by Lee, Tanith
‘Mummy,’ said Ruth, ‘can we have a cat?’
‘No, I don’t think so. I’m sorry, but there’s no garden and we’re out all day.’
She did not want Ruth to have a cat. She did not know why. Surely Ruth would not hurt the cat, for she stroked them on walls. Rachaela had seen her. It was something else.
Ruth did not whine or try to get her way.
She took the heath and went back behind her screen.
A storm raged over the house.
Rachaela dreamed of Adamus bending over her, his hair a black cowl. The lightning caught him, faded.
She opened her eyes. Ruth was seated at a window watching the storm.
A blue flash like an incendiary, the child did not start, but leaned closer to the pane.
Ruth had watched storms since she was three or four.
The thunder bombarded the capital.
Rachaela got up, and in the light of the street lamps through the uncurtained windows, padded into the kitchen.
‘Do you want a drink? Milk? Coffee?’
‘No thank you.’
Rachaela did not turn on the light. She filled the kettle and set it to boil. The saffron-azure of the gas flame starred the orange dark. The lightning came again.
As she drank the coffee something made her walk about the room. The child ignored her. Reaching Ruth’s area, she saw the beads and bells, clock and paintings, sear in another flash. So much that glimmered. And there the mirror she had given Ruth. The mirror had changed.
Not entering, Rachaela craned to see.
‘What have you done to your mirror?’
‘I painted it.’
Another blast of blue. All the glass was covered, fields and meadows, flowers and clouds, and distant mountains in a mist.
Chapter Thirteen
She had bought the bathroom mirror soon after moving into the flat. It hung the length of the wall. As the bath ran, a fog of steam began to cling to its surface. Rachaela wiped it away. Through the frosted window blazed the cold light of winter morning; sidelight, the most harsh. Rachaela examined her face and body.
She was forty. She did not look it. She looked the same as when she had been twenty-nine, before the birth of the child. Even that had not touched her. No stretch marks, no cellulite, the belly and thighs firm and white and smooth, the breasts full and yet high, the nipples small and rosy. The neck was unlined, the face unlined, the brow and cheeks. The chin was firm. No pouches about the mouth or under the eyes. The face and body of a young, young woman. And in the black hair, the black hair of the groin, not a single silver coil.
It did not please her. She tried not to let it unnerve her. She was used to it, saw it every day. She accepted such remarks as Jonquil’s, ‘But you’re only a kid.’ Even Denise had aged a little, got heavy and puffy in her thirties, from the big cooked dinners she made for hungry Keith. Jonquil had not herself changed very much, her skin had only grown harder and more obdurate, she had swapped the steel earring for an earring of bone, and all her hair was grey.
Probably I’ll age suddenly.
That might happen. It happened in books.
People did not notice youngness when they saw you constantly, the same as the alteration into age went largely unobserved, only picked out in sudden revelations.
‘What are you, you must be about twenty-eight now,’ Jonquil had said last year, not bothering with an answer.
The child had changed, of course.
Ruth grew out of all her clothes with punctilious regularity. She had breasts and two small brassieres that must be hand-washed.
Rachaela had explained to Ruth about her periods, sitting at the table with her while Ruth drew, asking if she understood. Rachaela’s mother had not told her anything but had given her a rather serious book. The blood had come in the middle of the night and she had still been appalled. She had had to wake her mother up to ask for sanitary pads, and her mother had grumbled, Rachaela put pads into Ruth’s drawer, among her underclothes, in front of her.
Ruth showed no resentment, no excitement. ‘I heard about it at school.’
‘From the teachers?’
‘From a girl.’
‘Tell me when you start,’ Rachaela felt bound to say.
‘All right.’
What did Ruth look like, unclothed? Rachaela never saw her. She would go nightly into the bathroom in her skirt and blouse and come out in a cotton nightshirt.
Rachaela slept in a nightshirt, too. Ruth’s decorum had somehow imposed it on her.
The bath was full.
Rachaela let the mirror veil itself in steam and stepped into the water.
