The Deadly Space Between Read online

  The Saints believed in Satan, Satan as a roaring lion who stalketh about seeking whom he may devour. I never quite knew how literal this was. Satan was responsible for contemporary evils like rock and roll, the television and A Clockwork Orange. He seemed to utilize insidious forms of agency rather than risk any overt appearances. But I sincerely believe that my mother was on the watch for a seductive chap with cloven hooves and horns. Perfectly visible to the naked eye, if you looked closely.

  We were antinomians. Do you know what that means? You don’t? Well, it’s simple. It’s a bit like justification by faith, not by works. Oh, that’s no clearer? Listen, Toby, I was washed in the Blood of the Lamb. So I’m clean. It doesn’t matter what I do. I’ve been saved for all eternity. I shall sit upon the right hand of God in the Heavenly City.

  Of course it’s all nonsense. But it’s what we believed. Well, if we were safe in Abraham’s bosom why were we always on the lookout for the Evil One? It wasn’t consistent. Mother used to explain it like this. We were all like Adam and Eve, created perfect, but with our own free will. Sufficient to have stood, yet free to fall. To fall? It means to fall from Grace. We could choose to renounce God’s Covenant at any time. Doesn’t that sound magical? Freedom? Choice? I longed to fall from Grace. But it couldn’t just happen. You had to do something. And I was too locked into their systems to imagine anything else, any other way to be. I had the habit of obedience.

  But is that true? No, it isn’t quite. I wasn’t too crushed to paint. They didn’t want me to study art. I was supposed to do modern languages or Maths. I’m not sure how either of these would be helpful if I were destined to the Higher Calling and to become a missionary in Africa. I suppose they could have sent me to a French-speaking bit. Anyway, I painted them. I painted strange portraits of the Saints. It was a quiet form of revenge, I suppose. Saying my piece in the language I could speak best. But I left those in the cupboard at school. The art mistress came to see my parents at home. She begged them to allow me to do Art GCSE. They made her sit in the dining room, which was cold without the Sunday fire. She sat on the edge of her chair and they never offered to take her coat. I remember that interview. It was very funny in a way. My art mistress was called Miss Shirley. She was a bit like Liberty, short hair and strong hands. She explained that I was potentially very good and deserved the training. They demurred. Art was at best a form of self-indulgence and at worst a pagan imitation of the Lord’s works. Oh no, pleaded Miss Shirley, art is the handmaid of religion. She mounted a huge argument which took in Russian icons, medieval manuscripts, every known form of ecclesiastical fresco, the Sistine Chapel, Piero Della Francesco, Velázquez and Van Gogh’s shoes. Mother put it all down to Satan’s inventiveness, but my father was almost convinced. He did think that sacred art had its uses. He had taken advantage of a picture book in Africa, to teach the story of our Lord’s mission and sacrifice to illiterate children, who then spent the afternoons crucifying each other to see if it hurt. But he never knew about that. And so I was allowed to do my art GCSE, but it had to be an extra, not a substitute for something more useful, like geography.

  You’d have kicked over the traces, Toby. And in my way I did too.

  I wished for three things. I even prayed for them. I wanted to look different. I wanted to wear different clothes. And I wanted a man to make love to me. Maybe that’s what every naive adolescent girl wants. But I wanted these things with a passion that was almost unbalanced. I wanted to be someone else, someone cool, streetwise, canny, sexy. I wasn’t afraid of whatever was out there, beyond the bars. I wanted to learn the world.

  There was a school trip to Germany. At the end of April, not long before our school exams. It was a language course in south Germany, on the Bodensee: lessons in the morning and coach trips to tourist sights or long healthy walks through the forests in the afternoons. All safe back at the hostel and tucked up in our rooms by ten o’clock. It sounded like the Hitler Youth. But I wasn’t fooled. Freedom. I could smell it, taste it almost – freedom. I didn’t really know where the Bodensee was in Germany, but I didn’t care. I signed up. I said they’d given their permission. But of course they hadn’t. I was trying it on. The German teacher rang them up. We did have a telephone, but it was in their bedroom and I wasn’t allowed to make calls. My mother went nuclear straight away. She said it was out of the question. But my teacher took my part. She said that they were holding me back. I wasn’t doing as well as I could have done because I was never allowed to take part in school activities. That cut no ice with my mother. But her next line of attack certainly did. She told them that there were bursaries available. And that was too much for Mother. Her high-mindedness was being interpreted as poverty. Pride got the better of her. I was allowed to go.

