The Walworth Beauty

by Michèle Roberts

  After Sid died Toby told Madeleine he knew he would never feel joy again. But now he does. He laughs. He dances. He writes poems to Anthony, cooks for him, talks about him all the time.

  Madeleine says: and I’ll bring a cake as well. What sort of cake would you like?

  I don’t want to know, Toby says: I’d rather have a surprise.

  Some of the tourists outside St Paul’s are eating burgers and chips from cardboard boxes. A bin at the edge of the piazza overflows with bottles and cans. Empty food boxes litter the ground nearby. The radical youths of the Occupy camp, a few years back, were tidier: ecological warriors who picked up rubbish. Sudden blossoming of tents tightly packed in, pitched on gravel not grass, their green curves echoing those of the dome above. The protesters festooned the surrounding wire fence with ribbons and necklaces, hung it with drawings and cartoons, handwritten messages. They made speeches against the Church’s collusion with City corruption and greed, sang, handed out bowls of stew. St Paul’s barricaded itself against them, its dignitaries skulking behind bolted doors.

  Some Londoners treated the tent-city as just another spectacle; like Borough Market or Covent Garden. They passed by, shrugged, walked on. Others muttered about filthy shanty-towns. Journalists and bankers strolled through the camp, got involved briefly in debate, wandered away again. Tourists retreated behind their phones, holding them out like the powerful relics of saints to protect against contaminating evil. They shuffled along as though blind; miraculously able to see once they framed shots on their tiny screens. After a while the carnival drifted away. The cathedral went on standing firm.

  Toby says: are you listening? I said, so we’re all sorted. I’m doing the flowers and the food. Anthony’s in charge of décor and music and our outfits.

  I’ll see you in a week’s time, then, Madeleine says: I’ll pick you up from home, take you to the civil ceremony, and then to the church and then to the party.

  She stands back for a gang of Italian schoolgirls uniformed like a dance troupe with red sashes. Toby says: I know what you’re thinking. But Anthony’s a practising Anglican. If he wants a blessing in church he can have it. With a vicar in his best frock thrown in, and a choir singing the Bach Magnificat!

  Next day sunlight wakes her, and footsteps overhead, the whimper of the baby. Troubling dreams withdraw, a dark tide drains out, leaves a residue, uneven marks that stain the morning. So snap out of it. Get up. Invent a treat. Buy a new outfit for Toby’s do.

  Sally catches her, emerging from her front door just as Madeleine is closing her gate. Smart Sally, in knee-length black boots, black beret. You off up the Lane? I’ll walk with you. I’m going that way myself.

  The leaves of the plane trees lining Apricot Place have begun to fall. Crackling brown debris silts up against the asters and fuchsias, still in bloom, that Madeleine planted in early summer around the roots of the tree opposite her flat. The yellow of a solitary marigold poking through the heap of fallen leaves matches that of the estate agent’s Sold sign leaning against the railings.

  Part of the tiny flowerbed has vanished. Overnight, someone has ripped up the climbing nasturtium plants she trained to scramble around the trunk, has dropped them on the pavement near her gate, withered leaves, wilting pale tangerine and apricot flowers. Watch where you put your feet! Sally yelps, points. Wet dog mess slumps out at one side of the piled greenery.

  No long, lavish coils. Someone has torn up the juicy stalks into short lengths then dropped them on top of a heap of fresh dog turds where any passer-by, or Madeleine herself, would tread in it. Emm? She swears under her breath. Impossible to prove it.

  Bloody vandals! Sally plucks short branches from her hedge, helps Madeleine sweep the mess over the kerb.

  The sun sparkles on cast-down metallic snack wrappers, glitters on tarmac. Wafts of hot frying fat from the open doorways of kebab shops, aroma of burnt coffee from the cafés, sweet spiciness from the Jamaican bakery. Stink of oil and petrol from cars and buses.

  Sally thrusts her arm through Madeleine’s: don’t want to lose you!

  How is Rose? She can’t ask. Leave her alone, instructs Nelly: don’t interfere. Yes, Nelly, yes.

  A metal arch frames the entrance to the Lane. On one corner a man sells wedge-heeled espadrilles and gladiator sandals, leftovers from summer sales, and on the other a woman offers plastic bags of nuts, birthday cards, children’s books. They shout at one another over the heads of their customers, lob their conversation back and forth. She didn’t! She bloody well did!

