by Liz Jensen
‘So I’m just visiting Manxheath daily to help Dr Stern with some research.’
‘Yes, of course,’ said Linda, mustering some tact as she adjusted the heat to woollens. ‘I phoned Dr Stern when I heard. He’s filled me in, up to a point.’
‘What did he tell you?’ I asked.
Linda began to fold a shirt, paying great attention to the sleeves.
‘Well?’ I insisted.
Linda blushed.
‘Just that you … needed a rest.’
She looked at me like I was a dangerous soufflé that might explode in her face.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘he’s right. I do.’
Dr Stern must have spun Linda the same line he’d spun Gregory. It was Dr Stern’s suggestion that I tell nobody about what Gregory had done until we had all the facts. That suited me: I wasn’t ready for Linda’s I-told-you-sos, and her organising of demos, and God knows, probably roping in the Reverend Carmichael as well. Let her think I had cracked, if she wanted. Let her think I had joined Ma in the State of Absolute Delusion. Which she clearly did.
‘Everyone needs a good rest from time to time,’ said Linda with effort. She was unused to being nice to me, but she soldiered on. ‘And it’s good, this new policy of bringing the community into the care environment. Dr Stern said it means Billy can spend time in Manxheath, and get to know Ma.’
‘Yes,’ I said vaguely.
I wasn’t sure I liked that bit, but there was no avoiding it, if I wanted to discover what Gregory had planted in my son’s genes.
‘It’s certainly better than the care-in-the-community thing they had.’ I was keen to make the conversation sound normal. ‘Remember that time they let Ma out of Coxcomb and she hijacked that City Hoppa?’
We reminisced for a while about some of Ma’s depressing escapades; her famous death threat to the Minister of State for Education, her trip to Bali – then lapsed into silence. Billy and I sat on the floor gazing at Linda ironing. There was something abnormal about her steam button; every time she pressed it, an enormous cloud of vapour emerged, and she would disappear behind it in the manner of a high priestess. When the church bells clanged eleven, Linda shook herself out her housework-induced trance.
‘Mind if I catch Holy Hour?’
‘No, go ahead,’ I replied.
My turn to be tactful. She pressed the remote control and there knelt the Reverend Carmichael before us, his face shiny with faith.
We watched for a while as Carmichael chewed his way through a rambling prayer full of thees and thous about catalepsy, adultery, and bullying in old people’s homes. After the Amen, he wiped the sweat from his brow with a tiny olive-green handkerchief and gave the signal for the hymn. The silver band orchestra began a smooth, catchy tune and the voices of a choir sprang from nowhere. Next to me, the soft sound of Linda’s slippered foot tapping in time to the music.
‘So, Linda, is it really true you’ve been converted by him – in person?’
‘I’ve found the Lord, yes,’ muttered Linda, her face all fixed-over as if she had applied a cleansing gel masque that mustn’t crack.
‘But you were an atheist,’ I said cautiously.
‘Well, now I’m a Christian,’ she snapped. ‘And it’s none of your business. So if you want to take the piss you can bugger off.’
Tests: personality, intelligence, co-ordination, Rorschach. I had them coming out of my ears. Joining dots, saying why such-and-such a word (billiard ball, pathos, handbrake, flying fish, Neptune) was the odd one out, talking to Billy and being recorded on video playing with educational toys. He thought it was all a game, which increased the pressure on me: I knew just how serious it all was. My son’s brain was at stake.
Meanwhile Ma’s crisis had ‘resolved’, according to Dr Stern, and she was looking quite perky and less mottled about the mouth, though she still shuffled. I caught sight of her sometimes in corridors, and avoided her when I could. She joined Billy for the sessions that concerned ‘hereditary factors’, while I shopped or went over for a swim in the hotel pool. I bumped into her in the Day Room after we had been coming to Manxheath for about a week, and it emerged she had developed an uncanny rapport with Billy: she seemed to know everything about him: the origin of every little scar on his knee, the names of his playmates, his aversion to broccoli, his conviction that a policeman would kill him. Yet he could barely talk.
‘I’m surprised Linda should have remembered so much about him, and then told you in such detail,’ I said.
I meant it, because Linda always tried to ignore Billy as if he were some buzzing fly. She must have been scraping around for things to say on her visits, I supposed.
