Idiopathy

by Byers, Sam

  Her mother was no different. If anyone, Katherine thought, should have been able to recognise her plight without said plight having to be overtly specified, surely it was her mother.

  ‘How are you, darling, are you well?’

  ‘Well …’

  ‘How’s your love life?’

  ‘I don’t want a love life.’

  ‘Now Katherine,’ said her mother. ‘We’ve talked about this. That sort of lifestyle is all very well when you’re young, but at some point …’

  ‘I’m off men,’ said Katherine, before shifting into indirect disclosure mode, which meant leaving a lot of pregnant (oh God …) pauses in which she took deep and ostentatiously shuddering breaths. ‘I’ve … I’ve got a lot going on.’

  ‘Oh, darling,’ said her mother, suddenly and satisfyingly horrified. ‘You’re not … I mean … You haven’t … You haven’t found religion, have you?’

  ‘No,’ said Katherine.

  ‘Oh thank Christ,’ said her mother.

  ‘It’s just …’ (deep breath) ‘a really hard time, you know?’

  ‘Don’t tell me about hard times, darling. I’ve had more hard times than you’ve had hot dinners. Speaking of which …’

  ‘I’m eating fine.’

  ‘Good.’

  There was a long pause.

  ‘I think I should come and visit,’ said her mother suddenly.

  ‘I’m very busy.’

  ‘No you’re not. I’ll come on Saturday. I’ll be passing anyway.’

  Katherine said nothing.

  ‘Aren’t you going to ask me why I’ll be passing?’ said her mother.

  ‘Why will you be passing?’ said Katherine flatly.

  ‘Your sister’s taking me on a spa weekend. Isn’t that lovely? She’s been working so hard, bless her, and she feels absolutely awful that she hasn’t had time to see me, so we’re going to have some good old-fashioned girl time. We can stop in to see you on the way.’

  ‘Wonderful,’ said Katherine.

  ‘Oh Katherine,’ said her mother. ‘Can’t you at least try to be nice?’

  For once, Katherine wasn’t lying when she told her mother she was off men. She could feel herself dissolving sexually. Her libido had somehow doubled yet also decentred, as if it were now situated somewhere outside of her and, greedy though it had become, she was unable to sate it simply because she was no longer able to locate it. Pornography and bruising masturbation weren’t helping. Images of men seemed fraught and distressing. Her body was unresponsive and blandly dry, yet somehow, somewhere in some part of her with which she was in less than perfect touch, the need for a fuck had never been stronger. Slippery as this urge was, she found it was better to extinguish it than to satisfy it, and nothing did that job better than the thought of children, which could turn lust to revulsion as rapidly as the little buggers seemed to turn pleasure to despair. Just as having problems made her feel suddenly inundated with the problems of others, so it seemed that just when she wanted to avoid not only the presence but even the suggestion of children, here they all were: tottering round town the regulation two paces behind their harried, stringy-haired mothers; getting screamed at outside the supermarket; dangling dead-weight from a white-knuckled parent as they were dragged from bus-stop to bus-seat and back again. Sometimes, in passing, they seemed to eye her, and she could never tell if they were seeking her solidarity or, in some eerily psychic way, saying to her: You’re next.

  Where children led, pity unerringly followed. The office was lousy with charity. In a convenient twofer, Dave on floor one was growing a beard for orphaned Malawi babies, then planning to shave it off for domestic violence. Donna on floor three was immersing herself in a bath full of baked beans for the dispossessed street kids of Burkina Faso. Birthdays were heralded with pinkly embossed cards proclaiming that the person in question’s gift had been converted into goats and couriered to Kenya. Even her alone-time wasn’t safe. Elle and Marie-Claire, usually such bastions of cheer, were smeared with weepy-eyed close-ups of little Ngugi or Jésus or Kalifa, with their cleft palates and Biafran bellies. Just two pounds a month can keep little Esmé in clean drinking water, they blared. Fifteen pounds buys Fatima a wooden leg. What, Katherine wondered, about the mothers? Feminism, it seemed, extended only as far as the childless or partnered. Once you popped a sprog and went it alone, you were little more than the unthinking delivery mechanism for another wasted innocent; the medium by which the misery of the world was multiplied. Why, she wondered, were people only capable of locating their pity in the most unchallenging of places? They responded to sadness only when it expressed itself as sadness, she thought. Sadness expressed as anger or hostility just turned people off. Why not a picture of her in a glossy magazine, streaked of makeup and ruffled of hair, with a caption that said Help us to stop Katherine going absolutely bat-shit mental. She couldn’t temper the outer manifestation of her sorrow. She would, she thought, go through all of this alone; the fear and the bitterness and the icy, nauseous starts to grey, lonely days, and at the end of it, whatever happened, all anyone would ever say would be oh, that poor child!