  I think my parents knew that it would be something of a turning point, but not in the way they imagined. Mother actually cried when they delivered me up to my German teacher at the station. She made me promise not to forget my prayers. And on no account was I to approach any of the churches. Rome was far more dangerous than all the wildernesses of Africa.

  The trip turned out to be a poisoned chalice. I’d never been out to a cafe with a gang of girls for an evening, let alone abroad for over a week. I was in for a shock.

  I had been forced to put up with quite a bit of teasing at school. They called me Swot or Inkpot in the second form. I was the only girl with a real pen and a bottle of Quink. They also called me Lizard. But oddly enough this was not an insult. One of our first school readers had a wise lizard that knew all the answers and sent the children off on interesting adventures. Like the Lizard I was clever and could do the maths and Latin. I helped them out with prose translations and theorems in geometry. I was useful. And I wasn’t out there all tarted up on the disco floor, wiggling my arse at their boyfriends. So I wasn’t a threat. Now I was out of place, out of my depth. I looked odd. Difference gets masked by school uniforms, but in civvies I was the only one in a Harris tweed skirt to just below the knee and lace-up Hush Puppies. I had that scrubbed sort of face that screams Virgin. I didn’t start conversations. I sat on my own and looked out of the window as the coach rolled away towards Dover. By the time we got to Calais they’d settled on my new name and the general line of attack. They jeered at my hair. And they gave me a new nickname. They called me the Nun.

  My hair was really long then, one long blonde plait right down to the small of my back. No one else had hair that long. It did look strange. As if I was suffering from Rapunzel syndrome. But now I think that they picked on that because it was my distinguishing feature. If I’d had spots or been fat they’d have persecuted me for those instead. They made up nasty songs, which they chanted to tunes from The Sound of Music, of which, of course, I’d never heard. Then they pissed themselves laughing. My German teacher never quite realized whom all this was aimed at, and anyway it was all going on in the back of the coach and she was sitting up at the front, gripping the map. That journey was purgatory. I’ve earned more years of grace for enduring that coach trip than all the tortures of my subsequent life put together. For the first time I had tried to join the group and found the gates barred by a mass of schoolgirls all standing there with drawn swords. I didn’t cry in front of them. Not a drop. That was a mistake. They’d have let up if I’d cried.

  We stopped, long after dark, at a hotel near Strasbourg. And by the second night we were there.

  We took possession of an entire Jugendherberge. There were Steppdecken sitting on the beds, arranged in two double pyramids like a king’s crown. Everything was eerily clean and white, as if we had moved into an asylum. My period came on in the night and I awoke in a pond of fresh blood. That was the end. I sicked up my breakfast in the lavatory and was confined to my room for the rest of the day. My teacher was sympathetic, but she was busy organizing the language classes. The pack backed off. The Nun’s sick. Poor old cretinous Nun. Leave her alone.

  My roommate looked incredulously at my bulky pack of STs. The Saints we
ren’t allowed to use tampons. Fuck that, Nun. Here, try these. You just take them out of the wrapping and shove them up. Not directly upwards. Backwards, towards your bum. Go on. It might even give you a thrill. I spent the morning crying into fresh sheets and pillows. They all went off to see the Schloss Neuschwanstein in the afternoon. I got up and walked down to the lake.

  I remember it all, the still water and the quiet day. The mud smelt of late spring. Fresh reeds were rising from the wet banks. There were moorhens nesting under the jetty. That part of the Bodensee was a wildlife reserve. And I sat there all afternoon, sniffling. Not even the moorhens were afraid of me.

  Then I saw him, rowing slowly towards me, a simple painted rowing boat and a giant man cradling the oars.

