A Kind of Vanishing (4 page)

Gina was willing assistant, finding things that were lost, filing letters, appeasing shop owners, fending off phone calls from over-eager guests. Lucian was usually away at school. Eleanor tried to make the most of this time when her mother was out of bed, so friendly and nice. She was desperate that each party should be the best ever. This time the food would be truly scrumptious, her mother’s favourites would come, with no one to bore her or get on her nerves and make her cross. Everyone would be happy. Afterwards, her mother would never be sad again. Eleanor imagined hearing the shouts of laughter as she lay in her bedroom, lulled to sleep by the dips and peaks of music and voices, waiting for her Mum to come and tuck her in and leave butterfly kisses on her forehead. On party nights Eleanor would not have to lie rigid to fool the monsters into thinking she was dead because her Mum would be there to keep them out.

After the party, Eleanor promised herself that everything would be better.

Mostly Eleanor didn’t let herself think of afterwards.

She was allowed to help Isabel dress because just before the party Gina disappeared into her bedroom until she was called. Eleanor scoffed inwardly at her sister who would emerge, stuck up straight like a brush handle in a trance to hang limply on their Dad’s arm. Or Gina would parade around holding a glass of watered down wine, peering at the pictures on the walls as if she hadn’t seen them every day of her life already. Eleanor would stump after Gina – clop, clop, clop – up the stairs to be introduced to the early guests. She couldn’t believe that Gina bothered to spend ages putting on stupid make-up so she could look like a lunatic.

With Gina out of the way, Eleanor could sprawl contentedly on her parents’ bed, creeping amongst the squashy pillows, sniffing lungfuls of her mother’s scent that mingled with the smell of cotton sheets, and watch her get ready.

Isabel sat on the edge of a low Victorian nursing chair to put on her stockings. She leaned back into the chair, raising one thin, shapely leg then the other as she unfurled each stocking along the length, pointing her toes upwards like the ballerina she should have been.

Eleanor stared at her mother’s hands as her fingers tipped with pink nail varnish swept up with a swoosh along the calves and around the thighs, smoothing out the silky wrinkles. She held her breath for the snap of the suspenders, as her mother dipped down to clip her stockings into place.

Isabel moved with precision and elegance. A fleeting frown betrayed a woman rehearsed in every gesture and action, and conscious of everything she did. Isabel could not afford spontaneity. She might have been gratified, yet disbelieving, to know she had long succeeded in appearing the woman she wanted to be. Her bosoms (a word Eleanor could not say out loud) pushed up over the black lace bra. Eleanor knew the skin was soft and warm, and as she glanced furtively at the dark space inside the bra she would picture the battles she had fought, the creatures she had slain mercilessly to save her mother’s life.

Eleanor would stroke her forehead and tell her everything was all right.

‘Soon your headache will go and you’ll be happy.’

Isabel turned this way and that as she tried on different outfits. She never planned her dress in advance. Even if asked, Eleanor dared not say she liked something. If her mother didn’t feel right, she would be cross with Eleanor and might send her out of the room. She watched with trepidation as Isabel yanked clothes off their hangers, discarding rejects on the bed and shoving others along the rail to find what she wanted. Eleanor knew that all the days of preparation could fall to ruin if her mother wasn’t wearing clothes that made her happy.

Finally Isabel was ready. She stood with one hand on her hip in front of the wardrobe doors and ran her hand over her stomach, stroking it downward, over and over, in the way that made Eleanor’s father angry. Eleanor recoiled at the crushing sensation in her tummy at the sound of him shouting in the White House garden last summer. It was the first time her mother had been out of bed the whole holiday.

‘For pity’s sake, Isabel, take your hand off your fucking stomach!’

‘And where do you suggest I put it?’

He had snatched at her wrist and held it, shaking it as if it didn’t belong to her, staring wildly at the thin flapping thing. There were white marks on her mother’s skin when he let go. The children had played statues until it was over. Isabel got up from the table as if nothing had happened, and Eleanor watched her go across the lawn in her short white dress and vanish into the house. Everyone chewed and swallowed in silence until it was all right to get down.

