The Lost Souls' Reunion (4 page)

*   *   *

Carmel caught a bus, a boat and a train. The voices of what had gone before came with her. She did not speak, they did not give her time to, so insistent and incessant was their chatter.

So, it was as well that by the time she stood on a station platform, dominated by a large clock, she had been found by Constance Trapwell, who had met her on the boat. Constance had informed her, ‘All roads lead to London for those who can't afford to go to America.'

‘Do they speak a different language in England?' Carmel asked Constance now, looking at the clock, not recognizing the Roman numerals.

‘No,' Constance replied. ‘We speak theirs. But not well enough for their liking. We don't pronounce properly, the English say about us.'

It was a bright, sunny afternoon and a part of Constance wanted rid of this girl who she had spoken to only out of curiosity to know where the bruises came from. But she was still curious. Carmel seemed frail and rigid in the fastness around her. Constance knew it was only a matter of time before it swallowed her. She remembered her own first days of knowing no one in this city and would not wish it on her worst enemy. But the thought of sharing her narrow single bed was not pleasurable. Carmel would have to make do with a blanket and the floor.

‘We'll have to hurry if we want to miss rush hour.' Constance did not even ask if anyone was coming to meet Carmel. ‘But you haven't much luggage anyway.'

A small cardboard suitcase, which had less weight in it than the belly with the life inside it, that is what Carmel amounted to.

The London Underground air stung the throat and nostrils as if it had been laced with vinegar. To make conversation Constance talked of the place that had been her home for five years, as one would talk of a lover who has never met expectations.

‘London is close enough to home to make sure you never forget it, but far enough away to make sure home forgets you.'

Carmel did not answer and Constance felt annoyed that she had not yet expressed gratitude. It was as if Carmel assumed she would be looked after and if it was not Constance's job it would fall to someone else.

‘I'm kept busy here in case you're wondering what I do.'

Carmel had not wondered.

‘I sang at Mass and at weddings at home,' Constance went on. ‘I'm up the West End all the time looking for an audition but they won't let me in the door without an agent. I can do all the numbers from every musical. I can do any number you care to mention. But my accent gets in the way of me. It keeps breaking through in my singing.'

A bare pause for breath from Constance and no visible breath from Carmel.

‘Never mind – I have the man to fix that. Mr Lawton says I'll be a mouthful of plums in no time,' Constance laughed in a hard way. ‘I don't care for plums myself but I'd eat a tree of them for a spot in one of them Park Avenue clubs.

‘It was Mr Lawton's idea I should change my name. My real name's Bridie. The Trapwell part came from the Trapwell Institute for Finishing, or is it Finishing Institute? I went to it when I first came over to put manners on me. Manners cost in London I can tell you. I expect you're wondering where I got the Constance from?'

Carmel was not wondering.

‘Well, Daddy used to call me Lady Constance because I went around with my nose in the air. And what would he know about it? Someone who never looked up from the paper but to ask for something? I don't know why I go home for holidays now Mam's gone. All him and the others want is the contents of my suitcase. This time they even took the suitcase. That's the last time I go home.'

Constance had the high talk of one who had gone a long time without a friend. Carmel could be made, a part of Constance realized, into whatever Constance needed her to be.

She was pleasing to Constance Trapwell in all but her silence. No thanks given. Constance stared openly at the girl with the clasped hands. She could be pretty underneath the bruises and the hat. What kind of figure she had Constance could not tell, for she was wearing a big lumpy coat. It was Noreen's coat and Noreen had worn it into the house called Hoar Rock on her wedding day over eighteen years before. She had given it to Carmel as the only coat she had. So she looked like one of the simple unfortunate country girls to Constance. But her face was not broad and strong and expectant. It was thin and hidden and afraid. She had a sickly look and the sickly look, Constance knew, was a look only real ladies had, ones that did not swallow big spuds and lumps of bacon from a pot. Those heifer women made their way over here to skivvy and fall in love with exactly the same kind of man they would have married at home. But home had no jobs for the men, so the women followed.

