The Private Parts of Women (19 page)

It was Jesus that guided me to the Citadel that day when I first met Mary and Harold, of that I am convinced. Harold was a friend too. He was Mary's fiancé. It had always been expected that they'd marry. They grew up together, the children of Salvation Army officers, he a year Mary's junior. They were the two people I loved best in the world, apart from Auntie Ba. Apart from Jesus, of course.

Mary and Harold helped me after my parents' death, prayed with me every night. I confided in them the problem of my inheritance. We decided that I could contribute to the Salvation Army by keeping the house. Mary stayed there and paid what she would have paid in rent to the Army and there was room for others too.

I was well nigh happy. The first thing I did was fix a red and gold Salvation Army badge in the centre of the mantelpiece, the first thing anyone would see when they entered the room. The house filled with my new friends, trooping up and down the stairs, laughing, singing, making a wonderful racket. Furniture was shifted so the rooms looked different. I was all right when the others were there but if I was ever alone I could hear the rustling of my parents' disbelief, the creak of their outrage. Sometimes when the others were there and I felt strong inside I almost wanted to laugh at their helplessness in the face of what I was doing. But that was spite and I had to ask God's forgiveness for the pleasure it gave me.

Mary chose the room with bars on the window. I had not been inside it for years. An almost bare room with an oval mirror hanging over the empty hearth.

‘Why the bars?' Mary asked as she walked round. I stood with my back to the open door. She walked to the window and touched them. ‘It's like a prison cell.'

‘I don't know,' I said. ‘Don't choose this room, it's gloomy, there are nicer rooms.'

The mirror hung on the wall like a wide oval eye. I tried to keep my own eyes away from it.

‘I see what you mean,' Mary said, ‘it does have a melancholy feel, but with a bit of fresh paint, some flowers … it's got good light. If we get the bars removed from the window, I can't be doing with them. I like it Trixie and we can leave the bigger rooms for others. I don't need much space. I'll ask Harry about the bars.'

She went to the mirror and looked at her own face. Just an ordinary unselfconscious look. I let my eyes travel to her reflection. I held my breath. Her face looked quite normal but vague. She gazed at herself as she continued speaking, saying the room needed airing, needed a fire lighting in the grate, probably the chimney sweeping, and my fast heart skittered. As she spoke and moved slightly, the glass warped her face, pulled her mouth askew. Even Mary, it even did it to Mary. She seemed not to notice, turned away, went back to the window and peered out.

‘Nice view of the street … plane trees … lime … Yes, Trixie, this will do me very well.' She turned back to me and smiled. ‘It's a good house,' she said. ‘When can I move in?'

‘Now,' I said, ‘as soon as you can, as you like.'

‘Tomorrow, after the meeting?'

‘Yes, let's go down, I'll make some tea.'

Louise had left after my mother's death, left to marry her young man, so the kitchen was mine and I liked that. I liked the kitchen best of all because it didn't feel like my parents' territory. It had a warm and wholesome air. Mary and I drank our tea sitting close to the range.

‘It's cosy,' she said, and I was proud.

I really wanted to burn all the furniture, rip down the curtains, roll up the carpets and start again. But the house was well furnished, the curtains and carpets had years in them. Mary wouldn't hear of it.

I did take down the lace curtains and I did open the windows, chipping away at thick layers of paint, to let air and light into the house. I took down the mirrors from the walls and stored them in the cellar. I removed some of the paintings. The one I loved, the two girls picking flowers, I put in my room by my bed so that I could gaze at it as I fell asleep and on waking. The sun shone from the frame as if the picture was a window opening on to another world, a happy childish world. Even with my new friends, even with my love of God, with music inside me, even with my parents dead, I would still have climbed through that frame, if it had been possible, to be one of those girls, bare-footed, with buttercup and daisy-chains in my hair.

Because, although I had had no absences since my parents' death, although I was as near to happy as I have ever been, there was always the fear. The fear of what I was. The fear of being found out.

