A Heart So White
“My hands are of your color, but I shame to wear a heart so white,”
- Lady Macbeth, Macbeth by William Shakespeare
Chapter One
In the greenest of our valleys,
By good angels tenanted,
Once fair and stately palace --
Radiant palace --reared its head.
In the monarch Thought's dominion --
It stood there!
Never seraph spread a pinion
Over fabric half so fair.
- Edgar Allan Poe, “In the Greenest of Valleys”
She always considered herself one of the girls -- a follower; she had no qualms being a follower, in fact, she quite liked it. It was hard thinking originally for oneself. Being one of the girls was comforting, a soft, warm cocoon of sorts. True to form, she followed all the proper fashions: etiquette, fashion, did everything a young girl should do: baked cake, served tea and cocktails, and showed her pretty face at every luncheon and soiree where eligible men made notice.
Now, not long returned from her honeymoon, and certainly no longer a girl, this was her first act of emancipation. She retreated to the bathroom. She stood in front of the long, tall mirror and undressed. Off went all those meddling clothes, off went the matching jewelry. Standing naked in that atrocious purple hat her mum had forced upon her, she pointed the gun at her heart.
Her new husband was in the dinning room, with his business partners discussing things that women just couldn’t understand. While, they were absorbed in their plans and machinations, she was trying to find the mettle in her own smile.
Go ahead, girl, this is your judgment day.
At first, when the shot was heard her husband did not move, as if he were marble sculpture in a museum. Only, when Mr. Meredith, architect, clearly shaken made his move, did the husband dart towards the bathroom. Mr. Meredith followed, and found the man crouched over his wife, her violet and white dress draped over her blood spattered body.
There were tear drops like dew drops sparkling in the corners of his eyes.
When Gertrude awoke next the cold was prickling at her naked flesh. A dress had been draped over her body, but very poorly, for more than half her body was vulnerable to the elements.
In a fit to protect her vanity, she clutched the thing to her body. She noticed that blood had soaked and dried on the dress, ruddy circles standing out against the purple and white. She turned away.
Gertrude got to her feet, and tried her best to look presentable. She managed to get back into the dress, though nothing could be done about the awful blood spots.
Her violet hat caught her eye, it sat cocked on the tile bathroom floor. She bent over and picked it up. Then, adjusted the atrocious purple hat to sit right on her head.
Standing in front of the mirror, checking her appearance, she could see stains evident on the skin of her chest, her cleavage -- not that she had much of it. The dried blood had made her skin horribly blotchy.
Reaching for the door knob, a violent shock went through her when her fingers brushed the metal.
“Ouch!”
Gertrude was more careful the second time.
The first thing she noticed when she emerged from the bathroom was that someone had redecorated. Even the paint on the walls was a different color. The old off white and sable wallpaper was gone, as well. Now, there was just bare walls painted a fierce shade of maroon; in places the paint was chipped. There were scar marks against every surface she could see, and paint smears on the carpet. Gertrude frowned, she would never have let that kind of thing happen -- after all cleanliness is next to godliness.
How could Edmund let it get so filthy?
As Gertrude made her way through the house, she avoided piles of dirty laundry and scattered trash. She was confused, why was it so different? And what happened to the lovely chandelier in the dining room?
Upon entering the sitting room, that opened onto the garden, Gertrude called out.
“Edmund! Edmund, where are you?”
When all she met with was silence, Gertrude wandered out into the garden.
It seemed the same; the same plants, trees, flowers -- the same verdant greens, interspersed with blots of color. But Gertrude was not an expert in flowers or even shubbery, as a young girl, she gave up gardening after her first plant withered and died after only a week on the window sill of the conservatory.
It seemed Gertrude had a talent in killing things.
As she ventured out into the garden, her stocking'd feet grew increasily soaked from trampling over all the damp grass.
Gertrude froze, as she thought she heard someone humming. But after a moment, she dismissed it as the wind; her mother always said she had imaginative hearing.
But as she turned a corner, she could no longer blame her ears, but her eyes as well.
He was sitting on a wooden, three-legged chair, his hands covered in what looked like grey mud. He was forming something, (at arms length), on a spinning table. A foot was pumping something underneath, and with each spin his hands shaped the gummy material.
Gertrude was somewhat put off by his appearance, he wore shabby, thread-bare clothing. the sleeves of his shirt were rolled up to his elbows, and his arms were caked in the mucky stuff. Over his ears were large colored, circular masses that were connected by a curved bar that ran from one to the other; out of the right one dangled a wire that disappeared into his pants pocket. He had long, disheveled chestnut hair -- longer certainly that was of fashion; not to mention the moustache and goatee he was growing in what appeared the Van Dyke style which was even further out of fashion than his hair.
But the most interesting thing about him is that he appeared to not notice her, at all.
So she continued to watch him. Every so often he would bob his head to something Gertrude could not hear.
He must be one of Edmund’s friends, Gertrude mused.
