Girl in Profile

by Zillah Bethell

Elizabeth

  Westerns

  Dear Elizabeth,

  Boy am I sore. I’ve taken up football in rec. I mostly play on the line doing the dirty work – blocking, rushing the passes, that sort of thing. The side to side movements have my ankles and knees sore as heck. You know I’ve got the heart of an eighteen-year-old, but my body tells me I’m forty. Think I’ll ever learn? Ha ha. These young guys that think they’re hot, the old man surprised them some. It’s fun to try to prove them wrong.

  My cellie Buckwheat got a stay of execution while they wait on a case in West Virginia. It sounds good at first, but they can take a stay and go on and execute you. A stay is not completely safe. But I’m happy for him. I fully expected him to go. He honestly said I can’t see myself growing old here and living the rest of my life here. Maybe it’ll be for the best. He has a dream where he has ninety candles on his cake and he wakes up just before he can blow them out. You’d love Buckwheat. He’s a no-nonsense, very honest, speaks from the heart guy. We watch westerns together. He’s the guy who gallops up to the corral in a cloud of dust. I’m the guy laid back on the grass with a hat over my face, maybe chewing on a stick of gum. Kind of lazy. Kind of indolent.

  Cardinals are kicking butt. A seven-and-a-half game lead. They stay real consistent and that helps. Seems like they’re coming together at the right time. Our pitching staff is getting healthy again as well. That, my friend, is where the games are won and lost. Cardinals are probably one of the better defensive teams going. Defending and pitching are the two main ingredients of a championship team.

  I had some words with the prison chaplain the other day. He said Moses was a basket case too, and then he parted the Red Sea. Makes you wonder what he’s got in mind for me. As a great catcher from the 1950s team of the New York Yankees, Yogi Berra, said, “It ain’t over till it’s over.”

  I’m sending two pictures to you and you can keep them. These are my wonderful kids whom I love so much. I got them from Mary, my ex-wife. My daughter is wearing some make-up and a little lipstick – my baby’s growing up!

  God, I wish Minnie would visit.

  Gwen

  Preparing the Canvas

  I prime canvases endlessly, try not to wait for you. Warm rabbit glue in a copper pan, add a little chalk, stir the mixture gently with a wooden spoon. Sometimes I let the liquid boil so that it fills with air bubbles that will leave little sinkholes in the linen. Apply to the canvas with a wide brush or cloth. Wipe clean. Repeat. Behold – a perfect canvas, an undulating skin ready to be coloured in.

  Ida’s Death

  Augustus writes that Ida has died giving birth to their fifth son. I send violets. She has gone to a cave where the air is light and she can breathe, he says. Another cave, nonetheless. What has she done since Slade? Have babies, cure freckles, share my brother’s bed with Dorelia. What has she drawn? Absolutely nothing. Her head was too full of babies’ cries. There was not enough space for her own voice. She toasted love at the end in Vichy water. I suppose it’s all she had. I bite my hands. We go to heaven in single file, one by one, not with our lovers, our babies. They do not erect monuments to people who have lovers and babies. They erect monuments to people who paint something. Something good. Poor sweet Ida.

  Elizabeth

  Colonising Mars

  Time hovers in the Blue Room like a dragonfly over the meniscus. We are the algae, the meniscus, everything teeming beneath, within, seemingly stagnant on top. Sometimes it darts at us, merciful, quick, carries one of us off in its hinged mandibles.

  “And shall we colonise Mars?” the visitor asks, an expert on orchids and climate change. “With packets of seeds?”

  “Oh yes,” the stephanotis claps. “Eleanor would do it. Eleanor would have done it. She carried seeds in an old clutch bag she bought in a Honiton antiques shop. She was a great one for the dahlias.”

  Everyone suddenly has a favourite flower to be saved from extinction.

  “You can’t beat roses.”

  “Bluebells.”

  “Snowdrops.”

  “I want troubadours in my wreath when I die.”

  “Marguerites.”

  “From the garage every time. And they were always fucking wilted by the time I got them in the vase.”

  “Oh my goodness, she said, don’t you just love butter?”

  “Dandelion’s a weed.”

  My mind’s a blanket. Flowers galorey my husband would bring the morning after, yet I can’t think of a single one.