‘Hi, you’re late,’ said Jonquil airily as Rachaela entered the shop. ‘That kid of yours mess you up? Is she at her secondary yet?’
‘Next year, when she’s eleven.’
‘I suppose you’ve got that all mapped out.’
‘It will depend on some test,’ said Rachaela vaguely. She was used to answering occasional questions about the child, who perhaps Jonquil did not really think existed after all.
‘I see,’ said Jonquil. ‘Used to be the old eleven-plus, but that’s all different now. You wouldn’t remember.’
Rachaela made coffee, and tea for Jonquil with one of her herbal tea bags. Jonquil fussed round her. When they sat down, Jonquil stood up again.
‘You’ve been here a long while, haven’t you, Raech? What is it—five years?’
‘A little longer.’
‘Denise too. Poor old Denise. That bloody awful feller she’s with. I hoped he’d leave her in peace but he knows when he’s on to a good thing.’ Jonquil drank some tea and sighed gustily. ‘I’m afraid we’re going to have to shut up shop.’
Rachaela looked at her. This had been on the cards from the very beginning. She was only surprised Isis had lasted so long.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said.
‘Yeah. It’s a shame. But there’s never been much interest around here. Dozy hole. I’ve got a chance to go in with a women’s group up Manchester way. So I’m all right. But it means curtains for Denise and you. Will you be OK?’
‘Oh, I’ll find something else.’
‘Some skivvy’s job. Or running round after some bloody male in an office.’
‘Probably.’
‘I wish I could do something.’
‘How long?’ said Rachaela.
‘End of this month. It’s rotten timing. It’ll be Christmas next. But it will give you a bit more time with the kid.’
‘Yes.’
Relieved by unloading her bombshell, Jonquil began to move about the forlorn little shop, examining books.
The hot water pipes gurgled as they had done for ten years.
It was not the end of the world. Thanks to Emma’s years of extreme beneficence, Rachaela had managed to save a little, and now there was some interest which would tide her over, perhaps until the new year. The child was an expense, of course, but she seemed up to date with her garments, her school trips.
Lyle and Robbins were advertising for staff again. Perhaps that would do. Or there was the antique shop in Beaumont Street, only one flummoxed woman who was always shutting for ‘ten minutes’.
Not a problem.
Rachaela remembered how Mr Gerard had fired her, and how relevant and ominous it had been.
Things were different now. Or she was.
On Thursday, her half-day off from the shop, as Rachaela was sitting in her chair listening to Tchaikovsky ballet music, the door sounded.
‘Yes?’
‘Oh Mrs Day. It’s Miss Barrett. Perhaps you remember me?’
‘No, I’m afraid not.’
‘From Ruth’s school.’
‘Yes?’
‘I need to see you about something.’
Rachaela recalled Miss Barrett, just over a year ago, the scrubbed clean face and essential glasses. Terry Porter and his knee.
‘You’d better come up.’
Miss Barrett entered the
flat in a strawberry-red coat with a white fur collar, a yellow wool hat and brown fur gloves without fingers. She carried a pink umbrella.
‘Oh, Mrs Day. So glad to catch you in.’
‘Please sit down.’
Miss Barrett sat in the chair, and Rachaela sat down on one of the hard chairs by the table.
Miss Barrett shed her gloves and hat.
‘What a nasty day. I shouldn’t be surprised if we were in for some more snow.’
‘What has Ruth done now?’ said Rachaela.
‘Oh dear. It’s always such a worry, this sort of thing,’ said Miss Barrett. ‘Mr Walker thought, as I’d come to see you before, it would be best if I came again. We don’t like to make too much of it. Unless it goes on, of course.’
‘What has Ruth done?’
‘It’s really what she hasn’t done. She hasn’t been coming to school, Mrs Day. I take it you haven’t been keeping her at home and just not sent a note? We must always have a note, you see. There’s a lot of colds about, I know.’
‘Ruth never gets colds.’
‘No. Well then I take it she isn’t here.’
