Writing on Skin

by Sara Banerji

  ‘What do you know about love?’ she asked at last, grumpily, her head still bent so he could not see her expression. ‘Have you ever been in love, Daniel? I’ve never seen you with a woman.’

  He did not answer, but he made a tiny sound that to Hermione sounded like a groan.

  Reaching out she tried to hug him. ‘Don’t worry, darling, don’t worry,’ she whispered having misunderstood his sorrow.

  Hugh had brought back lotuses from India, and planted them in his lake. These treasures needed much maintenance in the unkind English climate, and each autumn he would get Hermione to accompany him to the centre of the lake, where the two of them would remove the rotting foliage, and divide the tubers.

  One large piebald fish known as ‘the Piranha’ had always attended them on this annual ritual, swimming alongside the boat, lips ready. He became furious when Hermione leant out and snipped a leaf instead of feeding him and would almost stand on the surface of the water thrashing his tail.

  The Piranha had a gigantic appetite and had once eaten a whole dropscone spread with quince jelly and cream, flung in during some summer teatime, fighting off the other fish. In the scuddle of whirling jammy water, Hermione had almost thought she’d heard the sound of ripping fins and scales.

  This year Daniel rowed Hermione across the limpid English water to divide the lilies. And as usual the Piranha nudged at the boat’s side to remind its occupants of their duty towards him.

  Hermione, watching as her son pulled the boat under the willow trails, was struck by how completely English Daniel looked. No one, she told herself, would possibly imagine that this big red-bearded man had one drop of Indian blood in him. She suddenly longed to ask him whether he, born in India, brought up there, perhaps carrying its genes, had its strong-flavoured memories tugging at his being as she did.

  But she said nothing. She felt sure he did not.

  As the boys grew older, they had become ever more reluctant to go to India for their holidays, saying that they would find it boring, and that England with schoolfriends, or even grandparents, was more fun. Unity had loved India still, but of course she was different.

  Another question, painfully connected in a way that Hermione could reveal to no one, burst out instead. Without turning her head, so that he could not see her expression, she asked, ‘I suppose you all thought me a very bad mother?’

  She had never been one for confiding and took Daniel by surprise, so that he caught up a scoopful of water on his oar.

  ‘I think you were a very good one,’ Daniel said at last, speaking carefully.

  ‘Good?’

  ‘You gave us respect so that we felt we were people and had room to find ourselves.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, reassessing her maternal worth.

  Then, as they rowed round the willow tree, she saw the words, ‘Never grow old’ glimmering out of the muddy water and thought for a moment that it must be a message from the past.

  The fish were gathered round the pale instructive dome and seemed, for one jokey moment, until Hermione had fully taken in the urgency of the situation, like an assiduous group of students. She even let out a little sniff of part-laughter at fish learning under cold, mud-stained water a lesson that she at the age of seventy still did not understand.

  Then the reality rushed in upon her and she reached frantic hands down into the water. As her fingers touched the flaccid drowning head, the Piranha seemed to have its lips pursed out, ready to eat. A moment more and the Piranha would have been feasting on Slug.

  The boat nearly toppled as Hermione and Daniel dragged the limp body in and, while Hermione hung on, Daniel rowed wildly to the shore.

  The Piranha, miffed at being deprived of this latest delicacy mankind had so thoughtfully provided for it, churned behind followed by a flotilla of lesser piscine creatures.

  When they got to the bank Hermione yelled for Gerald, while Daniel first heaved the water out of a facedown Slug; then, turning him over, pouted the purple lips with thumb and forefinger and began blowing as though inflating some vast and stubborn balloon.

  Gerald gave one look at Slug’s mud-spattered, water-lily wiped face, into which Daniel was puffing strongly, and let out a howl of misery.

  ‘Push at his ribs!’ cried Daniel.

  Sobbing, Gerald began to pound his palms against the fallen skinhead’s chest, tears running unhindered off his cheeks and nose. ‘It’s my fault. All my fault,’ he wept as he pumped.

  At last a wheezing sound rushed out of the muck-caked mouth. To Hermione it was like that which came out of the balloons Hugh used to blow for his grandchildren and let loose without tying.

