The Lighthouse

CHAPTER EIGHT. Charms

Ester has been lying awake for half an hour, watching Bernard sleeping beside her, watching him breathe. He is lying on his back with his face turned slightly away from her, but she sees his eyes open; she hears his breathing change as he wakes. Rolling onto his side, he reaches for his watch on the bedside table, looks at the time and sits up. Ester looks at his broad, naked back. She can feel the warmth of his body, the warmth in the sheets on his side of the bed; she can smell yesterday’s camphor.

Bernard stands, walks over to the window and draws back the curtains, looking out at the fine morning. Only as he turns away from the window does he look back at the bed, at his wife who is lying there looking at him. He rubs his bleary face with both his hands and grunts by way of acknowledgement, and then he goes into the en suite bathroom and shuts the door. Ester stays where she is for a while, listening to the bathwater running and then hearing the sloshing and splashing as Bernard gets into the tub and begins his ablution.

She gets up and goes to her dressing table, sitting down and brushing her hair. Then, putting down the mother-of-pearl hairbrush and picking up her foundation, she begins to make up her face. She keeps her cosmetics in a drawer with her jewellery, most of which she never wears. Somewhere in amongst the tangle of chains there is a charm bracelet with half a dozen silver charms on it: a lucky horseshoe, a slingback shoe, an ‘E’, a ‘21’, a snowflake, a love-heart.

On the day Ester and Bernard married, Ida endeavoured to find Ester alone, cornering her in the register office toilets. ‘You are losing your sparkles,’ she said, reaching out and savagely refixing Ester’s diamante hair pins, the wire scraping along her scalp like rocks against the hull of a boat as it ran aground. Ida then lifted Ester’s wrist, looking disparagingly at the bracelet she wore there, the charm bracelet which had been Ida’s first Christmas present to Ester. The little collection of silver charms had been gifted on subsequent occasions, the fat love-heart the most recent present, given on her engagement to Conrad.

‘You know,’ Ida said, still holding Ester’s arm as if she were weighing it, ‘you are not the one Bernard loves.’

Ester, standing between the empty cubicles and the sinks, sweating into her wedding dress, her cheeks burning through her blusher, blinked.

‘The only girl Bernard has ever loved,’ said Ida, ‘Conrad took and then rejected. This is just revenge.’ A speck of saliva flew from Ida’s mouth onto Ester’s lower lip. When Ida released Ester’s arm and left the toilets, Ester wiped her mouth and reapplied her lipstick, but still she felt it there, the fleck of spit. In the hours which followed, Ester put her mouth to the rims of countless champagne glasses and wine glasses and shot glasses, but still she felt that speck of saliva clinging on. And even hours later, when Ester and Bernard were alone in bed and he was kissing her, all she could think about was Ida’s spit on her lip, as if it were still there, pressed between her mouth and Bernard’s like a cold sore.

Bernard emerges in a cloud of camphor-scented steam, the bath draining noisily behind him. Ester chats to him while he dresses, watching him in the mirror as he chooses his clothes, inspects his nails, snaps his watch back onto his wrist, checks his shoes. He does not reply, and she does not say anything which requires a response, and he does not look at her.

After Bernard has gone downstairs, Ester gets dressed, putting on cleaning clothes, and goes into the bathroom. She rinses away the tidemark which Bernard has left in the still-warm tub. With a towel, she mops up the puddles on the floor, a patterned lino which she likes because it does not show the dirt. The wall tiles and the bathroom suite are white and show everything, every speck, but at least the tiles are porcelain, hardwearing.

She opens the bathroom cabinet and takes a cigarette and a lighter out of a box of tampons. She has a few little hiding places where Bernard, who does not like her smoking, will not look. Opening the window, she lights her cigarette and smokes it with the sun on her face, inspecting a Venus flytrap on the windowsill, talking to it. She finds the plant fascinating and sometimes pokes at the expectant leaves with the handle of her toothbrush, just to see them in action. Bernard does not really care for houseplants and finds the Venus flytrap vulgar, a little ugly.

She leaves the apartment and follows Bernard down to the bar to have breakfast with him. As she sits down, he asks her whether she has remembered to lock the apartment, and even as she tells him that she has, she knows that she has not.

They eat their breakfast and Bernard reads aloud from his paper when he finds something interesting, but he does not look at Ester as he does so.

Ester stays in the bar, the dining room, while the guests have their breakfast. The ones who are going check out, leaving her with their keys and their petty complaints. Then she cleans the first of the empty bedrooms, a family room downstairs. She could go up to the apartment and lock it now, but she does not. Before going upstairs, she allows herself a break, returning to the bar and sitting on her stool, having a drink. She watches Bernard working, although in between the breakfasters and the lunchtime crowd, it is relatively quiet. Even when there is no one to serve, he stays at the other end of the bar reading his paper.

At eleven o’clock, the new girl arrives, relieving Bernard, who goes off to do some other work. Ester goes upstairs to clean the remaining rooms. When she finishes, it is almost noon.

She and Bernard rarely eat lunch together. If Ester is hungry she has bar snacks, peanuts. Bernard likes to make his own lunch in their private kitchen upstairs. He has a thing about other people handling his food. When Ester returns to the bar, he is there, sitting at one of the tables, eating his meal. He does not look up when she comes in but when he has finished eating he walks over to her, leaving his plate behind on the table. He stops beside her and leans in front of her so that his arm is on the bar in between her and the drink she has fetched for herself. He puts his face very close to hers and tells her again about leaving the apartment unlocked. He says, ‘You’re asking for trouble.’

In the middle of the afternoon, when the new girl is on a break and Bernard is in the cellar and Ester is finishing off a drink, a tourist comes in. He approaches the bar close to where Ester is sitting. She does not find him attractive, but that is not important. Leaning towards him, she says, ‘Buy me a drink.’

The man turns towards her and gives her a wary look.

Ester smiles at him and says, ‘It’s my birthday.’

He smiles back then, although he continues to look nervous. ‘Well, sure,’ he says. ‘What would you like?’

Bernard, returning from the cellar, sees the man and comes over to serve him, and Ester says to the man, ‘You’re offering to buy me a drink?’

‘Yes, I am,’ says the man. ‘What will you have?’

Bernard looks at his wife, although he is speaking to the man when he says, ‘Is that right? You want to buy her a drink?’

Once more the man agrees to this. He looks in the fridges and at the pumps, choosing a beer for himself. ‘And whatever the lady would like,’ he adds.

Bernard, still staring at Ester, says, ‘Get the fuck out.’

The man is confused. He laughs. Bernard, turning his head, looking directly at the man this time, repeats himself. The baffled customer backs away from the bar and leaves as quickly as he can.

Bernard resumes his position at the far end of the bar, picking up his paper again. Ester, who has no guests to wait for today, goes upstairs for a rest.

Sometimes she sleeps, and sometimes she just reads a book or a magazine, tearing out pictures of hairstyles she likes, tearing out party eyes and red mouths.

Later, when Ester goes to Bernard and says, ‘I won’t be here tomorrow lunchtime. I have an appointment,’ he says, without looking up from his crossword puzzle, ‘It makes no difference to me.’