The Other Me (21 page)

But that is the end of the beatings.

KLAUDIA

1996, London

I’m on my way to work when I catch sight of the back of Cosmo’s head. My step falters. I loiter on a street corner for a second, uncertain about whether to run to catch up, or let him go on without me. Since our Chinese meal we’ve fallen into a kind of uneasy truce, making polite but brief conversation, not quite meeting each other’s eyes if we happen to bump into each other.

Backing into the safety of a shop doorway, I stare after him, catching glimpses through the crowd. Another head is keeping pace with his, and the realisation grips me: he isn’t alone. It isn’t his grandmother this time, but a dark-haired girl. As if drawn by a hypnotist, I leave the shelter of the doorway and trail behind. They’re having an animated discussion, and I see by a flash of profile that she’s beautiful. She’s tall, long-limbed, with the kind of smooth amber skin that tans in moments. She waves her hands around in a passionate, Mediterranean manner. He throws his head back, laughing at something she says, stepping closer to wrap his arm around her, pulling her to him. Her shoulder slots exactly into the hollow under his. I turn away, pushing my knuckles hard against my lips.

At night I twist my head on my crumpled pillow, trying to erase the image of them together. Except I keep replaying it, recalling details: her faded jeans tight on her thighs, her long swinging ebony hair and the line of her cheekbone. They’d seemed so comfortable together, as if they’d known each other for years. She’d looked like the kind of girl I’d like to be friends with. What hurts most is that it didn’t seem to be a ‘fling’, something casual. There was something deeper between them. I could see it. Even at a distance.

I’ve changed my mind about the burlesque lessons. I can’t go on being a coward about everything. But the timing couldn’t be worse. Scarlett likes to teach in her room, which means I’m at the flat more often, and I’m terrified of bumping into him. Worse, seeing him with her.

When I ring the bell Scarlett throws the keys down. I hurry up, one hand clutching the keys, the other sliding along the rickety bannister, feeling my way in the dark. I have to be agile to move quickly in the dim, narrow corridors of the flat: piles of old magazines, hairdryers, wine bottles, boxes and odd shoes lie in wait for me. I hop around the obstacles, my ears straining for the sound of his voice, or a door opening. So far I’ve managed to avoid him. I wonder if he’s avoiding me too.

‘Here.’ Scarlett hands me an envelope. ‘This is for you.’

‘What is it?’

As I pull two pieces of paper out of the envelope, she explains. ‘It’s an application to the Laban Centre. All you need to do is fill it in.’

My mouth falls open.

‘Just do it,’ she says. ‘You should be training as a dancer, not working behind a bar. Not even doing burlesque. But for now, burlesque will have to do.’

‘Thanks.’ I look down at my feet. My throat tightens.

She rubs her hands together, dismissing my embarrassment, my gratitude. ‘OK,’ she tells me. ‘Let’s start. Make an entrance. Walk into the middle of the floor and turn. Look at me. Make eye contact.’

We have cleared a path through the chaos of her room. I walk, swinging my hips. I stop and turn and force myself to look at her.

She shakes her head. ‘There’s no conviction in it. If you don’t feel it then pretend. Make-believe is part of life. It’s how we find out who we are.’

I try again. She shows me how it’s done. She steps with a careless swagger, and yet each movement, each curl of her fingers, is a deliberate art.

‘You know what they say – that you can’t expect anyone to love you until you love yourself?’

I nod.

‘Well. It’s the same principle with enjoyment too. You need to learn to enjoy yourself.’ She separates the words. ‘Enjoy. Your. Self.’ She twists her bangle around her wrist. ‘People feel uncomfortable watching a performer that’s uncertain. I used to be nervous until I told myself that it didn’t matter. If I fucked up, so what? You can’t take life that seriously or you’ll never do anything. Try again.’

I take a deep breath and do the walk. This time I step as though I mean it. I feel the intention in my bones. It gives me a sudden flare of empowerment.

‘Better,’ Scarlett says. ‘Much better. Trust your body. It knows what to do.’

I walk and stand. Turn slowly, arching my back. Run my fingers lightly down my arm.

‘I know you don’t want to be looked at.’ Scarlett tucks her legs up under her on the bed. ‘But we don’t want them to look at you. We want them to
see
you. To see what you want them to see. Don’t forget, it’s an act. You’re in charge.’

I slink around the chair, trailing my hand across the back of it. With one move, I kick up a leg and swoop it over to the other side. I feel a lurch of uncertainty. It’s embarrassing to be advertising my sexuality like this.