  Madeleine sighs. I love coming here. It cheers me up.

  What d’you need cheering up for? Sally asks.

  Oh, Madeleine says: you know. Life. Sometimes it feels tough.

  Tell me about it! Sally says.

  That means: don’t. Madeleine wouldn’t know how to, in any case. The words won’t form. They stay somehow underground. Muddled together. Nudging her, but invisible. Something wants to be said, but what? No answer, came the bold reply, quips Nelly. Madeleine wants to yell at her. Lay off, will you? Just leave me alone!

  A tall, white-haired man, big and muscled, hollers the excellence of tubes of mustard lycra, tents of pleated azure viscose. A makeshift counter offers gold-threaded silks and satins, lurex and lamé, reels of glittering braid. Polystyrene legs clad in black-lace stockings dangle next to moulded bras in red, green, purple. Skimpy nylon thongs mix into heaps of frilled flowery knickers. Women throng in front, shouldering each other, heads down, intent on bargains. Their hands dive in, rummage, toss the gauzy scraps into the air.

  Piled bunches of coriander, parsley, mint, form a fragrant green barrier. The butcher’s, set back on the pavement, sells skinny-throated chickens, pimpled and pale, beaks and scaly yellow feet still on, and chunks of goat, and cows’ legs with hooves intact. People hover at the fishmonger’s stall, eating from mini tubs of cockles and whelks, checking over the crabs and prawns, the buckets of fish heads and spines.

  Madeleine pauses, making Sally pause too. Look over there. That cartoon figure. I always salute her when I come past.

  A plywood panel on the side of a haberdashery stall has been painted with a huge-eyed, impossibly wasp-waisted girl batting her feathery eyelashes. Hair tied up in a spotted red bow, she hoists up her pink T-shirt just high enough over her pointy breasts to reveal her sharp nipples. Sun and rain have softened her colours but not dimmed her coy grin.

  Sally says: I knew the fellow who did that. Painted quite a few of the signs round here. Dead now. That’s not the sort of art our Rose wants to do! But at least he earned a living from it.

  A CD stall belts out reggae. An ironmonger chants the praises of saucepans and woks. His neighbour offers artificial peonies and fake-onyx vases and gilt-framed pictures of Mary and Jesus, apple-cheeked, their blue and red robes held open to reveal their sacred bleeding hearts. Sally raises her voice above the racket: because how will Rose ever make a living from art? She won’t, will she.

  Madeleine says: she could go on with her job at the same time, couldn’t she?

  Sally turns her head towards Madeleine, her black earrings swinging. I suppose part-time worked for me all right. While my kids were at school I ran the coffee stall at the London College of Printing, up at the Elephant. Nice lot, the students. We used to have a good laugh.

  She presses Madeleine’s arm. Some of them were designing cardboard boxes. I never knew boxes had to be designed. Now, every time I pick up bits of packaging for our Rose, for her model, I give it marks for how easy it is to open and fold flat.

  In the middle of the market, the flower-man displays ranked geraniums massed by colour, wide swathes of scarlet, pink and crimson shining in the sunlight, and next to them bands of white petunias, yellow poppies, pots of green ferns. The last days of summer, carols the man: come on, girls, refresh those balconies, refresh those pots!

  And then only a couple of days ago, Sally says, she told me she’s thinking of destroying the whole thing and starting again. Says it
’s not right.

  I’m supposed to be writing her stories to go with it, Madeleine says: I should be getting on with them.

  At the beginning, when she was all fired up, writing seemed so easy; poured out. Now, as she advances further into it, every time she has a go she immediately feels bored. Language flees, replaced by a suffocating aimlessness. Why bother trying to write? You’re rubbish at it. She rattles inside her room. After an hour’s thrashing about, tugging her hair, drinking tea, gazing out of the window, she pulls the loneliness round her. My cloak; now called solitude. She settles down, dashes a few words onto her screen. Nelly hosts these beginning stories. You don’t know how to start? Just admit you can’t do it. I don’t know how. I don’t know how. Write that down. Language begins to flow. Later on she can re-read, edit, re-write.

