Edith Holler, page 9
Gave me quite the shock.
“Who are you?” I asked. “Whatever are you doing there?”
It shifted, this boy, terror in his face. I think he had been crying. Hair all ruffed up and coming out at all angles, like a cat when it is alarmed. (We did have a cat here once—an excellent ratter—but the dear creature was run over by a horse-drawn omnibus on the Prince of Wales Road, one of Norwich’s busiest streets.)
“You can’t be here,” I said. “This is not the place for sad boys to be. You must not, you know. And I do know, for I was born here. Miss Edith Holler, the author of The True History of Mawther Meg, even now going into production. What are you then? Come on, pipe up. Are you all right? Are you unhappy, gentleman?”
But the boy just sat there staring, a little snivel.
“Poor fellow, whatever is the matter?”
Still silent, still sitting, but the eyes big and afeared and weeping.
“Are you a coat? I don’t think you are. This is the place for coats, you see, not unhappy boys. I ask again: Are you a coat?”
He shakes his head. That’s good.
“So then, what are you? Come closer at last.”
He slowly rises.
“Speak!” I whispered, very gentle. “Are you a goblin damned?”
He put a finger to his lips.
I saw his eyes shine a little in the light, and then his whole face covered over, like a curtain had come before it. His eyes closed; his lids like two folds of cloth. And then I could see the face no more and he looked less and less like a boy at all and more like a piece of old worsted—until the boy collapsed into a pile, nothing but a small heap of old material.
“Where are you? Where have you gone? What have you done with yourself?”
I touched the worsted. He wasn’t in there, the boy wasn’t. As if he never had been. The material was ever so slightly damp; that discomforted me, as if the tears had wetted it. I dropped it again, it fell in a pile.
“Where are you now?” I called. “Come out. I shall not hurt you.”
I looked around the cloakroom. Everything as it should have been. Yet then I spied some hurried movement on the ground, something rushing by in the shadows. A rat maybe? We do have some rats here. I went chasing around after it and just managed to catch a glimpse of the worsted thing rushing down through a gap in the wall, where the skirting had come loose. I leaped at it and caught just the smallest corner of cloth end. I had it in my grasp, but one tight tug and something scratched my fingers, something like a cat’s claws, and in my surprise I loosened my grip and it was gone. No, not there anymore. Spirit of worsted.
“Oh!” I said to myself. “You’ve found yourself a ghost! A ghost!” I cried. Was it so?
I saw it. I did, I did.
There is a ghost in Hamlet. It is not just Hamlet that sees his father, no, no, Francisco and Ernesto and Marcellus start the play with the ghost; even Horatio, who is about the most rational of characters, even he sees the ghost plain enough. So then. There are shifting, danking, creeping ones, hiding in the theatre corners, not just in the plays but emerged, perhaps, to live among us. Whistling in the pipes. Stalking the understudies. Indeed, dear Mr. Leadham, our donkey keeper, has often said that in his blindness he can feel the ghosts of donkeys past all about him.
I opened the cloakroom door. “Ghost! Ghost!” I cried.
“Edith!” called Uncle Jerome.
“Miss Edith, there you are!” Mealing, running.
“How ill she looks.” Collin with him.
“I saw a ghost!”
“Miss Edith, come here at once.” Flora too.
Exit Edith.
II
She comes.
6.
The new mother.
My aunt Nora, the wardrobe mistress, lived only to stitch and cut. She was always busy about her tailoring, she feared I think ever to stop, but must always be bullying the material, cutting into it, piercing it with her needle until it surrendered. She is of true Norwich stock-in-trade, for what else was Norwich but a city of looms? Our great history is built on wool, we are a weaving people. Or perhaps I should say we were a weaving people, but we came to the machinery too late, we mechanized our spindles too long after everyone else, and so we lost to Manchester and Leeds and other places which had so much coal on their doorsteps. They took our clothing from us, and we were left naked and hungry. Down fell Norwich, once the second greatest city in the country, down the list it tumbled, until at last we picked ourselves up again, quite literally by our bootstraps. Where we used to be all clothing, now we do shoes and boots; we have fallen, you see, much closer to the ground. A little half inch of sole protects us from the unforgiving street.
Norwich worsted.
Yet once we were the greatest city in all the world for worsted, though perhaps only my aunt Nora chooses to believe it still today. (And it is surely Aunt Nora who remembers that the material is properly Norfolk, originating from the village of Worstead, which is but twelve miles away.) Aunt Nora has clothed everyone. She orders her little army of assistants like a great general, and all obey and go to battle over worsted or velvet or calico or silk or cotton. And in her hands, perhaps as much as any actor, she has made characters: she made all the Hamlets and Othellos, all the Changelings, all the Volpones and Alcestes, all the Cinderellas and witches, too, also all the fairy godmothers and every one of the fairies. Without her help they would all be naked, half-thought-out, shocking things. She had rolls of roles upon her shelf, bolts and bolts of them, just waiting for her scissors and needles to cut and prick them into life. And now, a pin in her mouth, she was stitching me up.
“Aunt Nora, the ghost I saw yesterday . . .”
