The Jeweller's Skin (7 page)

1946

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1947

The snow had stopped.  On the pavements the morning’s covering had been scuffed to slush.  The roadway was already clear, with a black sheen that might soon turn to ice.  Most of the roofs on the High Street were patterned in white with the outline of the slates; only the pub, where the upstairs room must be warmed, and Johnson’s the draper’s were dark, with little slicks of white snow at the edges.

The town was not unattractive like this, Anthony thought, looking out from the window of the Warming Pan Tearoom.  The clock-tower outlined in snow was rather fun.  The street was wide: he seemed to remember a market.  Still, you would never think it was so near London. A country town; narrow, he supposed, conservative, in the way of such places.  And burdened with the asylums - five, were there?  What on earth had possessed the LCC to build so many?

‘You wouldn’t like a pot of tea while you wait, sir?’  The waitress was middle-aged - his age, he supposed - with dyed black hair and that dry, lined skin that women seemed to have when they smoked a lot.

‘Perhaps I will; that’s a good idea, thank you.’  He watched while she fussed with the crockery.  She was bored, he supposed.  And then men didn’t come in on their own, did they?  It was a women’s place, for chatting in; no doubt she thought he would be feeling awkward. 

‘A bit better this afternoon,’ she said, bringing the tray.

‘You know, I rather like it like this,’ he said.  She unloaded the tea-things and arranged them in front of him.  ‘Makes me feel like skiving off and tobogganing.’

She straightened and laughed, a hoarse guttural laugh, incredulous.

‘Didn’t you ever do that when you were a child?’  He was being personal, but he knew she would like it: a tough woman nobody asked about her childhood.

She put the tray down on the next table.   ‘Oh, I’m not from round here,’ she said.  ‘I’m a Londoner.  Borough, I grew up, right near the market.’

‘Not far from the river,’ he began to say; but from the corner of his eye he saw Narcisa, leaning her bicycle against the lamp-post.  ‘Here’s your friend, then,’ the waitress said in her professional voice, as the door opened.  She stood by the table to take Narcisa’s coat.

‘This lady comes from London, from the Borough,’ he said, wanting to bring the two of them together.  But of course the Borough meant nothing to Narcisa.

Was there something wrong? he wondered as they sat down.  Certainly she wasn’t quite as he’d remembered.  She seemed smaller, her shoulders a little rounded, more grey in her hair.  Perhaps she was tired: they worked her too hard at the asylum, that he’d seen.

‘I am a little late,’ she said, seeing his cup.  ‘I am sorry; there was someone I had to see.  Nothing serious; only about the butter.’  She smiled quickly, putting it aside.

‘What would you like?’  he asked.  ‘This is Ceylon, but they have Earl Grey, too, if you like that?’

‘Earl Grey?’  she said.  ‘Oh yes.  No, I will have what you are drinking.’

He topped up the pot with hot water, and poured her tea.  ‘What about something to eat?  They have teacakes?  Or scones?’

This was what he always felt, now he remembered.  He wanted to pour tea and butter scones for her; and if they weren’t in public, he’d feed them to her, a piece at a time, from his hand.  And yet she wasn’t thin and under-nourished.  A strong body, he recalled, with small dark breasts, and heavy thighs.  ‘How have you been?’  he asked.

She considered, while the waitress took their order.  Toasted teacakes, he had decided, since she seemed so unwilling to make a choice.  He turned back from the waitress for her answer.

She refolded and smoothed the napkin by her plate.

‘Is there something wrong?  Nora, has something happened?’

‘My name is not Nora.’  Her voice was very flat.  ‘They have always called me Nora but my name is Narcisa.’

He remembered her walking out after the concert, and put his hand over hers, as if to keep her.  ‘I do apologise, I didn’t know.  Narcisa?  Is that how you say it?  It’s a pretty name.’

She looked down.  She didn’t seem to be angry with him.

‘If there’s anything I can help with.’  He was caught, concerned, knowing he was connected to her.  He had looked forward to an easy afternoon; but after all, people were more than that. 