  “Tulips.”

  Peter Pan wheels in, his face glistening with too much soap and too many sardines. “Hyacinths for me,” he says. “Every time.”

  My heart ascends a scale in C major, no sharps, no flats. Keep your fingers curved as if you’re holding a mouse. Don’t let him go, don’t let him slip.

  Gwen

  Notebook Entry

  RULES TO KEEP THE WORLD AWAY.

  Do not indulge in sensual reverie.

  Do not look in shop windows.

  Do not crave affection where none is to be found.

  Work for one moment, work for eternity.

  Letter From Rodin

  My dear Gwen Marie,

  My deepest condolences at your tristesse. I shall come to see you tomorrow in the evening. Remember that life and death revolve in each other’s arms like dancing partners.

  Auguste

  Moth

  Pot Noodles

  I place Jamie’s medication carefully in the fridge and turn up my Benefit High Beam cheek-illuminating smile. I can’t wait for these boys to blossom under my parenting skills. A kind word, a bit of sympathy and compassion, that’s all they need.

  “So. It’s a lovely day. Let’s all get out for a walk in the sunshine with Mr Stinks.”

  “Who’s that?” Max, a miniature Harry Potter complete with identikit lightning scar on his forehead, looks round warily like he expects some old tramp to come waltzing Matilda through the door.

  “Our dog.”

  “Does he shit off all the time?” Jamie grins. “Does he fart in your face? I’ll train him if you like. I’ve trained Max to pee into his own mouth. And he sucks my willy in the bath.”

  My two are giggling hysterically now, but I keep my Benefit High Beam smile on full power. These are shock tactics of course. I’m not in the least fazed by them. “Let’s get going then.”

  “I’m hungry,” wails Max. “I want my dinner first.”

  Jesus H, it’s ten in the morning. “Did you have any breakfast?”

  “Nah.” Both boys bring a Pot Noodle out of their rucksack. “Dad always gives us these.”

  “Well, your mother’s back tomorrow so things’ll go back to normal soon I’m sure.”

  “She always gives us these as well, but not Bombay Bad Boy cos it’s too spicy.”

  I boil the kettle, fix the Pot Noodles. Roan and Dove sniff the air longingly, but I remind them that they will be having a proper lunch later – fluffy cheese on toast à la Annabel Karmel.

  Max’s glasses steam up as he scoffs his chicken and mushroom at a temperature saints must burn at. The only other person I’ve known to do this is a girl in primary school who had green snot dangling permanently from either nostril.

  “Yuk.” I can’t help myself as both boys tip their pots up to their lips to drain the last dregs of sauce. Jamie bends one eye on me while the other travels so far left I feel like I’m in the presence of Mad Eye Moody. Which is a bit of a worry; at the end of Harry Potter everyone cops it. It’s a fucking bloodbath. Even poor old Hedwig blows up in a side car.

  Elizabeth

  Skinny Minnie/Eton Mess

  I’m sitting on the wicker chair by the window when Minnie comes in. Looking at Caldey Island and the sea. I know she’s there even before she speaks. She’d knock the air molecules out of the room, that one, with her presence.

  “Nana.”

  “Minnie.” I spin, tilt on my own axis. The world topples. “Your hair’s pink!”

 
; “Strawberry champagne, actually. With a hint of Bucks Fizz.”

  I laugh, stand up with my back to the window. It’s the best way to look at a rainbow, with your back to the sun. She’s wearing a dress like the petals of a sunflower and vintage winkle-pickers on her tiny, high-arched feet.

  “You look … radiant.”

  “So you know then.”

  I nod. There’s a slight curve of the belly, probably only discernible to me, to her mother. But she was always so skinny. Skinny Minnie, we called her. Skinny Minnie who could draw stallions and chaffinches at the age of three; Skinny Minnie who was modelling at fourteen; Skinny Minnie with her Rapunzel gold hair and her beautiful bones.

  She flops down on the bed and starts pulling at a loose patchwork thread. “I suppose you think I should get rid of it, too.” Suddenly aggressive, defiant, as vulnerable as a child, though she has a fish in her tummy and a silver star in her nose.