She almost went to disrupt him, but thought better of it. He looked so happy. Though she could not understand how he could be so content to be as dirty as he was. But, she let that pass.
The minutes passed and Gertrude felt her body cramp from standing in one place for too long. She feared disturbing the man with her movement, and there was no place to sit down in this part of the garden. All the nice white wrought-metal benches had be moved elsewhere.
As she brought her hand up, to brush a golden curl from her face, she stopped cold.
Her hand was transparent.
Oh dear.
Gertrude opened her mouth to exclaim but she couldn’t seem to do anything; and the hairs on the back of her neck prickled, the telltale sign that she was being watched.
Switching her attention to the young man, she froze, again, and disconcertion itched at her insides, the same exact feeling she had when she had seen her translucent appendage.
His eyes were the color of marsh grass and wet earth.
“You can see me?”
He was staring at her, and Gertrude felt the need to say something. At least, now, she had regained her ability for speech.
The young man chuckled, and smiled. His smile, clearly, was his main attraction. It tugged at Gertrude in all the right places, and she fought the urge to smile back.
“Course I can.” He had a thick accent, that seemed to have been softened by years of cultivation. He might have been Scottish or Welsh, but then geography wasn’t Gertrude's best subject.
“Really?” Gertrude kicked herself, she really should not have said a fool thing like that, again.
“Indeed I can. Though your hand looks a mighty blurry.”
Gertrude shrieked
“Oi, you silly girl, I dun mean to scare ya.”
“I… I…” Gertrude wrestle with her brain for something coherent to see, at last she whimpered, eyes searching frantically, “Where's Edmund?”
The man looked confused and the wheel had stopped spinning now, his creation had folded in on itself. “Who?”
“Who? Are you mad? Edmund! Edmund Landseer, my husband? How do you not- oh never mind-.”
The young man frowned at that, Gertrude liked it better when he was smiling.
She cringed, though, when he wiped his hands on his pants, smearing them with the gray matter. He shifted from one foot to the other, and worried his bottom lip between his teeth.
“Well, don’t know any Edmund Landseer, mum.” He looked her up and down, Gertrude shivered, and not at all in the unpleasant kind.
He crooked a smile. “You might want to see to yourself, you’re getting all kinds of blurry again.
“Really?” Gertrude mentally kicked herself, she really had to find a new word to express her disbelief.
This time the transparency extended up to her elbow.
Before, Gertrude could think of anything to do or say, the man stretched out his hand. She shrunk back from it, but he persisted and extended his fingers towards hers.
With a shock, just like one the metal door knob gave her, her limb became corporeal again.
Gertrude opened and closed her mouth, like a fish gulping, but no sound came out. She seemed to be having troubles speaking today. In a passing thought, she wondered if that was because she had not been taking her vitamins.
“But- how?”
The man just shrugged. “I just like seeing you whole, that's all.”
“Oh.” Gertrude had nothing to say to that.
“Well, young sir, I must know your name then?”
He looked up at her. “Only if you tell me yours.”
Gertrude felt the thrill of repartee swarm over her. “Oh, really, a woman never discloses her name to strange men.”
“I think you got that all twisted lass, it’s her age not her name that a woman keeps hidden.”
Gertrude smirked.
But he just frowned.
“Oh alright, if only to keep you from looking so put out. My name is Gertrude - but most my friends call me Trudy.”
He stopped frowning. “Gertrude, it’s a pretty name, it suits you. I can call you Gertrude, can't I?”
Gertrude looked away. “Only my mother calls me that.”
“Oh, well I like it, the nickname don't do you justice.”
Gertrude felt a blush creeping up her face. She supposed she was bright red now.
“And you, do you have a name, or should I resort to finding you one?”
He showed his crooked smile again, “Well, I'd rather have you calling me by me own name, than something else. It's George, George Dyer. Sort of like Bond, James Bond, ‘cept I’ve no Aston Martins nor any of his dashing good looks.”
Gertrude cocked her head to the side. “I don’t know any James Bond.”
He was looking at his feet, and shifting his weight on them again, his hands in his pockets. “Oh. Sorry.”
There was an uneasy quiet then, so Gertrude broke it. “Well, I’m off to find Edmund, then. You sure you don’t know him? This is his garden after all.”
The young man did not look at her, but nodded his head. Gertrude wondered why she wasn’t more afraid of this stranger. If Edmund hadn't invited him, how the devil did he get in?
“Goodbye then, George Dyer.”
He did look up at the sound of her departing, and smiled. Gertrude felt herself go slightly weak, and silly at his charming warmth.
When he spoke his voice was soft, barely louder than a hum, “Farewell, Gertrude.”
After she turned from him, she did not look back once.
* The title and the initial inspiration came from reading Javier Marías's Corazón Tan Blanco, originally it was only going to be a short, but apparently my characters are convinced otherwise.
Yours,
CL.