“Not that again, that was yesterday’s tale.”
“If you see a ghost, does it mean you’re going to die?”
“What rot.”
“Do you believe in ghosts?”
“Of course I do: ghost of Banquo, for example.”
“I mean real ghosts.”
“Do keep still. Look front.”
“Norwich has many ghosts.”
“And here we go.”
“There is the ghost of Lord Sheffield who haunts the Adam and Eve pub, he who was killed in Robert Kett’s rebellion. There is a monk that comes to the Maddermarket and he is a ghost. There’s a woman on fire in the castle moat, and a head that floats inside the castle. And there’s the Grey Lady who was a girl like me locked in her home, sealed up during the Black Death—they thought her dead and closed the house up, but she was alive still, and she ate a little of her dead family but still she starved to death!”
“Edith, enough!”
“The Grey Lady, she is called, and she walks Tombland. There she is now!”
“Edith! Stop it at once! Face forward, I do make you a lady in white. Be silent, be still.”
No one ever argued with Aunt Nora. When she gave you your costume you took it gratefully and left, and if that costume fitted you strangely, made one shoulder higher than the other for example, or added a paunch when you had not been expecting one, it was because Aunt Nora in her great wisdom had declared it so, and now the actor must alter his performance to match Aunt Nora’s chosen dimensions. What seemed at first a strange decision on her part, a terrible artistic dictatorship from the wardrobe, soon became the key to an exacting performance. The actors rarely thanked Nora for her great wisdom, and indeed Nora did not expect them to: she cared less and less for people. When Uncle Gregory betrayed her with the woman from Bungay, her hands afterward felt love only in clothing, never in the wearer. To Aunt Nora, most people were merely coat hangers.
That morning, I tried to understand the significance of the white personality that Aunt Nora was stitching me into. Was I supposed by it to look pure and innocent, or to appear a blank upon which my new mother might feel free to write? To give the impression of a dumb doll, or—like my mother, one of her predecessors—a Saint Joan on her way to execution? Or was I merely a table napkin, or a bit of lavatory roll? Was Aunt Nora disguising me so that my new mother would not be able to get at the real Edith, hidden behind so much blazing whiteness? I could not say. All I knew with certainty was that it was not comfortable.
“I don’t like it.”
“That’s scarcely relevant.”
“I feel like someone else.”
“You must look perfect.”
“Why must I look perfect?”
“Because today she is coming.”
“I feel like I’m being readied for my coffin.”
“Edith, keep still. It’s from an old nativity, one of the angels.”
“I’m not an angel.”
“You’re not an angel.”
“What’s she like?”
“You’ll see.”
A bell was ringing. Father’s bell.
“It is time, Edith.”
“Why am I frightened?”
“You must run along now. Best manners, remember.”
“I do try, Aunt Nora.”
“And look here quickly, Edith,” said my aunt, drawing me to the other end of the wardrobe workshop. “What is this, do you suppose?”
“I don’t know, Aunt . . . yet can it be?”
It was a new costume, beggars’ clothing, strips of patched-together linen making a hunched spider in form, a poor neglected creature.
“Is it,” I whispered, “is it for Mawther Meg?”
“It is, Edith. It is my tryout, to get the spirit of her in rags. What do you think?”
“Oh, it is perfect, Aunt Nora!” I cried, and I hugged her, and in so doing hugged likewise the wretched clothing of Mawther Meg.
“You did this, Edith. Is all your doing,” said Nora, gently putting me aside.
The bell sounded again.
“Go child, go.”
* * *
• • •
Mr. Collin was waiting on the landing. He was dressed as Father, just in case I suppose, but was holding Father’s nose in a handkerchief.
“Godspeed, dear Edith.”
“Once more into the breeches,” I said.
“A plague on both your trousers,” he replied in good spirit.
At the bottom of the stairs I saw a sullen child in a tattered dress—one of the carpenter’s girls, I supposed, or one of Bleachy’s. She saw me and scurried away.
Down I went, step by step, communing with Norwich’s famous anchorite.
“All shall be well,” I chanted.
Step.
“And all shall be well.”
Step.
“And all manner of things shall be well.”
No more steps, but a door. And then another.
* * *
• • •
Into Father’s drawing room —another room I am not supposed to enter without invitation, but which I sometimes invite myself to visit when Father is long absent. Father was standing at the mantel looking upright. Actual Father, the greatest of all mannequins, the tall master, the shapeshifter, the actor, the boss, the middle-aged man, and the love. He was propped up this morning by one of his most delightful smiles: a special smile, one he enlists rarely, sometimes there are whole years between appearances. But he had found it this morning, and there he was at last, my darling father. So much love in the morning. I forgave him immediately, of course I did.
“Father, I saw a ghost!”
“Did you?” Then, clearing his throat, “Good morning, Edith.”
And where was she then, the Margaret Mother?
An armchair, I saw. Father’s chair, I saw. She was in Father’s chair, I saw. A seizing of property! I came close to Father and put out my arms to hug him, but Father—with more restraint than was usual between us—took me gently by the shoulders and turned me round to face the armchair and the one that was using it.
