WOUNDING Read online

  Wounding

  Heidi James

  Copyright © Heidi James 2014

  First published in 2014 by

  Bluemoose Books Ltd

  25 Sackville Street

  Hebden Bridge

  West Yorkshire

  HX7 7DJ

  www.bluemoosebooks.com

  All rights reserved

  Unauthorised duplication contravenes existing laws

  British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication data

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  Paperback ISBN 978-0-9927919-1-9

  Hardback ISBN 978-0-9927919-0-2

  Printed and bound in the UK by Short Run Press

  This book is dedicated to all mothers, everywhere.

  There is no gratitude in mercy and in medicine.

  Gertrude Stein, Tender Buttons

  Pristine, she is motionless as a length of white bandage is wound around her body. Hands lift her, turning her one way then the other. She is held tight by the soft bindings. Her eyes are covered, for they too were damaged. If she tries to open them she can just make out the light oozing through the weave of the fabric; she prefers to keep them closed. She is being cared for, nursed by an unseen strength that can lift her entire body easily. The bandage is wound around her arms, first separately, each one carefully covered from shoulder to fingertip; then they are bound to her body. She is as secure as a swaddled baby. Unable to move, unable to hurt herself, she is wrapped up against injury.

  Every day they come in and unwind her, unveiling her new healing perfection. She is inspected; gentle fingers interrogate her flesh, probing the processes of her body. She is entirely clean. They bathe her with a warm fluid that doesn’t cut like water but soothes and slides over her like oil. She is too precious and sensitive for water. She is massaged and preserved, turned regularly on her bed to protect her against pressure sores. She is undemanding, as malleable as modelling clay; she lets them move her here and there. They recreate her each time they touch her; she is remade. A tube through her nose delivers nutrients to her stomach; waste products are removed just as efficiently.

  She is as contented as a stone. Moved by the will of others, she will go no further than this existence. She makes no decisions. Complete as she is, there are none to make. She is almost the same substance as the bed, as the floor, as the light fitting: she is inanimate; only the slight movement of her breathing differentiates her, but as it is involuntary and temporary it doesn’t count for much.

  She is reduced to a thing that loves. She loves the hands that cleanse and wrap her. She loves the white bandages. She loves the gurgle of the nutrients as they dribble through the tube into her. She loves the press of the entire universe on her unmoving body and the dreadful pull of gravity. She loves her transformation. She loves.

  Cora steps down from the train. It’s a long drop between the train and the platform, but she doesn’t stumble. She yields to the flow of other bodies pushing her towards the exit and the ticket barriers with the usual staff leaning against the wall. She presses her card against the reader and the gates open for her, like blunt scissors. Outside it’s still hot and light, despite being early evening. Taxis queue around the corner, waiting for the tired, the lazy and the lost. She walks past them, the slamming doors and the destinations, the meters set to clock the distance, the rolled up tabloids on the dashboard, the shiny shoes and loosened ties of office workers.

  On the corner a man sits on the kerb, perilously close to the traffic, his grey beard growing towards his belly. He would look like Santa Claus if he scrubbed up and wore a red suit. He nods slowly back and forth, a can in his dirty hand, as if he’s dancing to a song only he can hear. Something about the way he is sitting suggests he is younger than he looks. Cora thinks about speaking to him and checking if he’s OK, perhaps suggesting he move, but then the moment has passed and she’s walked by and she would have to turn back and probably bump into people walking behind her. He’ll be fine, she thinks. Maybe the police will come by and sort him out for the night. She has things that she must do; she must focus.

  She walks on through the streets, past the safe snug houses in their smug postcode. Past the dry gardens withering from the hosepipe ban, the cars cooling on concrete drives, their engines ticking like irregular clocks. She walks home slowly, her head dipping with each step, like a bird. She adjusts her black leather bag, heavy with her laptop and files, moving it to her shoulder. She looks straight ahead. She pays no attention to the cars flashing past, the glossy four-wheel drives ferrying children to ballet or flute classes, the plumber’s van with its windows wound down and the radio loud enough for the whole street to hear, or the low black crawl of a vacant funeral limousine. She ignores the indifferent drift of other people: mothers pushing buggies; a cat crouched on a wall, flicking its white-tipped tail at the air; an old woman watering her hanging baskets from a glass jug; children swinging back and forth in the small park, behind the protection of iron railings. She is unaware of the green shape of her dress, folding and refolding around her knees as she moves forwards, a fluid progress through the atmosphere.