He buttered a teacake and handed her the plate.  She ate attentively, as if it were something she’d never tasted.  Her hands seemed very large and capable.

He waited.  The teacakes were perhaps a little stale.  It was rationing; no doubt they did their best.  And the place was empty, apart from himself and Narcisa.

When she had finished she wiped her mouth on her napkin, then the tips of her fingers.  She sat back in the wheelback chair, and looked at him.

‘I am thinking about giving in my notice.’

She seemed calm now; as if she really had only been hungry.  Still he felt he needed to be cautious.

‘How long have you worked at Holywell?’  he asked.

‘Ten - no, I think it is eleven years.’  He was hearing the accent in her voice, the vowels drawn out.

‘It’s a long time.  Are you just ready for a change?’

She shrugged.  He poured them both some more tea.

‘Do you know what you want to do?  Have you something in mind?’

‘No,’ she said simply.  ‘I have no idea.  And perhaps it’s impossible.  But I have done this before, when I was younger.’

‘Well,’ he said, considering, ‘I’m sure you can.  I assume you don’t want just to go to another hospital?’

She spread her hands.  ‘I don’t know.  I have been a housekeeper; perhaps I could do that again.’

He hated the thought at once: Nora in service, at the beck and call of some ignorant rich couple.  He hoped the war had done away with all that.  ‘You should come up to London,’ he said.  ‘Get out of here.  You would find more people you could get on with.’

‘Shall we go?’ she said abruptly.  He gestured to the waitress, and paid the bill.

Outside on the slush-brown pavement he said, ‘Shall we go for a walk?’

She collected her bicycle and walked beside him.

‘I should hire one of those,’ he said.  ‘We could go out into the country.  Up on the Downs.’  He looked around the High Street for a cycle shop.

‘Is it the George where you are staying again?’

He was startled.

‘I want to go back there with you.  To your room.’

He stopped, and bent down to kiss her on the mouth.  Then he took her bicycle from her, and wheeled it along, walking very close to her, not quite touching.

*

I’m rattled, he thought, hanging his jacket on the back of the chair.  Nora - but he must call her Narcisa now - had gone off down the corridor to the bathroom, a small, determined figure, head down, overpowered he’d thought by the hotel corridor, the brown embossed wallpaper and flowered carpet.  He’d stood at the door and wanted to call out. 

He pulled at the knot of his tie.  Wasn’t this what he had wanted, after all?  But it wasn’t just that she had pre-empted him.  She had cut through all the delicious civilities, that was true, the things that you did together to pass the time, when you both knew really you wanted to go to bed.  But that wasn’t enough to have left him shaken.  He thought back to the tearoom.  It was Nora: that revelation of her name. Why now, after the months that he’d had it wrong?  And this sudden idea that she’d leave, go off into service.

She knocked at the door and he went swiftly to open.  ‘I hope it was clean,’ he began to say, but stopped, bending down to wrap her in his arms and crush her against him.  He felt her breathe out, with something like a sigh.  Then he leaned back a little to take hold of her face.  The roof of her mouth against his tongue made him dizzy.

I am out of control, he thought as he took off his shirt.  He had undressed her already, impatiently; she was lying in bed, the sheet pulled up over her breasts.  I am not like this.  He got into bed and made himself hold back, watching her dark face for what she wanted.  Her eyes with the deep shadows disturbed him again.

He moved his hands carefully over her body.  Everything about her seemed smaller today, her breasts in the swabbed light through the green curtains, the bones of her hips.  He became absorbed, as if testing for a response, finding her hard to reach in her sombre state.  A tremor went through her and she sheltered against him.  Then she lay back and put one arm over her eyes.

‘What is it?’ he asked.

She reached down to the floor beside the bed, then turned back to him with something in her hand.

‘Your stockings?  Do you want.. ?’  He was nervous, alive with dread.

She reached out and grasped the bedpost, the stocking trailing still out of her fingers.  He saw she couldn’t say the words to him.

