There’s a time when childhood ends, and it was then, under the swaying grandee on Eliza Street, under Prince Arthur, the Duke of Connaught. I put down my schoolbag so that I had two hands free, and gave Karina a shove into the gutter. She shoved me in turn against the wall, and we went on like that round the corner on to Curzon Street, pushing and grunting and trying to fend each other off, until we reached my front door which was on the latch and I went in and slammed it behind me. I wanted to bawl up the stairs, ‘Guess what Karina’s done now,’ but I knew that my mother was always on her side, and would think the pontiff a smart move, and want to know why I hadn’t written something similar.
Nowadays, when the word ‘child’ comes into my mind, I can never see a particular child, any single flesh-and-blood entity. I can only see one of the plaster cripples that in those days stood outside shops, effigies the height of a two-year-old, their outstretched hands supporting collecting boxes. Some of these effigies were boys and some girls, but their features were the same and their plaster-coloured curls; the only difference was that the boys wore short trousers and the girls a frill of skirt, and beneath this there was a cruel leg-iron, clamped to the lower limb. It was the leg-iron that caused people to drop pennies into the box; that, and the upturned, painted blue eyes.
You’re only young once, they say, but doesn’t it go on for a long time? More years than you can bear.
six
I must now tell you about our life at the Holy Redeemer; but first of all I must tell you how we came to be outfitted for it.
We had a list of what we had to get, and these were some of the things on it.
Outdoor shoes
Indoor shoes
Gym shoes
Shoe bag
Aertex blouse
Winter tunic
Girdle – girdle! ‘Martin,’ my mother said, ‘she’s required to have a girdle!’
‘Girdle!’ my father said. This had become his favoured method of communication: repeating what my mother said, as if it were alarming, far-fetched or intrinsically ludicrous.
‘A foundation garment,’ my mother said.
‘She seems very young for corsets.’
‘After all, they’re nuns, they don’t want young women going round . . . sticking out.’ She looked thoughtful. ‘It says “girdle in house colour”.’
Words came into my mouth and stuck there: backed up against my hard palate. I knew these girdles were the kind worn by princesses in distress. They were the kind you used to tether a unicorn, or to throw a lifeline to a gallant knight some ogre had cast from a tower. They were not whalebone, they were not elastic, they were more like ropes or strings, sewn with seed pearls or knitted from your own golden hair.
‘You can really only get white,’ my mother said. ‘Or flesh.’ She sucked her lip. Ankle socks white, winter knee socks grey. Underwear as regulation – the approved outfitter will be pleased to advise. ‘They don’t want to go into detail,’ my mother said. ‘Not in print. You can understand it.’
Winter hat, grey velour
Summer straw, school colours
Hockey stick
Tennis racquet
TENNIS RACQUET! I said
In summer, white gloves will be worn.
I was precipitated into Constantine & Co. by a push in the small of my back. I was in for a slap when I got home, this had been made clear to me: ‘Giggling and fidgeting like that in the bus; you ought to know better at your age!’ My mother was wearing a very big daub of Tan Fantastic, which Karina had been mocking. She was wearing a costume with a tight skirt, and pinned to the jacket her best brooch, a gilt wheel of big deep blue stones, deep as the sea. Karina’s mother lurched through the swinging glass doors behind us. Her coat came nearly down to her ankles and as usual she was lugging her tartan shopping bag.
This was the first time I had ever been taken to a shop for clothes. Everything I had needed until this point had been manufactured by my mother. I looked at Karina to see if she was any more at ease in this situation. She was standing with her eyes closed, breathing in the deep scent of leather and polish. A saleswoman dressed in black minced towards us over the polished floor, like a panther who has spotted something juicy: like a panther who has spotted something slow.
My mother unclasped her handbag with a big snap and withdrew the uniform list, folded in four.
‘The Holy Redeemer,’ the saleswoman murmured. She seemed to curtsey as she took it from my mother’s hand and opened it. Her fingers brushed her smiling throat as she ushered us towards the curtained cubicles of her choice. The room was built up to its lofty ceiling in glass cabinets and deep wooden drawers, some of which other salesladies slid open enticingly, to reveal stacks of stiff shirts bound in Cellophane; from which they lifted jerseys with their arms strait-jacketed by cardboard, in every size from dwarf to gross.
