An Unremarkable Body

by Elisa Lodato

  There was no one there. I pulled out my phone in futile remonstrance at myself. I was standing at the top of the ramp that led to the large, open doors of the library, facing the road, looking for a retreating figure that might be her. I was clammy and breathing hard. From behind me I heard a quiet voice, cautiously warm: ‘Laura?’ I turned and saw a small woman with a neat grey bob staring up at me. She searched my face and inhaled sharply before smiling. Then she put her arms out to hug me, buoyed by having found my mother’s face, after so many years, in my own. I bent down to meet her embrace, envious she had found something I was still looking for.

  ‘Let’s sit down over there,’ she said, indicating the benches in front of the war memorial adjacent to the library.

  ‘Did you want to go for a walk first, or grab a coffee?’

  ‘No. There’s something I need to show you first.’

  ‘OK. Sure.’

  We walked over to the war memorial and I stared, suitably sombre, at the names etched on the stone. I thought she was going to tell me something of the local history, indicate the name of a fallen relative, but she walked past it without so much as a glance and sat down.

  ‘Your mother and I worked together in there,’ she said, indicating the library on our right. ‘Before you were born.’

  ‘Yes, I know.’

  ‘She was a very gifted librarian. A custodian of quiet,’ she said, and smiled sadly to herself.

  ‘And she left to have me?’

  ‘No.’ She screwed up her eyes, momentarily hesitant, and then looked straight ahead at the cars motoring past on the Ewell Road. ‘She left because she met your father. And what happened to her on that stretch of road over there.’

  My mother hated school, not because she wasn’t intelligent or academic enough to succeed. She hated school because she had no friends. Her reticence and inability to communicate with others had become so marked and acute by the fifth year that all she could do was wait for her sixteenth birthday and the opportunity to walk away from the girls that had angled their chairs away from her for years.

  My grandmother was devastated: she believed that her failure to provide a sibling was the source of her daughter’s crippling loneliness. She cajoled, engineered and finally pleaded, but my mother’s desire to withdraw from the world had a momentum of its own.

  In January 1977, on the morning of her sixteenth birthday, my mother decided to stay in bed. She buried herself beneath the blankets and waited for my grandmother’s peremptory knock; it wasn’t to seek permission, just to alert her to the fact that an intrusion was imminent.

  ‘Happy birthday, darling,’ and then, without waiting for a response, ‘you’re going to be late. Get up, please.’ She spoke to the unmoving mound beneath the covers. ‘Katharine! I’m talking to you.’ She marched into the room and opened the curtains. ‘Time to get up. You’ll be late for school.’

  My mother still didn’t make a sound. She defied through silence, and it drove my grandmother berserk – she began shaking my mother’s body under the blankets, rolling her to and fro and into action.

  ‘I said get up. Get up!’ Her voice was high-pitched now, and starting to fray at the edges. In despair she pulled the covers from my mother’s warm, pale body and watched as she drew her legs up into a foetal position, protecting herself from the woman who had only ever wanted her. Who had desired her being with an intensity that had begun to turn in on itself. My grandmother looked at her body, soft and diffident, and felt a sudden urge to bite. To consume this flesh that had failed. In her anguish she looked around the room and saw my mother’s bra, hanging from the bedpost like a flaccid flag.

  My grandfather appeared at the door then, drawn by his wife’s raised voice. ‘What’s going on? Why are you shouting?’ His wife’s frustrations with their first and only child were nothing new to him. He remembered how her desperation to conceive my mother had nearly driven her mad. Literally. He had come home one afternoon from work and found her still sitting on the toilet, knickers kicked away, crying at the menstrual blood dripping, irrefutably, into the toilet bowl. Her extreme sorrow, every twenty-seven days, was cataclysmic. It closed them off from other people and made him fear for their life together.

  ‘It’s seven thirty, and look at her!’ My grandfather looked at his daughter’s nearly naked body, vulnerable and exposed, her breasts held behind the insufficient cover of knees hugged up in defence. He was deeply embarrassed. And then angry.

