The Private Parts of Women (15 page)

Inis pauses outside her front door, her key in her hand then changes her mind. Bloody Trixie, what's got into her, awkward bag. You'd think she'd be pleased to have someone interested. And it's not much to ask, after all the shopping, the help … the worry of having a needy neighbour, just a few shots, nothing posed or forced. Old women may
be
ten-a-penny but you can't just go up to people in the street and anyway, it's Trixie's face she wants, not just anybody's.
Trixie's
expressions, Trixie herself.

She wanders round the shops. So many gift-shops selling cards, inflatable guitars, candles, key-rings, amusing mugs, incense. Billie's birthday is in two months. She sets her jaw. The baker's window is full of gingerbread pigs and teddies. Every woman on the street is pushing a buggy. She should go home but why? What for? Still, there's nowhere else. She shivers, realising that her throat is sore. That's all she needs, a cold.

In front of her is Trixie's friend, Mr Blowski. She catches him up.

‘Ah, Inis, good-day,' he says, touching his hat. He at least seems pleased to see her. ‘I go to see Trixie.'

‘I've just been,' she says.

‘How is she?'

‘Oh, you know.' Inis moves her hand from side to side.

Mr Blowski nods sagely. ‘And you Inis, how are you?'

‘OK.'

‘Yes?'

‘Well, I'm getting a cold – and there's something wrong with the heating, the boiler bowing out I think, oh you know. Life.'

‘Yes.'

‘Fed up, to tell the truth.' Inis laughs. They have reached her house, and Trixie's.

‘I tell you what, I look at your heating. Sometime quite handy, me.'

He goes into the kitchen. Inis is ashamed of the cup rings and crumbs on the yellow table, the loops of spaghetti in the sink, the wet tea-bag on the draining-board leaking thick brown.

‘What a mess,' she says weakly, as if surprised.

‘My God, you need electrician,' Blowski says, squinting at the boiler. ‘Something buggered.'

‘Yes, well.'

‘You ring landlord?'

‘Ha!'

‘I know electrician, my good friend Oscar, he fix it up, no sweat.'

‘Oh don't worry,' Inis says, ‘It'll be spring soon.'

‘You joking? Anyhow, what about next winter?'

‘Oh …' Inis shrugs. She hasn't thought as far ahead as next winter but of course she won't be here, the thought is unimaginable, that far ahead still to be looking at the same white walls with the ghosts of roses. ‘Like some tea or something?'

‘No, I have tea with Trixie, thank you,' Mr Blowski says. ‘You find her …?' he mimics Inis's hand movement.

‘So-so,' Inis elaborates, ‘a bit …'

‘Unlike Trixie?' Mr Blowski looks excited.

‘What? No, I wouldn't say that, just a bit … low.'

‘Ah. Well, I say goodbye for now. Another time, a cup of tea, yes?'

Inis comes to the door with him. ‘She was watching her quiz, but it'll be finished now.'

‘Oh, I'm late, me,' he says. ‘Goodbye.'

‘Bye.' Inis shuts the door and stands with her arms wrapped round herself, shivering, listening to him knocking on Trixie's door, before she goes upstairs.

COMPOST

I heard them. She is a sneaking bitch. First she wants photographs. Why I ask? Photographs. Does she want to identify me or what? And then there is him. Blowski. She had him in her house. I heard them, clear as day. I heard them saying goodbye. He does not come when I want him and then he goes to her first. What does she do for him, give him, what does he want from her? What do they say about me?

Then he came knocking at my door, I ask you. A tom-cat prowling, that's Blowski, my bloody charming Blowski, see what he's brought me to, swearing now, yes bloody, bloody, bloody, Blowski. Did I answer it? Did I heck. Left him on the step. Oh he stood and knocked and even called, I heard his voice, ‘Trixie, you all right?' Lifted up the letter-flap to call it. Who does he think he is? Who do they think they are? What are they up to?

I don't know where to put myself or what to do. I hurt. I want to go out but I can't go out because I might fall. My leg is sore, she made it worse with her tender ministrations. Something is battering inside me as if it wants to get out. I am in pain. I should pray, oh yes because God is there, He is still there for me. I have my faith, I do, I do, I do. I must put my faith and trust in God and stop this nonsense.

