The Private Parts of Women (6 page)

When I remember that time, I can hardly believe I am remembering myself. It is all so dim and far away, like the memory of an old film. After Bonny's death I don't think I felt anything else strongly, not even love. I felt nothing much except guilt and loneliness and then immense relief at being needed by Richard, wanted and loved. I felt nothing strongly until the birth of Robin, and then I felt too much.

A FUNNY TURN

Mother and Father kept me a child for longer, far longer, than it was true. I was bad, ‘a problem child' though I don't think such a handy phrase was in currency then. I was lonely, cruelly sheltered even into my early twenties. I don't blame them. I was not safe to be left alone, that's how they saw it. They were afraid of my growing up, quite sensibly frightened of how I would cope with the world. I was no better. Still the blank spells came, though sometimes I was able to cover up the absences, for I was left very much alone.

The house was quiet. Father was out a good deal of the time. He was having trouble with labour relations in his rubber goods' factories. Demands for better conditions, shorter hours, more pay. Father was incensed by the ingratitude of his workers. At breakfast each morning, the newspaper would tremble in his hands. ‘Two million unemployed!' he might say, waving the headlines in my face. ‘And still they threaten action.' Then he'd subside behind his paper, muttering,
Commie traitors
, and
Bolsheviks
. He always drank his tea too hot, slurping it. The noise made me wince. There was no conversation. Father didn't like to talk at breakfast-time. Louise, the cook, served our food and slunk away, repelled I'm sure by the atmosphere. Father would have preferred to be alone, but he pretended, quite successfully mostly, that we weren't there. And sometimes, I think, I wasn't. And neither was Mother.

One day we were eating sausages, I remember, slightly blackened, and I suddenly saw us as we were: Father muttering over his newspaper, chewing and slurping; Mother silent, staring wild-eyed at the tea pot; myself, a woman dressed as a child, eating neatly, cutting my sausages into tiny pieces and chewing each one twelve times, and it made me laugh. Laughter was a rare sound. Mother did not seem to notice. Father whipped his paper down and gave me a look. Louise who had come in with fresh toast, pulled a droll face at me and backed out of the room closing the door behind her.

‘I fail to see the joke,' Father said. He had a smear of fat on his immaculately shaved chin. I thought it funny, him so dignified, a scarecrow dressed for the office. Oh I knew he was a scarecrow, I could still see the straw sticking in bunches from his nostrils and ears. ‘Pray enlighten me,' he said. Red spots were growing on his cheeks though his lips were white.

Mother reached out for the tea pot. ‘Another cup, Charles?' she asked, though her eyes were not with us. He banged on the table with his fist and my tea slopped on the tablecloth.

My laughter stopped. I don't know how I had dared. It's just … it's as if sometimes the light changes and makes quite ordinary things seem absurd. Looking at a bus, I sometimes want to laugh even now. All those people, two tiers of them, sitting still and travelling forward; sometimes the bus disappears, that is all that makes sense of it, the bus and then all that's left are the absurd people plunging seriously forward through the air.

Apart from breakfast I never saw Father. He was always at work or out elsewhere. Mother had settled into a sort of trance. She wouldn't move for hours, sometimes days. She emerged briefly sometimes, like a dreamer, wild-eyed with dreams, fighting the descending blanket of sleep. I sat with her, tried to bring her back.
‘It was the schooner Hesperus that sailed the wintry sea
…' I kept starting to try and rouse her, but her eyes were empty. It drove me half mad. Louise clattered in the kitchen and moved about the house, making pleasant remarks, even singing sometimes, and it was as if a real bright person moved among ghosts.

I read the newspaper and the Bible. I was Mother's nurse. Auntie Ba didn't come any more now that I was grown-up, she said that,
grown-up
, though it made Father snort. He was glad to see the back of her though, he'd always despised her. So I was left alone for much of the time – except for Mother. I sat with her, sometimes reading aloud; when she was at her worst, wiping her dribble, holding a spoonful of broth to her mouth.

Louise, who lived in, extended her duties and helped me get Mother up and washed, and later, put her to bed. I don't know what made Louise stay as long as she did. Father paid her very little and it must have been like living in an asylum. She was what you might call ‘strapping', very matter-of-fact. Her face was pale and pitted as a crumpet. ‘She'll never marry,' Father used to say with satisfaction, ‘not with all the young men of her class shot to smithereens in France. Not with a face like that.'