  She is repeating her list of tasks for the rest of the day like a mantra. The tasks tether her, hold her firm. She knows that without them she would lose form and fade away, so she runs over them in her mind, turning them as if each task was a plump bead on an abacus, something she could feel, something to worry back and forth across a wire frame. The thoughts expand and the to-and-fro, the click and clack of the tasks becomes the rhythm of her steps. She has to stay focused on being who she is, who she must be.

  Her hands, loose at her sides, feel nothing; the hot sun exerts no pressure on her bare head; her eyes are unsquinting in the brightness. Her mind feels granular, separated, the insulation of her body intervening between it and the outside world. Cora turns a corner into a street lined with narrow Edwardian houses. She takes a deep breath and stops outside a tall, red brick house. Her heart kicks like a rabbit against her ribs: she is here.

  The routine will begin behind the blue solidity of the front door. She stands at the metal gate. Red and white striped curtains frame the bay window at the front of the house. She doesn’t remember buying them, or even choosing them. Did she? Choose them? They seem brighter, more gaudy, today. She can’t imagine standing in front of the fabric in a busy shop, feeling it, weighing it between her fingers, purchasing it. Who could have run them up on the sewing machine, measured the window, and hung them? All those actions feel alien to her, alien beyond comprehension. She stands there on the pavement looking at the stunted magnolia tree in the front garden, the street extending either side of her, the twin row of houses, inside which her neighbours are eating, pacing, sleeping, breathing, fucking, talking. Out of sight, out of mind. Concealing secrets like Russian stacking dolls, one after another, fitting neatly inside themselves, secret after secret swallowing each other whole.

  She reaches into her bag and grabs her keys, cool to the touch. A bundle of keys, ten or so, different sizes: a small collection. She has keys for her parents’ house, for work, for her old flat, for the car, for her jewellery box and, of course, for this house. She tries one, inserting it into the secret mechanism of the lock. The key opens the door. When she enters she will become another version of herself.

  Once, when she was around twelve years old, she had come home from school to find no one there, the door locked. She tried the side gate and the garage, rattling at the padlocks, but they were shut firm too. The familiar house, with its spotless net curtains at the windows and neat, weed-free lawn had become strange, fastened shut against her. Like a friendly face refusing to smile.

  Her mother was always
home with her quiet busyness, bringing Cora juice and biscuits as she watched Blue Peter, her schoolbag dumped at the foot of the stairs, school shoes kicked off, white-socked feet tucked up on the sofa. Her mother was always there, lurking: busy, cleaning or cooking, breathless from climbing the stairs with clean laundry or pushing the vacuum cleaner around. But this one day she wasn’t. Cora sat on the front step of the house, exhilarated by the idea of its emptiness. She was surprised by the thrill of being so close to peril. Waiting, while danger lurked out there in the town, on her own street even. She’d been warned about strangers who lured little girls away with sweeties and puppies and then never took them back home to their parents. She knew that anything could happen. Anything. But she wasn’t afraid.

  When her father came home from work at 5:15pm and saw her sitting there alone on the front door step, his face tightened, the weight of his anger pressing down on his brow, his jaw working as if he were chewing his own teeth. She knew that look: it was a look he seemed to keep especially for her mother. He climbed out of his car and she watched it rise up like a levitating body, the coiled suspension relieved of his weight. He slammed the door and the car rocked a little.

  ‘Where’s your mother?’ he asked, his briefcase in one hand, the other hand reaching into his jacket for his house key.

  ‘I don’t know, Daddy.’ Cora stood up and sucked in her bottom lip, scraping her top teeth against its soft flesh.

