Skinner's Mission

48

It had been a long day for Alexis Skinner, immersed in her exploration of her mother’s past.

She had devoured the diaries slowly, line by line, trying to think of herself as their author, rather than read them as a stranger, objectively. Each time she had finished a volume, she had put it down and had taken something else from the trunk.

There had been the shoes, black, suede, with three-inch heels. She had tried them on, and found them to be slightly wide, but otherwise a perfect fit. There had been the costume jewellery, most of it plastic or carved wood, but some of it gilt. She had found a heavy imitation gold choker, with matching earrings, and had sat wearing them and the shoes as she made her way through the next diary, doing her best to be her mother.

Then there had been the clothes: the black, high-lift bra she had felt through the wrapping of its parcel; a suspender belt with black nylons, still in their box; a pair of frilled black panties cut high at the hip and narrow at the crotch; a black dress in sheer satin with a neckline which plunged enough to allow the bra to be at its most effective, and a short, square-shouldered matching jacket.

She had carried them all to her bedroom, where she had undressed completely, and had put them on, one by one. The 38C brassiere had felt slightly more comfortable than she guessed it might have to her mother, and the dress had been a little loose at the hips, but otherwise everything had fitted so well that she might have shopped for it herself. The hem of the skirt sat just above her knee, fashionable eighteen years before, fashionable again in Alex’s era.

She had taken off the dress and jacket, and her own engagement ring, and had sat down at her dressing table with an enlarged colour photograph of her mother before her, the last taken before her death. As first she had done years before, as a teenager, she had copied her make-up; her blusher, her eye-shadow, the way she applied her lipstick. Using styling mousse she had teased her hair as best she could into her mother’s fashion. Then she had put on the dress and jacket once more, and the costume jewellery, had taken the small black patent handbag from the trunk, and had gone out, into the day.

At 4 p.m. on a March Saturday, the image of Myra Skinner had walked again in the city in which she had attended college almost thirty years earlier, and in which her boyfriend had been a student.

She had walked along Woodlands Road, past the same pubs and shops, many of which had been altered only slightly by the years, down to its junction with Sauchiehall Street, at Charing Cross; stepping confidently, hip-swinging in her high heels, eye-to-eye with many of the men she passed, and looking down on more than a few. She had walked down Sauchiehall Street, along the pavement until she had reached the pedestrian precinct.

As she had made her way, she was aware of the heads turning, of the eyes fixing upon her in a way in which they seldom had before. Not only men, but women too, some with approval, some frowning, a few with looks of open hostility.

In Marks and Spencer, a young man in his twenties, shopping alone, had smiled at her. She had been unable to stop herself. She had returned the smile; not in her normal open, friendly Alex way, but with an added curl of the lip, and a slight raising of the eyebrow. He had approached, and she had known that he was completely in her power, that she could have done with him what she would. Excitement had swept over her, a pulse-raising thrill. She had felt a sudden burning pang deep inside.

Had she not been Alexis Skinner, she might have followed the feeling to wherever it would have taken her. Instead she had smiled again at the man, her normal Alex grin this time, and had turned on her heels and left the shop.

The presence of Myra had gone, completely, and her daughter’s earlier excitement had turned to self-consciousness. The languid walking pace at which she had set out had given way to shorter, more rapid strides; she had felt awkward in the shoes and uncomfortable in the clothes. Pulling the jacket tighter across her thrusting breasts, she had turned on impulse into Sauchiehall Street’s multi-screen cinema, and had brought a ticket for a film, any film, just to be out of sight, and to recover herself.

It had been dark when she had emerged, and she had taken a taxi home, throwing off the jacket and unzipping the dress almost before the door had closed behind her. She had showered again, and pulled on her most comfortable jeans, then bra-less in a sweatshirt, had gone across the street to her favourite Indian restaurant, back into her own world as if seeking reassurance.

Now she sat again with curtains drawn and the reading lamp shining over her shoulder. On her lap, she held her mother’s seventh diary, her record of the year in which she had turned twenty-one.

The page was headed December 31. Silently Alex read the final entry of the year.

‘Afterwards, we sat up in bed and ate Spaghetti Bolognese off big white plates. Now that, Robert, is what Myra calls bringing in the New Year with a bang!’

Alex closed the diary, put it back with the rest, put out the light, walked barefoot through to her bedroom, threw off her sweatshirt and her jeans and fell into bed. And there, alone in the darkness with her mother’s ghost, she cried, as if she would never stop.