by Stella Duffy
Since then I have been offered another chance to view you, laid out on equally cool white sheets. They said it might have helped. But I wasn’t interested in making it better. They could not make you better, you were my very best, so why bother? I closed the wide eye-shutters on their kind offer. Some sights should remain unseen wonders; wonder-full, awe-full. Awful.
You and I swimming. You have always swum further, faster, deeper than me. I would struggle to keep up, against the current, against the waves, against my grain. I am really a land person, understand dirt, rocks, hills, mountains, prefer my horizon bordered with recognizable jigsaw edge pieces. You like a long straight line of water against the sky, would swim far out until I was left behind, bobbing in the shallows, straining salt-splashed eyes for your return. No change there then. But I always enjoyed the intensity of your enjoyment, happily lay hours on the beach, leathering my skin as you watered your parched soul, several summers of block-buster reading discarded for the better-seller option of reviewing you.
Fifth morning and I found myself watching the man again. This time from my bedroom window, wet day, no sleep, no energy to make the dressed politeness of dining room breakfast, I sipped already cold tea with UHT milk and couldn’t taste the difference anyway. He walked through the morning drizzle, apparently untouched by the disgruntled irritation of bed and breakfasters all along the coast, their one-week-a-year panic settling and sending out just-suppressed fury, a heavy wave of pissed-off mist lining the damp shore. It seemed though that perhaps this was just what the man wanted. Empty coastline, morning haze, ugly mudflats of low tide exposing the bird breakfast smorgasbord. Like him, you wouldn’t have cared about the weather, might even have welcomed the rain, clearing the sea for your endeavours alone. But you wouldn’t have seen his sights. Your eye would have been trained on the fuzzy horizon, the thin grey line blurred by the cool land and the warm rain. You would have walked right past him, run even, to get into the water, drench your skin in its welcoming cold. But I watched him searching carefully, patiently training his eye on something too far to touch, too wild to get close, yet there. Within his sights. Watching and noting and writing down the real. And then I found I’d been watching the man for three hours. He’d been watching the birds for three hours. It was almost midday, the clouds began to clear and the beach-bound families re-found their summer resolve – we will play on the beaches, come rain or shine. The shine finally came and so did they, deserting the indoor shopping malls for the outdoor version. The bird man turned away. Clearly needed fewer people for his telescopic foray. It seemed that perhaps no people might suit him better. Made sense to me. And I began to think about what he was looking at, that he seemed to have made it his job to view what was actually there.
When they told me what had happened, it was impossible to believe. Not that I chose not to believe, or couldn’t understand, simply too far-fetched for truth. We’d talked about it. Late-night lover conversations, ‘How will I survive without you?’, ‘You won’t ever have to.’ ‘I’m never leaving you.’ ‘I’m never leaving you.’ ‘If anything ever happens to me I’ll come back.’ ‘Promise?’ ‘Promise.’ But it wasn’t something else that happened to you. Not something outside, beyond our control, no freak accident, creeping disease that took you. They told me that you took yourself, the creeping disease of accidental freak. You should have come to find me, confided in me. You should have cooled yourself swimming in me, but while I could always lose myself in you, soothe myself in you, it seems the reverse was not true. In summer, in London, sweltering city of land-locked people and grid-locked cars, you could find no water-marked horizon to cool yourself, so you swam out into the sky instead. Diving towards a sharp line horizon that could not be real, swimming yourself to the same place.
And it seems I’ve been doing the same. Training my telescopic eye on the not-there. Scanning impossible horizons for a blessed untruth, notebook and pen poised to record the self-created hope.
