The Jeweller's Skin (6 page)

1916

A week after Narcisa’s daughter was born, they brought the French interpreter again.  She was a small, stylish woman with crimped black hair, who kept her gloves on all through the questioning.  They were blue kid, reaching half-way to her elbow, and while she was listening to the Medical Superintendent she kept stroking them down over the backs of her hands.

Nobody had told Narcisa they were coming.  She was in the infirmary, still exhausted and in some pain from the long labour.  They brought her the baby to feed every so often, it seemed at the simple whim of the nurse on duty.  Sometimes she didn’t have enough milk, and the child went on wailing.  She was sturdy, although so small, with a slick of black hair.  The sound she made, crying Narcisa supposed from hunger, spread out from the bed into the whole ward.  Then a nurse would come and carry her away, and Narcisa would hear cries fading down the ward, till a door closed and it was quiet again.

That morning she was sitting up in bed, trying to knit a bonnet for the baby.  It was July, sunny, and the ward was stuffy; her hands sweated onto the white knitting.  One of the attendants had taught her to knit, soon after they discovered she was pregnant.  The baby-clothes she made were plain and misshapen, but she kept on knitting because the child needed clothes, and it seemed to be her duty to provide them.  By now at least she worked less awkwardly.  The thin wool pulled taut across her fingers, the wooden needles clicked more or less rhythmically.  The narrow fringe of fabric grew very slowly.  At the end of each row she stopped and stretched it out.

The little fat nurse called Wendle came hurrying in.  ‘Come on, Humphreys,’ she said, and more that Narcisa didn’t understand.  She took the knitting out of her hands.  ‘Doctor coming,’ she said impatiently.  She pushed her forward and straightened up the pillows, then yanked her back by the shoulder to sit against them.  The movement pulled at the torn place between her legs, and she cried out.

‘Big doctor,’ she said, pulling the sheet flat. ‘Oh, can’t you understand?  Medical Superintendent.  Dr Gross.’

They came down the ward: Dr Gross with his light-coloured beard; the Matron; and Madame Taté, the interpreter.  They had brought her in only once before.

They stood round the bed, these three important people and the nurse.  Narcisa thought they must be talking about her, but couldn’t make out what it was they were saying.  She felt blood seeping heavily out of her, onto the pad of rags under her nightgown.

She crossed her arms to cover her swollen breasts.  Dr Gross smiled and spoke to Madame Taté.

‘Monsieur the Medical Superintendent says there is no need for you to be embarrassed.’  She spoke flatly.

‘I am cold,’ she said to defend herself.

The nurse found a shawl and put it round her shoulders.  She drew the corners down over her chest.

They pulled up chairs, the Medical Superintendent and Madame Taté on one side, the Matron and Nurse Wendle on the other.  Dr Gross cleared his throat and began to speak. His cheeks in the gap of the beard were smooth and rounded; his lips seemed too red under the fair moustache.  Madame Taté stroked her gloves and listened.

‘Monsieur the Medical Superintendent says that now your child is born the asylum has to consider arrangements for its welfare.  In order for the legal position to be established you will have to provide full information as to the circumstances of its conception.’

She said nothing.  Dr Gross sat straighter in his chair.

‘He remembers that you refused to speak at the time you were first questioned, but he thought that now your child has been born you would be concerned for her welfare.’

‘What has this got to do with her welfare?’  She heard her own tone, sullen.  She was frightened.

Further down the ward a woman cried out twice, as if in pain.  Narcisa turned and saw her try to sit up in bed, her long hair hanging lank over her face.  Nurse Wendle murmured something and went to her.

‘Her father should be obliged to contribute to her upkeep.’  Madame Taté turned back to listen to Dr Gross.  ‘Also you will be able to retrieve your reputation, if a man has taken advantage of your situation here.’

She watched Nurse Wendle take a brown bottle from the cupboard, and pour from it into a spoon, which she held out.  The sick woman took it and lay down again.   Nurse Wendle pulled up the covers, and patted the woman’s shoulder.

Dr Gross was looking at her almost kindly. 

‘I was not raped.’  For a moment she remembered lying in the grass, and holding the boy’s head against her shoulder.

‘You must not be ashamed to tell Monsieur the Medical Superintendent if you were forced in any way to consent.  He understands that you were in a vulnerable position.’ Madame Taté said all this completely without expression, looking down all the time at her blue gloves.