But for a long time everything was almost as it should be and I grew gradually less afraid. I wore my uniform proudly. I thought about other things, my new life, my new concerns. For the first time I was looking outwards at the world and at the suffering of
other
people. I worked long hours at the shelter on Bothwell Street. It was miserable stinking work but I never took a single moment for granted. I never stopped being grateful for every normal minute that passed.

The shelter was a terrible place, like a barn, a place I could never have slept in. But we kept it clean, we charged a few pennies for soup, tea, bread and cheese, the chance to wash, a bed for the night. There were seventy beds in the one dormitory, too close together I thought, so that the men's breath must have mingled as they lay in bed, but more space would have meant fewer beds, and the beds were always full. We always had to turn men away.

The poor wretches turned up at six o'clock each evening with their handfuls of greasy pennies to pay for their night's lodgings and were able to wash, were fed, were able to rest in reasonable comfort. But it was their souls that benefited the most. For gambling was forbidden, and gambling is the chief downfall of the poor man. It is a temptation I can understand. It seems a chance for a sort of magic to happen – for sixpence to become six pounds, then sixty, perhaps six hundred and for life to be transformed. That is the temptation of it, a false and wicked temptation because of course it never works like that. It is a vice. It is one of Satan's traps. So gambling was banned from the shelter. On the wall under a portrait of General Booth was a sign in red lettering, the only splash of colour in the room:

HELP KEEP THIS HOSTEL FREE FROM

THE DETESTABLE EVIL OF GAMBLING.

ANY MAN FOUND PLAYING CARDS OR

OTHERWISE GAMBLING WILL BE EJECTED

AND NEVER AGAIN ADMITTED

UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES.

Gambling gives false hope. Our concern was to replace this false hope with hope for another kind of transformation, equally magical but good and sure and lasting. To this end we prayed with the men and sometimes we sang hymns. And sometimes we did save a soul, though many of the men's eyes were empty and lightless, blocked off from God's love, sometimes we did find a spark and wherever it was found it was kindled.

Oh, the drunkard may come
,

And the swearer may come
,

Gamblers, all sinners are all welcome home
.

If you will but believe and be washed in the Blood
,

For ever and ever you shall dwell with the Lord
.

We sang that at open-air meetings, aiming to reach out to those that had ears to hear. We sang outside pubs. Harold and I. One time. It was the beginning of the end although I could not see that then.

I am cold.

I cannot stop this blasted remembering.

Thank God for my television. Coco-Pops.
I'll have another bowl of Coco-Pops
. I like that tune. Properly catchy. Coco-Pops are something I've never had but they look like a cheerful start to the day.
Something cheerful, always cheerful, Constant sunshine in the soul
. Something new to try. I will have to go out.

I'll have another bowl of Coco-Pops
.

Concentrate on the memory. It will come. Get it over with.

All right then.

I did nothing wrong. There was attraction between Harold and me. Nothing happened, oh no. One day we were singing outside a pub, The Cross Cat. Mary was not there, she'd gone to visit a relative. It was the day after an absence. They had started again. I thought no one had noticed any difference. I did not want to know about the absences. I ignored them, pretended nothing had happened.

A man was staring at me. I took no notice at first, people always looked. We were there to be noticed, and some men did take a fancy to a young woman in uniform, it was well known. In the pubs on Friday nights when we sold
The War Cry
, dreadful suggestions were made and we took no notice. But this man persisted, looking at my face and then with a long, lazy, almost licking look at my body, at my uniform rather. He wore a Panama hat and a long light trench-coat. He waited until he'd caught my eye and smiled and shook his head at me in a horrible,
knowing
way, that made me feel sick. He had a crude scarred face. I averted my eyes, made myself smile at a little cluster of children who'd gathered.

‘Oh the drunkard may come,' we sang. I tried, I fought against the shrinking of my voice. It was as if I was shrivelling under his eyes, my voice, my self, to nothing. The round eyes of the smallest child were full of the ribbon on my tambourine. I kept my eyes on the children and at the edge of my vision, at last I saw the man move away. I turned slightly then, watched him enter the pub. But he looked back at me, caught my eye before I could escape his, shook his head and touched the brim of his hat. The door swung behind him and he was gone. There had been something so
knowing
in his manner that my voice died altogether and I shuddered. Later Harold walked me home.

