The Palace of Curiosities

скачать книгу бесплатно


Me? Go? she hissed. Now? Not likely. You need me more than ever.

That night, as I lay in the bed beside Mama, I was glad that it was warm; it meant that she curled away on to the far side of the mattress, and I desired greatly to be alone. I stretched out on my back, listening to her mutter herself to sleep, about how hot I was to lie next to, why did I heat the bed so, it was impossible to sleep with such a hearthrug next to her, and over and over, ungrateful child, thoughtless and uncaring, to forgetall the years I have protected her from mirrors, until the words drifted into deep breathing.

I allowed my thoughts to creep out and fill the room: thoughts so thrilling and wicked I was sure they would wake her. I imagined Mr Arroner coming back into the room, standing at the foot of this very bed. He shucked off his clothing, piece by piece, and I watched him the while, my excitement growing. Then all at once he sprang: leapt on to me, pressing his face deep into my belly and biting me fiercely, teeth sharp as knives, but not fiercely enough to satisfy; not fiercely enough to tear my hide. I wanted him to rip me open, and my voice begged him, Harder. Bite me, my love, harder. Harder.

In the morning Mama sighed and held her aching places, as though the holding might make them sting the less. I feigned sleepiness, which was not difficult, because I had had so little in the night. She called me lazy.

‘Do you wish the world to wait upon you?’

She was angry. I did not care. I was courted. I offered to rub her feet.

‘I am not helpless yet,’ she grumbled.

‘I will have him,’ I said to her and tried to make it sound like submission and not greed. ‘If you will allow it.’

I tipped my head to one side, playing the shy maid at the thought of marriage, a ring on my finger, a handful of hurled rice. A wedding night.

‘You’ll leave me,’ she said. ‘Then what will I become?’

I had stopped listening. I dreamed of a priest with a swim of lace around his throat, four white horses pulling my carriage, hymns sung, bells rung, a fat cushion of orange-blossom in my arms; breakfast after, with beer for the men, tea for the ladies. I pictured myself swathed in a sumptuous gown of the latest organdie, primped with tulle so fine as to be almost invisible, a veil of tambour lace floating around my head.

Donkey-Skin leaned on her elbow, yawning at my fancies.

‘Are you not excited?’ I gasped.

Lace tears easily, she said, digging in her ears with a long fingernail. And you can never get the stains out of organdie. I’d rather have a sturdy pair of boots and a five-pound note tucked inside them.

‘You don’t have a breath of romance in the whole of you,’ I sulked.

Good thing too, she said, drily.

‘Won’t you be happy for me?’

There was no answer.

‘Glad to see the dirty back of you!’ I shouted into the emptiness. I would not let her spoil my day.

Mama begged and borrowed plates and saucers from every room in the house, so that my wedding feast was served on a higgledy-piggledy mismatch of crockery and all of it chipped and cracked. I barely noticed. I believe Mama could have poured tea from a leather bucket and I would not have cared.

All morning she was a fury of bread-buttering, slicing it so thin you could have hung it at the window and seen through to the houses opposite. There were three vast pots of tea, a whole cup of sugar. She kept muttering ‘Friday for losses’until I had to tell her to keep her empty-headed superstitions to herself. I was gaining a husband.

I stood at the window, pulling on my gloves only to draw them off when my paws grew too hot, which was very quickly. I kissed the soft lilac leather, for surely he had touched it when he picked them out for my trousseau. There was no extravagant gauzy bridal gown, but he had bought me a pleasing and practical costume: a going-away dress in dark lavender, a pretty hat and new boots made for me alone. It was very kind of him.

I paced up and down so that I would not sit creases into my new skirt, screwing my head first to one side and then the other so that I could keep my eye on the street. It had to be the most long-drawn-out morning in the history of the world. Surely the moments had never ticked by so slowly.

‘Mama, I think the priest is late.’

‘Eve, sit down. You are making me dizzy with all this to-ing and fro-ing.’

