The Private Parts of Women (21 page)

‘Good day,' he said, and his eyes seemed to light up when he saw how Trixie was.

‘Blowski, my Blowski,' she exclaimed, enveloping and kissing him, crushing the flowers between them. ‘What a delightful surprise, and lilies … oh, my dear, my most favourite flowers.' Mr Blowski disentangled himself, his face was smeared with red. Trixie took the flowers from him and pressed her finger deep into the white horn of a bloom. ‘Rude flowers,' she said, ‘don't you think?' She held them out towards me. ‘Suggestive flowers.'

Mr Blowski looked quizzically at me. I hardly knew where to look. I thought he must be embarrassed.

‘I thought they were sort of symbols of purity,' I said, feeling most foolish. Trixie threw her head back and laughed. ‘How quaint,' she said. ‘Blowski, don't you think she's quaint?'

‘I've been commemorating the occasion,' I said, amazed at how pompously my words were coming out. I indicated my camera. ‘Trixie's birthday, I mean.'

He smiled. ‘That nice,' he said. ‘I never said: how do you do?' He held out his arthritic hand and I shook it gently.

‘Snap us together,' Trixie begged. ‘Do a nice picture, the two of us together.'

‘All right?' I looked at him.

‘Whatever the lady say.'

We drew back the curtains again and I took pictures of their two old passionate faces gazing into the camera, of them embracing, of them with the piano, Mr Blowski playing a little despite the pain in his hands, Trixie singing, her hand on his shoulder, her red mouth opened to the ceiling, her eyes closed. I took them out in the garden, to be sure of the light and took a roll of close-ups, the two faces, gazing at the camera's lens with touching seriousness.

Then I went home and left them alone. I made myself another cup of lemon and honey and, before I went to sleep, gazed at the big glossy rectangles that were my husband and children, my own loves. I slept heavily for several hours and woke dry-mouthed and ravenous. I could not think for a whole minute where I was. It was getting dark.

I was all ready to go out to post Richard's card and to buy food when I remembered an extraordinarily vivid dream about Trixie. Then I saw my camera lying where I'd discarded it by the bed and realised that it hadn't been a dream at all.

Not my dream. It had been more like wandering into someone else's.

BOY

I see through the crack of her sleep but I cannot come through

I can do anything I am a boy

If I could come

It is not fair

Some nights her sleep gapes her open but she is heavy

It is not fair

The world is for boys and I am

I am a boy I really am

I can do boys' things

She is too heavy

I used to come out when she was small

I used to come out and be bad

Stealing, all that

Hurting frogs and cats

Smoking Father's pipe

A worse thing one time – and then no more

But I don't feel bad

Babies are only weak

I see through her but I cannot come through

Now I am very angry and

She will be sorry

SNAKES

I do not want to be in the house, although it is chilly out here. I must go in. The frost is melting and the sun is just warm. Under the earth are roots, shoots, seeds. It is a wonder to me every time a seed grows, how the little specks that could be crumbs or dust are full of life. How can a person deny God when square yards of glory, of colour and fragrance will grow from a packet of dust? I sniff the air, not winter air, it is the beginning of spring. There is promise in it, generosity. Early this morning I opened all my windows to dispel the stench of winter that is like stale perfume, sickly sweet. The hyacinths are finished. When the ground has thawed I'll plant them by the fence. Next year there will be hyacinths again and the year after and the year after that, spindlier and spindlier until they are single flowers, blue or white bells. And none the less beautiful for being simple.

That woman next door is peering out of her window. I can feel her eyes on me. What does she want of me? What does she want?

Every birthday that passes, every year I think I won't live to see another. Eighty-four years. Yesterday was my birthday, though I know nothing of it, oh I must not dwell on that, not dwell. But what is it that she knows looking at me like that, bold as brass? I will not turn but I know she is there, that she is staring and grinning all over her face. Every spring I think I've seen my last crocus, tulip, daffodil. Every time I tip waste into my compost bin I wonder, will I still be here when it's ready to dig into my soil? Each Christmas when I fold up my little tree and sweep up the silver strands from the carpet, I think I'll never get it out again. But there you are, that's old age for you. You get so tired of it. It's so repetitive.