‘I was not forced.’

Dr Gross’ voice rose a little louder.  Madame Taté said in the same neutral tone, ‘Then you must give us the name of the man concerned.’

She said nothing.

Dr Gross and the Matron stood up and moved away.  She was a bony, grey-haired woman who rarely spoke.  Now she stood with her head slightly bowed in the white cap.  Every so often she said something that sounded cautious.  Dr Gross shook his head.

Nurse Wendle went back to the sick woman along the ward.  Madame Taté turned to Narcisa.  ‘Listen,’ she said quietly, ‘you are making it worse.  Can’t you understand, they don’t know what to do.  You don’t have to say who he is.  Just tell them something.’

She was still sitting perfectly upright in her chair.  Dr Gross and the Matron came back to the bed.  Before he could speak, Narcisa said to Madame Taté, ‘Tell them it was the day that I escaped.’

She nodded slightly and turned to Dr Gross.  His shoulders slumped a little as he listened.

‘So the incident took place outside the asylum?’  Madame Taté’s voice was toneless again.

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘And you are not willing to reveal his name?’

‘No.’

Dr Gross spoke at length.  At the end of the ward, a patient in overalls started mopping the floor.  The smell of bleach made her gag.  Matron spoke to Nurse Wendle, who shooed the patient away.

‘Monsieur the Medical Superintendent says you are being very foolish, but that clearly he cannot oblige you to give the name.  They will consider how this should be handled.’

They got up to go.  ‘What will happen?’ she asked.

‘They will tell you when the arrangements have been made.’

The others were already walking towards the door.  She reached out and touched Madame Taté’s arm.  ‘What does that mean?’

‘It means they will send the baby away out of here, after three months, six months?  I don’t know.’

‘Thank you,’ she said, but the interpreter was already catching up with the doctor and matron.

1917

She woke and a woman was sitting on her bed.  She was wearing patient’s uniform, a too-large dress.  Her hair was pulled back in a thick fair plait.  There was a birthmark high on her left cheek, a raised stain.

‘Look,’ she said, and held up a baby’s white wool dress.  Narcisa reached out and felt it.

She could not stop crying.  Her lungs and shoulders ached with it.  The woman moved to go, but she grasped her arm.  Awkwardly, the woman patted her once on the shoulder.

She wailed as her daughter had, in desolation.

The woman felt in her pocket and produced a handkerchief.  ‘You poor thing,’ she said.

Narcisa stared at her.

‘Do you understand?’ She was speaking slowly, whispering not to be heard.  ‘I’m sorry about your baby.’

She cried again.

‘What’s your name?’ the woman asked.  ‘I’m Esther.’

She nodded.

‘I think it’s awful, what they do,’ Esther said.  ‘I’ve got a little boy, you see.’  Then she spoke more quickly, and Narcisa couldn’t follow.  She lay listening to the quiet hoarse voice. At one point tears were running down the woman’s cheeks.  One spread out across the crimson birthmark.

The woman wiped her eyes with the flat of her hands.  ‘Listen,’ she said, speaking slowly again.  ‘They want to move you.  Do you know what I’m saying?  To the locked ward.’

‘Locked?’ she asked, frightened.  ‘Me? Locked ward?’

‘They think you’re bad. You know’ – she was searching for kinder words – ‘having a bad time now.  Ill.  Nurse Holmes said.’

‘No locked.  No. No, I can not.’

‘Can you get up?’ the woman asked.  ‘Put your clothes on?’

She nodded.

To avoid the locked ward she would have to be quiet.  She thought of her daughter screaming out to her, carried by Matron out of the long ward.  ‘Baby,’ she said, but couldn’t explain in English.  She rocked on the bed, as she had with the child in her arms.

‘Try,’ Esther said, and stood up, as the attendant Parsons came bustling towards them.

*

The thought of returning to the locked upstairs ward sent her back to the security of sleep.  She dreamed of Edwin at the first-floor window of the Camberwell house, making signs to her as she stood across the street.  He repeated the few gestures again and again, and she spread her arms wide in incomprehension, until a policeman came to bring her back.  Then she was inside the house, in some room she had never found before, alone.  She was still pregnant, and her daughter’s kicks were making a noise inside her like kettle-drums.

