Of Scarlet Chapter Three

Millicent bent over her dressing table and lifted a string of pearls over her head. A cough rose up from her diaphragm, shaking her ribs so that she had to rest her hand on the wooden surface. Millicent eyed herself in the looking glass. It had taken a good hour yesterday to recover from the last fit she endured. There was still a smear on the large 1940s mirror where spots of blood flecked with bubbles had landed on the glass. Millicent rubbed at the marks furiously before picking up a hairbrush. She ran it through her hair, and hesitated.

She felt satisfied then, just for that fleeting moment and pushed her hands down over her curves, along the crimson skirt seams she had specially sewn into her clothes. Millicent's hands snaked up to her zip, and then to the pleasing flatness of her stomach. In the stillness of the House at Nine, there was a droning in her head. It vibrated up and down her wrists and then travelled up her spine. Millicent averted her eyes from the mirror and felt flushed.

She pulled back the dead-lock on her door and walked onto the landing. There was the faint smell of burnt sugar out here. It reminded Millicent of childhood days with her sister, when they had tried to make toffee apples by burning sugar and food colouring on the stove. It had blackened the ceiling above the cooker, but their mother Madeleine didn't mind. As long as Rachel always took the blame, they could get away with anything.

The smell led Millicent past Lila's doorway to the top of the stairs, where a trail of Richard's books had been piled up on every step down the staircase. She walked across the hallway, picking up a thick, wide brimmed hat and charcoal leather gloves from a small table. The sight of the books troubled her. It was the way they had been placed precisely in such neat, little piles that made it seem eerie. On the second step she accidentally kicked one of the blue books until it flipped over all the way down to the last step.

Millicent's heart slowed. There was a memory there; of Rachel holding the book, of Rachel writing in the pages. She followed the book's path and stooped to pick it up. The title read 'All The Wild Roses'. Something was sticking out of it; a piece of paper with drawings around the edges.

There was a great deal that Millicent hated about the past. The vivid memories that returned just by holding a single object never failed to surprise her. However strong the urge was to talk about the past, to share it so that it might fade, Millicent knew that it was too late to do such things. She slipped the paper back between the pages. Books had never interested her that much, not like Rachel. To her words held their weight.
That blue volume, Millicent decided, would be the first to go.

****

The forbidding figure of Millicent walked down the path away from the House at Nine. Her winter coat fanned out behind her in the wind. Lila held her head in her hands as she leant on the window ledge watching the road out. There was a time when Millicent had taken Lila with her to parties, where she sorted the make-up and handed the expensive creams out to willing customers. Millicent had watched her niece talk with other islanders, pushing her towards men she hardly knew. At times she seemed desperate for Lila to make that connection with someone, perhaps because Millicent knew that a close relationship was impossible. Millicent couldn't be Rachel.
When Millicent ventured out alone, she covered her face and décolletage in a white, silk sheen of powder. Her compelling green eyes and heavy back eyebrows gave her a masculine air. The whiter she made her face, the more it resembled a death mask. Millicent was powerful in full make-up, but since Richard's arrival she had been applying it less and less.

When the harmless shadow of a bird flit across the front window, Millicent flinched far too easily. Lila had watched Millicent speechless in the middle of a phone call the day before, as if she'd seen something terrible rolling over the skyline towards them. She double checked the locks, and pressed her fingers against painted over window catches.

As soon as Millicent had walked out of sight, Lila turned to her own door. The door handle that Scarlet had tested was now jammed in an upwards position.At the end of the bed was a powder blue cellular blanket. It was curled around the slats of the bed frame, and Scarlet had gathered up all the silk edges so that they formed a pillow at her head.

Lila dressed in a white t-shirt and black cords, before opening her door out onto the landing. Richard's room was empty but the sheets on his double bed had been slept in. There was an outline on the pillow where his head had been. Lila was about to step across the threshold, but something told her to wait. What she really wanted was to step inside with Richard there. She wanted his attention.

When Lila had arrived on the island at the age of two, Millicent put her in a cot. Lila used to scratch off the cot paint with her fingernails, and make teeth marks in the wood. She outgrew it quickly, and slept with her legs poking out of the bars. All the other empty rooms had been locked back then, as if Millicent wanted to ignore their unique surroundings.

Lila turned to see the staircase and the way the books had been arranged. She padded down the stairs, and reached the bottom. The last stack was full of thick, ugly volumes of mathematics and politics, but one. A powder blue book lay on top, inches from her fingertips. She picked it up and read the title, turning it over to the front cover. There were no pictures, just the silver lettering of the title. Someone's thumb marks had been worn into the fibre of the spine. Lila held up the paper to her nose and inhaled. It was that sweet, musty smell only found in books that are left to age. The title page read: 'This book belongs to Rachel M Haslin'. Lila clasped it to her chest.
“Take it,” she heard a familiar voice whisper. “No one will miss it, it belongs to her so it's yours officially.” Scarlet was at her elbow. She bit her lip, agitated by the fact that Lila wanted to throw the book down and carry on with the way things were. There was a luminous halo forming around the little girl's head. The colours curdled into a sea of greens and blacks as they flowed into the collar of her coat.

