Sarah Hall: The Electric Michelangelo

A solution to the problem of the bloody basins did present itself, the week of Mrs Baxter’s potted shrimp that June. One day, while he looked down into the discharge bucket he was carrying, a small miracle occurred. He had of course looked down, being of an eternally curious and vitiating disposition. Blood and bleach swill had made patterns in the bowl as he carried it out to the washroom where he was to rinse the container in the big Burbridge sink. There, in distressed shades of red, was a man on a boat far out to sea, far out for the waves were tall, and he waving. At least a stream of blood masquerading as an arm was waving. Cy held very still, and for a brief moment his eyes saw a journey played out of a man to the sailors’ famed Elysium. Cradled within its mucus, red shapes appeared like spilled ink on a blotter, to form an accidental painting, except the shapes were never-setting, they continued moving and in a moment the image changed and was reformed. The boat became a seagull with crooked wings, which then became a blooming flower, which then became the turret of a castle. He moved the basin in a circle, like Gypsy Alva the fortune teller in the Curiosity Arcade rotating upturned cups to charm the tea leaves from which she would divine a life. Blood down the side of the basin wall was all at once like the distant shallow mountains unflattening the bay’s horizon. Then to the other side of the bowl the blood spun, there was another mass of red land, unrecognizable, until the ruddy wash came around once more to recreate the Westmorland mountains yonder.

Cy put the bowl down at the side of the sink and blinked. If he had been inclined towards such assumptions he would have sworn it was a prophecy of some kind. Or that his well-behaving, deck-swabbing eyes had engaged in some kind of mutiny. And for once his hands were not tacky with sweat, nor was his tongue furling in preparation for a retch. He had forgotten to feel disgusted. He was not thinking of the foul nature of the basin’s contents, instead something magical had been granted him beyond the grotesque, a counter-curse to the original hex. Perhaps he had Mrs Baxter’s consumption to thank for the vision, or the insistence of his mother that he continue with the task at hand, Cy did not know. Or perhaps, and he did not rule this particular option out, taking a moment from his contracted bargain, the Devil himself had painted Cy a little picture for amusement or aesthetic purposes, being not entirely wicked after all.

So. What if blood could tell you stories? What if blood could lure you into pictures? What if there was something worthwhile underneath the shudder and jitter of a body’s mess and spill, some redeeming wonder beyond the grit and gristle and ghastly cavalcade of the flawed and festering human anatomy? He was not entirely sure why, but that thought was oddly pleasing.

Where one confusion ended another was sure to arise. There were uncertain occurrences within his home, mostly out of season when the hotel was emptier of guests, that ravelled and knotted up the strait-laced brain. Arrivals and departures late at night, when muffled soothing voices and muffled cawing cries could be heard. Usually the sounds emanated from behind the fastened parlour door, so that Cy, having made his way up to it stealthily, barefooted and in his nightshirt, could never interpret their exact meaning, nor what might lead to their issuance. He had never yet found the courage to peer through the keyhole, for reasons similar to his theory that a foot kept safe within a blanket was less susceptible to being nibbled and gnawed on by boggarts and trolls beneath the bed. When the caw-caw cries and soothing voices intensified he would retreat timidly upstairs. There were serious notes to the music of the voices that suggested to him the hidden situation was a deeply adult matter, where the sudden presence of a sleepless child would result in a severe scolding or even a boxed ear. So he hid and he listened and he watched. After a while he would see his mother coming out of the door with a bloody basin of her own, covered by a cloth, then minutes later she would return to the room of strange noises. Later, tucked behind the banister, tired but bright with worry, he might spy his mother and another lady that he knew from town leaving the parlour, helping a third party — always a lady moving sore and slow — through the passageway to the front door. Their arrival was never heard, never apparent to him, as if the visitors stepped from a conjurer’s chest within the hotel or came in via the building’s creaky water pipes. Rarely, perhaps only once that he could recall, a man was present in the hallway also, a soldier, from the new army base at Bare hamlet. He stood pale against his uniform and said not one word. Mostly, however, it was a matter concerning only ladies. Before the discreet visitors left the Bayview, his mother would usually kneel down and lift the skirt of the unknown female, adjusting something beneath her while she sniffled and sobbed and winced.

— Is she clotting?

— Yes. Good. S’all right luvvie. All over now. Just keep off your feet if you can manage. Don’t wash for a day or so, stand up when you do it, and no bath, not for a week. Oh, luvvie, you’re all right, hush now.

Then as she closed the door to her visitors his mother would pause and smooth down her dress, or put a hand to the wall and lean for a time. She might pour herself a sherry from the cabinet, and drink it using her stiff head to take it back in one long finishing sip, or she would come upstairs to check on him in his room, and he would have to race silently back, remain very still below the covers and feign sleep, hoping the racket of his heart would not convey past his chest as it pounded and pounded and he felt he might go deaf himself from all the noise. Twice he had witnessed Reeda and her friend carrying a visitor in a sling made from their linked arms because she could not walk, and as he ran to the window of his room he observed them moving up the dark street, away from the dull yellow glow of hotel windows — for the lamps on the promenade were extinguished by eleven at night and it was long past that hour on both occasions — so that joined together they appeared to be a heavy, misshapen creature lumbering through the murk. And then, when she was gone, the hotel would seem ugly and massive about him and echoing full of unrest.

The Bayview was not a beautiful building, it was grey and fortress-like from the outside, with tall chimneys and brown, seaweed-coloured stains on the walls, molested as it had been over time by the salty sea air, the Anglo-Saxon damp, and it sat within a row of similar looking guest houses so it seemed like one of several poorly brushed ivories in a lower row of teeth. Jonty Preston and Morris Gibbs and Cyril Parks spent many a wet afternoon rampaging through the hotel’s hallways, on the hunt for mischief and distraction. The three had been friends since they could remember and if there was trouble being produced about the town they were seldom far behind it. The clatter of thrown boots, the scuffle of furniture being moved and the tinkle of shattering glass were sounds that often accompanied the trio on their rounds.

Reeda Parks and Mrs Preston were also friends of sorts. It was a practical relationship, which never extended to a shared pot of tea and a piece of currant cake in the Tower tea room. Nor were they cordial over the punch stall at the annual fancy dress parade. It was not a friendship at all really by the usual standards. The two women did not ever seem to enjoy each other’s company all that well if they met in the street, nor would they pass conversation idly at a grocery counter, not in the fashion that some ladies fell about laughing over gossip at the fishmongers, pointing to one of the young, lipsticked munitions workers from the White Lund factory as she strutted past the window, and sniping.