Second Skin Read online

  Bello:

  hidden talent rediscovered!

  Bello is a digital only imprint of Pan Macmillan, established to breathe life into previously published classic books.

  At Bello we believe in the timeless power of the imagination, of good story, narrative and entertainment and we want to use digital technology to ensure that many more readers can enjoy these books into the future.

  We publish in ebook and Print on Demand formats to bring these wonderful books to new audiences.

  About Bello:

  www.panmacmillan.com/imprints/bello

  About the author:

  www.panmacmillan.com/author/wendyperriam

  Contents

  Wendy Perriam

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Part One

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Part Two

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Part Three

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Ninteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty One

  Chapter Twenty Two

  Chapter Twenty Three

  Chapter Twenty Four

  Chapter Twenty Five

  Chapter Twenty Six

  Part Four

  Chapter Twenty Seven

  Chapter Twenty Eight

  Chapter Twenty Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty One

  Chapter Thirty Two

  Chapter Thirty Three

  Chapter Thirty Four

  Part Five

  Chapter Thirty Five

  chapter Thirty Six

  Chapter Thirty Seven

  Part Six

  Chapter Thirty Eight

  Wendy Perriam

  Second Skin

  Wendy Perriam

  Wendy Perriam has been writing since the age of five, completing her first ‘novel’ at eleven. Expelled from boarding school for heresy and told she was in Satan’s power, she escaped to Oxford, where she read History and also trod the boards. After a variety of offbeat jobs, ranging from artist’s model to carnation-disbudder, she now divides her time between teaching and writing. Having begun by writing poetry, she went on to publish 16 novels and 7 short-story collections, acclaimed for their power to disturb, divert and shock. She has also written extensively for newspapers and magazines, and was a regular contributor to radio programmes such as Stop the Week and Fourth Column.

  Perriam feels that her many conflicting life experiences – strict convent-school discipline and swinging-sixties wildness, marriage and divorce, infertility and motherhood, 9-to-5 conformity and periodic Bedlam – have helped shape her as a writer. ‘Writing allows for shadow-selves. I’m both the staid conformist matron and the slag; the well-organised author toiling at her desk and the madwoman shrieking in a straitjacket.’

  Dedication

  For Sara Stoneham

  – my guide in a new world of gigs, clubs,

  raves, Doves, flat-shares, fashion, ad-speak.

  Heartfelt thanks.

  Epigraph

  If I could choose

  Freely in that great treasure-house

  Anything from any shelf,

  I would give you back yourself,

  And power to discriminate

  What you want and want it not too late.

  EDWARD THOMAS

  Part One

  Chapter One

  ‘Keep still, Catherine. I’m trying to get your head in.’

  Catherine tensed obediently, self-conscious smile in place – she wasn’t used to taking centre stage. Her audience had dissolved into a patchwork of colours: dark suits, floral dresses, a sudden splash of crimson or fierce green. Their faces were a blur; only Gerry’s well-defined as he gazed into her eyes with a mock-Byronic air, hamming it up for the camera. They were standing at the centre table, about to cut the cake; the damp weight of his hand clamped firmly over hers on the ivory-handled knife.

  ‘Okay,’ he whispered. ‘Here goes!’

  Together they pressed down on the knife. At first the hard white icing resisted, but Gerry’s hand tightened on hers, and suddenly the blade slid in, penetrating the moist body of the cake. She wiped the perspiration from her forehead. The marquee was strangely sensual: sultry-dim, and creating its own enclosed and intimate space. Gerry pulled the knife from the cake and held it up triumphantly, again playing to the crowd. For a startled moment she saw him as Macbeth – the first part she had ever watched him in – a lean and shaggy-haired Macbeth, about to murder the king.

