The Clothes On Their Backs: A Novel (No Series) Read online

  Praise for THE CLOTHES ON THEIR BACKS

  by Linda Grant

  “Gripping and written with keen understatement, it manages to be a domestic coming-of-age story even as it takes in the tumultuous sweep of the twentieth century…. It is, in other words, that rare thing, a novel of big ideas that never forgets to tell a story. Any frocks and bolero jackets you happen to come upon along the way are just the icing on the cake.”

  —The Evening Standard

  “There is nothing lightweight about its themes and yet it is so artfully constructed that you barely feel you’re reading it at all, so fluid and addictive is the plot. But like all the best books, the serious ideas it raises stay with you for a long time afterwards…. This is a wonderful, tightly written novel that charts one woman’s emotional life while weaving in politics, history and morality…. This novel is above all a quiet masterclass in the perils of hypocrisy. No man is all good or all bad. And a decent suit can make you overlook a lot.”

  —The Observer

  “This vivid, enjoyable and consistently unexpected novel is like Anita Brookner with sex. Sándor’s mix of the endearing and the repellent takes on a life beyond that of an absorbing and unexpectedly ambitious story.”

  —The Telegraph

  “We are what we wear because clothes reveal our personalities, but as Grant makes clear as she guides us through a dizzying ethical maze, they also conceal them…. In this meticulously textured and complex novel, beneath Grant’s surface dressing, what she is talking about is more than skin deep.”

  —The Times

  “Such is the richness of Grant’s plotting that the story encapsulates many untold narratives…while the significance of other narrative threads can sometimes seem strangely opaque. But that is really the central theme of the novel—that life itself is opaque. You try to analyse it as best you can, but sometimes it is impossible to see past the surface of things.”

  —The Sunday Times

  “This is a terrific novel, bursting with life and vivid characters.”

  —The Mail on Sunday

  “Richly imagined…her novel is at once a beautifully detailed character study, a poignant family history and a richly evocative portrait…. It is a joy to welcome such a vibrant and thought-provoking book.”

  —The Independent

  “Like money, clothes have real, symbolic and psychological value. Linda Grant understands these dimensions implicitly. Stitched beautifully into the fabric of her latest novel is an acute understanding of the role clothes play in reflecting identity and self-worth…. Grant’s own particular beam reveals the way we acquire our sense of self from what gets reflected back to us, either in the mirror or in our relationships with others. She is as at home writing about the thrilling ripple of a skirt as she is charting social tensions.”

  —The Sunday Telegraph

  ALSO BY LINDA GRANT

  FICTION

  The Cast Iron Shore

  When I Lived in Modern Times

  Still Here

  NONFICTION

  Sexing the Millennium: A Political History of the Sexual Revolution

  Remind Me Who I Am, Again

  The People on the Street: A Writer’s View of Israel

  SCRIBNER

  A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2008 by Linda Grant

  Originally published in Great Britain in 2008 by Virago

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Scribner Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

  First Scribner edition November 2008

  SCRIBNER and design are registered trademarks of The Gale Group, Inc., used under license by Simon & Schuster, Inc., the publisher of this work.

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4391-5005-4

  ISBN-10: 1-4391-5005-2

  Visit us on the World Wide Web:

  http://www.SimonSays.com

  To George Szirtes and Clarissa Upchurch

  But this is the soul

  Prepared for you, these garments that glow

  In the dark and burn as fierce as coal.

  George Szirtes, from ‘Dressing’

  Contents

  Begin Reading

  Acknowledgements

  This morning, for the first time in many years, I passed the shop on Seymour Street. I saw the melancholy sign in the window which announced that it was closing down and through the glass the rails on which the clothes hung, half abandoned, as if the dresses and coats, blouses and sweaters had fled in the night, vanished down the street, flapping their empty arms.

  There was Eunice, behind the counter, patting her blue-black lacquered hair with silver nails. How old she looked, and how forlorn, her chin sinking for a moment on her chest.

