Chapter 26

Chapter 26

Violet

Bleached Poppies

‘You seem far too young.'

She cannot tell him he is far too old. His head is shiny where his hair has grown thin, and his neck reminds her of the turkey they once had for Christmas.

If she said this, she would be travelling back home without the prospect of a job. So instead, she sits quietly as he frowns at her, and tries to look as old as she can. She drops her chin and rounds her shoulders as she has seen the pedlar woman do when the wind whips down the street trying to steal her shawl. Her skin is tissue-thin like bleached poppy petals. She is the oldest person Violet has ever seen. Violet wonders if he would like her to be as old as her.

‘Most of the women we employ are sailors' widows. They seem to fit in, know a bit about the world.' He then adds, ‘A better age.'

He does not tell her the secret of what this age is, so she waits and continues to try to look like the pedlar woman.

She has become used to waiting: waiting for the letter to come, waiting for the tram to take her into the heart of the city, waiting to be let into a building that is home to more stone and marble than the graveyard. Then she waited in the corridor filled with paintings of ships that did not move and people that did. Streams of them, flowing past her as she waited, some rushing so fast that the draught from them ruffled the fabric of her skirt.

But now, when she has come to rest, told her tale and tried to sell her wares like the pedlar woman, it seems she is too young. The man appears to be waiting, thinking. Maybe he is waiting for her to get older.

He swallows like an anxious bird. ‘And you are far too pretty.'

She can see this worries him more than her age.

It does not worry her like it worries him. Her mother says she has no more idea than a babe born when it comes to the lads, but she has learnt a little. She knows the butcher's boy weighs her smile as an extra scoop on the scales and that the postman weaves a different path to bring their mail two streets early if she greets him and asks after his family. She sees her mother fret and shake her head at the men who straighten their backs as she passes by.

She thinks she is right to be wary of the butcher's boy, who looks as if he would like to pinch her flesh as he does the plump steak he is testing– but she knows her mother should not worry about the postman, who laughs like a man who has enjoyed the game but has long since given his boots away to another.

She now sees that she does not need to grow older as she sits on this hard office chair; she only needs to smile.

She is sure Mr Turkey was never a pincher or a man who pressed a sweaty hand into a girl's palm, but she can sense there was a time when he strutted and held his back a little straighter for the sake of a smile.

How strange it is that she has to use pretty ways to persuade him that she can make herself ugly.