  They reach the second-hand clothes racks, lined up two deep on either side of the road. Like the wings of a theatre: you come off-stage, shed one costume, don another. A little hat of black feathers with a spotted black veil? A dark grey 1940s overcoat? Sally says no. You’re not going to a bleeding funeral, are you?

  In the end Madeleine buys a man’s collarless dress shirt with flopping cuffs. Sleeves, lower part and back in fine white cotton, bib front in what seems white brocade. Right. Now I need a bit of decoration.

  A stall opposite displays costume jewellery: wide trays fatly striped with flashing rainbows of brilliants. Next to it: second-hand finds. Boxes of broken gilt chains, strings of faux-coral twigs, tin brooches, tarnished Our Lady medals. The stallholder, a lively-faced woman with hennaed hair, has pinned out the better pieces on velvet-covered boards: necklaces of amber, diamante, river pearls. Madeleine fingers a ring set with a green glass stone, a collection of hatpins, studded with jet, stuck into a pincushion. Victorian, explains the stallholder: very swanky, jet was in those days. Madeleine chooses a pair of flat silvery cufflinks, and some art deco clip-on earrings, shaped like wings, that curve along her ears. Egged on, Sally picks out a bracelet of jade-coloured beads. That’ll be nice for my daughter. Her birthday’s coming up. I’ll buy a box for it and she’ll pretend not to know it’s not new.

  They inspect the produce on the fruit stalls, choose plums and apples. Sally prods some pears. They go to the Turkish grocer’s and buy almonds, sugar, vanilla pods, orange-flower water. Loaded with bags, they trudge out, past the barefoot man sitting begging, and make for home.

  Approaching Orchard Street, Madeleine feels tired, her head tight, somehow scraped inside. Her brain all twisted round. She wants to fall into bed, catch up on sleep. Sally’s chatting about her younger daughter, whom Madeleine has not met, who lives near Bromley. Her kids like playing celebrities, playing being on TV. I got out my wedding-dress for them, and the two bridesmaids’ frocks, so they can dress up. They love wearing my shoes! The high-heeled ones that is.

  In Apricot Place, in front of their black iron gates, Sally dumps her bags on the ground, opens her handbag. Madeleine pauses, stretches. Not wanting to go in.

  Sally scans Madeleine with her sharp black eyes. Rose rang me again yesterday. She told me you know what’s happened. I said not to be scared. Make up her mind what she wants to do, and do it. Her mum’s very upset, but I said to her it’s up to Rose. We’ll be there for her, whatever she decides, she knows that.

  Nelly wrote that to Madeleine once, years ago. Her mother, ashen and rigid: a daughter of mine going on a demonstration, going about the streets shouting about sex, you do everything you can to hurt me. Nelly wrote: your parents will love you, whatever you do, they will always forgive. Now here’s Sally sounding just like Nelly.

  Sally says: what worries me is where she’ll live if she keeps the baby, if her squat packs up. Even if you get on the Council waiting-list you’ve got to take what they offer. You could be re-housed anywhere. Not necessarily round here.

  Madeleine says: you’d like her to be able to stay near you, wouldn’t you?

  Rose’s mother and stepfather have moved further out, to an estate down towards Croydon. Madeleine has met the mother in the street once or twice, when she arrives to visit Sally with her toddlers. Pale, thin, her pinched face expressionless, she lowers her eyes before Madeleine, does not speak. She wears a grey fleece over a grey tracksuit, always the same pair of trainers. No money for a coat, a pair of boots. Why should she be friendly? She’s got other things on her mind.

  Sally says: well, we’ll just have to wait and see. It beats me how anyone can afford to buy their own flat these days. You were lucky, weren’t you? One of the lucky ones!

  Nothing Madeleine can say to this, so she keeps quiet. Sally nods towards the yellow Sold sign. That’s for the flat above yours, did you know? I thought that flat would never go. The owner was asking too much. He moved away to live with his girlfriend, put the flat on the market, never managed to sell it.

  Madeleine says: but there’s a family in there! A mother and baby, anyway. I hear the baby crying the whole time. And the mother walking up and down trying to quieten it.

  Sally shakes her head. No, that flat above you’s been empty for months. You must’ve been dreaming it.

  Madeleine looks towards the basement underneath Sally’s sitting-room, trying to judge distances, thickness of walls. She says: sounds carry oddly, I suppose. I hear my neighbour, the chap down there under you, through my wall, banging down his stairs from the ground floor. I wish he’d lay some carpet to muffle the noise.

