Burning Bright

by Helen Dunmore

  ‘A kimono was quite enough. I certainly didn’t want a bath. But Sukey did. She held out her foot so we could see the mud spots on her stockings. Beautiful stockings they were: silk. We didn’t have nylons then – it was silk or cotton, and mine were cotton. Nylons came in the war, with the Americans. They gave us nylons.

  ‘“I’ll scrub your back,” said the red-haired one. Sukey just nodded. But she hadn’t forgotten about me, as I thought she might once her friend started fussing over her. “But will you be all right, Enid?” she asked me. “You ought to sit near the fire and get warm. Find a novel from the shelves. I shan’t be long.”

  ‘I felt shy going back into the big room with all the mirrors, in case anyone asked me what I was doing there. But then the two who were playing cards stopped their game and talked to me. They weren’t like Caro – they were quite friendly. They even seemed interested in me. I told them about Mr Albion and how I had met Sukey. I wanted to ask more about the club – whether it was just for professional women or might anybody join? They looked clever, as if they might have been doctors, or teachers. “Oh, no,” they answered, “Nothing like that.” “It’s just a private club for women, that’s all.” “No restrictions.” “Certainly no black-balls or waiting-lists.” “It’s not exclusive in any way.” I looked round at the orange tree and the pile of new novels and the five-pound notes thrown on the floor, as if they were rubbish. They saw me looking. “Only it’s a little tricky to find.” “We don’t advertise, naturally.” “Members bring then guests along, and then they become members.” “The entrance puts people off.” “So shabby – it’s deplorable, really, isn’t it, Paula?” “And the name too. Poor Millicent Sowerby.” “Shocking. But now you have found us…;” “People usually do…; “You’ll come again.” “Of course she will.” “Won’t she?”

  ‘They ordered tea, and we were just drinking it when Caro and Sukey came back in. Caro was very flushed, from the steam I supposed. Sukey looked younger in the kimono than she had in her black coat and skirt. Her hair was damp and it was curling round her forehead. She dropped to the floor and tucked the kimono round her ankles. I wondered if that was how Japanese ladies sat – it looked very graceful.

  ‘“Whisky,” she said. There was a sideboard with bottles on it. Caro got up and poured a stream of very pale whisky into a big heavy glass. It didn’t look at all like the treacly stuff I’d seen in bars. “Heaven,” said Sukey, drinking quite half of it. “What a haven this is.” “Heaven-haven,” said Paula. “Out of the swing of the sea,” said April. “Except that we aren’t nuns,” said Caro. “Oh, why not? To stretch a point,” said Sukey lazily, drinking off the rest of her whisky. “More heaven, please.” “Will you have some, Enid?” Caro asked me. “No, she won’t. She wouldn’t like it. But she’ll have a little brandy to keep out the cold, won’t you, Enid?”

  ‘So I did. I thought I shouldn’t like it, but I loved it – first the taste of it puckering up my mouth, and then the heat of it fanning out right through me till the last of the rain and Mr Albion disappeared. But I could tell Caro was annoyed. She wanted to be alone with Sukey, anyone could see that, but Sukey didn’t want to be alone with her. Then Sukey took a little comb from the kimono pocket; tortoiseshell, very expensive; and said, “I’ll comb your hair for you, Enid. If you take it down it’ll dry in front of the fire.” For I still had my hair long then. Father wouldn’t let us cut it when we were at home, and then I was told it was my best feature, though you wouldn’t think it now.’

  Nadine looks at Enid’s sparse tufts of white-grey hair. Artfully deployed as they are, they scarcely cover her skull.

  ‘It was down to my waist when I unpinned it. Nut-brown, they called the colour, like the nut-brown maid. That was what Father said when he got sentimental. I always washed it and brushed it and took care of it, so I wasn’t ashamed when Sukey unpinned it and the whole lot fell down my back. “What slippery stuff!” she said. “And such quantities of it. I wonder why we ever cut our hair?” “Because we prefer it short,” said Caro, who had her red hair beautifully shaped and no longer than a boy’s. Now I come to think of it, Caro’s hair looked a bit like yours, Nadine, apart from the colour. It suited her, but I could see Sukey had it in for her. “Enid’s doesn’t feel like hair at all,” Sukey said. “It’s like putting your hand under the tap. Soft water. It’s marvellous, you ought to feel it,” and of course I was pleased. “Put your head in my lap,” she said. “And I’ll comb your hair for you.”

