The Palace Of Curiosities Part 2

'f.u.c.k. f.u.c.k. f.u.c.k. f.u.c.k the Queen and her f.u.c.king consort too.'

He lets go of my hand and I fall back. I stare at the sky. My thumbs dig into the soft quilt of the filthy ooze, and I let myself slide into the comfort of its tight wet mouth. I am lullabied into a drowse by the slurp of their footsteps retreating, the moist tread of other men approaching.

EVE.

London, November 1845 They say when I was born I didn't cry; I meowed and licked my paws. They say that the midwife dropped dead of fright. They told a lot of tall stories but none of them were as tall as the ones I told myself when I looked in the mirror. Mama said I shouldn't look in mirrors: it would upset me. What she meant was, it upset her.

Other girls look in the mirror and see the fairest of them all. I saw a friend. Her name was Donkey-Skin. I can't remember when she came to me, only that she was always there. My only companion, born of imagination and loneliness, which is a hectic brew for a child. What did it signify if no one else could see her? I liked it so. She was mine and mine alone.

I did not want to share her with another soul, so I kept our conversations whispered, our games quiet. When Mama asked me whom I was talking to, I said, 'No one!' in my most innocent voice. She took it for another sign of my strangeness and it was not long before she ignored my chattering. Donkey-Skin wove herself from all the things I hid from my mother, knitting herself from the truths Mama would not tell me but I found out anyway.

Donkey-Skin was ugly: even uglier than me, which was quite something. If I was hairy, then she was as furry as a cave full of bears. If I was a freak, she was a cursed abomination in the sight of G.o.d. If I was lonely, she was abandoned on a hillside for wolves to devour. She was different because she did not care. Her life's work was to teach me not to care either.

When we were alone she murmured, Kitten, kitten, my very own pet. Her lullabies rang over the terrifying stretches of the night as I rested my cheek on her breast, safe under the press of her arm. She loved me because of my thick pelt of fur rather than despite it. Only she could sort my tangles. I purred beneath her gentle comb as she groomed my baby hair.

Of course, Mama was having none of that. Every day she reminded me that G.o.d made me foul-featured for a reason: punishment for a sin I could not remember and she never revealed. It could have been so much worse, she said. I was lucky, she said. Was I beaten? No. Was I fed? Yes. I had a roof over my head; I had a mother who was respectable. I should bow my head, keep my eyes down, keep the peace, be sweet, be grateful that someone cared enough to put bread in my mouth. I could have been sold to trim fur collars or made into a m.u.f.f. I could have been tied in a bag and dropped in the Fleet.

My earliest memory is of Mama shaving me. She sat me upon the table and I kicked out my heels. She caught my foot and kissed the only part of me that was smooth and counted out my toes: 'This little piggy went to market, this little piggy got shaved.' Or was it 'saved'? I do not remember. Her songs were hopeful spells to make the fairies take pity and return the pretty pink and white babe they'd stolen from her womb. There was no escaping the truth of it. I was a changeling and as furry as a cat.

She doesn't want a baby, Donkey-Skin whispered in my ear. She wants a piglet.

I giggled.

A naked pink wobble of a thing, with that sore scalded look of them, tiptoeing as though the ground hurts and makes them screw up their eyes.

You are not a piglet, said Donkey-Skin. Don't be one, not for anyone.

Donkey-Skin was right; I did not want to be a piglet. Piglets grew into pigs, fat overblown pillows slathering in their own muck. Pigs were dinner. I had no wish to be sliced, smoked, fried, salted, stewed or pickled.

Mama grasped the kettle and heaved it from the mouth of the range, poured a bowlful and soaked the dishcloth. A cowlick of steam curled off the face of the liquid. She folded the rag in half and hung its hot wet curtain across my face.

'Mama?' I whimpered. 'Mama?'

'Is it too hot, little one?' she said.

She pulled the flannel away and I tingled with the sudden cold. I grabbed at it, but my reach was far too short. She picked up a jug, took the brush, dipped in the bristles and swiped foam across my cheek. I giggled and wiped it away, slapping the white mess on to the floor.

