Observatory Mansions (25 page)

That summer was different, though, from all those other mosquito-bitten summers. That summer I was as usual bitten in many places, but I did not scratch. I itched a little but never for very long. Anna Tap bought a miraculous spray that stopped my itching mania; I sprayed myself and the spray felt very cool and soothing.

Later that same summer, Anna came up to me in flat six and told me that my bottom lip was swollen. I knew this very well, I was entirely aware of every feature, handsome and not so handsome, on my thirty-seven-year-old body. Anna held in her hand a small tube of cream. I bought this for you, she said. It is for your lip, it will stop the swelling. I held the tube of lip cream in my white hands. For a few moments I considered it and then said: I can’t accept this. I mustn’t get cream, whether it’s white or transparent, on my fingers.

Anna took back the tube of lip cream.

Anna placed some lip cream on one of her, ungloved, fingers.

Anna’s finger touched my lower lip. She put cream on that
lower lip. Anna’s finger rubbed that cream all over my lower lip until I felt a little faint and had to sit down.

That night I lay on my bed thinking that
Anna Tap’s finger had actually touched my lower lip
. As she touched it, I recalled this thoroughly, her face was extremely close to mine. I could smell her breath, which smelt of cigarettes, and see very clearly the freckle that lived on the middle of the end of her nose. I saw also, at very close range, the lips of Anna Tap.

Every day for two weeks Anna applied the cream to my lip. And every day she applied the cream I was able to study her face very closely. Sometimes when I looked at her face I looked into her eyes, and once she looked into my eyes at the same time. Not for long. I felt faint again. At the end of the two weeks my lower lip was no longer swollen and Anna ceased applying lip cream to it.

I remember this with regret.

I suppose it was at around this time that I began to reconsider my thoughts on Anna. I had at first thought that there was nothing pretty about her at all. I realized that this was not true. I found her nose pretty and her lips not unattractive, and her smile encouraging. Even her eyes, perhaps because they were so fragile, held a certain unconfident beauty. And she had the most moving shoulder blades I have ever seen, when she was reading, crouched over a table, they looked as if they belonged to a small bird.

One night in the street
.

One night when Mother was sleeping and Father was up in the broken observatory with Anna, I went out into the street. I whispered her name into the night. Anna, Anna, I said. To the streets, to the park, to the houses. I heard the sound of her name on my lips. I heard her noise lift out of me quietly and sound so small and precise in the summer night air.

Anna.

Anna.

Anna.

Tell me about gloves, Anna
.

Tell me about gloves, Anna.

This was a good way of passing time. Even if I asked her to tell me about gloves ten times in one day, she would smile and begin again:

Hands are measured by the glove tailor: the width across the knuckles; the span from outstretched thumb to outstretched little finger; the length from the centre of the wrist to the tip of the longest finger; the thickness of the hand. The shapes of the hands are traced on a sheet of paper. Two pieces of material are needed to form a glove. The first, the largest piece, is of the hand, minus the thumb. It has seven fingers. Picture it as if the skin of a hand had been removed and laid out flat so that the little finger is twice the width of the other fingers because, unlike the others, its nail side and palm side are still connected. This piece is folded in half at the little finger, making the shape of a hand and then it is sewn together. There is a hole in the glove at this stage where the naked thumb would peek out if it were worn. The second piece is a small length of material, itself to be folded in half and sewn together, in the shape of the thumb, which is of course inserted into the hole in the glove. Now you have the complete glove. In addition, two lines or more of raised fabric which tuck in some of the excess material and stop the glove sagging are often added, these are called darts.

But the more Anna told me about gloves, the more I realized that what I enjoyed in these descriptions was not the content of her sentences, which were loaded with the profession’s dry language, but the fact that she was speaking to me.
I realized that something must be done to end this infatuation. I began to fear for the exhibition.

A commission for William
.

I went to see William, my nails were quite long but they didn’t really need cutting. I had them cut anyway. When we were drinking the thick black coffee, William said: I’m glad you’ve come back. I was sure you would in the end.

I told him that I had come to give him a commission. A bust. In wax. As soon as possible, please. Tell me how much, I’ll bring you the money all in one lump or in weekly fees. We can draw up a contract if you wish it. I’ll pay you extra for speediness, but I shan’t penalize you if it arrives late. I have money, don’t be worried about that.

