The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher(10)

“I bloody got it,” Mary said. For a moment she stood tall and glowing. Then she ducked, she plummeted, rustling, beside me. The evening shapes of the terrace, serene, then fractured and split. With a rapid step the lady came, snapping through the tall arched shadows thrown back by the garden against the house, the shadow of gates and trellises, the rose arbors with their ruined roses. Now the dark flowers on her frock had blown their petals and bled out into the night. She ran the few steps toward the wheeled chair, paused for a split second, her hand fluttering over the comma’s head; then she flicked her head back to the house and bawled, her voice harsh, “Fetch a torch!” That harshness shocked me, from a throat I had thought would coo like a dove, like a pigeon; but then she turned again, and the last thing I saw before we ran was how she bent over the comma, and wrapped the shawl, so tender, about the lamenting skull.

* * *

IN SEPTEMBER MARY was not at school. I expected to be in her class now, because I had gone up and although she was ten it was known that Mary never went up, just stuck where she was. I didn’t ask about her at home, because now that the sun was in for the winter and I was securely sealed in my skin I knew it would hurt to have it pulled off, and my mother, as she had said, was a woman of her word. If your skin is off, I thought, at least they look after you. They lull you in blankets on a terrace and speak softly to you and turn you to the light. I remembered the greed on Mary’s face, and I partly understood it, but only partly. If you spent your time trying to understand what happened when you were eight and Mary Joplin was ten, you’d waste your productive years in plaiting barbed wire.

A big girl told me, that autumn, “She went to another school.”

“Reform?”

“What?”

“Is it a reform school?”

“Nah, she’s gone to daft school.” The girl slobbered her tongue out, lolled it slowly from side to side. “You know?”

“Do they slap them every day?”

The big girl grinned. “If they can be bothered. I expect they shaved her head. Her head was crawling.”

I put my hand to my own hair, felt the lack of it, the chill, and in my ear a whisper, like the whisper of wool; a shawl around my head, a softness like lamb’s wool: a forgetting.

* * *

IT MUST HAVE been twenty-five years. It could have been thirty. I don’t go back much: would you? I saw her in the street, and she was pushing a buggy, no baby in it, but a big bag with a spill of dirty clothes coming out; a baby T-shirt with a whiff of sick, something creeping like a tracksuit cuff, the corner of a soiled sheet. At once I thought, well, there’s a sight to gladden the eye, one of that lot off to the launderette! I must tell my mum, I thought. So she can say, wonders will never cease.

But I couldn’t help myself. I followed close behind her and I said, “Mary Joplin?”

She pulled the buggy back against her, as if protecting it, before she turned: just her head, her gaze inching over her shoulder, wary. Her face, in early middle age, had become indefinite, like wax: waiting for a pinch and a twist to make its shape. It passed through my mind, you’d need to have known her well to know her now, you’d need to have put in the hours with her, watching her sideways. Her skin seemed swagged, loose, and there was nothing much to read in Mary’s eyes. I expected, perhaps, a pause, a hyphen, a space, a space where a question might follow … Is that you, Kitty? She stooped over her buggy, and settled her laundry with a pat, as if to reassure it. Then she turned back to me, and gave me a bare acknowledgement: a single nod, a full stop.





THE LONG QT





He was forty-five when his marriage ended, decisively, on a soft autumn day, the last of the barbecue weather. Nothing about that day was his plan, nothing his intention, though later you could see that every element of the disaster was in place. Above all, Lorraine was in place, standing by the cavernous American fridge, stroking its brushed steel doors with one lacquered fingertip. “Do you ever get in it?” she said. “I mean, on a really hot day?”

“It wouldn’t be safe,” he said. “Doors could swing shut.”

“Jodie would miss you. She’d let you out.”

“Jodie wouldn’t miss me.” He understood it only when he said it. “Anyway,” he said. “It’s not been that hot.”

“No?” she said. “Pity.” She stretched up and kissed him on the mouth.

Her wineglass was still in her hand and he felt it roll, cool and damp, against the back of his neck, and make a creeping down his spine. He scooped her against him: a motion of ample gratitude, both hands around her bottom. She murmured something, stretched out an arm to put the glass down, then gave him her whole attention, her open mouth.

He had always known she was available. Only not found her alone, on a warm afternoon, her face a little flushed, three glasses of vinho verde from complete sobriety. Never alone because Lorraine was the sort of girl who moved in a crowd of girls. She was round, kind, down-market for the neighborhood and easy to like. She said droll things, like, “It’s so sad to be called after a quiche.” She smelled delicious, and of kitchen things: plums and vanilla, chocolate.

He let her go, and as he relaxed his grip he heard her tiny heels click back on the floor. “What a little doll you are,” he said. He straightened to his full height. He was able to picture his own expression as he gazed down at her: quizzical, tender, amused; he hardly recognized himself. Her eyes were still closed. She was waiting for him to kiss her again. This time he held her more elegantly, hands on her waist, she on tiptoe, tongue flickering at tongue. Slow and easy, he thought. No rush. But then, crudely, his hand snaked around her back, as if it had a will of its own. He felt for her bra strap. But a twist, a flinch told him, not now, not here. Then where? They could hardly shove through the guests and go upstairs together.