  ‘Caro made a sharp movement, as if she was going to say something or do something, but Sukey smiled at her and she said nothing. I put my head in Sukey’s lap. I could feel the warmth of her body through the kimono. She spread out my hair over her kimono and began to comb it in long sweeps from the crown to the ends. I shut my eyes. I felt as if Sukey was my mother, and I was long ago at home, being looked after. Except that my mother never did anything like that for us – she had no time. I could hear the fire bubbling, and the long hiss of the comb through my hair. Nobody said anything. It made me feel happy, but sad too, as if I would cry if she went on combing and combing. “There,” said Sukey. “Perfect.” I lifted my head from her lap and sat up without opening my eyes. She twisted my hair up and put in the pins. My hair was so fine that it never went up easily, but when I looked in the mirror Sukey’d got it just right, waving a little round my forehead, with a heavy knob shining at the back of my neck.

  ‘April was smoothing one of the five-pound notes between her fingers. “I promise to pay the bearer on demand…;” she said dreamily. “Do you think they would still give you gold for it?” “Why not try? Then you could bite off bits to pay for your dinners.” “And where do you work, Enid,” asked Caro. “In one of the mills?” “Don’t be more of a bloody fool than you can help, Caro,” Sukey said to her. “Enid is training to be a surgeon.” April’s face glowed. “Really? How splendid! Was there much opposition? Do you find there is still a great deal of prejudice against women in the medical schools?” “Now, April, remember, this is our haven. Enid has enough to do with training for a difficult career and battling against constant discouragement. Of course there’s opposition: there always is. Now she needs to relax. That’s why I brought her here. You have a lecture at three, haven’t you, Enid? I shall put you into a cab.” “Oh, yes, you mustn’t be late for a lecture. You mustn’t give them any excuse to call women students unreliable. What’s the subject?” “Anatomy today, isn’t it, Enid?” asked Sukey. Caro was crisping the five-pound notes between her fingers. She looked as if she would like to tear them up. I murmured something, hoping to God Sukey wouldn’t say anything more. It didn’t matter to her – she wasn’t the one who was going to look a fool if anyone asked questions. I still don’t know why she had to lie like that. It came out later that I wasn’t a medical student, but Sukey made it all right. She made it seem as if I was very clever and had always wanted to be one, but it was too expensive. So April was more sympathetic than ever. But that was later. Sukey quite often told lies.

  ‘It was half past two and I knew Sukey wanted me to go. I went into the wood-smelling bedroom and changed back into my clothes. My suede shoes had been brushed and shoe trees had been put into them to keep them in shape. That must have been Sukey.

  ‘She was waiting outside. Paula and April and Caro nodded and waved. They didn’t say goodbye formally – they seemed to think I’d be coming again. It was one of those places where people went in and out and melted into whatever was happening. But I wondered. If Sukey had meant me to come again, why had she said I was training to be a surgeon? I could never keep up the pretence. Or perhaps I could. Perhaps it was just a game and I could play it too. Why should everything be serious all the time? That delicious sound in Sukey’s voice changed everything – even lying seemed like a game. I looked at all the other doors off the entrance hall, the ones Sukey hadn’t opened. I wondered where they went. More rooms with women sitting reading and playing cards? Dining-rooms, perhaps? Libraries? It was
silent but it was a warm humming silence. A private silence, not a library hush. Perhaps there were bedrooms behind the doors. Sukey had her arm around my waist. She drew me to the narrow brown club entrance.

  ‘“Here we are. Yes, your cab’s outside waiting. Don’t worry about paying him – it’s on my account. Now, darling, let me look at you. Perfect. And the shoes? Did they mark?” I held out my foot to show her the unstained suede. “Lovely. Now off you go. Till next time, darling – remember, Manchester Ladies.”

  ‘She drew me closer, put her hands on the sides of my face and kissed me, two kisses, one on each cheek. Her irises were striped when you got close to them, grey and black. Then she moved back and they began to sparkle. She gave a little wave and turned away before I did, to cross the green carpet while I went down the narrow strip of brown lino to the street and the cab. And that was that.’

  Twelve

  The story’s over. The pink-skulled storyteller sips her cool tea as Sukey and Caro and the Manchester Ladies recede, folding in on themselves until they are no more than pinpoints in Enid’s eyes. Like Japanese paper flowers dropped into water they have expanded and taken on flesh and colour. Drained, they are nothing but a smear on glass. That was that.