I’m very busy at the moment.

Find time for Francis.

Francis, have you any idea how much it costs to make a wax head?

I have money.

I placed all my saved money on to William’s work table, coins from my plinth, notes from when I helped Mother to collect herself up into one room. William counted it.

It’s not enough.

It must be. You haven’t counted it properly.

William saw my disappointment and, sighing, he asked:

Who’s the subject?

A woman, late twenties to mid-thirties.

I’ll need photographs.

I’ll get them for you.

Is this person living?

The subject of the commission’s life, whether past or present, has no bearing on your work.

If she’s alive I could do the portrait from life. Francis, it’s not the girl we talked about, is it?

Consider the subject dead.

Why do you want it, Francis?

That is no concern of yours.

The photographs will have to be detailed. Every angle of the face. Close ups.

Certainly. One other thing: you will of course employ Laura and Linda to give her hair and Ottila to give her eyes.

Unless you want her bald and blind.

Now, as far as Ottila is concerned she must not, on any account, copy the eyes she sees in the photographs. Of course, she will discover the colour of the subject’s eyes from these photographs but that is all the information she is required to take from them. The subject’s eyes are damaged. They are bloodshot and yellow, the irises are cloudy. These details are to be ignored by Ottila. She is to give the head perfect eyes. Is that understood? I’ll bring you the photographs in a few days and then you can set about your work. Let’s nod on it. Good. Goodbye, William, I thank you for your time.

I’ll do what I can, Francis, but you’ll have to get me more money.

Everything I earn from now on.

A commission for Mad Lizzy
.

I was in a very business-like mood that day and went straight on to my second commission: photographs of Anna Tap. I found Mad Lizzy dashing and twitching around the crowds of the city, busy recording life. I stopped her and invited her for a coffee in a particular café where I am known, on occasion, to waste my hard-earned money. This café has nothing very extraordinary about it. Its coffee, however, is
excellent but that is not reason enough to visit it. I visit it because of its single waiter, George, a young man in his twenties, skinny and nervous and eager to please. The reason I like George is because of his lie. He lies only on one subject. And as he came up to take the order from Mad Lizzy and myself, he lied, predictably enough:

Francis, how wonderful it is to see your lovely white hands again. I’m glad you’ve come today, now we have a chance to say goodbye to each other. I am leaving for the capital tomorrow. I shall have a new life. One coffee and a bowl of chips, instantly.

Whenever I visit this café I always, by some bizarre coincidence, arrive the day before George is to set off for the capital city. I do not think that George will ever get there. But I don’t suppose George thinks that: every morning he gets up, smiles at his lean face in the mirror and says – Tomorrow, you naughty boy, you’ll be out of here.

Why are you buying me chips, Francis Orme?

I have a commission for you.

I’m too busy.

There’s money involved.

I can’t spare the time. I’ll miss something important. All for nothing.

We were sitting outside, Lizzy pecked at her chips and suddenly dropped one, pulled up her camera and shot off seven photographs. Three tourists had walked by, that was all. Lizzy’s body bobbed and jerked. From her mouth:

Got ’em! Yes. Hee hee. Now I’ll remember that for ever. I’ll develop it tonight and put it in the book of photographs for this street. What a shot, what a shot!

And she patted herself on her bony thigh in congratulation.

This commission, Mad Lizzy …

Stuff it.

It’s outside.

Where? Where? City outside? Or outside city outside?

City outside. Tearsham Park Gardens.

Who? Who? City person? Or outside city person?

A city dweller.

Money? Give it. Give it to Lizzy, please. Thank you. Good.

I gave Mad Lizzy half her fee and described to her Anna Tap and that she must take photographs of her face from every angle and be as inconspicuous as her twitching would allow her. Eleven o’clock, I said, in Tearsham Park. You’ll know her, I said, because I’ll be standing near her.

Got it. Got it. Off I go. Go. Bye-bye, blackbird.