“Here, Margaret, is Edith. Edith daughter, this is Mrs. Margaret Unthank. Formerly Miss Margaret Utting.”
It was true, then. A descendant of Mawther Meg was before me. Maw Meg, from my very own play. And so I saw her. Or faced her, at least. But already a storm of shyness had descended, and I was looking instead at the carpet. An Utting!
“So this is Edith.”
No, no, it’s the bloody pope, I thought. Head of the Catholic Church.
I’ll not look at her, I refuse. I’ll never see her face.
Yet I admit, after all, I was curious. And I couldn’t wait forever. So, then, I looked up. The neat, sensible shoes; the pretty dress of raw silk; the motherly waist; the necklace with a pendant of a golden beetle hanging from it. It was a deathwatch beetle, confirming outright that she belonged to that family. The great Spread people.
There was Margaret. Margaret upon the land of theatre. Here she is in a hurry: tall, really quite tall, taller than Father surely. A plain face perhaps, rather large, somewhat ruddy. Early forties. Full of bosom. Dark hair. She is an amazon. She is Norwich’s Hippolyta.
Will she stroke my hair? I wonder.
She looks so lovely. Like a painting, a different creature to the ones here in the theatre. She is so natural. Here is nature! The world beyond the theatre! Here in this person.
I think, for a moment, I might even love her already.
So then why did I go and do it? Why then, when all seemed so good? Why did I? The truth is, I could not stop myself. The idea was suddenly there, and it was so strong and powerful that I could not help but act upon it. I had no choice, not really.
As I stepped forward to greet her, my foot got somehow twisted in the carpet. And next: the modest tower of Edith, more of a tenement I suppose, came tumbling down.
My body collapsed. I fell not unto the hearthrug, nor backward into the huge hands of my able Father. No, I toppled forward, collapsed fully upon Margaret. I launched myself at her. I went Margaret fishing and caught myself a whopper.
There was a slight scream from Margaret, and a gasp, which must have come from Father. But there I was upon her, learning her properly with my senses, my cheek on her, my nose learning her particular smells, my ear learning her heart muscle. I had her. It was the quickest way I could imagine of catching her proper: not by little conversations and nicenesses, but by physical touch, by feeling her body.
The Margaret went stiff as I landed and then her hands were about me patting me, touching my forehead, stroking my hair. She was touching me.
Of course there were cries of “EDITH! EDITH!” as when are there not?
“Is she all right? Is she quite all right?” This from Margaret. “Has she fainted?”
And when she opened her mouth, I smelled her deep within.
There was something under the rose water on her skin—what was it, now? I’ll tell thee: it was bacon fat. No, no it was more than that: IT WAS DEATH.
Margaret stunk of many dead things.
And then I saw it for a brief moment: her teeth. Margaret had sharp teeth, like a cat or a vampyre or an ogre or a serpent or a monster. Sharp, pointed teeth. I saw them just for a moment, and she, Margaret, saw my slight look—I’m sure she did, for a second later, as if in a flinch, she was digging her perfect fingernails into my arm and shaking me.
Father was letting a monster in the house! A vicious strange beast! I had discovered the truth. Father had been taken in by the creature and had welcomed her into our home.
“What has happened to the child! Is she quite well?”
“She has tripped, Margaret. She has lost her footing. She is very frail, you see. Not as strong as us.”
“Poor thing.”
“Up you get, Edith. Are you quite all right?”
And up I got, my face so aflame it could not even be put out by the whiteness of the dress. I was very like a candle that first morning of Margaret. “I am so sorry. So very sorry,” I said, and I meant it, though mostly I was sorry for those teeth.
“She talks, then!” said Margaret. “The papers called her mute, and you never said otherwise.”
“Yes, she talks.”
“Why then is she called silent?”
“It is to lend a great effect. She plays her part very well and we all love her. She is very shy, indeed, especially in public. Nor is she always physically able as you have seen.”
That was my first tumble into Margaret. And I considered it a great success, for within it I had learned a great deal. Yet I considered it, too, a disaster, for this was no ordinary new mother. Here was something other altogether and I saw I must keep my cleverness about me.
She spoke, gentling her voice: “There now, Edith, let me study you.”
And what study there was. Up and down she looked, and in, and all over; it was as though her staring were pricking me and turning me around and around in her thoughts. So this is Edith; what am I to make of her?
“What a lovely girl she is!” Margaret finally exclaimed. “Sweet Edith, do you need to sit?”
“No, madam.”
“She is very dear, I do see that. Edith, your skin is like bisque. How perfectly delicious you are, I swear I could quite eat you up. Come now, my dear child, we are to be famous friends, you and I. Come sit now, sit close to me. There, then, what a good girl.”
She sat with me and cooed and smiled and said how well we got on, though I scarcely spoke a word. What an odd girl I was, she insisted. And look at those feet, though. Despite all that, most charming.
Tea was brought in and some biscuits: Norfolk Fair buttons, a local biscuit made with flour and lard, ginger and lemon, with two holes in them like buttons have. They have been sold at Tombland Fair these hundreds of years, never changing their recipe—and why would they, pieces of perfection that they are.
“No Spread?” asked Margaret.