  A champagne cork exploded, dispelling the wild image, followed by a ricochet of cheers. She was handed a foaming glass and as she took a sip, the whispering bubbles fizzed against her eyes. She swallowed a mouthful of froth, watching her son step forward, immaculate, despite the heat, in a grey suit and crisp white shirt. He cleared his throat; his expression serious, as if he were about to address a business meeting.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, please raise your glasses. I’d like to propose a toast to my parents on this very special …’

  Catherine suppressed a smile. Even as a child, Andrew had been solemn; born anxious to please, and briskly mastering each stage of his development – weaned by six months, sitting up at seven months, crawling at eight months, reading The Times aged six. It was probably her own fault. She had got pregnant far too young and he must have sensed that his arrival on the scene was highly inconvenient and that he must pull his weight as soon as possible. She forced her mind back to the present. The guests were drinking the toast; eighty-odd champagne glasses glinting in the light. She had a sudden vision of the marquee taking off into the air with all of them on board, and floating high across Carshalton, powered by millions of bubbles.

  ‘Happy Anniversary!’

  ‘Happy Anniversary!’

  People had been saying it all day. Was it happy, she wondered? Her feet ached really badly and her stomach was grumbling to itself. There hadn’t been time to eat; her mouth too full of introductions, chit-chat. She looked hungrily at the cake – two cakes, side by side, a figure two and a figure five, tied with silver ribbon, iced with blue rosettes. The ‘2’ was still unscathed, but the gash in the ‘5’ revealed a dark, dense mass of fruit, thatched with yellow marzipan. She could almost taste the marzipan – its rich, damp, cloying sweetness; the tingle of almonds on her teeth. On their wedding day they hadn’t had a cake, and certainly no grand marquee in a lush suburban garden. Back in 1968, Gerry had rewritten the script for weddings; directed a modern-dress, low-budget production, attacked by the critics (notably her father).

  ‘Speech!’ called Gerry’s brother Ian, conspicuous in his party tie with its grinning Mickey Mouse.

  Friends, Romans, Countrymen …

  No, Gerry hadn’t acted for more than fifteen years. Now he was playing his role of conventional businessman.

  ‘I want to thank you all for coming today. I know some of you have travelled miles to be here. Well, I only hope it was worth your while!’

  Laughter.

  ‘And thank you for all these marvellous presents …’

  Catherine’s eye strayed to the mound of gift-wrapped packages. They had only opened two so far: a set of apostle teaspoons and some ornate silver candlesticks. Secretly, she would have preferred a plastic robot – one which could help her run the business, h
elp her with the chores. Of course, they could always pawn the silver – might have to, if their finances didn’t improve. They couldn’t actually afford this party, especially the marquee: blue-striped, with a ruched blue and silver lining.

  ‘Well, aren’t you going to kiss her, Gerry?’

  Ian again, red-faced from the wine. Gerry’s other two brothers were there as well, plus wives and various offspring. And the whole tribe of aunts, uncles and cousins had made the trek from all parts of the country. Her own family was much thinner on the ground.

  Dutifully, she held her face up to Gerry’s, expecting a brief kiss, posed just long enough to gratify the guests and to be recorded by the phalanx of prurient cameras. But Gerry was seeking out her tongue, commandeering it, grazing the inside of her lips with his teeth. She could taste smoked salmon on his breath, feel the paunchy heat of his body melting into hers. He had kissed her like that on their wedding day – flagrantly, extravagantly, to the wild cheers of his actor-friends (and the silent disapproval of her father).

  She shut her eyes and savoured the kiss, remembering the Gerry she had married: rebellious, thin, intense; the actor Gerard Jones, destined to become a star. Her painful feet and empty stomach ceased to matter any more. Gerry was reviving her; arousing her quite shamelessly with the sea-anemone distraction of his mouth. He had punched their secret code into her body and it was responding as it had at seventeen, when they had spent whole days in bed together, shutting out the world.

  But today the world was here. She could hear catcalls from the crowd and a voice yelled, ‘Break it up, you love-birds!’ She pulled away reluctantly, knowing some of their more stuffy guests would regard the kiss as vulgar, and certainly inappropriate for a man who would be fifty next birthday. She blushed as she saw the lipstick stain on Gerry’s dark-shadowed chin. Her make-up must be smudged, her hair ruffled, in the heat of the embrace.