‘Oh no, it wasn’t Linda,’ said my mother. ‘I told you before, Billy was sending me messages.’
Oh well, I thought. They had put her on a new drug.
‘Slow-release capsules,’ she whispered to me conspiratorially. ‘I’m going to take a leaf out of Keith’s book and insist on suppositories. It drives the psychiatrists mad. I’m trying to convert the whole Group, but Monica’s holding out; she says her arms aren’t long enough.’
Dr Stern was the go-between when it came to arrangements with my husband over Billy. Gregory no doubt thought the psychiatrist was on his side: one’s wife has nutted up, dear colleague. Your syringe or mine?
Gregory and Dr Stern had agreed that Billy should spend the weekends at home, but Gregory wasn’t insisting. Better things to do, I suppose. He took Billy to McDonald’s one Saturday, acting like a typical male divorcé before he’d even got divorced. Then took him home and let Billy watch him play with a remotely-controlled fighter plane in the garden all afternoon. At least that’s what Ma said, with great firmness, when I bumped into her in the Day Room.
The day we went to print out the disc, Dr Stern seemed very calm, but I could sense his excitement under the surface. I chose a time when I knew Jane was at her karate morning. Dr Stern waited outside in the car, wearing his scarf round his mouth and hiding behind the British Medical Journal – though I said to him later that’s a sure way to stand out from the crowd in Oakshott Road, we’re staunch Telegraph readers. The house was still a wreck. Part of me yearned to get out my mop, and another part rejoiced in the disorder I had wreaked. Gregory hadn’t even put the shelves back, though he, or Ruby Gonzalez, had sponged the floor quite efficiently. There was a slimy smell, and I noted with interest that the mustard and cress had taken root in the living-room carpet. My messages of hate, although smeared, were still decipherable. I was glad I’d left Dr Stern in the car. He might have made something of it. I noticed Gregory’s portable phone lying on the floor; I hesitated for a moment, then put it in my handbag.
While the file was printing out, I checked the bathroom for unfamiliar toiletries and then hunted through Gregory’s drawers looking for other tell-tale signs of Ruby Gonzalez’s presence – perfume, knickers, a doctoral thesis bearing her name. But there was nothing – just his maroon socks. All Gregory’s socks were the same colour, because I had insisted on it. It saved sorting them after I’d done a wash. He resented that. Perhaps he had moved in with her. Perhaps he had a whole drawerful of exciting, multi-coloured socks at Ruby’s place, and just came back every now and then for a supply of shirts, and to remember how unreasonable I’d been over the sock thing.
Back in the study, watching the paper emerge from the plastic feeder, I pictured my saviour in the car, reading about cardiovascular disease, and my heart pounded in great kerthumps of gratitude.
When I slammed the door shut on my home, I didn’t look back.
‘Here you are, Dr Stern,’ I said proudly, handing him a sheaf of papers through the car window.
Dr Stern couldn’t wait to read the document, you could tell; he was all over it like a sniffer dog, riffling through it and grunting. Once I’d settled into the passenger seat he turned to me and said, ‘Call me Ishmael.’
It sounded familiar, which was surprising. Ishmael must be quite an uncommon name.
Dr Ishmael Stern.
Oh well, I thought. I’m not the only one with a strange ma. He drove with great intensity, as one does when taking a driving test; every small movement super-accurate and slightly exaggerated. When we got back to the Institute he excused himself. We were standing outside his office.
‘I have to read this document, and make some notes,’ he said.
We said goodbye, and as I turned away from his closing door I felt a strange sensation. It was as if a shroud were being peeled away from my soul. As I turned, I almost glimpsed it, from the corner of my eye, as it furled up in a transcendental spiral and wafted down the corridor. If it hadn’t been invisible, this shroud, I’d have seen it. Don’t tell me I wouldn’t.
SEVEN
Filthy February skies disgorge themselves on the North. On tarmac, on corrugated iron and on patio tiles, on superstores and charity shops and bottle banks, and into a thousand ornamental ponds in the back gardens of Gridiron City, a liquidised grit hammers down. In the city centre, gutters gargle on coagulated silt, giving a desperate feel to the streets.