‘She isn’t.’
‘Mrs Walker thinks that she saw Ruth in Woolworth’s.’
What a mundane place for the escapee to be. Why Woolworth’s? Sometimes when Rachaela shopped in the Saturday lunch-hour, Ruth went with her, and into Woolworth’s too, never showing a symptom of interest in the toys, sweets or loudly drumming music section.
‘Mrs Walker thinks that Ruth was trying on makeup,’ said powderless Miss Barrett, her unpainted eyes and lips wide with shock.
‘Perhaps she was,’ said Rachaela, for a moment almost intrigued. She herself had done something similar when she had played truant, but then she was thirteen or fourteen.
‘The thing is, Mrs Day, this is very serious. You must speak to Ruth and impress upon her that she has to come to school. She’s been absent several days this month. She has an important test next year, and she needs to pay attention. She’s very much a dreamer. A lot of talent in art, though some of her paintings, well. But she needs to pull her socks up. She must attend.’
‘I’ll speak to her.’
‘Ruth must come to school. If she doesn’t, Mr Walker will have to take further steps.’
‘I see.’
Miss Barrett was rouged after all by indignation.
Throwing her chances away,’ she said. School was very important, a life jacket in chaos. She looked actually frightened.
Rachaela had not offered her anything to drink, and let her go to the door unaided, pulling on her ridiculous gloves, until she looked like a parody of a bear.
‘And if she has to stay away,’ said Miss Barrett, ‘we really must have a note.’
Rachaela ate tomatoes on toast for lunch, and pictured Ruth eating her sandwiches on some wall or in a park.
She must finally have become bored with school. Rachaela knew she could read well but was virtually innumerate. This had been so in Emma’s day, and was so still, for once or twice Ruth had asked Rachaela some arithmetical question which Rachaela also found impossible to answer. Ruth had trouble even in adding up. ‘How many apples are there left?’ Rachaela had recently asked her. Ruth studied the bowl. ‘I don’t know, Mummy.’ There were seven. The child paid for things in shops by giving always a large coin, or a note. She would bring her loose change to Rachaela for translation into fifty-pence pieces and pounds.
Perhaps it was wrong to feel empathy with Ruth simply because she too had played truant.
Yet Rachaela saw the brief daylight ebb with a slight amusement, waiting for Ruth to appear punctually, as if just coming home from school.
The child manifested in the cold street. Rachaela thought of the day she had seen her in the snow, the day Emma had bowed out from their lives with urgent smiles. Poor useful Emma.
How different, now, was Ruth.
Her hair was no longer confined in plaits, but hung down her back to the base of her spine. It was thick and almost crudely black, with a shine on it like molasses. No hat any more, or gloves, the white long-fingered pianist’s hands playing with the buttons of her dark-blue coat. The satchel still there, incongruous. Despite this school bag of deceit, the white knee socks and little-girl shoes, Ruth was like a tiny woman on the street: a midget, quick rather than graceful, and with that strange white face of an elf.
When the flat door opened, Rachaela was sitting at the table.
‘Hallo, Ruth.’
‘Hallo, Mummy.’
‘Put your bag down, take off your coat, and come and sit here.’
‘What’s for tea?’
‘I haven’t thought about it.’
‘Can I have chips?’
‘You had chips yesterday.’
Ruth came to the table in her charcoal skirt, blue jumper and scarlet blouse. Rachaela allowed her to choose her own colours. She had, certainly, better dress-sense than Miss Barrett.
‘You haven’t been to school,’ said Rachaela.
Ruth looked at her, assessingly. She did not attempt to lie.
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘I don’t like it.’
‘Did you like it before?’
‘It was all right.’
‘And now it isn’t.’
Ruth said nothing.
‘Are the other children,’ said Rachaela, ‘bothering you?’
‘No.’
‘A woman came here today from the school. A Miss Barrett.’
‘Batty Barrett,’ said Ruth.
‘You were seen in Woolworth’s.’
