If I can remember this, why can't I remember the children's home from just the day before, or earlier that very same morning?
I was told I had a visitor. I was stunned. Who? Aunt Stella, now Mrs Warren Pike. A shock at first, but then I thought: well, who else would come? Stella was the only one with any guts.
Trudy came to fetch me, escorting me along a corridor I'd not been down before, a narrow switchback corridor I never even knew existed. Trudy's massive bulk nearly touched both sides. I followed her, mesmerized by the jolting of her buttocks in their tie-dye drawstring trousers. It gave me something to think about, other than the impending visit. She showed me into a small room, furnished with two easy chairs and a coffee table. There was a window covered by a white blind. The door to the room had a big panel of glass in it, the sort of glass they favour round here, with a layer of chicken-wire inside. Further down the corridor there were several more doors. Rooms where people had visitors. Rooms I never had an inkling of. Maybe I'm not that clever, after all.
And there, in the middle of that first room, stood Aunt Stella. Poised, stylish and positively svelte. I think she must have shed a few more pounds since we'd last met. She wore a plain grey linen dress. 'Grey' and 'linen' were not words I would ever have thought to associate with Stella. Her cardigan, in the palest shade of pink, was draped over her shoulders. I realized that a cardigan over the shoulders was still Stella's signature, though it was more likely to be cashmere, now, than nylon. Her hair was smoothed into a French pleat and she wore plain pearl studs in her ears. She reminded me of the mother in Brian's tell-the-time book: the one I thought a Carolyn sort of mother would look like.
Maybe I could pass Stella off as my mother. We could track down Lorna and do a double act for her. It might be worth the risk, just for the confusion I'd spread.
Trudy said, 'I'll be right outside.' And closed the door. I looked round and her big moon face was there, in the safety glass. I gave her a wishy-washy smile.
Good old Stella. She held out her hand and I thought for a moment she wanted me to shake it, but she was just showing off her engagement and wedding rings: a complicated modern design, gobbets of gold and three bright diamonds.
'We did it very quietly,' she explained. 'Well, his wife had only passed away three months before.'
I remembered – the wife in the mental hospital. I stopped myself from asking if she'd died on one of his visits. No, Warren was a kind man, a gentleman. Look at what he'd done for Stella, made an honest woman of her, a rather elegant woman, too.
'We slipped into the registry office one Friday lunchtime. Just Warren's mate Nige and his wife as witnesses. I'd have asked Gloria but Eddy was home. And we wanted it private as possible.'
'Did you have a honeymoon?'
Stella giggled. 'Yes – Paris.'
So Stella had been abroad, the first of the Burtons to venture so far.
'You must have got a passport?' I said, thrilled.
'Yeah. Handy, too. We're off to Spain for ten days in September.'
I thought of how far she had come, and how tricky the journey. The useless men who crowded her past, and her family at her back all the time like dogs barking behind a wire fence.
I said, 'Lucky you,' and the words fell into a little pool of silence between us. There wasn't even a clock to tick away the moments.
Stella looked longingly at the ashtray on the coffee table in front of her.
'You can smoke if you want to,' I offered. I was the hostess, after all.
'No, I won't,' Stella said, and then a moment later grabbed a pack of Rothmans Kingsize out of her handbag and swiftly lit one. She blew the smoke out sideways, upwards, and held her hand at a ladylike angle. I saw her glance at the door, and looked over my shoulder.
'That's Trudy,' I said. 'She's all right.'
'One of the staff, is she? I thought they'd wear uniform.'
'Some of them do.'
A long pause. I wondered if we could send Trudy to fetch coffee and biscuits. But it wasn't really the sort of place that provided room service.
Question: your favourite aunt comes to visit. Do you (a) lay on a slap-up tea at home? (b) take her out for a meal? or (c) ask her what the hell she's doing here?
Stella gazed at me. I felt her eyes roaming up and down, maybe in just the same way that I had scrutinized her. I wondered what she made of me.
'Thank you for coming,' I said.
