WOUNDING Page 10

  It is nine thirty. She has called work and told them she won’t be coming in. She is at home, with a headache. Cora is missing. She exists in two places and is in neither. She hopes her husband doesn’t call her at the office. It isn’t likely; he will be too busy making the right impression in his job. He will think of her, though, and the children; he will mention them fondly to his colleagues should the opportunity arise. They are always with him. He has photos in his wallet to keep them safe. The train pulls into the station. The doors open after a pause, the passengers move forwards, impatient, ready to brisk towards their next connection. Cora lingers, not wanting the chill of standing upright without them. She wants them to stay, pressed together. Like hibernating mammals, curled around one another in a blood-warm den. Neutralised, heartbeats slowed, breathing in perfect time together.

  The city clings to the earth. She walks out of the station into the street. She has no destination in mind, no plan, except to walk and walk. It is dry and warm. She carries a small black handbag, wears flat shoes and a grey dress that hangs in folds around her body. She wraps her arms around herself, holding herself in, restraining herself from running ahead, from getting lost. She moves forwards, in amongst all the bodies. The street is crowded, but less than it would have been only thirty minutes before. Others are in work. Making tea, typing, pushing information around, making visits to the stationery cupboard, to the toilet.

  She waits to cross the street. Patience is key. Cars pass, taxis, a small crowd gathers behind her waiting for the machinery of the city to whirr into the next phase, to turn red, and hold back the traffic. The marvellous compliance of every one of them, maintaining order and safety, performing their role perfectly. The cars halt, the engines ticking. Cora crosses the street. She turns left, past a large church famous for its relics, its collection of miraculous body parts safe in gold caskets, then right into the next street. She passes a museum, also famous for its relics. She continues on. She doesn’t rush, she doesn’t linger. She walks. There are no children, unlike the suburbs where children proliferate. Children rule the outskirts of the city but are not welcome here in the centre.

  She remembers the histories of the place from her schooldays, the legends of fires and plagues, bombs and beheadings. Whole ranks of horses slaughtered. Babies dropped in gutters, old women buried alive. Lies, all lies. There isn’t a single speck of dust on Cora; she is untouched by the elements. She is entirely clean here in the perfect peace of the city. Completely anonymous, she is reduced to a female body that walks, that carries a bag, that wears shoes, that wears clothes. That is how she is defined, at that moment. She is nothing else. She turns her wrist towards her, checking her watch: she has six hours. Six hours of peace. Six hours of being no one at all. If she is noticed by anyone else, it won’t matter, because they will have no idea of what she is. Except the bag, the dress, the shoes, her flesh. A collection of materials amongst other materials: concrete, glass, and stonework, wood, plastic. Solid.

  Her steps are precise. She is well-practised. She is hungry, or rather, her body is hungry. Her stomach coils and flexes. She decides to ignore it. She does not want to be noticed by anyone. She does not want to enter a café or restaurant and speak to a single other human. She passes shops with large plate glass windows, filled with treasures and people. She is immune. There is nothing she wants, just to walk alone. A fear flashes through her mind – what if she walks out of the city, if she runs out of space? She’ll turn and walk back, she reasons, but then she might be noticed. She forgets that she will run out of time before she runs out of space. Silly fear. Silly thought. She reports back to herself. I won’t run out of streets…I will run out of time!

  She moves forward. This street is more crowded: she is jostled occasionally, a shoulder catches hers, knocks her back a little. Other bodies recognise her shape, but they do not see her. She pushes on, felt but not seen, not looked at. Ushered on by the crowd and the traffic lights, the flow of movement, she floats along. She is a mark on the city. A blot. She is not bothered by the shoves and bumps from elbows, shoulders and carrier bags. She is grateful. Her arms hang by her side. She is unarmed, unguarded. She is a leaf floating on the surface, carried along in the currents, weightless and inconsequential. Doors open from the shops and the cafes into the street. Bodies join the crowd, bodies leave; cold air pumps out along with music. The doors shut. She is nearly at the end of the road. Ahead is the park. She moves towards it.

