Observatory Mansions (31 page)

For the softest skin.
The whitest teeth, the freshest breath.
And even you can find love.
Turn back the clocks, say goodbye to your wrinkles.
Because you’re worth it.

Finally, I had found the man who had been making his marks around the city, spraying the walls at night, passing on his messages, so they could be read by everyone in the morning.

I so longed for company but it took him some time to feel relaxed with me. He spoke with a terrible stutter. He was called, as far as I could understand him, Mark Daniel Cooper and he would often spend his nights with his spray cans. The work on Observatory Mansions’ walls too, he admitted, was his own. He explained that he found it so difficult to speak to people that people preferred to leave him alone. To remedy this he at first wrote in notebooks all his feelings. But often, he told me – more with the help of gestures than words – he was so angry that his letters became angry too, and angry letters, he said, he gestured, are huge in size and he filled his notebooks too quickly. But nobody read his notebooks, once he had shut them, they just lay there, useless. One day he saw some graffiti sprayed on the walls of a school playground and he suddenly knew what he had to do. He felt so happy scrawling his innermost thoughts on the city, that all his pain and frustration had dwindled almost to nothing. He was more confident afterwards and soon he ran out of things to say but he could not give up graffitiing the city walls, it was all that made him feel alive. In time he began to write out sentences from advertisements everywhere. They were so confident, those adverts, he told me. Nothing in the world was so confident. He said the Coca-Cola signs in the city, which had
been there for as long as he could remember, made us worth something. If the Coca-Cola company felt happy to be here, then it had faith in us, and that therefore we should have faith in ourselves. If the Coca-Cola signs were taken away then we would be worthless. With them here we truly belonged to the world.

Copying the confident words from adverts down, he felt their confidence glow within him. He told me this smiling and laughing between his broken words and wrote:

Enjoy the taste.

He let me borrow one of his cans so that I could write this word on to bricks:

Anna.

But no, he said, he gestured, I had made the word far too small and he sprayed a whole street with large bold Annas. Anna Street, we called it.

When he decided it was time for him to leave, he sprayed his goodbye on the wall, nervously smiled at me but without looking into my eyes and rushed off into the early morning before it became too light.

Observing Anna
.

In time, of course, they became careless. Their love for their blind doll began to wane. Mother had a key to Anna’s flat, which occasionally she left, inadvertently, by the playing dictaphone at night, so sometimes, when everyone was asleep, I’d leave flat six and climb the stairs to Anna’s flat clutching mother’s key. I’d walk into Anna’s bedroom and watch her sleep, just look at her for a long while. I’d discover new lighter freckles that I hadn’t seen before. I’d want to touch, but I never did. Anna’s closed eyes (what was happening beneath those lids?), Anna’s nose, Anna’s little ears. I’d imagine her
whole body concealed beneath the sheets. Anna’s hidden legs and arms, Anna’s hidden stomach, Anna’s hidden breasts. But I’d creep away again before she woke.

During the days when I was not allowed to see her, when I was not even allowed to wait outside her flat door, I had to find other preoccupations. I occasionally returned to my plinth, but I was incapable of concentrating. I spent hours with my exhibition, looking at those objects that Anna had looked at, talking to that most precious of all objects,
The Object
, at the end of the exhibition, an object which Anna never reached, which she would never see now.

A visit to Mr Behrens’ glove shop
.

Many people, when they are feeling a little low and need some cheering up, are often known to buy. Some buy clothes, some buy food. In those times, to console myself, I bought gloves, white cotton gloves from Mr Behrens’ glove shop. Mr Behrens was a tiny man who also wore gloves, though his were made of leather and were black. He wore his gloves to hide his hands which had been badly burnt in a war he preferred never to talk about. Mr Behrens’ glove shop catered for all types of glove wearers, he sold gloves every colour of the spectrum, he sold gloves made of wool, of leather, of rubber, cotton, fox skin, calfskin, kidskin, moleskin, wire. I was prized above all his other customers. I had been coming to him for many years and always bought several pairs of gloves whenever I came. Most of his customers, Mr Behrens said, make their gloves last for years, sometimes decades even. But among my customers, he said, are you, Francis, loyal and almost regular in your visits and always requiring, in bulk, the same traditional white cotton gloves, boxed and wrapped in tissue paper.

