Girl in Profile (6 page)

One day soon
. My heart tries to leap like a rabbit in the dilapidated gardens of the Hotel Biron, but I grab it by the neck with my tiny wee hands. Aha, little rabbit, you can strain, kick your legs, bulge the whites of your eyes at me, but I've got a good hold on you. Little darting heart that you are. He is
bousculé par le monde
as always. He is every e-acute you care to imagine:
enrhumé
,
bousculé
,
agité
,
âgé
. E-acute is a chronic condition with him. He is unrepentant, admits nothing. Am I to love flowers and cats for the rest of my life like a sad old spinster? Is that all I'm good for? I would not take a sou from him. I would rather wear my crimson faille through the winter, survive on one lump of coal a day, sit in a fairy ring of champignons with Edgar by my side. I shall work for L'Homme Femme, sit for her every day, maybe find a model of my own and put the energy of loving into drawing. I will paint her in this room, emaciated, etiolated by spiritual anguish and love, and I will present it to him with the words:
This is what you did to me, Monsieur Rodin, this is what you did to me.

Elizabeth

Cuckoo's Nest

Doctor Kharana looks at me like butter wouldn't sizzle, but I know better, the randy bastard. Saw him pinching Nurse Tinkerbell's bottom in the corridor only this morning. They think I don't notice, they think I'm just a dot-to-dot old bint reading my book about Italy and the vineyard and the skeleton of the whale they've just found beneath the vines and poor old Chiara, whose husband is a philanderer. She's a common little darter, Nurse Tinkerbell; Peter Pan's read up on her in his dragonfly book. He knows the language of dragonflies. And crickets. And toadstools. My son is a globe skimmer apparently, and I'm a banded demoiselle – that's right, a banded demoiselle. I've lived most of my life underwater as a nympho from what I can gather.

“Are you happy here, Elizabeth, at High View House?”

Hell yes, wouldn't you be? Three meals a day, shit when I need to, stephanotis who's swallowed a clock, and an emaciated stink for company. Pen pal on death row for murdering his girlfriend, husband who fucked off down the autobahn just sitting in his chair, children who behave like Icarus without the scorch marks and the downward descent, and a granddaughter in some old Etonian mess and a view of Caldey Island and the sea. Yippee. Lucky me. Lucky old effervescent-vitamin-C-to-perk-you-up-a-bit me.

“Do you get confused sometimes between what is real and what is not?”

Heavens, yes, of course I do. I don't even know where I lived my life. Was it out there in the streets and the suburbs, in the rain, in little rooms? Or was it here in the hippocampus of my head complete with safari tent and gear? Does it really matter anymore? My life still goes on like a television set, I take my KitKat tea breaks in the synapses of my brain.

“It's quite normal at your age to get confused, to have one or two aches and pains,” he smiles, though his eyes are cold as Dairylea straight from the fridge, and even though it's spreadable it still rucks up the bread. “Now that you're in your twilight years.”

Twilight, yes, when you can barely see or be seen. When you flit home from one lit window to the next until you reach your very own. When we're not quite light yet not quite dark, not quite lit yet not quite extinguished. Crepuscular, in fact, like Nurse Tinkerbell's face at the exit door as Doctor Kharana shakes his head and announces for the benefit of my twilight ears, “She hasn't said a word.”

I shout suddenly, red and blustering as a bare-cheeked gale, “I'm fine, Doctor Kharana, absolutely fine. Why don't you check on Peter and his calorific intake instead. Have you seen him recently? He's shrivelled as a pea.”

Nobody says a word. The birds outside are louder than us. They have a bit of song left in them. I slump, and guilt engulfs me with my pillow. Oh, to be smothered by Chief in
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
, to follow him out, out through the broken window, the open window, the hippo decamped for good.

