WOUNDING Page 6

  Her husband walks out onto the landing, as if making a stage entrance. ‘Smoking? What’s going on?’

  ‘What do you mean, “What’s going on”? I’m not a child. I just wanted a cigarette, that’s all.’

  ‘Cora,’ and he speaks her name over several beats, elongated, an exasperated drawl. ‘You agreed you’d stop, and at the very least you said you wouldn’t smoke in the house near the children. You know all the research, you know what it does to their health, to all of us! Christ.’ Cora looks at him – vigilant and decent, all clean. Good, so good.

  ‘You’re right, I’m sorry.’ She steps across the hall and throws the remainder of the butt into the toilet.

  ‘I’m worried about you. I wish you’d tell me what’s wrong.’

  ‘What do you mean? Nothing is wrong. I fancied a cigarette. You’ll be late. You need to go.’ She rubs her hand over her face, her fingertips moving the flesh over her bones.

  ‘Darling, I’m not blind. You’re not yourself, let me help. Talk to me.’ He moves towards her. ‘Please, Cora. God, you stink of fags. We’ll talk tonight.’ He turns his nose up at her and runs down the stairs, calling goodbye to his children.

  ‘Daddy is cross with you.’ The little boy emerges from his bedroom, his school uniform on.

  ‘I know, and I’m cross with you, so we’re all even. Go and eat some breakfast.’

  Other people, so much better at this. At all of it. Talking, laughing, being wives, mothers, fathers; even dogs are more successful than her. She is a failure. She is driving carefully, each child strapped into the correct chair. She thinks about the moment when she’ll be alone, and not required to answer their questions or chasten their squabbles. There is always thought, not speaking, not telling a soul. Just thinking. You can’t punish a person for thoughts. She drops the boy off at school: she is late, with no make-up on and sloppily dressed. The other mothers all gather punctually, with their teeth brushed, hair washed and clothes carefully chosen. They even wear make-up. She imagines that they manage brisk but intense orgasms with their men. They stand around the school gate, and chat for another half an hour after their children have been absorbed by the building and the teachers.

  How easy it is to the let the child go. And not think of him for those hours. And if something happens? It wasn’t her fault, she entrusted him to professionals licensed by the government. She would be innocent, absolved.

  They pull up outside a large building, and park the car between the painted lines on the tarmac. Just her and the girl. From the outside the building looks like a warehouse, somewhere industrial, where things are made and sold. A manufacturing plant where raw matter is processed into something new. She lifts the small girl out of the car and they walk hand in hand towards the large doors, the child excited and pulling against her grip. The reception is brightly lit and hints at the hygienic fun to come, all robust, colourful and wipe-clean. Cora hands over a card to the teenage boy at the desk.

  ‘It’s £10.50 for off-peak members, please. Dinky Dance class will start in fifteen minutes. Unfortunately the trampolines are closed today.’ She hands him the cash, and at the green flash on the turnstile pushes her way into Kiddie Space, the anodyne fun palace her offspring crave.

  A circle of women sit in amongst the primary brights; acidic textiles line the walls – corroding the fluid of the eye – rubber flooring cushions the precious little feet of their darlings. The women, heads together, discuss important items of existence, how to keep the future generation alive. This is not menial, this is crucial work, difficult and laborious and Cora is not up to the task. They talk and their children play noisily. There is no easy entrance into this esteemed coterie. Cora stands awkwardly, clinging to her daughter’s hand, holding on to her badge of belonging, her safety. She takes shelter in the minute palm of her little girl, shielding herself from harm. The girl pulls away and runs through the circling women, oblivious to the danger. Cora spots a seat at a table and walks to it, her footsteps stupid and grateful. There’s a scent of synthetic strawberries in the air they breathe. A pretence, mimicking the smell of innocent nature. She sits down, and takes out a magazine from her bag. Its pages slick as glass between her fingertips. She feels the heat of the woman sitting next to her, perhaps three feet away, breathing caution, her curly hair bouncing as she looks up every other minute or so to check on her child.