Constance ate like a bird and she watched her figure like a vulture. This girl was a breed apart, as Constance felt she was herself.

She would not like to see another girl stuck as she had been. Time enough for her to learn the more people are around you the lonelier you are.

The girl had not freshened up once in all the time they had been travelling. A girl's got to freshen up, look her best, feel her best, Constance thought. Dull hair spells a dull mind, but this one was a natural red. It would go down well in some of the more select clubs around town. Cut the right way she would look like a Maureen O'Hara.

Constance touched her own bleached and rollered locks. She hoped she did not look too like Betty Grable, an old-hat star, a forties flingback.

‘I had this done while I was at home,' she said to no one at all.

Carmel was further away from talk than she had ever been. She looked beyond her reflection, examining the black closeness. She had imagined under the ground to be comforting, what could be more comforting than the earth? But this Underground was a hollow place filled with a despair and unreality she could smell.

She could smell the sweet, stinging lacquer on Constance's hair and it reminded her of her mother, Noreen, one Christmas when Carmel had been a child. Getting ready to go out the door to Mass and Joseph had said it was not Mass she was going to but the whore shop and she had not gone. Later, when Joseph was downstairs listening to the radio her mother had called her and Carmel had gone to her in the bedroom and had been given her stocking. When she reached to kiss her mother she saw her lips brimming with blood, which poured, now that Carmel had touched them, from her mouth and on to the pillowcase.

The scent of set hair lacquer and fresh blood filled Carmel's nostrils and hot salt tears slid down her cheeks and into her own mouth through swollen lips that ached when she moved them. So she did not speak. Her mother had been in bed a long while that time and her face had gone as white as the sheets she lay in. But she came back to Carmel.

‘I should have waited till I got back and gone to someone decent.' Constance continued on with her hairstyle and the intricacies surrounding it. ‘I couldn't find a magazine under three years old in the shop. I want to look a fifties woman. Modern. With the times. I'm a great one for the times. You'll learn that, Carmel.'

Carmel saw Eddie in their place, Eddie alone and wondering where she had got to. She saw her long stretch of rocky shoreline and she felt the soreness of her beating and the tightness in her head where the heron had pulled her ashore.

‘I expect you want to know where we're going,' Constance broke in. ‘Hammersmith, Piccadilly line. That's the decent line you know, Carmel. The Irish are all off the Northern. Slums full of the dregs. That's what they are. You're lucky you fell in with me, Carmel. I'll keep you out of there.'

The carriage was crowded. Few spoke. This place robbed them of their voices. Without warning the train left the tunnel and the grey evening cast shadows, lights came on to drown them.

In those shadows Carmel saw Joseph Moriarty raise his curled fist and bring it down upon her.

‘Burn. Hell.'

And a woman called Sive, touching her hair.

‘Like fire.'

When the doors opened at Hammersmith she felt the autumn chill bite at her and could not see the sky for all the buildings peering down on her.

4 ∼ Shod

C
ARMEL SLIPPED OFF
her shoes before climbing the grey, uncovered stairs. Constance had told her to do this, because she slept like a sparrow.

‘I never heard feet like yours. A herd of elephants rampaging through Hammersmith.'

Constance slept through until afternoon most days. Her new job at the nightclub had her up until all hours. She got up as the sun began to set and she put her feet into a tin bucket and Carmel poured hot water on them. They soaked until they withered. Constance towelled them dry and massaged cream into them and pared corns and pricked blisters.

When all this was done she would slip them into comfortable slippers and begin to wind her hair with rollers. Carmel watched her do all of this and then would go into the kitchen and make tea for them both which Constance would sip and sigh, ‘My feet might be blistered, but I'm making the right connections. I'll be swapping my uniform for an evening dress and a microphone, you see if I don't.'

Sometimes Constance brought a friend home and would wake Carmel, putting her out of the bedroom they shared now an extra bed had been bought, on to the cold linoleum floor of the kitchenette. On these nights Carmel would open the curtains and look for the stars she had lost.

