The Knotted House

by Ruth Skrine

  She raises her eyebrows and her hand drops. ‘Come and tell me about it. What happened?’

  ‘Oh, it didn’t work out.’

  She asks me a lot of questions. Has it always hurt? Is it just on the edge or deep inside? I don’t know what I answer; she could be talking about someone else.

  ‘I don’t think you’ve had a smear have you?’

  I shake my head. The reminders that drop through the door always go straight in the bin. She gets off her chair, saying she will do it now.

  I leap up too and head to the door. ‘You must be busy. I’ll come back another day.’

  ‘I think we should do it now. I’m not in any hurry.’

  Standing in front of her I am a rabbit, frozen in the headlights of her eyes. Drawn to follow, as if my cuffed hands are attached to her by a rope, I approach the couch.

  ‘There’s a chair here where you can put your things.’ She draws the curtain round me.

  I hear her go back to her desk. Putting my handbag down on the floor by the side of the chair I take off my coat. A piece of white paper, smooth and cool, covers a grey blanket. I see those operating tables on television. There is always a huge light that glares down on the captive body surrounded by figures in masks and gowns. The light here is on the wall. Dr Fellows isn’t wearing a white coat, but a long skirt with a loose jacket that doesn’t hide her bump. I touch the paper. It rustles.

  ‘Are you ready?’ she calls

  I have no voice to answer. She comes round the curtain and hesitates as she sees me standing fully clothed. ‘Just take off your trousers and pants, you can leave your top things on. I have another blanket here to cover you.’

  I undo my trousers and slip them down with my knickers hidden inside. Snatching the blanket I sit on the edge of the couch.

  ‘Just lie back.’

  I stare up at the ceiling, my legs bent and my feet flat on the white paper. She takes my hand and mutters soothing words, then tells me to put my legs down. I force them straight and she puts her hand on my tummy.

  ‘You’re holding yourself awfully tense. Do you always have difficulty relaxing?’

  ‘Yes.’ My lips hardly move in my rigid face. I wish she would stop talking and just get on with it. I look at the ceiling again. In one corner there is a pattern of fine cracks, or they could be a spider’s web. Straight above me the lines are further apart, roads through a desert, crossing to make large, irregular shapes. A fly clings to one intersection. How lonely it looks, stranded in a vista of endless sand. I squeeze my eyes tight.

  ‘Could your open your eyes?’

  I peep out and see her putting some jelly onto her finger inside a transparent glove. She lifts my knees so my legs are bent again. But they are welded together as tight as the forceps Quentin found in the compost.

  ‘I promise I won’t hurt you. Just see if you can let your knees go a bit.’

  Her hand hovers as I lie immobile. ‘This is difficult for you, isn’t it? What if I just put my finger on the outside, and don’t attempt to go in?’

  I can see her forcing a passage into my flesh, tearing a hole where there is no hole.

  ‘Are you like this when you try to make love?’

  I nod.

  Her hand is caressing my thigh as if willing my legs to fall apart. ‘So your husband never got inside?’

  I wrench myself over to face the wall. Hunched away from her I try to repossess the secret that is now exposed, as raw as any wound in my flesh. I want to crawl into a hole, into my niche in the cellar or out into the garden to crouch under a bush as I used to do when my mother shouted. But I can’t escape from the eyes that I can feel boring into my back. I hear her gloves crinkle as she takes them off. I throw on my clothes but drop a shoe and have to crawl under the couch to retrieve it. Emerging from behind the curtain I hold out the scrunched paper from the couch. ‘What shall I do with this?’

  She takes the evidence of my failure and drops it in the bin under her basin. ‘Come and sit down.’

  I sit looking at my hands twisted together in my lap.

  ‘Have you any idea why you might be like this?’

  ‘None at all. I just know that I am different from other women.’

  ‘Have you ever been hurt down there?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’ I remember the girl at school. ‘A friend of mine was hurt once. That may have frightened me.’

  ‘What happened?’

  I manage to look up as I explain about the accident.