'You have to be family. They won't let you come unless you're family.'
'Oh, I didn't know that.'
But then it was becoming clear that I didn't know anything.
'How are you?'
'OK.' I thought of what Hanny had said. Don't tell me you thought we were OK!?
Stella ground her cigarette out, and looked as if she wanted to reach for another one right away. She twisted round to the window, but you couldn't see anything out of it. I wondered if there were bars hidden behind the blind, in case anyone was tempted to make good their escape. But then there weren't bars on the garden, there were just flower beds and hedges, and the eagle eyes of the staff. I looked round for Trudy again, and caught a glimpse of her broad tie-dyed back. I wondered how long these visits were supposed to last.
'No one else has been to see me,' I said, making my voice sound breezy.
'No. I know.' Stella's eyes were cast down now. 'You're not cross, are you?'
'I didn't expect them to.'
My mother had visited me, once, in the place I was in before this, a day or two after I'd been taken there. She wore her mackintosh buttoned up, and a hat, as if for church. She had her standards, despite everything. She whispered, through tight lips, 'How could you do this to us?' I was pleased that she never came again.
Stella asked, 'D'you mind if I have another smoke?'
I shook my head. She clicked her lighter nervously several times before managing to make a flame. I had never really got the habit of cigarettes but that first curl of smoke smelled beautiful to me.
'I could come again,' Stella said. 'If you wanted me to.' Her eyes were cloudy blue and doubting. 'I drove over. It's quite a nice drive. The different countryside, and so on.'
'Yes. I'd like that.'
She exhaled a long plume towards the ceiling. She was still clutching the lighter, and for something to do she held it out to show me. 'Warren bought me this.'
'It's nice.'
Stella remembered something then, and quickly took her hand away.
'Warren's good to you.'
'He's great.' She was picking up her handbag now, girding her cardigan more firmly round her frame. The last thing she did before standing up was to lean forward and decisively stub out her cigarette.
'Have a nice time in Spain,' I told her.
'Oh, I'll see you again before then.' She was halfway to the door, and through the glass panel Trudy stood to attention.
'It's nice to see you, Carol.' Now that she was on her way, the words seemed to flow more easily. 'You eating all right? Getting enough fresh air? Is there anything I can bring you, next time?'
'A book,' I said.
'A book?'
Trudy had the door wide open now, a look of bovine patience on her face.
'What kind of a book?'
'Oh, any book,' I said. 'A thick one. A nice thick one.'
39
Flesh
'Why don't you want to eat?' I asked Hanny today, in Activity.
We were making snowmen with our clay. They're the easiest things to make, one big round blob topped by one small round blob. Then you can cut the details of eyes and mouths and buttons with your fingernails, if you have any.
Hanny bites her fingernails right down. They're shallow and boat-shaped and set deep in the stubby tips of her fingers. I hadn't really noticed this before. You would have expected her to have long, delicate hands and slender almond-shaped nails. Even if you bit almond-shaped nails they would still look all right. Hanny has the hands of a person who has been forced to go grubbing th
rough rocks and earth for the whole of their life.
I had lowered my voice to ask her, but clearly not low enough for Hanny.
'For God's sake, Coral!' she growled at me. 'Not now.'
I shivered when she said my name.
It was hardly any time before Patrick asked me to sit for him in the nude.
I sort of knew from the very first that it would happen, that it would have to happen, but I told myself that really he wanted me there in my jeans, on kitchen chairs and shawl-bedecked sofas, that my wide-set eyes and golden-red hair and bony knees in faded blue denim were quite enough. And he was always painting people clothed, clothed and busy, clothed and just sitting there, musing or reading. I hadn't posed on the veranda yet, or at the kitchen table. I hadn't had my go with the blue striped bowl. There were plenty of alternatives to work through before we had to come to that.
But just like with Tom, it was very hard to say no.
Hadn't his wife and his daughter educated me all about it? What were my arguments against it, given the weight of artistic tradition and the evidence right here in the house that nobody minded at all?