  I should do that, I should check on my child too. Cora is capable of thinking something responsible. Her body is responsible. She looks up and peers through the miniature human bodies dashing about, until she spots hers in a pink dress. Her body mothers, all by itself, it produces without her will, without consent. It makes other humans and milk and mucus and shit. She is a disaster. A site of pure disaster, a mess. Her daughter runs past, a muddle of colour and dark hair, and climbs a ladder up into a padded orange cell that leads further on into ball-ponds, and down slides, and up more ladders. Cushioned everywhere by foam rubber if not mother-love these little precious treasures are cocky in their safety. Untouchable. Oblivious. Full little tummies toddle and swagger in their made-to-measure shoes. Damp fists clutch at fun, fun, fun.

  The woman next to her catches her eye and smiles. ‘Your little girl is a real live-wire isn’t she?’ Cora wonders how to respond, what might be the best answer. Mostly she hears parents complaining about their children with smug smiles etched onto their faces – their biology is a success. It lives and breathes! Triumph! What a little shit! What a beloved, bejewelled, little bastard! All that love, simple and easy. Look at us!!

  ‘Yes, she’s never still.’

  ‘I can imagine. My boy – that’s him in the green dungarees – is an absolute pain in the neck!’ As the woman says this, the corners of her mouth are twitched up towards her ears, satisfied. ‘He’s almost four, but physically very developed. How old is your little one?’

  ‘Four.’ Cora looks down at the magazine on her lap, its surface reflecting light, fluid and calm. ‘We’ve a son of six, but he’s in school.’

  A fresh yell joins in the cacophony. A new note to add to the leitmotif. Cora turns a page, revealing a different figure in a new pose.

  ‘Isn’t that your little girl crying?’

  Cora scans the room. It’s difficult to pick out one particular body in amongst all the others. The woman points to the climbing frame, at Jessica, her face deformed by tears.

  ‘Yes. Yes it is.’ She watches the child; it takes a breath, silent for a split second before screaming again. Perhaps she’ll stop all by herself. The girl takes another breath, opening her mouth to continue the scream. ‘I’ll go over.’ She stands and, unsure for a moment about whether to leave her bags or take them over with her, turns back to the woman, ‘Would you mind watching my things?’

  ‘No, no, of course not. Best get over there.’

  As Cora jogs over to Jessica, she can feel the other women watching her, their eyes unblinking as they disapprove of her every move.

  ‘What happened?’ She picks the child up, its brittle limbs difficult to contain. ‘Show me what hurts.’

  The child sobs into her mother’s chest, ‘My head, I bumped my head. I want my Daddy.’ She reaches her sticky hands up around her mother’s neck, snorting snot and tears onto her t-shirt. ‘It hurts, Mummy. It really hurts.’ Cora’s hand lifts and strokes the girl’s head, gently, forwards then back, forwards then back, always the repetition, with the correct pressure and restraint. She experiences her own movement, her careful hand; she feels the hot body pressing into her, calming down, comforted. Her body mothers, with or without her consent.

  Better, Jessica runs back to the danger. No one is watching Cora as she walks back, not even the woman sitting in the chair next to hers, guarding her things. She sits down. Her bags are there, untouched.

  ‘Everything OK?’

  ‘Yes, just a bump on the head. Nothing serious.’

  ‘L
uckily these places are well padded. I’m going to go up and get a tea. Fancy a cuppa?’

  ‘No, thank you. I’m fine, thanks. But thank you.’

  She is surrounded by happiness. She can make out their serenity behind their feigned exasperation. Like seeing heat rising on the horizon. They are haloed by it, coloured auras shimmer around them. Fat authors of these little characters. A garbled voice speaks over the tannoy, calling for a staff member. Cora wonders what it would be like to feel. She thinks about the fluid poured into her by her husband last night. How that fluid transforms: like all bodies of water, it shapes its surroundings whilst never remaining the same. His spunk changing her, filling her full of water, milk, blood, like a magic trick. It goes in as one thing and comes out another. Ta Da! Roll up, roll up and see the magic transforming liquid! She is nothing more substantial than a body of water.