  Gerald threw himself on to his knees by Slug’s head, still unashamedly weeping and said, ‘I was only joking, ducks. I wasn’t really going to leave you and live with Daniel.’

  Hermione looked reproachfully at her son, and Daniel went red and lowered his eyes at the same moment as Slug flutteringly opened his.

  He looked up into Daniel’s face that was still crusted with the debris of the lake, smiled, croaked, ‘That was nice. You can kiss me some more if you like, Daniel.’ And ignoring Daniel’s angry, ‘Don’t be a bloody fool, Slug! I was only doing it to get your lungs going again …’ sank back half conscious, still smiling goofily as though at some delicious memory, into Daniel’s arms.

  Chapter Six

  Daniel left next day, and Hermione travelled with him to London to have lunch with Lalia.

  They both wore hats: Hermione’s felt and cloche-like, quite wrong as usual, no one else was wearing anything like it, Lalia’s rakish as though she had something to celebrate.

  Lalia spoke lightly, as though wanting to blow away like chaff, the words she used. You could almost see the lady at the next table lean forward, examine, then carefully flick Lalia’s dry words out of her mixed salad.

  ‘Malignant. Inoperable. Advanced,’ was what Lalia said.

  Lalia: comfy, lazy, self-indulgent, greedy, pretty in her vast blonde vague way; brusquely, practically, helpfully, unsentimentally kind. It didn’t fit.

  Lalia said, ‘I want to tell Edward myself.’

  ‘When Unity was little she caught pneumonia,’ Hermione said, seizing on words as though they were logs floating past someone drowning.

  ‘I’ve heard the story,’ said Lalia dryly. ‘The holy man. A false hope.’

  Hermione knew about hope for it had been that which had made her squint for forty years into dust-filled roads, peer among tamarind avenues, crane across the bronze expanse of India, peep into the smoky dark of temples. It had been almost a relief, in the end, to come to England where there was no more hope.

  ‘I could go to India and see the same old holy man that saved Unity,’ persisted Hermione. ‘Unless he’s dead.’

  Lalia laughed. ‘In that case I shall have no faith in him.’

  ‘Ah!’ cried Hermione taking this as permission.

  ‘Of course you are joking,’ said Lalia. ‘The whole thing is too ridiculous and you too old for such gadding about.’

  ‘And you are rude,’ said Hermione.

  ‘There’s Edward,’ said Lalia. ‘You could live with us.’

  But Hermione knew she had nothing to offer Edward. Even as a little child he had evaded her comforting with stiff limbs and instead struggled for Ayah. She had not known then about Ayah’s chemical cure for calming his fear.

  As though reading her mind Lalia said, ‘At the end they will probably give the same stuff to me as Edward takes. We can have trips together.’

  She and Hermione pursued their inspection of the art galleries that afternoon.

  It was a time when people talked of spontaneous remission, wrong diagnosis, there is always hope, and because Lalia had moved through the walls of oils commenting on wonder and ineptitude as though it still really mattered, as though next month? Week? Oh God, would there still be Lalia to experience them? Hermione could say nothing, do nothing, but agree, ‘What wonderful wild brush strokes,’ and,
‘My God, look at that shade of yellow.’

  They went among sculptures, stood under muted lighting, exclaimed at horrors and marvels, related that missed moment, suggested emotions for this one, gazed in outraged mirth at another. And all the time Hermione wanted to ask questions instead of attempting artificially to produce cheeriness.

  Once an almost childish giggling brought on a gush of tears, which, under the guise of mirth, she was not compelled to hide.

  Stumbling along Oxford Street later, Lalia striding ahead like a soft doomed whale, Hermione tried to cry out to her and realized that because their relationship had been built on the brittle joy of shared adventures, art exhibitions, planting gardens, open-air concerts, recommended reading, little tipsy luncheons, it could not now include confidentiality.

  Going home that evening, she began to dread more than usually the night ahead, with no Hugh to comfort her.