'It's a bit cold,' I said. It was October, and chilly up there.
'Would you like to go down by the fire, then, the nice bright fire in the sitting room?'
No, of course I wouldn't. Thank you very much.
I sat on the sofa, which he had covered in blue this time. I leaned my jaw on my hand, and my elbow along the green plush arm. I crossed my ankles and kept my knees together. I stayed as still as I could, which was utterly still. It was very much like waiting to go in and see the headmistress. Except that my nipples were standing out like doorstops with the cold.
I didn't particularly want to see what this one looked like. I knew how he saw me by now, I was acquainted with my degree of attractiveness, or otherwise.
And he always slapped the paint on too thick.
Maybe if Rembrandt had asked to do me stepping out of the bath, or Velázquez, a half-torso, I would have let my shawl drop and looked tenderly over my shoulder at him. They would have let the light melt over me, like cloth-of-gold, like finest lawn, clothing me before the eyes of others. Shielding me with centuries-old dust-in-light. I would have shone, and been glad to do so.
But Patrick is like someone making shapes with clay. He plasters scraps together, leaves his thumbprint sometimes, makes flesh as choppy as a windy day in a maritime study.
I wonder what Tillie would have painted like?
I mentioned to Barbara that he'd painted me in the nude. I just wanted her to know that I could do it. She was astonished.
'Good God! You wouldn't get me agreeing to that,' she said. 'Not that he'd ask me anyway. I'm his daughter. It'd be like incest.'
So thank you for that, Barbara. Yes, thank you for that.
Another time he painted me naked, standing up. At least this time the weather was warmer. It was just after Easter and the temperatures had shot up, sending everyone out into the sun with their white arms and legs on show in unaccustomed summer clothing. I had to stand up under one of his roof lights, with the spring sunshine pouring in over me, leaning against an old-fashioned upright cabinet he'd recently acquired. He never bothered to paint his nudes caught in the act of washing or dressing, as if to give an excuse for the acres of bare flesh, but had them standing, sitting or lying, staring back at the artist, empty-handed and aimless.
There was something wrong with my pose. He came over to rearrange me, moving my left arm, then my right, interfering with the angle of my feet, then coming back to touch my jaw, my neck, my chin. His hands felt rather warm, very dry, and, just like a doctor's, were completely unembarrassed. Just as he drew his hand away from my chin he brushed my cheek with the side of his thumb. Accidentally, or otherwise.
Brushed my skin like he pronounced Mathilde, the slightest sighing caress.
At the end of the session, I decided to be brave and bold. I had got my clothes back on by then. 'Do you ever sleep with your models?' I asked, briskly, as I bent to do up a tennis shoe.
He was cleaning brushes. 'Absolutely,' he said, 'I swear by it,' not bothering to look up. He spoke just as if he was saying, 'I swear by linseed oil, or paraffin, or real beeswax,' or whatever the tools of his trade were. 'Except, of course, the men.' And then he looked up, and gave me a Hennessy kind of grin.
I hurried away down the attic stairs. I thought of what Barbara had said: 'It'd be like incest.' I thought of the fat blonde nude, and the thin dark one. I thought of his late-night comings and goings and the voices round the house that I could not identify. And I thought of Tillie.
Which makes me think of another time, several years before. It was autumn, quite cold, but we were sitting out on the veranda in a patch of sun, turning up our faces like basking seals, or elderly trippers in the seafront shelters. There was Barbara and me, and Tillie in the swing-seat covered by a blanket, and Mattie asleep with his head in her lap. We were doing some word game, I-Spy, or B for Botticelli. (I had enough education to cope with the latter by then. I knew who Botticelli was and could offer M for Michelangelo all of my own accord.)
In a pause while we gazed around searching for objects beginning with M, I heard the descending squeals of laughter from up above, peals and squeals of what could only be described as a musical laugh, something I'd only come across before in literature, and only second-rate literature at that.
'Mackintosh,' I guessed.
