Saltskin Read Free Page A

always he knew — like adulthood crashing through
the door — that she did it because she missed someone.
He recognised the faraway strain of her face because it was
what he now wore.
    In the days following his mother's death Angelo became
obsessed with womanhood in all its configurations, straight
or curled. He stalked women secretly, adoringly and forlornly.
At the start he searched for women like his mother, with the
same aristocratic air Magdalene had possessed, for he had
heard tell that his mother was once a courtesan. Women
with pasts, women with secrets . . . but he realised that every
female was different, and in a curious way each, despite the
flaws of low brows or irregular features or an ill-proportioned
torso, seemed exotic, like a cat on a leash.
    He watched the wealthy, their profiles shaded, bump past
sitting rigid in their carriages, and he watched the poverty-ridden
lift their muddy hems above the puddles. Angelo
was struck by the tender sight of an exposed, stockinged
calf, and he followed women stealthily and silently, fearing
what might happen if they spoke to him. Yet he was hurt if
they did not, and he began to think of himself as invisible
— a spectre, omnipotent and omnipresent. On market days,
he shadowed them, as their soaked bonnets flapped against
their cheeks, their hands dangling scrawny rabbits by their
hind legs or grasping soggy cabbages that were already
rotting, food intended for a family loved and secreted away
someplace.
    Sometimes he'd follow the women home through the
dreary streets, roaming far into the warren of alleys, and
stand, lost, outside until a candle was lit within and the
woman shrieked, 'Scat, you filthy beggar!' Once a nightwalker
put her nail-bitten fingers tenderly to the mole
above his lip and said, 'Want some love, honey?' showing
him her black gums. Angelo did want some love, but there
seemed to be so many kinds.
    His shoulders rounded over his chest to embrace the
heaviness within, the shame, and he began to see lonely
people everywhere, as if they wore gossamer shrouds to
hide and yet display their loneliness, in the hope that
another might seek them out as refuge. Where did all the
lonely people come from and where did they go? They
appeared everywhere, as though they had always been
there, but unseen, like dead birds. He identified with them
and that fact horrified him.
    Angelo worried that he would never be his old self
again. He wished he could pull a lever, like the brake on a
carriage, jump off and head in another direction. He stopped
looking at his reflection in windows because he didn't like
what he saw: the freakish grey hair over the worn face of
a small boy. He avoided mirrors. The reflection was never
the charming person he had once imagined himself to be.
He resolved to practise smiling, and when he had mastered
that he would look upon himself again. No one told him it
was normal to feel sad, or that time would soften it.
    Why she had done it he couldn't say. No one asked
him directly: it was as if they already knew, and what he
took for their secrecy stopped him asking, for who knew
her better than he? He didn't like the fact that she might
have had a life before him. He was her life. He didn't like
it that now he was insignificant in her other world. He
recalled the milky look in her eyes, the strange way her
face closed him out when he surprised her alone, and he
knew that the reason she wanted to die would hurt, for he
suspected it had nothing to do with him.
    A man, young or old, rakish or honest, would reach out
and grip Angelo by the sleeve or his grey hair, his ear or
his collar, and, with eyes as vacant and hollow as Angelo's
own, whisper, 'Ginger.' For a moment, with a bonding
stare, they would blend their sorrow on the breath mingled
between them. And for a short space Angelo shared his
grief, but a rash of jealousy would follow and he would
squawk, 'She was mine, not yours — mine!' And he'd bend
the man's little finger back trying to