  ‘No, I’m sure it wasn’t,’ says Nadine. ‘There’s much more, isn’t there? I can tell.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Something else happened afterwards. Something important, to do with Sukey and Caro and the others.’

  ‘I told you I met them again, didn’t I, dear? But I’ll tell you the rest of the story another time,’ says Enid, smiling over her teacup, her voice cosy and pacifying.

  ‘I wish you’d go on with it now. I’m dying to know what happened to them. The Manchester Ladies. It is all true, isn’t it? It really happened?’

  ‘Of course it did! Why would I want to make up a thing like that?’

  ‘It sounds quite bizarre, a place like that behind a door in an ordinary street in Manchester.’

  ‘What about this place?’ responds Enid sharply. ‘I daresay people’ud be a bit surprised if they knew what went on behind our front door.’

  Nadine is silenced. Satisfied, Enid goes on. ‘I only wish you could have felt that carpet. You don’t get anything like it these days. You’d think you could spread out your arms and swim away on it. It was like moss to walk on, though I don’t suppose that means much to you city girls. And quiet – it soaked up all the sound. Oh, yes, I saw Sukey again. And Caro.’

  The room is very quiet. Enid’s head is framed by the semicircle of hand-painted plates on the wall. She has painted them herself, splodging fat-petalled scarlet daisies on to cheap white plates, binding the flowers into a pattern with trails of woodbine.

  ‘Nobody could help seeing Caro,’ says Enid. ‘Even if they didn’t know her. There were pictures of her all over the newspapers. She didn’t do herself justice in the photographs. But then I suppose it was the circumstances. No one could look her best. And then in black and white you lost her colouring. I don’t care for red hair myself, but she was very striking. Red hair, white skin. Not green eyes, though. They were brown, golden brown. And she would stare straight at you and never look away. It was as if there was no one behind her eyes. I can still hear the newsboys calling out her name. They’d got it scrawled in black across the front of all the news-stands.’ The teacup is arrested in the air. Enid’s eyes narrow. Nadine whispers so as not to break the spell again. ‘Why? What did she do?’

  Enid leans forward. Her small fierce fingers grasp Nadine’s wrist, and she pulls Nadine towards her. Nadine’s never been so close to Enid before. Her face dissolves into a crazed map of wrinkles, brown splodges, patches of skin incongruously milky as pearls.

  ‘What colour do you think grass is?’ she whispers.

  ‘Why – green, of course,’ says Nadine, annoyed. What’s Enid playing at now? Can’t she just tell the story through from beginning to end?

  ‘No!’ says Enid, her dry fingers gripping tighter. ‘No, not if you look at it. It isn’t at all. If only I could make you see her.’

  ‘Who, Caro?’

  ‘No. Sukey.’ Enid pauses, sighs, says again, ‘Sukey,’ with slow, caressing love. ‘That’s how I know grass isn’t always green. ‘Course I was a town girl then. She was coming across the field towards me and all the grass was moving. It was a hill farm, high up, so there was always a wind. Not yet eight o’clock in the morning. All the shadows lying sideways, and the dew dried already, for it was June. The grass was purple and grey and brown and silver, all moving. None of it was green. And the grass shivered against her as she walked. There was Yorkshire fog and cocks-foot and fescue. It lapped up her legs and her skirts. Skirts were longer then. She was smiling at me. I could see her smile from a long way off, from the other side of the field, long before I could really see her face. She moved lightly and held herself very upright – Sukey always did. The wind made lines in the grass so it seemed to bow down and rise up around her.’

  Nadine sees it: the pelt of grass, purple and silver-tipped, dipping under the stroke of Sukey’s skirts.

  ‘Then I saw Caro,’ continues Enid. ‘She was over in the far corner of the field, by the gate. The grass seemed to knot itself round her legs: she couldn’t make her way through. She looked as if she was trying to run in a nightmare. She couldn’t get to Sukey. And her mouth was open, wide open like a hole in her face. I watched her crawling over the field. She was like a red stain in the grass.’

  Enid looks down. She is rocking herself very slightly, side to side.

  ‘Don’t get upset,’ says Nadine. ‘It’s a long time ago. It’s over now. I shouldn’t have asked you to tell me.’

  ‘Like blood,’ says Enid. ‘She looked like blood.’