I will not open to her today. Open the door I mean. There is nothing I need. It is always a mistake to let people in. Let them know your business. I must pull myself together and go out. Then I won't need her. Get my own bits from the shop, the post-office. Do my own banking. But, I am scared of falling. If I fall what will become of me? Who will know me? Who will come close then? I do not want to do harm.

Oh I am chock full of nonsense today.

Dear Jesus, let me remember yesterday.

All those cups of tea she's had, all those biscuits, and then cheating me of two pounds, slut with her dark roots growing through. No, no, I must not set myself up as judge. I am cold. I must go in. It makes me seethe the way she shovelled down my biscuits, the cheek of her.
Amazing how it adds up!
How could she do that and look at me with those innocent eyes. I rue the day she took that house, better the butcher's rumpus, better the emptiness than this. She will drive me mad. Water is running from her drain. She might come out. I must go in.

I do not want to be in there, in that mess. How it gets in a mess I don't know. Things conspire against me. What nonsense. I do not know myself this morning. I am out of sorts, that's all, Trixie do not panic. My head aches and my limbs. How can a person stand in a lovely garden surrounded by new growth, the sun almost warm on her hair, and still feel angry?

If I was not so stiff, I would kneel down here and now and pray.

You do not have to kneel to pray.

I still have my faith despite all and everything, I still have that.

I have never in my life knowingly done wrong.

I have never knowingly hurt another person.

I do not understand why my mind is turning back on itself, turning inside out. I cannot look forward. Well that is old age for you. What is there to look forward to? Come on Trixie Bell, get the house tidied, a cup of tea inside you, the television on. Season hard on the heels of season, winter hardly over before the nights are drawing in again. I cannot look forward or outwards, only back. And for that I must blame
her
. No, no, that sounds mad and I am not mad, only confused this morning, only worn out. I will not let her further in. For her own sake as well as mine.

A baby slug crawls across the grass, a tiny sliver of life, feelers so delicate. I should pick it up and pinch it in half before it has a chance to grow and breed and destroy my plants. But I haven't the heart today. Let it live for today. See how tender hearted I am?

My house smells of perfume, my body feels sore, ill-used. I am stiff. The space that is yesterday is awful. It reminds me of other, past mornings when I woke filled with dread. In my house, my parents' house, with Mary there too.

I thought that was all over. I thought I'd never lose a day again. Like then, back then also I thought all that was over.

It is not fair. Jesus, Jesus, it does hurt. Why have I been cheated of my life? Cheated from inside and from out.

One morning back in that house I woke with my head crashing. When I tried to lift it, the room spun round. I thought that I was really ill but then I looked back and saw the hole in my memory. I lay still, my heart chugged like an old motor starting up. I closed my eyes and swam in sickly oily darkness where swirls of coloured light floated away until I was afraid that I was dying and my soul descending to Hell. When I opened my eyes the light pulsed unbearably. I tried to pray. I lay absolutely still looking at the ceiling through my eyelashes, thinking about getting up to pray, but the thought itself took away all my energy.

I gradually became aware that there was something in the room with me, something sweet and repulsive. It turned my stomach. It filled my nostrils, it beat in nauseating waves even in my ears.
Jesus, Jesus, help me
, I begged silently. I was afraid of what there was beside me in the bed. I could feel something soft and cool against my skin and the stench was an evil sweetness. I needed to drink, to cleanse myself, to drink at the well of the Lord, to cleanse my head, my sticky body, my soul with water from His crystal spring but oh it all sounded like nonsense. It made me sick.

I slept again. I heard a knocking at the door of my room. I could not open my eyes. I was deep in such a sticky drowse. The heavy scent was like a sleeping drug. I heard as if through water the door opening and someone moving about. I smelled the fresh and rainy scent of Mary. I heard a gasp, I heard the clearing away of something, the clink of glass. I heard her light my fire. Then she was gone and it was quiet.