By eleven, the air in Bulger’s parfumerie and accessories department hangs sour with clashing toilet waters and the damp clothes of Saturday shoppers. On the escalator on the way up to the third floor (soft furnishings and lingerie), sandwiched between two women of indeterminate age, Linda does violence on her umbrella.
‘Ouch!’
‘Sorry.’
Fuck it.
‘Look, it’s my wedding, Mum,’ says the woman on the stair above Linda. Her pink placcy mac makes her look like an upright frankfurter.
‘And it’s my money, and your dad’s,’ the other fires back through Linda’s head. ‘I’m not having you wear some rubbish.’
‘Fold, you bastard!’ Linda performs a karate-chopping gesture on the flapping umbrella and snaps two ribs.
‘It’s a Designer, Mum.’
‘It doesn’t flatter you, Cindy, is all I’m saying. It just doesn’t flatter you, that type of romantic-style bodice. Not with those what-d’you-call-them-ruched leg-o’-mutton sleeves.’
‘You said I could spend two hundred and twenty-five pound. On my choice of wedding-dress, you said.’
‘Two hundred and twenty, I said, maximum, and I did specify, Cindy, that it had to be white, or whitish.’
Linda stuffs the broken-ribbed umbrella into her bag and checks her list:
1. Antimacassars.
2. Bra.
3. Mouthwash, etc.
4. Doo-da for washing machine.
‘Excuse me, we need a referee here.’
The frankfurter is tapping her on the hand.
‘Wouldn’t you say that cream was whitish?’
‘Jesus Christ!’ yells Linda, whipping round. ‘D’you think I give a toss?’
That’s done it. Mother and daughter exchange a look.
‘Don’t you use language with my daughter, young madam,’ threatens the mother. ‘There’s places for people like you, you know.’
‘Yeah,’ agrees the frankfurter. ‘Who rattled your cage?’
Linda carries with her at all times an imaginary Kalashnikov rifle, loaded and cocked, but before there is time to gun them down, mother and daughter have glided off the escalator and wheeled arm in arm towards an archway marked ‘Bridal’. A pair of twins in a double buggy get it instead, their brains splattering all over a row of naked mannequins.
Bra first. Padded bras do not come in as many shapes and sizes as bosoms themselves, for who would choose, reason the manufacturers, to have big overblown operatic ones, more akin to udders than breasts – or one even smaller than another, or a pair that would fail the famous ‘pencil test’? Linda is particular about her mammary glands. They are past their brief heyday, and have taken quite an emotional pasting over the years. They deserve a break. The enhancement of existing assets, she reasons, is not politically incorrect, as long as it stops short of optical illusion.
Prussian Rose, Lolita, Gypsy Doll, Proud Princess. 34B, 34C, under-wiring or cushion fit – all statements, but which one to make?
So engrossed is she that when a husky voice that comes from somewhere between Caracas and Croydon asks the assistant for maternity lingerie ‘for the already fuller figure, if you know what I mean’, Linda doesn’t register.
It’s only while wriggling before the cruel omni-directional mirrors of the changing cubicle, some fourteen bras later, reflecting on the injustice of breast size, and how you can only please some of the people some of the time, and that the Lord had obviously designed her tits as a cross for her to bear, that Linda suddenly recalls with shock the night she heard that voice before.
‘Are you pregnant, Ruby?’ Hazel had asked.
‘No, I’m afraid I’m just fat.’
Now she had had what men would call ‘knockers’.
Linda’s high-powered job has trained her in swift, creative management, and the decision-making skills that have won her status at the Butter Mountain do not desert her now. Without a moment’s hesitation, she lets drop the Midnight Blue 34C and, a naked breast clutched in each hand, stalks the length of the narrow changing corridor. She’ll recognise the shoes. Career-woman shoes, low-heeled and navy blue, or perhaps cream. There is little movement behind the curtains; just the guttural sounds of emotional pain and the cloying emanation of sweat. At floor level, there are tights with holes, slouch socks, boots, bunions, trainers, something orthopaedic-looking.
Up the far end, one curtain is barely pulled across. Linda tiptoes up to it, peers in, and draws a sudden breath. There is something unmistakable about the sloping shoulders and bulbous back, and the plait of dark hair that runs down the length of the spine to cleft-of-buttock level. The faceted mirrors stare back, and reveal the front, side and three-quarters view of a woman. A woman in fecund splendour, admiring in the mirrors a gigantic moonish belly atop a triangular bird’s nest of pubic hair.
