A Fine Woman

So here they were. Sidney clasped the remaining ounces of what had once been his darling, his Freya, and let the brass knocker fall against the door.

[private]Seven years ago, he had stood at Provideniya and scattered his wife’s ashes into the Bering Strait. It had been the first stop on a tour that had taken in the Grand Canyon, a rooftop bar in Tijuana, and the Miraflores lock overlooking the Panama Canal. Portions of her had been released to the heavens from atop Chichen Itza and cast out to flutter among the moai at Easter Island. He had sprinkled her into the spangled waters that slapped against their boat somewhere between St. Helena and Tristan da Cunha. He had watched her swirl about his ankles above Lake Victoria; he had released her into Nile; he had made his pilgrimage up the Appian Way before casting her upon the Senate steps to mingle with Caesarian blood. Now she floated among the hyacinths below the water palace at Jaipur, settled into the crevices of the Great Wall, haunted the frozen magma peaks at Hanging Rock. He had done his best to secure her presentation to the King of Tonga. When this had failed – and it had been, he told himself, the only disappointment in the entire journey – he had entrusted part of her to the care of a Methodist clergyman in Nukualofa.
There was no response to his knock, and Sidney took a moment to consider the house before him. It was an inelegant hybrid of styles: Scottish baronial updated with touches of Nouveau and Deco, postwar reconstruction to the façade, a neglected walled garden trimmed with chicken wire. From an adjoining field, several sheep gazed at him with marble eyes. It had taken him almost three hours driving over muddy carriageways and rutted country lanes to arrive at this place.
As he reached for the brass knocker again, the door opened and Sidney found himself face to face with a diminutive figure in a wrinkled linen suit. A gentleman with a face like a peach stone gripped the doorframe with slender, manicured fingers.
“Mr. Millbank,” said the man at last, in a voice that was almost girlish. His gaze lighted on the urn nestled in the crook of Sidney’s arm.
“Oh, jolly good. I’ve come to the right place, then?”
“Come in, come in.” Something about the gentleman’s eyes reminded Sidney of the smiling jade Buddha he had photographed in Shanhaiguan. “Minto’s the name. George Minto.”
“Sidney Millbank.” He indicated the urn. “And Freya.”
“Of course. Please…”

He was led into a chilly hallway sparsely populated by furniture covered in dust sheets. At one end, a neglected inglenook fireplace hunkered over cold embers. Three doors leading off the entrance hall remained closed. Sidney’s host approached the wide, carpeted staircase and extended an arm upwards. “We don’t use these rooms any longer – it’s become far too expensive to heat them all. You’ll find it much more comfortable upstairs. The sitting room is straight ahead. I’ll bring some tea, and then we can talk.”
From the top of the stairs, Sidney noted five rooms leading off the central landing, angling off like the points on a star. He followed a threadbare runner through the open door to find himself in a cozy room that resembled a converted library. A fire blazed in the grate, and Sidney settled himself into an overstuffed chair surrounded by piles of books. The urn he set by his feet.
Minto soon reappeared, bearing a tray of tea and scones. “I hope you’ll excuse me,” he said, in the same sing-song lilt, “but they’re not home-made. My wife has been away, you see. She’s only due back in the morning.”
“No need to apologise.” Sidney accepted the chintz tea cup and contemplated its milky depths.
“You had no trouble finding us, I take it?”
“No, the instructions were very clear.” Sidney fumbled in his pocket for the piece of paper. “I left most of the documentation at home while I was away. Seemed silly to risk losing it. The last piece of the puzzle, and all that.”
“So you’ve scattered the ashes everywhere else?”
“Over six continents, yes. Just as she’d asked. Seven years, on and off.” Seven years to distribute no more than three or four pounds of his darling’s mortal remains. The two men fell into an awkward silence punctuated by the ticking of a gilt clock on the mantelpiece. “You knew about it, then?”
“She asked me to expect you, yes. A fine woman.”

