Her Living Image (11 page)

“Will it be like this when we live together, do you think?” Carolyn found it suddenly possible to talk about the future, which she had not dared to do before. It was the middle
of a dim afternoon. Outside the rain pattered lightly on the window, and in the room there was a great sense of tranquillity. They were lying on the bed after making love, every trace of lust
scoured out of them, their bodies clean and abandoned.

“I don’t know,” Alan said slowly. “I hope so.”

“What are we going to do?” she asked. She felt that everything between them was clear now, so that speech was like dropping pebbles into clear water and watching them sink to
their resting place. The friction of their bodies had rubbed away all the untidy mess of misunderstanding, and they could speak directly.

“I could rent a place like this next year. In September.”

“September,” she repeated, and listened to the rain.

“You’ll have to stay at home till the baby’s born, won’t you?”

“Yes. We could move before September, though. We could move in the summer.”

“Yes. We’ll do that.”

They lay quietly, fingers just touching, Carolyn watching the lightshade sway in a slight draught, Alan watching the gentle rise and fall of her ribcage as she breathed
.

Carolyn began to notice the household around her. She came downstairs for all her meals. She was still very quiet and unapproachable, jumping and stammering if a remark was
addressed to her, but self-contained. Disciplined. Able to sit, composedly, eating and listening while they talked. She was still an awkward presence because she was never relaxed; there was an
unnatural quality of alertness in her posture, in the intent way she stared at you as you spoke, in her sudden jerky movements. They soon gave up trying to draw her into conversation. The first
advances she herself made were to Sylvia, Sue’s four-year-old daughter. Sylvia was pestering her mother for a story one morning after breakfast. Clare had gone to work, and Bryony was deep in
the newspaper. Carolyn was picking up on the movements of the three women, which had seemed so mysteriously random at first. She knew that Sue worked as a nurse four nights a week, going on duty
some time after the children had gone to bed in the evening, and returning at seven in the morning. On these mornings her freckled face was blanched, and she sat motionless at the breakfast table,
staring sightlessly into a cup of cold, wrinkle-skinned coffee, while her long red hair gradually slithered out of the nest of twists she had knotted it into, and hairgrips pinged out over the
floor and the table around her. After she had gone upstairs Carolyn collected them and put them in a jar on the mantelpiece. She was surprised by the extent of Sue’s gratitude, when she came
looking for them the following evening.

“Shall I read it, Sylvia?”

The little girl leaned back against her mother’s knee, staring at Carolyn.

“Let me read it. I don’t know that story. Can I have a look – please?”

Dragging her feet reluctantly, as if she was being pushed from behind, Sylvia took her book to Carolyn, standing well back and handing it to her at arm’s length. Carolyn opened the book on
her knee and studied it.

“This looks interesting. What’s it about? The Snow Queen? Who’s she?”

Sylvia put her thumb in her mouth.

“Where does she live, Sylvia?”

“In the North Pole.”

“Does she? What does she look like?”

Sylvia suddenly moved forwards and grabbed the book. “In a picture –” she riffled the pages “– there!”

“She doesn’t look very nice, does she? Shall we find out what she does?”

Sylvia nodded, and leaned her weight against the side of Carolyn’s chair. As Carolyn started to read a look of absorption came over the child’s face, and her thumb slotted into her
mouth. She gazed at the pages as Carolyn read, as if she could see the events unfolding there.

Soon Carolyn was the favourite story reader, both with Sylvia and her older brother Robin. They liked her because she didn’t put the book down in the middle to go and do something else,
and because she read stories properly, as if she wanted to know what happened too.

Carolyn was cautious about the times when she came downstairs. She knew Sue’s movements. She felt all right coming down when Sue and the children were there, or when the kitchen was empty,
although the suddenly-abandoned look of the room always gave her a shock. There was always the odd dirty plate or mug on the table, and a tub of margarine (open) and milk (in its bottle) lying
around, not put away in the fridge. She tried to avoid Bryony, which was difficult because she could not work out her routine. If their paths crossed Bryony usually ignored her, but with contempt,
as if she was behaving stupidly. Carolyn found everything about Bryony so alien that she could not begin to guess what she was doing that Bryony didn’t like.

