Island (4 page)

There is a routine of silencing: alarm clock’s tick to be wrapped in a jumper, wristwatch in a T-shirt, a folded sheet of paper to be wedged in the side of the window frame. I open my bedroom door, check the lock on the front door. The fridge’s hum has become a roar which drowns out everything else; I switch it off. The radio has been left switched to
tape
; its red light is still on and it emits a low exhalation of dull static like the roar of a gas flame. Pull out the plug. Next door’s TV is deafening, when I touch the party wall I feel it vibrating with the sound. Someone upstairs flushes a toilet and the intensity of the noise drenches me with sweat, I am hot then cold, my hollow head echoing and reverberating with sound. Outside the steady drone of traffic has become isolated incidents, the distant whine of a motorbike crescendoing to blast force then elongating itself into distance and vanishing. But as I track each moving sound and supervise its exit from the picture it is replaced, overlaid, interfered with by other, new intrusions – a shout, thudding
footsteps, the roar of aircraft, the dripping of taps, the slamming of doors and pressure of wind against the panes, the crackle of electricity in the wires and gurgle of water in the pipes, the settling and shifting of the building’s bricks and mortar the pattering hail of falling dust motes the stampedes of house mites the thundering waterfall of my own blood roaring past my ears.

I turn off everything I can find. Unplug all the sockets. Listen. Strain.

There is a faraway sound, behind these walls of noise. I can almost – I think it’s someone screaming. A car floods the place with noise and then recedes, I can almost – if I hear that scream again …

I pull back the curtain a couple of inches. There’s no one there. Just empty pavement and road. It’s quiet and still. I wait. It’s waiting. Like a stage set. Something will happen. I am frozen here, waiting, staring into the dark street. I’m getting cold.

I back myself onto the sofa, I can still see out from here. I pull the cushions over me. Things are quieter now. I am holding them out by force. I don’t let myself be distracted from the street. What is it? What?

My eyes are burning. They ache to close. Just for a second or two. But they fly open when I blink. The eyes closing will make it come. The thing in the street. I have to watch out for it. Me watching keeps it out. I haven’t any choice, I must sit here paralysed, eyes glued to the empty night-time street only by my force of will can that emptiness be maintained can horror be held at bay can the suffocating press of nightmare be held outside the edges of my field of vision.

5
On mothers

It’s quite pathetic isn’t it? Fear. It’s on the whole
contemptible. Courage is what people should have. Courage is attractive. A person sitting rigid and incapable with fear deserves to be the butt of jokes.

I am well aware of this. I don’t find it attractive either. I don’t just embrace it, I don’t just fall into it without a fight, I don’t pretend to myself it’s
nothing
.

Later – not at the time because there’s no brainpower spare to do it, but after an attack – I have tried to figure out the precise mechanics the twisted logic of the thing. If I relax my vigilance the bad thing will happen. Doesn’t that suggest the bad thing is in me? My relaxation releases it. I have to stay awake to hold it in. But is it in or out? Am I holding it captive or at bay?

At last I make myself get off the
sofa, stiff, pins and needles, aches. I deliberately turn my back on the window and make my feet go up and down over the floor to the bathroom. Take four paracetamols from the tub with the childproof lid I stabbed holes in with a tin opener because it wouldn’t unscrew. It is quarter past two. I go back to bed, I close my eyes and my ears. But I don’t sleep.

The night passes slowly. The first earsplitting car goes by after a long period of middle distance hum. Then another. Premature chattering from a disoriented bird. A milk float’s electric whirr. Soon it will be morning.

No one else does this. No one else waits, frozen, glazed, staring at the dark. A rabbit in headlights is the nearest thing. But the rabbit’s freeze is finite. The lights blaze through his eyes, fill his head in a starburst explosion, roar of engine, violent heat – it’s over. A minute, less. How long will you sit here Nikki? Waiting for it to happen, staring at the dark? Another week? A month? A year?