‘Keep the focus,’ Scarlett tells me. ‘You can’t stop believing in what you’re doing. Not for a moment.’ She gets off the bed and strolls over to the wardrobe.

‘I think it would help if we dressed you up. Get you into the mood.’

‘Oh, no.’ I grip the back of the chair. ‘I don’t think so…’

She ignores me and starts pulling out items of clothing, satin, lace and gauze, holding them up against me, her head on one side, squinting. ‘That’s your colour. That would look awesome on you.’ She puts her hand to her head, slapping her forehead. ‘No. Wait. I know!’ She rummages in the back of her wardrobe, half inside it, wrestling with fabric, so that it looks as though the clothes are trying to drag her inside and swallow her whole. She emerges with a hanger, pushing her hair back into place as she holds it up triumphantly. ‘This will fit you. I was thinner when I was working this baby.’

She slips a man’s smoking jacket and a corset in shiny black off the hanger. Dipping into the bag attached to it, she hands me a pair of black stockings, white collar and tie and a top hat.

‘You’re kidding.’

She shrugs. ‘I never joke about dressing up. Come on. Outta those jeans. Let’s see if you’ve got the legs for this get-up.’

When Scarlett has finished lacing me up, I can hardly breathe. The bones dig into my ribs. The bow tie itches my neck. She sits me down on the pin-free bed and dabs at my face with make-up brushes, her eyes half-closed in concentration. A little of this. A little of that. It feels pleasant to have brushes fluttering and pressing against my skin. She stands back, admiring her handiwork and steers me over to the mirror.

We stare at my reflection together. My heart is hammering inside the constraints of the corset. I look like someone else. Not the English girl of my imagination, but someone that I might be in awe of if I spotted myself at a party. I look like the kind of girl that would never have to fetch her own drink.

‘You look like Marlene Dietrich,’ Scarlett announces. ‘Enigmatic. Cool and…’ she pauses, nodding. ‘Germanic.’

The image in the mirror wavers. I blink, clearing my throat, and turning away from my reflection. ‘I don’t think this is really me.’ My hands claw at the bow tie. It hugs me tighter than a constricting snake. I want to strip it off, throw it from me in a slick black unravelling.

‘Don’t be crazy!’ Scarlett grabs me and forces me to confront my reflection again. ‘You’re sexy as hell.’ She slaps my thigh playfully, but hard enough to sting. ‘Look at those legs! It’s a crime to waste them.’

I stare at the girl in the mirror
.
Eliza and Klaudia collide, their images sliding across each other. They blur, mixing like two colours, making a swirl of muddy nothing. I hover outside, watching the thin texture of two strangers tremble and fade. I lower my eyes, my body stiffening under her fingers.

Voices come tumbling into the room from outside. West-Indian accents. A loud discussion shouted across the street and a peal of raucous laughter.

I begin to take it all off, unrolling the stockings, shrugging out of the jacket. My fingers scrabble at the hook and eyes behind me, trying to loosen the stays. I can’t breathe.

‘Let me…’ Scarlett is there, quickly stripping out the laces. I feel the corset undo, my breasts spilling free. ‘You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough,’ Scarlett says quietly. ‘That’s Mae West. And she knew what she was talking about.’

We both hear the moan of the saxophone. The sound drifts down as if it’s coming from the sky, as if it’s falling from the few hazy clouds that sift across the rooftops.

‘Luke must be playing to his bees,’ Scarlett says. ‘I think we’re done for the day. Let’s go see.’

I’m glad of the distraction. I struggle back into my jeans, yanking my T-shirt over my head. ‘Luke has bees?’ I ask as I follow her up the narrow stairs that lead onto the flat roof of the extension at the back of the house.

‘Sure. He’s just got the one hive. His honey is too too divine, darling,’ Scarlett drawls over her shoulder, imitating someone. I think it’s a character out of
Breakfast at Tiffany’s
.

Out on the roof extension, the daylight is dazzling. We’re above the cityscape and the sky is huge. Luke winks at us, but doesn’t stop playing. I recognize the swooping notes of ‘Night and Day’. Luke’s cheeks inflate and his fingers move, nimble and sure across the keys. I lean against a wall, listening to the mellow, throaty cry of the instrument.

‘Saxophones. They get me every time,’ Scarlett says. ‘And look, the bees are dancing.’

