The Liberation of Celia Kahn

by J David Simons

  “Still, it’s best you go.”

  “Whatever you say. What will you do?”

  “I’m going to stay here tonight.”

  He rose out of the bed, she watched him as he dressed. She’d never seen a man putting on his underclothes before, tucking in his shirt, buttoning his trousers, looping his braces up and over, fiddling with his cuff links, such an intimate scene, almost more intimate than their lovemaking. He leaned over, kissed her lightly on the lips.

  “Stay in bed,” he said. “I’ll let myself out.”

  Twenty-nine

  THE SOUND OF THE FISHMONGER’S BELL WOKE HER. Then his shout of prices for his herrings, smoked haddock and salted cod. His cart must have been just below her window for she could even hear the snort of his horse. There was bright daylight behind the curtains, she knew it had to be late in the morning, later than she had slept for a long time. But this was a remarkable day. Her own personal holiday. St. Celia’s Day she would call it. A day devoid of chores. She could do absolutely anything she wanted. She stretched her arms out wide, felt the slight soreness between her thighs. She remembered Stopes’ instructions. She could either take out the cap and douche if she felt anxious in any way about its effectiveness. Or just leave it in for a couple of days until ‘the usual processes of Nature disposed of the now impotent sperms.’ She would leave it in. At least for today, St. Celia’s Day.

  She thought about getting up but the lure of the warm bedclothes was still too much. She wanted to just lie for a while, recall the events of the night before. She couldn’t believe she had acted in such a forthright way. “Come here,” she recalled herself saying as she had beckoned Jonny into the bedroom. Charlotte would have been proud of her. She just hoped he didn’t think of her as one of those flapper girls, so easy to pet, so easy to get. The act itself hadn’t been anything special. If she were to be honest, she was just glad it was over. And that all these contraceptive issues had been properly attended to. The sexual life of the responsible modern woman was such a fussy one. But now she could relax about it. She was sure the next time would be better. And there was that fishmonger with his bell and his banter again. Time to get up. His prices weren’t even that attractive. But then, this was the West End, not the Gorbals.

  Even on this, her special day, she spent a few hours cleaning and dusting the flat in preparation for another cap distribution session that evening. She wondered how many poor souls would turn up this time. At least, she could counsel them from the standpoint of one who knew what it was like to have used the device. She thought about calling on Charlotte, telling her what had happened, her friend no doubt getting all crude and smutty, desperate for details, full of questions. Especially the one she didn’t want to ask herself. “Isn’t he supposed to be returning to Palestine?” But she decided she wanted to keep this day to herself, wrap herself up in these warm feelings before they melted away. She went outside, bought herself a newspaper, sat down at a window-seat in Urquhart’s Coffee House, watched the world go by. She wondered what those passers-by on the other side of the glass would think if they knew this was a woman who had lain with a man, a woman who now carried a cap full of sperm between her thighs. She wondered also what her lover was thinking as he sat on his low seat of mourning in a room full of covered mirrors.

  The weather remained dry for her St. Celia’s Day. A glorious autumn of azure skies with air as cold and sharp as a knife. She bought an iced bun, a bag of apples and did something she never thought she would ever do again. She decided to go for a walk in the Botanic Gardens. At first, she lingered at the gates by the red-brick station, its clock towers topped with its ornamental domes that always used to remind her father of Russia. Then with a sharp intake of breath, she strode through the gates. Just like that. An invisible line so easy to cross. She passed the glasshouses with their towering ferns, a battery of seated nannies rocking their perambulators, old men buried inside their overcoats watching the falling leaves, then down the winding stepped-pathway towards the river. She easily located the place where the socialist Sunday school had held its picnic, she remembered the tables laden with food, Agnes introducing her to this and that person. From this clearing, she moved on down to where that youth had taken her, the narrow walkway alongside the bank of the River Kelvin, followed the path for some distance, it didn’t seem as threatening as she remembered it. Back then in wartime, attending to its parks and gardens was probably not a priority in the minds of the Glasgow City Corporation. But now the rhododendron bushes and the branches of trees had been pruned back, the wooden fence fixed here and there with new railings.

