by Lee, Tanith
She put the bread under the grill, and her hands shook. From a decade of cobwebs and dyed glass she felt old leaf-like hands reach out and brush her.
The shop was bare, the books packed in boxes or sent away.
Denise was crying softly and fuzzily.
‘Come on, come on,’ said Jonquil. ‘Have some more wine.’
They sat drinking, perched on the wonky stools, as outside the non-customers, now excluded for ever, stalked past on the wet, dark pavement.
‘Do you remember that old lady who kept coming in for Roald Dahl, saying he was a woman?’ sobbed Denise.
‘What about that man who kept buying copies of Fight the Good Fight by Angela Truebridge?’
‘And the Angela Carter fiend?’
‘And that girl who never knew the author?’
They nodded reminiscently.
‘It’s been a funny old job,’ said Denise, and blew her nose. ‘I start at the Co-op next Monday, just till Christmas. Keith’s furious. He’ll have to get his own breakfast.’
‘Lazy sod,’ said Jonquil, ‘do him good.’
‘But he’ll make such a mess,’ wailed Denise. ‘And he never washes up.’
‘You want to get shot of him.’
‘Well, I met this really lovely bloke on the bus last week. I see him every night.’
‘Out of the frying pan,’ said Jonquil. ‘You never learn.’
‘What are you going to do, Rachaela?’
‘I haven’t decided yet.’
‘If you want to come up to Manchester,’ said Jonquil, ‘just drop me a line. You can doss on one of the girls’ floors till you find somewhere.’
Outside two young men peered in at the lighted women with their bottles and Jonquil’s cans of Carlsberg. They leered and made signs until Jonquil strode towards the door.
‘Rubbish,’ said Jonquil, as they fled. ‘There ought to be some sort of dustbin for them.’
‘I’ll have to go,’ said Rachaela, slipping down from her stool. ‘I have to get Ruth’s meal. I told her I’d be late but it’s already seven.’
‘Yes, OK, Raech. You whizz off.’
Denise embraced Rachaela, wetting her with fresh tears. ‘Drop in at the Co-op. I’ll get you a discount.’
Jonquil shook Rachaela’s hand. Her pale grey eyes were resigned. ‘If ever you’re Manchester way, look us up.’
They saw her off into the splashed black and rainy yellow night.
Spears of light, long aprons of neon reflected in the pavements. Beyond the block of shops the street-lamps spread like broken egg in the puddles.
The rain was dense, trying to turn to snow. The wind flurried.
Lit windows in the flats, the houses made into fiats. How often she had passed them, in rain and shine, on the summer evenings in the dust and diesel, on the white snow where every step portended a snapped ankle.
Already one or two trees with garlands of coloured bulbs. There in that blue window the same old ‘Merry Xmas’ which appeared doggedly year after year.
Soon a birthday present for Ruth, and then a Christmas present. Jonquil had pressed some books on Rachaela, unsuitable for anyone. Oxfam could have those.
Someone behind her.
Nothing in that.
One night a drunken man had staggered after her the length of Rosamunde Street. He had taken her arm and she had thrust him off. ‘What’s the rush, darling?’ he had said, and she had pushed him hard. He lost his balance and fell against some railings. ‘Bloody tart! Fucking whore!’ he had warbled, but no more than that.
There were generally people about, harmless people, perhaps concealing lives of molten depravity but offering no threat to the single woman on her way home.
A man with a dog now, coming up the road. Cars zoomed by in wings of water.
The one behind her did not fall back, or pass her.
His step was very soft. Somehow she knew the step—not its author, but its meaning.
Her stomach tightened. She was being silly.
The man with the dog drew level and went by.
Ahead, the traffic lights at the end of Beaumont Street were in sight. Green, amber, red.
Black snow drifted over her face.
It was like before. It was like the time when she had been hunted.
No, that was absurd. How could they find her now?
