Authors: Hugh Fleetwood
The Beast (8 page)
Then she stopped, looked up at Mr Ball, who was
staring
at her appalled, and with no longer any trace of a smile on his face, and gazed at him steadily. Maybe, she thought, his alarm was due to the fact that there were certain things a teacher—even an impeccably polite Englishman—didn’t expect a student, and especially not a plump white female student who never left her home, to say or read. Maybe …
‘Was that all right?’ she said innocently.
The Englishman’s thin red hands went up to his face, and touched it, as if to make sure that it was still there. ‘Oh—er—yes. Absolutely,’ he said. ‘Absolutely perfect.’ He looked at his watch again, desperately now.
‘Well,’ Antonietta said, ‘I’ve finished, haven’t I?’
‘Oh—er—yes,’ Mr Ball repeated, quickly, nervously, signing her progress chart, and standing up.
Antonietta gathered her books together, and put the red elastic band around them. Then she folded up her
newspaper
again, and opened her white handbag to put it inside. And then she gasped. ‘Oh, Mr Ball!’ She looked up at the thin red man in his yellow shirt and brown suede
shoes, who was already hovering by the door of the room and holding it open for her. ‘Something terrible’s happened.’ She hesitated. ‘You couldn’t do me a great favour, could you?’
The man attempted a polite smile again now, clearly feeling that he was safe, standing by the open door.
‘If I can, Miss Misseri,’ he said.
‘I hate to ask you.’
‘That’s all right. What can I do for you?’
‘Well, I know you haven’t got another lesson now and I was wondering—you see—I’ve forgotten to bring any money for my fare home.’ She stood up herself at last, and went over to him as he trembled there at the door. ‘I was wondering if you’d be so terribly kind as to give me a lift home.’
And then she smiled at him; deeply, understandingly. And as she did, she knew—she was quite quite certain—that, polite man as he was, he would say ‘yes, of course.’ Just as she knew that as he was driving her to her home in the pinewood in his flame-coloured car, he would say, when she told him what she had seen from the kitchen window the other day, ‘Did you? Did you
really
?’
‘I’ll sell it to you when she dies,’ she said, and laughed; and Daisy, standing behind the counter, felt suddenly terribly depressed. Not because of what the girl had said; that should have made her happy. (‘It’ being a diamond ring belonging to the girl’s mother, which was perhaps the only thing Daisy had ever coveted in her life.) But because of the way she had said it, and above all, because of that laugh. It had been hard, and high, and false; and Daisy, if she had ever had faith in any human being—had ever believed anyone could be, as she put it to herself, true—had had it in Rachel.
She had watched, through her small barred windows, the girl grow from a tiny baby being carried up the High Street, into a small, shy, smiling child who seemed more the offspring of a butterfly than of the elegant, dreadful woman who claimed to be her mother; and from an adolescent all legs and somehow wings, into this glorious creature who now stood before her in her dark little jewellery shop. Only now, glorious though she was—tall, dark, slim, yet as immense in a way, and full of promise, as the map of Africa Daisy had hanging on the wall behind her—there was this new note, this clang of cheap coloured
glass in her voice; and it threatened to shatter, in just a few seconds, not only the pure crystal splendour of Daisy’s image of her, but also all the hopes Daisy had ever had for her. And they, too, had been immense.
Of course, if she were at this stage to turn out to be false, there was only one person—her mother, the awful Mrs Menon—to blame, and the disappointment would only increase (if it were possible) Daisy’s detestation of the woman. But really she didn’t want or need her hatred to be so fed, and anyway had always nurtured her colossal hopes for Rachel (in part) just because it had seemed so wonderful that the child should be as she was in spite of all the forces working against her, all the waves of
cheapness
and lies that had washed over her since the day of her birth. A flower might be perfect—though a bit precious—if grown in carefully prepared soil and tended and cared for and watched over; but wasn’t it far greater, and far more perfect, if it grew without the slightest help—or indeed in the face of every sort of opposition—amidst garbage, and filth, and trash?
Yes, Daisy said silently, as she faced the girl with a tiny frown on her old, shrivelled little face and acquitted
herself
of the charge, that she was constantly levelling against herself, of sentimentality, and silliness. Yes, it was, and Rachel
had,
up to a few moments ago, been the most
perfect
flower she had ever seen. And it wasn’t just that the girl had always been physically beautiful, unaffected, intelligent and kind. There was more to it than that. There was something about the way she walked and held herself, and the expression in her eyes, and the way she spoke, that seemed to proclaim that this was how it should be in the world: that this was how a human being was meant to be. A person without smallness, without meanness, who
almost instinctively knew all the misery of the earth along with all its splendour, and who neither ignored the one nor denied the other, and who managed, within her one slim body, not only to reconcile these contradictions, but to be somehow the earth itself. To be mountains and seas, animals and flowers, wind and sun; to be young and old, ugly and beautiful, healthy and diseased. To be
everything
and nothing; and to be, when it came down to it, Rachel Menon and Daisy Jones.