  Just as he opened the door her mother arrived, flustered, panicked, her hair newly done, ‘Sorry, so sorry, the perm took so long, I tried to hurry them along.’ Her mother’s hands flapped like washing pegged out in the wind, her voice disembodied, the words more vague impression than spoken statement. Cora’s father sent her upstairs. ‘I need to talk to your mother. Go to your room.’

  She went to her room, to its pink and white walls, its flounces and frills, and sat on the bed, turning the pages of a book, while her father shouted at her mother for her stupidity and the neglect of his little girl. But Cora hadn’t felt neglected. She’d felt liberated, completely loosened from the tight bonds of the family. Free for the first time she could remember, she could almost imagine she was an orphan. Rootless, she’d felt nothing but joy.

  There are men working over the road, digging up the path. Most likely laying cables and such for all the new TV channels, phone lines and the Internet. All those words wriggling underground. Spooky idea. All that information on the move, hidden underfoot as you go about your business. Clueless as to what’s being said, to what’s known about us. Paranoid, you’d say. Maybe I am.

  They’ve started early, hammering at the paving and tarmac. They’ll wake you and the kids. I lie here listening, with you sleeping by my side. My hands crossed on top of the duvet, head propped up on pillows. The early light edging in under the blinds. It’s not unpleasant. They occasionally shout to one another, over the sound of the drill. Laughing. Bit early for it, being a weekend; but you haven’t stirred, you’re lying on your side, curled up on yourself, your small hands tucked under your chin, your wedding ring just visible. You have no make-up on and look like a young girl, almost a child, not a woman, or a mother.

  The banter from outside reminds me of when I was a student and did some labouring to earn enough to buy my first car. Dad didn’t approve, of course. That was a fun summer, working on a building site, stripped to the waist, tanned and toned – I don’t think I’ve ever looked so good. The money was great, too, for a seventeen-year-old. God, I loved that car. A VW Golf. Black and shiny, super quick, not flash, but not a rust bucket either. Bought all by myself with no help from the parents. That was a great time. University, mates, girls, a car. It’s a cliché, but I was lucky. Had good friends from school who came down to Uni with me, our old gang all in Halls together. I liked going to the lectures, joined the rugby team, enjoyed the cheap beer, worked abroad in the summer and partied hard so I could focus on my studies in the term. Loved meeting new people, the sense of excitement, knowing that this was it, my life had really begun. I was even – and it’s a little uncomfortable to think about now that we’re married and have a daughter – a bit of a Jack-the-lad. Sleeping around, taking random girls back to my room. I thought I was quite the lover-man, Mr. Smooth. It wasn’t anything outrageous: sowing my wild oats, that’s all. I wonder what they’re up to now, those girls, if they remember me. Probably married with kids, like the rest of us. I doubt I’d recognise them if I saw them again, nor they me. Good times though, good times.

  I only had one really serious girlfriend before you. My mother said she was my first love, but she wasn’t. You are. She was adorable and sweet, with short blonde hair. Lucy. Just Lucy, no nicknames or diminutives: she was very particular about her name. She was pretty particular about most things actually. She liked things to be just so. Not like you. I love that about you. That you don’t sweat the details of life, you don’t sulk if I haven’t put my socks in the laundry basket, or I forget to put the bin out. I love you for more than that of course. You’re the only woman I’ve ever truly loved and I know that will be so for the rest of my life. What we have is something completely different; you know I’ve never even looked at another woman since we’ve been together. Not seriously, at least.