  The grass has withered in the heat. The soil is compacted dust, easily kicked up. She walks towards a tree. It reaches out overhead, its large branches braced. It is a picture book tree, an absolute tree. She sits under it and leans her back against the trunk. She is uncomfortable: the large roots protrude from the ground and press into her buttocks. She stays where she is. It isn’t necessary to be comfortable. Picking up a fallen twig she picks at the end. It isn’t solid: the wood is made up of fibres, like threads twisted together, a matrix. She picks the twig apart, peeling back the filaments. She can’t imagine solidity, what a comfort that would be, a solid mass instead of granulation and particles. Something rigid and defined, not reliant on anything else at all – completely differentiated from the world around it. Indestructible. Leaning back now on the tree she feels its fragility, a composite of parts, unrecognisable. Even a tree disappoints.

  A woman walks past with a child in a pushchair. The child looks too large to still be in a buggy. They cross to a bench opposite Cora. The woman sits down and turns the buggy away from her. Reaching into a large bag she pulls out an orange. The dark-haired woman begins to peel the orange, taking care to remove the coarse white pith. All the while she is chatting to the child; Cora can hear her voice undulating across the still grass. She is singing a nursery rhyme. The child kicks its feet in time with the song. The woman hands the child a segment of the orange. It raises its small fist to its mouth. They are not aware that Cora watches them. She is still picking at the shards of wood in her hand. She works at her nail. Unthinking, repetitive and soothing gestures. Prising the hard shell from its bed. Small miracles of pain.

  The woman on the bench reaches to the child and undoes the strappings of the pushchair. The child is freed, and placed on its feet toddles around, bending from the waist as if hinged, picking up dirt and filth from the floor. The woman follows it, still talking to the child, guarding the toddler from harm. Coming closer, the child walks in the direction of Cora and the tree; it bends to pick a daisy, its head too big for its fat little body. Cora can see the child clearly now. It is a monster, a genetic mishap. Its large tongue protrudes from its mouth. Its disfigurements privilege it amongst other children. It is a marvel, a brilliant mistake, a one in a million. Cora feels a dull jolt of jealousy for the mother. For her damaged progeny.

  Cora could love her children if they were deformed. She has always been moved by images of starving or disabled children. Her children, with their strutting perfection, reject her, they don’t need her attentions, they aren’t endangered by the weight of oxygen or the movement of sleep. She could adore a damaged little baby, beholden only to mother love. A baby with the bones of a bird or an eggshell skull. A double-headed monster baby, fused in the womb with its dead twin. How much easier it would be to love the chaos of damaged limbs than the gurgling perfection of a normal baby. An ordinary baby wrapped in woollen clothing.

  The splinter of wood is sharp under her nail. She rolls it back and forth, loosening the flesh from the nail, excavating the raw pink underneath. The succulent clam tight in its shell. She breathes, new filtered air rushes in. The mother tucks her contorted child away into its carriage. They saunter away, singing a new nursery rhyme. Blood bubbles up from the wooden spear Cora has dug into her finger. More people are gathering in the park. Lunchtime. Groups congregate around plastic bags filled with packets of sandwiches and cans of drink, they laugh and joke together. The summer is a carnival, life restates itself, and they kid themselves they belong some
where. One or two lone picnickers lay back with their eyes closed, or read a book. Music plays from a portable stereo. A single airplane coasts overhead, its engine sound muffled by distance. Closing her eyes, Cora tears the nail off her finger.

  Her hand takes shape in her mind. Her nerve endings contact her brain, information is exchanged. She stands, dropping the nail on the grass and wrapping her finger in a tissue from her handbag. Blood oozes through and she is careful not to touch her dress. It would be no good stained. The nail lies on the grass, a monument to her presence. Her DNA scattered like seed on the soil. She imagines it taking root and producing small yellow fruits, bitter-tasting, with withered flesh. She walks, this time in another direction. Stepping carefully over the reclining diners. Her bag over her shoulder. She walks towards the meld of modern and old buildings, thrilling to the agony collected in her fingertip. She is unified by the pain: whole, newly named – baptized. She forgets what she was. What she failed to be. This is happiness. She has managed to arrive via a circuitous route. She is full to the brim. Cora overflows with pain and joy.

