The Clothes They Stood Up In (8 page)

She held it out to him but he made no move to take it, so she looked around for somewhere to put it down.

There was a long refectory table down the middle of the room and by the wall a sofa that was nearly as long, but these were the only objects in the room that Mrs. Ransome would have called proper furniture. There were some brightly colored plastic cubes scattered about which she supposed might serve as occasional tables, or possibly stools. There was a tall steel pyramid with vents that seemed to be a standard lamp. There was an old-fashioned pram with white-walled tires and huge curved springs. On one wall was a dray horse collar and on another a cavalier's hat and next to it a huge blown-up photograph of Lana Turner.

“She was a film star,” the young man said. “It's an original.”

“Yes, I remember,” Mrs. Ransome said.

“Why, did you know her?”

“Oh no,” Mrs. Ransome said. “Anyway, she was American.”

The floor was covered in a thick white carpet which she imagined would show every mark though there were no marks that she could see. Still, it didn't seem to Mrs. Ransome to add up, this room, and with one of the walls glass, giving out onto a terrace, it felt less like a room than an unfinished window display in a department store, a bolt of tweed flung casually across the table what it needed somehow to make sense.

He saw her looking.

“It's been in magazines,” he said. “Sit down,” and he took the letter from her.

He sat at one end of the sofa and she sat at the other. He put his feet up and if she had put her feet up too there would still have been plenty of room between them. He looked at the letter, turning it over once or twice without opening it.

“It's from Peru,” Mrs. Ransome said.

“Yes,” he said, “thanks,” and tore it in two.

“It might be important,” said Mrs. Ransome.

“It's always important,” said the young man, and dropped the pieces on the carpet.

Mrs. Ransome looked at his feet. Like every bit of him that she could see they were perfect, the toes not bent up and useless like her own, or Mr. Ransome's. These were long, square-cut and even expressive; they looked as if at a pinch they could deputize forthe hands and even play a musical instrument.

“I've never seen you in the lift,” she said.

“I have a key. Then it doesn't have to stop at the other floors.” He smiled. “It's handy.”

“Not for us,” said Mrs. Ransome.

“That's true,” and he laughed, unoffended. “Anyway, I pay extra.”

“I didn't know you could do that,” said Mrs. Ransome.

“You can't,” he said.

Mrs. Ransome had an idea he was a singer, but felt that if she asked he might cease to treat her as an equal. She also wondered if he was on drugs. Silence certainly didn't seem to bother him and he lay back at his end of the sofa, smiling and completely at ease.

“I should go,” said Mrs. Ransome.

“Why?”

He felt in his armpit then waved an arm at the room.

“This is all her.”

“Who?”

He indicated the torn-up letter. “She did the place up. She's an interior decorator. Or was. She now ranches in Peru.”

“Cattle?” said Mrs. Ransome.

“Horses.”

“Oh,” said Mrs. Ransome. “That's nice. There can't be too many people who've done that.”

“Done what?”

“Been an interior decorator then . . . then . . . looked after horses.”

He considered this. “No. Though she was like that. You know, sporadic.” He surveyed the room. “Do you like it?”

“Well,” said Mrs. Ransome, “it's a little strange. But I like the space.”

“Yes, it's a great space. A brilliant space.”

Mrs. Ransome hadn't quite meant that but she was not unfamiliar with the concept of space as they talked about space a lot in the afternoons, how people needed it, how they had to be given it and how it had not to be trespassed on.

“She did the place up,” he said, “then of course she moved in.”

“So you felt,” said Mrs. Ransome (and the phrase might have been her first faltering steps in Urdu it seemed so strange on her lips), “you felt that she had invaded your space.”

He pointed one beautiful foot at her in affirmation.

“She did. She did. I mean take that fucking pram . . .”

“I remember those,” said Mrs. Ransome.

“Yes, well, sure, only
apparently,
” he said, “though it wasn't apparent to me, that is not there as a pram. It is there as an object. And it had to be just on that fucking spot. And because I, like, happened to move it, like half an inch, madam went ballistic. Threatened to take everything away. Leave the place bare. As if I cared. Anyway, she's history.”