“A nasty piece of work.” So spat his mother, many years ago, when asked by his father why Sidney and Freya should not be married. “See the way she eyes up other men, how she looks down her pretty nose at us.” Could it be that his father had also fallen under her spell? “He’s bewitched. Mark my words, the boy will come to grief. But then, he’s your son: a fool, and a weakling. Always was, and always will be.”
Poor Sidney. Hapless, jug-eared Sidney; Freya’s pitied, pitiable petit-chou. What had he seen in her? What, beyond her Nordic fine looks and statuesque bearing? That ivory skin, which had always been cool to the touch; the supercilious curl of her lip, which never failed to reduce his legs to jelly. Perhaps bewitched had been the right word, after all.
He sipped at his tea. “I wasn’t there when she died, you see. We’d been estranged for six months. The first I heard of the overdose was when a solicitor arrived on my doorstep with her last will and testament and this urn.” He nudged it with his toe. “She didn’t have any family, poor creature.”
It had been a tempestuous courtship and, if he was honest, a disastrous marriage. His mother had called Sidney a masochist for taking Freya back after each failed affair. In the end, he had been the one to suggest that they spend some time apart, in the hope that his absence might make her heart grow fonder, that she would realize how much she was loved, in spite of her casual brutality, her childish spite and propensity for playing cruel jokes. The suggestion had been met with a wounded look that quickly transformed into something else – something which had frightened him, which he now knew was a premonition that if he banished her, he would lose her forever.
“How did you afford it?” asked Minto.
“I convinced my mother that we could avoid the inheritance tax if she signed over my due sooner rather than later.” Sidney met his host’s birdlike gaze. “Freya never traveled any further than Jersey, as far as I know. It seemed the least I could do, to make amends.”
Contrite, he had divided her up into seventeen parts – discrete clusters of peppery ash sorted into plastic sandwich-bags – and taken her on the tour of a lifetime. How many hours had he gained and lost along the way, in the limbo of airport lounges where he had watched so many lives taking off in a hundred different directions?
“You must be curious to know why she brought you here.” Minto shifted in his seat. “Your wife asked me to offer you something in return for your dedication.”
He rose and made his way across the room to an ornate writing table. Removing what looked like a large sewing needle from a compartment of the desk, he shot Sidney a triumphant grin.
“They are rudimentary instruments,” he said, offering his guest the needle and a spool of thick cotton thread. “But they should suit our purposes precisely.” Minto indicated the urn, and like an obedient schoolboy, Sidney passed it to him. “The first tattoos were probably accidents,” continued Minto. “Someone might have had a wound and rubbed it with soot or ashes to help it heal.” He offered Sidney more tea.
“Thank you,” said Sidney, offering his cup. His gaze remained trained on the oversized sewing needle.
“The Samoans use an instrument known as a hahau to pierce the skin,” said Minto. “I suppose you would call it a process of scarification rather than a tattoo in the true sense. Your wife was not precise in her specification, but I think we can safely assume that what she had in mind ran along these lines…”
“What lines?” asked Sidney.
Minto was unscrewing the top of the urn. “Inks can be improvised from various sources,” he explained. “Coal, or even shoe polish can be quite effective. But ash is my favourite.”
He tipped the last of Freya’s ashes onto a plate which he had brought out with the tea and scones. Sidney watched, dumbstruck, as the man withdrew a glass vial from his inside pocket. Tipping a watery solution from the vial onto the pile of ash, Minto stirred the sticky mixture until it resembled liquid tar.
“Your wife thought that it would be a fitting emblem of her love to be joined with you in perpetuity,” he said. “Physically, I mean.”

Sidney noticed that the dome of Minto’s head had been plastered over with fine wisps of black hair. It reminded him of the balding pates of the dolls his sister had played with as a little girl, and of a mummy he had once seen at the British Museum.
His host was soaking the thread in the dark liquid, prodding at it gently with the tips of his fingers before delicately winding it around the needle. “It’s important to keep the needle saturated in ink,” he said. “So that every time the skin is pierced, the maximum quantity of dye enters the top layers.”
“She asked you to tattoo me?” Despite himself, Sidney laughed – a tremor of incredulity.
Minto paused to stare up at Sidney with a wide, empty stare. “She stipulated that it should be her final destination,” he said simply. “A simple motif: only her initials. She thought it would be a comfort to you.”
“A comfort?” Could it be: had she at last taken pity on her doting lover? Beside himself, Sidney began rolling up his sleeve. “Anywhere?”
“Anywhere you like. Better where there’s muscle, and not too much bone.”
The first few pricks were the most painful. After that, Sidney registered only a dull numbness through his upper arm. It spread to his fingertips, this pins and needles feeling, and he asked Minto if that was to be expected.
“Not unusual,” came the murmured reply, as his host peered down an eyepiece to examine his progress before taking up the needle and resuming his work.

Hours must have passed, as by the time his companion leaned back in his chair to admire his creation the fire had burnt out and the first light of a new day was beginning to creep between the chinks in the curtains.
“You must be tired,” said a voice in Sidney’s ear, as he settled back into his chair and allowed his eyes to drift shut. “You should sleep now.”

He was woken by the sound of a door opening, just in time to see his wife entering the room: tall, serene, and beautiful as ever. Sidney rubbed his eyes in time to see her kiss the elderly gentleman, her lips lightly brushing his sallow cheek, before casting her husband a contemptuous look.
“He’s still awake,” she said.
“The dosage will take effect soon.”
“Freya – ” cried Sidney. He struggled to raise himself from the chair. “The ashes – ”
“We found them in a hospital incinerator. Oh, seven years ago, I should think.” She followed Minto with a tender look as he gathered the tray – the empty teapot, the tepid cups, the plate smeared with ink, the needle and thread – and sidled out of the room. Drawing the door behind her, she blew her husband a parting kiss. “It must have been the trip of a lifetime, darling. And now I have to love you and leave you…”[/private]

Trilby Kent is 26 years-old and a graduate of Oxford University and the LSE. She has written for the Canadian national press as well as for publications in Belgium, England and the US. Her short stories have appeared in Mslexia and The African American Review. Her first children’s novel will be published in 2009 by McClelland&Stewart. She teaches creative writing and is a founding member of books blog VulpesLibris.