The noises from the bedroom put her in mind of Eddie and what she had shared with him. But that put her in mind of the empty part of her that would never be filled and the tears came.

The hollow in her stomach had grown worse with time and the voices in her head more insistent. In the six months they had been living together Carmel answered Constance Trapwell's beck and call like a laboured donkey. It was not that Constance gave nothing. That much had been proven in the weeks when Carmel had first climbed the grey, uncovered stairs to their small piece of London and pulled off her coat. ‘So that's the way is it?' Constance spoke to the rounded belly. ‘Well, I had the same trouble myself when I first arrived. It's dealt with if you have the money.'

But Carmel did not want it dealt with. While the rest of her had grown cold there was a heat from her unborn that kept her warm. Constance let her rest a day or two ‘to get your bearings', but Carmel did not even leave the rooms, just sat at the kitchen table staring at the patch of grey sky.

Constance felt she would need to grow more patience in dealing with this one but could not stop herself pointing out, with a harshness she later regretted: ‘If you've money, you'll pay rent. But your money won't last long if you don't get a job, and you won't get a job when you're having a child.'

‘I can't part with it.'

‘You'll have no choice when it's born.'

‘I won't part with it.'

‘That's what they all say. I wasn't mug enough myself. I had prospects. Mind you it nearly killed me. They had me in bed three weeks, tipped up to stop me haemorrhaging. I knew if I got through that…'

Constance was lost in her own thoughts, of a back lane and an old woman who smelt of damp sweat, of a wall with peeling, mud-brown paint. She had drunk the vile-smelling liquid, scalding hot. It took away the insides of her mouth and she had wanted to cry out with that pain until another, far worse, came.

‘Most girls arriving here on their own have the trouble,' Constance said softly to the remembered mud-brown wall. ‘The trouble has to be sorted or it will sort you, Carmel.'

Carmel slipped out. She walked to the small park near their home and around she went as a prisoner paces an exercise yard. The lone trees and tortured flowers in angled beds made her want to cry out. When she grew calm she slipped out of her shoes and felt her toes spread out in relief.

Rain began to fall on her and she felt clean. The brain-fire put out. The coolness was a balm and she lay on the clipped grass, pressing her lips against it. A man walking his dog on a lead watched her and looked away, a woman parked on a bench with her pram and responsibility beside her, felt obliged to call to her, ‘You'll catch your death, missy.'

Carmel sat up, shamefaced, like a dog caught rolling in a scent. She put on her shoes and left the park but her feet would not turn to home, they walked the streets until she felt near dropping.

Then up the grey, uncovered stairs in her bare, tired feet. Into the room she slipped like the shadow she had become to find Constance Trapwell, waitress with notions of stardom and splendour, naked and bent over with a peacock's feather between her buttocks and a pair of high shoes that made her wobble like an unsteady building. Constance's clothes were folded neatly on the end of the horsehair sofa. Constance treated clothes reverentially.

A man had stayed well-dressed but for his dropped trousers. A pair of glasses balanced on the end of his nose. Constance turned a face that wished the whole thing was over with in Carmel's direction. And saw her watching eyes and high colour to her cheeks.

‘Show's over, Johnny.'

Jonathan Lawton, voice coach to stars and feather producer to would-be's without the money to pay for his services, was busy pulling on his clothes, leaving the premises in seconds, not forgetting his feathers.

‘I'm sorry, Constance,' Carmel said.

‘No need. He'll be back and I'll have to start charging him. But you should have bloody well knocked and saved us all a red face.'

‘You told me not to.'

‘I know what I told you. I didn't tell you to sneak up on me. Who pays for the lion's share of this palace? Who?'

Constance did not finish. Carmel had slid into a pile as neat as that of Constance's clothes.

*   *   *

The fire in her belly was what woke her. She let out a scream that brought Constance into the bedroom.

‘I have work you know, Carmel, I'm late as it is.'