Life

by Gwyneth Jones

  That night she went back to London, to her rooms high above the canyons of the City. Her living space still had the air of a student bedsit: a haphazard, temporary, and uncared for setting, in which only the heaps and piles of books possessed any validity. She spoke tenderly to the onlie begetter of her affections, Pele the blue rabbit. You are all I have and all I need, little one. The rest of them, those others with their families and friends and lovers, are deceiving themselves with pitiful illusion. I’m better off. You will never let me down. I call you Pele because that was what you were called when I was a baby. But don’t worry my dearest, my sweetheart. I know your real name. Actually, it embarrassed her to look at Pele, or speak to him as if aloud. Like all true lovers, he was a creature for smelling and touching. When she slept, with her darling nuzzled in her arms, then she was truly happy.

  She faithfully visited Lavinia in the nursing home. On the good days she found Lavvy bright-eyed and young looking, her hair brushed and styled to the taste of the nursing staff, and spent ten minutes or so chatting to a timid, affable elderly lady who knew Ramone well but hadn’t a clue who she was. Ramone could relate to that. She frequently found herself in a similar situation: only when she had to talk to people who expected her to recognize them, she wasn’t half so nice about it. But Lavvy had no choice. On the bad days, Lavinia remembered enough to know what was happening, and that was terrible.

  When she decided to move to Manhattan, she knew it wouldn’t make any difference. Lavvy wouldn’t notice if Ramone’s visits were six months apart. Her clock had stopped; her watch on time had bust a spring. Maybe she knew something, because on the visit that Ramone intended to be her last, Lavvy (in affable old lady mode) suddenly asked if she could have something to hold. Always before, in response to Ramone’s ritual question Is there anything I can bring for you? she had answered blankly, no. She did not want anything to read; she did not want flowers or pictures or smuggled forbidden drugs. She wanted for nothing. Ramone had struggled with herself, but won the victory and went back the next day with Pele. He was welcomed with puzzled approval. (Lavinia of course didn’t remember that she had asked for something to cuddle, but the need was still there.)

  Afterwards, when they asked her why she had left England, and why she was no longer available for raucous feminist comment, she gave them the kind of answer they expected. Professional feminists are snouts in the trough, arselickers to the male media, and their fans are a bunch of closet-genderist lesbians, bitter housewives, and fat people. Feminism stinks, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. There’s nothing anyone can do for women; they deserve all they get. This was entertaining copy, though not new. The truth had more to do with the fate of that blue toy rabbit, whose absence nothing could mend. In her heart, she was not living in Manhattan. She was not “involved” with the postmodern idiocy of Karel and Ri, or the least interested in the crappy “art” the three of them produced together. She was in phase transition, waiting for the day when her life would be restored to her.

  Waiting to move on.

  She found out about Lavvy’s final illness from Roland. Lavvy’s brother called her up to tell her his sister had contracted viral pneumonia, and the prognosis was not good. “She seems to have lost the will to live,” he said, with false gravity. Ramone knew that this was code for euthanasia. Shocked energy raced through her limbs. She would return to England at once. With positive nursing Lavvy could come back from this. She was only, what was it, sixty-five? Not old! She could live long enough to be there when mind power could be restored to Alzheimer’s sufferers, even the ones like Lavvy, with complications—

  “I’m coming back. Tell her I’m on my way. Tell her, no matter if you think she doesn’t know my name.” Already she’d decided to phone the nursing home and get them to relay her voice to Lavvy’s sickbed. It could easily be done, and she did not trust Roland.

  There was a long pause at the other end of the connection.

  “Umm. I was trying to break it to you gently, Ramone. I’m afraid she’s gone.”

  “Fuck. YOU BASTARD! YOU KILLED HER! You HAD HER PUT DOWN!”

  “The funeral is next Wednesday—”

  “YOU TOLD THEM WHAT TO DO. YOU SAID LET HER DIE!”

  “Actually,” said the pained middle-class voice, intolerably pleased with itself. “Those were my sister’s very words. Let me die. She had made a deposition to that effect, a living will. Didn’t you know?”