She reached the lights, had to wait. The shops showed a blaze of colours. She could turn, look up the dark road, and see who had come after her.
There he was. A man standing about forty feet away. Hesitating, as if trying to make out the numbers on the house fronts, which were perfectly clear.
Her heart tumbled down a stairway.
A short man in a dark overcoat and woollen hat.
It was frighteningly stupid. For people did not keep on wearing the same garments, not for eleven, twelve years. People did not stay the same.
She had. The mirror had told her.
She had not changed.
She thought of the green before the flats and the sudden figure. ‘You must go, you know.’
‘Go away,’ she said. But later he had come back and handed her the letter, the letter Adamus had typed, from the Scarabae.
He was too far off to be sure, the foreign face which maybe had not aged by another line, the gelid eyes, invisible.
She needed to see him more closely, to be sure. And even then, could she trust her memory?
It was impossible they could have found her this time. Even if they had been trying all the years between. She refused it.
The lights changed and the cars grudgingly screeched to a halt.
Rachaela crossed over the road.
She looked back and saw the man stop dithering before the houses, and cross further up the street, just before the cars took over again.
He came on, walking in the same direction as Rachaela, the dilute snow sparkling in his hat like sequins.
Rachaela walked along Beaumont Street. The garish front of the Pizza Eater blossomed. Should she go in for a drink? No, they would not serve only a drirtk, she should recall that. Where then? Somewhere to halt, to see what he would do.
It was a coincidence. He was some stray who had reminded her of the Scarabae agent. That was all.
The launderette was open, lit dead-white and empty.
Rachaela pushed open the door and went in.
She sat down on one of the seats, and waited for the man in the woollen hat to come up, see her, and check.
A woman emerged from the insides of the launderette.
‘Do you need any help?’
‘I’m just waiting for a friend.’
The woman looked at her suspiciously.
‘Not doing any washing then?’
‘No.’
‘Well I suppose you know what you’re doing.’
She began to fiddle with some clothes from an open machine, dropping pairs of briefs and socks on to the floor.
The man appeared. He went by the window, without a glance, and moved on into the night.
The light from the launderette had shone upon him like an arc lamp. He was the man she had seen all those years before. She was sure of it. Sure.
Rachaela got up.
‘Off now then?’ chirped the woman, dropping another sock.
Rachaela went out into the shiny black, the confusion of slanting lit rain, streetlights, headlights.
Where was he? He had vanished.
She had imagined the likeness. He was just some man. The Scarabae had been preying on her mind, as in patches they always did, and so she had conjured up the memory to fit a stranger.
For they could not have gone on haunting her. They could not still want her now.
She trod cautiously along the street.
Knots of people scurried in the snowy rain.
Rachaela turned left and walked more briskly. She was borne away from the lights, and on the stretch of darker pavement, she stopped and looked all round. But no one was there save for a woman with an umbrel
la, a cyclist going wearily along by the kerb. Overhead a red window concealed some ordinary pleasure or wretchedness. She too began to hurry home.
When she opened the door the flat was in darkness, but sometimes Ruth, alone, would sit in the dark.
Rachaela crossed to one of the windows. It was open, the curtain wet and blowing.
Rachaela shut the window.
She stood in the darkness, gazing out at the street.
Traffic went by now and then. A man passed, but not the man she had seen.
No one, so far as she could tell, hugged the doorways, folded into the shadows. No one was there, watching, ready.
She turned and switched on a lamp.
A sort of sleepy stirring came from behind Ruth’s screen.
‘Hallo, Ruth.’
Ruth came out.
Rachaela was startled; wholly, disconcertingly unnerved.
Ruth was draped in the blue and green shawl, leaving her legs, her snow-white shoulders bare. Through eyelets of the shawl, white flesh stared. Beneath this thin covering she was naked. Her hair poured round her, strands sticky with electricity.
Her face was made-up, not inexpertly as one would expect, but like a painted doll. Coal-black lids, mascara sooty-thick, the Ups exactly shaped and red as holly berries.
