Isabel's Skin

by Peter Benson

  “Thank you… thank you…”

  “Ssh...”

  I moved to her wrists, and as I was freeing them I heard a noise upstairs. I looked at the ceiling, froze, and she whispered, “Mice…” The noise came again, and the scrabbling of tiny feet. I undid the last strap, she took a shallow breath and moved her legs off the couch. She grimaced, then pointed to her dress, hanging on the back of the door. I fetched it and dropped it over her head. She arranged the straps on her shoulders, stood up, and the dress fell down over her stomach and legs. She lifted a cowled cape from the back of the door, wrapped it over the dress, covered her head and said, “We’ll need that.” She pointed at a black bag. I picked it up and said, “Anything else?”

  “My shoes are at the door.” She stepped towards me and I put my hand on her shoulder. She winced, but did not pull away.

  “Can you walk?”

  “How far?”

  “Over the hill.”

  She looked at me and did not blink. “Show me,” she said, and we went to the back door. As she laced her shoes, I stared out and listened. I pointed to the east, beyond the garden wall. “I saw him go that way,” I said.

  “That’s where he likes to walk.”

  “How long does he go out for?”

  “It depends,” she said.

  “On what?”

  “How he’s feeling. Sometimes he’s gone for hours, other times he’s back in twenty minutes.”

  “Then we leave now,” I said, and I stepped out of the house. I stood in the shadow of the back door, looked both ways and beckoned her out. At first she would not move and stood absolutely still, watching the clouds. Her face looked out from under the cowl like something from the very worst dream, a dream a madman might have in the desperate last minutes of night, before the dawn comes and breaks the spell and chases all madness away. But do not stay, madness. Fly away. Leave. I wanted to shout at her but went back instead, took her arm and pulled her away from the house. When we reached the garden wall I let go, stopped and said, “Are you sure about this?” She gave me a short, hateful look, then started running.

  We darted out of the garden and into the fields, and once we were away from the house, she moved quickly. We followed the line of the hedge, and when we reached the scrub below the woods, I stopped, she stopped behind me and I watched for Hunt. I saw nothing, so we carried on, up the hill and into the trees, but as we ran along the crest, I saw a movement in front of us, the flash of an unnatural green against the rest, and the noise of heavy steps. “Down,” I hissed, and we dived for cover in a hollow below the track. Hunt was coming towards us, slashing at the undergrowth with his stick and muttering to himself. As he got closer, I heard his heavy breathing. It had a rattle to it, coming from the back of his throat. He said, “Now they will listen…” and then suddenly, before he reached where we were hiding, he stopped. I reached back and put my hand over the woman’s mouth, and my legs started to tingle. I looked down at my feet. They were resting on leaves and twigs. He was about twenty-five feet away, and although his face was wearing the shrewd mask he had worn when I first met him, now I could see the mendacity in his eyes. Everything about him howled of a mad but perfect duality. He spoke again, this time something I did not understand, then turned around and walked back the way he had come. I waited a minute, stood up and watched his back disappearing through the trees, and then we carried on through the woods and down the track to the fields in front of Belmont.

  The dog cart was where I had left it, and the horse was looking tired. It had finished the nosebag and was swishing its tail in a bored, distracted way. I took the woman’s hand and said, “Now we run” – and so we did, through the orchard and the gate to the drive. Chickens flapped, the cats jumped off a wall, rooks burst from the castellations. I looked up and saw Miss Watson. She was upstairs, looking out of the landing window. When she saw me she raised her hand to wave, but then stopped, her arm frozen over her head, the colour draining from her face. She disappeared, we carried on running and were on the drive before she came running from the house shouting, “Stop! Mr Morris! Please!” She was almost pleading, and her face was lost in a look I hadn’t seen before. I think she was worried, scared or panicked, or all three. But her jaw dropped as she saw the woman who stood beside me, shining yellow and brown with a wince on her face and her huge eyes staring out from beneath her cowl.