And off went Mad Lizzy, busy in her body’s peculiar eccentricities. Mad Lizzy was always rushing but she seemed never to get anywhere of any significance. Her days were spent trying to capture city life. But she was unable ever to pin the city down, it kept changing, the most extraordinary things kept happening and she couldn’t be everywhere at the same time, she missed so much. She would need many people’s lives to finish her work. But the worst of it was that Mad Lizzy was photographing the city in order to feel somehow a part of it, and the more she photographed the more distanced she felt. She was frequently seen dashing around the city streets trying to tire the city out, but she was only exhausting herself.

At eleven o’clock the next day, while we were walking with Mother in Tearsham Park, Anna was distracted by the clicks of a camera and the twitches of a photographer. I excused Lizzy, explaining that she was, in fact, quite demented, and Anna seemed content with that. I received the
photographs three days later. They had a certain charm about them and described Anna’s face satisfactorily from every angle and a good deal of Tearsham Park Gardens besides. I gave the photographs to William and he began his work.

Observatory Mansions and Tearsham Park
.

It is now time to return to my father and mother. Mother had worked her way back to her gift-giving days. Father had positioned himself in flat four, where the old library used to be. All along we had been keenly aware that, as Mother rushed backwards through her Observatory Mansions experience and Father stumbled forwards through Tearsham Park time, there would come a moment when their two journeys would meet. It was not yet time for that to happen, but we knew that it must.

THE COMPLETE HISTORY OF
OBSERVATORY MANSIONS
AND
TEARSHAM PARK

as seen through the eyes of my mother and father

(retold with the assistance of Francis Orme and Anna Tap):
PART TWO.

Mother’s gift-giving days
.

At this stage of the history of Observatory Mansions Mother was to be found wandering hurriedly around the empty and few still-occupied flats of Observatory Mansions. Mother, the gift giver, became obsessed with presents during the first years of Observatory Mansions. Every new resident was given a gift from Mother, and those residents who reacted to those gifts and showed Mother some affection would sometimes receive visits and gifts as often as twice a week. With each gift, Mother explained, she gained an entrance into a flat. She gave a book on ballerinas to the fat girl who went to ballet classes, who lived with her meagre father and meagre mother in flat one. She gave a yucca plant to the young couple who lived in flat two. She gave a pouch of pipe tobacco to the unsociable stamp collector who lived in flat three. She gave a mirror to the three ugly brothers who lived in flat four. She gave a radio to the lonely old woman who lived in flat five. She gave nothing to flat six, she lived there. She gave a
protractor to the old man, whose back was bent so badly that everyone called him Mr Right Angle, who lived in flat seven. She gave nothing to flat eight, it would remain unoccupied until the bachelor arrived and she would give him herself. She gave the young, newly wed couple who lived in flat nine a pamphlet about how to write a will. She gave a ticket to the zoo to Mr Wilson, a man who loved anything from a certain strange land, who had left his home abroad to live in flat ten. She gave a set of four teacups to fat Eva who lived in flat eleven. She gave a set of four sherry glasses to old Elizabeth who was dying in flat twelve. She gave a set of four tumblers to Christa in flat thirteen. (Always four of each, so that she might be invited to drink with the mother and her two daughters.) She gave a book of common prayer to the defrocked vicar who lived in flat fourteen. She gave a bottle of vodka to the young and single man who lived in flat fifteen, he played the piano in a bar in the centre of the city. I think Mother found him attractive, until, that is, he started bringing a different woman friend home with him almost every week. She gave a book called the
Good Sex Guide
to Miss Claire Higg who lived in flat sixteen. In flat seventeen she gave a picture frame to the woman who had just lost her little daughter in a car accident just outside Observatory Mansions. Mother knocked on the door of flat eighteen and gave the retired army officer and his wife a plastic toy tank. Mother knocked on the door of flat nineteen but the shy resident, called Alec Magnitt (never to be seen without a calculator), did not come to his door, she left an abacus outside it. For flats twenty and twenty-one she gave, in that order, a canister of deodorant and a book called
Decorating with Style
. The resident of flat twenty-two was a portrait painter and she gave him a book on how to paint portraits. She gave Lord Pearson, of flat twenty-three, a book on modern architecture and she gave the resident of flat twenty-four, the furthest flat from the stairs, a report on how many people burned to death in houses without adequate fire
escapes. Not all of the gifts contained my mother’s unsubtle humour and not all of the residents understood that humour. She would return to flat six and say after she’d seen the insides of another flat – I’m living, I’m living!