Tremble (43 page)

Fuck, I hate hospitals. I hate that nondescript color scheme, the stench you can’t help but associate with death and the ill-lit corridors that seem to wind on forever. Maybe it’s a flashback to a really bad acid trip that saw me in St. Vincent’s emergency ward fighting off a jungle of sprouting plastic chairs, or maybe it’s because a hospital’s where I think I’m going to end up dying. Either way, striding through some pus-green labyrinth trying to find my injured wife is not my idea of a happy Monday.

And when I did locate her it gave me a horrible shock to see her so fine-boned and white, her body strapped up in a pulley. Almost as bad as getting the call from the ambulance guys. For a second I wondered what I’d feel if she’d actually died. Lost would be the best way to describe it. I mean, how many times have I wished her dead in the last sixteen years, and yet if it happened I wouldn’t know what to do with myself, wouldn’t know how to deal with the sudden gaping abyss.

Oh, I’m not talking about lover stuff; that’s for the mistress—the clandestine adrenaline kick you get as you use the excuse of going out to buy a paper or walk the dog, or nick down for a packet of fags, so you can make the call on your mobile and feel your cock harden at the thought of someone wanting you outside of the zone of the house, the comforting routine of it all. Something to sharpen the hunter. No, I’m talking about the shadow of marriage, the extra, irritating yet comforting limb that grows with cohabitation. The wife limb that you take completely for granted, until it is chopped off and you find yourself whirling uselessly like a broken gyroscope, trying to find your equilibrium all over again. Some blokes never do. Pathetic fuckers, you see them everywhere—at the pub chain-smoking in the corner, at the back of the cinema pretending they’re waiting for a date—lurching around for the rest of their lives looking for that one piece of the machinery that will prop them up again. I’m telling you, Georgina’s accident scared the shit out of me.

I’m not used to seeing my wife helpless. She’s the kind of woman
who’s quite capable of setting up a stock portfolio on her own and only telling you about it five years later after you’ve stumbled upon some certificates.

My first thought was, I’ll kill the bastard that did this to her, then I find out she was responsible for the accident. Suddenly I felt guilty, like she’d known about Madeleine all along and this was her perverse way of taking out her anger on me. Anyway, I had a word with the consultant and he agreed to quietly put her on some antidepressants and get her home as soon as possible on the proviso that I hire a private nurse. He gave me a card with a number to ring and told me she was young but reliable and that on my health insurance state-registered nurses were covered.

I look down and see that the nurse has a Russian name. I smile. I’m partial to the Slavic aesthetic and I could do with some eye candy around the house, especially if poor Georgina is going to be landlocked for a few months. Feeling particularly benevolent I hire the nurse, then ring Madeleine to cancel our rendezvous tonight. Fuck, it’s hard being a man sometimes.

I haven’t had any private time with him for over three weeks. Not even at work. Robert’s been flying out to cover the tour of one of our major acts, but then when I try to hook up with him he’s always rushing out for a meeting. I’m sure he’s doing it on purpose. It’s driving me crazy. At first he’d mutter stuff about being worried about Georgina, and how he has to stay home a lot to keep her company, and that he was really sorry but it’d all be over in a month or so when she was more mobile, then he stopped taking my calls. He has caller ID. I hate that, it’s so rude. He’s never done this before. He should be careful; I could cause a lot of trouble.

I vomited this morning. A great wave of nausea that had me running to the toilet before I’d even got up. I know why. As I stood there, my knees trembling, head hung over the toilet bowl, the heaving was followed by a huge surge of excitement.

Finally my life is going to change. We’re going to change. We’re going to become real. Legitimate, open, living together; me by his side at record launches, at concerts, standing at the door of our own townhouse, each
with our own cars—his BMW, my Saab with the child’s seat in the back. This will happen because I’ve decided it will happen.
Vogue
magazine:
Step 1 of self-redefinition—take control of your image, take control of your future, visualize what you want
.

I lift my nightdress now and stare at my breasts. I’ve never seen them so heavy. Taut. The nipples are darker and more prominent. Turning sideways I think I can see a slight bulge curving above my stomach: my womb. My fruitful womb.

The walker stands at the end of the bed like an over-grown crab waiting to hoist its legs over my body. It ages me just to look at it. Still, I should be thankful I can hobble to the toilet. I couldn’t a week ago. I’d never realized how humiliating bedpans are. I have never been this helpless in my entire life.

Robert has had the spare bedroom converted into a sickroom. Fixed it up with a television, a table that swings over so I can eat in bed, and a stack of movies he rented so that I won’t get too bored. He’s even gone out of his way to find films that fit in with my degree, documentaries on the Dutch masters. He brought me a gift, a figurehead in the shape of a merman from some old ship they found off the Scottish coast a couple of years ago.

Robert has a real love of anything to do with shipwrecks; he’s like one of those people who takes great delight in other people’s misery—the Germans have a word for it: Schadenfreude. He had the figurehead erected over the bed. It’s seventeenth century apparently; it must have cost him a fortune. We’ve argued about the gender. He’s convinced it’s a mermaid, but when I look at it I see a merman with a defined chest, noble suffering eyes, and a carved ponytail hanging down his back.