  When she went to the funeral, rage and hatred were still her principal emotions. She didn’t want to admit that she had known this was coming when Lavvy, who was never queer for soft toys, had asked for Pele… It wasn’t the first time she’d seen a friend cremated, so she wasn’t much bothered by the ceremony. In the middle of it, she remembered with horror that her darling had not been recovered—

  She rushed out of the chapel, or whatever they called it, and took a taxi fifteen miles to the nursing home. It was November: the straight, slim Dorset beeches in the grounds were laden with red gold. She had dressed in New York Bohemian chic, to annoy the family. The nursing home staff reacted with fear and revulsion to her makeup, her hat, and her shoes. They closed ranks. They said that Lavvy’s effects had been removed by her relations. If Ramone wanted a memento, she should ask the Kents. When Ramone broke down in tears, they softened but insisted there was nothing they could do. Anything the family had left behind had gone to be incinerated days ago. She pushed them aside and ran, a mad woman dressed like a scary clown, past the tv lounge and the ranks of folded wheelchairs, to the room that she remembered. It was empty. It had never been other than empty. Lavinia had never lived here.

  At the open window, polyester net curtains flapped. The fresh air didn’t hide that grey disgusting nursing home miasma: piss and feces, stale food and disinfectant.

  She walked out of the building sobbing without restraint. She had nothing to gain by keeping a straight face, so why not howl… At the bend in the drive, something halted her. It was like a voice, calling very softly. It was like the smell of damp leaf mould, in the dark undergrowth of the Embankment Gardens. Instead of going straight ahead to the gates, she turned to the left along a moist, rutted track between banks of rhododendrons. There it was: the rubbish corral, a big shoveled-out space cut into the shrubbery, stacked with bulging black bin bags. Oh my God, whispered Ramone, without the slightest doubt. A beautiful, grey-haired lady in a vivid pomegranate dress, walking away from Ramone, had turned and looked back… She fell on the first bag in the front row; then the next; scrabbling among all kinds of litter, soiled dressings, reeking incontinence pads, things that definitely shouldn’t be left to fester like this. I’ll get the place closed down, she thought vindictively…and saw the tip of a faded blue ear.

  She had found Pele.

  He stank. He would have to be washed. Otherwise he was fine.

  Oh, miracle. Oh dear god who makes mistakes, thank you for this.

  It had begun to rain, but she was too shaken to leave, and in any case she felt at home in this place. She spread one of the cleaner bags to sit on and used another—draped over two branches—to make a roof. Anyone who saw her now would know she was completely mad. Roland would be happy. Ramone didn’t give a shit for their definitions. She had been saved by Lavvy, long ago, from the terrible trap of other people. She had been taught to live. No one could catch Ramone; she slipped through all their nets: not the feminists, not the intellectual bullshitters, not the spirituality groupies, not the sex-gang children of Bohemia. They were all the same, all conforming to some lying code they were afraid to defy. No one could tell her any different; she knew that she had hold of the important thing, here in her arms. In her own way, which was like no one else’s way. Something to love.

  The Entrainment

  i

  The journey must end. She must leave the toll system; she must drop into the familiar evasion pattern to deal with Bournemouth’s aversion-therapy traffic control. Why did she feel such a sinking in her hear
t? She had never felt so bad about coming home before: not even when returning to Leeds, across the Pennines, meant returning from the haven of her work to the house that held only Lily Rose’s death. Why feel so bad? The disaster had happened, the struggle was over, all she had to do was adapt. To be happy, with Spence and the child. How could she ask for more, remembering the icy sleets of March, than this—

  It was Spence who spotted the paparazzi.

  “Fuck!”

  “Holy shit,” breathed Anna.

  The road beyond their house was blocked by cars. Dark figures were leaping out of them at Anna’s approach, a premature camera flash sprang white above the glare of headlights. She braked hard and in a panic began to swing the wheel, flinging her head to see behind her. But they were being closely followed. No escape that way.

  “You both said naughty words—” began Jake. But then he started to cry.

  The newshounds were banging on the windows, pressing their lenses against the glass.

  “Get out of the car,” said Spence. “I’ll park it. Be cool, smile. Get Jake indoors.”