  Roehm looked much the same as he does now, not so heavy perhaps, but much the same. He hasn’t changed. He was leaning on the oars, watching me. I had the distinct impression that he was rowing in towards the jetty with the single intention of speaking to me. Have you noticed how he addresses you by your name? Roehm always makes you feel chosen. It’s part of his endless, sinister charm. There was a slow dip and splash as he came, the rowlocks creaking in their sockets. He looked up. His face was white, strange, hairless, as if he never shaved. I remember his rings. He wore golden rings, too many for an ordinary man. It was as if he belonged to many different secret societies and wore a seal for each one. I stared at his rings. I knew he was old enough to be my father. But still, I stared at his face, fascinated. The boat slowed and hovered, unsteady in the shallows. He leaned on his oars, looking into my face, waiting.

  I wasn’t sure what language to use. I had to be the one to speak first. How did I know that? It was a question of permission. Almost an invitation. Roehm could not come ashore unless I invited him to do so. I knelt on the jetty and stretched out my hand for the rope.

  ‘Thank you.’

  Those were the first words I heard him say. His voice is the same. Un de ces voix, as Françoise describes it. She always comments on his voice. Maybe that’s all she knows. I can’t remember if she’s ever seen him. I caught the rope and pulled him towards me. The boat bumped against the jetty and the moorhens scuttled for cover in the reeds. He shipped oars and reached inside his jacket. He wore a black suit, a white shirt with the top buttons undone, as if he had been wearing a tie, but had hauled it off. He was oddly overdressed for a boating expedition.

  ‘Are you English?’ I asked, curious. I sat on the jetty above him, my legs swinging, looking down into the boat. Roehm lit a cigarette and looked up at me. He had shiny, city shoes.

  ‘No. Would you like a cigarette?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Your parents won’t let you smoke.’ It was a simple statement of fact, something he already knew.

  ‘They won’t let me do anything,’ I snapped bitterly.

  Roehm laughed, that wonderful, eerie, resonating laugh.

  ‘Then I’m glad they’re not here.’

  ‘So am I.’

  And I smiled at him from my perch above. Roehm always seems to know more about you than you’ve ever told him. Have you noticed that? He puts you at your ease. I knelt on the jetty and reached out for his hand. I had no fear of him. His face was terribly still. He took my hand. I let out a cry. His hand was so cold. I thought it was his rings, the chilly gold of his rings.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, rising, ‘I’m unusually cold. You are beautifully warm.’

  This was a compliment, a caress. He swung himself onto the jetty beside me and the boat sank alarmingly beneath him. We sat side by side, looking across the lake. He held my hand secure on his lap. I felt the icy gold of his rings.

  ‘You have something to give me. And I have something to give to you.’ He delivered these lines as an utterly factual, undramatic statement. Even in my innocence I thought that he was a bit extraordinary.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’ll see.’

  There was silence. A ragged chevron of ducks banked away over the lake, their necks outstretched, calling into the watery sun.

  ‘What is your name?’

  ‘Isobel. And yours?’

  ‘Roehm.’

  I sat wondering at his name. Was he Mr Roehm? Or did he have just one name, like Heathcliff, or Madonna? He heard me thinking.

  ‘Just Roehm. It’s easy to remember. What do you hate most?’

  ‘My hair.’

  I banged my heels indignantly on the struts of the jetty.

  ‘They won’t let me cut my hair. All the other girls have waxed spikes. Dyed orange and green sometimes. And I sit here like Julie Andrews. They say I look like Julie Andrews. Do you know what they call me? The Nun! I hate it. If I had short hair they wouldn’t laugh so much and I’d look more normal. My clothes are awful enough. Especially my shoes. Who wears Hush Puppies with lace-ups? Only health visitors or your dead grandmother. But the plait is the first thing they see.’

  I turned to face him and grimaced, my mouth sulky and hard. He squeezed my hand. I felt like his accomplice being trained for my special mission, whatever it was.

  ‘Would you like to have it all cut off?’

  ‘Well, maybe not all of it. But I wouldn’t dare. My parents would never forgive me. It says in the Bible that a woman’s hair is her crowning glory, so I can’t have it cut.’

  ‘Hmmm. Yes. But St Paul was addressing a first-century audience. If he was preaching now he might think that it was nothing but vanity.’

  I was puzzled by his accent. He spoke perfect English but was obviously foreign. Remember that I was only sixteen. Or nearly sixteen. I felt safe as houses. I never suspected Roehm. He seemed reliable, even protective. And I was very struck by his innovative biblical interpretations.