  When she first moved in with him, in love, she was nervous, intimidated. She was in her twenties, he was not much older, she had the bigger salary, he owned a flat. A flat filled with the past. He owned yellowed photographs of his ancestors, pieces of heavy, ugly furniture handed down through the family, a violin, crockery, silver cutlery with broken ivory handles, leather-bound books with gold lettering. She brought nothing from her family, no heirlooms, no idea what her ancestors looked like, beyond the vague references about her resemblance to her great-grandmother from an aunt who always spoke out of the corner of her mouth, as if she didn’t want to be seen talking to Cora’s sort.

  He came from an aristocracy of care and forethought, an authentic family. Where quality and the practice of thinking about the future delineated them. Her family only ever existed in the present. Responding to their immediate needs: I want it now, I’m angry now, it’s now, right now. Impulsive like animals, in debt and impoverished. That was the difference between them. Being able to imagine anything beyond now.

  They met at work, both moving numbers around on screens, manipulating money. He pursued her, courted her with gifts, notes and flowers. They ate expensive dinners, sitting on fat, upholstered banquettes, and went on holidays together, walking in the Lake District or swimming in the transparent Mediterranean. Everything as it should be. Precise, proper and in the correct order. He was the perfect man. Moving in with him was the logical next step. It was the right thing to do. And she loved him.

  He was good at loving, practised at it. She’d had practice too, had been in love or something like it before, but he had lived with someone else and had even considered marriage. She moved into his flat because it made sense, why incur the expense of moving, he said. She didn’t like to tell him that his ex haunted every room.

  One day, not long after moving in, she decided to clear up the kitchen. A basket full of paperwork, old bills and catalogues took up too much space on the counter. It was untidy, and didn’t fit in with her idea of their shared home. She began sorting and sifting through, creating small piles of paper carefully classified according to which company they were from, and what was outstanding. She was diligent and hardworking. She took her responsibility seriously. In amongst all the paper she found a notebook, a simple unadorned notebook. She flipped it open. The first page revealed nothing more interesting than a list of food to be ordered from the Indian take-away. She thumbed through, revealing more lists: to-do lists, shopping lists, things to pay, things to forget. Random phone numbers. Birthday dates. Nothing sinister. All written before her presence in his life. When she was loving someone else. History. And then, feeling warmly towards him, smiling to herself at his charming attempts at organisation, she looked more closely at a To Do list. On Sunday the 18th of November, eighteen months before they’d met, he was to: take tea in bed to his Beloved and Moby; slip her a length; do a small tidy up; phone parents; wash gym kit; slip Lucy another length! (his exclamation mark), make beloved Lucy a roast dinner. She turned another page, and then another. A Christmas list. With both their names, and the names of their families and friends. Theirs. Their little silly cute life all punctuated and listed on paper.

  Cora’s stomach leaked bile into her throat. Her head throbbed. Stupid to look, stupid. Her fault for prying; ignorance is always better. See what you get for knowing! Only pain. A dirty pain. Better to not know, only to believe. She deserved to feel this agony. Who was she to rummage in his things, in his flat, where she was a guest? She hated him. How dare he? How dare he be playful and loving with someone else? How could he have desired someone else? He could have, should have cleaned the evidence out. Revised his past. Who was Moby? Did they have a threesome? Was it a friend? He called her his Beloved. She wasn’t the only one. She waited for him to come back. He was out with work colleagues, trustworthy him. Who’d never cheated on a woman, ever, and certainly wouldn’t now. Or so he always said. She walked to the window, and looked up the street in the direction of the station. Looking for his walk, his shape pressed out in black in the streetlamp dark. A little drunk possibly. She sat back down.

  When he came in, tired, happy to see her, kissing her, she turned her back. It hurt even to say it.

  ‘Who is Moby?’ She’d have liked to say this calmly, but her voice wavered, like an animal’s cry. It wasn’t a human voice. Betraying too much without requiring words. She blushed.

  ‘What? I don’t know.’ He slumped onto the sofa, his back curved like a shell. ‘You took Lucy and Moby tea in bed. Who was Moby?’