  ‘Cover her up!’

  ‘Paul, it’s seven—’

  ‘I said, cover her up!’ he roared. And then, because my grandmother was too shocked to move, he pulled the blankets over my mother himself, careful not to touch her skin and complicate his feelings further.

  ‘Jean. I’d like to talk to you downstairs.’

  From her bedroom, my mother heard them argue, my grandfather adamant that my mother be left alone to make her silent protest on the morning of her sixteenth birthday. He knew exactly what she was doing, and in his own way he supported it.

  They left her at home alone that morning in January. When she heard the front door close as they went off to work, she got out of bed and dressed herself. She went downstairs, breathed in the musty freedom of an empty house and made herself a cup of tea and some thickly buttered toast in the kitchen. It was the most liberating experience of her life – to be at home alone, while the world outside continued to turn. She thought of the other girls in her class, settling down to their lessons, answering questions, raising an eyebrow to her empty seat, and she felt happy enough to laugh. After breakfast she searched the bookshelves for something to read and went upstairs to run herself a deep bath.

  My mother avoided baths – they made her feel too vulnerable. She grew up in a home where locks were not allowed. My grandmother would not allow it. And so, lying in water, naked, waiting to be looked upon, was something she couldn’t bring herself to do. My grandmother said it was a safety measure, but as my mother grew into adolescence, she knew it was a way of keeping an eye on her.

  On my mother’s sixteenth birthday she treated herself to a deep bath. She immersed herself in the hot, soapy water and luxuriated in the sensation of quiet and privacy. And used her fingers to smooth, clean and connect with her body – and in this moment of perfect pleasure, resolved never to return to school again.

  The happiness of that morning became a working prototype for many others. The next day my grandmother made an abortive attempt to get her up. When it didn’t work, she left her to sleep, slamming the front door with empty vengeance.

  As with all uncompromising decisions, on the third morning my mother was forced to admit she’d inadvertently denied herself access to something she needed: the school library. The small, overcrowded room at the top of the tower had been my mother’s sanctuary during anxious lunchtimes. The exacting silence was the perfect social leveller for someone like her. Instead of running a bath, she put her shoes and coat on and walked down the hill to Surbiton Library. A grade-two listed building, built in 1896, its imposing arched entrance at the summit of a long ramp belied the timid courtesy of its interior, where the few quietly and unobtrusively sought something to read. My mother found shelves of nineteenth-century novels and crouched down on her haunches to have a better look. They were all there before her, authors long dead who beckoned to her from beyond the spine to a private landscape she could make her own. She picked up Middlemarch and took it over to a chair near the window, where she was immediately captivated by Dorothea Brooke. She had been in her seat for over two hours when the librarian came over to return some books to a nearby shelf. She saw my mother’s absorption and looked for the title of her novel.

  ‘It’s a wonderful book, isn’t it?’ she whispered.

  My mother looked up, her brow creased in irritation.

  ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt you.’

  My mother shook her head, as if to say she hadn’t. And smiled.

  ‘Have you read The Mill on the Flos
s?’ the librarian asked kindly.

  My mother shook her head again.

  ‘Well, you must. It’s Eliot at her very best, in my opinion. I’m Nicola, by the way. The librarian here.’ She extended her hand down to my mother.

  My mother looked at the hand and then up at the smiling face, and decided to take this social opportunity. She shook Nicola’s hand and said, simply, ‘I’m Katharine.’

  My mother began visiting the library every day. She arrived at the same time, sat in the same seat and worked her way through Middlemarch, before moving on to The Mill on the Floss. At the end of February, Nicola approached her again, but this time with a direct question: ‘We’re looking to hire a junior librarian with responsibilities three mornings a week. Is that something you might be interested in?’

  My mother tried to speak but her voice was dry and raspy. She managed to nod, whereupon Nicola went to get her an application form.