I am so angry I am shaking, my clenched fists ache, my eyes flood with red hot tears. You cannot do this. You cannot sit here for the rest of your life.
Anything
would be better.

Every time I manage to fly I end up going down like a stone to the bottom. Why? I call it Fear. Which is childish, I know. But childish is the point, isn’t it?

I’ll tell you how I’ve worked it out. This may be wrong – it may well be wrong. The point is it makes sense to me. I’ve looked at mothers. Women with their children. I watch them a lot, in places where they’re commonly found. Playgrounds are good; I sit on a bench
with a fag and watch them push their children on the swings, release them down the slides, hover below them on the climbing frames. Listen to what they say:

‘Hold tight!’

‘Don’t fall!’

‘Don’t let go!’

‘Be careful!’

‘That’s high enough.’

‘
Not
head first.’

‘I’ll catch you. Jump. I’ll catch you.’

These are the kinds of things mothers say. If you’re at the top of the slide and it’s very high you don’t have to be afraid; a mother will be it for you.

‘Hold tight! Sit down! Slow yourself down with your feet.’

I hear other things they say at other times, litanies of mother-speak:

‘Don’t be late.’

‘Lock the door.’

‘I’ll meet you/wait for you/pick you up.’

‘Be careful on the road.’

‘Wrap up warm.’

‘I’ll leave the landing light on.’

‘Don’t forget to turn
off the gas.’

‘It’ll be alright.’

‘Mummy’s here.’

‘Sleep well.’

Mothers to their children. What are they doing? Worrying. Taking care of.
Fearing for.
It’s simple, isn’t it? Why do I fear? Because my mother never did it for me.

If a mother does it for you you’re free to fly. Swing high on the swing, Mother can worry about what if you fall. Mother knows you’re fragile, vulnerable, tiny; she knows how practically nothing you are, just a tiny smear of flesh squeezed out of her. She knows you’re mortal – so you don’t have to.

That’s what I think. That’s where successes come from. Mother-fear. Mothers who’ve done the proper thing and taken on all the cold sweats and shadows. Mine, the bitch, left me to do all my fearing for myself.

That’s why I thought I’d kill her. Catch her and kill her. Give her a good dose of fear beforehand, a bit of paying back – then kill her and free myself to fly.

Going along in life is like skating or cycling, if you keep going you’re fine. It’s when you think about it or slow down, that’s when it’s dangerous. Which thought makes me superstitious. Are you superstitious? Most of my superstitions are to do with birds. Good birds: duck, sweet white duck on a pond. Swan, heron, lapwing, owl, Canada goose, kestrel, kite. Bad birds: magpie, obviously. Pigeon (filthy, string-tangling vermin), starling, crow, seagull, hen, white goose, tit. That’s not true, I don’t care about tits one way or the other. Or
sparrows. They’re too common. Or robins because they’re too friendly. The rest are all true. A heron means it’s a blessed day.

The superstitions are to keep it going, keep my balance, stay up. Or signs that I may fall and lose it.

I have spent long periods of time going along with hardly any problem. My first year at university, for example. But I always know the fall is imminent. And when it comes it’s hard to go back up. I thought ironing
her
out might iron me out and stop me going down.

You might as well believe me. Why would I lie? What would be the point in writing down a load of lies?

I suppose I’ve always thought the truth was quite important. Not easily available, a scarce resource; but
necessary.
At some level. This was another reason for killing my mother, in fact. The necessity for truth. But I’ll stick to my original point. (It’s important to note though that really it’s only liars who have a proper respect for truth. I mean, all the lies I’ve told, they’ve mainly been to protect the truth. There’s underlying truth then there’s the passing needs of the moment, reality which isn’t true in any way and doesn’t need to be dignified with the name. For example, I say, ‘My new coat was a gift from a rich friend, she persuaded me to try it on and then said it suited me so well I must have it and she paid.’ When in reality I nicked it. Well – do I deserve to have a coat bought for me? If I went shopping with a rich friend, wouldn’t she have bought it for me? D’you want me to say the truth is I’m a thief and I will never get given anything? The lie is a temporary measure. Until the facts come around a bit.