Gwen

Rape

I paint Fenella in my room. She's vulnerable in the waning light like a fawn that lingers too long by the edge of the lake, like Leda half dreading, half anticipating her rape. I start with slow smudges of curl, delicate feathery strokes from mid-air, building up skin, pigment, flesh on canvas. Her shoulders are bare, sloping, angular. My paintbrush undresses her further, unties the black sash from about her waist, lets the pretty white Romany dress slip to her knees. I have to catch my breath as it runs away from my body. I curve a breast into place, reveal another, lick an areola star into being. She is pale and thin as a fairy grown by the light of fireflies. She was meant for the shadows. I lengthen her limbs, deepen her, take her to extremes. Her left hand curls in mild protest. I tauten a sinew in her neck like tuning a violin string. She flinches. I show the whites of her heavy, lidded eyes, force her to look at me directly as I look at her. Not a particle of her body escapes my gaze, my touch.

Her mouth opens in defiance. When will it be over? Soon, my dear, soon, I lie. I take my time over the torment in her face, the bewilderment, discomfort. My breath is shallow, hoarse as a dog on a chain. The world diminishes, contracts, becomes grey and meaningless. Only her body shines, enticing me, provoking me. I gouge a belly button, hollow a collarbone, shadow the inner side of her thigh. I scratch her irises out through pity then scratch them in before slitting her downy plum in half, until vermilion juices trickle down my wrist, my chin. She sobs. I've gone too far. I paint out quickly, cover the mess with the pretty white Romany dress, give her a pendant as a token of my regard. Her long neck droops under the weight of it. She's wilting out of the canvas, acquiescent at last. The light dies. She is mine. (She lingered too long by the side of the lake.) I take over where the light left off. I paint my desire into her, my frustration into her, the whole of my sick and debauched little soul into her. This is what I did to her, God help me, this is what I did to her. And this is what you did to me.

Moth

Women's Work

I lie in the bath water Roan and Dove have probably pissed in. Plastic toys bob around me and an orange duck laps between my legs like it's giving me oral sex. I allow myself to think of Adam.

“This dog's been rolling in fox shit.” Drew is washing Mr Stinks, as we're calling him now, under the outside tap. “What the fuck's wrong with him.”

BC (before children) I indulged in long luxuriant baths; I might listen to the radio, light a candle, dribble a little aromatherapy oil into the cascading waves. BC I conditioned my hair; BC I prepared honey, strawberry and egg yolk face packs to keep my Miss-Carmarthen-at-twenty-two skin radiating Miss-Carmarthen-at-twenty-two. BC I had beautiful feet. Now, ten years later, I lie tense and crouching in a leaking shower cap and a piss-filled bath waiting for Drew to finish cleaning the fox shit from Mr Stinks, come in, and sit on the toilet seat so that we can get a word in that is not edgeways round the head of a child, the washing up, the Monopoly board, the Wii.

Tom whistles in the bathroom next door then urinates: a steady stream, a pause, two drops, the flush, the light switch. All the bathrooms in this row are ground floor, flat-roofed extensions. All are cold, all are mouldy. Tom looks like a member of a boy band who's bedded his mate's mum. He and his girlfriend have a baby girl called Cherry and, what do you know, grandma lives the other side of us at the ready. She's a bit of a Rottweiler, but she sure sings some sweet lullabies as she wheels the kid up and down the bleach-fizzing pavement. Tom collects his lunch from her every day – a tin of beans on a plate. Don't ask me why a grown man gets his lunch off his nan every day – it's beyond my comprehension. They call each other cunt over our garden gate. It's some kind of endearment with them. “Hiya, cunt” like you might say “hiya, love”. “Cherry's a little cunt, innit?” like you might say “Cherry's a little coughdrop,” and, appreciatively, “Nan, you're a real cunt…” like you might say, “Nan, you're a real godsend.” We're sandwiched between cunts. It can't get better than this, can it?

The night is youthful. Ten o'clock, the kids are asleep – this is babyless bliss – an hour of mindless TV and then bed. That's the plan. I add more hot, try and drive the minutiae out of my head. Roan needs a Fair Trade banana for tomorrow, there's that ridiculous Victorian homework, a clean cross-country vest for Saturday, the photo he wants to show Jonah because it's funny and he's eating an ice cream, dig Dove's scribble out of recycling because apparently it's a masterpiece of daddy in an aeroplane, and more fish oil for their IQs and Dove's skin. This stuff is women's work, I've noticed. Men deal in broad outlines, women fill in the minutiae.