She looked drowsy, as if she had been asleep. Yet a kind of current emanated from her, she was like a live wire. She had not been sleeping.
Rachaela found her voice. ‘Is that the make-up from Woolworth’s?’
‘Yes.’ Ruth’s own voice was mild. She was neither embarrassed nor uneasy.
‘You’ve done it very carefully.’
‘Yes.’
‘What were you doing?’
‘Waiting,’ said Ruth.
Of course she had been waiting, Rachaela delayed at the shop, later than she had intended.
But did Ruth mean that? Waiting for her mother?
‘Why was the window open?’
Ruth said, To let in the night.’
Perhaps it was a line from a book. Ruth did not lie to Rachaela, neither was she speaking all the truth. Yet the truth was somehow self-evident.
Vampire. Ruth had made herself up like a vampire from a horror film she had perhaps contrived to see, or some illustration in a library book. She looked the part.
And then she had lain down in the dark, naked but for her flimsy shawl, the window open to let in the night, and waited.
Rachaela had, again, the image of a man in a black cloak walking up the house wall. This time no sexual clenching moved in her loins, she went cold.
Was this Ruth’s fantasy? Dracula walking up the brickwork to claim her?
She switched on the electric fire, the room was freezing as if hung with icicles. She went into the kitchen, washed her hands, and began to put bacon on to the grill.
Ruth went silently back behind her screen.
When she emerged she was wearing her nightdress and dressing-gown. She walked into the bathroom and Rachaela heard the clink of the pot of cold cream.
When Ruth came out, she was wiped clean of all colours but her own black and white.
‘You could have kept it on,’ Rachaela said.
‘I was finished with it.’
Rachaela fried an egg for Ruth.
‘I’m home from the bookshop now,’ said Rachaela.
‘Can I have a day off tomorrow?’
‘Yes, if you want. You can have another bilious attack.’
‘Thank you,’ said Ruth.
She sat at the table, eating bread and butter.
Rachaela served the food and they ate it.
Outside snow began to fall in large fat flakes.
When they had finished, Rachaela got up and walked to one of the windows. She drew back the curtain with her hand and looked both ways along the deserted street.
‘When you’re out and about,’ Rachaela said, ‘you know you mustn’t talk to anyone. I remember Emma telling you about that. It still matters.’
‘I sometimes ask the way.’
‘That’s all right. But don’t get into conversations. Always speak to women, not men.’
‘Yes, Mummy.’
Rachaela closed the curtain. She looked at Ruth drinking a mug of tea at the table. She seemed like an average child, a little unusual, wonderful hair, very composed.
‘Never,’ said Rachaela, ‘speak to men.’
Christmas came. They did not celebrate it, although with Emma they always had. Rachaela gave Ruth three books and some multi-coloured paints. Ruth gave Rachaela one of her Ruth-type presents, this time a long candle shaded through vermilion to orange, and this they burnt as their one festive token.
For Ruth’s eleventh birthday, a week or so before, Rachaela had given Ruth a dress she wanted, scarlet and apple green, and Ruth wore it on Christmas Day.
They ate chicken, peas and chips, apple Danish and cream.
Outside the rain, which had taken over again from the snow, fell in grey torrents.
The day was otherwise normal. Rachaela played music, Ruth painted. There was a play on the radio about the Three Wise Men lost on the Ml.
On Christmas night Ruth went for her nightly bath and came out in her nightdress.
‘Mummy.’
‘What is it?’
‘You said I was to tell you.’
‘What?’
‘I’ve started.’
Rachaela took a moment to catch up. Then she said, ‘You’ve got a period?’
‘Yes, Mummy.’
‘Did you manage all right?’
‘Yes, thank you.’
‘Does it hurt? Do you want a paracetamol?’
‘No, it doesn’t hurt.’
‘That’s good.’