  Then I saw her rouse, and raise herself up, lifting her chin with a cupped hand. She mouthed a couple of words to herself. Be brave!

  An impulse took me through the door, a strong pang of sympathy. I stepped inside and her perfume filled the room, inimitably Eunice–Revlon’s Aquamarine, the scent of eau de nil and gold.

  ‘You!’ she said. ‘Vivien, is it really you, after all this time?’

  ‘Yes, it’s me.’

  ‘I thought so. How come I never saw you before?’

  ‘London is very vast,’ I said.

  ‘A woman gets lost easy, but not me, I’ve been here all along. You knew where to find me.’

  ‘But I wasn’t looking for you, Eunice. I’m sorry.’

  You never went to see how Eunice was? my uncle’s voice cried out, in my head. You left her all alone like a dog, my Eunice! You couldn’t even pop in to buy a pair of gloves?

  ‘Well,’ she replied. ‘That’s true. You and me had nothing to say,’ and she gave me a haughty stare, raising her nose high and pulling back her shoulders. ‘How is your family doing?’

  The shoulders filled out her jacket, she smoothed the box pleats of the skirt. Three gilt buttons engraved with fleur-de-lis flashed on her jacket sleeve above the swollen bone of her wrist, lightly freckled. I recognised her gold watch. My uncle gave it to her. It was an Omega, his favourite brand, still revolving on quietly, tick-tock.

  ‘My father died last week.’ How strange it was to refer to him in the past tense, to think that I would never see again that cantankerous old man. Whatever was unresolved between us would stay unresolved unless we met again in the yane velt–that life, that other life.

  ‘I only saw him the two times, neither was a nice occasion, you’ll agree–your mother, though, she was very different from him. Is she still alive?’

  ‘No, she died sixteen years ago.’

  ‘That’s a shame, now she was a true lady. I’m sorry she went before her time. And what happened to the boy? Don’t look at me so innocent, you know who I mean.’

  Yes. I remember. A sudden laugh, sharp little teeth, a lascivious mouth, his hands rolling his cigarettes, his red canvas boots, his spiky dark hair. His T-shirt. His guard’s cap. His fish tank. But particularly I recall his smell and what was in it: and the whole arousing disturbing sense of him flooded my veins, a hot red flush of shameful erotic longing.

  The red tide subsided. ‘I don’t know what became of him, he must be in his late forties now.’ A residue of sadness, imag
ining the sultry, sexy boy as a middle-aged man for he had had nothing much going for him apart from youth and all its carnal excitements.

  ‘You are a careless person, Vivien. You always was, you’ve not changed.’

  ‘Oh, Eunice, you don’t know anything about me. It’s been nearly thirty years. You can accuse me of anything you like, but careless! No, not at all.’

  ‘OK, OK, I take that back. So tell me, where have you been living all this time?’

  ‘Abroad for a few years, but I’m back in London.’

  ‘In that flat round the corner?’

  ‘No, of course not. I have a place near Regent’s Park.’

  She looked me up and down and I knew what she was thinking–that I didn’t dress like a woman from Regent’s Park. Where were the pearl necklaces, the Chanel handbag, the diamond earrings, the fur coat? Eunice had an exact understanding of the clothes that rich people put on when they got up in the mornings; she read all the magazines, but I was more or less in rags. Those jeans!

  And she had not spent most of her life in the retail trade without knowing how to seize an opportunity. A rich woman badly dressed is in need of a clever saleswoman. ‘Well, well,’ she said, ‘you want to buy an outfit? I’ve got something that would fit you. We’re low on stock because we’re closing but I could find you a nice bargain.’

  I smiled. Me of all people, being offered a dress. For I no longer bothered to look at my reflection in shop windows as I passed, let alone cringe in front of a full-length dressing room mirror with strong overhead lights, and if I did I would not recognise what I saw. Who was that dreary woman walking up the steps of the tube with lines around her eyes, jeans, boots, leather jacket, chapped hands, a ruined neck? That middle-aged person you see hesitating at the traffic lights, trying to cross at Oxford Circus, with her dyed hair and untended roots?