'No,' she said and sopped my other cheek.

I wiped that away also, squeaking with delight.

'Stop it,' she said, louder, and I squealed louder, to match her.

She aimed quick blobs at my chin, my cheek, my forehead. I could not get enough of this new game. Even when she held my wrists with one hand and soaped my face with the other, I wriggled free.

'I am making you beautiful,' she snapped, and started to cry. 'I'm doing this because I love you.'

Then she smacked me. I had been stung far harder in the past, and deserved it too. This small slap spelled me into stone.

'Stay very, very still.'

I sat obediently and let her lather up my whole face and neck. She unfolded the razor, stropped it keen and laid it on my forehead. I quivered under its chilly stroke, stranger than the licking of a cat. The blade came away loaded with sc.u.m, and more. With each sc.r.a.pe the water grew dirtier, clogged with brown silky threads which collected in thick clots. I grew cold. When she finished, she kissed me and tickled my hairless chin.

'Now you're my pretty girl, my real girl, the girl I should have got, the one who loves her mama and will never leave her side.'

That night, Donkey-Skin visited me as I undressed for sleep.

'Mama's made me pretty,' I sang, spinning in a circle to show off my new nakedness.

Pretty? she snorted. She's made you ordinary.

'Mama told me I am a real girl now. It must be true.'

You look like all the rest of them: simpering, feeble, wet-wristed, snickery-whickery, snappy-snippy little girls made of milk and money.

'Then what is a real girl, Donkey-Skin?'

It's a long story. I have plenty of answers. We have time.

Every week Mama shaved me. When I was old enough, I said no. She did it anyway. I grew and still she shaved me naked, until I was tall enough to smack the razor from her hand.

'You'll look like an animal,' she wept. 'Is that what you want?'

I stood in front of the looking-gla.s.s and admired myself. My moustache wormed across my lip, the tips lost in the crease behind my ears. My eyebrows met over the bridge of my nose and spread like wings up the side of my forehead. My chin sprouted a beard the colour of combed flax, reaching to my little b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

You are my very own princess stuck in the tower, whispered Donkey-Skin.

I laughed. 'A very small tower!'

Donkey-Skin tugged my moustache.

I will spin you into gold. Weave a happy ending with a handsome prince ...

'I will weave my own story,' I replied, and she smiled.

'Listen to you talking to yourself!' cried Mama. She wiped her nose. 'Look at you,' she sneered. 'You're not even human.'

I stuck out my chin and my beard swung backwards and forwards.

'I know that I am different. How could I not? If G.o.d intended me to be this hairy, I shall find out the reason, however long it takes me.'

'Do you think this is a game? You're only safe out there on the streets because I make you look like a real girl.'

I crossed my arms.

'People know who I am. Whatever I look like, they'll say, There goes Eve, Maggie's daughter.'

'You are stupider than you look. And you look particularly stupid. Can't you see my way is better?'

'I shall prove you wrong,' I said. 'Today, I shall take the air.'

I opened the door and stepped into fog as thick as oatmeal. Dim hulks of buildings swam towards me as I strolled along the pavement. No one pointed at me. Shadows tiptoed past, hands on the wall like blind beggars, and at first I was comforted by the thought that I was walking unseen, and therefore in safety. This soon changed to frustration: I would have no proof that our neighbours did not care what I looked like. I wanted to show Mama that I could be seen and accepted.

I kept walking, picking my way carefully, and did not realise how far I had come until the gate of the Zoological Gardens gaped before me. I strode past the ticket office, and smiled at saving sixpence. The mist had cleared a little and I found myself in front of the lion's cage. The great cat lolled within. A raven pecked at its beard.

The dark form of a man appeared next to me. He lifted his arm and threw a stone at the lion. It bounced off the animal's head.

'Oh, Harold, don't carry on so,' said a woman's voice.

His answer was to throw another.

