The Rental Heart and Other Fairytales Read online

  We flatten out some newspapers from the gutter and sit on the kerb outside the house. I hear the church bells ringing in the distance, and I wonder if they’re more than just a way to tell the time. I don’t know what else they might mean but if it’s to do with the man and his empty eye then I don’t want it, I don’t want it at all.

  Momma says that me and Lily can’t have supper because that’s what the milk and beignets were for. I came home with the money still in my pocket but, you can’t eat coins, says Momma, so you march right back to that store. She has her hands on her hips and she’s looking right in my eyes and not sway-dancing or jangling her bracelets or anything, so I know she means it.

  I won’t go because of the man with the empty eye, but I don’t want to tell her that in case of scolding. I cry and cry but she still just stands there so after a hundred thousand years of crying I tell her about the man and how he scared me and the bit about the poor lost lambs and then Momma wraps me up in her arms and lets me tuck my hands in the waist of her skirt like I used to, except I’m tall now so it’s not a good angle but I don’t care because it’s Momma, it’s my Momma and she makes it all okay.

  Opal goes out and gets us all Eskimo Pies for supper, and me and Lily eat them on the back step with the ice-cream dripping from our fingers and it’s the greatest thing I ever ate.

  THIRTEEN

  I’m at the table doing school with Lily when my blood comes. We’re trying to read some old book about a man called Mr. Jackal and sometimes he’s Mr. Hide and it’s boring but at least it’s not real long, and I feel something at the inside top bit of my leg, and I think I know it because Momma told me but I go and check anyways, and I want to go and get Momma but she’s still sleeping so I don’t, I just clean up and go back to the table and sit down next to Lily and open my book.

  What’s the matter? she says but I just smile all calm like ladies in portraits. I raise up my chin and think of the neat-painted lines of my face and I say, Nothing, Lily. Let’s read the story.

  Lily frowns and throws down her book and stomps out the back door, and I sit up straighter and turn the page, and that’s when I know the difference between a girl and a woman.

  I tell Momma about my blood later, when the sun has gone to bed and she has got up – they balance like that, like weights on a scale – and she comes downstairs to make me and Lily pancakes. The piano is already thrashing and rolling in the front part of the house and Momma swipes her feet across the floor in time as she’s mixing up the batter. Her face is all painted and she keeps pressing her lips together to spread the red properly.

  I wait until Lily goes to set the table and I sidle up to Momma and eat a fingerscoop of the batter, and I press my tongue to the roof of my mouth to feel the grit of sugar dissolving. And then, Momma, I say, I’m a woman now.

  Momma stands, just stirring the batter, and more than anything I want to tuck my hands into the waist of her skirt. But that feeling passes blink-fast and right away Momma wraps her arms around me and strokes the strands of hair back from my forehead and, A celebration, she says, to celebrate my little woman, all grown at thirteen.

  Momma lights candles and pushes them into the stack of pancakes and says I can lick the syrup straight from the jar, but I don’t because suchlike things are for girls and not women, and Lily looks kinda confused but Momma tells her I am a woman and I just smile like the painting and I hope Lily’s momma told her about the blood because she’ll get a fright when it comes. I didn’t get a fright and Momma fixed it all anyways and I’m so giddy with how much I love my home and my Momma and being Violet the flower-girl, and I push out all the thoughts that are making my forehead crease and I shovel pancakes into my mouth until they’re all gone.

  The week after my blood, Momma takes me into the front of the house and lets me meet the soldiers. One man has a body as round and soft as an uncooked bread roll. Another one is all elbow and knees, and his trousers are too short so I can see the knobbles of his anklebones rubbing on the rim of his shoes. Another one wears a long coat full of pockets and he limps on one leg – Momma says this is because he keeps his money in his shoe, but if he’s got all those pockets why doesn’t he put his coins in them?