Jesus was wagging his finger at me. I saw it behind my eyes where the dark was – not black dark – velvet red. I saw His finger, pale, disembodied, wagging. And I felt his finger on my body, waxy warm and soft. I felt it against me. I do not want to understand the feelings, the swelling urge that caused me to lift my hips against the weak finger that wagged and fluttered where I wanted it to press. And oh the scent in my nose and the rhythm of Jesus's finger, wagging at me because I was so wicked such a wicked woman. My heart was beating with the need for Jesus to come right into me, enter me, fill me with love. Then I was taken with a kind of fit, that was strange and nevertheless dismayed me with its familiarity and I cried out with the painful pleasure.

When I opened my eyes I saw that I shared my bed with white lilies. On the pillow when I turned my head, a bloom gaped at me, a rude blurt of white and wax tongues, at their centre a damp, sticky, three-lobed thing, six stamens steeped in yellow dust. The petals were slightly crushed, bruised at the edges to brown. The smell was sweet and rotting. When I pulled back the sheet I saw my naked body and the lilies, the flowers and the tapering leaves stuck to my body, crushed between my thighs and breasts. I felt sick. I got unsteadily out of bed, the walls billowing like curtains, and pulled the flowers off my body and out of my body. I stood shivering by the fire that Mary had made. My skin was imprinted with the shapes of leaves and stems. I washed in cold water and dressed, thankful to button my body away in the plain thickness of my clothes.

I knelt and prayed. I thanked God for sending me the pain that smashed in my head, the sickness in my stomach to punish me. I tried to banish the memory of the silly wagging finger of Jesus that had so inflamed my morning dream.

But it wasn't fair. It isn't fair. I am a good, pure woman. I am. No intention in me is other than good.

I was afraid of what Mary had seen, of what Mary knew. Of what she'd tell Harold.

I threw the ruined lilies on the fire where they hissed and curled like snakes.

Another morning, soon after, I woke filled with dread. Dread wrapped round me like a cold sheet. I was not over the other shock. I had prayed night after night on my knees amongst the gravel until I was exhausted – but the more exhausted I was the more my sleep turned into absences and the more frightening the evidence of the absences when I awoke.

I got slowly out of bed. There was something wrong with me. Trembling, I lifted the hem of my nightdress. High on my thigh was a small patch of gauze. Blood had seeped through, stuck it to the wound, some sort of wound on the inside of my thigh. I fell to my knees and prayed. I asked Jesus to forgive my body for what it had done, whatever it had done. I begged him to free me from the Devil. I had dedicated my life to Jesus, I would do anything, anything if only I knew what He wanted. What more could I do?

I could not remember the night before. I remembered the morning and some of the afternoon, but I could not remember the night.

When I removed the gauze from my thigh I found a thick black scab, hairy with stuck threads. It was the size of half-a-crown and as thick. I did not touch it. I could not bear to imagine what this body had done. I left the scab and put on the uniform and I did my work. My face, my smile, the same as ever. I looked sinners and fellow soldiers in the eye and all the time above the top of my thick lisle stocking there was the wound that burned as if the Devil had branded me with a fiery horn. All day my fingers longed to go to the place and touch. All day I prayed and fasted to punish my body.

In the shelter that evening, I sat with a dying man. He was not more than fifty but his body and mind were pickled with strong drink. His skin was red and coarse, traced with the hectic purple of broken capillaries, his nose was swollen and strawberry-pitted. Between their lashless lids his eyes were watery blue. I tried to look at him with compassion, tried not to smell the sour reek of his breath and skin, not to mind the dampness of his hand that clutched mine as I prayed for him. I sat with him almost all night. I prayed and softly sang to him. He seemed to like the childish choruses. Perhaps a memory from his childhood stirred in his dying mind, a memory from the time before Satan with his tobacco, his spirits, his gambling, his traps of flesh, had won his soul away from God. He opened his mouth and I swear he said ‘Jesu', that is the last word he said, I am almost sure it was that, as he slipped into his last sleep. And only I knew, as I walked home through the last of the night, that as I had prayed for his soul the Devil had been there in me, in the burning under my skirt, the hairy, devil-print on my thigh.