‘In here if you please,’ the saleswoman said, as if she were threatening us. The curtain swept behind her. I was shut up with my mother in my own cubicle, at dangerously close quarters. But she was all simpering smiles now: for the duration, I was her darling. She took off her coat and hung it on one of the hooks supplied, and at once her woman smell gushed out and filled the air: chemical tang of primitive deodorant, scent and grease of Tan Fantastic, flowery scent of face powder, emanation of armpit and cervix, milk duct and scalp.
I removed my clothes. I was pale as paper, my body without scent or flavour of its own. Each of my ribs could be counted; each vertebra was accessible to a casual eye. Around my nipples was a puffiness which looked like a disease. I had been worrying that I would have to undress in front of Karina, who was in advance of me, gently but definitely swollen. I knew I had to get a bosom, but I hoped it wouldn’t come on too quickly, because when it did I’d need an ‘A’ cup, size 32 broderie anglaise bra. And my mother would say, All this costs money, and as we are scrimping and saving for your education . . . The flatter my chest stayed, the cheaper I’d be.
The items required for the Holy Redeemer were brought in one by one, stiff on their glossy wooden hangers, by the saleswoman in black. Only the winter tunic was an exception; she carried it across her arms, palms spread beneath it, as in certain statues and paintings Our Lady bears the weight of the body of her crucified son. The tunic was clay coloured, a stiff deep grey-brown. In the uniform of the Holy Redeemer this colour predominated, but it was offset by a solid purple-red called maroon: and sometimes where you would least expect it, these two colours would collide and form stripes.
I slid my arms inside the chilly sleeves of a cream shirt blouse. My mother twitched the stiff collar into position and began to button it up; she was attending to me as if I were a three-year-old, impressing the saleslady with her maternal skills. When the blouse was fastened it came to mid-thigh. The cuffs hung below my hands as if I’d climbed into the body of an ape. ‘I’ll move the button,’ my mother said. The saleslady made an approving noise, and picked up the tunic. She dropped it over my head and it engulfed me. Daylight vanished. I took a breath inside its clay folds. My arms moved outwards as if I were trying to swim. My mother tugged, and the daylight reappeared. I stood with my arms out from my sides, looking down at my feet, which were visible under the tunic.
‘She’s bound to grow,’ my mother said. ‘Bound to.’
‘You’ll find,’ said the saleslady, ‘that they have very strict requirements about length at the Holy Redeemer. We may have to adjust a little, upwards.’ All three of us stared at my feet. ‘Indoor shoes.’ the saleslady said. ‘I shall be but one moment.’
She came back with a box. On the outside of it was a picture of what looked like a coracle. ‘We call this “The Diana”,’ the saleswoman said. ‘Wonderfully durable and absolutely recommended.’
When the shoe was revealed and lifted from its tissue paper, even my mother was taken aback: even she, who for the next seven years would hear not a word spoken against the Holy Redeemer and its dress codes and rules and strange demands. ‘Well, it i
s old-fashioned,’ she said, taking it unwillingly from the saleslady’s hand. The saleslady smiled, and showed one tooth. The shoe was brown, its toe was round, it had a bar across like an infant’s shoe. It had a sort of shelf around it, a running board; its sole looked an inch thick.
‘Sit down,’ my mother said. She grappled with my ankle. I wanted to curl my toes like a baby, squirm my soles so she couldn’t ram them into The Diana. When I stood up again I felt as if the floorboards had been fastened to my feet.
We heard, from outside the cubicle, a rush and clatter as an adjacent curtain was drawn back. ‘Show Mary,’ my mother said. She manoeuvred me out under the cruel strip lights. Karina and I stood side by side. We were clad, we were uniformed. We did not look at each other. Karina’s hands were bunched at her sides.
Karina’s mother said, ‘She must have vests.’