Lila's fingers were already digging into the fabric of the book. She knew she couldn't put it down, not now. Even the title 'All The Wild Roses' was unlike anything she had ever read. Lila hurried all the way back to her room and closed the door. Scarlet was already ahead of her, clapping her hands with excitement. She sat on the floor cross-legged, fascinated.

The pictures were of the kind of women Millicent sold make-up to, in churches, and ballrooms, at parties. There were sketches of seduction, of men in top hats and women in ball gowns. There were parts that Lila wouldn't read aloud to Scarlet. She wouldn't read those pages even if she were completely alone. She skipped over them; her fingertips touched the drawn out bodies, the curves, the parts no one should draw, or see. Men and women had been strung out in between the sentences together, their faces stretched out in ecstasy by Lila's constant flicking of the pages. This was Rachel's book of erotica. She had turned it into one herself.

Scarlet pointed to the slip of paper sticking in between the last few pages. She was itching with excitement to look but couldn't pull it out herself. It was a posed photograph of the two sisters in evening dress. Millicent was sat on a chair in the background at an angle, not facing the camera properly. Rachel was in the foreground with her head tilted to look at the camera. Lila could tell from her stiff sitting position that it wasn't a happy moment. She had to guess what thoughts were running through Rachel's head at the time as there were deep, scored lines on the surface of the picture. Rachel's face had been scratched out completely with what looked like pin marks. She read the back: Rachel and Millicent, Birthday present for George.

“Who's George, why's he so important?” Scarlet watched as Lila slipped the photo into her pocket. The scratch marks were so raised that they rubbed against her thigh. George, she knew, was the grandfather she never saw. Family was a difficult subject. Lila and Millicent had existed in solitary, with no one but their own company for years.
“Do you think there’s a picture of my mother in here somewhere?”
The pages had been well-thumbed. Lila shook her head. She shut All The Wild Roses, and placed it under the bed.
What happened to your mother? It must've been bad, everybody looks so miserable.”
“I don't know,” Lila said. She didn't want to admit it to anyone, but she hadn't ever asked. It had always been assumed. It was just another secret never talked about.
“Maybe it's time you found out,” Scarlet suggested. They both looked at the half closed door in anticipation. Lila didn't want to make things worse. She imagined Millicent, angry and tearful, scratching out Rachel's face after an argument.
“People get rid of pictures if they don't care,” Scarlet said. “They don't keep them in books, and scratch out the faces of people that don't matter.”

It was later on in the day when Lila approached her aunt. Millicent was cleaning a vase out at the kitchen sink. Her shoulders were hunched in anticipation as she looked sideways at her niece.
Lila took a deep breath. “I want to talk to you about Rachel, about how she died.”
Millicent exhaled, stopping the flow of water from the tap, before twisting her whole sideways to confront Lila. “Well?”
“What was it? You didn't ever tell me, and we don't ever talk about it.. Was it Cancer?” Millicent's eyes slid to the counter-top. “Was it an accident? Did she fall from somewhere?" Silence. The tap was turned back on.
“How did my mother die?”
“You don't need to be asking that kind of thing.” Millicent took the vase she was holding and poured out the muddy water and the headless stems into the sink. Lila stayed where she was, leaning against the door frame.
“You must know what happened.”

The tap was turned on again. This time hot water ran over the glass, spraying Millicent's wrists, soaking her long sleeved blouse. It ran until Lila thought that the temperature must be boiling the skin on her aunt's papery thin hands.

“I do know, I just don't think it would help you. You should put it out of your mind,” Millicent replied.
“She didn't kill herself?”
There was a shattering sound. Lila stepped forwards to see what her aunt had done. Millicent's thumb was bleeding. The glass neck of the vase lay broken on the dull metal of the sink. She had squeezed it too tightly, strangling it until the pressure had forced it to break.
Millicent grabbed a tea towel and wrapped up her hand, cursing. She ran her fingers through strands of her razor sharp fringe. Flecks of blood settled on her eyelashes. A small piece of glass had embedded itself into the mound of Millicent's other hand. Lila watched as she used her nails to gouge out the thick lump from her skin. She seemed to shoulder the pain well. Blood flowed towards the drain. Lila didn't think it was a good time to talk about the de-faced photograph or the book.

“She didn't kill herself,” Millicent repeated. Her lips struggled to form a smile. She shut off the tap and shook her hands free of water, and blood. Then as if Lila had already accepted her explanation, she looked straight ahead at the green kitchen tiles, past the window and out into the garden beyond.