  Momma says soldiers used to be the best customers, that they were so proud she felt proud to be with them. She says they’re still the best customers but now it’s because they have to be. No one else will have them because they’re broken, wild-eyed, likely to snap. Opal still takes them. She says it’s a public service, doing her bit for the war effort. My momma laughs and says the war is over, but Opal says it’ll never be over. It’ll never be over when those men still have those eyes.

  I think about if I’ll raise my chin high like Momma or get on my knees like Opal, because I’m a woman and that’s a decision that every woman has to make.

  Momma puts red on my mouth and curls in my hair and tall shoes on my feet, and she holds my hand light as a moth as we prance through the house. The music is so loud it shakes my lungs and the floorboards sway under our shoes and Momma leads me on on on down a long corridor and through to a room with a huge rusted keyhole and she pulls a key from a hidden ribbon around her waist and she opens the door.

  And I see.

  I see what Momma and Jade and Pearl do with the pony. I reach out my hand and I stroke the pony, moving my hand in big sweeps like brackets surrounding us. From the other rooms I hear the crackle of a skipping record, some old song sung by a woman with a voice thicker than treacle. Outside, across the rooftops, I hear the church bells tolling from other people’s lives.

  The men around the edge of the room all clutch fistfuls of paper and I know, I know. I am a diamond and someday the pony will be mine.

  The Light Eater

  It began with the Christmas tree lights. They were candy-bright, mouth-size. She wanted to feel the lightness of them on her tongue, the spark on her tastebuds. Without him life was so dark, and all the holiday debris only made it worse. She promised herself she wouldn’t bite down.

  The bulb was sweet and sharp, and it slid down her throat with a feeling of relief: an itch finally scratched. She came to with a shock. At the realisation of what she’d done, she tangled the lights back into their box and pushed them onto the highest shelf. The next day she pulled down the box and ate the rest. The power cable was slippery as liquorice.

  She got hungrier as the days passed. A lightbulb blew; she went to change it but ended up sucking it like a gobstopper. She had soon consumed the rest of the bulbs in the house. Lamps mushroomed up from every flat surface – and there’s no good in a darkened light. Each day she visited the hardware shop and walked home with bags full to clinking. Her eyes were always full of light; with each blink she caught gold on her eyelashes.

  One night she opened her mouth to yawn, and saw that her path was lit. Up she jumped, pyjama-ed and barefoot, and followed the light across streets and playgrounds, fields and forests, all the way to the edge of the land.

  She paused on the rocks, between the trees at her back and the black of the sea. This is where he left, and this is where she could find him again. She stretched her body to the sky in readiness, then opened her mouth to outshine the stars.

  She spat out the bulbs – one, two; nineteen, twenty – in a runway from trees to shore. She spread herself out on the sand. A perfect starfish, a fallen body. An X, so he could find his way back.

  Matryoshka

  Elimae was a magician with a key in her mouth, a foreign language, a matryoshka doll: uncomplicated on the surface, but with a dozen secret selves hidden inside.

  She thought I didn’t notice her, but she’s all I did notice. All day I’d ring for iced water, sugared pastries, pots of blossom tea. Then I’d ring in the middle of the night just to see her stumble to the foot of my bed, hair twisted in rags and nightgown sleep-rumpled. I’d whisper my request so she would have to lean closer; so I could almost feel
the heat from her skin. She’d bring me the extra blanket or glass of warm milk, then disappear back to her room, so tired she’d forget even to curtsey. I liked to think that my face, being the last thing she saw, smudged into her dreams.

  I did not know what I was to her – a tyrant, a grasping child? – but I knew what I wished to be. Elimae was a matryoshka doll, and I did not want her surface: that painted design everyone could see. I wanted to pull apart each doll until I got to the one at the centre – the tiniest doll, the only one that couldn’t be split in half.

  When my brother Laurent turned 21, our parents decided it was time he found a princess – or rather, that one was found for him. At 17, I still had a few years of grace before I too had to be married off. To find Laurent’s princess, our parents invited every lady in the land to a masked ball. Invitations were sent, the gold leaf indented into every letter by hand and delivered by a servant on a white horse. Responses were not necessary; no lady would miss a chance to become the next Queen.