Bryony was squat with a cropped bristly head, reminding Carolyn of a wrestler on television. She wore enormous shapeless skirts which looked as if they were made from old curtains or bedspreads,
and baggy sweatshirts which she had dyed herself in dingy shades of rust, snot-green and pale mouldy purple. She described colours which appeared to Carolyn to be faded, dirty, or both, as
“subtle”, and Carolyn realized that her clothes were not these shades by dismal accident, but by the most painstaking design. She had tie-dyed various instantly recognizable T-shirts
and scarves for Sue, Clare and the children too, and was obviously pleased by the blotchy and imperfect (in Carolyn’s view) results.

She wore the strangest shoes Carolyn had ever seen. They had thick flat soles, to each side of which was stitched a straight flap of leather. The flaps stood up on either side of her ankle, and
were laced together where they met in a stiff ridge over her foot. Through the gap at the end her thick grey sock protruded. Carolyn commented on them, and for once incurred Bryony’s pleased
attention, as she explained how a friend had made them for her to an ancient design, and that unlike any shoes you could buy, they were made to last a lifetime, were completely healthy and natural,
and did not threaten to deform the foot or posture in any way. Bryony also had an enormous bag which she took with her everywhere, a great soft shapeless thing which looked as if (Carolyn’s
guess was later verified) it had been home-made out of wash-leathers. There were odd jagged seams all over the place, and the pale soft chamois leather had effectively polished dirt off every
surface it came into contact with, so that it was now as grimy as the leathers Carolyn’s Dad used at the garage. There were things embroidered in red wool on the top flap of the bag; in time
Carolyn recognized them as feminist symbols. She thought that by far the most apt symbol of women’s liberation was the beautifully simple clenched red fist-in-a-bag, which Clare and Sue also
wore in their lapels. When she later read (at Clare’s instigation) the Pankhursts’ story, with the exhortation to suffragettes to be “an iron fist in a velvet glove”, she
immediately linked that image with the symbol of “fist-in-a-bag”.

Most of the conversation at meal times made little sense to her. She was content to let it wash over her, occasionally noticing, like someone with a different first language,
the way they laughed at things she didn’t see the humour of, were made angry by perfectly innocent-sounding newspaper articles, discussed people she had never heard of as if they were better
known than the Royal Family. She was still concentrating on surviving, each day presenting its own series of obstacles; she was content simply not to appear too odd or ignorant.

She began to piece together what it was that Clare did. There was a house somewhere near, where women who had been beaten up by their husbands stayed. There was a “Refuge Rota”
pinned by the house telephone, with six different names filled in for different times in the week. Clare’s and Bryony’s names were on it, and they were at home at those times (unless
the phone rang for them). Otherwise, Clare was mainly out. Carolyn gathered that she spent a lot of time at the Refuge. She always looked in on Carolyn, when she came home; gradually Carolyn came
to realize how kind this was, and how many other claims Clare had on her time. Clare was the only one she wasn’t nervous of. She liked the way Clare called her “Caro”. She began
to ask questions, about the other two women, the Refuge, even some of the mysterious topics she had picked up from meal times. Half jokingly, Clare assumed the role of teacher-guide, and fed
Carolyn a steady supply of reading material on the Women’s Movement, ranging from
Spare Rib
magazine to the lives of suffragettes; from
The Female Eunuch
to pamphlets on
Consciousness Raising.

Carolyn was made glaringly aware of her own ignorance, a looming space which grew rather than diminished, as she was able to define its area by reading more. It was as if a balloon was being
blown up inside her head, and the space in the balloon needed to be filled with knowledge. She was in turn confused, amused, horrified by the things she read – and sometimes had that closer
reaction, recognition of something suddenly true – something she absolutely identified from her own experience, but had never put a name to. The mixture of incomprehensible lunacy and clear
truth was as surreal as the life she was living; treading a thin line between the sharks in her room and Bryony, waiting for those times of distant peace, when she could watch the moving clouds
through her window in simple tranquillity; descending nightly into drugged black sleep, and carefully, anxiously behaving herself as inconspicuously as possible in front of the inhabitants of the
house. Once or twice when she crept down to the turn in the stairs to see if it was safe to go and get something to eat, she was scared back by the murmur of unfamiliar voices, and saw three or
four bicycles parked in the hall, leaning together with their pedals tangled in each others’ spokes, forming an intricate barrier to outside.