He took the stocking gently out of her hand and tied it in a knot round her wrist, then to the bedpost.  Her arm was stretched out, the inside pale in the underwater light.

‘Please,’ she said, and he moved naked around the bed to find the other stocking, then, seeing he needed more, his red scarf.  She watched him in silence, her eyes almost black.  He looked round for something to tie her other ankle.  In anticipation she stretched her right leg out, spread-eagled.

Doubtful, he lifted his leather belt to show her.  She nodded. 

What have I done? he thought as he tightened it above her ankle-bone, and clicked the buckle.  He leaned over and covered her black pubic hair with his hand.  Then he climbed back on the high bed and left his thoughts, as her body rose to his against the restraints.

*

She left her bike in its place at the far end of the shed.  The racks were full: everyone else it seemed had stayed back here, on duty, or playing cards in the staff canteen, or gossiping in their rooms.  She felt the weight of the habitation of the place, the hundreds of patients and nurses, ground-staff and domestics.  And probably she knew all of them by sight;  in her mind there were people for each of these bicycles, every uniform that went through the laundry, every spoonful of mashed potato that she cooked.  She flexed her shoulders.  The warmth of cycling was already leaving her; she felt stiff.  All of these people who knew her, and didn’t know.  Not for the first time, she wondered if word had got around, if the new Assistant Clerk had talked.  But even if they knew, would she find out?  Would she be able to tell from the way they looked?

Up in her room, she shook her coat and put it on a hanger behind the door, then took off her shoes.  The snow had seeped in at the toe of the right one; the stocking was damp.  She unclipped the suspenders and peeled it off.  Her skin seemed sallow under the central light.  She ran both hands down her calf.  Just above the ankle there was still a mark, where Anthony’s brown belt had been pulled tight.

I wanted that.  It came to her as a hollow feeling, as if she had learned she had some hidden illness: malaria, perhaps; or TB, like Clara.  The idea had come to her suddenly; and then she couldn’t have gone through anything else; her body was aching to stretch out against the knots.  Never before; she’d never even thought of it. 

There was more; she knew there was more of it inside her.  As Anthony was doing what she’d asked, as she closed her eyes and fought against the bonds, she had seen something else, another familiar image, and shaken her head, hard, so the hair fell into her eyes. 

I wanted..

She leaned forward and covered her face with her hands.  The smell of her room surrounded her, talc and polish and the subtle smell of her own skin from the sheets.  Her leg began to feel chill, without the stocking.

So I am still the same asylum patient.  But this was worse; it was not just remembering.  This is how they keep you, she thought, with a new bitterness.  Thirty years later you’re begging for what they did.

She stood up, and looked for a dry pair of stockings in the drawer.  On top of the chest was the sewing she’d left from last night, an ochre dress she was making into a blouse.  She picked it up; pins fell onto the floor.  The cotton between her hands was soft with wear.

No, I can’t sit here sewing all evening, she thought, and knelt down to pick the pins off the rug.  She looked round the room.  It was neat as ever, clean, the varnished oak of the chest of drawers almost black, the flat panel at the foot of the tall narrow bed.

She put on the stockings and dry shoes, and brushed her hair, and went out into the corridor.  The sounds of other people were seeping out under the closed doors, and mixing up in the cold green-painted space: the high-pitched laugh of a young woman, amongst other voices; the low murmur of a man’s voice, forbidden here in the women’s block; music.   She stopped to listen.  It was jazz, a radio she supposed or a gramophone; a sinuous plaintive sound, was it a sax?  and a woman’s nasal, plaintive voice:
Ain’t these tears in my eyes telling you?

The slow emphatic line stayed in her mind as she went down the stairs. 
Ain’t these tears
.  That’s what I want, music, she told herself.  She was becoming someone else, erratic and restless, fallen outside the nest of work and order. 
Ain’t these tears in my eyes.
  But she wasn’t sad.  She walked through the corridors.