  ‘Don’t think about it any more – I’ll make us another cup of tea –’

  ‘It isn’t over, it’s never over,’ whispers Enid. But below them the big house booms like Jack’s castle in the clouds when the giant comes home. The clouds crowd together, bruising one another, while the beanstalk leading into the sky begins to shake. The front door slams, the hall echoes, feet strike the bottom step –

  ‘It’s your Kai. Quick. You don’t want him finding you up here.’

  Nadine leaps up, slips on the rushes, grabs at the mantelpiece, misses, catches her temple on its black corner. For a sick second her head swims, the gas hisses in her ears, the line of knickers lurches towards her. Then Enid’s got her and is steering her back to the chair.

  ‘She needs a glass of water – now where’s the bugger–’ Then there’s a chink of glass and a mineral smell of cold water under her nose. She breathes in, sips, eyes closed. She breathes in the dry nannying smell of Enid. But that banging and pounding is not just in her head any more. It’s footsteps. She opens her eyes and sees Enid frozen, suspended, one foot on the rushes, listening to the rising clomp of Kai’s footsteps, knowing now that she’ll never get Nadine out of the way in time.

  ‘Don’t let him come in here,’ she pleads, seizing Nadine’s arm with her knuckly little hands as if Nadine carries magic with her to baffle Kai into seeing a fence of blossoming thorns where the door once was.

  ‘Nadine! Nadine!’

  Up and up, winding the starlit stair to the attic. He’s close. He’s just outside on the landing. The two women can almost hear his breathing. His footsteps stop. ‘Nadine!’ he bellows. Now he’s bound to come in. Nadine might as well answer him. She opens her mouth.

  ‘She’s just coming,’ screeches Enid, but it’s too late. The knob turns, the door opens and there is Kai, tired and rumpled, a big green and gilt carrier-bag in his hand.

  ‘What are you doing up here? I thought something had happened.’

  ‘She only banged her head getting up, that’s all it was,’ says Enid, waving a damp wodge of cotton wool in the direction of Nadine’s head. Nadine feels Kai’s hands take the two sides of her temples. His hands aren’t tender but they are firm and warm. They hold her
so she can close her eyes and feel the pain go.

  ‘You poor kid,’ he says. His big warm body shuts out Enid. ‘It’s OK. Do you feel sick? Can you see OK?’

  She nods, holding back tears.

  ‘You poor kid,’ he says again. ‘How did it happen?’

  ‘Hit my head on the shelf. I slipped.’

  ‘It gave her a shock when she heard you calling,’ says Enid.

  ‘You mean this crap made you slip?’ says Kai, stirring the rushes with the point of his shoe. A faint smell of decay rises where he bruises them. ‘What’s it doing on the floor?’

  ‘Rushes,’ mumbles Nadine. Talking makes her head hurt.

  ‘It keeps the air pure,’ says Enid.

  ‘Jesus,’ says Kai. ‘Jesus. Come on, Nadine, let’s get you downstairs.’

  He won’t talk to Enid. His eyes avoid her as he looks round her room with its piggled washing, its heaps of bedclothes and newspapers, its bunches of herbs drying from the ceiling, blodges of paint and spread-out jigsaw skies. He breathes in the smell, of rushes, damp washing and old flesh. ‘Get it cleaned up,’ he says. He puts his arm round Nadine. They are two and Enid is one. Enid is small and wispy and worthless in her dirty nest. She’s worse than a bird. Even a rickety old jackdaw won’t foul its own nest. She’ll be bringing vermin into the house next.

  ‘Besides, it’s a fire risk,’ menaces Kai casually, as he steers Nadine towards the door. She goes with him, saying nothing. Her head hurts. She’d like to cry. It’s the shock, she needs support. You poor kid, she says to herself, tasting the words. It’s OK not to say anything to Enid. She’s going to let herself go, leave the room and the story and let Kai take care of her.

  Nadine yields. They walk down the stairs slowly, side by side, through the quiet blue darkness of the stairwell, with a cool breeze blowing through the open landing windows. The house is a ship again, creaking as the wind fills its sails and it tugs hard at its ropes, turned to the open sea, ready to leave behind the complications of land. Only now does Nadine realize how hot it was in Enid’s room, how stuffy, claustrophobic even. And surely there was something odd about Enid’s story. The Manchester Ladies. There was probably a grain of truth in it, but Enid must have made up the rest. It was just like a fairy story. Of course she makes up stories because she’s lonely. Old people look back to the past. Enid’s so proud of her memories. There’s nothing magical about her. Only when you’re with her, listening, the story floats like egg-white in water, transparent at first, then solid, white, whirling you round in its circle.