  Anna and Jake scrambled out into the barrage. Mrs Senoz, Ms Senoz! Dr Senoz! Have you anything, could you just, what do you, Hey, Hey, Anna! Look this way! She put her arm around Jake and smiled, but then ran stooping as if through a storm of hail, up the steps, unlocked the house door, and slammed it behind them. The narrow hall felt cold as a cave. And it was here. The dread was here, indoors, not out there with the hellhounds. She stood, shocked and puzzled, trying to get the measure of this feeling, this cold waft of fear that had invaded her safe den…

  “Can I tell you about my goal again,” said Jake, wiping his eyes.

  “Yeah, do.”

  “The one I got that was declared offside… I headed it in from the edge of the box, off a free kick from Matthew—”

  “But it was offside, you know,” said Anna, who’d been there. Once she’d found out that Charles never came to football, she had made it a priority to support the babes, last season. “You weren’t offside, but Henry was. I saw him. It was rotten luck.”

  “It was still my goal, though. I hardly ever get a chance to score. But Andy says my tackling’s very good. Did you know, Andy once trained with Alan Shearer, when he was my age?”

  “Yeah, I did know. He won it in a competition in Match. He told me. Amazing luck.”

  She went into the ground floor study, where the piano lived, with their bicycles. Is it here? There were hounds scrambling over the front garden. They stared in at her, faces bloated with sexual rage. She wasn’t making it up. There was nothing more blatant than the sex in bastards’ furious hatred. She closed the curtains.

  “Why are they so horrible?” asked Jake, who had followed her.

  “Because they are sad bastards. I’m sorry, I said a naughty word. Can’t help it.”

  “I don’t mind.”

  “Let’s get away from the street.”

  Spence found them handfast, sitting on the edge of Jake’s bed, Werg the bear in close attendance; comforting each other with talk of the beautiful game. Jake was still wearing his mother’s jacket. The ambush had not yet dispersed: Jake and Anna had heard its war cry start up again as Spence came through. MR SENOZ! they called him, but the ones who thought they were clever yelled, HEY, SPENCE.

  “Sorry I was so long, couldn’t find a parking place. Those assholes.” He dumped Jake’s rucksack. “I’ve left the rest of the bags downstairs, I thought I’d better empty the car. D’you feel like making a cup of tea? Or d’you want something stronger?”

  Anna shook her head. She never wanted to move or to let go of Jake’s hand. “What’s the point of it? That’s what I don’t understand.”

  “Simple. You refused to feed them; it makes them mad; there’s nothing more in it. I must admit, I thought the fuss was over.”

  The rough love of public interest had reached them almost as soon as Anna’s findings hit the press. Is this the end of the line for the male chromosome??? Anna, partly from shock and partly because it seemed like common sense, had stonewalled: she’d tried denying these idiots the oxygen of attention. It hadn’t worked. There’d been skulkers in the street, reporters on the doorstep. Neighbors had been interrogated; Jake had been followed on the way to school. When they found out she’d been fired, the frenzy had intensified. SEX SCIENTIST DENOUNCED; they’d loved that. Spence was right; she should have given the pack what they wanted straight away, when she was still to some extent in control. It was too late now. She knew she wasn’t capable of handling an interview.

  “They’ll give up,” she insisted. “They’ll go away.”

  “Thank God they didn’t track us down in Manchester.”

  There had been phone calls, which Anna’s mother had calmly fielded: nothing worse. Maybe the media people had been restrained by legal considerations.

  “Poor Jake!” said Spence. Anna heard the accusation: so did Jake, of course.

  “I’m all right,” said the child stoutly, hugging her. “Poor Mummy!”

  Over his head, Anna and Spence exchanged challenge and truce. I know you think this is all my fault, signaled Anna, but please try not to act nasty to me, for his sake. They put Jake to bed together, with a show of parental solidarity: brush your teeth, no, it’s too late to have a bath, wash your face and hands. No we can’t go and fetch Fergie (his hamster) from the Rectory, we’ll get her in the morning. Into your pajamas. Through the bathroom window Anna saw figures prowling in her garden. There was no access to their garden except through someone’s house. How much was that worth? Which of our neighbors took the money? She closed the blinds.