  My mother closed her book and began completing the form. At the end of the afternoon, she handed it in to Nicola behind the desk and walked down the ramp and out into the chill air with a renewed sense of purpose.

  My mother was invited to have an interview with Nicola, but as she was the only applicant, what was billed as an interview was in fact an induction session. Her first responsibility was to reclaim and reorder the library’s property: she was shown how to categorise returned books and position them correctly on the trolleys for redistribution.

  She didn’t tell my grandparents about the job. They had been coexisting in an uncomfortable stand-off until one of my grandmother’s friends told her they’d seen Katharine pushing a trolley full of books around in the library and then asked the obvious – and to my grandmother, galling – question, ‘Is Katharine no longer in school?’

  My mother didn’t try to explain herself. She heard my grandfather counsel patience to his wife from her bedroom upstairs. And over time, people grew to accept my mother’s new job. She went about her duties with a discreet and methodical professionalism that recommended her to Nicola and readers alike. In May 1977, just three months after she’d started, Nicola asked her to do three full days instead of just mornings. My mother accepted, and grew in confidence as she mastered subcategories and reference books. She was quick to spot and replace books that had been mindlessly returned to the wrong shelf. It was a job that required her to blend, unobtrusively, into the background. It was the perfect job for her. And she did it happily for almost four years.

  At the beginning of the 1980s, the local authority wanted to reinvigorate reading areas for children, and Nicola thought my mother should take responsibility for that. My mother disliked small children – she used to shrink at their confident clamour – and would have been happier if she’d been asked to lead a project on keeping them out of the library. But she recognised a vote of confidence when she saw one, and began looking into brightening up a suitable corner.

  As the weather turned warm and bright outside, she began to notice a young man who arrived at a quarter to nine every morning. Just fifteen minutes after Nicola had opened the doors. He was tall – just under six foot – but stooped and uncertain in his gait. He arrived at the library every morning in order to do very little. My mother was intrigued by him; he couldn’t have been more than twenty-one or twenty-two, and yet he was dedicated to a routine of nothing. He entered the library and went to his usual table in the natural history section. My mother watched him nose around the shelves, take several books, or sometimes just one, over to his desk and then, instead of reading them, he rummaged in his jacket pocket for a packet of tobacco and a lighter. He smoked just outside the doorway, his right foot resting against the building and his neck stooped so he could watch the ground. My mother used his first cigarette break of the day as an opportunity to peer at the titles he’d pulled down from the shelf. Birds and How They Live was a favourite, as was The Observer’s Book of Trees.

  My mother watched him return to the books he’d carefully selected and then disregard them entirely for the rest of the day. She suspected they were mere placeholders: a means by which he could secure space. He broke the day up by smoking cigarettes, buying cups of coffee, reading newspapers or completing a crossword. He was killing time in the most obvious sense, unable to concentrate on any one activity for longer than twenty minutes. At around four thirty in the afternoon, he began gathering his things up and, striding quickly past the issuing desk with his head down, left the library for the day.

  My mother grew curious and, as the weeks passed, her curiosity got the better of her. One morning, in June 1980, she went outside ten minutes after opening the doors in order to witness the prompt arrival of a man tasked with doing nothing. Sure enough, at the appointed time a red Austin Maxi pulled up outside the building and the young man emerged, leant in to speak to the driver and then closed the door with a bang. He turned to trudge up the ramp, his every step observed by the middle-aged woman behind the wheel. As he passed my mother, standing under the arched entranceway, he smiled, surprised by her presence there, and said, by way of explanation, ‘She watches me until I’m inside.’ My mother looked back at the car and saw the woman return to a driving position, signal left and rejoin the flow of traffic.

  My mother got on with her work: ordering books, making posters, painting boxes in bright primary colours, but try as she might, she couldn’t ignore the disconsolate young man who wandered around. Her interest was not purely observational; she detected in him the same writhing obedience to a controlling matriarch. He was aimless precisely because he was so used to being directed.