  I gathered my maids a month before the ball to plan my dress, my hair, my shoes. I asked them all what they thought, but the only opinion I cared about was Elimae’s. Whatever she found beautiful was what I wanted to be. She was excused her usual tasks to work on my slippers, stitching pearls to the soft upper until it was too dark to thread her needle. While the castle slept, I crept out of bed and pulled out the shoes, lining them up on my knees. I kissed each smooth, warm pearl, imagining I kissed her fingertips. All I could think about was the night of the ball: Elimae dressing me, arranging each ribbon and ringlet, then standing back and seeing how beautiful I looked, my delicate feet in the slippers she made. I planned to send her to bed after that, carrying my image straight to her pillow. I’d have one of the other girls undress me after the ball, so that Elimae wouldn’t see how my powder had smudged or smell the stale wine on my breath. Just for that night, I wanted to be beautiful for her.

  Three days before the ball, and I was almost ready for display. The hairdresser had prepared a creation for my head: a cage of spun sugar around which my hair would be twisted and pinned, and which would disintegrate through the evening, scattering ringlets and glittering sugar shards onto my bare shoulders. The dressmaker had sewn three dozen jewels onto the bodice of my gown in the stylised curls of a peacock’s tail. But the shoes remained half-stitched.

  I rang the bell for Elimae with every turn of the clock’s hands and asked about the shoes. The shadows under her eyes fascinated me, cinder-grey darkening to foxglove-purple. The night before the ball the shadows were the colour of charred wood, but my shoes were almost finished. I paused before dismissing her, watching the way she swayed in fatigue, wishing more than anything that she would collapse. Then I could take care of her: tuck her into the empty side of the bed, lay my hand on her sweat-itching brow, press my lips against her needle-swollen fingertips. But I could not touch Elimae, so I had to content myself with the last thing she had touched. I slept with the shoes cradled to my chest, dreaming of her fingers on the pearls.

  The next day I could not sit still, not even for a moment. I wandered the wings and walkways, looking for Elimae. When I caught sight of her, tousle-haired and tired-eyed as a street urchin, I quickly looked the other way. She bustled past me and I turned to watch, desperate for a glimpse of the pale skin of her throat.

  Three hours before the ball, my dressing-up game began. My serving-ladies made me into a mannequin, an invalid, a work of art. They passed in a blur, powdering and tight-lacing, but Elimae was nowhere to be seen.

  Finally I was almost complete, perfect from my head to my ankles. I was standing on a wooden block to allow the dressmakers to re-stitch the hem of my gown, so I had a clear view of each tired head bent over its work. I was sure that Elimae was not in the room, and I couldn’t bear the thought that she would miss my moment of beauty. As much as I wanted to stand there all night just so that Elimae could see me, I knew I could not. My mother, my father, Laurent; no one would understand that Elimae was all I cared for. I closed my eyes to hide my tears and stepped off the block – straight into my pearl-stitched shoes.

  Without opening my eyes I knew that those were Elimae’s palms pressing against my heel, Elimae’s fingers easing my toes into the shoes. And, just as surely, I knew that these were not the shoes Elimae had been working on for the past month.

  I’m sorry, she was saying, my mistress, I could not finish. I’m sorry, I did try. Her hands were hot and dry against my ankles as she slipped my feet into the soft blue slippers I wore every day to shuffle along the polished floors of the palace.

  The gown is long, I thought; it will hide the shoes. I can make an excuse, I thought; tell my mother that I did not like the gleam on the pearls. I did not say these things.

  Elimae, I said as I stood there in my worn blue shoes. And she would not look at me.

  I waited, alone in my room, until the vibrations from the ballroom started to shake my spun-sugar cage loose. The sounds of the orchestra and a thousand dancing feet got steadily louder as I walked along the corridors.