When she woke she remembered the threat.  It was daytime: the ward was washed with a pale grey light.  Someone a few beds away was mumbling.  There were the usual smells, disinfectant and unwashed female bodies and urine.

She sat up.  She must get dressed.  There were no clothes on the chair beside her bed; the last that she’d worn must have been sent to the laundry.  She got out of bed and looked for an attendant.

There was no-one around, apart from the old woman talking to herself, and a young girl down near the door, bedclothes thrown off, her hand under her nightdress, masturbating.  As Narcisa passed she raised herself on one elbow and spat.

She opened the door onto the corridor.  A porter, a big man with a bald head, was pushing a trolley stacked high with brown parcels.  ‘Hello, darling,’ he said.  ‘You looking for someone?’

Her nightdress felt very thin and clinging.  She wanted to shrink away and close the door.  Instead she said, shivering, ‘Attendant.’

‘You need an attendant?  Fine, love.  Leave it with me.’  He winked and went on pushing the heavy trolley.  She watched his broad back in the sepia cotton coat.  At a bend in the corridor he spoke to someone. 

The attendant Parsons came towards her, half-running.

‘Oh, it’s you, Humphreys.’  She pushed her back into the ward, holding her elbow.  ‘What are you doing?’

‘Better,’ she said, and pointed to her chest.  The English words she’d known came back piecemeal.  ‘Dress.’

‘Oh, you’re better, are you?’  She laughed.  She was a cheerful woman, with a smooth face, and large firm breasts under her uniform.  ‘Has the doctor seen you?’

She knew she had to be clever to defeat them.   ‘No doctor.  Better.  Work now.  Work.’

‘Well,’ she said, ‘not many patients ask to work, do they?  I don’t know.’

‘Bath?’  she asked.  Her skin felt heavy with lint off the sheets and grease .

‘You can’t have a bath, it’s Wednesday, isn’t it?’

‘Please, bath,’ she said.  ‘Bath - dress - work.’  She could feel the panic expanding in her stomach.  She longed to be back under the rough blankets, wordless.

‘I don’t know,’ Parsons said again.  ‘I should wait and ask Sister.  I’ll tell you what, you have a wash and take your time.’

Narcisa looked at her, helpless.

‘Oh Lord.  You wash’ - she spoke loudly, and the young woman in bed swore - ‘You wash’ - she mimed it - ‘all over - no hurry.  All right?’

She stood naked at the stone basin, and washed herself quickly with a worn face-cloth.  There was no hot water, and the wash-room was icy.  It should have been luxury to wash alone; but she was anxious, planning the next steps, to get herself sent to work and avoid attention.  She soaped her breasts, and the memory of feeding the baby made her dizzy.  She leaned on the basin.  As she straightened again, she thought she saw her mother, in the doorway to one of the bathrooms.  She called out, but her mother had already gone.

‘You all right, Humphreys?’ the attendant called.  She came in and leant against the wall, watching idly.  Narcisa stopped herself shouting
go away
, the words so close to her tongue they made her cough.  Instead she finished as quickly as she could, and rubbed herself hard with the little towel, for warmth.

Back on the ward, she put on the clothes Parsons had found her.  The dress must have shrunk in the wash: it was too tight over her chest and the upper part of her arms. ‘Work?’ she asked.

‘Oh, you can’t work until Sister has seen you.  Come on, I’ll brush your hair.  You’ve got nice hair.’

Narcisa stood in front of the woman.  She was rough, pulling the hair out straight with the brush, almost beating at it to tug out the tangles.  Narcisa’s head jerked back with the strokes; her scalp was painful.  She remembered her Aunt Apolonija doing the same, how she would wriggle and cry out when the brushing hurt her.  There were tears in her eyes, maybe from the pain; but she felt the panic release in her a little.  Then she was cautious, afraid of being outwitted.             

Parsons plaited Narcisa’s hair and looked round for something to tie it.  There was a length of pink tape on someone’s night table, so she stole it calmly and made it into a bow.  ‘There,’ she said, standing back and patting her shoulder.  ‘You look quite nice.’

‘What I do?’ Narcisa asked.  She couldn’t sit in the day-room, doing nothing.

Parsons thought for a moment.

‘I’ll tell you what,’ she said.  ‘You can clean my room.  But you mustn’t tell, we’re not meant to.  Promise?’

