Under My Skin Read online

  ‘You have Scrabble,’ he says and it seems really important to him.

  ‘On Friday,’ he goes on, ‘come to my house for dinner, play Scrabble,’ and he shivers in my sitting room. ‘Get warm.’

  He opens the door and looks up at the sky for a moment, and then without saying goodbye he leaves.

  Email to Hope Swann 4.48 p.m.

  From Jack Mitchell

  Hey, Going to try to get down there at the weekend. Saturday

  afternoon.

  Did you work out how to light the stove OK?

  Jack.

  Email to Matilda Vaughan 5.02 p.m.

  From Hope Swann

  Hi Matilda

  How are things? Sorry I left in a hurry and without saying goodbye. I just needed to get away and think. I’m in Cape Cod. Truro. In Jack’s beach house. Do you know it? It’s nice but very cold. I am so mixed up about everything. I just need some time.

  There’s one interesting person here. An old guy who invited me to his house for a game of Scrabble!?! Is that a date do you think?

  Anyway, hope things are good with you, and sorry again I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye.

  Hope.

  The bedroom window faces away from the beach. From here I think I can see the lights of Wellfleet and in the distance a single light like a yellow star and that could be from his barn. When he left I stood in the doorway and watched as his feet sank a little when he jumped the step on the front porch and landed in wet sand. He turned the corner without waving and then he was gone – and somehow he has been with me ever since. I do not understand this. He seems to have turned into a hundred different shadows so that he is imagined to be seated on the white chair, or adding a log to my stove or stretched out on my bed on a warm June afternoon. And when his face is gone I stand still for a moment and try to remember his eyes and his smile and I think I have the memory now and then it’s gone again.

  There is a bottle of wine in the bag of groceries and I see that Mr Huckstable has chosen a Californian Shiraz. I will take the next bus carrying the bottle and with the box of Scrabble under my arm. I can remember Frankie’s voice as I step out on to the porch: ‘That’s like asking someone with dyslexia to play Scrabble.’ Today on the beach Arthur told me about all sorts of things and there were words shooting in every direction and it was impossible for me to catch them in my net and pin them down.

  There is no one on the beach tonight – not even a tug or a ship or a single light out at sea. The noise of the waves in the dark is frightening and I hurry to the bus stop with the wind whipping around my ears and face. When I get to his house I can see him through the window, putting logs on his fire, and everything in his room seems warm in red and orange and gold. He sees me coming across his yard and a light flashes on over his door. He smiles when he sees me and he says, ‘Welcome’ and he opens his arms.

  For dinner there is lamb with rosemary, peach chutney, roast potatoes and baby peas. It is all simple and fresh and laid out on a red and white gingham cloth. He has lit a big fire and he says, ‘We should both sit on the same side of the table to keep our backs warm.’ And outside the wind picks up and somewhere far away is the sound of the night sea. I imagine what it would be like if we were married and like this, feeling the cold together and getting old. He talks easily about himself. Producing awful facts and incidents without any embarrassment or thought. ‘Mortality’ is mentioned again and he says that for some reason he is the last person other people see before they die. When I ask him about his family and his friends he says that most of them are dead.

  ‘Vietnam,’ he explains simply and he takes a forkful of food. He makes two mugs of hot chocolate for dessert and hands one to me with the handle turned around.

  ‘Now,’ he says, ‘get out the Scrabble board.’ The fire dies down but the room is warm. There are no draughts in his house and there is a cowskin rug on the floor. We move to the couch and lay out the little white tablets and pews and in between making words and pretending to find it difficult he offers up more information around his life.

  ‘The women I meet,’ he says, ‘tell me I can’t commit.’

  ‘I’m a widow and I’m dyslexic,’ I reply and for the first time I manage to really smile for him and he puts back his head and laughs.

  His first word is ‘ebony’ and then ‘bison’ and then ‘squaw’.

