WOUNDING Page 9

  Having sex with Lucy was like having sex with an actress. It was so unreal. All image. She made perfect faces, not dirty porno style, but you know, art house erotic, pouting and eyes closed, supposedly sexy but totally fake. I used to feel that if I just stopped and stood back she would continue the performance and sounds on her own like an automaton. At times it felt that her gasps and sighs were oddly out of sync with what was actually going on. She insisted on bathing just before, so she never smelt of anything but perfume and deodorant. Her hair all perfectly blow-dried and her face made up with lipstick. She dressed in stockings and elaborate lingerie, all of which is supposed to be a man’s ultimate fantasy I know, but it was off-putting, a mask; sex with her had to be prettied up, tidy and premeditated. All the make-up and costumes were less an invitation and more a warning not to touch her or mess up the effect with my brutish sex drive. Look but don’t touch.

  I much prefer us, or at least the way we used to be. Imperfect, snaggle-toothed, hairy, smelly and totally real and totally beautiful. Normal. I’ve always loved the way you smell, your natural untouched scent, dark and female. And though you’re insecure about how you look now, I love how your body has resolutely and inexorably come to represent the history of us. Your body is like a diagram describing our lives together, our family, your body is a map of us. Surely that can only ever be beautiful?

  I’ve never missed Lucy. Contrary to your fears. When she moved out all I felt was relief. I came home from work to find her sitting on the sofa with a tight expression on her face. The flat looked odd but I couldn’t place why. She told me she was leaving, that she was in love with someone else and that was that. It was only after she’d closed the door behind her that I realised that all her stuff had already been packed up and removed. My ego was bruised, sure, but when she’d gone, there was nothing about her that I suddenly craved. I was free to have you and you were everything. I wish you could understand that. Still you doubt sometimes, which is ridiculous. How can you imagine that I’d want anyone else?

  You hated my flat. Christ, the sulks and battles because of that place. Your silences and long baths that were just an excuse to punish me. I’d ask and ask what’s wrong and you’d say, ‘Nothing ignore me, I’m being stupid’ and then finally you’d admit it was something you’d found – a hair clip left in the fruit bowl or junk mail arriving with her name on or photos that reminded you that my place had once been mine and Lucy’s home. It pained you that she and I lived in that flat together, that we’d decorated the rooms one by one, that we’d chosen the furniture, cheap as it was, you saw meaning and significance in the smallest detail, in things that didn’t matter in the least to me. It was all just things. You imagined a history for everything; the smallest object suddenly carried weight, as if a significant memory was attached to the most banal thing. You said you hated our muted and low-key taste – the beige walls and the pine coffee table. You hated the leather armchair we’d found in an antique shop in Rye. You hated the plain white totally inoffensive coffee mugs, saying they were bland beyond belief. You hated the plants that crowded the kitchen window ledge and the bonsai tree she’d bought me one Christmas.

  You wanted to know which rooms we’d had sex in, if we’d fucked on the sofa, if we’d fucked on the kitchen counter, if we’d fucked in the shower. You wanted to raze it all to the ground. Lucy, Lucy, Lucy. Her memory tormented you, so I cleaned her out because I wanted to please you, because I loved you. I painted the walls the colours you chose, bright primary colours that seemed better suited to a children’s nursery than our home, but I didn’t care because you liked them and you were happier. I bought new furniture, replaced perfectly adequate things with different perfectly adequate things. I threw out photos of good times with family and friends because Lucy was in them. I did everything I could think of because I loved you and wanted to please you. Eventually I even sold the place at a loss so that we could move somewhere new and untainted. I excised an entire chunk of my life because it only mattered that you were in it right now, I didn’t need a history because I had a future with you and that future, stretching ahead of us, shiny and promising, was all I needed, all I wanted. So we bought the place in Clapham, together, both our names on the deed. You said you felt cleansed; that you could relax now that Lucy wasn’t tainting everything. It was as if she was haunting you like a ghost. Except of course, she was alive and well, married to the guy she’d been screwing behind my back and the mother of four kids.