This is a tangent. I’ve just thought of
another example though. Affairs. You tell one person you love them and want to be with them always, you tell another person the same. These are necessary lies. Because if you told either of them about the other, they’d kick you out of bed. And anyway it’s the truth, in fact what you told them was the truth. Truth isn’t consistent with what’s possible, is it? I mean the truth is people would like to live for ever, always be happy, be rich and good looking with strings of lovers and wonderful showbizzy careers. That’s the truth. Whereas what people get is illness, dying, misery, poverty, ugliness, divorce and jobs cleaning toilets. What’s the truth? The truth is what people
want
. Liars are basically idealists, liars are saints and prophets. Jesus was a liar.

Stories tell lies. That’s why they’re good. Someone’s
made it up
. You start to read and it’s full of lies, the ugly duckling turns into a swan, the goodies beat the baddies! Justice prevails! Hooray for lies.)

Now let’s get it over and done with: Fear.

I have always suffered from Fear but it’s not a constant state. It comes and goes. When it comes it paralyses me. When it goes I’m fearless. Again, I can give you proof of this. I have swum in bottomless black water in a Scottish loch. I have ridden at 90 m.p.h. without a helmet on a motorbike. I don’t mind spiders. For a dare I have crossed the Mancunian Way at rush hour with my eyes closed. I have been in the back of a stolen car driven by a drunk. I can do fire-eating and juggle flaming brands, thanks to a six-week fling with an alternative clown. I have hitchhiked on my own from Newcastle to Southampton.

So I’m not afraid, OK? In the normal sense. Not timid, nervous, twitchy,
looking out for danger. I mean, there’s a
thrill
. The motorbike going like an arrow through the dark so fast your lungs can’t catch the air and your heart dances in its cage – fantastic. Danger doesn’t worry me.

But. When I have Fear (choosing my words; as in, have a cold, have pneumonia, have a breakdown, have Fear) I am incapacitated.

Now one thing I’ve noticed is that no one else is. Unless they’re
very
good at hiding it. Unless they’re all much better liars than I think and when they crawl into work and say ‘My back was out all last week’ they really mean ‘I was a helpless jelly in the face of non-specific terror and couldn’t move.’ I don’t think so. There would be a cult of it, wouldn’t there? People who have Fear. Like migraine sufferers and manic depressives and schizophrenics and anyone who suffers from an altered state. It is an altered state (I’m loath to give it status. It’s shit. But – it is an altered state.) I am different when I have Fear. But there is no clan of fellow sufferers I can turn to for support.

So naturally then arises the question, why? Why does this supposedly healthy apparently normal reasonably intelligent young late-twentieth-century female, alone in all the world, suffer from Fear? From clinical Fear?

OK. In what way do I differ from the billions of other young women alive in the world? I look for discrepancies between my own and the common experience, attempting to narrow it down. Hey presto, I’ve found one! I have no mother.

Lots of people have no mother. Their mother dies or runs off with a taxi driver or gives them up at birth.

OK OK. But subtract from that number
all the ones who had a
bit
of mother: say were aged five when she died or eight when she ran away, or were adopted from birth by a proper mother-substitute who could be bothered to hang on to them for a whole childhood long. Subtract from that all the ones who had a parent; the ones with no mothers but with fathers. Or even grandmas, or aunties or stepmothers,
anyone
to love them.

Subtract from that anyone who was ever loved as a child. OK?

How many would be left? A few million I suppose. Subtract from that all the people whose lives are so wretched that they are permanently preoccupied by the struggle to stay alive: street kids in Bombay and Mexico, starving refugees from war-torn/drought-ridden/flood-devastated third world countries on the news every night. If you have to think about catching an insect to eat because you’ve had no food for five days and three soldiers have just raped you, the lack of a mother is not necessarily foremost in your mind. I imagine.