But what is it that they say behind my back? What do they say?

Stop it Trixie. Solace in your garden: seek it. Your own miracle. Where you are in control.

Trixie tips her kitchen compost tidy of tea-leaves, peelings, old lettuce into her compost bin and straightens up. She breathes in the musky scent of flowering currant, admires the pink clashing against the yellow forsythia. She can feel the sun on her back. Another spring has sprung and here she is yet.

She heard Inis's door banging shut some time ago. Soon she should be back with the money and shopping. She didn't want to entrust Inis with her bank book. She contemplated going out herself. It's not far. There's no ice or slippery rain. But since her fall she can't face going out. She can only be at home or in the garden.
You're closer to God in a garden, than anywhere else on earth
. And there
is
God in the creamy primroses, in the pale pink flexing of an earthworm, in the clash of currant and forsythia.

If only Inis would set to and sort her garden out. She'll have to have a word. It's nothing but an eyesore that Trixie has to turn her back on to enjoy her own. The mattress has grown dark speckled patches of mould and there are hairs where a cat settles itself down every night. Already the dandelions are pushing up their dark toothed leaves and before you know it the fluff will be in the air, getting its roots in her own fertile soil.

Trixie agonised long and hard about whether to give Inis access to her bank book, but in the end there was no choice. That blasted Blowski hasn't turned up again or she would have asked him – though she doesn't ask him favours as a rule. And she's out of money. She gets a hundred pounds out of the bank at a time and ekes it out on food and what-nots. Everything else is paid straight into and out of the bank, simplicity itself. She keeps the cash in the top of the piano, covered by the cloth and the fruit bowl and the photographs, quite secure.

She put her finger in the Bible in the end, letting Jesus decide whether Inis was to be trusted. After an irrelevancy:
They shall not drink wine with a song
, her inspired finger alighted upon
Devise not evil against thy neighbour, seeing he dwelleth securely by thee
. She took that as positive and, comforted, signed the authorisation slip and put the book and shopping-list through Inis's letter-flap. But her heart sank as they hit the doormat. She could have taken it the wrong way. It could have been a warning that
Inis
devises evil against
her
. She wants to tick Jesus off for being so cryptic.

She could have knocked and asked for the bank book back on some pretext or other. But what could she have said, all of a flutter as she was? And now it's too late. The die is cast. Despite the sun, she shivers.

FREEZER

‘I cannot have it,' I said.

I was surprised that he did not object. It was hardly spoken about, hardly acknowledged as real. He never mentioned that it was my fault, no contraception, what on earth had been going on in my stupid head, none of that and I was grateful. What
had
been going on in my head I couldn't begin to contemplate. There was a week when I was sick in the mornings, as discreetly as possible. I felt awful, hateful, full of poison, leeched, parasitised. I never thought of it as a baby. It was an illness, something I wanted to recover from quickly. I did not want to have to think.

Richard took me to a clinic to be counselled. In a small windowless room that stank of air-freshener, we sat side-by-side on plastic chairs, holding hands. The woman was very earnest. She wore a big purple sweater down to her knees and long Indian silver earrings. Her iron grey hair was cut very short. There were little broken veins in her cheeks that matched her sweater.

‘I can't have it,' I said.

‘Right.' She leant towards me. ‘Would you like to tell me why?' She squinted sympathetically.

‘I feel so sick … I've got two … I just can't.'

‘What would happen if you
did
go ahead with the pregnancy?'

‘I … I don't know. I couldn't. I can't cope with anything else, any more …' The woman blew her nose on a child's handkerchief with a nursery rhyme on it. Suddenly I wanted to laugh. I looked hard at the hairy green carpet tiles.

‘My wife hasn't recovered from our daughter's birth,' Richard said, ‘either physically or mentally.' I shot him a look. ‘Sad as this is for us both, I really consider she's not strong enough to proceed with the pregnancy.'

The pregnancy, the pregnancy, like a sort of animal, children's drawing, blob on legs, like the gonk I used to have, I'd forgotten about that gonk until then. He used to sit on my bookcase, a knitted gonk. Mr Humpty. I wonder who knitted him?