  ‘I am an American after all,’ he laughs. And I come up with ‘feet’ and from that ‘toe’ and I am in Scrabble hell. He offers me five-letter words and American culture and I reply with four-letter scores and body parts.

  We talk about women and men and how it is impossible to know anyone.

  ‘I mean to truly know them,’ he says. ‘For example, your parents, how well do we know our parents? What sort of people are they when they’re not with us? Is it possible to know another person fully – or would you want to?’ and he asks this question of the room and of himself.

  My letters are ‘Q’ ‘X’ ‘T’ ‘Y’ ‘I’ ‘I’ and he begins to suggest words to me and in the end we agree to accept abbreviations and my next effort, added to ‘toe’ is ‘i.e.’.

  ‘I thought I knew my last girlfriend,’ he says, as if I am no longer in the room. ‘When I met her. I thought she was beautiful – she was – and then I thought, “Puppy from the pound”.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The first time I went to touch her, she pulled back. It was involuntary. When I lifted my hand… she didn’t know what was coming next.’

  The door behind us creaks suddenly and I look up quickly and he smiles.

  ‘Then she told me she had been abused by someone, but she was telling me something I already knew. I did care for her. I took her in. One night she told me I was her umbilical cord. I never thought she was dangerous but you know…’ and his voice trails off.

  ‘She was wounded,’ he goes on. ‘It wasn’t her fault. She learned to trust me. I was the first man who treated her with kindness – so when I wanted to end it – it was like she got all broken up again. She was so lonely…’ and here he gets up and fills the kettle and there is a part of me that is tempted to look at his letters before he turns back around.

  ‘Lonely people,’ he says, ‘can invent extraordinary lives for themselves – she was like Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver – and I began to realize she would do anything to get to me.’

  ‘And what did she want?’

  ‘Revenge. Against men. The ones who had hurt her. And because I broke her heart – that definitely included me.’

  ‘But she wasn’t dangerous…?’

  ‘Who knows…?’ and his voice answers in the softest whisper now.

  And the shutter behind him suddenly flaps open and I jump up and give a little cry and he runs and closes it and then walks over and puts one protective arm around my shoulder. Somewhere in between being careful with me – he is amused by my distress.

  ‘Honey, there are no devils or ghosts in Wellfleet – you’re in America… there are usually enough scary things happening in the house next door.’

  And we sit back down, our legs touching now, and we look in silence at the Scrabble board.

  The fire crackles and it makes shadows and I am suddenly looking at him and how he holds his chin, watching the letters on the board. I cannot stop looking and suddenly he takes his glasses off and looks right into my eyes. I am waiting for him to say something. To tell me something. To explain why I suddenly need to be around him all the time – and instead he says in a quiet voice, ‘You know you’re a beauty… right?’ and he smiles. He smiles so that his eyes sparkle and there is light and energy coming from him and filling the room. I can’t speak. I don’t have any answer here.

  ‘The minute I saw you…’ he says and his voice trails off. We both see me then as I am walking into the hardware store with red cheeks and tangled hair and his words are lifting me up and up again from my own dark place.

  He lifts his hand and places it gently against my cheek
. His hand is rough and callused, so much so that I almost move back involuntarily. ‘Puppy from the pound’, that was how he described her. The girl who would not leave him alone. To me his skin feels like work and pain and fingers pressed against rough walls by someone lost in the dark.

  ‘There have been others,’ he says, ‘but you have walked into my life and I have followed and looking at you now… as you are… I can’t turn around, even if I wanted to.’

  There is a bright flashing current running between us. It moves and curls and twists in each electric flash. It is so obvious we could almost say it out loud to each other, even though we have only just met. It is like an undertow and the rain hits the windowpane in one sudden dash and the wind makes the green shutters creak.

  He leans into my face and we kiss and I can feel his breath on my top lip and every sense is magnified. He kisses my neck – my forehead – my face – my lips. And he sits back and watches me as if I am made from some kind of gold. I am wondering what he is going to say to me. If he will tell me that I amaze him, if what is happening here between us is amazing for him as well.

