Say the bells of St Clements …
It was my fourth birthday and I was sitting on my father’s knee, wearing a hideous dress in pink organdie. Well, it looks hideous in the photograph. I remember loving it. It had starched, frilly knickers underneath which scratched and rustled when I moved.
‘I owe you five farthings,’
Say the bells of St Martin’s …
My father’s name was Martin. He was around for just four years. In fact, the last time I remember him was at that birthday party. He turned me upside down and swung me round and round, and my head started spinning and then the room and the whole world, and I knew he was God, then.
‘When will you pay me?’
Say the bells of Old Bailey.
‘When I grow rich …’
He must have been rich, because he bought me a rocking-horse with flaming nostrils and a real hair tail, and a red balloon you could sit on, and a dog on a string. At tea, he lit the candles on my cake and said “damn” when he burnt his fingers. Then he cut the cake into fat little wedges and gave me the fattest bit with the “T” on.
“T for Thea,” he said and kissed me. He had a kiss which prickled, like the knickers. He’d chosen my name himself. My mother wanted to call me Patricia Jane.
After tea, I climbed back on his knee and asked him to swing me round again. My mother said, “No, Martin, not after all that cake.” But he did. The world span even faster then, and I kept saying, “Again, again, again, again, again …”
When I was five, I didn’t have a party and he wasn’t there. My mother knitted me a cardigan the colour of manure. I asked her where he was and she said, “Ask Josie Rutherford”, but I didn’t know anyone called that.
Here comes a candle to light you to bed,
Here comes a chopper to chop off your head.
Chop, chop, chop, chop, chop …
I yanked my head off the block, fought my way through the trap of strangling arms. The candles had all burnt down and were melting the icing on the cake. Balloons were popping everywhere.
“Stop,” I shouted. “Stop!”
I tried to sit up, but gravity had turned into gelatine. A face was swinging over mine. At first, I thought it was my father. I could see dark hair and feel the prickle of a chin, but the smell was different. My father smelt of birthday cake and Capstan Navy Cut. This was Leo’s smell. Leo still brought with him the faintest odour of the Russian steppes, bare scrub and young horse.
“Hallo,” I said, when he’d stopped swinging.
“Thea,” he whispered. His voice was almost snivelling. He couldn’t bear to look at me. His eyes had already left the room. “How are you?”
“I’m fine,” I said. I was. I even knew it was Monday. I’d been to the dental room first thing Monday morning. The dentist had hot fat fingers which tasted of oil of cloves. He’d had to remove a root and a nerve or two, and put stitches in a gum, and file off two more teeth which were jagged round the edges. He gave me injections, so it didn’t hurt at all. Sister Anselm stood beside me and squeezed my hand and passed him probes and forceps. And they both kept saying, “Brave girl!”, which was crap, really, because the injections made me feel as if I were floating above my own mouth on a fat pink cloud, and even if they’d attacked me with a pick-axe, I’d probably just have smiled. The treatment lasted about a hundred years, but I knew it was still Monday, because Sister Anselm had told me so when she tucked me back in bed and said, “Now you rest there till lunchtime, dear, and I’ll go and say three Hail Mary’s for you in the Chapel.”
Leo was trying to pick up the fragments of his voice. “Thea, I don’t know how to …”
“It’s Monday,” I said. I had to say something. I couldn’t talk about the weather. There isn’t any weather in a hospital.
“Yes, I know.”
He’d brought me grapes. He dropped the bag at the foot of the bed, as if he couldn’t bear to come too near me. I hoped they weren’t the same ones I’d bought with his money for the dinner party. He edged a little closer. “How are you, Thea?”
“I told you, fine.” I wished he wouldn’t keep asking. My mouth was mostly numb. The lump on my head still throbbed, but I’d decided to pretend I was just a clock and that was the bit which ticked. I didn’t inquire how he was. He looked too ill for that.
“How’s Karma?” I asked, instead.
