All week, Kitty longed for her bath. At Lou’s, she’d become used to taking a bath on whatever evening she liked, but here she had to take it on a Friday, between eight and ten o’clock. When the time finally came, she waited until nine, when Geenie was usually in bed, and Mrs Stein-berg and Mr Crane were in the sitting room together. Venturing out of her room at any other time was just too risky: Mrs Steinberg might be wandering the house, looking for Mr Crane, and Geenie might be anywhere at all.
She gathered up her dressing gown, towel, and the copy of Garden and Home Lou had given her, and listened at the door. Kitty’s room was only reachable through the kitchen, and it was unlikely anyone would be in there at this time. Occasionally she heard Mr Crane’s steady footsteps on the flags at night; in the morning there would be crumbs on the table and butter left out by the sink.
She opened her door, walked across the kitchen floor, and then listened again to check no one was in the corridor.
In the kitchen, she could hear music coming from the sitting room: a man’s deep voice, but not Bing Crosby or even Al Bowlly. Lou loved Bing, but Kitty found his songs too sleepy. This voice was much raspier, younger. The things I do are never forgiven it sang. Then there was a bang, and Mr Crane’s laugh.
Kitty imagined that Mrs Steinberg was dancing around that huge room. Now that the wall had come down, there was certainly plenty of space for it. Mr Crane would be sitting in his armchair, watching, perhaps with a book on his lap. The woman would be flinging her arms about, just like her daughter when she was dressed up and acting out those solo plays of hers on the lawn. And wearing no stockings.
It was probably safe to make a dash for it.
She opened the door. The hallway looked clear. It was impossible to see around that blasted corner, though, and she almost shrieked when she came across Blotto, sitting on the hall floorboards, waiting for some action. The dog looked up hopefully, then got down on his belly and shuffled along the floor like a huge hairy insect towards Kitty’s feet. Deciding it wasn’t safe to stop and pat, Kitty stepped past the creature and pressed along the hall, her stockinged feet rasping on the bare wood.
There was Mr Crane’s laugh again: sudden and surprisingly loud.
She didn’t run along the corridor, not exactly. But she must have taken the two steps up to the bathroom too fast, because now she was holding out her hands and the gown and towel were wrapping themselves around her legs as she went down. Her shin bone cracked against the step, but she didn’t yelp; she went down silently, still clutching the magazine in one hand, then sprang up again, grabbing the gown and the towel with the other hand as she leapt inside.
Once in the bathroom, she leant against the door and tried to breathe normally. She couldn’t hear any footsteps. Perhaps no one had heard her fall. If Mr Crane had heard, would he have come to see what was wrong? Or would he have shrugged and continued to watch Mrs Steinberg dance without stockings?
The bath was huge, with gnarled claw feet and brass taps which squealed as she twisted them. The geyser choked. It would take at least ten minutes to even half-fill the tub; sometimes she thought it would actually be simpler to use the public baths in Petersfield, as she’d done before Mother died. Whilst waiting, Kitty sat on the bath’s edge and opened her magazine.
Are You the STAR in Your Husband’s Life? she read. Or have you allowed yourself to slide into a minor, supporting role? Wasn’t that what wives were supposed to do? Slide into supporting roles? Not that her own mother had done any of that. She was always the one who went to the pub whilst her father waited in. ‘Once he looked at the clock when I came home,’ she’d told her daughters. It was one of her many stories, meant to prove that they were all better off without him. ‘I told him, don’t you dare look at that clock.’ She’d gripped the arms of her chair as she spoke. ‘And he never did again.’
Remember your husband is human. What he really expects of you is that you should continue to be the leading lady in his life, the heroine of the domestic drama, and that every now and then you should spring on him a new act. In that light, look at the woman you see in the mirror and ask yourself today: ‘Is she slipping or is she still a star?’
Had Mrs Steinberg read this? Kitty had never seen the woman with a magazine. She was always carting big books by authors with foreign names about. Not that Kitty had ever seen her actually reading. It would be easy, Kitty thought, for Mrs Steinberg to become a leading lady, if she put a bit of effort in; that was what money was for, wasn’t it? Money could put a shine on the ugliest of women, as Lou often pointed out, particularly when she saw a photograph of Mrs Sweeny in the Daily Mail.
She dipped her fingers in the bath. Still warm enough, although the water had started to run cold.