The next day, a solid night’s sleep for the first time in nearly a year, and again I am up before the sun has made it through the thick morning drizzle. My bags are packed, my room tidied, and I’m on the shore before all the other visitors who have learned to wait until at least five hours of daylight has burnt away the rain. I carry you to the shore as you sometimes tried to carry me. Picking me up and stumbling a few feet to dump me in the water, both of us tumbling in the waves and each other. I carry the full urn and take this chance to look at you, really see what is here, not my dream of you. The truth is that you are ashes. That is all you are. And ashes cannot come back to me. I can see the bird man, maybe three hundred feet away, his telescope trained on the high cliff to our right. The breakfast waitress told me he had hoped to sight a pair of gannets this week, that someone had told him they had been seen around here recently staying on too long into summer, a special treat for the watcher. She told me gannets mate for life. It’s a nice idea, but I don’t know much about birds, don’t care much about birds. It turns out the hope of flight was your thing, not mine. The man raises a hand to wave to me, after all, we’ve seen each other every morning, every day, for almost a week now. But I don’t respond. I have a job to do. Something real of my own to view. I have the truth of you to concentrate on. The water is warmer than I had expected. I walk out to almost waist deep. There is very light rain, a thin horizon of pale grey, the certainty of bright sunshine in another hour or so. I’m training my vision only on what is here, now. I’m holding the urn that is holding you and walking out to do the right thing.
Mid-summer, warm water, me flesh, you ashes. Mid-summer, warm water, me here, you gone. Mid-water, hot summer, you’re gone, I’m here. Mid-me, then mid-you, scatter the summer of you in the warm water around me. Swimming with summer you in the warm water, scattering around the swimming me. Me swimming in you, in letting go, leaving you, swimming around, scattering in me. You and me and summer water, the warmth of the waves and a thin grey horizon that is growing stronger with the hotter sun, bluer as the bright light burns off the misty grey. I am letting you go. Like the bird man, I will concentrate only on what I can see. Breathe in deep only what I can see. Breathe in. I can see you. Sea me. We too are warm. We two are warm.
Later, the bird man, unfortunately not much of a swimmer himself, said it had certainly looked as if the woman knew where she was swimming to.
Being the Baroness
I HAVE BECOME THE Baroness. I almost don’t know how it happened, as if the time that passed did so on grandma’s footsteps, creeping up to catch me out. One day I was Liesl, wet dress of palest pink clinging to my sixteen-going-on-twenty-one breasts, panting the possibilities of all things male beyond my ken (sure they were, Barbie) and the next, I am the Baroness. Madam not Mademoiselle, Senora not Senorita. I am the adult woman, I pour the tea, I drink pure and simple cocktails that do not have double entendre names, I have a winter wardrobe that goes into storage with the first cuckoo. I did not mean to get here. Be her. I didn’t know it could happen so soon. Twenty-six years so soon.
I’m very well groomed, I do not mourn the flesh of my youth. I have no cause for complaint against myself, the outer layer, the visuals remain beyond reproach. The gold sheath dress I wore for my last dinner would not stretch to fit half the younger women I know. They don’t seem to try very hard any more, these young girls, they think it’s easy, that it’s just coming to them, that they deserve it all. Our sacrifices, my sacrifice, handed over on a plate of what you will. The young women I see in the streets, on the screens, in their flabbiness of youth – late twenties, early thirties even some of them, still certain there’s time to take it in hand, fix themselves up, make the flesh work for them before the moment has passed. When it already has. (If you know there is a moment to pass – then believe me, my dear, it’s passed you by.) They are late already, these younger women of my acquaintance, distant relation. Some of them too late now, some of them were always too late, born too late, made too late by their own ignorance or inten
tional unknowing. I see these girls-to-women and understand that they have missed the moment of conquest without realising, observe the ones who will never look back on a time of iridescent beauty, golden power. I can. I do. Perhaps that is what makes it so hard now. How much I know of then.
There are seven stages of woman.