  When he speaks his voice is suddenly young and innocent. He is smiling, almost laughing, as if he can’t disguise his own surprise.

  ‘I’m so glad I met you,’ he says simply.

  He kisses my breasts and then my stomach, once – twice – three times and then he begins to move his lips further down. The cowskin rug feels warm underneath us and there are two reindeer antlers to protect us overhead. In my mind I am seeing Indian ponies and braves who ride bareback through the prairie wind. And deep down inside I still miss him so much that I am in some kind of constant pain but… life goes on… that is what everyone says… and I am trying so hard to make a start… and so yes… life goes on… but it will never be the same again. But Arthur Glassman kisses and sucks and draws the pain out of me until I believe in one sudden bright flashing moment that a world of pain is gone.

  In the morning the sky is clear and lilac and there are gulls circling and crying when I kiss him on the steps. He is wearing a red sweater and his stubble and his fingers are rough when they touch my face.

  ‘Come back and have breakfast,’ he says and I smile and as I walk away I have a strange feeling that makes me want to turn and see him – and so I turn and expect to see him, hands deep in his pockets, his glasses on his nose, but his door is closed and he is suddenly invisible. He has already disappeared and gone inside again.

  Email to Hope Swann 5.38 p.m.

  From Matilda Vaughan

  Hey, I’m just glad you’re OK and safe. I love Cape Cod – we spent summers there too you know. That guy sounds interesting… and yes… I think it IS a date… (by the way what’s his name?).

  Matilda xx.

  Email to Matilda Vaughan 12.00 a.m.

  From Hope Swann

  Hi Matilda,

  We kissed. I don’t really know what I’m doing. He’s way too old for me – fifty-one – can you believe that? – He’s an artist, making something from glass… romantic I guess.

  Hope.

  Email to Hope Swann 12.01 a.m.

  From Matilda Vaughan

  Hi Hope,

  Sounds like you had a great time. Not much happening here… by the way what’s that guy’s name?

  Matilda.

  Arthur is sitting in his studio. He is wearing an old grey sweater with a red bandanna tied around one wrist. He apologizes because he needs to work today and because the air is full of ‘glass dust’. There is a fire lighting in the black iron grate behind him and next it, an old green wicker chair. The grey velvet curtains on the window are moth-eaten and beginning to fall down on one side. I sit on the wicker chair and watch him work and now and then he tilts his chin up a little and frowns down into the glass. He holds each piece in his fingers as if it is precious and confusing or like an unusual shell he has just picked up on the beach. To one side are two fishing rods and there are two big wooden crates. His name, Arthur Glassman, and his address, 1029 Prince Street, Manhattan, is written in clear black print on one side.

  ‘I’m not sure what it is,’ he says suddenly and he slowly puts his head into his hands. He looks sad and broken by it and as if his life is quite suddenly a waste of time. He holds it up then and turns it towards the light as if searching – and then he gets up and dips it into a bucket of water and holds it up again. And I can see it and wonder that he cannot. It is unfinished and already damaged by someone else. It has suffered trauma and been broken and there has been pain inside every vessel and disease. The pale blue and white of the old sea glass is sacred and ugly and beautiful all at the same time.

  ‘It’s a heart,’ I tell him and he looks at me.

  ‘The right side here,’ and I touch it with my hand, ‘and here is the… aorta… and on this side – you can make the rest,’ and when I look at him, he nods down into the glass spread out at his feet.

  ‘Not an original idea,’ he says and his voice is sad. ‘I would not be the first artist to make a heart from glass.’

  ‘It will be a first for you,’ I reply and he hunkers down over the glass again and smiles. His hands are callused from it. His hair is full of white dust. Today he looks tired and pale and ill.

  ‘I don’t know how you do this,’ I tell him then and he gives a wry smile.

  ‘I don’t feel like doing it every day.’