Since she was in Peru Mrs. Ransome felt that she was geography too, a bit, but she didn't say so. Instead she nodded and said, “Men have different needs.”

“You're right.”

“Are you hurting?” Mrs. Ransome said.

“I was hurting,” the young man said, “only now I'm stepping back from it. I think you have to.”

Mrs. Ransome nodded sagely.

“Was she upset?” she asked, and she longed to take hold of his foot.

“Listen,” he said, “this woman was always upset.” He stared out of the window.

“When did she leave you?”

“I don't know. I lose track of time. Three months, four months ago.”

“Like February?” said Mrs. Ransome. And it wasn't a question.

“Right.”

“Hanson, Ransome,” she said. “They're not really alike but I suppose if you're from Peru . . .”

He didn't understand, as why should he, so she told him, told him the whole story, beginning with them coming back from the opera, and the police and the trek out to Aylesbury, the whole tale.

When she'd finished, he said, “Yeah, that sounds like Paloma. It's the kind of thing she would do. She had a funny sense of humor. That's South America for you.”

Mrs. Ransome nodded, as if any gaps in this account of events could be put down to the region and the well-known volatility of its inhabitants; the spell of the pampas, the length of the Amazon, llamas, piranha fish—compared with phenomena like these what was a mere burglary in North London? Still, one question nagged.

“Who'd she have got to do it with such care?” Mrs. Ransome asked.

“Oh, that's easy. Roadies.”

“Roadies?” said Mrs. Ransome. “Do you mean navvies?”

“A stage crew. Guys who do setups. Picked the lock. Took the photographs. Dismantled your setup, put it up again in Aylesbury. Designer job probably. They're doing it all the time one way or another. No problem, nothing too much trouble . . . provided you pay extra.” He winked. “Anyway,” he said, looking around the sparsely furnished room, “it wouldn't be such a big job. Is your place like this?”

“Not exactly,” Mrs. Ransome said. “Ours is . . . well . . . more complicated.”

He shrugged. “She could pay. She was rich. Anyway,” he said, getting up from the sofa and taking her hand, “I'm sorry you've been inconvenienced on my account.”

“No,” said Mrs. Ransome. “It was well, you know, kind of weird to begin with but I've tried to be positive about it. And I think I've grown, you know.”

They were standing by the pram.

“We had one of these once,” Mrs. Ransome said. “Briefly.” It was something she had not spoken of for thirty years.

“A baby?”

“He was going to be called Donald,” Mrs. Ransome said, “but he never got that far.”

Unaware that a revelation had been made the young man stroked his nipple reflectively as he walked her out into the hall.

“Thank you for clearing up the mystery,” she said and (the boldest thing she had ever done in her life) touched him lightly on his bare hip. She was prepared for him to flinch but he didn't, nor was there any change in his demeanor, which was still smiling and relaxed. Except that he also must have thought something out of the ordinary was called for because, taking her hand, he raised it to his lips and kissed it.

One afternoon a few weeks later Mrs. Ransome was coming into Naseby Mansions with her shopping when she saw a van outside and crossing the downstairs lobby she met a young man with a cavalier's hat on and wearing a horse collar round his neck. He was pushing a pram.

“Is he going?” she asked the young man.

“Yeah.” He leaned on the pram. “Again.”

“Does he move often?”

“Look, lady. This guy moves house the way other people move their bowels. All this”—and he indicated the pram, the horse collar and the cavalier's hat—“is getting the elbow. We're going Chinese now, apparently.”

“Let me help you with that,” Mrs. Ransome said, taking the pram as he struggled to get it through the door. She wheeled it down the ramp, rocking it slightly as she waited while he disposed the other items inside the van.

“A bit since you pushed one of those,” he said as he took it off her. She perched with her shopping on the wall by the entrance, watching as he packed blankets round the furniture, wondering if he was one of the roadies who had moved them. She had not told Mr. Ransome how the burglary had come to pass. It was partly because he would have made a fuss, would have insisted on going up to the top floor to have a word with the young man personally. (“Probably in on it too,” he would have said.) It was a meeting Mrs. Ransome had not been able to contemplate without embarrassment. As the van drove off she waved, then went upstairs.