‘Oh,’ said Ruth, ‘Why Woolworth’s?’
‘It was raining.’
‘What do you do when it doesn’t rain?’
‘I walk about,’ said Ruth. She paused, then said, ‘I go in the big graveyard and look at the stones.’ She added, ‘Sometimes I take a bus. I get lost. I always make sure I get back in time for tea.’
‘Yes I know.’
‘Are you going to say I have to go?’ said Ruth. She looked blank. She did not suspect Rachaela of complicity with the authorities, recognizing her as a fellow, though alien, outsider.
‘It depends what you want,’ said Rachaela.
‘I don’t want anything,’ said Ruth.
‘You’ll never get a smart job,’ said Rachaela. ‘I expect they’ve already told you about those.’
‘They said what did we want to be.’
‘What did you say?’
‘I said a library lady.’
‘Is that what you want?’
‘No.’
‘If you really don’t care,’ said Rachaela, ‘I’m not going to force you.’ She recollected her mother’s furious wobbling face: ‘You’ve got to pull yourself together. You’ll end up in the gutter. You go to school, do you hear me? I won’t be disgraced like that again, you bloody little beast.’
‘But we have to work something out,’ Rachaela said. ‘You’ll have to go in some of the time. When you want a day off tell me, I’ll write you a note.’
Ruth considered. Her privacy had been penetrated, but she seemed to accept the inevitability of this.
‘Will you?’
‘Yes.’
‘All right,’ said Ruth. ‘Thank you,’ she said.
Rachaela sat looking at her eldritch elfin child. Was Ruth also like her?
‘Will spaghetti on toast do for tea?’
‘With cheese.’
‘With cheese.’
Rachaela got up and went to set out tins on the work-top in the kitchen. Ruth followed her and stood in the doorway.
‘What would my dad say about me not going to school?’
Rachaela checked. ‘I don’t think he’d give a damn.’
Ruth said, ‘Will I ever see him?’
Rachaela made herself look back at the white face of her child.
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘He wouldn’t be interested, Ruth. I’m sorry.
’
‘How do you know?’
‘Because I knew him. He wasn’t interested in me, either.’
‘But the grandfather and granny,’ said Ruth.
Your grandfather is also your father.
‘There isn’t any grandfather or granny. It’s just a big shapeless family of old people. You wouldn’t like them.’
But how could she be sure?
Ruth was in their image. Ruth had done what they did.
She must not try to picture Ruth in that house. The house which had faded to a ghost with the years, but still lingered there, a lump of fog, on the edge of her mind. The mirrors, the windows.
Ruth said, ‘I might like them. I don’t mind old people.’
‘They’re very far away.’
‘Couldn’t I go?’
‘No, Ruth.’
‘But I want to.’
How had the conversation veered into this? Rachaela put down the can opener and emptied the spaghetti into the saucepan.
‘No, Ruth.’
‘I dream about them,’ said Ruth.
Rachaela stopped what she was doing.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I dream of them in a big house. And I walk down a corridor and I go in a door, and they’re there.’
Obviously, through the years, Rachaela had let things slip. She must have done. The child had her fantasies, like any child.
‘I don’t want to talk about it, Ruth. I don’t want you anywhere near them, and that’s that.’
Keep away from the Scarabae.
Rachaela saw again her mother’s congested face.
Ruth said, ‘Why can’t I? Why not?’
Rachaela said, ‘They’re mad. They’re mad people. And they’re a sort of vampire. Or they think they are.’ Don’t say any more.
‘Vampire,’ said Ruth. ‘Like Dracula?’
‘Not like Dracula. They’re bad people.’
She stirred the saucepan, waiting for the next assault, which did not come. When she looked back, Ruth had retreated again, behind the screen.
I shouldn’t have said that.
Too late.
She had a vision of Adamus walking up the wall of the house in the black of the moon, his pale face lifted and a trickle of blood running from the corner of his mouth. A sexual pang shot through her core, amazing her. After so long, after so much that was base and stupid, after Ruth.