  ‘Cora! What are you talking about?’

  She picked up the notebook and held it up to him. He laughed. Read his list.

  ‘Moby was her cuddly penguin. A stuffed toy! She cuddled him in bed.’

  ‘What? A toy?! How pathetic! A grown woman with a cuddly toy. Oh my God! What an idiot. That’s fucking pathetic.’ Her hands were numb and her chest hurt. Her body seemed to constrict, to pull itself tight around her, protecting, ready to run, making the separation between them, the growing distance even bigger. She wanted him to prove he loved her, Cora. Loved her more than the other one, the perfect, tennis playing, toy-cuddling one. She wanted to undo herself and fuse into him. But he just stood there, opposite her, completely distinct.

  ‘Alright, Cora. What do you want me to say? So she’s an idiot. That was then, a long time ago. Why are you freaking out?’

  ‘And did you ‘slip it to her’ twice in one day?’

  ‘I don’t remember. Probably not. She didn’t like sex much, besides she’d started seeing the bloke behind my back by then. Why are we even talking about this? Christ, Cora it’s in the past.’

  Cora wanted to stop then. Not to feel angry, or jealous, or hurt. She was embarrassed by her behaviour. She wanted to go to bed with him. To forget what she had seen. She wanted to eradicate Lucy, pretty Lucy, clever, tennis playing Lucy, Lucy who could cook, ski and sing, and play Poker, and get on with his mother, Lucy. Adult Lucy, who cuddled toy penguins in bed and gave them names.

  ‘Do you love me as much as you loved her?

  ‘What a question! I’m not with her am I? Lucy left me, she cheated on me, you know the story. Whatever was there was destroyed. We moved on, she’s with someone else, I’m with you, surely that says everything? Isn’t that proof enough?’

  ‘So does that mean you’re only with me because she left you?’

  ‘Jesus, Cora, please. Leave it alone. I love you.’

  Not long after the incident he asked her to marry him, and had remained loving and loyal. But she flinched when he called her his Beloved, or wrote lists that said things like: buy bread and milk; pay credit card; kiss my Beloved; clean the oven. Because she was just another one pressed to fit into a Beloved-shaped hole in his life.

  ‘Mummy!’ Jessica stands in front of her, a still body amidst all the hurtling children. ‘I want a drink please.’ The little girl places her fat little hand on her mother’s. Cora leans back, into the rigid plastic seat and looks at the girl.

  ‘What would you like to drink?’

>   ‘Beena, please.’

  ‘Ribena. Say Ribena. You’re not a baby anymore. OK?’

  ‘OK, Mummy.’

  Cora looks at her daughter, her flesh, her spit, her blood; an outcome, a transformed fluid. Shape shifter. I am blank. She feels herself recede, hears her own breath, tidal – in and out, sucked in through the mouth, is conscious of the small child’s eyes watching her, the black eyelashes clicking open and shut, she is looking at something dreadful and complex. A hollow opens in her middle, a gap; she tries to fill it with air and takes a deep breath in. It fills with nothing. A network of veins on the child’s wrist is theatrical in the bright light. Cora stands, Jessica’s dark head reaches to her waist, she is a bird, brittle-boned, vulnerable, flightless. ‘Let’s just go home.’ The child starts to cry, huge gulping sobs, her small fist rubbing at her eyes.

  ‘I want to stay,’ she whines, kicking and flailing as Cora picks her up. The other mothers watch her as she leaves.

  The child is sleeping. Flat on her back, her hair slicked with sweat, she sighs, her forbidden thumb close to her mouth. At the doorway to her room, Cora watches. I should love you. I should love you. The child is tucked into her pink room; the curtains at the window ebb and flow with the breeze, reshaping, remade with the current. The house is quiet, naptime, scheduled peace, time for Mummy to relax, when the child-rearing manual instructs Cora to ‘flick through a magazine or watch some TV’. She is absolutely NOT to attempt to catch up on household chores, this is counter-productive, she must value herself and allow herself to enjoy some ME time. She could make herself a cup of coffee even, what a treat!