Observatory Mansions (32 page)

I would resume my work.

I do like your exhibition, Francis. Or almost. I don’t think I quite understand it. You said that it was an exhibition of love. But I didn’t see that, I just saw abandoned and stolen objects. Perhaps you should tell me about the other exhibits I didn’t get to see. Perhaps you should read me your catalogue.

No, never.

When I went into the city to stand on my plinth, she would insist on accompanying me. She would stand near to the plinth and smile whenever a coin was thrown into my box.

I could never be alone.

She was still losing weight, as the bathroom scalesman was eager to inform me whenever Anna and I went to the park. I sometimes tried to leave her with the chalk artist. I walked
towards the broken fountain, sat Anna down on the nearest bench to the chalk drawings and told her I’d come and get her soon. She called after me, she looked frightened. She took Saint Lucy’s eyes from her pockets and passed them nervously from hand to hand. But despite my irritation at the almost perpetual presence of Anna Tap, I found that I could never leave her alone for very long. I felt guilty when I walked away, I saw her pathetic expressions and heard her rubbing the wooden eyes together. I often felt guilty enough to return to her and say – Yes, all right, you can come. But the moment I said that the irritation would reappear. So I sat her down somewhere else and promised to return. So she called out to me. So I felt guilty and sad. So I let her come. So I felt disgusted by her.

I was a solitary person. I was happiest with just myself for company. But now I could no longer talk to the most precious object in my exhibition because she was there; I could no longer achieve inner stillness because she was there; I could no longer think because she was always there. Silences would be interrupted by – Francis, what are you doing?

She said to me once, when we were in the tunnel: I am filling your days with love, Francis. You’ll get used to it. Be patient.

I would ask her – Are you still alive behind those white eyes, Anna. They make you look dead. I’m still alive, Francis, she’d say, come closer.

She was always smoking. It dirtied everything. I was sure that if I spent too much time with her that my gloves would become tobacco stained.

I stole her toothbrush. I threw it away (it wasn’t worthy of the exhibition). I complained that her breath smelt, asked her to keep her distance. I climbed up to her flat whilst she was with my mother and moved her possessions about. I placed bricks outside the entrance door, I saw her fall over
and cut herself. I would take her for a walk in the city and leave her there and hear her scream out my name and follow her as she desperately asked people for help. I would follow her all the way home, and even watch her standing on the curb, panic-stricken, listening to the traffic rushing around Observatory Mansions and see her waiting there for an hour, begging every passer-by to take her across.

She would bear all the little abuses I subjected her to with patience and pretend I was just tired, that I didn’t mean what I said. She would always forgive me: I forgive you, Francis. But I thought it would be more interesting if she didn’t forgive me, if she shouted at me and insulted me and left me in peace. My days were filled with the fug of Anna Tap and I struggled for clean air.

She gave me gifts: she gave me her spectacles case, she gave me her love dress (which I had every intention of stealing anyway, lot 995).

I know this is hard for you, Francis. I know it will take time. But do not worry, I am patient.

Of eyes and sticks
.

I walked Anna to the eye hospital. They gave her a white metal stick with a rubber end. People taught Anna how to use the stick and kept her away from me for hours while she tapped the ground and was given instructions on how to know the streets by beating them. And strangely, when Anna was away at her lessons, I wanted her back, I was bored without her. When she had finished at the eye hospital for the day I would be there waiting for her. With each lesson she was regaining her confidence.

The eye hospital had ordered some glass eyes for her and expected them to arrive in a number of weeks. But she wanted
to wear wooden eyes in her skull and screamed and kicked when the eye people refused her. Unhygienic. Unsavoury. Unmentionable.

Tap walks alone
.

After she had been a few weeks with the eye people, Anna was happy walking alone. She would not allow me to guide her, she did not cling on to my arm or try to grip my hands as she had before. She stood erect and alone, and if when following her I came a little too close I was struck by the stick. Anna Tap was confident again. She stopped giving me presents.