  The doctor is thoughtful before giving me a smile which is meant to be reassuring. ‘I can’t see that putting you off unless there is some deeper fear.’

  I follow her eyes as they roam round the room. The door is still firmly shut, the blanket lies on the couch in a heap. I should have folded it up. One of the taps over the basin is ticking like a clock. ‘Did anyone touch you there when you were little?’

  I have no idea what she is talking about.

  She tries again. ‘I just wondered if any man had touched you down there. Perhaps some man in your family?’

  ‘There weren’t any men in my family,’ I say without thinking. She raises her eyebrows. ‘There was just my sister Briony and me, with my mother and grandmother.’

  ‘What about your father?’

  ‘He died when I was eight.’

  ‘But you remember him clearly?’

  ‘Of course I remember him.’

  ‘What was he like?’

  ‘He was very special. We did all sorts of things together. We walked the weir once.’ She blinks, not understanding. ‘Do you know the river? The weir is upstream from here. The long one with a bend in the middle.’

  She waits for me to go on.

  ‘We walked across the top. It isn’t really difficult, lots of kids do it now, but my mother thought I was too little. I’d only just learnt to swim.’ She still looks as if she doesn’t understand, or that she disapproves of him doing something so dangerous. ‘The journey was a kind of initiation. My father was proud of me.’

  ‘I’m sure he was. He never did anything inappropriate, did he?’

  ‘Inappropriate?’ I frown down at my hands. She is making no sense. Then it hits me. The heat spreads up from my neck until my whole face is burning. She thinks my father abused me. How could she imagine such a thing? She never met my father. He was probably dead before she was born. I look round the room again, at her bookcase with medical tomes ordered by size and at a glass cabinet with metal instruments. ‘How can you ask that? My father was a doctor, like you.’

  ‘Even doctors are not perfect.’ The tap in the basin, where she washed her hands though she did not need to as she hardly touched me, drips loudly. She gets up to turn it off more tightly.

  Was that what Louise meant when she said Jane was like me? Do they think my father was like the men that Jane’s mother entertains? I can never face them again.

  The doctor is sitting in her chair waiting for me to say something. ‘You’ve got it all wrong. Can I have an operation?’

  She picks up a pen and starts to doodle on her notepad. ‘I don’t think that will be necessary. It is very unlikely that you have anything physically wrong. I think you have been frightened and need to talk to someone. I can arrange …’

  I get up and head for the door. I don’t need to talk. I need to have an operation to make me like other people. How dare she suggest my father could do anything to me?

  ‘If you change your mind …’

  I fling open the door and let it bang behind me.

  Stumbling out of the surgery I find my way to the river. Not watching my feet I tread in a cowpat and have to turn my foot from side to side to wipe the shit from my shoe. As I look up I see the house at the top of the field. I have walked two miles from the town in a daze.

  I stride on towards the weir, my hands clenched deep in my pockets. The wind blowing down the valley numbs my face. Doctors are hopeless. My father would have understood – wouldn’t he? He had been gentle and
practical, not like that probing woman. Under cover of kindness she ripped my defences away and left me naked.

  I remember the tender way he dressed the cut in my foot after we had walked the weir. That had been the best day of my life, sitting under that tree with the caterpillar.

  A wave of nausea grips my body. I stand stiff as my mouth fills with saliva, and the taste of sick rises in my throat. With a deep breath I hold it down but my heart is racing and my forehead is drenched with sweat. Bending over I retch but nothing comes up. The doctor’s fingers on my knee are those of my father stroking my leg as we sat side by side on the grass. Have I forgotten that on purpose? Against my will I remember the feel of his hands as he tucked my dress into my pants before we ventured into the water.

  The doctor’s words are eating into me like acid into metal. How dare she make such accusations? I lean against the trunk of a weeping willow tree, my hand on the rough bark. A spider’s web is stretched between two branches with a half-digested fly dangling from it. On a normal day I would take my father’s magnifying glass from my pocket and check to see if it is a garden orb web spider or some less common species. Today the very glass is poisonous.

