Tales of Sin & Fury, Part 1 (15 page)

‘Morton thought it was just a daydream. I didn't tell anyone else about it. I was worried what people would think. That experience seemed so real. I kept wondering if it was like a flash from some other place or time.'

‘It made an impression on you,' said Ren.

‘What do you think? Does it mean anything?'

‘I'm here to help you find out what it means to you.'

‘Morton thinks I'm cracking up.'

Ren asked ‘Have you known Morton long?'

‘I've known him for several years, but we haven't been together long. He was around at the university library, I never took much notice. I used to pass him in the corridor sometimes, he sort of glided past with a canny smile. He's slight and he's not particularly handsome, but he looks like he knows a joke about the universe that he's not telling.

‘Perhaps I should tell you about him. How we got drawn together, that's another strange story. Would you like to hear?'

‘Anything that seems important to you to tell me,' said Ren.

‘I don't know what's important and what isn't. But when Morton and I got together, that was weird too. As if the afternoon had decided to make an intervention in my life.' She stopped. ‘I feel embarrassed telling you all this.'

‘Stick with what you feel comfortable telling me.'

‘It's OK. I'm just being daft. That day we were working in the library on desks next to each other. Just happened to be. I was reading about some inscriptions from Epidaurus. Morton didn't look up or speak to me or anything, but I became more and more aware of him. As if someone had opened up a telephone line between our bodies without telling me. Or like he was putting out rays and they were wrapping themselves around me. I couldn't concentrate. I started to sweat. When I looked at him, he didn't seem aware of anything. He was just getting on with his work. It was hard to resist looking over his shoulder from where I was sitting. He was reading some old translation of Homer. It said it was by Private Shaw. That's T E Lawrence, did you know? Lawrence of Arabia. I never knew he had translated the
Odyssey
. Morton looked up and saw me staring at his work and I tried to move my gaze on nonchalantly – as if it were just passing over him on a general survey of my surroundings.

‘I needed a change of air so I got up and headed for the stacks. That's where they keep the journals, packed in rows in very close high rows of bookcases. I was looking for the right year of the
Journal of Hellenic Studies
when he appeared at the end of the stack. He had a funny look on his face.

‘“Are you looking for something?” he said.

‘We both knew he wasn't talking about the
Journal of Hellenic Studies
.

‘Without thinking I said “Yes.”

‘I was wearing a loose silk blouse. He walked towards me, put his hand up the blouse and tweaked my nipple. I didn't stop him. Next thing he put his book neatly on top of the row of journals, and started doing it with both hands. Teasing both nipples under my blouse. I was taken off guard. My legs nearly collapsed under me. But I didn't pull away. Passion has always been my weakness.

‘Just then somebody came along the end of the stacks, checking which bookcase they needed. Morton let go of me and turned to the shelf as if he were scanning titles. As soon as the person had gone he stepped right into me, pushing me round against the shelf, and rubbing against me. He's not very tall, we're about the same size and our bodies dovetailed together. I could feel that he was excited. I couldn't catch my breath.

‘Then we heard a group of people coming down discussing Sappho in whispers. He pulled away, picked up his book and walked off.

‘When I got back to my seat he was working away as if nothing had happened. I tried to get back into reading about Epidaurus, but my body was playing tricks on me and I couldn't concentrate. Eventually I turned to look at him. He lifted his head and winked. Then nothing for an hour and a half, until teatime. We went upstairs a few minutes apart and joined a group of archaeologists and classicists sitting around a coffee table. They were mostly PhD students. They all chatted away, but Morton and I were quiet. They didn't know what had happened. He and I avoided looking at each other. There was a plate of Garibaldi biscuits on the table and I kept stuffing them in my mouth to stop myself feeling anxious. At the end of tea, we let everyone else gradually leave while we sat tight. The tea lady took our cups and the empty biscuit plate, closed down the hatch and went off. We were left sitting alone in silence. My mouth was dry.

‘Then he said, “How about it, then?” and we both burst out laughing.

‘That was how we got together. Not very romantic, but there you go.