“OK.” He was scrabbling in a plastic carrier, bringing out books, biscuits, toothpaste, talcum — all the wrong things. I couldn’t eat biscuits, I never use talc, and it was impossible to clean my teeth. I could have wept for him. He loathed shopping. It hurt his pride dawdling round Boots and Fine Fare with unwieldy wire baskets, trying to make contact with giggly shop assistants who had one CSE in General Studies. Yet he’d done it just for me. Filled a whole trolley with paperbacks I’d never read, sweets and grapes and Lucozade when I didn’t have a mouth. He seemed embarrassed by them all. Boots and Fine Fare didn’t suit him. The packets were too bright, too vulgar. The tin of talcum fell off the bed and clattered to the floor. He left it there. He kept staring round the room, shuffling his feet, clearing his throat as if he had something stuck in it. The backs of his eyes looked yellow. He hated hospitals. I knew we must both get out.
“Will you take me home?” I asked. My teeth were better now. I couldn’t even feel them.
He seemed to have mislaid his voice again. He was always nervous when I called it “home”. He had picked up the grapes and was pulling them off in little wounded clusters. “They … er … won’t let you go yet, Thea. They think you ought to see … well … a psychiatrist.”
“I won’t,” I said. Leo had always told me psychiatrists were shit. He offered me a grape. I shook my head.
“They’re shit,” I muttered. “Not the grapes, psychiatrists.” I’d learnt to repeat the things he said. Usually I did it with more subtlety, changing his words around, so he wouldn’t notice.
So they’d been ganging up on me. The Sisters intercepting him before he’d even seen me. I knew I must keep him away from them. They were weakening him, unravelling him. The smell of the hospital was seeping into him like acid and eroding him. He couldn’t even sit down. His sallow hands kept clenching and unclenching. He didn’t know where to put himself or what to do with his eyes. Every time they met my face, they retched and crept away. I couldn’t bear them to have to cower like that, sneaking further and further back into their sockets, cringing under the lids. His eyes had always blazed before, not squirmed and grovelled.
“Why don’t you draw the curtains?” I suggested.
“But it’s still light.”
“Never mind. It makes it cosier.”
He walked over to the window and pulled them to, shutting out the cold white afternoon, as if it were a busy-body nun.
“Now pull the curtains round my bed.”
“But won’t they think it’s … ?”
“Who cares?”
He did it almost gratefully, as if he were glad of anything to do to fill the silence, offer restitution. It was darker now. My broken face could be dismissed as just a shadow, a shifting trick of the light. I turned it half away from him, pulled down my nightie, leant back against the pillows. I knew we must get out of there, return to his house, to peanut-butter sandwiches and arguments and normal conversations.
“Did you buy the vase?” I asked.
“Which vase?”
“The one in the Bermondsey shop. The phoenix one.”
He frowned. “No.”
“Why not?”
He shrugged. “Too expensive.”
“Was it a proper phoenix?”
“How do you mean, proper?”
“Well, like the other one.”
“Yes.”
“Rising from the ashes?”
“No.”
“I thought they all did that.”
“No, not the Chinese ones.”
“Why not?”
“It’s a different bird.”
&nbs
p; “How d’you mean, different?”
“Well, it’s not a phoenix at all, not really. We only call it a phoenix because we haven’t got another word. It’s a sort of mistranslation. Look, Thea, Sister Anselm said …”
“What should you call it?”
“Call what?”
“The thing which isn’t a phoenix?”
“Oh, Thea, let’s not …”
“I want to know.”
“The Chinese word is feng huang.”
“Feng what?”
“Huang.”
“Oh.”
“There’s no exact equivalent in English. I suppose we might have called it roc, or albatross, or …”
“The one you had looked like a phoenix. I mean there were flamey things around it.”
“No, they were only feathers.”
“Very fancy feathers.”
“Yes.”
“You even called it a phoenix.”
“Well — yes — one does.”
I leant across and took his hand. He had settled down at last, but had moved the chair as far away from me as possible, and was sitting opposite my feet. His fingers felt so cold, they could have been made of marble.
“Leo …”
“What?”