  You have to see that I can’t lose you now. After everything we’ve been through. Now we have a history as well as a future. Maybe we need counselling. Sally said it could work, that she and David saw someone after she had the kids and they’d run into problems. She said they’ve never been closer since then. She wonders if you’ve had post-natal depression since Jessica was born. It’s possible. You could see a different doctor this time, maybe this time it will be better. They aren’t infallible. I should take you again. How many times have I sat there, on those uncomfortable plastic chairs, flicking through old magazines and NHS pamphlets advising me on flu jabs, addiction and contraception? Watching the patients shuffling in and then out, clutching their prescriptions. Being a parent seems to be a continual back and forth to the doctors – for colds, chicken pox, innoculations, antenatal checks, post-natal checks and bumped heads. But that time you went in by yourself and I sat in the waiting room. You didn’t want me to come in. I sat there reading the battered old magazines wondering what you needed privacy for, what you were telling him that I couldn’t hear.

  You were in there for ages; people came and went, looking at me sitting there alone. The receptionists answering the phones and booking appointments kept glancing over as if they’d forgotten why I was there and wondering if they should call security. When you came out you were grim-faced, furious, though I could see you’d been crying. You pulled your black raincoat tight around your body and threw your handbag over your shoulder. When I asked what the doctor had said you muttered under your breath and then turned to me and said, ‘Nothing, he didn’t bother to listen, he didn’t listen at all, he just made fucking assumptions. He gave me a prescription for these, bloody idiot.’ You held the scrap of paper up so that I could see – Zoloft – and then tore it up and threw the pieces in the bin. You refused to discuss it except to say that you weren’t depressed, that you didn’t need pills and that the fucking doctor was wrong.

  But it’s possible that you’re depressed, isn’t it? Maybe working and having the kids is too much for you. You aren’t the expert, he is. Maybe all you need is a course of anti-depressants. Perhaps we need to go back to the doctor. There’s no shame in it. Sally says it’s very common now. Even she sometimes finds coping hard and she’s a real trooper, as you know. She’s a natural and even she finds it hard. You could give up your job, stay home with the kids; we can afford it. You’d love that, and so would the kids. A period of recuperation. A rest. No more full-time nursery for Jess. You could relax at home; Jess could go to nursery one day a week so you can go for lunch and shopping with your friends. I want you to be happy. This doesn’t do anyone any good, all this silence and denial. I want to shake you, wake you up and force you to talk. I don’t. I’m afraid of what you’ll say. But honestly, it doesn’t matter; it doesn’t matter because I love you and we can work it through. If you could just tell me where I’m going wrong, I’d fix it. I’ll change if it will make you happy.

  It is hot, with few clouds cluttering the sky. The woman blinks in the hard light – the blink erases the world, only for it to reappear unchanged. A moment of blindness. She is sitting in a garden chair, reading a magazine. She is relaxing. She never leaves this domain. Her small world of anatomy, botany, butchery, economics. There is no other world than this. She is appearing in a dream.

  Cora looks at her mother; she is a child, and the mother young again. Everything is recognisable: the old house, the metal-framed chair, the earthenware mug her mother always drank
her tea from. She is watching, replaying an old scene. She has a puppy, a white fluffy terrier, small enough to carry around in her arms. He is called Bobby in the dream. She is sitting on her swing that hangs from the tree. Her feet scuff the ground beneath, obliterating the lawn. She is wearing her favourite shoes with brass buckles.

  Bobby the puppy is lying on the path towards the house, his feet kicking, dreaming of rabbits. He is chasing them down dream holes, seizing them by their meaty back legs. Cora runs towards him as her mother turns another page. Blinking out the world. She wants him to wake up so she can play with him, dress him in doll’s clothes and parade him as her little baby. The dream jumps frame. Bobby is on his side, rigid muzzle open at the hinge, his long tongue grey and slack. His feet continue to kick. Green foam pumps from his throat, collecting around the points of his teeth. Cora screams and her mother runs over to her and the dying dog.