  “Of course not.” I lean over and kiss the strawberry champagne. It smells like a kitten. “When are you due?”

  “Christmas. I thought of Holly. D’you like it?”

  “Yes, very much.” I smile. We always know what sex we’re creating. Either that, or we wish them into being.

  “Mum says I’ll never finish my degree, if I have her.”

  I tread around the landmines, wishing I had a protective helmet. “How is your mother?”

  “Oh, you know.”

  Yes, I know. Fiercer than tigers, intricate as clocks. Always on the lookout for a new sunrise, a new ship.

  “She’s up for some award again.”

  A small bubble of pride, like a snow globe I shake occasionally. Watch the snow fall like dandruff onto my daughter’s white coat, my son’s strong yet scholarly shoulders.

  “Anyway, I’ve got a job.”

  “Oh?”

  “In a tattoo parlour.”

  It takes all of the strength in my wizened old body not to move a muscle. Strange how sometimes it takes more strength to say nothing, do nothing. At the still point, there the dance is, Peter Pan says. Like a tornado’s heart.

  “I’ve only done designs so far, and Chris says they’re amazing. I can’t wait to turn them into skin. When you think about it, it’s the ultimate canvas. It’s alive. It scars, bleeds, ages, shrinks, and the artwork just has to go with it. How cool is that?”

  I invite her to stay for tea and cake. Peter Pan wheels in with a book on horticulture and a stench of rotting compost. She is very kind to him. Minnie is always kind.

  So glad to know Nana has a friend in the home. So sad to make it short and sweet. Nick revving up the engine as we speak. Hours scouring Port Eynon for a little something for his parents. Lunch in Bath. Very posh. The seagulls, yes, bombarding us like kamikaze pilots. In the end a doorstop from a little old junk shop in the shape of a carousel horse. Dented in parts but vintage kitsch if you know what I mean.

  I listen to her chittering on. Her colours refract, shimmer through the raindrops in my eyes. She’s about to disappear. How beautiful, rare and brief rainbows are. They must be the prick teasers of the meteorological world, and the clouds like pot-bellied weak-bladdered old men scuttling after them.

  “Bye, Nana. Love you.”

  “Love you too, Cheeks. It was wonderful to see you. Don’t forget your folic acid, all the essential oils.”

  She winks, pokes her tongue out, winkle-pickers off, and the floorboards squeak in protest beneath her tiny, high-arched feet. Don’t go. Not yet. How evanescent and selfish youth is.

  “In the female dragonfly,” Peter Pan pronounces from his wheelchair, “the maiden flight is always vertical. Then subject to the prevailing wind.”

  The wind. A slovenly old bag who farts beneath her party frock, whips a wig off her own head to reveal a bald moon staring down on a grim and grimy sea. Old cuttlefish, cola bottles, seagull smears. The rain pisses down from the pot-bellied weak-bladdered old men, and I wonder if the monks on Caldey Island ever eat their own ice cream. If, during a vow of silence, any of them ever scream. Or do they kneel for eternity in a row of tornado hearts, like artichoke plants.

  Gwen

  Sex and Sinkholes

  He fades me like the sun. If I gaze too long upon him. I wriggle from beneath the thickened waist, step carefully over Edgar, who immediately jumps into my warm soiled space. Just like Dorelia. Warm the brown teapot, wipe the William Morris cup he admires, prepare some chestnuts in milk for his digestion. It scares me, sometimes, to think how old he is. He props himself up on a loose-tissued arm, watches me work.

  “You are form in air, like a statue. You have no bad sides or angles. You are magnificent.”

  “Thank you.” I pull on my white tunic nonetheless.

  “You have made preparations.” He indicates the canvases, the pictures of Fenella. “You have revealed the art of undressing. It is sad and sensual naturellement as all love is. It is an outburst.”

  I bring the chestnut milk, sit at the foot of the bed. “Directed at you,” I challenge him.

  He laughs, and I am suddenly angry that he is old, that Ida is dead, that my canvases remain unadorned, that I am so timorous of the world yet so desirous of its pleasures. “I’m the crumpled glove my master warms his thumb in when he chooses.”

  The lines on his forehead turn into calligraphy. “I came here to console you, comfort you in your grief.”

