no
t go—Rachaela saw Scarabae. Perhaps she had encouraged it, or not. Ruth was a living plant which put out stained-glass flowers. You could not snap them off, as perhaps Rachaela’s own mother had tried to do. For how much of the shadowy Scarabae had she seen in her daughter, and tried to poison with her haircuts and crosses on the sprouts?
Beyond the windows, out in the streets, the coloured glass of the seasons came and went. The distant park was like a calendar. Green, yellow and brown the pages fell from its trees, black spider-web bareness and another ice age of pure snow.
Emma was never mentioned.
The school took Ruth to museums, art galleries and gardens; the seaside.
At night and the weekends, they sat in silence but for the music centre and the thump-thump from the flat below.
It was easy yet impossible to forget the child was there.
Jonquil was in the shop when the young woman came in. She was about twenty-two or three, with glasses and a washed young face. She walked up to Rachaela.
‘Mrs Day?’
‘Yes,’ said Rachaela.
‘Ms,’ said Jonquil, ‘Mzzz Day.’
‘Oh, well,’ said the young woman. ‘I’m Miss Barrett, from Ruth’s school.’
‘What’s happened?’ asked Jonquil.
‘Oh, nothing—well, something. But I mean Ruth’s quite all right. I’m sorry to bother you at work, Mrs Day. But I wanted a word with you when the child wasn’t there.’
Jonquil swung her boots off the counter.
‘Go through to the back, Rachaela. Take Mzzz Barrett with you. I’ll see to those magazines.’
They went into the back room. It was crammed with boxes and piled by books. Letters overspilled a tray and the old typewriter squatted among the coffee things. Over a radiator hung three pairs of Denise’s tights, long dry, ‘As I say, I’m sorry about seeking you out, Mrs Day, but I felt it would be best to talk to you without Ruth. If you prefer I can come to your flat at a convenient time.’
‘When I’m there, Ruth is always there. What’s the matter?’
‘Well, I don’t want to alarm you. It’s probably nothing, children get these strange little fancies. One shouldn’t make too much of them, but then again, they need watching. I wonder if you’ve noticed anything like it.’
‘Like what exactly?’
It was play-time, and I saw a huddle of children near the sheds. I left it a while but they didn’t break up, so I went over to see what was going on. There was a ring of children, they were giggling, but some of them looked a bit frightened. Sitting on the ground was Terry Porter who’d apparently fallen over and cut his knee quite badly. Instead of coming up for medical attention he was just sitting there, looking white, and Ruth was sitting next to him. As I got there she put her hand on the cut and actually squeezed it, so the blood ran out quite violently, all down his leg. She said, ‘Make it bleed again, Terry’.’
Rachaela felt a strange delayed horror, moving so deep in her she scarcely knew what it was. She said nothing.
Miss Barrett, having waited for her, said, ‘Has Ruth ever done anything like that at home?’
‘No,’ said Rachaela.
‘Perhaps it’s never come up. Ruth’s had the usual odd spills and scrapes herself, but never anything very bloody. Sometimes children do get fascinated by blood.’
‘Yes.’
‘Maybe you should have a word. Or perhaps you’ve been telling her about when her periods will be due. Sometimes that sparks it off.’
‘No.’
‘Well it is a bit early.’
‘What happened?’ asked Rachaela. ‘I mean with the boy?’
‘Oh, Terry. Well, I just told Ruth not to be a silly girl and got him off to Nurse. Ruth is sometimes a bit, well, a bit unusual. The things she draws. And if we ask them to tell stories or act out little plays, Ruth’s are always rather gruesome. I sometimes wonder where she gets her ideas from.’ Miss Barrett looked at Rachaela with keen glasses.
‘I don’t censor her reading,’ said Rachaela.
‘No. Well, maybe you should be a little more strict. We’re very careful what we let them have.’
Rachaela remembered a drawing pinned up in Emma’s flat.
‘But you tell them about the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.’
‘Well of course. That’s Religious Knowledge.’
‘It’s also a very grim subject and Ruth painted it.’
‘Well I have to admit,’ said Miss Barrett, trying not to look at Denise’s tights, ‘I know they’re all fairly bloodthirsty little savages. They go on and on about the nails.’ She cheered up, having reassured herself. ‘That’s all it was, really. I thought you should know and keep an eye on her.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Don’t mention it,’ said Miss Barrett.
Typical woman,’ said Jonquil disapprovingly, when Miss Barrett had gone.
Ruth was drawing behind her screen when Rachaela came in.
Rachaela took off her coat, and washed her hands, and began to arrange Ruth’s tea automatically.
‘How did it go today at school?’ Rachaela asked.