  For some time–several months, but perhaps it was longer–I had let myself go, just drifted away from even thinking about how I looked, had let go the self which once stared in the mirror, a hand confidently holding a mascara wand, a person who cared about how she appeared to others.

  There are mitigating circumstances. This is not my true personality. A year ago my husband died, thirteen and a half months, to be exact, and then my father. Too much death gets in your hair, in the crevices of your nose, your clothes, it’s a metallic taste in the back of your mouth. My daddy was ancient, a toothless old man in a dressing gown and stained trousers; my husband had muscled forearms with reddish gold hairs and a thick neck which he had trouble finding collars to fit. He was so full of life and energy and humour, had a go at things whether he was any good at them or not, then cracking jokes about his own failures; only Vic could get lost on a golf course.

  Twice this has happened to me. In the middle of my life here I was, as it was in the beginning. The same pearl grey horizon with no distinguishing features has reappeared.

  And today of all days, on my way to my father’s flat to get it ready for the house clearance people, a woman I had not laid eyes on for nearly thirty years was looking me up and down, remembering me as a young girl in her early twenties when I was careless, as charged. And curious, full of yearning, longing, passion, hope, indignation, judgement, disdain. Full of conviction, of course, about what not to wear. Yet now I stood with a line of white at the roots of my hair, in my jeans and plucked at the green silk scarf round my ruined neck, for no one looked at me any more the way Vic had looked. And despite my sturdy legs, the roll of fat around my waist, I felt like a ghost, only half here.

  But Eunice was renowned for always wanting a woman to make the most of herself, whatever her drawbacks, whether imposed by nature or self-inflicted. ‘I don’t say you are the skinny girl you was when I saw you last, you filled out quite a bit,’ she said, ‘but look, this is for you. I can give you a good price.’

  The dress she handed me was red, the colour of dark wine held up to the light in a glass bottle. I held it tentatively, rubbing the fabric between my fingers then holding it up against me. I didn’t really get it. I couldn’t see how it was supposed to fit.

  ‘It looks nothing on the hanger,’ she said, ‘but you try it, you’ll see. It’s just right for your colouring, your black hair, and when you fasten it round your waist it pushes up your bosom. It’s a wrap dress. You never seen one of those before? They’re all the rage. And the fabric is silk jersey so it’s going to do wonders for your bottom, you wait. Try it on!’

  I get dressed quickly in the mornings and rarely bother with make-up apart from a balm to keep my lips from cracking. My daughters bring me round miracle skin creams that they read about in magazines, and saved up to buy me a weekend break at a spa, for which I have not yet got round to making the booking. Sweet girls, they turned out; more confident, straightforward and loving than I was at their age, for which they have their father to thank–and being the products of a successful (though hardly perfect) marriage. His light colouring came out in both of them, the reddish hair, the rosy cheeks and dimpled smiles.

  ‘You’re closing down,’ I said, looking round trying to remember the place in its heyday, when I last came here in the seventies, and it did not seem so different. Perhaps the colour of the walls had been altered, and the carpet, but let’s face it, I was more changed than the shop.

  ‘Yes, after all these years, the owner Mrs Post, she died and her daughter Carolyn took over but she is not a saleswoman, she doesn’t know how, and then the ladies that used to step in here to buy, my loyal customers–Mrs Cohen, Mrs Frame, Lady Parker with the false breast from after the operation–I remember them all but they don’t come any more, they stay inside their flats. No excuse, I say. Look at me, I’m that age and still I’m on my feet. Go and try that dress, right now.’

  ‘But I don’t want a new dress, I have all the clothes I need.’

  ‘Silly girl.’ She looked at me, with dark, inquisitive eyes. ‘What’s your age now?’ she said. I told her. ‘Not such a bad one. Shame you got that skin that falls into wrinkles, though a good cream wouldn’t do no harm, either.’