Isabel was unaware of her human shadow as she studied her reflection, making reparation for perceived flaws with restless hands. Eleanor traced her own hipbones through her pinafore dress with the flat of her palm. With a faraway look, Isabel put her hand to her nose and sniffed the tips of her fingers and thumb as if confirming her own existence. Eleanor sniffed her own fingers, the smell was comforting: a mixture of her guinea pig and the tuppenny lasting lolly she wasn’t allowed because her Dad said it was pure sugar.

As she copied her mother, Eleanor learnt how easy it was to be someone else.

That night, for the party vaguely intended to celebrate the departure of the Ramsays to Sussex for Whitsun, Isabel had chosen a black shiny dress with no sleeves and a zip up the back. She let Eleanor do it up. As she balanced on the bed to reach, Eleanor dreaded her father coming in and taking over. She could hear him next door, striding about in the ironing room where he kept his clothes. She clutched her mother’s bare shoulder to steady herself.

‘Eleanor! Get off, you’re cold!’

Eleanor briefly nursed her hand, blowing hard on it. The shape of Isabel’s body appeared as the zip pulled the slippery fabric together and it tightened over her hips and waist, to reveal contours of muscle and bone. She lingered over the fastening of the hook and eye at the top.

Now the make-up.

Eleanor had prepared the dressing table while her mother was in the bath. She lined up what her mother called her ‘condiments’ including the tiny bottle of scent the children had bought for her birthday that was still full. An expert assistant, on these occasions Eleanor never got it wrong.

Her mother handled the brushes like an artist, shading in colour with deft flicks of soft sable. She pouted at the three-way mirror as with a magician’s sleight of hand, she drew an accomplished bow with a lip pencil, and filled in fleshy lips with glossy lipstick. She took a tissue from her daughter without acknowledgement and stained the paper with a crimson kiss. Taking another bottle of perfume from her handbag, she squirted it behind her ears, on the inside of each wrist and between her breasts. She dropped the bottle back in her bag and snapped shut the clasp.

Isabel was ready to meet her guests.

Eleanor studied Isabel, anxious to miss nothing. It was one of the facts of life that her mother was clever, witty and beautiful. She had overheard a woman say Isabel Ramsay could turn men to stone. It was obvious to Eleanor that the tall woman adjusting her bra through the neck of her dress as she stepped into high heels was capable of everything. Her mother was a project Eleanor could have got top marks in. She knew her better than anyone. Better than Gina who went on the shopping trips, better than Lucian when her mother rubbed his back after cricket and told him he was her favourite man. As Eleanor followed her out of the bedroom, she swiftly pocketed the crumpled hanky. Later she hid it in her Box of Secrets with the others.

After Alice disappeared, Eleanor was not allowed to help her mother dress.

The doors dividing the drawing room in half were thrown open to make a space the length and breadth of the house. The furniture had been pushed back to the walls or removed. Her mother prowled the room, her stilettos clicking on the polished floorboards, rearranging chairs and repositioning ornaments. She touched surfaces and looked tetchy, but Eleanor knew Lizzie had done a good job.

Isabel was never happy.

Eleanor took up position by the French doors, and peered through a pane of warped Georgian glass. The road was fragmented by the swirly shaped gaps in the wrought iron balcony. She would spot the first cars. She loved the start of parties as the house filled up with excited, colourful people, their faces flickering in candlelight. Yet it was with mixed feelings that Eleanor anticipated the first knock at the door. It signalled her countdown to bedtime.

Suddenly her mother was upon her, stroking her hair, adjusting her dress and wrenching up the socks with the horrible flowers Eleanor had purposely rolled down. Clawing nails grazed her skin. Eleanor sniffed her mother’s hair: apple blossom and warm spring although outside a cold, spotting rain marked the end of May. Her breath caught as Isabel squeezed her round the waist, bending so far over her that Eleanor could not see and her tummy hurt. She didn’t want to cry out or it would end.

‘You’re my very own darling! My gorgeous, delicious little baby. You love me best, don’t you? You love your Mummy… so, so…’ Her voice grated in a half whisper. Eleanor was unable to respond.

Then it was over.

Her mother strode over to the coffee table and snatched up a cigarette from a silver box placed at an acute angle on the glass. Mark and Isabel’s initials were engraved on the lid: a chunky ‘I’ and ‘M’ fitted around each other like building blocks, a shape so familiar to Eleanor that it had nothing to do with letters or with her parents. Isabel lit the cigarette before Eleanor could do it for her and stood with one hand on her hip as she sucked on the filter, tossing her head back to exhale smoke rings that broke into ribbons above them.