Anna Tap no longer visited me in the tunnel, even when invited. She spent a lot of time with her stick tutors, girls of a similar age to her. Plotting.

An outing
.

One mid-January day was, and is, my birthday. On that particular birthday I was given as presents:

1. From the Porter: a hiss.

2. From Claire Higg: nothing.

3. From my mother: a pair of red cotton gloves.

4. From Anna Tap: an outing.

This outing of Anna’s was a surprise outing, one she said that she had been busying herself with for several weeks, in fact ever since a certain person, who was wearing white gloves, announced (dropping this unconnected information casually between sentences) that his birthday was approaching. The outing began with a bus journey. I sat in the front seat next to Anna Tap. I noticed, slightly frightened, that the bus was not heading in the usual direction towards the city
but away from it, in a direction I was unaccustomed to taking, we were moving towards the countryside. Ever since Tearsham Park changed its name I had somehow forgotten that the countryside still existed. After half an hour we had arrived. The bus moved off without us.

What do you smell, Francis?

Decay, rotting.

Is it a pleasant smell?

No.

Look up, Francis. Are there any birds?

Pigeons and seagulls.

What is in front of you?

A metal wall stretching out for miles.

Is there an entrance?

There’s a metal door.

Open it, we will walk inside.

A man ran up to us dressed in a filthy boiler suit, wearing boots and thick rubber gloves, a helmet and with a paper mask over his mouth and nose. Anna took a piece of paper from her pocket, the man read it and left us alone, instructing us first, for safety’s sake, to remain on the perimeter.

What do you see, Francis?

I don’t know … there’re things everywhere, old mattresses, old bicycles, smashed televisions, ruined cars, carpets, suitcases, papers, magazines, bags, curtains, books, bones, cardboard boxes, rotting food, rubble …

Are you crying?

No.

Good, then keep going.

There’re broken chairs, floorboards, window frames, twisted and smashed shop’s mannequins, clothes, till receipts, beams, lamps, cans, record players … all smashed …

Stop crying and go on.

I’m not crying.

Keep going.

There are tables with three legs, there are plates and clocks. There are cups, smashed glass, bottles, paintings, posters, tyres, cartons, wires, shoes, spectacles, wigs, wardrobes, drawers, doors …

Don’t stop.

Please can I stop?

Go on.

I think I’d better go now.

KEEP GOING!

There are pens, suitcases, briefcases, filing cabinets, sheets, blankets, buckets, saws, iron poles, plaster, a caryatid missing its head, tiles, coats, rocks, mirrors, a doll’s leg.

On! ON!

There are bed frames, dresses, plastic jewellery, telephones, photographs, a blackboard, a tricycle, a doghouse, a chimney, a snooker table … a walking frame … I want to stop.

Besides the objects, what else do you see?

People walking about it all – It’s so high in places, it’s like mountains!

What are the people doing?

Collecting?

No, they’re scavenging.

What is this, Anna?

It’s all the rubbish from the city.

No, it’s not rubbish, not all of it.

Describe the smell.

I can’t.

It’s decay, it’s rotting, it’s the smell of everything that we throw away, heaped together. It’s the smell of everything we don’t want any more.

It’s so sad.

It’s the smell of dying objects, Francis.

Objects don’t die.

Here, Francis, are kept out of sight all the dead objects, all the rejected objects of dead people and living people. The things we don’t care about any more. Our things will be sent here one day.

Not my things. Why are we here?

I thought you might find it entertaining. It’s a little like your exhibition, don’t you think? Less ordered of course.

NO.

There are similarities.

My exhibition is full of love. I feel sick.

Then be sick.

Look at it. It’s so, so sad.

I can’t look. I can’t see.

I want to go home.

Touch it, Francis. It’s so dirty! Touch it. Touch it and then look at your gloves.

Stop it. Please, please stop it.

This is the shit the city laid.