  Instead of parading down the wide arc of the main stair like the other ladies, I slipped through a side door, joining in the twirl of skirts as if I’d always been there. I made sure to take small steps to hide the scuffed heels of my shoes. I quickly found a man’s hand to hold – as long as I kept a pretty smile on my face, he wouldn’t notice my distraction. I did not even know whether I knew him; as this was a masque, his face was covered in that of a wolf. I rested my head on his shoulder and breathed in his smell of hair oil, starched cloth, and flower pollen. I felt it cloying on the back of my throat, but as long as I focused on him – the deep comb-ridges in his hair, his palm sweating onto my waist – then I wouldn’t think of Elimae.

  As was my habit, I was still searching every face to find hers. Silly, I know: she would be crying herself to sleep, or still desperately trying to finish stitching my slippers. I didn’t want her to cry over me, but at least she was thinking of me. Perhaps I would visit her later. After the musicians had broken all their strings, after the dancers had hobbled home on tattered feet, after the whole palace was as quiet as a secret lover, I would tiptoe along the halls to Elimae’s door. I would not knock, of course. I would creak open the door to reveal the tableau of a wretched girl: a tear-soaked pillow, patched skirts spread out across the bed, her tiny feet poking out of the bottom. Thinking of Elimae, all ready for me to save, made me smile and pull my dancing partner closer. His sweaty hand gripped mine harder, his fingers on the bird-thin part of my wrist, making the bones grind. I pulled back, keeping my gaze carefully away from his.

  In the ballroom all the skirts billowed, all the bosoms swelled, but none caught my eye. The ladies’ faces were disguised as swans, deer, pampered housecats. The men had all chosen to be wolves or dogs. I kept my eyes down on the floor, watching the dull glitter of shoes twisting round one another.

  A flash of gleaming pearl.

  I started, pulled away from my dancing wolf, but was dragged along by the force of bodies moving in sync. Had I imagined those shoes, those pearls I had kissed every night? I looked wildly around the room, trying to catch a glimpse of the shoes I knew so well. I had to know who had stolen my precious shoes, but all I could see were masks, blank and leering.

  I let go of the wolf and forced my way through the shifting sea of the crowd, all toes and elbows. Pressed up against the wall, I stared around the ballroom. Nothing but twirling skirts and straining backs, then – there! The gleam of pearl. I kept my eyes on the swift movement of the shoes, upwards to a froth of white skirts, a tight-laced bodice, a single pearl nestled in the swell of breasts, and a mask of pale dove feathers. As the dancer turned I examined the line of her jaw and the angle of her wrist, trying to put them together into the shape of someone I knew. Someone who would steal my most precious possession. No, I amended, my second most precious – Elimae was surely the favourite thing I owned.
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br />   I kept staring at the masked dove, twirling gleefully in my stolen shoes. Belatedly I realised the identity of her dancing partner – my brother, Laurent. Dancing with the marriageable prince was surely making her the envy of the entire room. Laurent stretched out his arm to spin his mysterious partner, his smile obvious even under his lion mask. The dove turned under his arm, and as she pressed her body back against his, she looked straight at me as though she had been aware of my gaze all along.

  I knew those eyes. Elimae, my matryoshka.

  Everything moveable in me rushed to my throat, and it felt like a storm was thudding inside my head. I pressed my hands against the wall to keep from falling down. In the polished floor of the ballroom, the pearl shoes reflected to infinity. Had Elimae finished them and not been able to find me, and so had worn them herself only to show me how hard she had worked? Had she constructed two pairs, working double hours in secret, so that we might match? Was she dancing with my brother because he was close to me, was my same blood and flesh? I could not think. I kept my back pressed up against the wall, the dancing figures blurring in front of me. The only shape I could make out was Elimae, shining clear as the north star in my brother’s arms.

  I stood in the corridor outside the ballroom for a long time. I stared at the polished floor, looking at my own tear-streaked reflection and trying to make sense of what I had seen.