Isabel's Skin

by Peter Benson

  I fetched some water. “Then may I ask you an unusual question?”

  “Yes?”

  “How often do you need an injection?”

  “I don’t know. This isn’t stable.” She rubbed her arms. “Sometimes I don’t need any for a day, then I need it every hour. I should have taken a loaded syringe.”

  “And what’s going to happen when this stuff runs out?”

  “I don’t know. There’s enough for a week or two. Maybe three.”

  “So in a week or two you’re going to have one of those attacks and you won’t have anything to take for it?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you can live with that?”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  “I don’t know. Do you know what it’s made from?”

  “No.”

  “I think…” I could feel my heart bursting in my chest. She was looking up at me. Her head was tipped to one side and again I saw her face as it should have been, and her eyes reflected me.

  “What!” she said.

  “I think we should find out what it is… how it works…”

  “Do you know someone?”

  “I might do. A friend from university. William. He’s a medical man.”

  “Then ask him,” she said, like she did not care and wanted to do something else.

  “I’ll see him tomorrow.”

  “Do that,” she said, and then, “I think I’m going to bed.”

  “I’ll help you.”

  “Thank you,” she said, and I picked her up, carried her to my bedroom and laid her down. I pulled the blankets over her and laid her coat over them, and sat beside her for ten minutes. I watched her and she looked at me, and then she turned away from me and her breathing slowed and I closed my eyes and watched the spots behind my lids. There were hundreds, and I let them swarm and gather, swarm away again and fly to the corners of the dark.

  I was lying on the settle when I heard Isabel calling my name. I got up and went to the bedroom. She had lit a candle. The blankets were pulled up to her chin and she was wearing a woollen hat. She said, “Would you read me a story? No one’s read to me for so long.”

  I shook my head and smiled at her. She pulled the blankets tighter and snuggled down. “Which one?”

  “I don’t know. They’re your books. You choose.”

  “What do you like?”

  She shrugged.

  “I’ll choose,” I said, and I went to the shelves and ran my fingers along the spines until I found one of my favourite books. I held it to my nose. It was worn, but interesting and full of the greatest stories. I said, “How about a fairy tale?”

  “Yes please,” she said, so she moved to one side of the bed and I lay down on the side I do not usually sleep on. I leafed through the book and chose ‘The Hut in the Forest’, and when she was ready I started to read.

  The story was about a poor wood-cutter who lived with his wife and three daughters in a little hut on the edge of a dark and lonely forest. Two of the daughters were lazy and badly behaved, while one was a good girl and kind to animals. I read, turned the pages quietly and, when she moved towards me, I shifted my shoulder and let her rest her head on my chest. She made little pleased sounds when good things happened to the characters, and shuddered when things went wrong. And when I reached the moral and the end, she snuggled up to me, kissed my cheek and smiled. “Thank you,” she said. “That was perfect.”

  I closed the book, put it on the bedside table and said, “My mother used to read these to me.”

  “Where does she live?”

  “She died,” I said.

  “Oh. I’m sorry.”

  “It was a long time ago,” I said, and I told her what I knew about the accident and the rose bed and my father. As I talked, she put her hand on my chest while I ran my finger in circles around one of the patches of brown on her shoulder, and her eyes closed. After about ten minutes I felt her go limp and she made a little clicking sound that came from deep in her throat. Then, when I was sure she was asleep, I slipped off the bed, blew out the candle, left the door half open, went to the sitting room and lay back on the settle. I closed my eyes and saw forests and huts and birds, little grey men in hats, stolen cows and old horses and then, in a blinding flash of relief, sleep.

  When Isabel awoke in the morning, she was sluggish and said she wanted to be left alone with the curtains drawn. I told her I was going to my office. Then I would be visiting William, and I wanted to take some of her medicine to show him. She gave me one of the phials, told me to be careful with it and, after I had given her a glass of water and a slice of toasted bread, I told her not to open the door to anyone.

  When I left the building, I stood on the step for a moment. I looked for loitering people or carriages with steamed windows. Apart from a pair of tramps sitting on a bench and a clutch of ragged children baiting a dog, I saw no one who looked as though they should not be there. I walked to Highbury Corner, caught the omnibus and rode into town.

  My superior was Mr Hick. He was a tall and elegant man. He always kept a carefully folded handkerchief in his top pocket and smelt faintly of cologne. He wore half-glasses, beautiful suits, and on this day a silk tie with flowers entwined. His office was tall and panelled with oak. There were a series of hand-tinted botanical prints on the walls, and a pair of Germanic vases on a low sideboard. He sat behind a huge desk and twirled a silver fountain pen. I sat in a leather wing-back, and as he skimmed my report of the Buff-Orpington collection, I gave him a précis of the highlights. He smiled, his cheeks glowed and he said, “This is wonderful, David. Wonderful. You have done very well. Quite excellent work. I’m proud of you.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “The Dresden Œuvres – are they really as good as you say?”

  “Every bit. They’re superb.”

  “I can’t wait to see them.”

  Mr Hick reached across his desk and pulled out a sheaf of notes, but before he had a chance to tell me what he wanted me to do next, I said, “I’m owed some days.”