Unbuttoning her frock, she glimpsed her reflection in the full-length mirror which stood in the corner of the room, and she turned away to unhook her stays and roll down her stockings. Then she stepped in the bath quickly, so as not to catch sight of herself again. Kitty had yet to look at the whole of herself in that glass; it was the first full-length mirror she’d been confronted by. She’d seen parts of her body at Lou’s house, of course, in the dressing-table glass: her shoulders, small and yet fleshy; her belly-button, like a comma in her rounded stomach; her breasts, which seemed alarmingly blue. Once, she’d even peered at the dark nest between her legs with a compact, but had been unable to see much with just the bedside lamp, which had been a bit of a relief. But never the whole thing together.
She slid into the water, turned over on her stomach, and rested her cheek on the enamel. It wasn’t very comfortable this way but if she balanced right, she could pretend she was floating in the sea. She could still hear music coming from the sitting room, and she began to rock back and forth, the water rippling over her hands and thighs and backside as she pushed herself along the bottom of the bath. It was like the time she’d gone to Bognor Regis on the Sunday School outing and had spent hours letting the tide wash her up and down the sand, the whole length of her brushing the beach as the sea moved beneath. She closed her eyes and listened to the raspy young voice coming from downstairs. I hear music, then I’m through! It was full of – what? Something like movement. Sweetness, too.
There was no more laughter now, just the low gurgle of water in the pipes, and the ticking of the recovering geyser. Were they dancing together? Kitty herself had danced with a man only once. Her sister had set the whole thing up, introducing her to Frank, who’d worked at the bakery with Lou, at the Drill Hall dance. Kitty remembered the way he’d let his fingers wander from her shoulder to her neck, feeling the hairs that lay there like weeds – that’s how she’d always thought of her hair, like a clump of weeds on a riverbank, thick and straight, fanning out in broken ends, no particular colour. She rinsed it in vinegar every week but it was still the brown-yellow shade of Oxo cubes. All night she’d felt that she was pushing against his steps, because he kept getting them wrong; she hadn’t meant to do that, and told herself to stop, but he would keep standing on her feet when she’d polished her shoes specially, and he wasn’t the lightest of men, so she’d had to try to take his hot hand and correct it. Eventually he’d barked, ‘You’re leading!’ and she’d apologised over and over again but his hand was crushing hers by then; the bones in her fingers crunched together as he said, ‘For Christ’s sake, what’s the matter with you?’ She’d thought of her father looking at the clock and what her mother would have said to him to stop him dead, but she’d carried on dancing until the music stopped. Then she ran from the dance floor and out of the Drill Hall without her coat or hat, and Frank hadn’t come after her.
But not all men would be like that, she thought. Dancing with Arthur, for example, would be different: Arthur left his boots at the door before walking on her kitchen floor; he rinsed out his own cup after tea; his fingers were nimble when they loaded his pipe with tobacco.
But dancing with Arthur would be nothing like dancing with Mr Crane.
She opened her eyes, rolled on to her back and took up the soap. After she’d scrubbed herself everywhere she could – soaping between each toe, along each leg, swishing the water about between her thighs without touching anything for too long, then sliding the bar up her stomach and across her breasts, round the back of her neck and down her arms – she heaved herself out of the bath.
Now was the time to look, before she could think about it too much, before she was cold and shivering and needed to put the dressing gown on.
She stood before the full-length mirror. At first, she looked only at her own face. She was not, she’d decided long ago, pretty: her nose was too wide, her chin too prominent. But if she turned and looked back over her shoulder – like those photos in Film Pictorial – she wasn’t too bad. It was always better to look at her face when it was rosy from the heat, and viewed like this, all cheek and naked shoulder, her hair wet and dark and even a bit wavy, she looked not quite herself. It was strange how like another person she seemed, as she gazed at the length of her body in the mirror; strange how it all connected up, all the parts of herself she’d often thought separate: thighs to bottom, stomach to chest to neck and arms, and her head on top. She tried to take it all in, putting a hand on her hip and smiling. She blushed at herself in the pose, then giggled, leaning forward and putting her hand to her mouth so the tips of her breasts shook; she felt them beneath her arm, swaying. Taking her hand away, she watched her own fingers connect with her breast, and saw her nipple turn brown and wrinkled like a walnut. Was it normal for flesh to move of its own accord like that?
There was a noise from the sitting room: a shrieking laugh. It wouldn’t be long, then, before the other noises began. She turned away from the mirror, pulled her dressing gown tightly around her, and sat on the rim of the bath to watch the water run away.