‘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
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 towards me. We were frightened not to wear our prescribed woollen gloves; our palms brushed