  Now, she knows exactly where she is going. She walks quickly, before time runs out. She knows these streets well. She worked here when she first left university. She turns left and avoids stepping into dog shit. She rushes towards pain, so as to inflict it on herself first before any other cunt gets the chance. As she moves she taps at her wounded finger with her thumb, pressing it with her nail, releasing little pumps of clarity. She breathes. Turns into the small street market, walking past the stalls piled with sooty fruit and vegetables. Her finger has swollen slightly, and responds to her prodding with new blood. It soaks the tissue wrapped around it. A thickset man steps towards her smiling, looking her up and down. He likes what he sees and wants her to buy some flowers from him. He proffers a bunch of cheap chrysanthemums wrapped in cellophane. The flowers send messages from behind their protective window. He wants her to buy his flowers and let him stroke her breasts; he’d like to feel her body underneath her dress. She knows what men think. She can see his thoughts projected onto his face. The flowers tell her. She looks through him at the road ahead. He turns away, looking for his next punter. She can see clearly.

  A cluster of mini-theatres crowds the end of the street. In the doorway of each one a woman stands, a thick layer of make-up competing with her skin. They all wear miniskirts and bra-tops, and look bored and at ease with their semi-nudity. They beckon to passers-by, inviting them in to watch the live sex or striptease shows. Cora would like to go in, but doesn’t dare. She would like to be a man and to have all the mysteries of other female bodies solved. She would like to see the wads of cellulite and fat on other thighs, watch the judder of breasts as the male crashes his body against the female. To sit at the front and smell them, hear them. To be so close as to see the hard skin on the balls of their feet, the thin skin on the backs of their knees. The exits and entrances. She would like the world to reveal itself to her. But she is too afraid to look. She can only watch it on films. Removed from her own body, mediated by the protective intervention of a lens.

  She enters a shop with blacked-out windows. A young woman with purple hair, dressed in a black leather mini-dress, is standing behind a counter reading a book. Behind her is a display cabinet with dildos of various shapes, sizes and colours. Shelves of films line the black walls and, in the centre of the shop, racks are hung with clothes made from leather, nylon and rubber. A hand-written sign saying ‘Toys and Equipment’ points to a flight of stairs. There are a couple of other customers, men, browsing through the films. They stand carefully reading the description on the back of each case. Cora moves quickly. Her cheeks flare red. Looking up, she realises she hasn’t been noticed. She is another customer, no more and no less. No one remarks on her presence. They are perhaps too polite, or too busy with their own shopping trip to care.

  The floor is carpeted; she is surprised by how clean it is. Her breath slows, she moves towards the clothes, looking through the outfits, one by one. Her injured finger catches in the lacework of a nipple-less bra. She sucks in sharp pleasure and is reassured. She is a thing that responds. She is in a world mysterious to her. She looks around, but can’t see straight. She is less sure now of what she wants, but knows she will find it here. The shop is not what she’s always imagined. Far calmer and more professional than she thought, it smells of a pine air freshener, or disinfectant. She is impressed by its hygiene. A radio tuned to a pop station chatters over by the cash desk. She picks up a shiny white plastic nurse’s outfit complete with hat and stethoscope. She wonders if her husband would like her to wear it. She wonders if she would like to wear it, how it would feel on her skin. Whether they would indulge in role-play. He asked her to, once: he wanted her to dress up as a secretary and sit on his knee. He offered to dress up for her too, in exchange, but she couldn’t think of anything she would like. He was enough then, his flesh, his smell, his weight. But she dressed up, in a pencil skirt and prim blouse, wearing stockings for him and black silk underwear. She sat on his knee, feeling ridiculous as he called her ‘Miss Jones’ and asked her to take dictation. She wasn’t enough; that was the message. Only make-believe can satisfy. She put the nurse’s outfit back on the rack.

  ‘Can I help you find something?’ The shop assistant walks over, her legs bare except for the leather boots. She speaks with a soft lilting accent, difficult to place but instantly soothing. Cora looks at her, at her full lips and round chin. She is pretty beneath her uniform of cosmetics and trashy clothes, her limbs smooth-skinned and long. She’s taller than Cora in her high-heeled boots, as tall as a man. She places her hand on the rail of clothes, the nails dirty and short like a little girl’s. Cora wants the hand to stroke her own hand; she wants to be held by the girl, placated and kissed. She has the feeling the girl could help her, but she doesn’t know what kind of help she needs or even how to begin to ask. This other body standing so close to her is a body for which Cora is not a means of fulfilment or nourishment: they are completely separate. She is a customer, she has a role negotiated and understood, fully legislated.