  It’s funny, my mother loved Lucy more than I did. They played tennis together and lunched and planned and all the while I knew something between me and Lucy wasn’t quite right. I mean, I was serious about her, I cared about her and she was the first woman I lived with and bought furniture with. I sent her flowers and nursed her through hangovers, colds and down days. I played golf with her dad and got on fine with her mother but, I don’t know, it just didn’t quite fit. It’s a strange one that, knowing something isn’t right, but you can’t quite pin down exactly what it is. You like each other, you might even love each other, you even make each other laugh, but somehow you know that you don’t really want to spend the rest of your life with this person, that marrying them could be a disaster. That there is someone out there better suited to you. I was working at Gilson’s then, as you know of course, doing well, having been promoted to Senior Finance Manager, having good holidays, skiing in winter, at the beach in summer. I’d bought a flat and a new car, all the stuff that you do because it’s what you do and it’s reassuring, knowing your role, having a plan and living up to expectations. I’d have married Lucy eventually, I suppose. Perhaps we would’ve made it work somehow, had kids and muddled through. Who knows? Who cares?

  And then you came to work with us. And, me being me, I kept my head down and watched and fell in love and did nothing because I was committed to Lucy and as you’ve said, my darling, I’m a wimp, wanting to do the right thing all the time. So I was good, playing dutiful boyfriend, picking up after myself, cooking suppers, going shopping, visiting her parents on Sundays for lunch, pissing with the seat up, rinsing the sink out after brushing my teeth. I did the list of jobs Lucy wrote out for me every weekend and took her for dinner on a Saturday night. I was dutiful, but not attentive. All I could think about was you.

  I can see you now, in your pencil skirts and high heels. You were so glamorous, smoking and drinking wine in the pub after work, holding your cigarette just like a film star of old, as if it were an accessory, some piece of jewellery created to accentuate your best features. And I was your work colleague, nothing more, watching you from afar, fascinated by even the simplest things you said or did. Like the way you lifted your hair from the back of your neck and twisted it up out of the way when you were concentrating or the way you’d let one of your shoes slip off your foot and dangle from your toe as you were talking on the phone. The irony, of course, is that while I was secretly, guiltily in love with you, Lucy was screwing some bloke she met at my mother’s tennis club, and even though I was relieved not to be the one to end it, relieved not to be the bad guy, to be honest I was humiliated and hurt. No one likes to be rejected, do they? But I was free to ask you out. And I did. In the pub, during
the regular Friday after-work drinks, I bought you a glass of wine and you looked straight at me. You looked right at me in a way that meant you saw me as I’ve never been seen before. I know that sounds stupid, but it’s the only way I can describe it. You saw me.

  Inside, behind the blue door, is the suck and fuss of her family, two little children and a husband. A house. A family. So much to get wrong, choices made that could lead to regret or worse, much worse. So far, so good. A decent education, some travel with friends that widened her horizons, a nice man, a boy and a girl child, a house with a garden, a career, motherhood. All the right choices; nothing had gone wrong. Nothing serious. No illicit love affairs, no unplanned pregnancies, no bankruptcy or addictions, no sudden tragedies: all present and correct.

  She hangs her bag on the banister at the bottom of the stairs. The children are in the sitting room watching TV. She turns her palms inwards to hide a sudden sweat before wiping her hands on her dress. Down the hall in the kitchen, her husband stands by the sink, peeling potatoes. His patient hands feel the flesh of the vegetable for bruising or flaws before carefully peeling back the skin, rinsing the mud away under the cold tap as he works. A bristle of irritation catches the back of her throat: his hunched shoulders, untidy in his checked shirt, half-tucked into jeans she dislikes, straight dark hair on the nape of his neck. He looks up and sees her, his wife, her brown hair loose around her shoulders, her skin pale despite the sunshine.

  ‘Hello darling. How was your day? How was the office?’ Smiling, he comes forwards and kisses her, wiping his hands on a towel. He turns and reaches past her to the kitchen counter; everything well thought out, pre-planned, carefully administered.

  ‘Here, I poured you some wine. Kids! Mummy’s home!’

  She takes the wine; the red liquid glows in the swell of the glass. She knows he doesn’t like her to drink, but equally he doesn’t like to seem oppressive. So he offers a civilised glass of wine with dinner, as is ordinary and perfectly acceptable to the rest of the world and which does not in any way indicate an alcohol problem. She sips carefully from the glass, slowly, demonstrating that she is firmly in control of her appetites.