First is Gretl, small and stocky, body too sturdy for the delicacy of childhood. A Gretl is cute and keen to grow, and she is interchangeable with Marta, the forgotten girl, the other one. (Dark hair, just a year older, no-one remembers her name.) Next comes Brigitta. Ten years old and for Brigitta the world is all books and possibility and hiding in the pages from an outside that threatens too soon to intrude, the beginnings of womanhood that are alien, frightening. Brigitte wanders lost in the space made by the woman she is yet to become. Louisa and Liesl are third and fourth. The interchange between nearly and not quite there. The natural blonde of the classic virgin and the rouged brunette of growing knowing. They represent those few years where the pendulum swings in a single day, a momentous hour, from girl to woman and back again. Ballet to boys, mischief to men.
When I was Liesl I knew nothing. Not really. Certainly I knew bachelor dandies, drinkers of brandies – what young woman does not? (Only the young woman whose words are written by an older man.) I was born knowing the ways of men. What I did not know were the ways of women. And to know only half the truth, is to know close to nothing at all. Men have always been easy for me, moveable, pliable, play-able. Women were my mystery. Myself included. It took time to understand female, she-male, woman. Femininity on the other hand, that was simple. Femininity required merely a giggle of champagne and a dress of swirled organdy. What I learned, what I have acid-etched on my heart, took graduating from girl to woman. And not even aware I had studied. But I keep the knowledge. It is wiser to remember.
I learned that looking good is not good enough. Cunning is also required, and skill to catch him, art to hold him. Yet cunning is not sufficient either, there must also be love. And we had it, my Captain and me. (Lover Captain, not father Captain – I’m telling you an analogy, not a truth.) We had so much love, between us, I certainly had enough for two. And he had enough for me. Until he didn’t. Until he had her and she used it, used him, used his love, in that way little girls do, half-women do, using it all up and asking for more, demanding more. I have never asked for more, I am disciplined and self-denying and constrained. My will is the corset that holds me in, tempers my yearning, fits me for the pattern of my life. I have always hated the idea of looking needy, seeming greedy. (Silly me. It was her need he loved the most.)
This is how it was.
When I met Marcus I was just sixteen. He was twenty-eight. Far too young for me they said. Someone to flirt with perhaps, go out with once or twice, learn what I could, but not want, not really want. I would know better when I grew up, look back on this as a romance, a lesson in love. But I knew better even then. Knew that I would grow, and learn and change – and that probably, Marcus would not. He would, as every man does, pick his decade and stay there until his demise. Even then, at sixteen, I knew stasis was his outer form, and change my inner process. That I would change until I became what he required, and then I would do all in my power to stay there for him, and if I could not stay there wholly, I would at least manufacture the perfect mask that made it look as if I had. I had a plan, I expected it to work. And, like most plans, it did for a while. I waited and I matured and I became a lady, woman created of the open articulation of his wants. Marcus never had any qualms about expressing his wants. I developed personal poise and special talents, procured a double degree, an honours education, matriculated myself into Marcus’ mistress. At work I had a thriving business career, at home a fantastic act on my back. Front. Knees. All these things in which I have confidence. And nowhere to ply my trade.
Marcus meanwhile had acquired a wife. Of course he had. Who expected him to wait? Every man needs a first wife, someone to ready him for the second. A second wife can wear what she wants, classic gold, dark silver, maybe even tempt the jealous gods in a twist of green and blue. A first wife must always wear white. White suits no woman’s complexion, and ankle hiding is for Victorian tables. Every woman looks better in colour, best in black. We are washed out in witless white or worse, the latter day ironic ivory. (How these girls do that without wincing I don’t know, they might as well wear the stained sheet to the altar.) I had no intention of being just any other bride, covering my curves and bleaching out my beauty in a simplistic recreation of every other wedding. So I held out, made myself a better mistress as the first wife worsened. Readied myself to come first in second place.
Yes, I could have tried to be the first and only, done my best to take him on and found a way to make him stay. But even then, I knew myself, knew who I would become as well as I knew who he was, and would always be. Marcus needed a woman who was first-wife-material. And I am no-one’s material. I am tissue and flesh and blood, cannot be taken in or let out or cut and re-shaped, but by my own design. I just needed him to be ready, for me. And in time, he was. The first wife swept away, the bedroom door unlocked for me. He had always had the key to mine, now I had the key to his as well.
