Hide-and-seek: the game he played as a seven-year-old with his mother. She called for him to carry the scuttle of coal, to sweep the yard, and he vanished; nowhere to be found. Oh, you monkey! Come here this minute! Tucking himself into the larder, he curled on the cold floor, shut his eyes. Where did he go in those states of escape? Not quite sure. His mother’s words for it: he just dissolved, into thin air.
His hidey-holes changed from week to week as she discovered them, exploded them. Under her bed in the room next to the kitchen. Below the brass hook in the passageway, inside the drop of overcoats. Outside, in the privy. Upstairs, in the box room where he slept. The box room doubled as linen-room, where washing hung to dry on wet days. Sent up to fetch the pillowcases for ironing, he would stand between the lines of damp sheets, listen to her call: oh you rascal, you scallywag.
Aged eight, he learned to read and write, to tell the time. Hiding, finding secret places, became more than a game. His season, his element, which soaked into him, formed him. Solitude gave him the freedom to daydream. He filched a stub of pencil from a kitchen drawer, scrawled pictures on torn squares of newspaper. With a stolen piece of chalk, he drew sparrows and blackbirds on the walls of the yard, cranes and ships.
One morning he turned the kitchen table into his house. The skirts of his mother’s dressing-gown, thrown on over her chemise and petticoat, swishing to and fro, curtained the opening on the far side. The rough underneath of the table, yellow and raw, formed his ceiling. He squatted against the wooden pillar of the leg at the corner. His mother’s slippered feet inched closer to him. When she stood still, his fingers flew out, hovered, stroked the felt that covered her toes, just lightly enough that she wouldn’t feel his touch. Her invisible hands rattled kitchen tools, dumped pans. Her slippers tramped away. Clang of iron as she shook the frying pan. The thick, salty smell of kippers beginning to sizzle.
A chair scraped on the floor. Backwards, forwards. She yawned and burped, planted her feet apart. He gave her time to settle, then pinched up the hem of her dressing-gown, lifted it, crawled in, under the tent of her petticoat. He curled up between her open thighs, facing her, his head bent, one cheek resting on his drawn-up knees, his arms clasping them. Crisp brush of newspaper: his mother turning over a page. Her legs gleamed palely in the calico darkness. She wore no stockings, and no drawers. He’d got inside the house of her skin, her alluring scent, sweet-sour and fishy. If he leaned forward her curly brown muff would brush his forehead, tickle it. If he raised his head, approached his mouth to her? If he put out his tongue and licked her and tickled her?
She didn’t move. Surely she knew exactly where he was? Surely she liked him being there, wanted him to stay with her. No Hoof tramping about, whistling, shouting for his tea. Just the two of us. Just the fish puckering and seizing in the pan. Breathe quietly. Breathe on her very softly, and feel that secret mouth breathing back.
Rush of cold air as the door banged open, the Hoof’s voice sang out hello, his mother jerked up and away, sang back: sweetie!
Joseph retreated further under the table, as a pair of boots backed a pair of slippers towards the angle of wall and floor. Her giggle. Silence. Rustle of cloth. Her low, throaty voice: not now. Jo-Jo’s hiding under the table.
Molly-coddler! Come here, my little nincompoop! A giant hand hauled him out, swung him by the collar. Half-choking, legs scrabbling in the air. Joseph squawked and kicked, and the Hoof laughed. Little dummy! He let go. Joseph tripped. The hearthrug’s dusty cotton knots smacked his face.
Acrid smell of burning fish, red flame leaping, cloud of black smoke, his mother shrieking. Boots and slippers trampled towards him, pulled up the rug, tipped him out of it. Flare of red tongues. Rug flung over the blazing pan. Smell of scorched cloth. The Hoof hurled the black mess outside and his mother seized Joseph, ran him to the inner door, thrust him upstairs. Sobbing, feeling the flames lick him, singe him. Burn holes in him. Later, his mother hugged him, scolded him. The Hoof banged out to the pub.
Widening slice of gold light, as the door opened. Here came Mrs Dulcimer, carrying a basin, a towel over her arm. It’s late afternoon, Joseph. I’ve brought you some warm water, look, in case you want to wash. Come next door when you’re ready, and we’ll have some tea.