  He took off his glasses, squinted at me and put them on again. “Are you indeed?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I see.”

  “And I was wondering if I could take them now, sir.”

  “But we wanted you in Derby in a few days. I believe you were informed. It’s an important sale. We need you there, David.”

  “Can I see the catalogue?”

  He pulled it out of the sheaf, passed it across the desk and said, “I think you might be interested.”

  The lots were varied, but the highlight was the Milton. There was a copy of the 1644 edition of Areopagitica with two corrections in the poet’s own hand, Paradise Lost with Paradise Regain’d and Samson Agonistes all bound in one volume (1669–71), and a rare copy of the first collected edition of the great man’s poetry. There were other lots of lesser editions and pamphlets, and as I leafed through the catalogue, Mr Hick said “Milton?” knowing I could not resist.

  “I can see, sir.”

  “There are some fine editions, so naturally we thought…”

  “Of course,” I said, and I recalled why.

  When I left university, I moved back to Dover. For a couple of weeks I walked the cliffs, read books in the freezing parlour and listened to my father as he repeated the same stories over and over again. A feeling of melancholy and lassitude began to descend upon me, but one day, a bold autumn day with golden light and a desperate wind that blew off the sea, I decided to look for a job. I wanted to work with books – that much I knew – so I wrote to publishers, antiquarian booksellers, auction houses and libraries, anyone or anywhere that would bring me into constant contact with words and pages. On a cold day in November – a Wednesday, I think – I was offered a junior position at Mitchell’s, a small but respected auction house, and a job as manuscript assistant at the British Library. I chose Mitchell’s, and moved to London in the first week of the coldest December for forty years.


  For the first year I was assistant to a senior valuer. I loved the work, the accumulation of knowledge and the idea that I might stumble on forgotten treasure. Something overlooked, something lost, a scribbled hand on a yellowed flyleaf, a signature leaping out, but only at someone who knows what they are looking for.

  Within a few months I had become so involved in the job I could not walk by a second-hand bookshop without checking its shelves, and my idea of a relaxing holiday was a week browsing the shops of Bloomsbury. And so it was that I found myself in a little place behind the British Museum, leafing through a badly chipped copy of Tetrachordon. I was about to put it back on the shelf when I noticed something odd about the backboard and its marbled paste-down. It was bulging, and there was a repaired cut along the top edge. I closed the book, took it to the counter and paid the asking price. I carried it back to my rooms and carefully reopened the cut with my razor. I tipped the book upside down, tapped it with the palm of my hand and a plain brown envelope dropped out.

  My heart jumped. The book trade is rife with stories of amazing finds in quotidian circumstances, and as I opened the envelope the hairs on my neck froze. I was holding a short autographed letter from John Milton to an unnamed lawyer. The poet thanks the man for his interest in Areopagitica and writes, “My belief is absolute, for books are truly as lively as the dragon’s teeth I wrote of,” and as I read and the paper crinkled in my hands, I could not stifle a yell. And when I look at that letter now I still bless my luck. It has become my talisman, a signpost to the future, and was the reason I dispelled any doubts about the wisdom of my choice of profession, and why I used to be a book valuer.

  So when I said to Mr Hick, “I’d love to go, I really would, but why don’t you send Mr Reynolds? He’ll enjoy Derby,” I had a catch in my voice.

  “Mr Reynolds?”

  “Yes sir. He’s a good man.”

  “But does he know his Milton?”

  “As well as I do.”

  Mr Hick took the catalogue back and flicked through the pages. “I suppose we could,” he said. He looked at me. “I have to say, you do look tired.”

  “I’m exhausted.”

  “Just exhausted, David? Nothing more? I must say, I do detect a certain, how can I put it, lethargy in your manner…” Mr Hick had always taken an avuncular interest in me, and his concern was genuine.

  “I just need a few days’ rest, sir.”

  “Simply a few days?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He paused, flipped some pages in his diary, scribbled a note and said, “Then we’ll send Reynolds.” And as I left his office he said, “Going anywhere pleasant?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Norfolk?”

  “I’m not sure…”

  “Well, wherever you go, do have a relaxing time,” he said, and with a wave of his hand he returned to his work. I left the office, and as I stood in the hushed corridor, for a single, preternatural moment I thought that I would never see him again, never see my office again, or the beautiful view of the busy Thames, the barges and lighters and tugs, and the desperate glow on the inky water. But these were simple, foolish thoughts. I chased them away like a dog or cat, and when I reached the street I turned for a moment, looked up at the building and knew the place would always be a home to me.

  I took a cabriolet to Smithfield and called on my medical friend William. His office was on the first floor of a building behind St Bartholomew’s hospital. He had not changed. He was serious and studious, with thinning hair and neat, plain clothes, exactly as I remembered him. He had a nervous tic – he rubbed the side of his nose every couple of minutes – and before he answered a question he screwed up his eyes and thought carefully. I offered to buy him a cup of tea, so we left the hospital and crossed the road to a restaurant in the shadow of the meat market. It was hot, steamy and noisy, and bloodied porters came and went. We sat in a corner, sipped our drinks and for five minutes shared the awkward memories of two people who could have been best friends but drifted apart before the crucial connections were made. I say best friends but maybe not – I have no idea what I mean. What I mean is not necessarily what I say, but we talked about Edinburgh and about how our expectations had almost met our ambitions, and I asked him exactly what he was doing now.