  She realised she had come too far, for up ahead was an unfamiliar stone bridge spanning the river. She turned back, her eyes scouring the bushes for the spot. What did she expect to find? The branches and weeds still flattened? A plaque? Her shoes? Yes, her shoes. Now she remembered. She had walked barefoot back to the picnic. Could her shoes still be here? How long did it take leather to rot away into the soil? Or would a dog or fox or other creature have come by and stolen them away? Or would a park-keeper have picked one up with his stick and said, “I wonder what happened here then?”, scratching his head as some lascivious thought passed through his brain before tossing the shoe back into the bushes. But trying to locate the scene became futile, she would just have to choose a spot at random. A symbolic area. A white cross for the unknown soldier that was her innocence. She found somewhere suitable. A bush not so thick as to prevent a couple disappearing into its bowels to consummate some sinful act. She stood looking at the earth with its mulch of decaying leaves, twigs broken from bodies that could have lain there many years ago. It was like visiting a grave. But she felt stronger now. Not sad or bitter or angry as she might have expected. Last night had changed everything. It hadn’t eradicated what had happened in this place but diminished its importance so that perhaps the memory would eventually shrivel up into a nothingness. She took out an apple from her pocket, polished its skin against her sleeve, took a bite, then threw it into the bushes.

  She left the Botanic Gardens, strolled past Jonny’s house on Great Western Road, not even with a sideways glance, just for the excitement at the chance he might be standing at a window, gazing across to the Gardens, thinking about her. She then continued on into the city, window-shopping the shoe shops, the furriers, the department stores, even with a mind to browse the jewellery emporia in the Argyll Arcade, until the rain started spitting. Green’s Playhouse was presenting a matinee of The Bohemian Girl so she was happy to go off and sit in the darkness in the company of a few old biddies as well as Ellen Terry, Gladys Cooper and of course, Ivor Novello, as they played out their parts in this gypsy tragedy. Reminding her of that day berry-picking with Jonny in Blairgowrie, the tinkers’ encampment, the dancing bear, that fearsome woman telling her that she too was a traveller in this world. She kicked off her shoes, sank back into the plush velour, nibbled at her bun, happy in herself on this St. Celia’s Day.

  It was dark by the time she emerged from the flickering silence of the black-and-white picture world, the rain stopped now, she took the subway back to the West End. A hot-chestnut seller stood on the corner of Agnes’ street, she caught sight of the lamplighter still on his rounds, and those little mounds of swept leaves still uncollected from the night before. She passed the lights in the tenement windows warm-bright and welcoming in these dark early nights of the approaching winter before the weather became too fierce.

  At the entrance to Agnes’ tenement, she found a toppled plant pot, its earth scattered across the steps, forcing her to scrape the terracotta shards and soil to one side with her shoe, something she would sort out later with a pan and brush. She glanced up to the first floor window, searching for a light that would show if Charlotte had arrived before her, the darkness meaning it took her a few seconds to realise the pane was broken, a large jagged hole where the glass had been. She pushed open the main door, rushed upstairs. The landing walls were daubed with white-paint slogans
as were the double storm-doors. She had to climb halfway up the next flight to see what had been scrawled. “Hores”. “Bitches”. Those were just two of the words, she couldn’t make out the rest especially where the paint had run. She raced back down to the first floor landing, pulled out the pamphlet stuck in the letter-box, fumbled for her keys, pushed open the door, careful to avoid touching any of the wet paint. When she entered the flat, the door into the kitchen slammed, locked against her. My God, the perpetrators were still here. But how could that be? The storm doors had been locked, the first floor window too high to scale. She knocked gently on the kitchen door.

  “Charlotte. It’s all right. It’s only me. Celia.” She put her ear to the door, could hear the footsteps of approach on the lino. She rapped again. “It’s Celia.”

  The key turned in the lock, the door quickly pulled open. An ashen-faced Charlotte, a kitchen knife in her hand, fist knuckle-white around the handle. “Thank God. Thank God, it’s you.”