On that day, some months, it was estimated, before my required time of purchasing, I left Mr Behrens and his glove
shop with ten new pairs, ten new membranes neatly stacked, waiting peacefully for the day when I would call them to life; when the fingers would operate and timidly learn the world.

The Christmas present
.

Soon Anna felt more confident and was allowed to go on accompanied walks. Sometimes she went with Mother, sometimes she was allowed to go with me. She never went with Miss Higg. Claire Higg did not appreciate outdoor places. Anna’s eyes had begun to completely cloud over, now there was no proof in them that they had ever seen. The irises, the pupils, were all a milky white – they were hard now too. When she was still, she was like a waxwork that someone had forgotten to paint eyes on. She kept touching her white eyes, pushing them, scratching them. I asked her if she remembered what most things looked like. Yes, she said, by memory and by touch. Anna said to me:

Please let me touch your hands, then I’ll be happy.

It was Christmas time, at Christmas time people are known to wrap objects in paper. Anna Tap wanted to touch my hands and, since it was Christmas time, that would be my present to her. I would gift-wrap my hands.

Dressed in my costume (the costume I wore when I was employed in the waxworks), in buckled shoes, in tights, in a white shirt with frilly cuffs, in a long gabardine and on top of my head a long curled wig, I entered the wax museum through the side door with the combination lock that we half-wax-half-human dummies had always used. Still were the inhabitants, as silent as wax. Did they dream? Did thoughts move inside their wax interiors? Was a person seen through the glass eyes of the wax dummies, moving about them? Some of these wax men and women moved themselves, in daylight hours, when the exhibition was open, when electricity
warmed their bodies and let them shift in their ugly and jerky movements. But they did not move that Christmas Eve when I walked amongst them again.

I stopped in front of a certain wax model of a film star, young, deceased. My white gloved hands touched his youthful wax hands.

I heard the security guard walking about upstairs, doing his rounds. Silently, I twisted the hands off the film star, the wax hands rotated slowly, slowly. There was something appalling in the way those wax hands went round and round: why wasn’t the wax mouth of the wax head screaming?

Then I held two wax hands, my hands, but made of wax.

The security guard came down the stairs. I stood still by men in suits, women in ball gowns, fat kings and fat queens in their regal togs. I was kept company by the famous and the infamous and I was altogether welcomed among them.

The light from the torch entered the room and the security guard came after it. He walked around us. He shone his torch in our faces. He stopped in front of each of us. He was trying to catch us out, but none of us moved, or rather only one of us moved, but it was not me. Further away, at the other end of the exhibition hall, stood, in wax company, a model of a man, about six foot high with brown hair, thin, wearing a pinstripe suit. The eyes of this exhibit moved. They moved in one continuous action from staring straight ahead to staring at me. I knew this exhibit. His name was Ivan. He was not a wax dummy, he was a flesh dummy. He had been working as a flesh dummy before I came to the wax museum but was dismissed from employment on the same day as me.

That night I saw him again, silent and still, save for the single movement of his eyes. The security guard did not notice those eyes move, he saw nothing unusual in the frozen figures before him, he did not notice that one wax figure had lost his hands, or that another had taken them. As he waved
his torch about us his expression did not change. Then he put his torch down and started to take off his clothes.

Now I only achieved outer stillness, the inner, I confess, had quite gone. The security guard, quite naked, walked up to a certain wax figure and hugged her. He felt her body and kissed her lips, he brushed his hands through her hair. He sighed and he moaned. He stroked the polystyrene breasts and felt under the dress, way up the fibreglass legs. This was a model of a certain celebrated beauty, a singer. He rubbed his body all over her wax, fibreglass and polystyrene skin.