‘I saw the way that man looked at you,' he said, quite delicately, ‘and I saw your reaction.'

‘I was frightened,' I admitted, ‘the way he was looking.'

‘He's not an acquaintance … not a former acquaintance?'

I walked faster. ‘Certainly not.'

I wanted to be away from Harold, away from everybody. I wanted to shut myself in my room and pray. On the floor of my room, I had scattered sharp gravel to kneel on during prayer to stop myself from going off again, to keep me conscious of and in my skin. The consciousness of the pain prevented the fearful drift. For this reason, I almost liked the pain of the gravel biting into my knees.

‘Trixie, I have been wanting to talk to you.'

‘Do you think Mary would mind you walking me home?'

‘Mary would not mind.'

‘What is it?' I asked.

‘I don't know how … I've prayed for guidance. I've spoken to Mary about my feelings. Trixie, you must have guessed …'

‘No!' I hurried so that he had to lengthen his stride to keep up with me.

‘I love Mary as a sister and a friend. I have not looked at another woman – hardly looked – before in my life. But you … I know you feel it too. Trixie, I am excited by you. I could love you in another way. The way God meant a man to love a woman.'

My heart went cold. ‘And you've said this to Mary? Harold! How dare you?'

‘She understands.'

‘I don't care! Mary is my friend. Is that why she's gone away?'

‘No … not entirely … she is worried about you – your activities. Oh she is innocent. Innocent where you are not.'

‘What do you mean?' I stopped and faced him. I pressed my lips together to prevent them from trembling.

‘If you will marry me, you will be saved. Mary will stand aside. If you will not marry me, then I'll marry Mary.'

‘Poor Mary.'

‘Mary is strong. She would wish us well.'

‘I don't believe it.'

‘Trixie there is a wildness in you, something dangerous. There is talk … If you marry me you will be safe.'

I began walking again, fast and then slower. The idea began to settle on me like a soothing cloud, a temptation.

‘Let me come in with you. We can pray together for guidance.'

I let him come in and made him tea. I remembered the day when my feet had first carried me to the Citadel, when I had seen Mary and Harold together and wanted to
be
Mary, to be with him. Now I had the chance to do that.

We did not pray. I was filled with dread that Mary might have seen me in an absence, spoken to me when I was not there. I was weak, tired, confused by Harold's closeness. He held my hand gently in his own. His hand was beautiful, long fingers, little dark hairs curling on their backs. To have another person so close, a person who cared, who loved me, wanted to hold me, hold me for the rest of my life was an overwhelming temptation. His mouth was wide and kind, the skin on his chin and cheeks shadowed bluish with the stubble underneath. I almost gave in. I said I would tell him tomorrow. The idea was so big and pressing in my mind that everything else got pushed aside and I could not think straight. When he left he kissed me on the lips. A long, deep kiss, not holy, a kiss that left me breathless.

‘I am not blind to your eyes, Trixie. I know the way you look at me. Do not deceive yourself,' he said as he left, and I shuddered after I closed the door on him. If he had not said that …

Something in his eyes, his tone of voice, reminded me of the knowing eyes of the man who had looked at me so … so intimately, so greedily. I had thought of Harold as good, as sent by God but the way he spoke those words made me doubt him.

As I knelt on the gravel and prayed, the thought came to me that he was not of God, he was the Devil in disguise. A good disguise. Oh with his smooth tongue he had nearly tricked me. Even that thought didn't remove the temptation. Lust. It was that that he felt for me and not for Mary, lust not love. And though that knowledge shocked me I felt an answering stir. But he loved her. He could never love me because I am not loveable, I am not even a whole person, so how could he love me? And when he got to know me, when he discovered the deep flaw in my soul, then what? Then he would regret leaving Mary and I would be despised. I would have lost everything.