  Sally says: what are you on about? His steps are carpeted. He told me all about having them done, when he moved in. Invited me to have a look. Nice thick carpet.

  She pushes open her gate, stumps up her steps. You have the radio on a lot, don’t you? I expect sometimes you forget to turn it off. You’ve been hearing something on the radio. Oh, Madeleine.

  She closes her front door. Madeleine ducks under the overgrown lavatera, lifts aside a stem of jasmine, walks down into her basement area. Closing her own front door, she shivers. As though it’s mid-winter with no prospect of sunshine or warmth, just relentless rain. She’s grown used to how the flat traps chill and damp, but today it feels extra cold after the golden warmth of the day outside. Almost dank.

  The baby’s wail begins. A woman’s voice, high and light, joins in. Sobbing. Their plaints twist together, relentless. Madeleine tries to speak out loud. All right. This time I’m ready for you. The words stick in her throat. As in a nightmare when you try to scream and can’t.

  Some kind of force pushes at her, thrusts her back. The baby’s wail quivers, a thread of despair. A girl sobs. Oh, will you give over! The noise of the boots breaks in. Like someone kicking down a door. Breaking and entering. Coldness washes through her in waves.

  Her heart thuds. Blood pounds in her throat. Her head feels dry, somehow. Airless. She swivels, faces the source of the noise: the partitioned-off space holding the boiler and fridge behind their lace veil. Bang! Bang! Bang! Someone invisible clatters down in mid-air. Dampness seizes her neck, closes round it, a cold, rough hand tightens over her mouth and she staggers, twists round, nearly falls over. She cries out, drops her shopping. She blunders through the galley kitchen, unlocks the door to the back garden, wrenches it open. She stumbles up the steps out of the area, stands in the middle of the little paved space. Cold, fresh air. She folds her arms tightly. Shivery, sick. Wanting to throw up. To cry. Stop it, stop it! Who’s whispering that?

  She goes back inside, turns on the central heating. Cook something. Make a late lunch. She throws tomatoes into a pan with olive oil. Consider Sally’s theory about noise from the radio. She turns the radio on.

  Silence for a few seconds. Then disembodied voices, eerie and pure, float in from far away, an island in the Hebrides where poets are singing, chanting, reciting, keening.

  No. Radio music is radio music. Voices on the radio are not the voices she heard.

  THIRTEEN

  Joseph

  They sat down eight to supper. Mrs Bonnet arrived just as everyone was settling themselves
in their places and Mrs Dulcimer was standing by, ladle in hand, ready to serve out the soup. Here we are! Who’s this, then? She shook Joseph’s hand, peered into his face. Ah, yes, the gent from the other day. Her look said: getting your legs under my friend’s table, I see.

  Mrs Bonnet shed her outdoor things and hung up her bag, all the while complaining about the traffic splashing the passers-by, the darkness, the deep puddles of mud and wet you fell into as you went along. She leaned her umbrella against the back door, where it dripped onto the mat improvised by Mrs Dulcimer from old sacks. Directed to sit down next to Joseph, she moved her chair a foot away from his, declaring she needed more room for her sleeves; puffs of dark blue gauze fat as cabbages.

  The five young women clustered opposite, Doll and Annie with their heads together, whispering, and the three lodgers chattering about their working day; swapping notes. A rough music; all speaking at once. Foreign languages sounded like that: an unbroken flow of syllables. On occasion Nathalie and Cara had babbled French in front of him and he hadn’t understood a word. Handy for them, eh? Congratulating themselves, laughing at him up their sleeves.

  Young and fresh-skinned, the girls formed a pretty enough gang; their hair knotted tidily behind their heads and their faces shining in the warmth. The lodgers were a strong-looking, lively trio, tilting back their chairs and cracking their fingers, grumbling and shoving. They’d taken off their boots, which tumbled in a pile to one side of the range. The smell of perspiring feet in felt slippers mixed with that of nutmeg and roasting apples. Now they changed the subject, from work to play: the Hallowe’en fair that was putting up on the common. They planned a visit, en masse, tomorrow afternoon. You’ll come with us, they cried to Mrs Dulcimer: won’t you?