‘There is no mention of an approved vest-style on the Holy Redeemer’s list,’ the saleswoman said. ‘However, we do stock various excellent types which I shall show you without delay.’
‘Warm, solid vests,’ Karina’s mother insisted.
‘You’ll be needing vests, too,’ my mother said reprovingly. I understood that she had to match Karina’s mother item for item; never would it be said of a daughter of hers that she went to the Holy Redeemer ill-equipped.
An hour later Karina and I were back in our own clothes, with parcels about our feet, bolsters and boulders which contained the equipment for our new lives. We had yellow woolly vests with three buttons at the neck and big navy knickers of soft furry cloth, and ankle boots for severe weather and tan leather satchels; also grey woollen gloves and lace-up outdoor shoes and presses for our tennis racquets and maroon and clay-colour striped scarves. My mother took out her bulging purse.
I averted my eyes. It seemed to me the cost of this was almost as much as the cost of our house. And I bit my lips, thinking of the humiliation of Karina’s mother, who surely would not have planned for this, would not have seen so much money in her whole life. I pictured the knickers and the racquet press confiscated, stacked back on the shelves, the pullover re-imprisoned in its cardboard and Cellophane and consigned again to one of the varnished drawers, and Karina herself sleeving away a tear as she recognized that she would never go to the Holy Redeemer now . . .
Mary hoisted up her tartan shopping bag and unzipped it. The sound of the zip, like God farting, seemed to fill the shop. She plunged in her hands like a woman plunging them into the washing-up bowl, and drew out two fistfuls of one-pound notes. She thrust them at the saleslady and dived back in for more.
Hands full, the saleslady recoiled. I noticed that a smudge of her orange lipstick had come off on her predatory tooth. Karina reached out and pulled the tartan bag from her mother’s grasp. I heard from inside it a deep jangle of loose change, half-crowns and two-shilling pieces and big change of that sort. Karina scooped the notes back from the salewoman’s hands, and began to count them out, one by one, into her ready palm, counting out loud with deliberation, as though she were at school and this were a test. Then she dipped back into the bag, brought out some more pound notes, and continued the process, until the saleswoman purred and was satisfied, and advanced on the till licking her lips, and left us alone to start stacking our gains into each other’s arms.
On the way back to the bus, Karina said to me, ‘Are those sapphires, actual gemstones, that your mother is wearing?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘They’re glass.’
‘I wonder why she bothers,’ Karina said thoughtfully. ‘Embarrassing, really, isn’t it?’
I never thought the day could come, but it did; or at least the eve. On the 11th of September my mother sent me to bed at eight o’clock. It was light outside, and a blackbird trilled in Curzon Street’s one bush. I lay between the sheets trying to compel sleep and yet to deny it; I did not want to lie awake the whole long night, and yet I was afraid of the morning. I had heard of knights who, wishing to keep a vigil without nodding, slit the ball of their thumb and rubbed salt into the cut; formerly, my curl-rags had served this function. But the rules of the Holy Redeemer, which my mother and I had both studied, stated that hair was to be worn tied back and off the face, in a neat and restrained style; my mother could see that luxuriant ringlets would not fit this brief. Instead she had set my hair in kirby grips in a series of well-regulated corrugations all over my skull; the rest she was proposing to clamp back in a big plastic-toothed pony-tail comb. As an alternative, she said, I could have plaits. She had bought three yards of approved maroon ribbon from Constantine & Co. Even she could see that I might need a change, from time to time.
I turned over, cheek against the pillow. Kirby grips swivelled and upended themselves and probed my tender scalp. My blouse and tunic were hanging outside the wardrobe, as if to heighten their state of readiness, and mine. Music crept up, from the sitting-room below; we had a TV set now, and I knew my father was seated before it, his jigsaw puzzle unattended on the table, while my mother rampaged about in the kitchen. I would have liked to throw aside the blankets and creep down to them, embrace their knees and say I am one of you: offer my father to fill in the sky, on this puzzle and any to come. But I had seen the pitiless state of my mother’s face: pitiless and proud and full of tension, as if it were she herself who were going to the Holy Redeemer in the morning.