  She turned from Gerry and slipped into the crowd, wishing more of her own friends were there – her old friends, real friends, most of whom still lived up north.

  ‘Catherine, have some cake.’

  Gratefully, she accepted a plate from her daughter-in-law, admiring the elaborate blue rosette on every portion. Antonia had made and iced the cakes, as perfectly and professionally as she did everything in life And now, with equal efficiency, she had sliced the ‘5’ into dainty fingers and was busy distributing it to the guests.

  ‘It’s delicious,’ Catherine smiled. ‘Though it seems a shame to demolish such a work of art.’

  ‘Well, I’ve left the second one intact. It’ll keep for Christmas if you want’.

  Christmas, she thought, with a sudden twinge of panic. Hordes of family and friends again – mostly Gerry’s, of course. Not that she didn’t like his family – it was the pressure she detested: December exploding into rush and hype as each day became shorter than the last, not just in light – in hours. But it was crazy worrying about Christmas in the middle of July.

  She was accosted by a trio of Gerry’s aunts before she could finish her cake. She was tempted to cram it into her mouth and guzzle it whole; instead, she sipped politely from her glass, the tart dryness of the champagne cutting through the sweetness of the marzipan. She could still taste Gerry’s mouth: whisky and smoked salmon. Maybe tonight she should become the seventeen-year-old virgin for him again. She wondered sometimes if he had married her for her rarity value. Virgins were like unicorns in the so-called swinging sixties.

  ‘How are you, Catherine dear?’ Aunt Bridget was asking. ‘You look wonderful – so smart.’

  ‘Gosh, thanks. Though I must admit, I don’t feel it.’ She put an anxious hand up to her hair. She’d had it permed and highlighted, but her usual girl was off sick and the one who’d taken over had made it look unnaturally stiff. And as for her dress, well, Antonia had helped her choose it, steering her away from her favourite pinks and reds to staidly ‘classic’ beige.

  ‘I see Gerry’s on top form,’ said Neville, breaking into the cluster of aunts with a wave of his cigar. ‘That was some kiss! Real Hollywood style.’

  ‘He’s been saving it up for years,’ joked Catherine, sipping more champagne to boost her courage. Neville was the most important of their customers.

  ‘It’s quite an achievement these days to have lasted twenty-five years,’ Aunt Rosalind put in, patting her hand as if in sympathy.

  It hadn’t been that bad, thought Catherine – not all of it, at least. She glanced across at Gerry, who was chatting with his niece Susanna. His boyish figure might have gone, but his hair remained defiantly dark, and he still had such huge energy. She watched him sawing the air with his hands; his whole body involved in the conversation as he hugged himself in delight at something Susanna said, then lunged forward and flung his arm around the girl. It was the same with everything he did – working, eating, talking, even sleeping. Gerry tossed and turned half the night, talked in his sleep as if the days weren’t long enough for all he had to say, pushed her almost out of the bed in his unconscious nightly gymnastics. She had grown used to it in time. At first horrified and bleary-eyed, now she could sleep through Gerry as she could sleep through a violent thunderstorm.

  She suddenly wished they could be alone, his arm round her, not glamorous Susanna. They were so rarely on their own these days. That was the trouble with running a business from home – there were always other people around, and even in the evenings customers must be entertained, or late calls made to stockists.

  A customer was approaching now – Francis Fenton-Cox, who owed them a large sum of money, but had to be handled with kid gloves in case he took his business elsewhere. Sometimes she resented all the customers. They had killed the man she had married, turned him into a workaholic who talked invoices and orders in his sleep (instead of fantastical gobbledegook). Though today he had been resurrected, become the ardent lover again; proved he could still put on a performance.