  ‘I’m not sure what I’m looking for, I’m sorry, I’m just browsing.’

  The girl moves a little closer to Cora. One of the other customers leaves the shop, the bell above the door noting his departure. The door closes, sealing them in again.

  ‘Well, are you looking for a costume, or lingerie?’

  ‘No, no I don’t think so.’

  ‘What about a vibrator? We’ve got some great ones in stock.’

  ‘I think I’d like something for my nipples.’ The words squirm on Cora’s tongue.

  ‘To use alone or with a partner? We have booby drops in chocolate, strawberry and passion fruit flavours. We have nipple clamps, nipple weights, vibrating nipple clamps, suction pumps.’

  ‘I’m not sure. Clamps I think. Or something like that.’

  The shop assistant steps back, smiling, revealing a row of perfect teeth.

  ‘Come with me, I’ll show you what we’ve got.’ She walks back to the counter and bends down, leaning into the space beneath the counter top and cash till. Standing, she begins laying out objects. The clamps catch the light, shiny metal contraptions that look like medical equipment. Cora watches as the girl displays them like fine jewellery.

  ‘OK. So we have these ones, they’re good for beginners; they’re adjustable here and have these little rubber bits so they won’t be too harsh. Then moving up in intensity we have these ones with little spikes, again these can be adjusted so you can get used to the sensation gradually; you can also add weights to these. We have these that are, I think very prettily, joined with a chain that dangles down on your chest and can be pulled to add to the sensation. Then these ones that squash the nipple between these two plates that are moved by turning this screw. And then we have these ones that are super intense.’ She held up a pair of silver metal vices. ‘You tighten the two plates around the n
ipple, with this little ball on the side and the points of these spikes cut into the skin. So these ones crush and bite into the nipple, a double sensation I suppose. These ones aren’t for amateurs really.’

  Cora looks at the clamps in front of her, the world outside the shop evaporating. The other customer moves in behind her. She can smell his cologne.

  ‘Can I pay for these please?’ He hands over two DVD’s. On the cover of one Cora can see photos of beautiful young men posing with each other, their perfect bodies flexed and bulging. Cora moves to one side, stepping out of the customer’s way. The films disappear into a black plastic carrier bag.

  ‘£25 please.’ The girl rings them into the old fashioned till. He hands her cash, untraceable to an account. Leaving no paper trail. His gold wedding ring cutting into his finger. She hands over the merchandise and he thanks her. As he turns to go he nods at Cora.

  ‘So, what do you think? Any of these look good? I’ve got vibrating ones too.’ The sales pitch is seamless; the girl’s knowledge of her stock impresses Cora, because Cora knows little about anything, least of all herself. The girl looks at her, her black-rimmed eyes scanning her face. She’s not unfriendly, curiosity guides her. ‘Shall I let you think for a minute?’ She turns and picking up a can of furniture polish and a rag begins cleaning the shelves behind her. Picking up each dildo and dusting under it, before flicking the duster over the rubber rod itself. Cora extends the fingers on her unharmed hand. She touches the silver implements; they’re cool and clinical. She runs her nail along the jagged edge of one of the clamps, its jaws crammed with teeth.

  In Argentina, Orcas beach themselves to catch seal pups. She saw them on TV. They launch themselves on the shale, against their instincts, their bulk slapping into the shore, thrusting the water ahead of them. They grab the baby in their jaws, the sharp points of their teeth puncturing blubber, before turning and turning, working their mass forwards and back, turning at last with the tidal inrush and swimming back out to their family group with the drowning pup. Helped by the geological construction of the beach, they roll back out to sea on the perfectly round pebbles, transferred back from the alien land as if on ball bearings. It isn’t all in their favour: it’s dangerous and sometimes they miss, hauling themselves back off the beach without a catch. To the scientists that watch them, they are miraculous. Though scientific scrutiny doesn’t allow for miracles, privately the scientists worship the animals and their intelligence. Giving each one a name and creating a history for them. They breach rational protocols. The scientists kid themselves that they have translated the whistles and squeaks of the whales’ language. Cora understands this need to know something absolutely and imagines that the knowing would be miraculous.