There’s a rat over there! I feel sick.

Look at the rat, Francis, look at it. Is it wearing white gloves?

In the bus on the way back she told me she had shown me the mountains for my own good. She asked me to take off my gloves again. I didn’t say anything. I moved away from her, we sat at different ends of the bus.

That was my birthday outing.

Afterwards, if Anna came into flat six, I left it. If I went to the tunnel I would always lock the door after me.

The demolition experts came back again. They talked to the Porter. I ignored them all: Anna, Mother, Claire Higg, the Porter, the demolition experts.

That white.

That cotton.

That exhibition.

That favoured object.

That’s all.

That’s all there was for me.

Porter
.

The Porter brushed on, dusted on, mopped on, moped on. He would sometimes be seen scrubbing a small patch of carpet with a wire brush, and would only leave his work after the carpet had been scrubbed completely away and the floorboards were visible underneath. But he continued to empty our bins and he continued to hiss and we continued to avoid him.

Higg
.

I shopped for Miss Higg now. Mother brought the food up to her. She thought Miss Higg was deteriorating, she said:

Claire has let herself go. She watches the television all day and all night. She no longer sleeps in her bed. After the programmes have finished for the night and the channels only transmit a single, high-pitched, continuous screech, Claire watches the blank screen and hums along with the screech all night.

Miss Higg complained that early one morning, when she was dozing, someone crept into her flat and turned off the television. She said that someone had stolen her hairbrush. Everyone looked at me. But I hadn’t stolen the hairbrush. What would I want with Claire Higg’s hairbrush?

Mother
.

Mother spent as little time as possible within her bedroom and had me cover all her objects with sheets. She got up early, before the rest of us, and dressed always in smart clothes now but would never go out, not even to the park.

Tap
.

Anna Tap was ignored by me until the night when she was visited by a man wearing white gloves.

The man in white gloves
.

Late at night, when everyone was asleep, someone was out of his place, walking up the stairs to the third floor. He stopped outside the flat numbered eighteen, he turned the door handle with a white-cotton-gloved hand. The door was locked. He took out a key. He unlocked the door to flat eighteen and stepped inside.

Fast asleep in her bedroom lay the gently rising and falling body of Anna Tap. She was asleep, she did not know that someone had entered her flat and was even slowly approaching her bedroom, was even slowly approaching her bed.

The visitor knelt down when he reached the bed. He stayed there for a little while looking at the closed face of Anna Tap. He brought his white gloved hands up to her face and gently, gently touched her dark hair. He stroked it for a while, gently-gently so he wouldn’t wake her. He grew brave. He touched her skin. He brushed her cheeks with his fingers. A finger traced the outline of her nose. He felt the closed lips. He touched the eyelids. But when he touched the eyelids, the damaged globes underneath them began to move. They opened and the broken eyes looked out and saw nothing.

Who’s there? Someone’s there. Is it you, Francis?

The visitor touched the face of Anna Tap once more. Anna’s hands grasped his
.

Francis. Francis.

The gloved hands of the visitor held the cheeks of Anna’s face. They squeezed
.

Not so hard, Francis. Be gentle.

The gloved hands stroked her hair
.

That’s right.

And then pulled it
.

No, Francis, gently.

The gloved hands gently touched her lips
.

That’s right, Francis.

The gloved hands pushed a gloved finger inside Anna’s mouth. And then two fingers and then three and even four. Anna Tap pushed them away, choking
.

Francis, please!

The visitor kissed the forehead of Anna Tap and the cheeks and the lips. Hard. Hard kisses
.

Gently, Francis, you must be gentle.

The visitor’s lips gently kissed those of Anna. And Anna kissed back. Anna felt the visitor’s face. She learnt it with her hands. She felt the visitor’s lips and then she stopped. The visitor’s lower lip was not swollen. The visitor didn’t even have Francis’s smell.

Who is it?

The visitor held Anna’s face
.

Who’s there?