  Single mother, she thought. It had a branded ring to it: class-bound, wide open for judgement. No more the offhand excuse of never having met the right man. Now the truth was plain for all to see: fucked a very wrong man indeed. All this time, she thought, spent so carefully maintaining distance from and control over the lesser gender, and now here was this thing inside her that not only served as a continuous reminder of some of the most unsatisfying and ill-judged sex she’d ever had, but also, disgustingly, turned the absence of a man in her life from a secret sadness easily disguised as an ideological stance to a full-on yawning deficit.

  She was already assembling a protective veneer of tragedy. The father, she imagined herself saying, had been a wonderful man: masculine and independent; sensitive and attentive, with a job that was both altruistic and admirably dangerous. Nothing military or police related, of course – there was something deeply unfeminist about being an army widow. Perhaps an award-winning photojournalist renowned for documenting the human toll of under-reported wars. Touchingly, with a carefully controlled glisten in her eyes, she would tell the story of how he’d placed his handsome, desert-toughened hand on her belly, his Tag Heuer diving watch glinting in the candlelight, and told her he was giving it all up to be with her and his baby. Just one more job and I’m through, he would have said, promising a desk job, an end to the nights of worry when she’d woken in the early hours fearing that some awful yet wonderfully poignant fate had befallen him. There was, he’d have told her, just one more atrocity to document; one more global tragedy to brilliantly yet reductively symbolise in the face of an innocent yet suspiciously well-posed child. She would describe in detail their last night together; the conversation they’d had about names (Leica if it was a girl, Pentax for a boy); about moving to a bigger home; about the values and skills they would instil in little Pentax from the moment he was born; the way she’d woken in the morning to find a rose on her pillow and his watch on the nightstand to remember him by; and the way she’d woken again in the night, two days later, and known, just known that something awful had happened, because (deep breath; Pinter pause) … his watch had stopped. People would admire her. They’d think she was one of those resilient types. She’d be So Brave, So Strong.

  Something had to be done. She needed, she knew, to take control. Things were getting the better of her. She did not want to be the sort of person of whom things got the better. She decided to begin with the question of income.

  ‘I’ve switched to soup,’ said her manager, wresting the lid off a thermos. ‘I just couldn’t take that soggy bread any more.’

  ‘I un-quit,’ said Katherine.

  ‘When did you quit?’ said her manager.

  ‘The other day. But now I don’t want to. I want to rescind my resignation.’

  ‘Oh,’ said her manager, looking up from his soup.

  ‘What d
o you mean, “Oh”?’

  ‘Well, I was just … I mean, as I said before, you know, much as we’d be sorry to see you go, I was sort of looking forward to not being your boss any more so we could …’

  ‘Can I not quit, please?’

  ‘Obviously. Not a problem. Can I ask what’s changed?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’re not going to immediately take maternity leave, are you? Because I’ve had like three people …’

  ‘I could take you to court for that question,’ she said.

  ‘Right,’ said her boss. ‘Point taken.’

  The television, for so long a friend that had seen her through the gloomiest of times, now held little comfort. Katherine found herself at a loss to find much that might be categorised as entertainment. The news seemed to be infecting everything. Inspired by the economic downturn, the fashion channels were excited about thrift. Tapping into mounting concern about an epidemic, the history channels had shifted focus from Hitler to the Plague. Excited at a rare opportunity to be cutting edge, the nature channels were broadcasting wall-to-wall documentaries about diseases in animals, and the food channels, picking up on the largest swing towards vegetarianism the country had ever seen, strong-armed the zeitgeist with a series of tips towards a meat-free life. She stuck to the news itself, which ran a rolling double narrative of recession and pandemic. The burning of cattle carcasses, initially an experimental measure, now seemed the norm. Talk was shifting to a cull. Men in boiler suits made important pronouncements.