  Since she was eighteen she had gone to Hugh for comfort, leaning against his always-hopeful spirit like a reptile warming its blood on a sun-baked rock. Hugh ‘not there’ had seemed so unthinkable at first that she had not felt alone. She had been unable to shed the notion of his presence and would turn while watching some television programme to comment, ‘Do you think India is really in such a mess?’ Certain for a moment of her husband’s reassurance, ‘It’s only a hiccup. Things are improving really.’

  His absence left her feeling now as if a piece of the material of her life had been ripped out by rough giant hands, leaving a blank and windy hole, so that she was no longer able to make sense of the increasingly threadbare pattern left to her.

  Tic-tic-tic, the electric train brought Hermione nearer to the house she knew with dread was empty.

  It was not. She would have felt more dread if she had known who was there.

  She reached home late, paid off the taxi that had brought her from the station and opened the door.

  To keep up her spirits she began to hum and realized for the first time that the dark house had echoes. Over the Victorian tiled floor, up the wide mahogany staircase, her song slid, Til never be alone again, for I’ll have my love beside me.’ The theme tune of Daniel’s latest hit. ‘All my life long, from this time on, love will not be denied me.’

  She stood holding the hat-rack on which her fingers felt Hugh’s shooting hat in the dark and the waxed country coat that was jaded beyond the darkest dreads of Oxfam. There seemed something terrible in the way inanimate things, cap, scarf, boots, managed to survive after their immeasurably animate wearers had been destroyed. Fancy masters of the world, changers of history, being outlived by a pair of socks. Hermione pulled down Hugh’s cobbled shooting thermals and her exploring hands discovered Percy the Great Dane’s collar. She caressed it, shocked at how real it seemed, rough wool still burred, the collar stuck with dog hairs. She held the objects to her nose in the dark, the socks of a dead man, the collar of a dead dog, and the smell of lost loves was so strong that she became overwhelmed by a sense of Hugh’s presence, felt him switching on the light, bending down to clip the lead on to a joyful Percy.

  Hugh would pull on his awful coat and heel-squashed boots. He would say to her, ‘I’ll be careful this time. I’ll see that Percy doesn’t get run over this time.’

  Percy had been galloping ahead of Hugh, and had seen Hermione on the other side of the road. He had rushed towards her at the moment the lorry came.

  Because the vet said the dog’s lost feeling and movement might be regained, Percy had lived for three weeks after the accident, paralysed from the waist back, dragging himself round the house on his front legs, still smiling, still trying to reassure Hugh and Hermione that he loved them and did not mind. He died smiling, died loving, died blaming nobody.

  ‘You never get a next time, Hugh,’ Hermione whispered to her husband’s ghost.

  Then she became aware of another familiar smell, something so strong that it overwhelmed the dog and man smells against her face.

  Sniffing it, she was reminded of the balsawood planes the boys had constructed when they were little. The solid melodious throb in the dark of the grandfather clock’s unwinding pendulum reminded her that she had not put on the light.

  It was not the sudden flood of illumination that made Hermione wince, but the gaps that had appeared since she had gone to London. There was now only a chest with dark cavities where once the drawers had been. She looked beyond, through the open door to the drawing room. She had shut it before she left, she knew, and now the contents of the drawers and shelves were scattered everywhere: pens, wool, letters, the spare dog lead, Hugh’s fishing things, her spare chequebook, a ‘funny sort of thing’ made for her birthday by Dinah. The dining-room door was open too, sideboard tip-turned; mats, forks, solid silver rejected. The hall cupboard had been ransacked, its contents scattered. Hadn’t there been a small revolver in it kept naughtily, secretly, by Hugh since his days in the army, used in the end to finish the life of poor Percy?

  ‘I should have kept the revolver loaded and accessible,’ she thought aloud, her heart beginning to beat heavily in her throat.

  The idea came to her from the way the drawers and cupboards had been rummaged, that the intruders had known of Edward’s bathroom seducer and had been hunting for that dark delicious demon. Otherwise why were the silver candlesticks still on the sideboard, the salver untouched in the hall? They must have already gone through the bathrooms and the bedrooms. They would have found nothing, though, because Edward had run out the last time he had come to stay.

  Glue. She suddenly realized what that smell was.