“You’re freezing.”
“Yes.”
It was stifling in the room, windows shut, heating full on. Three yes’s he’d given me, on top of all the shopping. He kept trying to make amends, offer me drinks, grapes — pick up things I’d dropped. It didn’t suit him, really. The silences kept threatening us again. I knew I had to distract him, keep him talking. If the silence went too deep, it would lead us back to frightening hurling objects, dangerous things.
“Did they ever put the other sort of phoenix on their vases? The ones that rise from ashes?”
“No, they didn’t even know about them. They’re an Egyptian thing. The feng huang is a completely separate myth.”
I mistrusted myths — they’re always so remote and complicated. “You mean it’s not a real bird at all?”
“No. It’s like the dragon or the unicorn. A sort of symbol, I suppose. It only appeared in a Golden Age. It was meant to be a sign that the gods were pleased with what was happening here on earth.”
“And were they pleased?”
“Not often, I suspect. Golden Ages have never been too common, except in retrospect. Though occasionally the bird appeared, even in a bad age. Apparently, it could be tempted down by music. It was a very musical creature, so if you played the flute, or sat with your friends in the garden, singing songs, it was meant to flutter down and join in.”
I closed my eyes. I could see Leo playing his piano by the open window, surrounded by Thea, Sian, Rowena, and above us all, the Golden-Age feng huang, pouring out its gold and scarlet song.
“What did it look like?” I asked. “I mean, apart from on the vase.”
“Oh, beautiful, exotic.”
“Like a peacock?”
“Sort of. It was coloured like the rainbow.”
“Yes?” So long as he went on talking, we were safe, trapped inside the curtains in our own white bird-cage. Leo, too, seemed grateful for the bird. Its wings were sheltering us from sharp-edged, naked things. Without it, we had nothing to discuss but loss and shock and blame.
“It was the Emperor of all the birds, so the Chinese gave it the best attributes of all their creatures — you know, the throat of a swallow, the breast of a swan, the stripes of a dragon, the tail of a fish …”
I kept my eyes tight shut. Its beauty almost hurt them. “Yours didn’t look like that,” I murmured.
“No.”
“I suppose they couldn’t show it on a vase.”
“No.”
“Tell me some more,” I said. I was frightened by the no’s. I wanted him there forever, sitting by my side, weaving me bright, exotic fables which matched the quivering colours in my head.
“It was a very good-natured bird,” he said. One long hand had edged towards me now, crawling up the counterpane towards my own. “It never harmed a living thing. It wouldn’t even peck at a grub or tread on a blade of grass. And in wartime, it simply disappeared.”
I smiled. The bird was so gentle, I could trust it near my mouth. I could almost see it hovering over us, as if Leo had brought it with him in his carrier bag, and then released it like a dove. I was still on my fat pink cloud. This was how the world should be — kind and bright and peaceable. I wanted to stop it there, freeze it forever like a picture in a story book, so no wars would start, nor mouths split, nor birds or vases ever smash again. The feng huang had already healed us. Leo had clutched my fingers now, and the pain in my mouth was hardly fluttering.
“Did it have a mate?” I asked.
“I shouldn’t think it needed one. It was sort of male and female both at once. In fact, the Chinese poets used it as a kind of metaphor for the perfect union of man and woman.”
I picked up his words and held them in my hands like flowers. The perfect union. Joined, fused, indivisible. One pair of wings shutting out the world. No rows, then, no divorces, no separate beds, no sex. Or maybe endless sex, uninterrupted.
“So it couldn’t lay eggs?” I said. “I mean, there wouldn’t be any young?” Even that could be a blessing. Man and woman and children all in one. No need to grow up, or apart or away, or become a disappointment, or an orphan …
Leo was pulling at a hang-nail on his thumb. “I suppose it wouldn’t need eggs if it was immortal. Though, actually, I did read somewhere it was connected with procreation.”
Procreation. That was a biblical word, a Janet word. I could see the feng huang carrying Lucian, very gently, in its beak. We needed it — for peace, for harmony, for offspring that were part of us and didn’t abort, or die, or simply never happen.