I thought of Jane Eyre, the night before her wedding. She thought it was presumptuous to label her effects as Mrs Rochester; she would not anticipate the event. Then the real Mrs Rochester with her blood-congested face and psychotic eyes came down from the attic and ripped her veil in two. Every item purchased from Constantine & Co. was now sewed with a name-tape; for better or worse, it belonged to me. I wished something would come down from the garret and rend my tunic, which glowed like an old corpse in the darkening room.
I must have slept. At six o’clock, when Curzon Street was empty and the air was the colour of a dove, my mother was at my bedroom door, shouting at me to get out of bed this very minute. My grey wool socks, striped at the turn-down with two rows of maroon, tugged over my feet and rolled up to my knees; my outdoor shoes clamped on to my feet. My mother plucked out each kirby grip with a flourish. My corrugated hair rolled back from my forehead, reeking of setting-lotion.
My mother looked at me fearfully, as if I were a prodigy, a monster. She watched me eat, each mouthful. My mouth was dry and my toast rolled up into little pellets in my mouth. ‘A pity you could never eat breakfast,’ she said. I thought of the likely scene in Karina’s house; half a dozen eggs spitting in a pan, Mary gripping a butcher’s knife and smiting slices from a side of bacon which dangled on an iron hook from the ceiling.
I pushed my plate aside, with the cold remains of the rubber bread. ‘Martin, do up her tie for her,’ my mother said.
My father said, ‘Doesn’t she know how?’
My mother said, ‘What do you think she is, Vesta Tilley?’
‘Vesta Tilley! That was a bow-tie she wore,’ my father said.
My heart had sunk down into my stomach; it felt soft and spongy and as if it were folding up on itself, like a bedroom slipper doubled in two.
The moment came. My mother flung open the door. She clamped my hat on my head and thrust me out into Curzon Street. The morning was mild. Through it a grim shape moved towards me, solid like a tank. It was Karina. Like me, she carried her empty satchel slung over her shoulder; like me, she wore a donkey-coloured coat that came down below her calves. ‘Have you ever heard of somebody called Vesta Tilley?’ I said.
‘Yes,’ Karina said surprisingly. ‘She is in music-halls. She sings she’s Burlington Bertie.’
We turned on to Bismarck Street. The Prince of Connaught swung above our heads. ‘Remember when we used to play him?’ I said to Karina. I was half-smiling, indulgent, as if this folly were a world away.
‘Yes,’ Karina said. ‘Daft, weren’t we?’ Her tone was the same as mine; she turned her head, smiled slowly, and put out her hand tow
ards me. We were frightened not to wear our prescribed woollen gloves; our palms brushed and squeaked against each other, then snagged together, then stuck in a clammy fastness. We passed our old school – shuttered, unpopulated at this hour, the playground bare except for blowing litter, the double doors locked fast; this autumn it would go on without us, bursting with screaming children sucking up their milk and spilling their ink and knuckling each other’s heads and being searched for lice, chanting their times tables and feeling the cane bruise their frozen fingertips. ‘It looks so small, doesn’t it?,’ Karina said. ‘Pathetic.’ We turned downhill towards the bus station, cast our satchels on to our outer shoulders, and began to link.
When we arrived at the bus-stop near the market place, Susan Millington was there, standing at the head of the queue. She was in her Holy Redeemer summer uniform, her striped blazer and boater, and this shocked me slightly; obviously, some concession was made to the sun, and I thought that, if my mother were in charge at the Holy Redeemer, no concession of any sort would be made. Susan Millington leant on her hockey stick, which was turned inwards between her feet. Her hands were bare, clothed neither in white cotton gloves nor grey woollen gloves; and they were brown because – as everyone was aware – she had recently returned from a family holiday in Portugal.
‘Susan,’ I said. ‘Hello there.’
Susan Millington turned to me her long horse-face. She looked down at me and moved her lip, as if she were whinnying. Then she turned away, and spoke to her companion, and both of them laughed in a long hectic gust of horse-laughter.
Karina pulled at my coat sleeve. ‘You can’t speak to her! Her dad’s a dentist.’