  For a moment, I thought about turning and going to Miss Watson and explaining something, but what, and where to start? Where to end? Did the story have an end? Could it? I did not have the hours I would need, so I yelled “I’m sorry!” and helped the woman into her seat, tucked her cloak around her, pulled the nosebag off the horse, jumped into the driver’s seat, released the brake, flicked the reins, and away we were up the drive towards the village. I raised my hand and held it up as we drove away, and the woman beside me started to whimper, and as we disappeared around the first bend of the drive, Miss Watson’s desperate voice faded in the damp, sick air.

  London

  I used to be a book valuer. I was employed by an auction house and I lived in London. My beautiful, spacious rooms were at the top of a converted Georgian house overlooking Highbury Fields. My sitting room had white walls and was lined with bookshelves. Three old prints of Edinburgh hung between the two bay windows, and a watercolour of the Norfolk marshes hung over the fireplace. I had a comfortable settle and a blue armchair, and a collection of treasures and souvenirs on the mantelpiece.

  My bedroom was dark, and besides a bed, a dressing table and a wardrobe, the room was filled with more books. The kitchen overlooked the backs of the gardens of the neighbouring houses, and the bathroom was painted green. I had polished the hall floorboards and covered them with patterned rugs from the orient.

  I loved my rooms. When I came home from the office, I used to relax on the settle with a glass of sherry, close my eyes and let the day sink into the floor. It was wonderful to sit at the kitchen table in the summer and watch the evening light splinter through the trees, and know the clip and rumble of the city meant nothing. I was secure in my life, sheltered in the knowledge of reason, happy with my own company and my work. Pleased. This is a word you could have used to describe me.

  I was back in touch with Timothy. He was living nearby, working for a good firm of solicitors, and when we met for a drink he did not betray his fractured and unhappy past. The change had stuck, and he said he was happy in his work. I did not believe him. There was a crease in his voice when he told me he was happy, but I ignored it. There was nothing I could do.

  My father, retired from the church and living in a small house by the river in Canterbury, was changing. He was reading the sort of literature he used to avoid – Ovid, Chaucer and Shakespeare’s poetry – and even visiting the theatre to enjoy opera, a musical form he used to believe was more dangerous than any other. His new interests showed themselves in brighter eyes than I had seen before, clear skin and a straightened back. “We shall not all sleep,” as Paul wrote to the Corinthians and my father quoted to me before I left to value the Buff-Orpington Collection, his finger wagging and his eyes lit with the memory of a different faith, “but we shall all be changed.”

  When we arrived at my rooms, the woman with snakeskin was weeping, shivering and hugging her coat to her neck. The journey from Somerset had not been easy, but it had been smooth, and although the railway carriage was crowded, I had managed to secure a private compartment by informing the guard that my companion was feverish and needed quiet and privacy. Once she had settled she had slept, and now she stood in the hall and the tears rolled down her face, and when I asked her if she wanted anything she said, “I must have it hot. Very hot.” I fetched blankets, wrapped them around her, carried her to my bed and watched for five minutes. The shivering slowed, then she made little snoring sounds, like a mouse trapped in a box. I left her with the door open, lit all the fires, checked on her once more, poured myself a large glass of sherry and went to the sitting room. />
  I lay on the settle, stared at the ceiling and the floor, studied the pictures of Edinburgh and drifted into a light sleep. Dreams came, pleasant ones about walks over moors and along beaches, and one where I was walking with a woman I knew when I was living in Scotland. Her name was Grace, and she was very beautiful and studious, her fair hair was like an unusual plate of food, and the flights of freckles on her face were signposts to another life. Everything was very clear, like I was dreaming through glass.