  “Laboratory work, mostly. Sometimes I get to do something interesting, but mostly it’s routine.”

  “Do you want to do something different? Something unusual?”

  “What do you mean?”

  I took the phial out of my case and put it on the table between us.

  “And what is this?” he said. He picked up the phial and shook it. It clouded. He squinted at it, and I could see he was intrigued.

  “I have no idea, but I don’t think it’s anything routine.”

  “No?”

  “A friend of mine takes it, she won’t tell me what it is, and I’d like to know.”

  “She’s addicted?”

  “No.”

  “Then what?”

  “She’s sick,” I said.

  “And this is a prescribed medicine?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “And what does that mean?”

  I shook my head. “It’s difficult to explain.”

  “Try.”

  “I can’t.”

  “And what do you want me to do with it?”

  “Could you analyse it? I’ll pay you.”

  Now he laughed. “Nothing routine…”

  “I don’t think so.”

  He sipped his tea, put the phial on the table between us, sat back, thought for a long minute and then said, “If I do this, you don’t have to pay me, but you will make a donation to the hospital.”

  “Of course,” I said.

  “Good,” he said, “then I’ll see what I can do,” and that is how we left it, him tapping the phial and holding it up to the light, and promising to call on me in a few days.

  I was going to go straight home, but as I was close to where my old friend Timothy lived, I made a visit. When he answered the door, he was wearing a dressing gown over his pyjamas and his hair looked as though it had not been brushed for a week. I followed him up to his rooms, which were littered with empty beer bottles, unwashed dishes and overflowing ashtrays. I did not bother to ask how he was, and for a moment I thought about turning around and leaving, but when he started weeping, I put a kettle on the stove and some leaves in the pot, and lit him a cigarette.

  He took it with a shaking hand and said, “I’m so tired…”

  “What’s the trouble?”

  He shook his head, took a deep drag and said, “I’m not going to spend the rest of my life working in the law.”

  “So what are you going to do?”

  He shrugged. “I’m writing the novel. Again.” He pointed at a sheaf of papers on the table. They were covered in scrawled notes and corrections.

  “What’s it called?”

  “Well, it used to be The Sleepwalker, but I’m not sure any more. Maybe I’ll call it When You Hate.”

  “What’s it about?”

  “Parents,” he said, and when I asked him why, he told me what I had suspected, that after his time in hospital he had reformed himself in response to an offer from his father: get a first and a respectable job, and I will buy you your own rooms.

  “So what did he say when you told him about the novel?”

  “I haven’t told him.”

  “And when you do?”

  “He’ll be angry. And when he gets angry, it’s best to be in the next parish.”

  I poured the tea, and as we drank and he smoked another cigarette, I waited for him to ask if he could move in with me, but he did not. He started to talk about writing and how he surprised himself. I asked if I could look at the work, but he shook his head and told me he could not show me anything, not yet, he was superstitious, he did not know if he was heading in the right direction anyway, he needed more time, but yes, eventually I would have the chance to read
it. And when he asked me how Somerset had been I told him it was a quiet place, the Buff-Orpington collection was superb, and one day I would tell him a story he would never believe.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I can’t tell you now.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because…” I said, but by now he was ready to see the back of me and return to his work, so I left him sitting at the table with a distant look in his eyes and a drift of cigarette smoke settling around his head.

  When I returned to my rooms, Isabel was lying in bed, wrapped in blankets and an eiderdown. The curtains were closed and the fire was dying. For a moment I thought I had stepped into the wrong rooms or an alternative version of my own rooms carried from someone else’s imagination and put in place without sound or reason. I said “Hello,” and she looked at me, punched the pillow and said, “My head hurts.”

  I sat next to her. “I’m sorry.”

  “And my hands. And my stomach, and my legs.”

  “Do you want to go?”

  “Where?”

  “Norfolk.”

  She shook her head. “What good’s it going to do?”

  “I don’t know. But it is beautiful there. Peaceful. And you’ll be safe.”

  “And that’s going to make a difference?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Norfolk’s flat.”

  “Last night you said you liked the sound of it.”

  “I’d drunk too much sherry.”

  “And I drank too much beer,” I said, and I got up, pulled a suitcase from under the bed, flipped it open and started filling it with clothes. I picked up a few books and tossed them in with some other things, the sort of things you might need if you are planning to leave town for a short while. Isabel sat up, ran her fingers down her arms and said, “All right, let’s go to Norfolk.”

  I turned and faced her. The scales around her eyes were lighter than the others, and smaller, and where they covered her lids, thin and white. Our faces were inches apart, and we stared at each other for a moment until she threaded her arms around my waist, hugged me and said, “I didn’t want to shout at you.”

  “Don’t worry.”

  “I didn’t mean it.”