  They said prayers: Anna thought of Lavinia Kent. Never underestimate the power of ritual; never think yourself above the comfort it can give. How can it be false comfort if it palliates the suffering, for a little while? Beggars can’t be choosers. God bless the bad reporters, said Jake firmly. And help them stop being bad soon. They lay together, Anna and Spence on either side, Jake in the middle, squeezed into precarious shelter. Anna held Jake close against her breast, and turned her face into Spence’s shoulder. She’d never felt so much like a woman—the mythical nuclear-family, dependent, stone-age woman, huddling in the shelter of a male arm—in her entire life. Ironic, or what? She’d have liked them to spread sleeping bags on the floor and stay with Jake all night, but Spence wasn’t in the mood to play shipwrecks. As soon as the child slept he withdrew his arm, as a matter of course, and they went to bed without speaking to each other.

  She did not sleep. How soon would it be dawn? She would get up and do her yoga: paschimottanasana, where are you little fish? No wonder Spence was furious. It must seem to him she’d maliciously kept the destructive power of her paper a secret, until all hell broke loose. Did she deserve his anger? She’d known there would be trouble. Way back in Sungai, when her intuition had been strong that those bizarre results would stand up to verification, she had known what would happen. There would be an uproar, and it would be based on ideology, not science, so it would be truly vicious… So why had she done this to Spence? Why? Because like any scientist she couldn’t leave a puzzle alone, and it was instinctive, innate, to deny the troublesome aspects. She had treated her husband badly; she shouldn’t be surprised that he was bitter and distant.

  She shouldn’t have been surprised that Nirmal fired her, either. He’d warned her, but as always Anna Anaconda had tuned out the warning. From his point of view she had dragged his fledgling department into scandalous controversy. He’d taken vengeance for what he saw as a personal betrayal, exactly the same as long ago in Leeds…

  She lay drowsing, mulling over the situation. She had been called a naive fraud, a man-hating hysteric, a deranged eco-terrorist. (What did they think? That she’d been tipping vials of fast-breeding TY viroid into the global weather systems?) Impossible to stop the tabloid machine, but the serious trouble was mostly her own fault, she could see that now. If she hadn’t panicked… She felt better. She could see he
r blunders, her tactical errors: better to know you’ve been stupid than feel yourself in the grip of an incomprehensible nightmare. She must have slept, because she woke, and Spence was not beside her. A trapezoid of light lay across the landing outside their bedroom, coming from his work room next door. She put on her dressing gown and went to see what he was doing.

  He was at his keyboard, wearing the worn blue cotton djellaba he used as nightclothes; it was a long time since they’d slept naked. He was checking his email. No, talking to someone online. She watched as he typed, paused to read a reply, typed again. Ah, the quirky old intimacy of chatroom-world. She felt envious and affectionate. Who was he talking to? How strangely alive he looked, so poised and so alert… From the past she had visited on the journey home there rose an image of Spence at the foot of the stairs to the chill-out loft in the Riverrun. He was tossing his head and teasing poor Wolfgang. Spence, at home among the tropical clubberati, drowning the air around him with the pheromones of a fine sexual animal, certain that he is desired—

  “Hallo?” she whispered.

  He logged off, so quickly that he must have left somebody puzzled.

  “Who were you talking to?”

  “Meret,” he said, turning in his chair with a stern expression. He seemed to wait for her reaction, but Anna was too slow. “Got some Shere Khan problems we have to sort out.”

  “Oh.”

  They went back to bed, without another word.

  But Anna knew. She knew because she’d known already, with a secret, normal-person part of her brain that she usually ignored. The world fell into a different shape, a new gestalt.

  She slept. When she woke again Spence was by the bed, with a mug of tea and a newspaper. They hadn’t taken a newsstand paper for years. They relied on mTm and the freesheets to keep them up with current affairs. “The hounds have gone,” he said. “But here’s something that explains their excitement last night. Some guys in Canada have supported your results.” He laid the folded paper by her. Anna picked it up and looked at the headlines, feeling no interest. Of course her results were real.