Drew comes in, dips his fingers in the bath, so I'm swirling in fox shit as well as children's piss. Thank you, universe.

“D'you remember Ro's got to take a Fair Trade banana tomorrow for school?”

“You what?”

“You've just proved the point I've been making to myself. That without me this family would fall apart.”

“You're a frigging marvel. I keep telling you.”

“Are you being sarcastic?”

“No, not at all. There's another mess I've got to clean up on the step now, else I'll tread in it in the morning knowing my luck.”

Off he goes to clean up all manner of shit: dog shit, fox shit, bullshit – he won't take any of that. He says it like it is, does Drew. He's a grafter, my mum said when I married him. A real grafter. In no way could you describe him as an intellectual. She breathed the word like it was something special: intellectual. I close my eyes and allow myself to think of Adam. There's a faint cry somewhere. I squeeze my eyes, hoping it's a bat, a fox, Cherry.

“Mummeee.” It's not.

“DREW.” The cries become more frantic. “Oh, for fuck's…” I heave-ho myself out, dripping, freezing, clutching a towel, stomping up to the children's room. Dove is sitting up in bed, her eyes gleaming in the frigging gloaming at me.

“What is it, Dove? What's the matter?”

“I'm thirsty.” With an internal sigh I hand her the cup of water that sits next to her silver-painted horse on the bedside table. “I'd have thought that at three-and-a-half you could get your own water at night.”

“Oh yes, but it's better when you get it… Mummy, you're all wet, like a mermaid.”

“That's because I was in the bath. I was in the middle of having a bath, trying to get a bit of peace and quiet from you lot.”

“Did you know,” Roan announces from his bed, his star globe shining Cassiopeia at him, “that in the old days people used to stand on the roof and pee down on you.”

“Good boy, go to sleep now.”

I do the obligatory kisses on the heads, the tuckings in once more. I'm halfway to the door.

“Mummy, are goblins on this earth?”

“No, sweetheart. Just pretend, just in books.”

“I thought I saw one. By the window.”

“No, that's just your brother's Fair Trade mobile, remember, the one he made out of bottle tops.”

“Oh.”

I'm halfway through the door.

“Mummy.” It's Roan's turn to pipe up again like a frigging Scottish reel. “Mr Sullivan gave me a gold certificate today.”

“Oh, what was that for?”

“He found it under the table. He asked if anyone wanted it. I was desperate to get it.”

“I see. Well, goodnight.”

“Goodnight, Mummy.”

I stomp down the stairs, stick my head out of the dog flap, and hiss at Drew. “When I'm in the bath, make sure you're inside, all right.” Then I stand about morosely in the kitchen. There's no point going back in the bath now. My shower cap's still hanging on to my head as if it were Tom Cruise in
Mission Impossible
. The only thing that'll save me tonight, I mutter, is cheese and crackers. BC I didn't talk to myself or stuff down cheese and biscuits at ten o'clock at night with the last dill pickle in the jar. Or possibly I won't, seeing as how it's mouldy.

The phone rings. What fucking idiot phones at this hour?

“DREW… Oh, for fuck's…” I chew and spit some cheese out as quickly as I can, run for the sitting room, tripping over some pink fluorescent took-two-hours-to-unwrap-and-will-probably-end-up-in-landfill plastic toy and answer the phone in the take-it-easy-Cadbury's-Caramel-rabbit voice my mum used to use on my dad sometimes. In case it's Adam. It's not. It's Steven, Maggie's husband. He's been looking after the kids since Maggie got her brain tumour. He gibbered so much at the doctor that he got six months full pay, six months half pay. He's way past that now and on statutory sick pay. He sounds like he's being strangled, which he probably is.

“Maggie's coming out next week.”

“Oh, wonderful, Steve.”

So could we look after the boys on Saturday so he can tidy up a bit.

Drew is suddenly behind me, gesticulating. Wildly. No. Absolutely not. Not in infinity years.