  By the end of June, the children’s book corner was almost complete. With no chairs for the children to sit on and no more money to furnish the area, my mother had begun reading up on how to make her own beanbags – the material and filling could be obtained at little expense. The task she had accepted with quiet disdain had absorbed her so much that she now pushed at the boundary of expectation.

  She was flicking through a pile of textile books in the reading room one Monday lunchtime when he approached her desk and waited for her to look up. When she didn’t, he coughed quietly.

  ‘I’m just going down the road to buy a sandwich. Can I get you anything?’

  ‘No, thank you. I brought my own sandwiches.’

  ‘OK. Just thought I’d ask.’ He turned to walk away.

  ‘Wait. I could do with a walk, though. I’ll come with you.’

  They walked down the hill to a café, where he bought a sandwich and a cup of tea. He suggested they sit on the bench behind the war memorial and eat their lunch.

  ‘I’m Richard,’ he said, extending his right hand across his body to shake my mother’s limp fingers.

  ‘Katharine. Nice to meet you.’

  ‘And you.’

  My mother opened her carefully prepared cheese and ham roll while Richard foraged in his paper bag for his egg sandwich. He kept looking cautiously sideways as though to check she was still there. My mother stared straight ahead at the names etched on the yellow stone.

  ‘Is that your mum who drops you off every morning?’

  He’d just taken a huge bite of his lunch and had to nod in answer, his mouth full of bread. He chewed quickly, gulping down the silence that was suddenly everywhere.

  ‘I’m supposed to be applying for jobs. I finished university two years ago and still haven’t worked out what I want to do.’

  ‘What did you study?’

  ‘Mathematics.’

  My mother raised her eyebrows in surprise. ‘I thought you were going to say natural history, or something.’

  ‘Why? Do I look like I should be a zookeeper or something?’

  My mother laughed. ‘No. Just, you always have that bird book on your desk.’

  ‘Oh yeah,’ he said, grinning. ‘I do actually like birds. My dad used to take me birdwatching when I was younger. But no, I keep my papers in there.’

  ‘Your papers?’

  ‘Rizla papers. You know, fo
r making rollies.’

  My mother looked blank, so he reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and pulled out one of his cigarettes. ‘Do you want one?’

  My mother shook her head emphatically.

  ‘Do you mind if I smoke?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So what about you?’ he asked, putting the cigarette between his lips and lighting the end. ‘Why are you here?’ He leant against the back of the bench and lifted his right ankle to rest on his left knee.

  ‘I work here.’

  ‘Permanently? Is this what you want to do?’

  ‘I like it. I like the quiet,’ she said, looking down at her lap, ‘and Nicola’s really nice.’

  ‘Is that the other one? The one with the short hair?’

  ‘Yes. She’s the senior librarian.’

  ‘Have you left school, then?’

  My mother nodded her head. ‘Over three years ago now.’

  ‘Don’t miss it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Me neither. But my mum is threatening to enrol me in the army if I don’t get my act together.’

  My mother looked at her watch and stood up. ‘I’d better get back. Nicola will be wondering what’s happened to me.’

  ‘OK,’ he said, standing up to join her. ‘I’ll be in in a bit,’ he said, putting the cigarette to his lips again.

  ‘Bye.’

  ‘See you later.’

  On Saturday morning I woke feeling well and refreshed. I went for a run and managed a few hours of writing after lunch. With nothing left to do but anticipate the evening ahead, I put on the red and blue tunic dress I’d selected the day before. I wore it over leggings with black boots. I blow-dried my hair straight and noticed, as I tried to hide the split ends behind my ear, that it was in urgent need of a cut. I pulled my make-up bag from the bathroom cabinet and began applying foundation, eyeshadow, liner and mascara. I stared at the face that slowly emerged and remembered it from the morning of her funeral. The last time I’d applied make-up.