  It was like this: we had taken a weekend in her cousin’s house at Sandwood Bay, in the far north-west. The sea was blue and fierce and crashed around the stack at the far end of the shore. The grass rustled in the dunes and the terrible ghost who was meant to walk the sands was watching us from behind the walls of a ruined croft. With his Polish face and his Polish boats and the seaweed hanging from his shoulders, he dashed against the rocks after drowning in a gale. Blood ran from his face, his eyes were white and his hair was covered in barnacles. His dead brain was filled with frozen memories of Gdańsk, amber and shattered rigging, and the climb through a tower to the cathedral roof where he proposed to a dark-eyed woman he never saw again. Grace was spooked and wanted to leave. She said she had heard a voice in her ear, whispering words she did not understand. The sand was hard and ridged, and there were gulls in the sky. They were crying and singing songs to each other, and when I awoke their songs were still in my head. I turned over and rubbed my eyes. The dream had not felt like a dream, but it had been. I had not been at Sandwood Bay with Grace and a Polish ghost. I had been in bed, in London, asleep. I stood up, went to the bathroom and splashed water on my face. The fires were roaring. I went to the kitchen.

  The woman with snakeskin was standing by the table, looking out of the window. She was naked, drinking a glass of water, and her skin was shining. She turned to face me. We stood and stared at each other.

  I was struck dumb.

  She whispered, “London…”

  I nodded.

  “London…”

  My mouth was tight: the words stuck. I forced one. “Yes,” I said.

  “I’m in London.”

  The early-evening sun glanced off her scales, and although it was impossible not to gawp at her in amazement, it was a frightening and disorientating thing to do, and made me want to sit down.

  I said, “I’m sorry.” Sweat was pouring down my face. I took out a handkerchief and wiped my eyes.

  “Why?”

  “For staring.”

  “No,” she said, “stare.” And she stepped away from the table, spread her arms like wings, dropped them, raised them again and slowly turned around.

  How can I describe what stood before me? What can I write? Did reason collapse at that moment, turn and run through the marshes? Did the bitterns stab my heart with their beaks? Was I dreaming? And, I wondered, are books enough? Books sleep, awake, open, and sometimes even change a life. They move like herds of animals across dust plains and leave clouds in the sky. What can I say? Could music help? Some strange piece of courtly music, played by ancient men for another ancient man who, with a nod of his hand, could have the musician’s cut fingers in a jar. I speak for myself when I write, and do not worry about the consequences, the reasons or the meaning. These things are for people who think they understand or know. I stared at her and, as I did, I turned the vision in my head like a ball, turning and turning and turning until the sight began to make sense.

  This was the first time I had seen her in good light and as she moved, the yellow scales darted spots over the walls and ceiling, and the brown patches deepened their colour. These were spaced irregularly down her arms, thighs and calves. She had an oblong of brown around one of her breasts but not the other, and a single patch in the middle of her stomach. The scales grew smaller and blackened as they narrowed towards her groin. Her back was mainly brown, but where the scales tapered to her neck, a thin line of yellow broke through. Her head was mostly a darker yellow than the rest, with a brown oblong across her forehead, a crescent shape on her crown and a line that ran from the corner of each eye to the corners of her mouth. The skin around her wrists and ankles was paler than the rest, but the pus and blood from her wounds had dried. Her hands and feet were completely brown, and there were little whorls of scales around her ears. She stroked her arms. Her eyes were huge and shone with tears. She smelt of sugar, and when she moved she rasped.

  “It is…” I began, but then I stopped.

  “What?”

  “No.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Tell me.”

  I shook my head. “How can I?”

  “Beautiful?” she said. “Is it beautiful?”

  “Yes,” I said. “It is miraculous. Awful. Amazing.”

  “I know,” she said, and she sat down again. She put her hands out and laid them on the table.

  I said, “Can I touch?”

  She turned her head away.

  “Please?” I said.

  “Why?”

  “Because I want to.”

  A silence dropped, lifted and hovered in the air. It looked down at us for a minute with a single clear blue eye, and as it did she stretched out her right arm. It came to me slowly, rustling across the table, the fingers pulling it. I shuddered, and then I took it and turned it over in mine. It was cool, dry and perfect, and when her fingers reached around and gripped, the keels of the scales left marks on me. I whispered, “Everything that comes out of the hands of the Creator of all things is good…”

  “Excuse me?”