  On the beach we wrap ourselves in coats and scarves and walk together towards the pale November sun. We collect shells and smooth round pebbles and now and then I find a piece of old glass in the sand. He takes me to the harbour and we watch a red trawler unload its catch. The fishermen are Puerto Rican and the fish are jumping and slapping in nets as they come in. When we watch he stands behind me, his chin resting on my shoulder and his arms around my waist. Then we have coffee at the stove in Attwoods and we read the same copy of the New Yorker again. When we walk I put both red mittens around his hand and we rake out the shells from under rocks and stones. We are quiet then in the warmth of his kitchen and he shows me how to make real yeast bread and seafood chowder – ‘New England style’.

  And tonight in the middle of getting ready for dinner I remember to reply to Matilda’s email.

  Glassman

  That is all I write and then I run from the beach house, over the sand dunes and into the village, on to the bus, towards the red warm barn, the glass heart and him.

  18 Reason to Believe

  ‘My father was an Indian,’ Glassman said to his mirror image and the words came out, truthful and brave.

  ‘He made me,’ and when he spoke again the words fell down and broke into pieces on the ground. The other women were damaged and beyond repair but not Hope Swann. They walked to him like a tribe of broken dolls asking to be mended. They came, looking for something – hurt and in some way broken – abandoned and abused. Their eyes were always blue – why was that? And they could blink and roll but they usually just stared straight ahead. Matilda was the most like a doll. An old-fashioned porcelain figure arriving in tissue paper and in a long cellophane box. How beautiful she was and when she was hurting – how angry and dangerous and cold.

  On that last night in his apartment he stood in the doorway of his own kitchen and stared as she picked up a Stanley knife. He watched as she began to cut herself, not a nick or a mark – and had he not stopped her, she was going to saw off her hand.

  He ran his fingers back through his hair at the thought of it. And now here was this new girl because that is what she was. And he wanted to hold her and protect her and never let her go. He had seen her cross the street from the library and he had begun to dream about her and the hope of being able to feel love and lust again. She was very young but he needed this last chance at happiness and he needed her.

  Glassman could not see her – not as she was that day in the hardware store – and then look away and just carry on. He had seen her on the street in Wellfleet before that and then again at the library and then he saw her s
itting quietly at the red stove.

  He had wanted to talk to her and tell her – confide in her – about everything – and Jake in that silly hat and Huck with his dour face, and even the log that spat in the fire, grew into mountains and got in his way.

  She was different to the New Englanders. She had soft smooth skin, high pretty cheekbones – where did they come from? – and such beautiful – Matilda would call it – ‘angel hair’. But her real beauty and what made her precious and somehow more breakable was that he could see she was feeling sad and broken deep inside – and she was consumed by it – and completely unaware that for someone else she had become a ray of light. And his illness suddenly shifted and became smaller around her and it gave way to boyish ideas of how to impress and convince her that he was great.

  When the sun came out – even Huck was surprised by it – it lasted only an instant and just long enough to make a perfect round circle of light on her head. It was as if she was blessed or had an aura or was an angel and sent by someone else.

  Anyone except Glassman would have been taken aback by it, but he felt something click and release inside his chest and he began to feel – what? He did not know – but it was like a vessel in his heart opening and a fresh narrow river of blood feeding him something bright and new. ‘The feeling of life… that is how life feels,’ he would tell her later. And anyone else would have been surprised by a girl like that in Wellfleet, but not him, not really – Glassman was romantic and he had hoped and prayed and longed her here.

  In the dark afternoon when she was gone, his mind returned to the scar on her stomach and he spanned his fingers in front of his eyes and against the fading light and reminded himself that he had touched her – and right there and then he wanted to get out of bed and walk over hundreds of dunes to find her at the beach house and bring her here.

  He loved her and he wanted to keep her – that was all. In his mind his endorphins were like coloured butterflies now. They had escaped from him and went fluttering away and now because of her, he could catch them and try out a different one each day.