  ‘I love your snazzy waistcoat, Francis,’ she said, ashamed at stooping to flattery. ‘It’s so nice when men dress up.’

  ‘My wife says I’m too fat for it, but the pattern helps to camouflage the bulge.’

  Catherine laughed. ‘Gerry always denies he’s got a bulge at all. He calls his muscle!’

  Gerry’s assistant had sauntered over to join them, and the old couple from next door, and Ian was bearing down on her, a touch unsteady on his feet. She looked enviously at the group of children sprawling on the grass. They had taken off their shoes and socks and were gulping lemonade. She longed to kick off her own shoes, peel down her clammy tights, feel the cool caress of the grass against her naked feet. It was ninety degrees outside, even more in the marquee – extraordinarily un-English weather.

  ‘Catherine, hi! I’m sorry to show up so late. But you know what I’m like.’

  ‘I certainly do!’ Catherine gave her friend a hug. Maeve was always late. Even on their wedding day she had arrived halfway through the ceremony, despite the fact she was unofficial bridesmaid. Very unofficial. She had swept in, out of breath, dressed in a black leather jacket and a crotch-skimming red skirt. Today she wore a Chanel-style suit in innocuous baby-blue.

  ‘So, how’s Salford these days?’ Catherine asked, thrilled to see Maeve in person after so many years of phone calls. They had lived in the same street before she and Gerry migrated south.

  ‘Not the same without you.’

  ‘Are those ghastly people still living in our house?’

  ‘Yes, worse luck. But this incredible guy’s just …’

  ‘Auntie Catherine, telephone!’ Her youngest nephew, Robert, tapped her on the arm. ‘It’s Kate.’

  Catherine murmured her apologies and ran full tilt across the lawn into the house. Phone calls from India cost a fortune, and her daughter earned a pittance.

  ‘Hello! Hello? Kate, can you hear me?’

  Nothing but a sort of muffled roar.

  ‘Listen, put the phone down, darling, and I’ll phone you straight back, okay? What? Oh
, you are there. Good. But the line’s appallingly bad.’ She strained her ears to catch the remnant of a voice.

  Kate was saying that the phone call was a present – ten whole minutes, on her. She was sorry but she hadn’t had a chance to buy them anything else.

  ‘That’s okay, we’re knee-deep in presents here.’

  ‘How’s the party going?’

  ‘Oh, splendidly. I just wish you could be with us.’

  Silence. Had she sounded critical, Catherine wondered anxiously, as if she had expected Kate to come? She had to be so careful. Kate could be prickly, and anyway, she disapproved of empty shows of wealth. ‘How are you, darling?’ she asked, to fill the gap.

  ‘Okay.’

  Why couldn’t Kate say ‘fine’? Now she’d worry. She worried enough as it was – dysentery, malaria, no proper sanitation. And Kate’s wisp of a voice made her sound as if she had been stricken already by some tropical disease. ‘Are they still working you into the ground?’

  Kate’s answer was drowned in static. She ached to cut through all the interference and evasions and to say, ‘I miss you, darling, terribly,’ but that too might seem a form of disapproval. She had no right to miss a daughter who did worthy work with paupers and untouchables. Kate was based at a centre in Gurgaon, which sounded primitive in the extreme – she washed each morning in a bucket, slept on a thin straw mattress with neither sheets nor pillows, and even travelling the twenty miles into Delhi on the lumbering local bus was apparently quite an experience in itself. It usually entailed being crammed into a seat-for-two with a whole extended Indian family: babies, toddlers, uncles, grandmas, overflowing shopping bags, plus a few live chickens thrown in for good measure.

  ‘How’s Paul?’ asked Catherine, seizing on a subject which seemed slightly less remote. Paul was the only other westerner in Gurgaon.

  ‘Busy!’

  Kate never opened up about matters of the heart and had given no hint as to whether Paul was ‘serious’, or just a casual friend. All they knew was that he was writing a new-age travel guide and had an interest in Zen Buddhism.