  Then Hermione began to hear, through the corded leaded hum of the old clock, tiny sounds: floorboards creaking, something that might be a joint bending, the small grinding of cartilage and bone, stirrings. All accompanied by the stinging sensation that someone was watching. In the bottom of her mind she probed to see if she felt fear, knowing that the thing most people did not know, the day and hour of death, might be quite near.

  ‘Who is it?’ she called through the ringing listening house. ‘Who is there?’

  And was answered by the sound of quite near breathing.

  Chapter Seven

  There were four youths, one very spotty, one resembling a newly hatched vulture and a thin one called Bones. There was also Slug.

  Probably, thought Hermione, among the many insights that rushed through her mind as understanding grew, she had suspected from the start.

  In previous weeks she had caught glints of the handlebars of motorbikes, and she and Lalia had heard twigs cracking when they’d made the pond. Last Saturday evening she had heard the sudden roar of a motorbike engine, seen a head, shaggy as a minotaur riding like a hairy turnip along the surface of the hedge. She had glimpsed, pretending even to herself she had not, the bluish globe behind and the quick flash on it of the words ‘Never grow old’.

  ‘Get her, Slug! Kick her in the cunt!’ Pimples squawked now.

  ‘Go on Slug, now’s your chance!’ cried Bones.

  Slug came towards her, staggering, smiling, her Slug, honesty chalker. He aimed a shuffling toe in the direction of Hermione’s crotch, muttering by way of excuse, ‘They’re my friends. You’ve got to do things for friends.’

  Fledgling, who was pasty, puckered and wet-looking, said, ‘She hasn’t used it for such a long time that she probably doesn’t even know she’s got one any more!’

  Their hands were smeared with the contents of the pots and jars that had got broken in their search. And red from blood that, Hermione learnt later, was Gerald’s. Angostura Bitters lay in a blood-like pool on the floorboards. They had taken the spirits straight from the bottle as Edward had once drunk the spiked mixtures given him by Ayah, ‘It is my punishment for letting such a thing happen to my child.’ They had tried to smoke Hugh’s cigarettes but because of their dampness could not and the stubs lay smouldering on the carpet.

  ‘Let’s give her a treat, lads!’ This from Fledgling. ‘Come on, you want a fuck, Slug?’
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  A shudder passed through Hermione as though her blood had started drying.

  Slug, grinning his huge sweet smile, reached his hands out towards her as though she had agreed to be his lover.

  ‘There, see, ooh! She’s thrilled!’ Fledgling pronounced this last word in a long and rounded parody of the way Hermione spoke. His face became suddenly pale. Then heaving with sudden convulsion, he vomited.

  ‘They made me do it!’ Slug blubbed, snot running from his nose into his mouth. ‘Because of Gerald.’

  ‘Don’t mention that filth!’ screamed Pimples, a froth of fury dashing out on to his lip.

  ‘He tried to do the dirt with me, see.’ Slug was still blubbing loudly. ‘’Course I wouldn’t let him. No way.’ Then the sight of Fledgling, wide jawed like a fang-flashing hippo, retching the contents of Hugh’s crusted port and the after-dinner brandies mingled with jiffy snacks and mini pizzas from the motorway, spurred on by Quickfix, shooting loudly over the sofa, set Slug off.

  Pimples was a pushover. Or at least Hermione gave him a brisk shove and over he went, grabbing at coffee tables, bringing down Hugh’s teak elephants, Benares trays, little china shepherdesses and the carriage clock. And bringing down Bones. Slug and Fledgling heaved and puked among the shower of sentimental objects that had been gathered into Hugh and Hermione’s possession during a lifetime, while Pimples and Bones at the bottom of this shattered and stenching pile tried to struggle up. And suddenly were being sick too.

  It is surprising sometimes what a person, though outnumbered, female and aged, can do in her own defence.

  The pistol had never been the deciding factor even after Hermione found it tumbled by the sofa. She took it up and, because it was something she had always longed to do, waggled it with threatening caution in the direction of her vomiting aggressors.

  ‘Get up,’ she ordered.

  The plundering skinheads emerged, shuddering.

  ‘Where’s Gerald?’ Hermione asked.