Free The Jeweller's Skin by Ruth Valentine Page A

was painful.  She remembered her Aunt Apolonija doing the same, how she would wriggle and cry out when the brushing hurt her.  There were tears in her eyes, maybe from the pain; but she felt the panic release in her a little.  Then she was cautious, afraid of being outwitted.             
    Parsons plaited Narcisa’s hair and looked round for something to tie it.  There was a length of pink tape on someone’s night table, so she stole it calmly and made it into a bow.  ‘There,’ she said, standing back and patting her shoulder.  ‘You look quite nice.’
    ‘What I do?’ Narcisa asked.  She couldn’t sit in the day-room, doing nothing.
    Parsons thought for a moment.
    ‘I’ll tell you what,’ she said.  ‘You can clean my room.  But you mustn’t tell, we’re not meant to.  Promise?’
    Narcisa followed her out to the curving corridor.  Parsons looked to either side, then grabbed Narcisa’s wrist, and pulled her along.  They went like this along a side corridor and up some stairs.
    The room was narrow, and full of heavy scents.  Narcisa stood when the woman had closed the door, and breathed in smells she’d forgotten, talc and face-cream and some kind of florid perfume.
    ‘All right,’ Parsons said, sullen.  ‘I know it’s a mess.  You don’t know what it’s like..’ Narcisa lost the rest, a complaint perhaps.
    A petticoat drooped from the seat of a chair, towards a pair of drawers collapsed on the floor.  The bed was a bundle of sheets and counterpane, with a red flannel nightdress thrown over the pillow.  A bright-covered book lay open face down on the night-stand, next to a hairbrush and two or three letters.
    ‘Now what you do,’ she said, cheerful again.  ‘Make the bed for me, and dust - I’ll find you a duster.  And sweep the floor.  The clothes go in here’ - she pointed to the chest of drawers.  And the pot..’  she considered.  ‘You can empty it, down the end of the corridor, only wait till there’s nobody around.  Do you understand?’
    She went out, and came back with a broom and a duster.  ‘You’ve got to be quiet,’ she said.  ‘It’s really important.  Trouble - bad trouble.  For both of us.  I’ll come and get you in an hour or so.’
    Narcisa sat on the bed, wondering how to manage.  The sultry smells of the room were like a trap.  She could fall asleep in them, in this woman’s sheets, a child waiting for her mother to return.  She closed her eyes, bracing her arms not to fall sideways.  There were more layers to the smell: rosewater, and stale urine from the pot under the bed.
    She was supposed to empty the chamber-pot.
    She opened her eyes.  There was a man’s black comb on the night-table.
    She stood suddenly, full of energy and revulsion.  She wanted to shout: I am not your maid.  I am not used to having to clean rooms.   She wanted to pick up the pot and empty it, over the woman’s bed and her red flannel nightdress, and run away back through the hospital.
    In Camberwell there had been a pink satin bedspread.  She could see it superimposed on this narrow bed, folded back, slipping off because they had been making love; and herself lying back, supple and soft-skinned, her legs wide open, in satisfaction.
    Stop.
    She made herself stand, and lift the flannel nightdress up to fold it.  It smelt intimately of sweat and lavender water.
    She drew the curtains, undressed, and put it on.  The smell of the other woman’s skin was disturbing.  The cloth was soft and comforting on her shoulders.
    She looked in the mirror.  With her hair in a plait, she could have been any young woman, going to bed in the plain single room.
    It is my room, she told herself.  I am allowed to come and go in it.  These are my letters, from my family.  My lover came in late and spent the night here.
    She made the bed, smoothing the sheets with care, tucking in the corners as she’d been shown.  She pulled up the blue cotton counterpane.