If Dr Ruby Gonzalez were naked and heavily pregnant, this is what she would look like.
For three lurching seconds, Linda bears silent witness, then drops her tits in shock and rushes back to her cubicle as though stung by a bee.
While Linda was shopping that Saturday, I was swimming.
I am a good swimmer, thanks to the Tadpole Club. Linda and I learned to swim there as children. Ma would sit in the spectators’, her glasses all steamed up, crocheting something crooked or reading from the Pocket Floral Encyclopedia, which she always carried in her handbag. ‘A positive minefield of information’, she called it. Our friends at school and at the Tadpole Club would always snigger at the way she looked, planted there in the third row like an absurd obelisk, but in fact Ma was almost normal in those days. Afterwards we’d go to the sweet shop: Rolos and marshmallows for Ma, sherbert and a Wagon Wheel for me, wine gums and Love Hearts for Linda. Linda always read out the inscriptions: ‘Kiss Me’, ‘Sweetiepie’, ‘Yours Forever’, ‘Be Mine’. Fodder for the soured dreams of later life.
‘Sue the manufacturer,’ I told her once, after another evening of Kleenex and comfort eating. But she didn’t laugh.
The Tadpole Club taught me to swim, and swimming taught me that the brain can sort swiftly and painlessly through the ghastly bric-à-brac of its contents if the body is occupied by a banal enough activity. Hence my attraction, in times of stress, to the gormless rhythm of breast-stroke. Now, every morning, I would do fifty lengths, bubbles swilling past my mouth, my muscles going through their routine. And I would empty myself of Greg, of Ruby Gonzalez, of my time-bomb son, and of Ma. After the fiftieth length I would take a deep breath and dive down to the chlorine depths of the pool where I would stay until my ears buzzed and my mind burst into a realm of white clarity.
In the two weeks I’d been at Hopeworth, I’d established what you might call a routine. Billy and I crossed the park in the mornings to Manxheath, where I would drop him off at the crèche with a mixture of guilt and relief. I think h
e felt it too, because he’d cry until I was out of the door, and then stop abruptly, and head for the trike park. I saw him, as I passed a small window on the way out, the only parent to dawdle. Most of them were mums, nurses, wearing the sky-blue Institute uniform with a black elastic belt fastened by a big buckle. They bustled with small anoraks and lunchboxes, and looked harassed.
Then I’d go for my swim, see Dr Stern for my session at eleven, and go back to the hotel for lunch. I’d order my room service, and watch soap operas on TV. Around three I’d walk back to Manxheath through the park to fetch Billy. Then mother-and-child activities until bedtime: playing on the swings, feeding the ducks, watching cartoons, reading, wiping away tears, tickling. It suited me, this new life. No home to run, no supermarket shopping to do, no dry-cleaning to fetch, no pans to scrub, no husband to –
No husband.
One day stood out from the others. It was partly out of a sense of duty that I had paid another formal visit to the State of Absolute Delusion. I regretted it as soon as I arrived. Ma gave me a guided tour of the grounds. The light was bright as a camera flash on the trees and grass, but alarmingly, the sky was almost black. It was murderously, frozenly beautiful, and I could feel the cold through my thermal underwear. That’s the tragedy of things you order from a catalogue.
We went round the garden. Ma walked faster than before, but she still dragged her feet. As we walked along, she named the plants, but there seemed to be more names than plants, as though she were seeing something I couldn’t. She thought the silver birch trees were mangoes, and warned me to ‘watch out or you’ll fall in the pond’. Then she started to mutter angrily about ‘deliveries’ not arriving on time. Her voice became so hoarse and rasping I thought something in her larynx might give out, and the words repeated themselves on a loop: ‘The bananas should be planted this month, they’re delicate, they need their roots soaked for a week. They need their roots soaked for a week, they need their roots soaked for a week!’
I backed away from her, ashamed of my fear. She stood in profile on the iced lawn, a lone plastic bride on a vast wedding-cake. It was frightening, because I thought I’d seen the whole bag of tricks. Dr Stern hadn’t quite prepared me for this, with that light-hearted word, ‘cavalier’. Finally she moved, and I started to follow, but suddenly she was yelling at me again at an intense pitch.