  Upstream some lads are throwing stones into the water. Their laughter echoes down the valley, mocking me. A gravel island divides the stretch of river in front. The familiar murmur of the small rapid on the far side usually fills me with delight. Now it is a jangled cacophony. I move to the bank and stare into the pool below me. My ancestors fished here, on the edge of the field where a madman roamed as he tended the cows. Perhaps I am tainted by the history embedded in the land. That doctor must have sensed a whiff of insanity as I lay exposed on her couch.

  Gazing into the river I feel drawn to the weedy depths. If I let myself fall forward the swirling eddies of water will wash me clean. I see a white shape lying there, eddies of current swirling the gown around her body. I lean further forward and my face is reflected by the side of the pale image. I am falling…

  A movement by my side jolts me upright. How long has Quentin been standing there? The damp grass must have muffled his footsteps. He says nothing as he too stares into the water. I had not told him I was seeing the doctor today but he may have guessed. He waits for me to speak but I am dumb in my cocoon of misery. I cannot risk breaking the shell that holds me together.

  Eventually he asks, ‘Are you all right?’

  I glance at him and look away to the trees on the other side where I once saw a kingfisher. That had been my magic land but there is no flash of blue today, not even a crow or pigeon to disturb the branches. As the minutes pass I can feel the man at my side nudging my thoughts away from the edge.

  ‘My ancestors used to fish this river.’ They are so real, so present, more alive than the man at my side.

  ‘Looks like a good spot.’ He reaches for my hand. I let it lie still in his for a moment before turning.

  ‘I’ve seen the doctor. She says my problem is all in my mind. She wants me to see a specialist – a psychiatrist, I suppose. I’m not mad, am I?’

  ‘Of course you’re not mad.’ The force behind his words loosens the stiffness of my face and I manage a weak smile. ‘That’s better.’ He puts his arm firmly round my waist. ‘Maybe she wants you to see a gynaecologist.’

  ‘I don’t think so. She said it was not likely to be anything physical.’ I can’t tell him that she is blaming my father. I would rather be mad in some way than allow myself to consider he did anything wrong.

  ‘Come and have a drink and tell me about it.’

  I look back at the water. The surface is wrinkled by the current but there is no sign of a corpse in the murky depths. ‘There’s nothing much to tell. My muscles went rigid as they always do but she said she didn’t think there was anything wrong with my body.’

  ‘We don’t need to worry then.’ He tries to lead me away, but my feet won’t move.

  ‘It’s this place…’ I can’t go on.

  ‘You’re very cold. Come away now.’

  I become aware of the chill that has spread through my whole body. I can’t remember how long I have been standing there. The children’s voices disappeared ages ago. I allow him to take me up the field and back to his flat. He pours me a brandy. I don’t like it very much but the warmth revives me. Quentin sits on the opposite side of the electric fire that he has turned full on for my benefit. Stretching his long legs out in front of him he tells me about a patient he saw that morning. ‘This old duck always mumbles, but today she’d left her teeth at home. It was even more difficult than usual to understand what she was saying.’ His voice is soothing, and I am glad not to have to say anything. ‘While she lay on her side to have her treatment, I moved a chair close to her head. She told me about her cat.’

  He is trying to take my mind off my worries and goes on in a sing-song, story-telling voice. ‘Yesterday it brought a live mouse into her house. She planned to hit it on the head with a dustpan brush, but kept missing. She waved her arm about showing how hard she tried. In the process she almost threw herself into my lap.’ Quentin gets up and swats the air in imitation of her efforts and I let out a small laugh. He tops up my glass and asks if I have made any plans for Christmas.

  ‘I’m going to Briony in London.’ The words making their way out of my throat sound almost normal. The voice gives me the courage to try to say more. ‘They do the traditional family things. She thinks I should not be alone this first year without my mother. You must want to spend time with your children.’

  ‘Yes and no.’ He sips his own drink. ‘My wife’s being difficult. She says she doesn’t want me in the house. I may have to stay in a hotel and see the children there.’

