Lady Oracle

  About the only explanation I could think of for this behavior of hers was that making me thin was her last available project. She'd finished all the houses, there was nothing left for her to do, and she had counted on me to last her forever. I should have been delighted by her distress, but instead I was confused. I'd really believed that if I became thinner she would be pleased; a smug, masterful pleasure, but pleasure nonetheless: her will being done. Instead she was frantic.

  One afternoon when I'd dragged myself home from school, weak with hunger, and had gone into the kitchen for the single piece of RyKrisp which was my reward, she wandered in from the living room, a glass of Scotch in one hand, still in her pink dressing gown and furred mules.

  "Look at you," she said. "Eat, eat, that's all you ever do. You're disgusting, you really are, if I were you I'd be ashamed to show my face outside the house." This was the sort of thing she used to say to me when I was fat and she was trying to browbeat me into reducing, but I felt this speech was not necessary any more.

  "Mother," I said, "I'm on a diet, remember? I'm eating a piece of RyKrisp, if you don't mind, and I've lost eighty-two pounds. As soon as I lose eighteen more I'm going down to Mr. Morrisey's office and pick up Aunt Lou's money, and after that I'm moving out."

  I shouldn't have given away my plans. She looked at me with an expression of rage, which changed quickly to fear, and said, "God will not forgive you! God will never forgive you!" Then she took a paring knife from the kitchen counter - I had been using it to spread cottage cheese on my RyKrisp - and stuck it into my arm, above the elbow. It went through my sweater, pricked the flesh, then bounced out and fell to the floor. Neither of us could believe she had done this. We both stared, then I picked up the paring knife, put it down on the kitchen table, and placed my left hand casually over the wound in my sweater, as if I myself had inflicted it and was trying to conceal it. "I think I'll make myself a cup of tea," I said conversationally. "Would you like one, Mother?"

  "That would be nice," she said. "A cup of tea picks you up." She sat down unsteadily on one of the kitchen chairs. "I'm going shopping on Friday," she said as I filled the kettle. "I don't suppose you'd like to come."

  "That would be nice," I said.

  That evening, when there were no longer any sounds from my mother's room - she'd gone to bed early and my father was still at the hospital - I packed a suitcase and left. I'd been badly frightened, not so much by the knife (the scratch hadn't been deep and I'd washed it thoroughly with Dettol, to avoid blood poisoning) as by my mother's religious sentiments. After her mention of God I'd decided she was crazy. Though she'd forced me to go to Sunday school, she had never been a religious woman.

  PART THREE

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The morning was bright with sunshine. It streamed through the windows of the Library, where Charlotte sat, neatly attired in her modest gray gown, its white collar fastened at the throat with her mother's cameo brooch. The brooch aroused sad reveries: her mother,; whose delicate pale features Charlotte had inherited, had pressed it into her hand moments before she died. She had smiled at Charlotte, a single tear rolling down her cheek, and had made her promise to always tell the truth, to be pure, circumspect and obedient. "When the right man appears, my darling," she had said, "you will know it; your heart will tell you. With my dying breath I pray for your safety." Charlotte had always treasured the picture of her mother's face, framed in the gently curling tresses of blonde hair fine as spiders' webs, and her sad but hopeful smile.

  Charlotte shook off these unhappy thoughts. She bent again over her jeweler's glass; she was repairing the tiny clasp of an emerald bracelet. For a fleeting moment she pictured how the emeralds would look against Felicia's white skin, how their green would enhance her green eyes and complement her fiery hair. But she dismissed these thoughts too, they were unworthy of her, and concentrated on the work at hand.

  There was a light laugh, like the drowsy twitter of some tropical bird. Charlotte glanced up. Through the gauzy white curtains she could see a couple strolling arm in arm at a short distance from the window, deep in what looked like a confidential conversation. By her red hair she recognized Felicia, who was wearing a very costly morning costume of blue velvet, trimmed with white ostrich feathers at the throat and cuffs, with a dashing hat to match. Her hands were concealed in an ermine muff, and as she threw back her head to laugh once more, the sunlight glimmered on her milky throat and on her small teeth.

