‘Ms Sibush! Ms Shibush! Oh, look what I have for you!’ he exclaimed, smiling and excited. Then he whispered, ‘from Ms Patel.’ He passed her a fold of paper.
An envelope. It was as if something had been sent to her out of a previous century. Milena carefully lifted up the flap and pulled out a thick white card. It was edged in gold. Jacob waiting, smiling.
The card was engraved in beautifully flowing copperplate script.
‘Do you feel able to tell me what it says?’ Jacob asked her shyly.
‘It’s an invitation,’ said Milena. ‘For dinner at eight o’clock tomorrow evening.’ She passed him the card. ‘With Rolfa’s family.’
CHAPTER FOUR
Antarctica
(The Indigent Gloves)
The Bears of London lived together in one street in Kensington. It was a Nash terrace, painted cream, with black wooden doors.
Milena was too short to reach the door knocker. She tried jumping and missed and decided to avoid any further risk to her dignity. She pounded on the door with the heel of her hand.
There were shouts and thumpings and suddenly the door was thrown open by a naked Polar teenager. All her fur the length of her body was in braids. There was a blast of icy air from inside. The girl took one hardened look at Milena and yelled. ‘Rolf-a! Your little friend’s here.’ Then she walked away, leaving the door open.
It was bitterly cold inside. All the walls between the houses had been knocked down to make one enormous, barren room that ran the length of the street. A large male GE in a metal mask was squatting over a machine, welding a join. Milena had time to notice that the floor was covered in fur.
‘Shut the door!’ the Polar girl shouted. There was angry thumping, the girl stalked past Milena and flung the door shut. ‘It makes our hair fall out, you little Squidge,’ she snarled. ‘Rolfa! Slump your fat tush down here!’
The room was full of unopened bamboo packing cases. Polar teenagers lounged on them, watching a screen. It was video! It was showing an old movie! Milena couldn’t help but stare in wonder. There was a flash and a mechanical scream, and Milena saw someone torn to pieces before her very eyes. Why on earth, she wondered, have a video and men use it to see something like that?
‘What are you staring at?’ said another GE, a boy, his voice cracking on the edge of puberty like an egg.
‘Nothing,’ said Milena.
‘She’s never seen a video,’ said the girl and rolled her eyes. Some of the Bears were grooming each other, brushing their pelts or braiding them. It was their moulting season, too hot to go outside. They were sullen and dangerous with boredom. Milena hugged herself and tried to stand her emotional ground, but she was still feeling sick from having seen a human being rent into stringy chunks. She began to shiver from the cold. That’s frost, she saw in dismay, that’s frost on the inside of the windows.
Rolfa appeared at the top of the staircase. She was trying to wear a dress, and looked like an unsteady column of crumpled satin. She began her descent, clutching the handrail, stumbling, swaying. Her feet kept catching on the inside of her hem, making frantic motions within it like trapped rabbits.
Rolfa, lift the dress up, Milena willed, silently.
Rolfa’s hair had been brushed back out of her eyes and was held up by two pink resin butterfly clips that looked like lopsided ears. Braving the distance between the staircase and Milena, Rolfa held out something soft and black. It was a fur.
‘We usually dine upstairs,’ Rolfa said, as if to a stranger.
‘Thank you,’ said Milena for the fur, and wrapped it around herself, her teeth chattering.
‘Follow me,’ said Rolfa and began the ascent. She stood once more on the hem of her dress, and had to hold out a hand to catch herself.
‘Rolfa,’ whispered Milena. ‘Up. Hold it up.’
There was a collapse of laughter from the cousins behind them.
There was something majestic about the way Rolfa ignored them. She bent over and lifted up her dress from the bottom, exposing her knees, and climbed the stairs.
There were chandeliers overhead. They blazed with light. There was a chug-chugging noise in the background. A private generator. There were paintings, extravagances of flowers or empty street scenes at dusk. But no people. Thick wires trailed alongside the carpet on the stairs, and from somewhere came the singing of a circular saw. The cold sunk into Milena’s bones.
‘Want to wash your hands?’ Rolfa asked, quickly.
‘I think they’d freeze if I did,’ replied Milena, watching her breath rise as vapour. I wonder, she thought, if my eyebrows are frosted.
‘In here,’ said Rolfa. Her voice was higher and softer than usual, very precise but barely audible as if there was no force of breath or personality behind it. Milena was shown into a room that made her gasp.
Capitalism, she said to herself. Capitalism was what she thought she was seeing. It was the only word she had for it.
There was a polished mahogany table. Little rough wooden boots had been nailed to the bottom of each leg to make it tall enough for GEs. There were more real paintings on the walls, another showerburst of light overhead deflected through crystal. There was an enormous covered dish made of silver on the middle of the table. It was twice as long as Milena was tall. There were silver knives, silver forks, silver candlesticks, matching mahogany chairs and, in the corner, a tin rubbish bin. Even in the cold, it stank of fish. Milena thought: what if we’re all still working for them?
A door swung open and a Polar female walked in backwards. She wore a billowing orange dress and carried a kind of porcelain cistern in front of her, a vat of food.
‘Hiya, Squidge,’ she said to Milena. The tone was not unfriendly. She put the cistern on the table and reached into the bodice of her dress. ‘You want some mitts?’
‘Oh yes please,’ said Milena all in a rush.
‘Thought you might,’ said the GE and rumpled her lip in Rolfa’s direction. ‘Here you go.’ She threw a brown ball of wool at Milena. Fingers trembling, Milena unwound it. They were gloves designed for counting money in Antarctic blizzards. There were no tips to the fingers. They looked utterly indigent, as if they’d been half-eaten by mice.
‘This is my sister, Zoe,’ said Rolfa.
‘You’re Milena,’ said Zoe. Milena was too cold to answer. Zoe left, shaking her head as if it wasn’t Milena’s fault that she’d been brought there. As she went out another sister came in.
She was even bigger, and her cheeks were flexed with the effort of keeping down a grin. She looked at Milena and Rolfa, nearly dropped two tubs of food on the table, and ran out. From behind the swinging door, there came a shriek of laughter. It was followed by spurts and whisperings.
‘That’s Angela,’ said Rolfa.
Milena sat down. The table was on a level with her chin. The two sisters re-entered, a matching pair, batting their long black eyelashes at each other over the top of fluttering Japanese fans. They lowered themselves gracefully onto chairs, spreading napkins over their laps. Zoe’s hair was wrapped around a hoop to make a glossy, flowing arch around the back of her head, Navajo style, Milena’s viruses told her. ‘I like your hair,’ she said.
‘Do you?’ beamed Zoe, lowering her fan. She batted her eyelashes. ‘Do you like my moustache as well?’
Then Milena saw that her moustache had also been wrapped around hoops, one at each end.
‘I used to have the same trouble with mine,’ Milena replied, with a flash of instinct.
The eyelashes stopped batting.
‘Only,’ said Milena with a sigh, ‘now I shave mine off.’
There was a click behind Milena and a kind of surly grunt. Milena turned to see a short GE. He was rotund and bristling like a hedgehog, his cheeks puffed out as if enraged. He was punching keys on a small device that made a whizzing sound and printed out a result on paper.