He splashed his face and hands. Still groggy. Something bad had happened. What? He couldn’t remember. He found his mud-caked boots beside the bed, dragged them on. No jacket. Had he lost it somewhere? He glanced in the little square mirror hung above the chest of drawers. A wild man, with troubled dark blue eyes, rumpled chestnut-grey hair, stared back. Big beaky nose. Another of the Hoof’s names for him: Beaky. Leaky Beaky the Silly-Billy Bawler. Collar undone and crumpled. No cravat. Who was that fellow? No idea. A changeling, perhaps. Someone had sidled in while he slept and exchanged him. They were welcome to him, whoever they were. This new, unknown self would do for the time being. Until he got his bearings, discovered what he should do next.He splashed his face again, dried it on the soft towel.
He trod into the sitting-room just as Mrs Dulcimer entered from the other door, carrying a tray of tea things. Her long brown fingers clasped the plaited-brass handles. A red weal blistered the back of one hand. Her dark face turned, surveyed him. Eyes gleaming under the curve of her eyelids. Sculpted brown cheeks. Scarf twisted around her black hair. A draught swept in behind her, the smell of hot butter and cinnamon. She stretched out a slippered foot from under her green and grey skirts, kicked the door shut. He held the tray for her while she cleared the little table, sweeping up her pile of manuscript and setting it on the floor, perching pen and inkwell on top. Her brown hands plumped gold satin cushions, turned chairs to half-face the fire.
The blue Chinese pot smirked at him from the mantelpiece: how are the mighty fallen, eh? Near it, a dark, sack-like thing hung from the corner of the marble ledge. Here’s your jacket, Mrs Dulcimer said, taking it down: it was soaking wet, so I brought it in here to dry. Joseph put it on, seated himself, while she poured tea.
She set a plate of bread and butter in front of him, a pot of anchovy paste, a cup of tea. She took up her own cup, began to drink from it. Eyes lowered, fringe of black lashes. Off in her private thoughts, allowing him time to recover his wits. A black jagged hole in his mind. Piece of jigsaw. The one missing bit.
The black gap shone darkly at him. Began to jump with light. Transformed, a star-shaped opening, now gold in the darkness. Just put your eye to it: peep through. Child stuck to the keyhole: the bedclothes humping and writhing. Last night, at home in Lamb’s Conduit Street, he’d looked through the keyhole in the kitchen door. What’s going on? I don’t know! He wanted to cry and laugh both. His back ached; his throat convulsed. The speed with which Nathalie had married him: surely a clue? He’d pressed his lips to her soft cheek: why such haste, darling? She’d seized his big hand between her two little ones, pouted, whispered. I want to stop looking after other people’s children. I want to start looking after you. She’d tickled his palm with her forefinger. Round and round the garden, she sang. Up the bleeding garden path more like.
Mrs Dulcimer propped her feet on the fender, leaned back, nursing her cup between her hands on her lap, the grey and green folds of her dress. The sweet smell of the apple wood burning mixed with the bitter one of coal. You could taste both: ripe fruit; sourness like soot.
The heat around the fireplace contrasted with the coldness of the rest of the room. He sneezed, groped for his handkerchief. A lace-edged square of white cotton printed with blue spots. Whose? Mrs Dulcimer’s. She’d pushed it into his hand before he slept. He blew his nose into it. Yawned. He rubbed his face. Began to focus. The heap of white manuscript pages bore a few fragments of ash blown from the grate. He leaned down to brush them off. Lines of black writing, scribbled over, crossed out.
He said: I am sorry. I interrupted you earlier on. When I came in. I shouldn’t have done so.
Mrs Dulcimer placed her blue and yellow cup back on the tray. She said: I finished my
work while you were asleep. So you didn’t disturb me after all.
He began to sip his tea, smoky-tasting, aromatic. He said: that is kind of you. Thank you.
She shook back her sleeves, turned her palms over, regarded her ink-stained fingertips. She put up a hand, pushed at her scarf, her bundle of black plaits, toppled to one side. She brushed crumbs from her cuff. She said: so many words describing untidy women begin with S, have you noticed? Sluttish. Slovenly. Sloppy. Slatternly. Slack. Slipshod. Slummocky.
She rolled the epithets over her tongue, relishing them like a nursery rhyme. She spread her inky hands in the air, looking pleased as Punch. A childish streak in her. Perhaps that was why he didn’t feel ashamed that she’d seen him in such a sorry state. At first, certainly, she’d been annoyed at his intrusion, but now she seemed to accept that a person could arrive at her door in total disarray, his soul half torn from him. He ought to gather himself up, say something brisk and authoritative, shoot off into the hurly-burly street. He didn’t want to move. Soothed by the hot, fragrant tea, by the steady ticking of the clock. His heartbeat slowed to match it. He took up a piece of bread and butter, spread it with anchovy paste, bit into it. Coldness and saltiness. Springy fresh bread. She’d lopped off the crusts.