  ‘We’ve seen Herd Disenfranchisement Syndrome before,’ said one, ‘and we’ve seen Herd Disengagement. This is worse. Bovine Idiopathic Entrancement needs to be taken very seriously indeed. Any indication that a cow might be staring excessively, ceasing to move, desisting from common bovine behaviours such as cud-chewing and tail-flicking, or indeed simply standing alone for any period of time needs to be reported immediately.’

  She began to enjoy the repetition, the sense of predictability that rolling news engendered. The word ‘news’ was, she thought, slightly disingenuous, given that the stations were basically falling over each other to deliver more of the same: heaps of cattle carcasses, splayed legs silhouetted against the winter sky; hooves and heads in smoke and flame.

  Whenever the landline rang she would think it was Daniel, who would, she was quite certain, call very soon. She also, however, worried it would be Keith, and so let everything go to voicemail. True to form, her expectant prodding of the playback button did, once, summon up Keith’s voice.

  ‘Katie-babes. Long time no see. What’s the dilly-deal?’

  She hit the delete button, then checked her voicemail again to be sure the message had vanished. She was beginning to realise how few phone calls she actually received.

  She thought about Daniel, wondered what he was doing, what he was thinking. She liked to imagine the extent of his pain. She pictured him beset by insomnia; pacing the kitchen in his atrociously baggy boxers; running a hand through his hair and squinting. He’d want to be drawn out of his shell. He’d become sullen and withdrawn around his partner – what was her name? – waiting for her to ask what was wrong. If she didn’t ask he’d become angry. If she asked, he’d say Nothing. Katherine liked the idea of being someone’s secret, and of being Daniel’s secret in particular. Not because she wanted him back, but simply because the worst thing anyone could do to you was forget you.

  Erasable though Keith might have been from her answerphone, he proved quite the stubborn presence about the office. Katherine clocked him at the water cooler, making eyes at Claire Demoines, who was new and single and wore tights with complicated patterns and said things like ‘I get so many offers, you know? But … I don’t know, maybe I’m just too fussy.’ Then Katherine bumped into him on the stairs, which she had only started using through fear that she might encounter him and/or Claire Demoines in the lift. He was smugly calm; greased with a post-something glow and making a grand show of not making a grand show. To Katherine’s horror, he looked more attractive now that he was the father of her child, as if she were seeing him through a hormonal filter of potential happiness rather than in the chilly-eyed spotlight of rational thought.

  ‘Hey there,’ he said, pausing with one hand on the banister and the other fingering change in his trouser pocket. ‘How goes it?’

  ‘Great,’ said Katherine, eyeing him icily and feeling no need to slip into her usual routine of drawing attention to her own dishonesty. ‘How about you?’

  ‘Making some changes,’ said Keith, nodding the nod of a sage and pointing to the red rubber band on his left wrist. ‘Learning.’

  ‘Right,’ said Katherine. ‘That’s great. Why are you wearing a rubber band on your wrist?’

  ‘It’s for your protection,’ said Keith gravely. ‘By the way. Were you planning on going halves on that holiday or what?’

  ‘Not really, no.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘What’s the matter? Short of cash to blow on your latest fuck-piece?’

  ‘Wow,’ said Keith, nodding seriously. ‘Lot of hostility there, duchess.’

  ‘Just asking.’

  Keith reached out and put a hand on her shoulder, squinting slightly as though pained.

  ‘You really need to respect yourself more.’

  ‘Keith?’ she said earnestly, softening her face and gazing into his eyes, lashes aflutter, sinking swoon-like into her hip.

  ‘Yes, Katherine?’ said Keith, tilting his head to one side and nodding gently in a way that said, I’m a Wonderful Person for Listening.

  ‘Do you think, one day soon, just for me, you could die in an autoerotic accident?’