“How?” I asked. “I mean, why procreation?”
Leo tugged at the hang-nail with his teeth. “No idea. There are so many different legends, I get confused. They say it’s a creature which sprang from the sun, so I suppose it’s connected with warmth and growth and harvest — things like that. I saw one on a tapestry once, gazing on a ball of fire, sort of pecking at the flames.”
“Flames?” I said, excited. “So it is like the other phoenix.”
“Well, no, the fire wasn’t really …” His thumb was bleeding now, and he had trapped it under the fingers of his other hand. Another silence. He tried to shovel words into it, like Polyfilla.
“Sometimes I think the Chinese made it a symbol of anything they fancied — fertility, the Emperor, peace, long life, married bliss — ideals of all the things that don’t work out in grim reality. Perhaps that’s what myths are for — to deal with what you can’t explain or control or contrive or …”
“Leo …” I murmured. I didn’t want to return to grim reality. I joined our two hands again.
“What?”
“Do you think it could be mended?”
“What d’you mean?” He was still a little irritable. It was as if his gentle, careful side had rusted up, and every time he tried to exercise it, it creaked and grated.
“The vase. The one I …” I didn’t dare say “smashed”. The word felt menacing. I knew I was responsible. I had brought war to the land, banished the feng huang. I could feel cold, sharp tears pricking against my eyelids.
“Oh, Thea, don’t …”
He inched towards me very carefully, as if I were made of glass and even his footsteps might shatter me in pieces. I stretched out my arms to him, laid my face against his soft cashmere sweater, making a little nest for it in the hollow of his shoulder. I was safe again. Nothing had happened between us. It was so dark now, you couldn’t see my mouth. The shadow on the wall had merged us into one. I didn’t need a mate, because I was part of him, man and woman and child with him, immortal, feathered, joined.
“May I come in?” The voice was like a gunshot scaring away a bird.
“No!” I almost shouted. The door was openi
ng. It was Sister Robert, furtive as a poacher, gun in her hand, torn and bleeding feathers at her feet.
Leo leapt up. He looked very dark and old against the nun. Someone seemed to have mangled him in their hands. He no longer stood as proud as I remembered him.
Sister Robert smiled. “Dr Davies would like to see you both. He’s waiting just outside.”
“I’ve … er … got to go,” said Leo. He was snatching up the carrier, shaking out his coat.
Sister Robert took his arm and steered him towards the window. “It’ll only take a moment, Mr Rzevski. Dr Davies is our hospital psychiatrist. He’s very understanding.”
“Shit,” I murmured. “They’re shit.”
She’d ruined everything, lobbed a bullet through our perfect union, brought war and pain again.
“You see, it’s really up to Dr Davies how long Thea stays with us. We’ve seen the X-rays and she’s going to need a little operation on her mouth. But we can’t do it yet. Not until all that swelling’s settled down. She doesn’t have to stay here. The immediate dental work can be done in the surgery, or as an outpatient. On the other hand, we think she needs a rest. She’s very overwrought. Dr Parkes suggested …”
She was talking about me as if I were just a squiggle on the lino. Leo wasn’t listening — backing away, shoulders hunched and steely, hand on the doorknob.
“Leo, wait …” His face was barred and shuttered, his eyes so dark, you could have lost your way in them. He had almost gone. He hadn’t kissed me, hadn’t said goodbye. The vase was broken again, the feng huang torn and writhing on the ground.
“Leo, I …”
Gone. He hadn’t even left his smell. All I could smell was Sister Robert now — chloroform and death. The pain in my mouth came rushing in again, the lump on my head booming and pounding like a grandfather clock. The bed was littered with baubles — biscuits, bathsalts, cheap romances. There was nothing of Leo left.
Dr Davies must have passed him in the corridor. He knocked and entered before I could even say, “Get out!” He was violating Leo’s sanctuary, heaving back the curtains round the bed, unveiling the windows. The light strode in and raped us.
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