  The man by her side, bending closer now to whisper something into her ear, was wearing a short cape; in his gloved left hand he carried a goldhandled riding crop, which he dangled nonchalantly. Charlotte thought it must surely be Redmond, and a pang of dismay shot through her; but as he straightened and turned his profile towards her, she realized that this man, although he certainly resembled Redmond, was not he. Redmond's nose was more aquiline.

  Charlotte did not mean to eavesdrop, but she could not help overhearing part of the conversation. The man said something in a low voice, and Felicia replied, with a contemptuous toss of her head and another laugh:

  "No, you are mistaken ... Redmond suspects nothing. He is occupying himself completely these days with that whey-faced chit he hired to repair my emeralds, and has eyes for nothing else."

  What could she mean? Charlotte was still gazing out the window at the departing couple when a slight sound made her turn. Redmond was standing in the doorway, regarding her with a fixed stare; his eyes burned like coals.

  "How do you like my wife's new riding costume?" he asked her, with a sneer in his voice that let her know he had seen her looking through the window. A hot flush rose to Charlotte's cheek: was he accusing her of meddling, of spying and intruding?

  "It becomes her very well," she answered with reserve. "I could not help seeing it, as she passed so very near the window."

  Redmond laughed and came towards her. She rose from her chair and shrank back against the shelves of fine leather-bound books, each with Redmond's family crest stamped in gold on the spine. Her heart was beating with alarm. His face was flushed with drink, although it was still mid-morning, and she recalled the strange stories she'd been hearing about his behavior from kindly Mrs. Ryerson, the housekeeper. His wife Felicia, Lady Redmond, also had a scandalous reputation. They could escape gossip because of their position, but Charlotte knew that if she herself once fell from virtue she would be doomed, fated to wander the polluted night streets of London or to find asylum only in a house of shame.

  "I do not admire such fine plumage," he said. "That dress of yours now ... that would be more fitting ... in a wife. But you wear your hair too severely." He approached her and disengaged a tendril of her hair; then his hand crept towards her throat, his lips sought hers, his features distorted and savage. Charlotte pulled away, seeking wildly for some object with which to defend herself She seized a weighty copy of Boswell's Life of Johnson; if he attempted to humiliate her in this way again, she would not scruple to strike him with it. He was not the first importunate nobleman she'd had to fend off, and it was not her fault she was young and pretty.

  "I beg you to remember, sir," she cried, "that I am alone and unprotected under your roof Remember your duty!" Redmond looked at her with a new respect; but before he could reply, there was a low laugh. In the doorway stood Felicia in all her opulent splendor, dangling her plumed hat in one dainty hand. Beside her stood the cloaked stranger.

  "Prettily spoken," said the stranger, grinning at Charlotte. "Redmond, I hope you take it to heart."

  Felicia ignored her and addressed herself to Redmond.

  "It seems to me, Redmond, that your little Miss Jeweler is overly long about my emeralds. Surely it does not take such a time to repair a few broken catches and mount a few gems. When will she be done?"

  Charlotte flinched at being thus spoken of in the third person, but Redmond bowed to his wife, an ironic bow. "You must ask her yourself, my dear," he said. "The ways of a professional are unfathomable, Me ways of a w
oman." He strode towards the doorway. "Good of you to ride over,. Otterly," said, shaking hands with the tall stranger. "You know I am always glad to see you for luncheon, when unannounced."

  "I like a little brisk exercise of a morning," the man replied. The two strolled away. Felicia remained a moment, studying Charlotte with an appraising glance, as if she were apiece of furniture.

  "I would not remain here too long, if I were you," she said. "The drains in this house are not good; for those with sensitive natures, such as your own, they have been known to have a bad effect on the health, and even on the mind. If you care for some outdoor exercise, however, you might enjoy a stroll in our maze. I'm told if s interesting." She swept away in a swirl of velvet.

  Charlotte sat in a whirl of confused emotions. How dare these people treat her like this! But yet with Redmond, though he could be so disagreeable, she had found herself wishing that his hand had remained on her throat just a moment longer.... And the cloaked stranger, he must be Redmond's half brother, the Earl of Otterly. The things she had heard about him from Mrs. Ryerson had not been pleasant.