Mermaids…deviant mythical creatures that conjure up the notion of cunt as a briny, slimy, cold thing. Not the most attractive vision; still, whatever it is, male or female, it’s mine and it watches over me. When I look up at it I imagine the figurehead carving a path through an uncertain future. Our future. Robert’s and mine. For the first time I’m jealous. Isn’t that unbelievable after three years? Suddenly the thought of him with her, of him kissing her, going down on her, makes me
furious. I feel profoundly impotent lying here, pinned down by this great crushing weight across my pelvis.

I know he’s taking advantage of my paralysis and spending hours over there with her. That’s why he’s so considerate, it has to be. Or this is the calm before the storm; there’s some strange legal technicality to do with divorce that’s making him invest in caring for me. God, I sound so cynical, but that’s what sixteen years of cold war does to you. So what if we had sex a month ago and it was fantastic? That doesn’t mean he’s fallen back in love with me. I’m not that much of a romantic fool. Perhaps my infirmity has jolted him into a fear of his own mortality. Whatever, I’ve started to watch him closely.

He’s hired a private nurse, a Russian woman who’s been in Australia since she was about ten: Tania. She’s really sweet, one of those younger women who have an emotional practicality about her. More endearing is the way her own beauty seems to be an irritant to her. Strikingly tall, a brunette with piercing green eyes, she does everything she can to diminish her physical presence. It’s most amusing watching her deal with Robert, who stumbles around her completely intimidated. She’s fiercely protective and wouldn’t let him near me at first, insisting that she would be the only person to bathe me and change the dressings.

When Tania thinks I’m sleeping she gets on her mobile phone and has long conversations in Russian. I lie there drifting in and out of sleep, my dreams peppered with a floating hum of guttural Slavic. But sometimes she breaks into English. That’s how I hear about her grandmother.

“Vali, you’d never imagine what babushka had to do the other day—spinning thread from human hair. Some young woman brings in a big bag full of her lover’s hair, all gray. And you know what grandma did? She makes her a wool shirt. For what I don’t know, but you can bet it will mean mischief for someone. Bad magic…. You know Grandma, she just has to whisper your name and a tree will come crashing down…. Grandma said there was so much hair she reckons the poor guy must be bald by now…. She said the girl was young, not even thirty. Poor thing, she must have been desperate to go to babushka. Three years, she told her, there was three years’ worth of hair in that big bag.”

My eyes flash open. Could it be? You know how it is: synchronicity. A snippet of gossip, a name that resonates, and in an instant you realize there’s a web of fate linking houses, suburbs, even whole continents. A
mesh that can destroy, misinform, create paranoia, make men rich, make women weep, start world wars.
Fear the imagined, not the truth
, my mother always used to say. Being a plain-speaking Presbyterian she believed in absolute truths and in her day absolute truths existed. Not like now.

That night when Robert collects my dinner tray I can’t help noticing that he’s thinning slightly on top. I haven’t combed his hair in years; frankly I hate it. I’ve always considered long hair on men a statement of their lack of emotional development.

“Robert,” I say seductively. “Would you like me to brush your hair tonight?”

Startled he actually blushes.

“Thanks, love, but nowadays I’m kind of weird about other people touching it,” he says, averting his eyes.

Liar, liar, with burning ears. Other people, except her. Determined to extend his discomfort I reach across and pluck a loose long silver hair off his shoulder.

“Has it always fallen out this much?”

“Georgina, you know I’ve always shed hair like an Old English sheepdog but fear not, this wolf isn’t going to go bald yet.”

Once he’s left I wrap the long hair around and around my finger until the tip bulges out red and painful.

The fucking bastard, I can’t believe he just hung up on me. There’s no point ringing again; he’ll have registered the new number by now. I’d used my girlfriend’s mobile because I knew he’d only pick up if he didn’t recognize the caller.

“Robert,” I said triumphantly.

“Madeleine, are you okay? It’s past nine. You know it’s difficult for me to talk after nine.”

“I’m not okay. I need to see you; we need to see each other.”

“Oh, baby, I’d love to but it’s really hard at the moment. Work’s crazy as you know and Georgina’s still housebound—”

“Fuck Georgina. I have needs too.”

“I know. I’ve been a real shit, I’m so sorry. But it’ll all be back to normal in a couple of weeks.”

“And what’s normal, Robert? Me hanging around waiting for the phone to ring? Meeting twice a week for a couple of hours so you can screw me and then go back to your wife?”

“Madeleine, I can’t talk about this now, Georgina is in the other room. How about we do lunch tomorrow?”

“Lunch! I’ll give you lunch—”

Bleep. The lonely sound of the hang-up.

I squeeze my eyes shut now and count slowly as the rage curdles into a bitter grief. This can’t be good for the baby. Then, deliberately, I reach for the hair shirt.