‘I cannot be still.’

‘It is unladylike to bustle about, and in such a nice dress. You will become overheated.’

She could not bring herself to say the word ‘sweaty’, but it was true: my fur was clinging to the inside of my blouse.

‘Mama, do not fuss.’

‘Do you want to faint away? That’d be a fine business, if the priest asks you to say “I do” and I have to fan you awake with a hymn sheet.’

At last the wedding party arrived, to a fanfare of much rapping at the outer door. I fought to stand still while Mama went to greet them. Mr Arroner was first through the door, greeting my mother with loud declarations of apology for his lateness. He burst into our room and bowed deeply, heaping me with tender compliments and presenting me with a small posy of violets to match the dress. He was followed by a priest and two plainly dressed strangers who stared at me and my not-quite-yet husband back and forth until I thought their heads might grind their necks down to their shoulders.

There was no Order of Service, no hymn sheet, no hymns of any kind; only the briefest of prayers and I do not remember a word of them. The only words worth treasuring were the ones which dropped from his lips when he said he would have me as his wife.

‘Do you take this woman?’ said the minister, too hastily for my liking.

‘Indeed I do.’

They were the sweetest sounds I had ever heard, so delightful I half expected doves to fly out of his hat. He could have stood before me in sack-cloth for that vow clothed him more royally than any king. Then the minister blinked at me.

‘Do you take this man?’ he said, unable to keep a curl of distaste from his lips.

‘I do,’ I said, boldly.

Holy eyes flickered between my husband and myself.

‘Yes, she can speak for herself,’ said my new man, and I squeezed his arm for the champion he was.

I went to throw my arms around his neck, but his eyebrows climbed so far up his forehead I thought they might drop off. Mama also shot me a look, and I tempered my behaviour. We would be alone soon enough: I could wait for marital embraces a little while longer. I dropped my head and made a courageous attempt to behave decorously, as befitting a bride. I clenched and unclenched my fingers around the spray of flowers so often that I quite strangled them.

My mother did not cry. We signed our names and my man gave a coin to the witnesses: they were quick to leave and I did not see them again. It was not a grand ceremony, but it was good enough. I had the greatest prize, a husband who had already taken up a shield in my defence against the world. I loosened the word ‘girl’ from my shoulders and dropped it at the side of the front door.

Mr Arroner took me then into my new home, our new home: a palace with high ceilings and five steps leading up from the pavement to the door and a pink-and-white maid who bobbed her head and called me ‘mum’.

‘You will want to prepare for bed, Mrs Arroner,’ he said as soon as we were through the door. ‘As shall I. I shall be in my dressing-room.’

‘Yes, Mr Arroner,’ I said, delighting in the words.

He was mine. I followed him up the stairs; he showed me into the bedroom and left me there. My head swam with the notion that he had an entire room in which to dress and undress, for it was thrilling enough that there was a room set aside for sleeping. Of course, not only for sleeping: there were the other things husbands did with wives in their bedrooms.

I flushed beneath my fur and began to undo the buttons at my cuffs, but discovered those running down the back of my blouse were out of reach. Mama had fastened me into my clothes that morning, which seemed a very long while ago. I was not sure what to do next. I looked around the room: a small fireplace, a jug and basin on the chest of drawers, the window shutters closed tight, a cheval-glass leaning into the corner.

He did not return. I did not know what mysteries husbands engaged in to prepare themselves for their wedding nights, and the room into which he had retired was very quiet. I thought of how he had looked earlier that day, not yet my husband, and I not yet his wife: his polished hat, new stiff collar, bright waistcoat and gloves so fresh they were not yet rubbed from holding the head of his cane. I had tried diligently to be as nervous as a virgin should be, but I could not stop my eyes from wandering over his body, even when Mama pinched me.