Standing at a safe distance, I see a few bees tracing circles and squiggles in the warm air above their hive. It does look like a dance. The sound of their buzzing is muffled inside the music, louder during the breathy pauses. Luke takes his mouth away from the instrument. ‘They really like jazz best.’ He wipes his lips with the back of his hand. ‘I mean, seriously. I’m not even biased. I’ve tried out different types – classical, rock.’

‘How can they hear the music?’ I ask.

‘Must be the vibrations.’ Luke taps his foot, places the saxophone against his mouth and begins to play again.

‘Sound is vibration.’

I start at the sound of Cosmo’s voice; he’s blinking in the light, as he crosses the roof. He’s barefoot. His hair rumpled. It occurs to me that he’s just got out of bed. I glance behind him, expecting to see the dark-haired girl.

‘Luke’s saxophone is sending a series of compressions and rarefactions through the air. I think that’s what the bees are picking up on.’ He continues, waving a hand towards the bees. ‘But it’s different for humans. Depending on their speed, the vibrations will ripple the fluid in your ear, like ripples in water after a stone enters it.’

He touches my earlobe, squeezing gently between finger and thumb. A tiny shiver shoots through me.

‘That jiggles the little tiny bones in here,’ he adds, ‘which sends an impulse to your brain, and,’ he smiles, releasing my ear, ‘you hear music.’

‘Well, I certainly do.’ Scarlett sways her hips. ‘Love this song. Reminds me of home.’

I clear my throat and step away from him. ‘How do you know all that?’ My voice is husky.

‘Lived with doctors all my life.’ He shrugs. ‘Couldn’t avoid absorbing something.’

There is green in his hair. His bare arms and hands are covered with paint splatters. Yellow smudges over pink streaks. I want to touch his skin, smoothing my thumb against the ridges and flakes of colour. I hunch my shoulders and turn to look at the hive, concentrating on the dancing bees.

‘What made you leave New York for Brixton?’ Cosmo is asking Scarlett.

‘It was a done deal as soon as Josh told me whereabouts in London he was planning on setting up shop,’ she says. ‘There’s a line in
The Prince and the Showgirl
where Olivier asks Marilyn Monroe where she lives. And she turns to him and says in that breathy voice, “Brixton Water Lane.”’

‘You’re joking!’ Cosmo laughs. I hear the sound as a betrayal. He’s happy without me.

‘Really,’ Scarlett says. ‘So you see, it was my destiny.’

I can’t turn my head, can’t risk it. I feel transparent. All my jealousy, misery and desire will be exposed. I keep my back to both of them and walk to the edge of the roof. My ribs hold the impression of the corset. I allow myself a deep breath, filling my lungs. I wonder where his girlfriend is. I half expect to hear her voice behind me. I don’t think I could manage it if she came up here now.

Below me, over the low parapet, people walk, chat, cycle by. I draw my gaze up, across the slate roofs where the evening is gathering, dusky purple as a bruise clotting.

The club is quiet. It’s too hot to do anything that involves any effort. We’ve run out of ice. There is a distinct smell of sweat in the room. I hear Josh telling a customer that he’s had cheap air-conditioning installed in his flat. ‘It’s the old-fashioned kind,’ he says, keeping a straight face. ‘I lie on my bed and wave my legs around.’ He looks over and winks at me.

I practise my burlesque sashay, stooping to collect an empty glass from a table with a dip and a bump of my hip. My spine is supple as milk, one hand on my hips. There’s a dribble of beer on my arm, and I lick my skin, tasting salt and the lingering smell of the dandelions I’d pulled from the garden that afternoon, their crushed leaves releasing a sour juice.

Even Scarlett is subdued. Slinking about the stage, her movements are heavy and deliberate, except for the wrist of one hand. She flutters a fan throughout the routine; it bobs and flits around her like a painted butterfly.

‘May as well go on home if you like,’ Josh tells me, looking at his watch. ‘The place is empty. I can cash up.’

As I leave the club, someone moves out of the pool of light under the lamppost on the corner. I see his smile as he walks under the next illumination, and my heart bumps against my chest.

I glance into the shadows behind Cosmo, looking for her.

‘Are you going to see Josh?’ I try and sound normal. ‘He’s just about to cash up. We’re closing early.’

‘I was.’ He squints towards the door of the club as if he can see right through it, and nods. ‘But it’s not important.’ He pushes his hand through his hair, leaving it sticking up. ‘How are you? What are you doing?’