‘Right, fine.' The woman was happy to transfer her attention to Richard, rational Richard, Dr Goodie Two-shoes who knew exactly what to say. ‘The usual procedure would be for me to explain the process of termination to the client, but I'm sure you …'

‘I don't want to know,' I said. ‘I just want it out. Like a tooth.' I wanted to laugh again. This time Richard gave me a look.

‘If you wait in the waiting-room she can see the docs, make an appointment and Bob's your uncle.' She smiled warmly at Richard and her earrings tinkled.

What I wanted was to be put to sleep then and not to have to wake up till it was all over. The examining doctor was black and cheery. He was kind, his fingers gentle. He kept his eyes on my face as he delved inside me, pressing down on my abdomen with his other hand and whistling ‘Waltzing Matilda' through his teeth.

‘Seven weeks,' he said. ‘I'd wait another week or two … can be dodgy so early on.'

‘No,' I said. ‘No, as soon as possible.'

There were two days to wait. In those two days I hardly spoke or even thought. I was like a robot woman, going through the motions of life with my mind frozen up. Richard tried to explain what they would do to me but I shut him up. He drove me through the snow to the clinic. Soft sticky flakes clung to the windscreen wipers. When we got out of the car I caught a flake on my tongue and felt it vanish.

Richard looked sad but I felt quite cheerful now that at last it was happening. I was put in a room with three women all dressed in white gowns, long socks and their own colourful slippers. They were quiet for a moment when I came in, then two of them resumed their conversation. The third a very young and pretty girl never said a word. She stared blankly at the wall ahead of her. I thought I should try and talk to her, to comfort her. But the other two wouldn't stop chattering, steering resolutely clear of the reason they were there. It was as if they were at a party, or in a departure lounge; trembling on the edge of something, furiously bright.

‘Are they Marks and Sparks?' one said, nodding at the slippers of the other, and they were off into the subjects of shops and weather, holidays and horoscopes, talking and talking with never a gap, never a gap for the truth to get through. They even laughed, going on about some rubbish on television the night before. Rubbish that I'd watched too, filling my own head with it so I didn't have to think.

‘I could have wet myself when the door opened …'

‘And there
he
was, with that look on his face …'

‘… and his bicycle clips on!'

‘Shut-up
!' I wanted to shout.

A big tear rolled down the young girl's cheek.

One by one we were removed. My time was 10.30 but it was 11.15 before it was my turn to go. I was second. The young girl went first. There were a few moments of contemplative quiet while we listened to her slippers slapping away from us on the polished floor. Then the two started up again. I felt sicker than ever because my stomach was empty. I flicked through a
Woman
magazine, avoiding the pork recipes, the advertisements for food and nappies – it didn't leave much.

Then it was my turn. I did not think about what I was doing. The nurse was kind; the anaesthetist didn't meet my eyes. ‘False teeth?' he asked. ‘Crowns?'

‘No.'

‘Right then.' He tapped the back of my wrist.

‘You'll feel a little prick.' The nurse looked at him and tittered. ‘Then count to ten.'

It was all very brisk. I got to six and thought I wouldn't go to sleep. I noticed a dead fly inside the flat white glass light fitting. I woke to the sound of a voice.

‘Inis dear … wake up now … all over.' For a minute I thought it was my mum. Once she came to the dentist with me when I had gas for an extraction and she was so kind. She drove me home, tucked me up on the sofa and we spent the afternoon eating strawberry ice-cream and watching a soppy film. But it was not Mum. I could not think who it was or where or what. Then I knew. For a second I felt violently relieved. It was over. I was wheeled back to my bed. The other beds were empty.

‘You sleep it off,' the nurse said, ‘then we'll find you a spot of lunch.' I lay on my stomach with my face in the starchy pillow. Between my legs was a fat wad of sanitary towel, in my belly a dull, comforting pain. ‘All over, darling,' said my mum's voice, ‘all better now.' And then I went to sleep.

Lunch, powdery grey soup and fish-paste sandwiches, was a subdued occasion. The young girl was not there. Maybe she didn't go through with it, I thought, found myself hoping. Changed her mind at the last minute, because you can do that, right up to the last second it is a matter of choice.