  ‘Mummy, fix him! Mummy, fix him, now!’ she repeats, over and over. Her mother stands there, crying. They are both crying.

  ‘I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do. Oh God, I don’t know what to do.’ Bobby is dead. Her mother blinks, the entire world caught in her eyelashes.

  Cora sleeps on, her head heavy on the pillow.

  I’m angry with you. I’m really fucking angry with you. Though I try so fucking hard not to be. I just want you to tell me what the fuck is going on. Who is he? I can’t believe I’m putting up with all this. I’ve a lot to put up with too. I’m unhappy too. This silent treatment is killing me. Night after night I lie here and imagine these stupid fucking conversations with you. I’m doing my best to be patient and kind. I’m trying, I’m really trying to be the husband you need. But it’s getting harder and harder. You treat me as if I’m a bastard, and you know you really are difficult sometimes. You are not perfect: you can be hard to love, hard to be around. I don’t complain. I do my best by you and the children. I’ve never mentioned this before because I rarely admit it to myself because I feel disloyal and I don’t want to hurt you, but there have been times when you’ve been an embarrassment, when you’ve humiliated me and our friends. If I’m really honest I know why we don’t see people anymore, it’s just too difficult to say openly, to your face.

  Sometimes it’s as if you don’t like people. Even our good friends. You can be so rude. I say sometimes, but let’s face it: you’re rude when you have a drink. I don’t even know you then. You’re a fucking stranger to me. My God, Sandra’s dinner party to celebrate her 36th birthday was ghastly. Jeremy and Gregor were there and Joanna showed up with her new man. Everyone was having a great time, drinking and eating and you were being your usual elegant, quietly funny self until the end, when Jeremy opened the last bottle of champagne. I looked at you and could see you were pissed. Your eyes rolled and your head tilted on your neck. You looked like a broken doll. A slice of chocolate cake sat uneaten on the plate in front of you. We all knew what you could be like, that you could be a little aggressive when drunk, but you were among friends and so I didn’t think to take you home. I didn’t want to embarrass you by treating you like a naughty little girl I had to put to bed. Besides, until that point you’d been charming, there was no reason to imagine that you’d lash out. So I didn’t imagine you’d tap on your glass and wait for quiet before you began telling us that after a lot of thought, your grand ecological solution would be to annihilate the population of Russia or China and sterilise 50% of the remaining humans left on earth. And I didn’t imagine that when Sandra questioned you and asked if you were serious, you would answer ‘Yes, and it’s idiots like you that I’d sterilise first.’

  Jesus, Cora. Everyone was quiet, shocked into silence. Sandra sat there completely taken aback, worse for wear herself and you started laughing. You just laughed in her face. Then you turned on Jeremy and Gregor calling them pretentious little queens and you told Joanna’s boyfriend that she was a slut and he should be careful. You didn’t say anything to me, but you stared at me across the table as if daring me to do something. You looked like a petulant child willing me to spank you so you could run and tell tales on me. Everyone else was looking at me too, wanting me to shut you up. As if you were my responsibility. What could I do? We all knew you were drunk and just trying to be shocking, but it was terrible, like you were finally expressing this dreadful rage that you’d kept pent up for years and years. I wondered if deep down you meant everything you’d said. That you hated us all and had nothing but contempt for us. You were filled with bitterness, but sober you could be the most gentle, loving woman. You aren’t that person. I know you aren’t. That isn’t you.

  The next morning you couldn’t remember what you’d done. When I told you what you’d said you thought I was lying and started to cry. You sent flowers and cards to the others and they were good and forgave you because we’re all old friends and that’s what good friends do, but things had changed. We’ve seen less and less of our old gang. Now it’s just you, me and the kids. Our world has shrunk. We don’t talk about these things, or rather you won’t talk about these things.