I wish I had been more friendly to her. Though she didn't encourage it. She was pleasant enough but … well because of Father probably … she knew her place. She would never criticise them, never side with me. She did her job, cooked piles of plain food, was polite and helpful. I can't complain.

One day, I found myself outside. There was the familiar and sickening lurch back into consciousness like the moment of falling in a dream. Another absence, another frantic looking round to find myself. I don't think I'd done anything bad except walk out alone with no coat or hat, quite normal as far as the world was concerned. There was nothing strange in my pockets, no dirt or damage to my clothes. I asked directions back to Holloway – and found I'd walked miles. I was in Stratford, an area I didn't know. I was full of the sick, startled sensation that always followed a significant absence.

I hurried along, troubled and tired, anxious that I might have been missed, when I came to an ugly square red-brick building. Something made me stop and look instead of hurrying past. Inside, someone was playing a trombone. Above the door it said:
CURRY STREET CITADEL
. I hesitated. I felt unwell, faint and weak and torn. What I should do was hurry home. I didn't know what state Mother would be in, what trouble I'd get into from Father. But the trombone sounded like a message, reaching out especially to me. Years before I had heard a Sally Army band and believed that it beckoned me. I had almost forgotten, but the rich brass slither brought it back to me. I looked around but there was no one on the street to see. I went through the front door into a lobby, and looked through another door into the main hall.

A young man in shirt-sleeves was standing with one foot on a chair, a beam of sunshine from a high window shone down and lit up his trombone like gold. He was laughing down at a young woman in Salvation Army uniform. She held her bonnet in her hand and was looking up at him, smiling and scolding. She looked utterly happy and herself. I wanted quite suddenly and badly to be her. To laugh. To scold flirtatiously. I wanted that young man with his trombone and his floppy black hair to be smiling down at
me
.

They noticed me at the same instant. The woman smoothed down her wavy hair and with it her expression. She replaced her bonnet. The man took his foot off the chair.

‘Can we help you?' the woman asked.

‘I was just walking past,' I said. ‘I didn't feel well … I heard the trombone … Oh I don't know …'

‘Sit down a minute,' the man said brushing the chair with his hand. The woman took my arm and sat me down.

‘You're very pale. Water,' she offered, ‘or tea?'

‘Just water,' I said. I could hardly look at them, they were so kind.

‘What's your name?' the man drew up a chair and sat close beside me.

‘Trixie … Trixie Bell.'

‘I'm Harold Brown, Lieutenant,' he added with a grin, ‘and this,' he indicated the woman who returned with my drink, ‘is Lieutenant Mary Bright.'

‘I heard a Salvation Army band once, at Harrogate,' I said. I sipped the water. I could feel the blood returning to my head. The hall was lofty, full of echoes and splinters, the windows so high you could see nothing out of them but sky. There were posters on the walls advertising meetings, Battles for Souls. There were texts in great black letters, some I recognised from my own reading, that almost made me feel at home.

Harold had a narrow face, a long nose, shadowy, speckled cheeks. He was a big heavy man and he smelled slightly of sweat.

‘I thought they were wonderful,' I continued. ‘But my father doesn't approve…'

‘We thrive on disapproval,' Harold said, grinning.

‘Have you been to a meeting?' Mary asked.

‘No, I was only a child then and I … well it would be impossible, I care for my mother, you see, I don't get much time.'

‘Could you not make a little time?' Harold leant towards me.

‘I don't know … perhaps … one day.'

‘Do you feel better?' Mary asked. ‘You looked like a ghost when you came in, I thought you were going to pass out.'

I nodded. ‘Yes, thank you … I came over tired … just a funny turn.'

‘Where do you live?'

‘Holloway.'

‘You've walked all that way?'

‘I like to walk,' I said.

‘Evidently.' She looked down at my dusty shoes and smiled.

‘We'll go a little way with you,' Harold said standing up. ‘We could walk in that direction.'

‘No,' I said. I handed Mary the cup. ‘Thank you. I must go. Mother might miss me. Thank you again. I will
try
and come to a meeting.'