  That same afternoon she saw him talking to Carol by the photocopier. He looked hangdog and up-to-something. He showed Carol the rubber band on his wrist. Carol touched his shoulder as she listened. He did one of those little smiles and thanked her. When Katherine came closer they parted. When she asked Carol what was happening she said Nothing.

  Galvanised by her isolation, and by the slow, creeping dread that Keith might slowly and subtly turn the women of the office even further against her through little more than implication and gentle persuasion, Katherine attempted to make inroads into her iciness. She made sure to say good morning. She stood in the staffroom and listened to Debbie go on about her son. When Jules’s close-male-friend-with-whom-there-had-never-been-anything-going-on passed away at the age of fifty after a protracted battle with pancreatic cancer, Katherine rushed straight to the supplies cupboard to upgrade Jules’ wrist rest and mouse mat just so that, if nothing else, her carpal tunnel syndrome wouldn’t exacerbate her grief. When someone in the office either stole or inadvertently appropriated Janice Johnson’s bag for life, which she had very sensibly brought in so as to allow her to transport her macrobiotic stew without it leaking all over her handbag, Katherine sent a global email that resulted, after just thirty minutes, in the bag miraculously reappearing in the staffroom. When Dawn Rickstadt, who Smelled So Good, wafted past Katherine’s desk smelling particularly good, Katherine made sure not only to note the name of her perfume (Consensual, by Chanel) but also to check how Dawn might feel if Katherine purchased the same perfume and so also ended up Smelling So Good, to which Dawn had generously replied that she had no problem at all with Katherine buying a bottle of Consensual because it was gorgeous and indeed, since she herself was nearly out, perhaps they could go shopping for it together at lunch.

  ‘This has lovely dirty notes,’ said Dawn in Debenham’s, misting Katherine’s wrist with Reproach, by Comme des Garçons. ‘It’s sea breeze meets knee-trembler in a Ford Capri.’

  ‘Is that supposed to be nice?’

  ‘It’s supposed to be sexy.’

  ‘I don’t want to be sexy,’ said Katherine. ‘I want to be clean.’

  ‘Gotcha,’ said Dawn. ‘Something more zesty?’

  ‘How about Mace?’ said Katherine.

  ‘Oh I know,’ said Dawn. ‘You’d think with all th
is research they’d have come up with a reliable twat repellent by now.’

  Afterwards they did lunch. After lunch they did coffee. Dawn talked about her relationships, all of which had ended badly, but about which she was still, she said, hypothetically optimistic.

  ‘That must be nice,’ said Katherine.

  ‘It has its moments,’ said Dawn. ‘But anyway. Tell me about you.’

  ‘Ick,’ said Katherine.

  It was, however, short-lived, just as Katherine’s occasional episodes of bad-faith niceness were always rather short-lived, and always left her, like her recent bumptious, bad-faith orgasms, feeling disappointed and faintly dirty after the event. Her suspension of cynicism was brief and incomplete. The more effort she invested in people, the less she seemed able to overlook their flaws. Jules was Too Compassionate. Dawn Smelled Too Much. Debbie’s Patience was annoying. They were all annoying. They nibbled their food in naughty little bites because they were watching their weight. They sent global emails listing fifteen things that make you glad to be alive. They thought capital punishment had its uses but only for really bad crimes and only if you could be really sure the person did it. The ones with husbands moaned about their husbands. The ones without husbands wanted husbands. They all definitely wanted more stuff but their houses and flats were very cluttered and they felt they should really get rid of some stuff because the minimalist look was in but then on the other hand it wasn’t homely, was it, the minimalist look. Many of them wanted to do something worthwhile because they admired people who did things that were worthwhile. They all agreed there was a lot of suffering in the world. Often one of them was coming down with something, and the others would worry that they were about to come down with something, although often they would not and then they would all agree that they were probably just run-down. Yoghurts had a lot more calories than any of them ever really imagined. Somehow, they had all been given computers that were particularly recalcitrant. They liked each other only to the extent that they themselves wanted to be liked. When one stood up to go to the toilet or make a cup of tea the others talked about her, about how she smelled too much or how her patience was wearing them all thin.