‘He came round that evening. He was a bit surprised to find Bert at the supper table, he didn't realize I had a child. He got on well with the other people in my house. There were four of us altogether then, plus Bert. Freddie, one of my housemates, he's a musician, when he learnt that Morton was into Ian Dury, he started tugging on his earring like he always does when he gets agitated. He took Morton off to his room to look at his new guitar, and they ended up listening to Kilburn and the High Roads for ages. We could hear it all through the house. Then they moved on to Steel Eye Span. So Morton managed to miss the last bus home. The others had gone to bed and I'd put him on the sofa with a sleeping bag when Bert woke up asking for a drink of water and said his teddy wasn't well and what was that man doing there?

‘The next evening Morton came round again and after supper he washed up. The sofa didn't seem appropriate any more and I invited him upstairs. I've never regretted it. We were both a bit hesitant that first night, but we're a perfect fit. We argue about history and literature and archaeology and the meaning of life and anything else you can think of, but our bodies never have any problems getting along.

‘We went to Greece for the first time together a few months later. It was spring half term, my mum looked after Bert. That was when I had another strange experience. Do you think it's possible to revisit the ancient past?'

‘We could talk about that in the next session.' Ren glanced at the clock on the table. ‘I'm afraid we've come to the end of our time now.'

‘The minutes go so fast. I've done nothing but talk. You haven't got a word in edgeways.'

‘That's OK. You have a lot to tell.'

‘Thank you for seeing me half price. It's kind to do a sliding scale.' Anthea pulled her purse out of her bag, struggled to extract a note and tipped all her small coins onto the floor.

She went onto her hands and knees to retrieve them, then hastily gathered her coat and bags and edged out in her socks past the aspidistra, forgetting to shut the door. There was a scuffling sound of her putting on her shoes at the top of the stairs, and her footsteps going down two flights of stairs, then the front door closed.

A freezing drizzle was starting again as Ren left the house a few minutes later. She picked her way along the pavement, where a few footsteps were already imprinted into the layer of fresh snow. She reached into her bag for her umbrella, but thought better of it. She looked up at the sky and let the icy rain fall on her pale face and on the soft lilaccoloured scarf wrapped around her head where her hair would have been. A stray dog was sniffing in the gutter at an empty polystyrene take-away box. He looked up and wagged his tail as she passed, and she clicked her tongue in greeting. Avoiding a puddle, she wove between parked cars and turned onto a side street towards the main road.

There she turned left past a chemist's shop lit inside with a bluish glare giving its cosmetic products an unnatural gleam. From the window a larger-than-life photograph of a black woman with long woven braids smiled at her. Outside the shop a young white man with a pinched face was holding an armful of newspapers: ‘Stop the Gulf War! Socialist Worker! Stop US aggression in the Middle East! Get your
Socialist Worker
here!'

The passing traffic was splashing up slush, and ahead of Ren a middle-aged white woman wearing a transparent plastic hood slipped on the pavement and fell against a lamppost as she tried to recover her balance. She righted herself, but her Safeways carrier fell on its side on the wet ground. Ren bent down to pick up a packet of fish fingers and put it back in the bag.

‘Thank you, love. Thought I was a gonner there for a minute.'

‘Are you OK?' Ren returned the bag and offered a steadying arm, looking up Stoke Newington High Street.

The woman clutched the wrist and shook it hard. ‘You're all right, dear. I'll be fine once I'm indoors.'

The lights turned red further up, and traffic slowed to a halt. Ren threaded her way across the High Street between a 243 bus and a plumber's van, towards the Turkish shops on the other side. Outside the supermarket a striped awning kept the sleet off boxes heaped with giant oranges and lemons alongside the winter vegetables. There was a smell of fresh bread. Ren stopped outside the restaurant next door. In front of the window displaying trays of hot dishes garnished with fresh coriander, a young man with a short Mohican haircut held out a leaflet.

She looked into his face as she took it. ‘Thanks. You must be freezing.'

He gave a nod that said, ‘I'm freezing but I can handle it,' and ambled across the pavement to hand another leaflet to an elderly man with a stick.