The banging shook the house. Isabel shuddered at the noise then snapped into action, stubbing out her cigarette in a huge speckled marble ashtray and checking her face in the mantelpiece mirror. She left the room, smoothing her stomach with fluttering hands. Eleanor chased after her, only remembering as she was about to take the stairs two at a time, to adopt her mother’s languid indifference.

When Eleanor reached the hall Isabel was giving what her children privately called her ‘too hot to touch’ hugs to a woman with dark hair in a green mini dress, who had the skinniest legs Eleanor had ever seen. Her Dad wore the saggy tweed suit her mother hated because it made him look ‘stodgy’. The suit meant he was in a bad mood and Eleanor felt helpless as she watched him shake hands with a man in a flowery shirt and tight yellow trousers who had a mass of long curly hair, making Eleanor think of an exotic bird. Her mother presented her face to the man to be kissed. They kissed on the lips and then Isabel briefly touched the man’s cheek, as if correcting a mistake.

Eleanor stayed on the bottom stair, hanging from the newel post. The man obviously didn’t know her mother hated to be kissed like that when she had her make-up on. She pulled a face and glancing at her Dad saw that he too had seen the other man’s mistake.

Soon Gina would appear, tottering like a doll on stilts in her new pointy shoes and there was a danger they would send Eleanor to bed. She kept still and hoped no one would notice her. Then Isabel beckoned to her:

‘Harry, you’ll have to say hello to my youngest. This is me at seven. To a tee. I’ll have to find a picture. Elly is the ghost of me as a girl, the others take after Mark.’

Years later, flicking through photographs, Eleanor would see quite plainly that she took after her father. The likeness was striking. Yet Isabel had always insisted that Gina had Mark’s eyes and that Eleanor had hers. It made her suppose that Isabel had perhaps loved her after all. But by then too much had happened.

‘I’m nine in thirty-one days.’ The words were lost as her mother’s voice soared, she was holding the man’s hand which was all right for crossing a road, but looked stupid indoors. She signalled urgently to her:

‘Darling, come here. Now! Come and meet the next poet laureate!’

Eleanor didn’t want to go near the man who in any case was staring at her mother. Isabel pulled her forward with a jerk and held her by the shoulders.

‘This is my last baby. She’s growing up far too fast. Don’t you hate the way they lose that puppy look? The best bit is over so soon.’

Eleanor tried to smile but his eyes were on Isabel so it didn’t matter. She kept still, in case her mother let her go. The man remarked that she had grown. Eleanor was about to say he had grown too, she had planned this would be a good answer for a question she was sick of, but the man was speaking to her mother so clearly their chat was over.

Isabel led the way up the stairs. The yellow-plumed birdpoet followed. Her Dad gave a slight bow to let the stick-lady walk in front, then without looking told Eleanor to go to bed, reassuring her that he would tuck her in. Eleanor looked to see if her mother had heard; if she had, she might let her stay up longer. The banishment was too early tonight. She was not to be at the party at all. She got the sick feeling that came the day after parties, so couldn’t answer when the lady commented how lucky she was to have such a kind daddy.

Eleanor loitered around on the landing outside the drawing room, hoping Isabel would appear and take her in. She could not know Eleanor had been told to go to bed. But the knocker banged again, so she gave up.

It was all over.

Tomorrow her mother would stay in bed refusing to be touched. Tomorrow things would go back to usual, except Isabel was crosser after parties.

Eleanor did not want tomorrow.

Things were different after the business with Alice. Eleanor’s parents never allowed her downstairs when they gave a party. Nothing was actually said, certainly Alice was never given as the reason. Eleanor just knew she must keep to her bedroom. At first she would sit on the top stair listening to the muffled music and laughter. Through the landing window she would count the double-decker B.E.A buses going back and forth to London Airport on the Great West Road. The noise swelled each time the drawing room door opened and she hoped it was her Mum coming to fetch her. It never was. Instead she had to be ready to rush back to bed when Gina floated up the stairs, walking like Isabel.