A pause, perhaps of astonishment.
‘It was all right.’
‘What about yesterday?’
‘That was all right too.’
Rachaela thought of her mother, so many lectures over the table. Meals should not be interrogations.
She turned the steaks slowly.
Tonight they would eat together. Steak for both; mashed potatoes, tomatoes and peas for Ruth; lettuce and avocado for Rachaela.
When the food was ready she called Ruth to the table. They ate in silence, the drawing dividing them, to which, between mouthfuls, Ruth added a stroke or two. Upside-down, the drawing looked ominous, some bleak landscape under a cloudy sky, some beast coming from a lair.
‘What would you like now, pie or ice-cream?’
‘Both, please.’
Ruth was always polite. She was also a greedy child. Even when Emma had gone her appetite had not slackened, She stayed wand-slim, yet, in past weeks, Rachaela had begun to note the points of little breasts. She was only nine. Everything would need buying again, including a tiny bra. Would Ruth be embarrassed? Rachaela never saw her in the bath.
When the meal was finished, Rachaela washed up and made coffee, and Ruth retired behind her screen.
‘Do you have any homework tonight?’
Again the perhaps-astonished pause.
‘No.’
‘Will you come out, Ruth, for a minute, I want to talk to you about something.’
What would Emma have done? Emma, with all her experience, might not have cared. ‘It’s a phase they all go through. Don’t you remember it in yourself? Don’t draw attention to it. She’ll work it out.’
Ruth emerged, with her drawing. She sat down again at the table and worked on steadily.
Rachaela said, ‘Tell me about Terry Porter.’
Silence.
Eventually Ruth said, ‘I don’t like him.’
‘Why not?’
‘He shouts things at me.’
‘What sort of things?’
‘That I didn’t have a dad. That I came out of an egg.’
‘Of course you had a father. He doesn’t live with us, that’s all. Emma told you about that.’
Emma’s name was ignored.
How nastily inventive of Terry Porter to say Ruth came from an egg. Perhaps he had heard mention of the reproductive cycle.
‘So you were glad,’ said Rachaela, ‘when Terry Porter cut himself.’ Ruth said nothing. ‘Why did you make the cut worse? To scare him?’ Ruth drew on. The landscape, like all deserts, had a familiar look. ‘Please say something, Ruth.’
Ruth said, ‘It bled.’
‘Is that what interested you?’
‘It was very red.’
‘You’ve seen blood before,’ said Rachaela. Had she? She must have done, she had been born in it.
‘It was very red blood.’
&nbs
p; Was there relish in the statement? Was there, more to the point, thirst and incipient sexuality?
Ruth shaded in an area of her beast.
‘Why doesn’t my dad live with us?’
‘He didn’t want to.’
‘I don’t have a nanny or a grandpa, either.’
‘No. I’m sorry. There’s just us.’
‘Didn’t they want me too?’ The inquiry was not plaintive. It was brutally matter-of-fact.
I didn’t want you. Don’t want you. You are a little animal, muddling up my life, that expects to be fed and clothed, that has to have schools and presents. That has to be thought about. Not loveable, like a cat. Skin and hair and voice.
But the Scarabae had wanted Ruth. Oh yes.
Lie about it now? She tried not to lie to the child, as she had been lied to.
‘I expect they did want you, but it wasn’t their choice.’
‘Do I have a nanny?’
‘Maybe.’ Had Anna been Adamus’s mother, as Rachaela suspected? ‘But they’re a long way away.’
‘Like Emma,’ said Ruth, surprisingly.
‘Much further than Emma.’
‘They don’t write to me.’
‘No.’
‘I don’t expect they want me,’ said Ruth.
She had successfully sidetracked Rachaela from the subject of the blood.
Rachaela said, ‘About Terry Porter. You mustn’t do anything like that again.’ Ruth did not ask why. ‘You understand that, don’t you? You must be careful not to give people bad ideas about you. Don’t trust anyone. Don’t give yourself away. Try to behave like other people.’
Ruth nibbled at her coloured pencil.
Impelled by instinct, Rachaela took the drawing up and stared at it.
Ruth had drawn the heath, the Scarabae heath, the dragon parts, and the dragon coming forth to kill its knight. On a slope was a weirdly shaped rock—the standing stone?
‘What gave you the notion for this?’ Rachaela said.
‘Don’t know.’
Ruth was looking at her at last with sharp, bright black eyes. Her unlined milk-white face was ancient.
‘It’s a very good drawing.’
‘Thank you.’
Rachaela handed back the heath and the dragon. Through that place she had walked, Ruth a thing coiled inside her. How else had the child seen?