  ‘Well, you look marvellous, Eunice.’ I said this in deference to that iron determination of hers: never to surrender to what she could conquer with her own will–her weapons an eyeliner pencil, a lipstick, and a pair of stockings with no runs in them. But then her son was no good, and she had nothing to live for, in that direction, unlike me.

  ‘I work at it, Vivien,’ she said. ‘All my life I made sure I never had a torn fingernail or my shoes needed heeling. Many times I had no dinner when I got home at night so I could take my business suit out of the dry cleaner’s. You going to try that dress on or not?’

  ‘I’m too fat. Look at me, I’m as big as a house.’ It was an exaggeration, I had put on a couple of stone since she last saw me but then I marvel at how thin I was in those days. I put my hands across the bodice of the dresses I once wore–I had no chest to speak of. Children round you out. I’m not so much overweight as neglected for there is self-abuse and then there is self-desertion.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, a woman is never too big for a nice dress. This is going to take pounds off you, you’ll see.’

  And Eunice stood there with the dress in her hands, this old woman facing the emptiness of her enforced retirement. She was holding a dress and urging me to try it, she was reminding me of what I had once intimately understood and had forgotten, that surge of excitement, that fizz, that deep pleasure–for a new dress changes everything.

  ‘Go in there, try it on, that lovely dress.’

  Alone in the little room with its velvet-covered stool, its hooks to hang my clothes, its flattering mirror and its clever lights, unzipping my jeans, pulling them past legs covered in a fine dark down that I went for months without remembering to shave or wax, I could not even recall the last time I bought something new. But the sight of the red dress was enough to intimidate me. How were you supposed to put it on?

  I called out to Eunice. ‘See?’ she said. You ins
erted your arms in the sleeves and threaded a long belt through a slit at the side, wrapped with clumsy fingers the other belt around your waist and tied it in a bow. When I had managed to complete that awkward manoeuvre the dress acquired a life of its own, taking charge of my body, rearranging it to assume a completely different shape. Breasts up, waist in. I looked at least ten pounds slimmer.

  The dress felt dangerously silky, it felt as if it might cling to me for good. And in the mirror a startling visitation from one at first I barely recognised or remembered, the one whom I had let go, that slim, exciting girl, that former me, silvery in the glass, smiling back at a fifty-three-year-old woman with white roots in her hair. Vivien Kovaks!

  The red dress was glowing like rubies against my skin. I stood on tiptoe to mimic the effect of high heels. I thrust my right leg forward and put my hands on the place where I last remembered seeing my hip bones. Without the camouflage of my silk scarves, the wrinkled neck was exposed but the skin on my breastbone was unlined. Oh, the tricks your body plays, the fun it has with you, you have to laugh. Well no, not really.

  ‘What do you think?’ I said.

  She looked me up and down with her appraising shop assistant’s stare, darted forwards and rearranged the neckline in a couple of quick movements with her hands. ‘See that? Now your bosom is uplifted. You need a good bra, by the way, Selfridge, they’ve got a nice selection. And make sure you get measured before you buy anything, you’re wearing the wrong size.’

  The dress dissolved and mingled with my flesh. Who knew where my skin began and the silk jersey started? I was falling ridiculously in love with a piece of cloth.

  ‘I’ll take it.’

  ‘Now don’t go buying it as a favour. I’ve got a nice pension from Mrs Post. I don’t want for anything.’

  I noticed there was a beige mark at the neckline. Another customer had left the trace of her make-up and Eunice hadn’t seen it. It would come out with dry-cleaning yet I felt a wrench of sorrow that after a lifetime of close examination of herself, she had lost her own keen eyesight. Her irises had a milky opacity. I didn’t say anything about the mark but she seemed to feel some small dissatisfaction in me, a criticism, perhaps of her. The balance adjusted itself again, and not in my favour.