She said: nicer without crusts. I keep them for bread pudding. I’ve one baking in the oven now. It provides an economical supper.
Joseph said: I used to help my mother make that. Stale bread soaked in sweetened milky tea, with raisins and beaten eggs and a sprinkle of rum.
Mrs Dulcimer glanced at the red weal on her hand, sucked it. She must have burned herself on the stove. What did her skin taste like? Honeyed. Nutmeg, vanilla sugar, sultanas. Wasn’t that what you put in bread and butter pudding? Wobbling pale yellow custard held inside soft white ramparts. Cara used to bake that for the children. One of the recipes she’d learned from his mother.
His shirt and waistcoat had dried on him while he slept. Dirt-stiffened. Never mind. The fire-lit room held him in warmth, which folded round him, like the quilt on her bed. So peaceful here. If only he could stay, rest. Somehow stop time, linger in this moment. Just flow out, be part of it. The ticking and crashing of coal against wood embers, red and glowing.
The edges of furniture softened as darkness began to gather in the corners. Mrs Dulcimer got up, drew the curtains against the misty dusk outside.
Flames like tiny red women kicked up their legs. Why hadn’t he let himself suspect what Nathalie was up to? Because he was a well set up young fellow, with a decent job and prospects, a good catch for any children’s nurse. Lucky to get him, wasn’t she? Her lack of fear on their wedding night he’d accepted as a grateful virgin’s compliment on his expertise. Rather than recognise it for what it was: the compliance of an experienced and cunning woman. Probably she’d been laughing at him behind his back the entire time.
No. Not true. Don’t believe it. His thoughts were knives, scraping his insides. Perhaps, if you really loved a woman, you got over your jealousy. He might have. If he’d been given a chance. If she’d lived. Would he have wanted to marry her, though, if he’d known the truth? No. Was that true? Perhaps he might. How could he tell now?
The heap of wood and coal burned lustily, crisping and crackling in the grate. Mrs Dulcimer drank her tea and watched the flames. He should go home. Face the music. What music? A funeral dirge. The knives withdrew, leaving him cleaned out. Hollow. A blown egg. Pierced, sucked dry. Fragile shell. Easily crushed.
Sometimes sparrows built their nests in the high, windswept house gutters along Lamb’s Conduit Street, and sometimes in the mornings, going outside, he came across fallen fledglings. Stretched-looking pale bodies. Grotesque, with broken, flopping necks. Featherless. Fatherless.
Joseph said: you said S for slut and so on. For me the letter S stands for Stepfather. I resented mine. Clumsy sort of chap. I couldn’t see why my mother ever married him.
The fire glowed red and clear, sinking a little. You could cook on it. Make toast. Hold out the extendable fork with its long, thin tines piercing the slice of bread, turn it, you crouched close to the fire, felt your cheeks thicken and redden at its heat. You sat with your mother, watching her knife out dripping from the pot, spread it over the browned square. Bite into that earthy, silky taste of meat jelly and fat. Eat as slowly as he liked, no one chivvying him to hurry up, get back to his chores. The Hoof had gone out before Joseph got up and wouldn’t be back until mid-day. Time alone together. After their shared late breakfast, his mother tidied up the remains of their meal, began preparing her husband’s. She put a brace of kippers into a pan, set it on the stove. Joseph hid under the kitchen table.
The memory burned him all over again while Mrs Dulcimer looked on. She leaned forwards, put out her hand and jiggled a fallen bit of branch, its end glowing crimson. She used it as a poker, to stir the flames. She patted them; unruly children. She sat back, placidly regarding the heap of twinkling coals, flaring twigs. She breathed quietly. So he breathed too. He breathed out.
Keep still. Undo his life’s red tangle somehow, smooth it, make it usable. Like helping his mother prepare her knitting. He held the skein in a wide loop between his outstretched hands, thumbs up to keep the wool in place; she seized the dangling free end and began to wind; the long thread of yarn ran back and forth between his spread fingers, criss-crossing the air, as she wound it into a globe. There! She held three red balls, began to juggle with them. She tossed them to the Hoof. That’s for your new pullover. Robin Red-Breast! The Hoof crossed the room, arms full of red wool, kissed her, and she smiled.