  She was too upset to continue working. She locked the emeralds back into their box, locked the box into the room as Redmond had instructed her, and went upstairs to her own room to compose herself.

  But when she opened the door of her bedroom, it was all she could do to keep from uttering a scream. There, spread out on her bed, was her good black silk dress, viciously slashed to ribbons. Great gashes had been cut into the skirt, the bodice had been mutilated beyond repair, the sleeves were in shreds. It looked as though some sharp instrument had been employed, a knife or a pair of scissors.

  Charlotte entered the room and closed the door behind her. Her knees felt weak and she was a little dizzy. Who had done this? She knew she had left the dress in the wardrobe when she had gone down to commence her work on the jewels. She opened the wardrobe door.... All of her other clothes had been treated in similar fashion: her traveling cloak, her one other dress, her nightrail, her petticoats, her tippet. She had nothing left to wear but the clothes she had on her back.

  But why? she asked herself as she sank, trembling, onto her small, hard bed. It occurred to her that someone wanted to frighten her away, someone wanted her to leave Redmond Grange ... or perhaps it was a warning, a sign left by a well-wisher. She had looked for a note but there had been none. Only those ominous slashes.

  She had left her room at nine o'clock; she had breakfasted, then worked alone until eleven-thirty, when she had overheard the conversation between Felicia and Otterly. In that time, anyone in the household - or someone from beyond it! - could have entered her room, unseen by her, and committed the deed. Redmond, Felicia, Otterly, kindly Mrs. Ryerson ... the maids, the cook, William the gardener, Tom the coachman, with his ratlike smile. It could have been any of them.

  Fearfully, she recalled Felicia's remark about the badness of the drains. Had it been a threat? And if she disobeyed the warning, to what lengths would her unknown enemy be prepared to go in order to rid Redmond Grange of her ... forever?

  I wrote this in Terremoto with my apple-green felt pen. It took me four days, which was far too slow. Usually I wrote my Costume Gothics on the typewriter, with my eyes closed. It was somehow inhibiting to have to see what I'd put on the page, and in apple-green it was more lurid than I'd intended.

  I decided I'd have to make the trip to Rome for the typewriter and the hair dye. I'd never be finished with Charlotte at the rate I was going, and my own financial future depended on hers. The sooner she could be safely established the better.

  Meanwhile she was in peril, my eternal virgin on the run, my goddess of quick money. The house was after her, the master of the house as well, and possibly the mistress. Things were closing in on her, though so far she was being sensible. She was a plucky girl who refused to be intimidated. Otherwise she'd take the next coach out. I myself didn't have the least idea who'd slashed up her clothes. Redmond, of course, would buy her a new wardrobe, which would fit perfectly, unlike the shabby discards she'd been wearing. She'd hesitate to accept, but what could she do? She didn't have a stitch to her name. Bad things always happened to the clothes of my heroines: bottles of ink got poured over them, holes were burned in them, they got thrown out of windows, shredded, ripped. In The Turrets of Tantripp someone stuffed them full of hay, like a scarecrow or a voodoo effigy, and floated them down a river. Once they were buried in a cellar.

  Felicia wouldn't like Charlotte's new wardrobe though. "If you're going to set this girl up as your mistress, Redmond," she'd say, within Charlotte's hearing, "I wish you'd do it somewhere else." She was a cynical woman, and used to his escapades.

  I replaced the manuscript in my underwear drawer, put on my disguise, and set out for Rome, locking the door carefully behind me.

  Driving in Italy made me nervous. People steered cars as if they were horses. They didn't think in terms of roads but in terms of where they wanted to go: a road was where someone else wanted you to go, a road was an insult. I admired this attitude, as long as I wasn't driving. When I was it made me jumpy. The road from the town was a series of zigzags, with no fences or posts on the drop side. I beeped the horn all the way down, and chickens and children scattered.