  Charlotte fell into her arms, her head against her shoulder, they stood like that a good few moments, the mounds of Charlotte’s small breasts pressed against her own, the silk of her blouse cool against her finger-tips. With a sigh, Charlotte pulled away, looked at her straight, eyes veined red from the sobbing. “It was terrible,” she said.

  “What happened?”

  “What do you think?” She switched on the light, held out her hand with the knife to indicate the broken glass, a half-brick on the floor, a piece of paper tied around it in a neat bow. “All this.”

  Celia stooped to pick up the brick, rough and heavy it was in her hands, placed it on the kitchen table, pulled away the paper. A pamphlet the same as the one she’d plucked from the letter box. “Who did this?”

  “A group of women. I don’t know how many. Five. Six. Hard to say in the dark. They started banging on the storm-doors. I nearly went to open them, thought it might have been the constables or something, until that brick came through the window. Two or three of them outside shouting obscenities at me. Then it was over. They were gone in a flash. Like rats down a drain. Then it was you at the door. You must have missed them by a couple of minutes. Now where are my bloody cigarettes? I’m sure I left a packet on the mantelpiece.”

  “Have you seen what they’ve done to the close?”

  “I’ve been holed up here in the kitchen.”

  “You’d better have a look. I just hope it’s water-based paint. Otherwise we’ve got a job to do.”

  She let Charlotte go out to see for herself, went to fetch a broom and shovel to lift up the glass. She would have to get some newspaper or cardboard to tape over the hole in the window. Then there would be a tin bucket to fill with soapy water, add in a bit of bleach, hoped it would be easy enough to wash down the walls with a mop before their clients came. She was down on a crouch on the floor, picking up the larger pieces of glass when a huge tiredness came over her. Not some lack of physical energy but a kind of emotional lethargy. She couldn’t believe how happy she had felt this morning on her St. Celia’s Day. And now this. She stopped in her task, pushed herself up onto her feet, sank down in an armchair. Tiny specks of glass had dusted her fingertips. She rubbed her fingers together, the sensation quite pleasant. Then Charlotte came back in from admiring the handiwork in the close, she must have cadged a cigarette off a neighbour for she was trying to light one up as she entered, the draught from the broken window making it difficult.

  “Can’t even spell ‘whores’,” Charlotte said, back to her usual self. “Fucking ignorant women. It’s a mess out there. I told our neighbour not to worry. We’d clean it up.” Charlotte moved across the room, sat herself down in the armchair opposite in her usual slouch. “We should install a telephone. I could have called the police station.”

  She let Charlotte ramble on, the cigarette forgotten between her fingers, couldn’t blame her, she must have had quite a shock, wanting to talk out all her anxiety. She could hear some noises from out on the street, children playing hopscotch, there had been a grid chalked on to the pavement outside the flat. She remembered herself doing the same as a child, hopping through the numbered squares, avoiding the beanbag, a single-hop there, a double straddle, then base. Life was simpler then. She wished she could do that now. Just a few steps and she was ‘home’.

  “Perhaps they’re right,” she said, stopping Charlotte in her tracks.

  “Who?”

  “These women. Saying we’re whores. Look at what their pamphlet says.” She read from the paper she’d untied from the brick. “‘The distribution of birth control devices encourages sexual intercourse out of wedlock, a sin against the will of God’. Isn’t that what we do?”

  Charlotte laughed. “It might be what I do. But you’re a bloody paragon of virtue.”

  The flush to Celia’s neck and cheeks made it useless to disguise the truth even though she didn’t feel too much like confessing. “Not any more,” she said softly.

  “I don’t believe it.” Charlotte, wide-eyed now, her red lips broadening into a sloppy grin. “You slept with your Jonny boy? Please tell.”

  Celia shrugged, as if sex to her was the most natural thing in the world. “Last night. Here in this flat. And I could do it because I was sitting in a room full of contraceptives.”

  “Oh, Celia. At least tell me you enjoyed yourself.”