'Where?' demanded Barbara.
'It's what the pony wears in very bad weather.'
'But he's not wearing it now, is he?'
'Minestrone,' said Tillie.
'Oh, come on.'
'Meteorite. Mandolin,' said Tillie. 'Marguerite of Anjou.'
There was nothing out there beginning with M. The laughter fell in peals and rolls, arpeggios of laughter, on and on.
'Who is that?' I was forced to ask, though usually with the Hennessys I retained an air of casual detachment, as though nothing in the world could or would surprise me.
'Freddie.'
'There's nothing beginning with M,' said Tillie. 'We give in.'
'Don't be so boring,' said Barbara. 'Look harder.'
'Freddie?'
'Yes. Are you really looking?'
'How can it be Freddie?' I asked. The musical laugh was clearly female. It stilled for a moment, and then came gurgling again, this time on an ascending scale. As if naughty fingers were tinkling up her ivory backbone.
'Short for Frederica,' said Tillie in a flat voice. 'Mistletoe.'
'There isn't any mistletoe.'
'I thought there might be but my eyes aren't good enough to see it,' said Tillie, in a conciliatory tone. 'Not as good as yours.'
'Who's Freddie?' I asked.
Barbara gestured with a flick of her head. 'The fatty in the red shawl.' Her head flicked towards the dining-room window. The big nude. The big fat red-shawled nude. Frederica. 'Come on. Keep guessing.'
'Metal. Metal as in barbed wire,' I said.
'No. Give up?'
'We give up,' said Tillie.
There was another sort of squeal, a quite different sort of squeal, from above. Tillie put Mattie's head aside from the blanket and jumped up.
'Give up,' I said.
We heard Tillie running down the back veranda steps.
'It's marguerite. They're still in flower, just about,' said Barbara, pointing to a grey clump with two straggly white flowers on show.
'Well, I didn't know that's what they're called,' I complained. Mattie sat up, scratching himself.
The squeals had disappeared now. All was silence from above.
'Tillie almost got it with Marguerite of Anjou.'
'You should have let her,' I said.
We could hear Tillie. She was chopping firewood down by the summer-house step. Chop chop, chop chop.
40
Co-operation
'They don't like me, you know,' Hanny told me. 'They think I'm a pain in the neck.'
'Who?'
'Travis, and Moira, and Mike. And the rest.'
'Not all of them, surely?'
'They've got me down as Un. Co. Operative. They'd be happy to see me dead.'
'Not Mike. He's so wet, he wouldn't wish harm on a fly.'
'Don't you believe it.'
As if the mention of his name had summoned him up, Mike appeared on the lawn to gather everyone in. The others assembled docilely. We were on our usual bench, hidden on three sides by hedges. Maybe he wouldn't see us.
'I'm not going,' Hanny said. 'I like it out here. And I hate it in there.'
She kicked off her shoes and put her bare feet up on the seat, hugging her knees. 'I think we should go on strike. Stay out here all night.'
I looked up at the sky. 'We'll get cold in the night, and wet if it rains.'
'You've got no spirit of rebellion, have you?'
'I wouldn't say that. I'm just being practical.' She was the one who was always shivering.
'We're OK in our little corner. We'll be just fine.' Hanny made both her hands into pistols and aimed them at the figures on the lawn. 'We'll be like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. They'll have to surround us with troops to get us out. I loved that film.'
'I never saw it.'
'You're joking.'
'I'm not.'
'Where is it you live – Timbuktu?'
'We used to have a cinema in the high street, but it closed down because of a leaky roof. When it opened up again, they'd turned it into a bingo hall.'
'No kidding?'
'I've seen The Sound of Music, and Cliff Richard in Summer Holiday.'
'Poor you.'
Mike was walking steadily down the path towards us, holding out his arms like someone driving cattle. 'Sorry, you two, but it really is time to go in.'
'We're not coming. You'll never take us alive.' This time Hanny raised a shotgun, and squinted down the sights.
Living In Perhaps Page 27