Ren read the headline as she went into the restaurant: ‘NO WAR BUT THE CLASS WAR'. She turned it over as she sat down: ‘Another example of the working class being massacred for the interests of their rulers! It is not a war for Kuwait, but for control of oil. The West cares nothing for people, just for their own profits.' She turned it back and looked at the graphic on the front: rows of gravestones. She put it down, took off her mack, shook it and hung it over the back of her chair.

‘You want the usual?' a slim young Turkish woman dressed in black held out the menu with some hesitation.

‘Yes, please, a mercimek,' said Ren without taking the menu. ‘And mint tea please. Thanks.'

The young woman tilted her head to read the leaflet lying on the table. ‘What can we do?' she looked at Ren and shrugged. ‘What can we do?'

Tuesday 18
^th
December 12.15 pm

One of the narrow cell windows is open and I'm leaning against the side of it, holding my head out. I love the shock of the chill on my skin. I'm staring down as the sleet slips past, wetting my hair.

I remember I left a trowel out when I was working on Mr. Haughton's garden last week. In this weather it'll be getting rusty.

It's all coming back, in bits and pieces. The better I feel in my body, the more I realize the wreckage I've made of my life.

Mandy comes over, looking at the cigarette butt held between her thumb and forefinger. She's smoked it right to the edge of the filter. She pulls a face. ‘Fucking menthol fags. Doing my head in.' She flicks it out of the window. ‘Beggars can't be choosers'. She glances at me. ‘What you looking at down there? You ain't planning on jumping, are you?'

‘No. Some Greek heroines did.'

The leap into nothingness. Into infinity. I can see the appeal. In myth Agraule hurled herself off the Acropolis in Athens. After she saw a forbidden sacred object. It made her go mad. In another version she threw herself off as a sacrifice, to help Athens win a war. The Athenians were so grateful they built her a temple. But I haven't got the energy for any grand gestures.

‘Anyway,' says Mandy, ‘Them windows are too thin even for you.'

‘…And you'd have to believe in something for that,' I add.

‘You've been reading them mythical books again. So what you looking at?'

‘Your story,' I say. The crumpled sheets of paper lie far below, partly in a puddle and partly covered by orange peelings. The icy rain is plopping on to them.

Mandy peers out. ‘Dead and gone.' She shuts the window and wipes her fingers on her jeans. She looks at my wet hair. ‘You can get to wash it in warm water, you know. There's set times. Ask the screws.'

I blurt out, ‘I envy you.'

‘You what? You don't know what you're saying, mate.'

‘Your story. It made me realize. How much I wish I could write something again.'

‘You get a pencil, right, and a piece of paper. Start with a couple of words. Like “Down the shops…” or “I feel like throwing up…” Then let the words come. Like little friends running in across the page.'

‘Is that how it is for you?'

Mandy nods. ‘Always has been. Even at school.'

I shake my head. ‘For me nothing comes. Blank. Ever since I left that cottage in Dorset, I haven't been able to start anything. Somehow Hayden captured my imagination and it's imprisoned there. It's all locked up and he's got the key.'

Mandy's staring at me. ‘I never realized,' she says, ‘You're titchy, ain't yer? Even smaller'n me.'

‘He used to tower over me.'

‘So what he done, then, to stop you writing, lover boy in Dorset?'

‘At the start I was galvanized. It was him who started me making up stories again like I did as a kid. He made me feel I was teeming inside. That I had to create something or I'd burst. As if the top of my head was sliced off and every dream and idea and fantasy inside was bubbling out of it. I started two stories.'

‘What about?'

‘It's years since I looked at them. One of them started “Dusk was falling along the sleepy esplanade…” or something like that. There were seagulls swooping. And a weird hotel… But when Hayden rejected me, all the fantasies turned to horror. Slowly, like the dripping of the tap in the empty cottage where I waited for him. I finished the two stories. He never came back. I left the cottage and everything went blank. I was just a stupid girl who thought I could fly and I couldn't. That was when I went to Greece. When I met Joris and Sigurd I didn't care what happened to me.'