'Oh, Harold,' she simpered.

A small crowd began to gather. More stones were thrown, until the lion was surrounded by a ring of pebbles. It continued to ignore us. Then a boy spotted me.

'Hey, look!' he squealed. 'Look at that, will you!'

Every nose swivelled to follow the compa.s.s point of his finger. There was a pause. I smiled. What better place to prove I was no animal than here, where the dividing line was drawn so clearly? They were in cages, and I was not. The mist grew thinner. I held my breath as it peeled away.

'Oh, Lord, will you look at that,' said the first of them.

'That's not right.'

'It's not decent.'

'If that were mine I'd never let it out.'

'If that were mine, I've never of had it, if you get my meaning.'

Their eyes poked knitting needles at me. I took a step backwards and felt the bars of the cage.

'Shouldn't be allowed out. Should hide itself away from decent folk.'

'Mind you,' chirped one wag, 'right place for it, ain't it? You know, the zoo, like,' he said, in case they missed the joke.

They did not. There was a rattling of unpleasant laughter.

'Here, monkey. You a monkey or what?'

'Even a monkey ain't that hairy.'

'It's a dog.'

'Nah. Dog is man's best friend. It ain't no friend of mine.'

'Perhaps it's an exhibit got out of its cage.'

'Can't see no park-keepers,' one growled.

There was another pause as they ran out of amusing things to say. A boy bent down, picked up a stone and let it fly in my direction. It was weakly thrown and wide of the mark, in that way of first stones. I waited to see if anyone would tell him off. No-one spoke. In their eyes I read drowned cats, kicked dogs, rabbits skinned alive. I saw my own pelt stripped off and spread like a rug before the kitchen fire.

There was no point in searching for escape. The moment I looked away I would be piled up with rocks high as a hill. The cage pressed its bars into my back, too narrow to slip through. Then I felt the sweltering breath of the lion on my neck. I waited for its claws to rake me open, but instead my skin was sandpapered with a tongue the size of my foot.

'Look! Even the b.l.o.o.d.y lion thinks it's a cub!'

'Freak!'

The stones had started as a drizzle, but now turned to rain, bouncing off the bars. One hit the lion on the face, and its roar boomed like thunder over the heads of the mob, which turned and ran. I reached into its prison and scratched the top of its head. A purr rumbled in its throat. A man in a peaked cap came running up to the enclosure.

'You bothering my lion?' he panted; then he saw my face and stepped away. 'Oh. Sorry, miss.'

'I won't bite you,' I said, but he muttered an excuse and left.

I did not cry. I would not shed tears. I took myself back home bent double with my shawl tied round my head. Mama did not say a word, but she smiled for the first time in many months.

Donkey-Skin was my only comfort. She called me all the names they shouted; all the cruelties made of words. Hours and hours we played the game; for days, for weeks, for years; until the words were mine again, and I was not just b.i.t.c.h, but the queen of all the b.i.t.c.hes: not just freak, but empress of all the freakish, with a dazzling crown.

She told me new stories: of a prince clever enough to spot a princess through her wrapper of dirt, who would kiss the beast to make it beautiful. A fearless man who would fight through the bramble forest a hundred years' thick, past the wolf at the door and the witch at the gate. My fur was my protection. Only the most true of heart would find their way through.

There is a man for you with knife in hand to cut through the world's binding. A man of blood and flesh and bone and strange in all of them.

Keep an eye out for him. Watch carefully. You may not know him when he appears.

I am Donkey-Skin. Peel away this fur and I am as pink as you. The blood in my veins is as crimson. If you flay me, we stand equal. Beauty is truly skin-deep. We are all horrors under the skin.

ABEL.

London, January 1857 It's not like waking up. I'm awake already. I have been somewhere. Like sleep, but not. My body rocks backwards and forwards. Something has hold of my shoulder and is shaking it, vigorously.

'Wake up, Abel,' a voice whispers. 'It is time.'

'Time?' I ask, and forget everything.