She could not help noticing the untidy grime of the house, and because she wanted to please the women who lived there, she began to clean. She started in the bathroom, where she washed down
years of dust from walls and ceiling, scoured the toilet so that it sparkled, and dug out the thick dusty webs behind the pipes and wash-basin, disturbing a colony of frantic spiders. She scrubbed
the old lino floor until it revealed a pleasant geometric pattern of tan, brown and yellow diamonds; poured bleach, then caustic soda, and then her own physical energy into the stained hideous
bath, succeeding in restoring it in several places to snowy whiteness. With a nail brush she scrubbed persistently at the frosted glass of the small window, where something black (dirt? or some
kind of growth?) spread all along the indented patterns on the glass. It was particularly difficult to remove from the corners.

She took her time over it, waiting until she was sure no one wanted to use the bathroom, and going downstairs a couple of times for drinks and stories with Sylvia. The gradual transformation
from squalor to cleanliness gave her satisfaction, and she was pleased to think that the others would be pleased too.

She was nearly finished – polishing the taps – when Bryony poked her head around the half-open door.

“Thought it was you,” she said contemptuously.

Carolyn put down her cloth. “Sorry – d’you want to come in?”

“No. Haven’t you got anything better to do?”

“What?”

“Haven’t you got anything better to do with your time?”

“I – I mean, I thought – it was – it could do with a clean so I –”

“Proper little housewife, aren’t we.”

Bryony withdrew her head and shut the door sharply, leaving Carolyn bewildered. She wondered whether Bryony was offended; perhaps she thought Carolyn was criticizing them for not keeping it
cleaner.

That night Clare commented on the bathroom when she brought Carolyn her sleeping pills.

“Looks nice. Take you long?”

“All day, on and off.”

Clare nodded. “Rather you than me. Cleaning’s quite therapeutic sometimes though, isn’t it? I cleaned the whole apartment when I was pregnant – Jesus, I was at it from
morning till night, you could’ve eaten your breakfast off of the john.”

“When were you pregnant?”

Clare hesitated. “Oh – a long time ago. The kid’s six now.”

“I – wh – I mean, where is he?”

“He lives with his father.” Clare bit off a torn fingernail. “In Mexico.”

“Mexico?”

“Yeah.” She shifted impatiently. “It’s a long story. I married a Mexican guy when I was at college. He got a teaching job at the University in Monterrey – huh
– and I got pregnant.” She made it sound as if the two things should have been similar.

“I – then – what happened?”

“It didn’t work out. I had to leave.”

“Don’t you ever see him?”

“Who? Juan? My son? No.” She moved to the window, looked down at the wasteland garden. “No. His Grandma looks after him. It’s better for him. More settled.” She
turned abruptly, holding out her hand. “Here. I’m going to bed.”

Carolyn took the two pills. “Why don’t you give me the bottle, instead of two-at-a-time? Don’t you trust me?”

Clare smiled. “Yeah, I trust you. The goblins’ll eat you before you OD.” She went to the door. “Gives me an excuse to come and put you to bed, I guess. Thwarted maternal
instincts, that’s what it is.” She laughed. “Now you know. Sleep well.” The door shut behind her.

Carolyn sat on her bed and swallowed the sleeping tablets, washing each down with a mouthful of water. She did not understand Clare’s sense of humour. It was OK to clean, though. Clare
didn’t mind it. Whatever Carolyn did wouldn’t please Bryony, that was plain, so she might as well get on with it.

She tackled the TV room. It was called the TV room because all it was used for was to watch television. The kids sat in there before they had their tea, and sometimes the women went in there to
watch some particular programme, for an hour on a certain night. Otherwise they used the kitchen. This made it an easy room to clean, no one would want to come in while she was working. Bryony
might not even notice. It would be nice for the children when it was done, she thought. It was a bare square room with ugly yellow paint, and a sofa and three armchairs all pushed against the walls
like a doctor’s waiting room. In one corner were three big cardboard boxes full of filthy old jam jars. The open grate was choked with rubbish, and on the mantelpiece stood a stack of
unopened mail, election leaflets, circulars and letters for people who’d moved. Gasping at the weight, she staggered out to the dustbin with the jam jars. Then she flopped on the sofa to sort
through the letters. The third one was addressed her. “Miss Carolyn Tanner.” She stared at it in confusion. Her mother’s handwriting. The address was by someone else.
“It’s for me,” she said aloud. Why hadn’t they given it to her? She ripped it open and saw the date in her mother’s neat childish writing. October 31st.