Still he did not come. There was no clock ticking, but it was my opinion that enough time had passed for him to remove his clothing. Perhaps he was smoking a cigar; perhaps he thought me so timid that he wished to give me time to compose myself. But I was not composed: I was sitting with my cuffs open and no other preparations made. I tried once more to reach the buttons laddering down my back but failed. It was easier at home: my clothes were simpler and I had Mama to help me. I slapped away the ungrateful thought. I was wearing the beautiful clothes he had picked out with his own hand. They were just troublesome to get out of.

Then it came to me: perhaps he did not want me undressed at all. He wanted to do it himself. I was deeply stimulated at the thought of him standing behind me, unlooping each pearl button from the nape of my neck down to the dip where spine flares to hip, pressing his palms on to my unclothed shoulders, weaving his fingers into my hair and pulling me towards him for our first wedded embrace. My pelt prickled, imagining itself ruffled up under his hands. These imaginings were no longer sinful, for I was a married woman and such thoughts were permitted.

My stays were very tight. I hoped he might come soon, for I needed loosening and a tickle of sweat was stirring between my breasts. I wondered if he was shaving himself; I thought how grand it would be to say to him, Now you are my husband, I wish you to grow a beard. I itched for him to open the door.

My delicious dream returned, that he had chosen me because he was hairy too, just like Donkey-Skin said he would be, but he shaved and kept it secret. Now he had me, he would no longer need to do so for I would throw away his razor, tie up his wrists with his handkerchief and feed him soup as I waited for him to sprout the bristles hidden in the gift-wrapping of his skin. Days would pass, and he would sigh, Oh, untie me, do. Set me free, my love,but not angrily, and each day with less conviction.

I imagined his hair set free from the confines of his clothing: wandering up and down his breast from navel to neck, spreading its paw-prints over his shoulders and down his back to the sweet damp crease of his buttocks. He would be my faun, my Pan, the Lord of my Woods, and I would be his maenad for he was the strange prince Donkey-Skin had told me to look out for. He must be.

The handle of the door turned; my heart leapt. I looked into my lap, I looked at the bedspread, at the ewer, the bowl, the wallpaper, the window-shutters. At last I looked at my husband. The dark rug between us seemed the width of a continent. He smiled.

‘My dear wife!’ he said. ‘Dear little wife!’

He crossed the space in three strides. He was dressed in a smoking jacket which reached past his knees, his oiled-down hair catching the light from the candle. His chin was smooth.

‘Dear little wife!’ he said again. ‘Or should I call you Mrs Arroner?’

‘Wife is a very good word.’

‘Is it not? A capital word! To me you are wife; to the world you are Mrs Josiah Arroner. What status! What gravitas!’

‘Yes, my dear.’

I thought it a little overwrought, but tonight I could allow him any of his fancies.

‘Come now, Mrs Arroner.’

He took my hand and patted it; I lifted my golden wrist to his chin and he pecked at it with dry lips.

‘My name is Eve, dearest.’

‘It is indeed. The sweetest of names to my heart from the day I met you.’

He leaned forward and pressed his mouth to the velvet of my forehead. A deep thrill swept from that spot down to my inmost parts until I was running over with richness, churning instantly from milk to cream.

‘Oh, Josiah,’ I breathed, and snatched at his coat, pulling him towards me.

The weight of his breath warmed the crook of my neck, perfumed with coffee and tobacco. I wrapped my arms around him and we rocked backwards and forwards. I rubbed myself against him, purring. Unsheathed my claws and dug them into his back, chewing on his neck.

He shoved me hard; my eyes sprang open to find him breathing in short bursts, his collar awry where I had torn it. He staggered to the mirror where he examined the spreading wine-stain of my mouth on his throat, and began to tie his cravat very high, to cover the dark spot. I watched the way his fingers slipped the silk over and about until he was satisfied with his handiwork, devouring his every gesture. However, I was confused, for I would be proud to have his mark on me – would parade our passion without shame. Then I understood: he did not want to share our secret. I giggled.