  “…and everything degenerates in the hands of man.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “Rousseau,” I said, like a fool.

  “Oh…”

  “And can I ask you…”

  “What?”

  “What is your name?”

  “My name?” Her voice cracked.

  “Yes.”

  “My name is Isabel.”

  “Isabel…”

  “Isabel Carter.”

  Isabel Carter. This is a beautiful, chiming name. To me, it sounds like a kind of rose, a rare thing, picked and placed carefully in a perfect vase. A scarlet rose with a tight heart and flared petals.

  She was born in Charmouth, a village on the Dorset coast. Houses run down a hill to a bridge over a river, and lanes wind towards the sea. There are a few shops and public houses. It is a pretty place with walks along the beach and over the cliffs, and the air is salty fresh. Isabel’s father was a physician, her mother was inclined to write poetry, and she had an older brother called Simon. She enjoyed a safe, happy childhood, like something out of a story for children. The family home was big and bright. It had tall windows and ceilings, and a walled garden. It was a five-minute walk from the beach, and if you strolled in the other direction, the lanes led to hedged fields and tracks that climbed to ancient wooded hill forts.

  She developed a fascination for palaeontology and spent hours hunting for fossils along the shore. Solitary and happy with her own company, she walked out in all weathers, and when storms battered the coast and the cliffs collapsed onto the beach, she climbed over the mud slides and filled a canvas bag with ammonites, belemnites and shards of fossilized fish. This passion grew to embrace the science of living things, and when she was asked, at the age of twelve, what she wanted for Christmas, she said, “A hammer.”

  She was a brilliant pupil at a fine school, but when she announced she was going to be a famous scientist, she was told to be realistic and not such a dreamer. But she had made an irrevocable decision and would use her skills to develop cures for the worst ailments. Her grandmother suffered from an incurable disease that wasted her brain and erased her memories, and when she visited her in her room at the far end of the upstairs corridor, she told her that one day no one would need to suffer from disease. Once, her grandmother had worked as a missionary nurse in Africa. She had worked in hospitals where insects the size of plates scuttled across her face at night, honey was a balm and leaves
were used as plasters. She had helped to establish a maternity hospital on the Gold Coast, but now she could not remember where the Gold Coast was or what maternity was or who this girl was, and she would ask her when her clever grand-daughter was going to visit, because she always did and never forgot.

  When Isabel Carter left school, she was determined to continue her career in the sciences, and although her father and mother tried to convince her that a career in nursing was the only appropriate work for a woman of her character and inclinations, she chose to travel to Cambridge. She carried a letter of introduction from the headmistress of her school to a Professor of Biology at Downing College who – she had heard – was looking for an assistant who possessed understanding, patience and meticulousness. His name was Professor Richard Hunt. At that time he was a gregarious and ambitious man, even charming. His guile and cunning had yet to show, but his mendacity was already well formed. He told Isabel he had a dream. No, he would not tell her what it was, she would have to wait, and although he did not say so, she knew that if she earned his respect and trust, one day he would confide in her. She knew this instinctively, like a gorging ortolan in its locked box knows about the light and air outside, and imagines it under its wings.

  She found rooms in a house on Emmanuel Road, and although she had opportunities to meet new friends, as the child, so the woman – and she preferred to keep her own company. She took her work very seriously and did not want distractions, and as she sat up in the night and tried to understand Professor Hunt’s research, she thought of her grandmother sitting in Charmouth. The windows rattled and the sea broke along the shore, and millions of tons of sand and gravel were hauled by the tides. The land was turned to sea. Birds failed in flight and fish slipped away.

  If she was asked exactly what the Professor was working on, she would not have been able to explain, but she would have said it was important and certain to result in great benefit to mankind. For the man was as close to a genius as she had ever met, and when one day he suggested they leave the laboratory early and take tea in a little shop he knew, she felt limp with excitement. He said he had matters to explain and he felt – looking into her eyes and smiling slightly – she would understand.