I fled. I was not used to people or to making conversation. I could not believe my nerve. The idea that I might attend one of their meetings seemed preposterous, seemed a lie. I hurried through the streets towards home, head down, terrified that I would be seen, or that Father would have returned home unexpectedly and discovered Mother alone.

But as I hurried I knew that that is what I wanted. That it was not really preposterous, not a lie. One day I could be one of them. I could be a Salvationist. I could wear a uniform like Mary's. Maybe I could even be called Lieutenant. Lieutenant Bell. It was a glorious thought.

I opened the door cautiously and crept inside, terrified that I had been missed. But it was all right. It was as if I had never left. The grandfather-clock ticked sluggishly in the hall. Mother still sat in her chair: that her chest was dark with dribble was the only sign of neglect. The dreary smell of braising liver floated from the kitchen. I went to fetch a cup of tea. Louise, chopping carrots, only looked up and smiled.

BINDWEED

I have got myself involved. Christ knows I didn't mean to but what can you do when someone needs help and you are there?

First thing, I was coming back from a walk yesterday. I'd walked through the parks taking pictures of the wintery trees, the mill-dam, branches, leaves frozen into the ice and the ducks waddling and sliding. Now it was getting dusky, I was tired and wanted only to get inside and drink coffee. But when I got back, there was a man standing in the passage between my front door and Trixie's. He was standing facing her door as if he'd knocked and was waiting for an answer, a small man in an overcoat and trilby.

‘Hello?' I said.

‘Ah!' He raised his hand and shook mine. ‘You are Inis, yes? The new neighbour.'

‘Yes.'

‘Honoured to meet you.' He took off his trilby and executed a little bow. ‘I am Blowski, Stefan.' He looked as if he expected that I knew of him.

‘Yes?'

‘A friend of Trixie Bell.'

‘Pleased to meet you,' I said. I moved towards my door and he moved reluctantly aside.

‘I want you to know it is relief to me that Trixie have neighbour, nice neighbour. I worry about her, alone.'

‘She's OK,' I said, fumbling in my bag for my key. ‘She knows I'm here.' I just wanted to get inside, switch on the gas-fire and drink coffee. I found my key and put it in the lock.

‘She keep herself to herself,' he said, ‘but she need …'

‘Me too,' I said opening the door. ‘I keep myself to myself too.' I stepped inside and was enveloped by the cold smell of new paint. I flicked on the light and it shone out on Mr Blowski, a quite charming old man, I saw, with a wizened monkey face, wild wiry white eyebrows and a most glamorous puff of silvery hair. ‘Goodbye,' I said.

‘She no ordinary woman,' Mr Blowski was saying as I shut the door.

I made a jug of coffee and crouched beside the gas-fire drinking mug after mug, scorching my face, feeling guilty that I had been so rude. The flowers loomed through the white paint like faces through fog. It was too quiet. I wondered if Mr Bloswski was still standing in the passage, waiting for Trixie to open her door.
No ordinary woman
. Funny, I had thought she was just that, an ordinary old woman, wandering a bit perhaps, but that's normal surely at her age. Though there were the hymns she bellowed out at night. I shook myself, irritated to feel that she had got her hooks into me, only soft ones, more like the tendrils of a creeper – bindweed – tendrils that seem so slight and tender but will never let go once they have a grip, unless you break them.

When I'd drained the last drop of coffee, I went up to my darkroom and switched on the red light. Some other photographers I know hate this part of the job, find it tedious, the processing, but I love it almost more than taking the photographs, the small space, the red light making rosy shadows, even the vinegary whiff of the chemicals.

I had several reels of film taken in Sheffield – roadworks, street scenes, shopping-complexes, trees – Sheffield is full of trees, I'm surprised to find. I've been wandering around shooting this and that, groping towards a theme. None of this is my usual style. I am a portrait photographer by trade and inclination. I work best with a long lens, a dense point of focus. Character in close up is my forte. I also had some rolls of undeveloped film I'd brought with me, some of the last I shot before I left. It was one of those I picked up first, rather numbly, scarcely thinking why. Wondering instead, as I tested the exposure, what Mr Blowski meant.
No ordinary woman
. Well nor am I. Who is?