  “It was fine.”

  “Fine? Just fine?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it. I just want to say that here we are getting all these women to sign declarations they are married before we can help them. And here I am dipping into our supplies whenever the fancy takes me.”

  “You’re just upset about the broken window and the…” Charlotte waved a lazy arm in the direction of the front door. “Paint.”

  “Upset? I’m terrified. You could have been hurt. We both could have. I really feel threatened right now. And I don’t have the energy to fight back. It’s all too much. Jonny was right.”

  “Right about what?”

  “Glasgow’s problems run too deep. We keep trying and trying to make change, and look what happens? Threats against us. By other women. I don’t think we can make any difference at all. Not here.”

  “Well, I want to carry on.”

  “I don’t think I can.”

  A knock at the front door. Charlotte fished out a fob-watch from her trouser pocket. “Well, that’s probably our first client now. What do you want to do?”

  “I’m not staying.”

  “What about the paint in the close?”

  “I’ll worry about it tomorrow.”

  “Where will you go?”

  She didn’t say. But she knew exactly what her next destination was going to be. On this, her St. Celia’s Day.

  She managed to get there just as the service finished, visitors quietly pouring out the front door, murmured farewells and quick handshakes, the mourners still there on their low stools in the hallway. She stood in line with the rest of them, trying to compose herself, feeling hot and sweaty beneath her garments both from the hurried walking and the stale air in which she stood. She wondered if there was a religious law about keeping a window closed in a house of mourning so as to seal in the grief. A woman behind her in tall dark hat and veil asked:

  “Are you family?”

  Celia just shook her head solemnly in a gesture that thankfully didn’t inspire further enquiry. She moved along the line, Jonny’s father no longer present, but she wished the two aunts a ‘long life’, then Jonny’s two older brothers and sisters, all of them looking more relaxed and professional in their acceptance of these condolences. Jonny looked pale but smiled generously on seeing her. She held out her hand and he took it in a way that somehow felt more intimate. Or perhaps it was just her imagination. Or her over-sensitive state. For she was trembling as she tried to find her voice. She didn’t wish him ‘long life’. Instead, she spoke those other words she hoped would console him.

  Thirty

  CELIA CAME OUT ON D
ECK, the first time she’d breathed fresh air in four days, not that the air had been so fresh back in the Liverpool docks when last she’d surfaced. There was close to a full moon in a star-filled sky, the temperature still warm, she’d never experienced that before, being able to wear just a blouse in the evening time. She felt better now that the ship had turned eastwards from the Atlantic into the Mediterranean, gone was that rolling sensation that made her stomach turn, not being able to hold down her food, vomiting into a bunk-side bucket as if it were her whole past life she was getting rid of. Which wasn’t far from the truth. One of the other girls in the cabin was the same, sometimes the two of them throwing up together in some kind of vile symphony that would have made her laugh if her stomach muscles hadn’t hurt so much already. She didn’t know what had happened to the other two girls she shared third class with, not occupying their bunks since the steamship had set off, probably had some sailors for company somewhere, all the better for her and her other sick-mate with more room to throw up in. The smells of the lower deck didn’t help her queasiness either, too near the engine rooms with their stifling ooze of diesel, and the kitchens with their reek of whatever was lard-frying in the pans. ‘Getting there is half the fun,’ was the steamship line slogan. Not if you’re travelling third class.

  She ran her tongue over her teeth, still a taste of staleness there even though she’d rubbed them with bicarbonate of soda. But the sea air felt good against her skin, pulled hard into her lungs, she was getting her strength back, that was for sure. She was even feeling hungry. She gripped the thick wire of the railings, let her body sway and swing in the breeze as free as a child, an elderly man with a huge walrus moustache giving her a strange look under his hat as he tapped by with his cane. She wondered about Jonny, how she would be able to find him again in this warren of corridors and stairs, like a game of snakes and ladders. But she wasn’t prepared to move from her spot just yet, didn’t want to get too cocky about the reliability of her sea-legs to sway down these steel tunnels.