She had asked, when Rachel had come into the shop, ‘How are you?’, and ‘How’s your mother?’ and—since it was a kind of standing joke between them—‘How’s your mother’s ring?’; and would normally have gone on to ask how Rachel was enjoying university, and how her studies were going. But given the tone of the reply to her question about the ring—a reply that had always been in the past a small smile, or a slightly melancholy ‘Oh, splendid as ever,’ or ‘Oh she still wears it I’m afraid,’—Daisy repeated now her first question; implying, with her frown and the way she said it, and with the very fact that she was repeating it, that she didn’t, on reflection, believe the ‘I’m very well Daisy,’ that the girl had given her.
Then it was Rachel’s turn to frown, and very briefly Daisy was afraid that the girl was thinking, dismissively, ‘poor Daisy’s getting forgetful in her old age.’ But then she saw that this wasn’t the case, and that Rachel had understood perfectly why she had repeated herself; and that she was frowning because she was struggling within, trying to decide whether to take the high hard tone of before, or whether to be what Daisy called truthful.
It was a struggle that lasted perhaps two seconds; perhaps five. But for the little old jeweller, watching it from her vantage point behind the counter, it was as long
and bloody a battle as had ever been fought in history. She stood there and prayed that her side—the
right
side—would win; she lit candles, had masses sung, made
sacrifices
; and then, as if her entire life were at stake—which in a way it was—she simply waited, resignedly, unable at this point to do anything more.
But at last it was over; and as Rachel dropped her eyes to the counter, touched the dark old wood with her young, sun-tanned hands, raised her eyes again, looked directly, deeply, and with the most terrible appeal—terrible because she knew it was unanswerable?—at Daisy and murmured, with just the faintest smile, ‘Oh, I’m all right, Daisy, really,’ the old woman thought she would faint with joy.
Obviously the girl wasn’t all right; if she had been she would never have been tempted into that retreat into
falsehood
earlier. But at least she was aware of the danger that this not being all right put her into—the danger of banishing herself into the wilderness of lies—and just to be aware of it was the main thing; the one thing that would, if anything could, protect her and keep her safe.
Daisy nodded, put out her hand and squeezed Rachel’s, that was still lying on the counter, and said—putting into her words every promise of help, if help were possible, and every evidence of understanding of what would
probably
never be explained to her—‘I’m very glad, dear’; and then, since there was really nothing more she could do or say, went on to ask how Rachel was enjoying university, and how her studies were going, and was she planning on going abroad this summer …
Until she had, as it were, discovered Rachel Menon, the one great passion of Daisy’s life had been jewels; and in fact her love and aspirations for Rachel had in no way
affected or abated this passion. Ever since the age of sixteen when, on her mother’s death, she had come as a thin ugly girl to work for her thin ugly father in this dark little shop on the High Street of an English country town, she had found in jewels all that other people found in husbands, lovers, children or whatever. And she had never felt—or almost never—that jewels were a substitute for any of these other things that people claimed to live for; on the contrary, she felt that they were a substitute for jewels, and the fact that she had never, even remotely, had the chance of having either husband or children was entirely due to the fact that she had never, even remotely, wanted either. Up to the age of sixteen she had been a poor, witless creature, to all intents and purposes deaf, dumb and blind, aware neither of the world, other people, nor of herself. But the second she had come to work in the shop—ah, suddenly she had found the path that led straight to the centre of the universe: a path that most people, she believed, threshed around looking for nearly all their lives and, aside from making themselves miserable in the attempt, hardly ever found. Yet she had found it at the age of sixteen, and for more than fifty years now had been walking directly down it. And as she had walked down that diamond-studded, pearl-studded, ruby-emerald-and sapphire-studded track, she had slowly (also by observing the changing landscape on either side, observing it for the most part through the windows of that dark little shop) learned the ways of the world; learned them, she was again convinced, more completely than most other people, who never knew where to look and were continually being
sidetracked
. Other people went to the theatre or read books; she gazed at her jewels. Other people went on holidays to exotic places; she (though she closed her shop for a week
every September to stop people coming in and saying ‘Daisy dear, you know you
must
take a break’) gazed at her jewels. Other people went home in the evening to talk and laugh and have sex, or to sit alone and feel wretched. She went upstairs to the little flat over the shop, that had remained virtually unaltered since her father had died forty-three years ago; and, having eaten and done the housework, turned on the radio (to learn, in a very
superficial
manner, what was going on) and gazed—in order to know what was
really
going on—at her jewels; at those few special gems that had come into her hands during the years and with which she wouldn’t have parted for
anything
. Her jewels had made her literate, her jewels had made her joyful, her jewels had made her knowledgeable (the news programmes, talks and concerts she listened to on the radio only gave words, definitions, sounds to what she already knew and thought and felt) and ultimately, her jewels had given her faith. Faith in the possibility of
perfection
. The sort of perfection that she was convinced existed in certain stones—even if she had never actually come across one herself, being only a little jeweller in a little shop in a little town, who dealt mainly in goodish, but not priceless items—and believed existed in Rachel Menon.