After he had masturbated, he cried. He dressed himself, walked up to the wax figure he had abused, kissed her on the forehead and murmured sincere apologies:

I love you. I’m sorry. I hope I didn’t startle you. I love you and I am not worthy of your love.

He picked up his torch, shone its beam around us, particularly at his beloved, and then quietly descended the stairs.

When he was no longer heard I left my outer stillness and, still carrying wax hands, walked over to Ivan. I stopped just in front of him, smiled and whispered:

Happy Christmas.

Don’t tell anyone, Francis. Please. I don’t do any wrong. I just come here to be with them. I don’t touch them or hurt them. Don’t tell anyone, please.

I promise. Are you here every day?

Every other day.

How do you eat?

I always bring sandwiches and a drink with me. I creep in at night, like you did, through our old entrance while the guard does his rounds. Then I stay with them all day and some of the night before returning home. I sleep for a day and then come back. I am happy here, I’m not doing any harm.

Will you come out with me now or have you just arrived?

Just arrived, just before you. I couldn’t leave them alone over Christmas.

Poor Ivan.

Francis, why have you stolen those hands?

They’re a Christmas present.

If you don’t put them back, I’ll be forced to report you.

And they’ll ask you how you know. How did you witness the theft? And when you explain they’ll look at you strangely and call doctors and lock you away … They’ll find new hands, Ivan. He’ll look the same.

But I’ll know.

Happy Christmas.

Francis, don’t go.

I must, the security guard could return.

I’m frightened. It’s because of the young man without hands. People should have hands, he doesn’t look like a person without them, he just looks like a model. He makes the others look like models. Please put the hands back.

Happy Christmas.

Then take the whole figure.

I only want the hands.

I’m frightened. Look, my hands are shaking, my hands want me to cut them off and give them to the young man.

Ivan, he’s made of wax.

You’re betraying us.

Why don’t you come out now?

Stay here with us. It’ll be like before.

I’ve got to go home. I must deliver these.

I think one day someone will come in here, one of the officials, and remove me from the exhibition. They’ll lift me up and drag me away. They’ll put me in a cold room and lock the door. I’ll stand still even then. I shan’t move. And maybe days or maybe weeks later they’ll come into that room and pull off my arms or legs and give them to somebody else, to
some other model. Then they’ll burn the rest of me. And what’s certain is that when I am burning, my flesh will drip from me, like wax.

I think you should leave the exhibition, it’ll be fine without you. Come outside.

You’re jealous.

No, Ivan.

Ivan resumed his stationary pose and would not talk again.

Christmas morning
.

On Christmas morning I went to flat eighteen. Anna Tap sat across the table from me.

Anna, you can touch my hands.

Wax hands at the ends of my jumper sleeves, my own gloved hands up my jumper holding wax wrists. She touched both my elbows and slowly crept her fingers down my forearms. She touched my hands.

They’re so cold.

She felt them.

They’re so hard.

She took hold of the fingers and gently pulled them towards her. The wax hands came free. She felt the weight of them. They banged on the table. Anna screamed.

They are my hands, they are my fingers and knuckles. Wax casts made by my friend William.

Another commission?

Not for me, for the wax museum. They were for a wax model. They’re yours now. My hands, from me to you. Happy Christmas.

And what did Anna give me for Christmas? A pair of spectacles. Spectacles that were mine already. Spectacles that belonged to the exhibition, that were on loan. So was it a happy Christmas? Not really, no.

A shadow called Tap
.

Anna Tap, blind, mid-twenties to early thirties, in a blue dress, in black shoes, needed, she said, to be by me always. She said she felt uneasy if I wasn’t near. She didn’t want to be left alone. When she was left in the largest room of flat six she would sneak away in search of me. She followed me down to the cellar and found the door to the tunnel and knocked on that door and wouldn’t stop knocking until I had let her in:

I’m busy now. Go back upstairs.

I won’t disturb you. I’ll just sit here. I won’t make a sound, you won’t know I’m here.