  We all have our moments. I know I can be difficult. I can be grumpy sometimes. I want you to see that I do try though. That I forgive and keep on trying. I try to understand. It isn’t easy. If you would only trust me enough to share your worries with me, maybe I could help. I would at least know what you were going through. The drinking worries me. Perhaps we should both stop. For the sake of the kids.

  You know my grandfather was a drunk: he used to spoil Christmas every year until my father said enough was enough and banned my mother from inviting him. What I remember most about the old man is his smell, a stench of stale whisky, cigars and body odour. That and his hairy nostrils, which seemed to me to make perfect sense when I was a child: to be smelly but unable to smell oneself past the wads of hair stuffed up one’s nose. Once the old man put his cigar out on the oven-ready turkey. My mother was in tears. She said her father hated her. Imagine that, thinking your parent hated you. Who hates their own children?

  His father, my great-grandfather, was a convict. Probably never told you that. We never talk about any of this. I think the whole family is caught up in the shame, or maybe we just don’t want to hurt my mother by bringing it all back up. Let sleeping dogs lie, that’s what they say, isn’t it? He was caught embezzling money from his company and sentenced to eight years. My mother thought that was the explanation for her father’s drinking. Having a father in jail and a mother who could barely cope with life on her own. He lived with his granny, after his mother disappeared with a soldier. It does explain a lot: his father in prison, his mother running off, him left with his gran. He beat his wife. Mum saw it all. She once said her earliest memory was sitting in his car outside the pub with a glass of lemonade while he got pissed inside. Her mother was in the hospital. Mum would’ve been around seven years old, she said. He was a solicitor. Ironic huh? His dad a criminal, and he a lawyer. A drunkard who beat his wife and left his only daughter waiting for him while he got drunk with his friends. I don’t remember my granny much, not mum’s mum anyway, she died when I was young, probably worn out with loving him, poor thing. There are photos though; Sally looks like her, tall and slender with the long, melancholy nose.

  You can understand why mum is the way she is though, right? It couldn’t have been easy for her. She made sure our lives were very different. Sally and I had a very different family life. We grew up in such peace and stability in comparison to her. Mum and dad rarely argued; they were very loving with each other and us. It was perfect in a way, about as good as one can hope for. You see every family has their problems, their secrets. Perhaps knowing all these things means that we can make more allowances for one another. Perhaps knowing this will show you that you can trust me. I won’t let you down. Nothing is perfect, but we have to try.

  He is looking forward to the weekend. He said to Cora ‘I can’t wait for the weekend. I’m so tired, I don’t know what’s wrong with
me.’ Cora agrees because it’s for the best that she does. But she hates Sundays and therefore the day preceding, with its gathering of dread. She hates the Day of Rest and its declaration of man’s stupidity. What a stupid lack of confidence, to need a god to decree that humans need a day to rest. And with God involved one dare not disobey. You have no choice but to sit and eat and watch TV with your family, even now that God has fallen silent. Because to rest is to be with your family. It has been decreed. The only release is work, where you can be alone.

  The train doors slide back with a hiss. She has dropped the children off at their schools. She is alone. A press of other solitary people moves her body into the train. She stands by the glass partition next to the seats, supported by the others travelling to work. The comforting warmth of their bodies lulls her; she wants to sleep in this upright embrace. The train moves and she is rocked back and forth. Closing her eyes she hears the muffled sounds of music being channelled into other ears, the muted rustle of paper and the strut of the wheels on the tracks. All the sounds must traverse the barrier of her solitude. She is suspended, separated from the world around her, not yet alive.

  The doors open and more people push onto the train. She is held tighter, constricted by their bodies. Her proximity to them gives her a new privacy, she is known to them only as mass, as material, anonymous. Someone behind her breathes; she feels the expansion of their chest and the warm air on her neck. She can’t move her arms without disturbing the passengers around her. Her body is useless, nothing but fat, muscle and bone. Tissue poised to rot; she is perfectly impotent and unthinking.