What could be wrong with the girl, she spent the rest of that day wondering, that she should come so near
betraying
herself because of it?
What could be wrong with her, she wondered the next day as she saw her walking down the High Street, on the opposite side of the road, looking thoughtful and tense and unhappy.
What
could
be wrong with her, she wondered a week
after that, with the same feeling of depression as had struck her when Rachel had said ‘I’ll sell it to you when she dies,’ as she saw the girl meet an acquaintance in the street and greet him with a silly wave and a high, affected laugh. Oh, she had fought a battle within herself eight days ago in the shop, and had won that time; but clearly the war was still continuing. Would she be strong enough for the final victory? Would she? Daisy prayed as she had prayed before; but she was afraid, very afraid …
What could be wrong? she wondered.
If she didn’t really expect ever to receive an answer to this question, she would never have guessed where she would, in fact, get an explanation of sorts from—the very next day.
She got it from Rachel’s mother.
It was five in the afternoon and Daisy was just preparing to close, when she saw the slim, dark woman walking rapidly down the street. She muttered a kind of curse on her for the damage she was doing to her daughter—and as she did so Mrs Menon turned, stared at her shop front, and without a moment’s hesitation strode, with her
confident
boyish walk, across the road and into the shop. Daisy was both appalled and stunned. Appalled to have her in the shop at all, and stunned at the manner of her arrival. It was as if the curse had been a call …
‘How are you, Daisy?’
‘Quite well, thank you,’ Daisy muttered, looking—in order not to look at the lazy left hand which held an untipped cigarette, and on one of whose fingers shone the great square diamond—at the sleek black hair that Mrs Menon wore like a shiny little cap, and at the bags under her oh-so-weary eyes. ‘I can’t complain.’
She could and she should, Mrs Menon’s gaze seemed to
say, as she attempted—but it was such an effort—to smile. ‘I have to talk to you.’
How she hated her. Oh God, how she hated her! She hated her looks, she hated her foreign—French and English, Jewish and Russian, she’d heard—ancestry, she hated her money. She hated her many husbands, and she hated the way she dressed. She hated the way she spoke, and she hated the way she smoked. She hated everything about her; and above all she hated her because she was the only person in the whole world who had ever made her feel that Daisy Jones had, perhaps, missed out on something; and that there was perhaps an alternative to a life spent in a small dark shop, with stones. She had often tried to find out the reason for this; the reason why the woman made her feel so wretched and disturbed, and at times even dead; and if only she had been able to she would have been able to dismiss her from her mind, and throw her out onto the refuse dump where she was sure that she belonged. But she had never, quite, managed it.
It wasn’t that Mrs Menon had been, and still was, in spite of the bags under her eyes, a very good-looking woman. Many of the women who walked down the High Street were far better looking, and Daisy had never been disturbed by them. It wasn’t that she was rich; in fact she was apparently no more than comfortably off, and
certainly
not as wealthy as some of the red and cheerful local farmers’ wives—nor even, possibly, as wealthy as Daisy herself. It wasn’t that she had travelled so much and had all that mixture of foreign blood in her veins; Daisy in her way had travelled quite a bit, and had always enjoyed meeting foreigners and comparing, as it were, notes with them. It wasn’t even that the diamond on her finger was perhaps—though Daisy couldn’t be certain, never having
had the chance to examine it closely, and not being able to ask—the one perfect gem she had always dreamed of seeing. No, it wasn’t any of these things.
And yet, and yet … Whenever Mrs Menon came into the shop there was just something about her, something indefinable, but
something
that seemed to proclaim, with unbearable smugness: ‘Of course I’ve made compromises, of course I’m not perfect, and of course, if you like, I’m false to the tips of my fingers; but the world being what it is, and life being what it is, I’ve done the best I can, and had the best there is, and I’ve enjoyed myself and would do it all again if I could’, which so upset and crushed Daisy that, convinced though she was the woman was wrong—was utterly and wickedly wrong—she couldn’t help but feel that a poisonous little animal had slithered into her brain, and was hissing at her, and whispering to her of waste …