And it was good with Marcus. Passionate and fierce, of course, but also friendly. We were friends. I could make him laugh as no other woman could, read out a stupid newspaper item, recount a chance meeting at my work, act out the conversation I had intentionally overheard in a restaurant three nights earlier. Keeping tidbits for Marcus to enjoy later when we were alone. I knew what pleased him, and he knew my pleasures too. We dined together, drank together, shopped together. Marcus is the only man I have ever let shop for me. He is the only man I ever trusted to get it right. He would leave me naked in the hotel bed and return an hour or so later with something lovely in a box. A necklace, a bracelet, a dress. Something lovely wrapped in pale tissue, carefully boxed by sales assistant hands whose wages could never afford the gift I received so readily.
And when Marcus and I made love every time was like the first time. What more can be said? (Except that every time might also be the last time, I knew that too. Though I’m not sure he did.)
And time passes.
Yes, very well, though I would rather skip right over and move swiftly on, there is the fifth stage. Maria. Number Five. The Julie years. What is there to say of those women who give themselves to this time and stay there forever? That they are complicit, compliant? That their only desire is the ring on the finger, the key to the door, that they will subjugate and subdue their vital selves for the lightest weight of red gold? That they would trade the convent cloister for the marriage bed, maintaining vows of obedience in both, seeing no difference between bride of Christ or Christopher? Of course I despise these women, I was never able to be them – we all despise what we cannot bear to attempt. I could see the advantages, of course I could. Men adore a Maria, just enough verve to stand up to them, just enough sense to lie down in time. In truth, and not a little regret, I simply couldn’t shut myself up long enough to say, ‘I do, I will’ – and sound like I meant it.
Marcus was forty-two, I was thirty – I was just thirty. Young enough to turn heads purely with my youth, old enough to hold them turned with desire. I was wonderful – I am still wonderful, I know that – but I was truly wonderful then. And yet, that damned fifth stage has its charms too. Particularly if the woman knows how to work those charms. And work them she did. Worked them in seeming innocence and clumsy care, worked and wormed her way, right past me, to Marcus. And I attended his second wedding as his only mistress. Only as his mistress.
So we come to the sixth stage of woman, she who is beautiful and charmed and wealthy and elegant. Who has made herself so, piece by self-created piece. A Baroness who lives her own life on her own terms. And if, one night, stuck in her car with her best friend, she realizes in the pouring rain that she is forty and single, that she is Bette Davis as Margot Channing and all her career is not worth losin
g her man, if she sinks so low as to think this could be true – then a real Baroness would never dream of saying so out loud. The Baroness is a European invention, she does not indulge in American psychobabble. She swallows down her disappointment, knowing it will keep her thinner than gin, and holds it to herself. The Baroness is all gold. She does not reflect inwards.
I keep it all in, tighter than the leanest muscles my trainer punishes me for daily. And he stayed with me, Marcus, married one wife, then two, and stayed with me. Until he didn’t. Until there was a third wife and a third family and he became, not the lover with whom I was friends, but my friend. Marcus began to introduce me as his friend. The first time it happened was a tiny dagger to the bone, the second a tearing rip of sinew, muscle, and flesh, the third by-passed my heart entirely and shot straight through to the spleen, I bit back the bile. I knew then it was the end. And when he introduced me to a sharp young thing in a little black dress that was all angles and curves and perfectly proportioned and sex and restraint and right, not a hint of pink or baby blue in sight, I shook hands with an all-knowing replica of my twenty-years-younger self. I knew I was meeting the second mistress. She was good, I applauded his taste and I hated her, kissed him goodbye and I left the room.
Marcus made his right choices, I made mine. There was no recrimination, and tears are inappropriate in a silk blouse.