End of story, or so Mrs. Ransome thought, except that one Sunday afternoon a couple of months later Mr. Ransome suffered a stroke. Mrs. Ransome was in the kitchen stacking the dishwasher and hearing a bump went in and found her husband lying on the floor in front of the bookcase, a cassette in one hand, a dirty photograph in the other, and
Salmon on Torts
open on the floor. Mr. Ransome was conscious but could neither speak nor move.

Mrs. Ransome did all the right things, placing a cushion under his head and a rug over his body before ringing the ambulance. She hoped that even in his stricken state her efficiency and self-possession would impress her prostrate husband, but looking down at him while she was waiting to be connected to the appropriate service, she saw in his eyes no sign of approval or gratitude, just a look of sheer terror.

Powerless to draw his wife's attention to the cassette clutched in his hand, or even to relinquish it, her helpless husband watched as Mrs. Ransome briskly collected up the photographs, something at the very back of his mind registering how little interest or surprise was occasioned by this tired old smut. Lastly (the klaxon of the ambulance already audible as it raced by the park) she knelt beside him and prized the cassette free of his waxen fingers before popping it matter-of-factly into her apron pocket. She held his hand for a second (still bent to the shape of the offending cassette) and thought that perhaps the look in his eyes was now no longer terror but had turned to shame; so she smiled and squeezed his hand, saying, “It's not important,” at which point the ambulance men rang the bell.

Mr. Ransome has not come well out of this narrative; seemingly impervious to events he has, unlike his wife, neither changed nor grown in stature. Owning a dog might have shown him in a better light, but handy though Naseby Mansions was for the park, to be cooped up in a flat is no life for a dog; a hobby would have helped, a hobby other than Mozart, that is, the quest for the perfect performance only serving to emphasize Mr. Ransome's punctiliousness and general want of warmth. No, to learn to take things as they come he would have been better employed in the untidier arts, photography, say, or painting watercolors; a family would have been untidy too, and, though it seems it was only Mrs. Ransome who felt the loss of baby Donald (and though Mr. Ransome would have been no joke as a father) a son might have knocked the corners off him a little and made life messier—tidiness and order now all that mattered to him in middle age. When you come down to it, what he is being condemned for here is not having got out of his shell, and had there been a child there might have been no shell.

Now he lies dumb and unmoving in Intensive Care and “shell” seems to describe it pretty well. Somewhere he can hear his wife's voice, near but at the same time distant and echoing a little as if his ear was a shell too and he a creature in it. The nurses have told Mrs. Ransome that he can certainly hear what she is saying, and thinking that he may not survive not so much the stroke as the shame and humiliation that attended it, Mrs. Ransome concentrates on clearing that up first. If we can get on a more sensible footing in the sex department, she thinks, we may end up regarding this stroke business as a blessing.

So, feeling a little foolish that the conversation must of necessity be wholly one-sided, Mrs. Ransome begins to talk to her inert husband, or rather, since there are other patients in the ward, murmur in his ear so that from the corner of his left eye Mr. Ransome's view of her is just the slightly furry powdered slope of her well-meaning cheek.

She tells him how she has known about what she calls “his silliness” for years and that there is nothing to feel ashamed of, for it's only sex after all. Inside his shell Mr. Ransome is trying to think what “ashamed” is, and even “feeling” he's no longer quite sure about, let alone “sex”; words seem to have come unstuck from their meanings. Having been sensible about Mr. Ransome's silliness just about brings Mrs. Ransome to the end of her emotional vocabulary; never having talked about this kind of thing much leaves her for a moment at a loss for words. Still, Mr. Ransome, though numb, is at the same time hurting and they plainly need to talk. So, holding his limp hand lightly in hers, Mrs. Ransome begins to whisper to him in that language which she can see now she was meant to acquire for just this sort of eventuality.