Ruth stood looking at her. Rachaela could imagine Emma would have been all congratulations and the joys of womanhood. Ruth had begun early as she, Rachaela, had done. She thought, inadvertently, Bleeding.
‘I’m different now,’ said Ruth.
‘Yes.’ Rachaela could think of nothing more to say.
Ruth walked behind her screen and was gone.
Chapter Fourteen
BY the end of January, Rachaela was working for Mrs Mantini at the antiques shop in Beaumont Street.
Mrs Mantini only wanted her in the afternoons and all day Saturday.
They did a surprisingly brisk trade, although mostly on the little things, the ewers and basins, china dogs, trays of ancient photographs. Certain of these reminded Rachaela of the Scarabae albums, the upright waxwork figures posed before palm trees—yet these people might once have been alive, the Scarabae had looked frozen dead for ever.
Mrs Mantini did not like Rachaela to sit and read in the shop. She wished her to dust the furniture, burnish the coal scuttle, and clean the windows. In spare moments she gave Rachaela boxes of jewellery or coins to sort, unvaluable items often to be highly priced.
The pay was not wonderful, but the job was fairly convenient.
Spring came early. Ruth had a phase of bringing home flowers obtained during her days of truancy: daffodils and tulips perhaps picked from the park or swiped off graves.
‘Don’t steal things, you’ll get caught,’ Rachaela admonished her.
The flower phase died a natural death.
As the days lengthened, Ruth came home later and later. Often she was not home when Rachaela arrived from the shop.
Sometimes, too, Ruth had eaten in a snack bar, having saved up her pocket money for a beefburger.
The school sent Rachaela a letter saying that Ruth’s frequent absences were causing her work to suffer. Rachaela dropped it in the bin.
‘A man spoke to me in the graveyard,’ Ruth announced, as they ate at the table.
‘What did you do?’
‘Nothing. He said I was Ruth Scaraby and I said No, I was Ruth Day.’
‘You shouldn’t have answered him.’
‘But he was wrong.’
‘All right. Then what happened?’
‘What then?’
‘He said he’d buy me a Pepsi and I said you said I mustn’t talk to strangers, and I came away.’
‘Did he come after you?’
‘No. He just stood there.’
Rachaela said, ‘Did he have a dark coat and a woollen hat?’
‘Yes. I expect he was hot.’
Rachaela tried to order herself. She had begun to tremble with a sort of frightened and frustrated fury. How had he found them? How had he followed Ruth? How dare he speak.
Weeks since, she had tested the evening pavements for pursuit, looked from windows for watchers in the shadow. And all the while he had been creeping up on them, unseen. Of course, it was not Rachaela who interested them now. Their craving for continuance—the child—
‘You must never—never—have anything to do with that man, Ruth.’
‘Why?’
Tie’s bad.’
‘He just looked like a man.’
‘He works for the Scarabae.’
‘Is that for my dad?’
‘No. For the family. I told you, they’re mad and dangerous.’
It was like hurling stones into water. After a moment the impact vanished, leaving no trace. Rachaela had the feeling that, rather than warning Ruth away from the Scarabae, she was intriguing her further with them. What on earth was to be done?
‘I think you’d better stop roaming about. Either you must go to school or stay indoors here.’ Lock her in, keep her close.
‘Mummy I don’t want to.’
‘You’ll have to. I don’t want him getting at you.’
Could she go to the police? This man is molesting my eleven-year-old daughter... questions asked. This man is the agent of your daughter’s father, his family. Your daughter’s father has rights to your daughter. It could become complex, more perilous. Keep the child in. For how long? She must confront the man, drive him off. But now he never showed himself when Rachaela was there.
‘You’ll have to go to school. I’ll take you.’
‘I don’t want to.’
‘I know. I’m sorry. But this is serious.’
‘He only said he’d buy me a Pepsi. I didn’t go.’
‘He might—I don’t know.’
‘I won’t talk to him again.’
‘Ruth, you must do as I tell you.’