  He took me to the most expensive hairdressers’ in the town. We walked in as if he had already made the appointment. It was air-conditioned. I noticed the purged chill in the stale air. The room stank of artificial hairsprays. There were long lines of black chairs receding endlessly. Some of them were occupied by women in expensive clothes with old faces and liver-spotted hands; their lank thin hair hung defeated, festering on their ears and shoulders. I hesitated in front of the desk and leaned back against Roehm.

  ‘Are you nervous? Have you changed your mind?’

  His voice against my cheek was subtle as a kiss.

  ‘Oh no. I want it off. All of it.’

  ‘Farewell the crowning glory. It is a little old-fashioned.’

  A young woman slid towards us across the marble tiles. Roehm twisted the plait around my throat.

  ‘Here is my Rapunzel,’ he said in English. The girl looked confused. I winced.

  She ushered me to one of the black chairs. I saw myself suddenly in the great gilt-framed pool of glass. I was an English schoolgirl in a white shirt and green cardigan, pleated navy skirt, knee-high white socks, lace-up flatties, my cheeks a little sunburnt, my nose freckled and gleaming. I looked at least five years younger than I was. Even my breasts looked hard and small. Roehm lifted the offending plait and kissed the nape of my neck. I felt his tongue on the last vertebra just below my collar.

  ‘Don’t worry. I’ll buy you new clothes.’

  The woman carrying a pile of gold and white towels took in the suggestive curl of his kiss and stood still, shocked. She had assumed that I was his daughter. I blushed, shrinking into the chair. Roehm won back the ground, easy, charming, speaking fluent German, explaining how he wanted her to cut my hair, shorter here, above the ears, layer the top, a bit of energy, to give her height. But keep the plait entire. I shall hoard it up, to remember her childhood. When I hold it again I shall remember her, as she is now, freckled cheeks, white arms and this long thin torrent of gold. He meets my eyes in the mirror.

  ‘I want to keep my plait,’ I said, suddenly perverse. I was afraid of him owning anything of mine.

  Roehm cuffed my cheek and laughed. He said nothing. Then he turned to the hairdresser who had already swaddled me in towels and was glaring sadi
stically at the plait.

  ‘I’ll return in an hour.’

  The old women had begun to stare at him. Graceful as a dancing master, he strode away down the long marble room passing from mirror to mirror, drawing each glance into the frame and then beyond, staring after his huge shoulders, white jowls and giant hands, with the great bands of heavy gold. I watched him go. Then I noticed the scissors approaching my head. My attention snapped back to the woman’s hands. Roehm had gone.

  I looked very different with my hair bobbed short. I’ve worn it like that ever since. I see no reason to change. I looked older, taller. I sat with the plait in a large envelope on my lap.

  ‘Here it is.’ I offered the thing to Roehm when he appeared in the doorway.

  ‘I thought that you wanted to keep it.’

  ‘Well, I don’t now. You have it.’

  I never saw what he did with it. The plait mysteriously disappeared. We walked down the pedestrian streets peering into clothes shops. Everything gleamed. There was no rubbish under the benches. The geraniums in pots lolled sideways as if they had been drugged. Roehm was smoking. He held me firmly with his other hand and my flesh burned with the imprint of his cold rings.

  ‘You’ll have to choose, Isobel. I have no idea what the young girls are wearing these days.’

  ‘Don’t you notice?’ I wanted at least two obscene tight black tops and skin-tight black jeans or a micro-skirt with patterned black tights. I wanted, at last, to be seen.

  ‘No. I never notice these things.’

  I chose a black leather jacket, with patterned studs. It was fabulously expensive. I thought, He’s my lover. He can pay.

  Roehm smiled slightly.

  The shops paraded clothes for fat middle-aged women. So how did he know which passage to turn down, which square to traverse, how to find the tiny little caves which contained fake silver trinkets and elastic flesh-gripping tops? One of the boutiques was so small he couldn’t fit into the space, so he waited outside as I frisked and pranced in the sunshine, parading one set of black clothes after another. The skin-tight tops showed off my breasts, made them seem bigger, softer. He only looked into my face, and at my smile rimmed by the swinging blonde bob of short hair. He made me feel Hollywood beautiful.