  ‘That sounds bleak. I’m not really looking forward to it much either. I don’t find Briony’s children easy.’

  He smiles across the fire at me. ‘Let’s have our own celebration before we go away.’

  My heart lifts. ‘I could cook something special and then show you over the house. You said you wanted to see it.’

  ‘I’ll provide the wine and some table fireworks. You do like them?’

  ‘I adore them, so long as you don’t set fire to the house.’

  ‘I only light fires in the garden, never in the house.’

  The smile in his voice warms me. When he comes to sit on the arm of my chair I lean against him. Perhaps this man, so firm yet sensitive, is the one to help me become a proper woman. ‘Can you eat pheasant? I’ve got a recipe of my grandmother’s, done with black and green grapes.’

  ‘Umm…’ He lifts my hand and puts it to his lips. I manage to look fully into his eyes. ‘Now we know there is nothing wrong with you,’ he says, ‘you don’t need to avoid me.’

  ‘I haven’t been avoiding you.’

  ‘No? Oh well, perhaps you’ve just been busy.’

  I could make all sorts of excuses about how busy I have been but I want to be honest with him. ‘Although I’ve had masses to do with the school play and everything, you’re right. I was so worried about seeing the doctor…’

  ‘I think you should put that out of your mind now.’ He slips his hand onto the back of my head and turns my face towards him to press his lips to mine. For the first time since the buttery bonfire kisses it feels as if he really means it.

  Chapter 8

  In an attempt to put the meeting with the doctor and all my problems out of my mind, I immerse myself in work. Preparations for the nativity play are way behind schedule. Whenever I ask for help the others slide away from me, as if they are afraid my bereaved state may contaminate them. I can no longer cope on my own and ask Jim to call an emergency meeting. I tell them that unless I get some help there will be no play this year. ‘I can’t do it all by myself.’

  An uncomfortable silence fills the room. Louise picks her nails and Mrs Hendry looks out of the window. Jim does nothing to ease the tension. At last Tracy speaks. ‘We have tried to help but you’re so prickly, Meena, nothing we suggest is right.’

/>   Not one of them will meet my gaze. I may be tainted, warped by my past, but I have tried so hard to carry on as normal. I lose my cool. ‘That’s not fair.’ I am shouting but I don’t care. ‘You all know what needs to be done. The tableaux must be planned and the children need to start rehearsing.’

  Louise looks up ‘Surely they’re always the same, the standard ones: the manger, the kings and shepherds.’

  I turn on her. ‘You don’t care about the children. We have to adapt the story to use their individual talents. None of you have offered to stay after school to help me decide which part would suit each child best.’

  ‘You haven’t asked us.’ Mrs Hendry puts her oar in as usual. After all my efforts it is still my fault. Briony said I was always a martyr… well, never again. I get to my feet. ‘Someone else had better take over.’

  Jim does now speak, in a measured voice. ‘That’s enough. Meena is right, the children come first. We must do what we can to retrieve the play for them.’ I edge towards the door. ‘Don’t be silly, Meena. Come and sit down.’

  I shake my head and remain standing.

  ‘We’re a small group,’ he goes on, ‘and if one of us is upset we all feel it to some extent. Several of the children are causing concern this term, as you all know.’

  Jane is now on the ‘At Risk’ register. No definite signs of abuse have been found but we have been told to keep a careful eye on her. She is still wet most days, and she clings to me in the staff toilets, making no move to help herself as I soap and dry her. When I have finished she looks up with such a trusting smile that my heart turns over. ‘I’m sorry. I suppose I am still a bit upset.’ I force myself to return to my chair.

  Tracy speaks with sudden resolve. ‘I’ll do the costumes. I know two or three of the mothers who will help. I’ll get them to make cardboard halos and wings for the angels. We can use up that gold paint we have left from last year.’

  Pictures begin to form in my mind. ‘Could you sprinkle glitter on them while the paint is still wet?’

  ‘I might manage that.’ She smiles and the tightness in my chest eases.