  “How very noble.” I pull up my tunic, straddle the thickened waist. Edgar jumps down obligingly. Just like Ida.

  My body buckles, undulates, overheats, fills with sinkholes, air bubbles.

  “Your face is wetter than your minge,” he chides.

  “Does it bother you?”

  “Not at all.”

  First he colours me, then he mottles, finally he bleaches.

  Opening the curtains wide, I suck him in, absorb him, inhale him, exhale him. Inhale him, exhale him.

  Even when he’s gone and my eyes are closed, he goes on burning my retinas.

  Elizabeth

  Letter To Death Row

  Dear James,

  I’m Odette tonight. All feathers and glitter, and the shapes I make you wouldn’t believe. I spin, conduct the air, twist and plait the atmosphere. From a distance this life looks perfect like a set of veneered teeth, but don’t forget that underneath we’ve been pared down to fit. Pared down to the bone, the stump. We’re merely groundhoppers really. Close to, we cry, pant, thump. You’d be surprised how loud it is if you’re sitting in the pit. Our panda eyes as the greasepaint melts. Our stepladdered tights and ladybird pumps as our sinews strain, the toenails curl. Behind the ethereal being is a surprisingly muscular heart.

  Gwen

  The Little Interior

  “How can you love him?” L’Homme Femme demands, applying the calendula I brought for her scalded arm in fierce sharp dabs. “He’s pompous shit. Merde. He’s like a cathedral in awe of his own grandeur. Thinking his spire reaches up to heaven.”

  “Well,” I giggle. “That’s true. But in a hundred years’ time his work will be in every museum in the world, still covered in thumbprints. Philosophers will have a carte postale of The Thinker on their desks. Lovers will have one of The Kiss on their dressing tables.”

  “And what about your work?” She pours cardamom tea from a pot the colour of faded pansies, decaying flowers. “What will become of that?”

  I shrug, gaze about the room. The little interior so like my own: the round table, the teapot which from where I sit looks as if it has no spout, no phallic adornment, the paints, overalls, smock. How hard it is to create light and space for ourselves as women. I should like to paint so that the viewer has to work hard also to create light and space within my pictures. “My friend Ursula is an artist who lives with her parents. Sometimes she has to go into the middle of a field to scream.”

  “Bien sûr. We must be ruthless. There is no place for family. Or love.”

  I think of my father playing the organ every Sunday in Gumfreston, his
foot firmly pressed on the tenuto pedal of grief. “If I could make a living out of my painting that would be a start. The rest I leave to others. But I think if I am left alone without distraction I can produce something good.”

  “So. Let the pompous turd shake at his own wonder. Start to tremble a little at yours.”

  Moth

  Cunts and Flying Saucers

  We trudge down the hill, Ro racing ahead with Mr Stinks. What a delight – a boy and his dog running through the countryside. Jamie whacks nettles with a big stick.

  “If we had some string,” his voice gleams, “we could have a conker fight.”

  “Absolutely not. No, no, no. We don’t have any in the house.”

  “Everyone has string. You must be mental.”

  “Yes, we do have string.” Dove pulls me up. “In the drawer by the sink in the kitchen.”

  “Oh, yes, sweetheart, we did. But Daddy took it to work this morning. Oh look, here’s Cherry with her nana.”

  Nana Rottweiler is hurtling towards us with a pram so shrouded in shawls and blankets it’s impossible to discern its contents. Jamie and Max charge up. Even Roan and Dove peer in tentatively.

  “Fucking hell.” Max steps back. “Have you been feeding her Bombay Bad Boy?”

  “She looks very…” I fumble for a word like a stone in my pocket.

  “Red?” Jamie offers, his magical eye travelling so fast I catch it with a grin.

  “Well. She looks very well.”

  “Teethin’, innit. Little cunt. Kept me up half the night.”

  “Oh dear. Well, we better get on. Lovely day for a walk.”

  “For them what’s got the legs.”

  She puffs off and Ro falls in beside me, his face solemn.

  “What does cunt mean exactly? I thought it was a swear word.”

  “Mo’s just saying she’s a bit cheeky, a bit naughty.”

  “Like Dove.”

  “No, not like Dove. Not at all.”