  I made it to Tivoli without accidents, then down the long hill to the plain. Rome hovered in the distance. The closer I came to it, the more raw earth there was, the more huge pipes and pieces of red, blue and orange machinery lay strewn like dinosaur bones beside the highway. Men were digging, excavating, tearing down, abandoning; it was beginning to look like North America, like any big junk city. The road was now crowded with trucks, small ones and large ones with trailers carrying more pipes, more machines, in and out, but I couldn't tell whether it was evidence of growth or of decay. For all I knew the country was teetering on the edge of chaos, it would be plunged into famine and revolt next week. But I couldn't read the newspapers, and the disasters of this landscape were invisible to me, despite the pipes and machines; I floated along serenely as through a movie travelogue, the sky was blue and the light golden. Huge blockish apartment buildings lined the road to Rome, their balconies festooned with washing, but I couldn't guess what kind of life went on inside them. In my own country I would have known, but here I was deaf and dumb.

  I pushed my way through the stifling traffic and found a place to park. The American Express office was crowded; long lines of women in sunglasses like mine and men in rumpled summer suits jammed the wickets. The American dollar was unstable and banks were refusing to cash traveler's checks. I should've taken Canadian, I thought. After waiting my turn I was given some fresh money and went out to search for a typewriter.

  I found a secondhand portable Olivetti and bought it, using my limited vocabulary and finger signals. I came out of the store weighed down by the typewriter but nevertheless feeling light as a dancer, anonymous and unwatched in the procession of sidewalk people I would never have to know.

  Then suddenly I remembered Arthur. He'd been there with me, we'd been on this very same street together, I could feel him still beside me, real as touch. We'd been holding hands. We'd stopped to consult our map, right here in front of this store, it even smelled the same. Had it happened or was I making it up? Had we really walked through the maze of Roman streets together, did we meander in a rented Fiat, did we drive along the Appian Way with its tombs and rumored ghosts, did we descend into the Catacombs, stuffed with the dried shells of Christians, were we guided by a short Bulgarian priest, did we rise again after thirty minutes? Did we go round and round the Colosseum, unable to find the right exit while thunderous trucks swayed past on either side, loaded with metal and cement, pillars, lions for the games, loot, slaves? My feet hurt a lot but I'd been happy. Arthur had been with me, he wasn't with me now, we had been walking along a street like this one and then the future swept over us and we were separated. He was in the distance now, across the ocean, on a beach, the wind ruffling his hair, I could hardly see his f
eatures. He was moving at an ever-increasing speed away from me, into the land of the dead, the dead past, irretrievable.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  I first met Arthur in Hyde Park. It was an accident: I collided with him between an anti-vivisectionist speaker and a man who was predicting the end of the world. I was living with a Polish Count in London at the time, and I still wasn't sure how I'd gotten into it.

  When I'd walked out my mother's front door two years earlier, closing it gently behind me so as not to wake her up, I had no such plans. In fact I had no plans at all. I had a suitcase in one hand and my purse in the other. The suitcase contained the few clothes that would still fit me, skirts with belts that could he pulled in, blouses that could be gathered and tucked; I'd had to discard a whole wardrobe over the year I'd been deflating. It was the end of June, almost my nineteenth birthday. I'd written the grade thirteen examinations and I knew I'd failed at least four papers, but the results wouldn't be available till August. In any case I didn't care.

  Aunt Lou's fox was in my suitcase, and in my purse I had her birth certificate and the picture of us at the National Exhibition. I had about thirty dollars, seventeen of my own and thirteen from the petty cash box my mother kept in the kitchen; I would repay it later. I could not yet collect Aunt Lou's legacy as I was still overweight, but I had money in the bank from my various jobs and I could get some out in the morning.

  I took a bus downtown, where I checked into the Royal York Hotel. This made me nervous: I'd never stayed in a hotel before in my life. I used Aunt Lou's name, as I didn't want my mother to trace me. That was stupid, she would have recognized Aunt Lou's name at once, but I didn't think of that. Instead I was prepared to be challenged by the desk clerk for being underage, and I would then have been able to whip out Aunt Lou's birth certificate and demonstrate that I was forty-nine.