Mrs Dulcimer refilled their cups. She said: hard for you, perhaps, having a stepfather. Your mother saw some good in him, I suppose.
She’d picked up his thoughts again. She was at home inside his mind. She went on: my mother didn’t have much time for us, she worked so hard. She’d raise her fist when we got under her feet, she’d holler at us then we’d skedaddle. When she cried I would go to her and lick the tears off her face. She said I was her little comfort. Comfort was my middle name! She taught me to read and write. On Sunday nights she’d hear us say our prayers and then she’d tell us stories. Hair-raising, some of them.
Joseph fidgeted. The fire quivered, fragile suddenly, sticks about to collapse, more kindling needed to get it going again, she ought to ring for more coals.
He put down his cup. He said: my mother came to live with us, at the end. She was already ill, but she didn’t want to let on.
Wrapped in her grey shawl, his mother sat in the kitchen, huddling close to the range. She wrote out recipes for Cara, she worked her way through the darning basket, she helped with the little ones. She fended off Joseph by not attending to him; always busy with counting stitches or measuring out flour. She’d flap her hands at him: out of the kitchen! Shoo!
Joseph said: children shouldn’t question their parents, but I wanted her to explain why she’d ever married my stepfather, given how dull he was. Solid. Almost stupid.
He lowered his glance, talked to his teacup. At one time, as a boy, I believed she wasn’t really a widow. That in fact she’d never been married to my father at all.
He gulped breath. Illegitimate. Terrible, shameful word to say. Like wearing a label tied round your forehead for all the world to gawk at. Despise you. You’re not like them. Dirty son of a dirty mother. People stared, pointed, hissed. You live apart, outcast, you scratch a living in the wastelands, like a gypsy. Maimed, sick. Nathalie must have believed that, too.
He said: my mother told me, in one late conversation, that after marrying my stepfather she lost two babies. Two in three years. At the time, of course, I didn’t know. She hid it from me. To protect me, I suppose. I was too young to understand about such things.
Mrs Dulcimer sat up straight. Her face softened. She said: losing two babies, well then, that was sad for her, wasn’t it.
Only when you wanted the babies, lady. Those girls who visited Mrs Bonnet, what did they feel? Little more
than children, if you considered Doll, and Annie. Desperate, presumably. Mrs Dulcimer fixed him with a direct gaze, as though to say: and how did they come to fall pregnant in the first place, Joseph? Did they do it all by themselves? And why should they tell you anything about how they feel?
Joseph said: I didn’t want to understand, when she finally told me.
A spring morning, Saturday, a sharp wind whipping the new green leaves in Brunswick Square at the top of the street. Cara had taken the children out for an airing. Left alone with him in the kitchen, cleaning the brass while he watched, his mother had given halting replies to his questions. Her fingers closed round her stinking yellow rag. Speaking of the children she’d lost, she shut her face, blinked, turned her gaze away. She began to heave up from her chair. She said: I think I’ll take my rest now. Will you help me upstairs, Joseph?
He gave her his arm. They crept up the two flights from the kitchen to her room. She wheezed and panted. She sat down on the bed, feet dangling, to allow him to remove her slippers. Billowy swollen ankles. He turned his head aside, dropped a slipper on the floor. Ah, you’re a clumsy boy, Joseph. She slumped back against her pillows, heaped up to ease her breathing. She seemed to be falling asleep, her eyelids fluttering. Deeply fissured skin of her cheeks. Wrinkled throat. She was tender and soft as a sheet of tissue paper.
She murmured: stop fretting me. I married your stepfather because I fancied him, d’you see. As a young man he was so beautiful, Joseph. No one to touch him, in his beauty. Such charm he had. Wicked, glinting looks. Always promising something but never telling you what. I wanted him more than anything. There. Does that satisfy you?
His mother closed her eyes. Dreamy expression. A smile. She began to whisper in a hoarse voice. Such an appealing gaze he had. He was like a flower with some petals torn off.
Joseph pulled the bedclothes towards her chin. She chanted on. The brown throat the muscles of him the taut brown skin the lean frame the red mouth. The pleasure we had together, Joseph, I didn’t know such pleasure could exist, I could never get enough of him, can’t you understand that?
The Walworth Beauty Page 24