Narcisa followed her out to the curving corridor.  Parsons looked to either side, then grabbed Narcisa’s wrist, and pulled her along.  They went like this along a side corridor and up some stairs.

The room was narrow, and full of heavy scents.  Narcisa stood when the woman had closed the door, and breathed in smells she’d forgotten, talc and face-cream and some kind of florid perfume.

‘All right,’ Parsons said, sullen.  ‘I know it’s a mess.  You don’t know what it’s like..’ Narcisa lost the rest, a complaint perhaps.

A petticoat drooped from the seat of a chair, towards a pair of drawers collapsed on the floor.  The bed was a bundle of sheets and counterpane, with a red flannel nightdress thrown over the pillow.  A bright-covered book lay open face down on the night-stand, next to a hairbrush and two or three letters.

‘Now what you do,’ she said, cheerful again.  ‘Make the bed for me, and dust - I’ll find you a duster.  And sweep the floor.  The clothes go in here’ - she pointed to the chest of drawers.  And the pot..’  she considered.  ‘You can empty it, down the end of the corridor, only wait till there’s nobody around.  Do you understand?’

She went out, and came back with a broom and a duster.  ‘You’ve got to be quiet,’ she said.  ‘It’s really important.  Trouble - bad trouble.  For both of us.  I’ll come and get you in an hour or so.’

Narcisa sat on the bed, wondering how to manage.  The sultry smells of the room were like a trap.  She could fall asleep in them, in this woman’s sheets, a child waiting for her mother to return.  She closed her eyes, bracing her arms not to fall sideways.  There were more layers to the smell: rosewater, and stale urine from the pot under the bed.

She was supposed to empty the chamber-pot.

She opened her eyes.  There was a man’s black comb on the night-table.

She stood suddenly, full of energy and revulsion.  She wanted to shout: I am not your maid.  I am not used to having to clean rooms.   She wanted to pick up the pot and empty it, over the woman’s bed and her red flannel nightdress, and run away back through the hospital.

In Camberwell there had been a pink satin bedspread.  She could see it superimposed on this narrow bed, folded back, slipping off because they had been making love; and herself lying back, supple and soft-skinned, her legs wide open, in satisfaction.

Stop.

She made herself stand, and lift the flannel nightdress up to fold it.  It smelt intimately of sweat and lavender water.

She drew the curtains, undressed, and put it on.  The smell of the other woman’s skin was disturbing.  The cloth was soft and comforting on her shoulders.

She looked in the mirror.  With her hair in a plait, she could have been any young woman, going to bed in the plain single room.

It is my room, she told herself.  I am allowed to come and go in it.  These are my letters, from my family.  My lover came in late and spent the night here.

She made the bed, smoothing the sheets with care, tucking in the corners as she’d been shown.  She pulled up the blue cotton counterpane.  There, she thought, they’ll never know he was here.  Then she took off the nightdress, and laid it, carefully folded, at the head.  The red was fierce against the dark blue.

She put on the white drawers and petticoat.  They were much too big, but the cotton felt pleasantly crisp still from the laundry.  Dressed in the woman’s underclothes, she took the duster, and wiped the top of the chest of drawers, the back of the upright chair, the night-table.  In the back of her mind the young married woman she’d been was indignant at having to learn such menial work.  I am not Narcisa, she told this person: I am Florence Parsons.  She opened the window and flapped the rug outside, singing an old song under her breath, pretending that the words were in English.

Her mother joined in.  She didn’t see her at first, but heard her voice, sweetened and amplified in the narrow room.  When she turned from dusting the mirror her mother was there, in the armchair, very pale in her grey turn-of-the-century dress.

She began to weep.  ‘I thought you’d gone,’ she said.

Her mother went on singing.

‘I’m not that woman,’ Narcisa said, and took off the clothes.  ‘Look,’ she begged, naked.  ‘You can see I’m Narcisa.’

Her mother looked steadily at her breasts and the stretch marks on her belly.

‘I know,’ she said, ‘I know, but I couldn’t help it.’

Her mother stood up and Narcisa rushed forward to hug her.  She fell onto the empty chair, and howled, over and over, beating her forehead on the upholstered seat.

Then the door opened.  There were hands gripping her arms, and shouting voices.