In this dream we’re holidaying somewhere exotic. There is soft, percussive music playing from beyond our open window. I am lying on the peach coverlet and you are holding my feet in your hands. You’re trailing fluttering kisses along the sharp bone, where it juts out at the ankle. ‘My baby my baby my baby my kitten my precious pearl my little baby girl,’ you say. ‘Mmmmmh,’ you lick the length of my sole, staring right into my eyes. Your pupils are tiny in their white orbs. Your tongue is very cold. ‘I love to eat baby girl’s feet, baby girl’s feet.’
One of Mrs O’Toole’s granddaughters comes in to introduce her little girl to her great-grandmother. There is no chance that Mrs O’Toole or the baby will retain any memory of the encounter beyond this afternoon. The granddaughter will, though, and this is the point of the visit. Mrs O’Toole’s arms get tired. She asks me if I can hold the baby for her and I sit very still, like I’m made of glass, and the baby is a live baby in a glass cradle that could shatter at any minute. When the mother gets back she picks the baby up from my arms. ‘Don’t want you to be late on your rounds,’ she says. She smiles. Through the glazed bedroom window, I see her checking the baby thoroughly, tilting her backwards and forwards, as though inspecting a bicycle for scuffs or scratches. Well, you kids behave, off I go, back to my rounds.
This dream moves at an unexpected speed. Usually my dreams are slow and reflective, but this one looks like it’s been filmed on a different camera and then it becomes clear that I am, indeed, being filmed. The film follows a morning in the life of two anthropomorphic animals, me and my companion. I’m both in front of the camera and behind it, and I can feel each part of my body simultaneously in both of those places. It is unclear in the dream to what extent the creatures are animals and to what extent humans; whether their evolutionary process has terminated or is still currently unfolding; whether we are shooting a nature documentary or a social commentary. This poses some issues. For instance, the camera kicks in as we are still sleeping in a pile. We are wearing no clothes and there is no bedding, but our bodies are covered with fur, some kind of down. In the dream I am considering with some difficulty whether the way we are sleeping means we are sleeping naked, whether I am infringing on any rights by filming this moment. I assess nudity in terms of the percentage of a body’s surface that is uncovered by clothes or other garments – skin on show – and so it takes a while before it occurs to me that something that stems from the body is not clothing. I begin to find the intimacy of the scene unsettling. I should not be here, I think, yet I am. The camera fast-forwards as our conjoined bodies twitch in their sleep in the early hours of the morning. When the alarm goes off my companion pinches at the old-fashioned alarm clock blindly, with its finger and thumb, finally managing to depress the button with its left paw. We scatter to the kitchen, busy, fully proficient. I squat on my four legs to go through the motions of making breakfast. I poach us two perfect eggs. We plate up and eat, our muzzles shoved together.
Call-Me-Melissa has come up with her seasonal project. It’s her own New Year’s resolution to give to charity, but of course, none of her subordinates are exempt from it. Care home staff and patients are invited to produce rag-and-cloth dolls, which are sold to wealthy women who like to furnish their houses in a ‘shabby chic’ style. This is only one of the many things that Melissa’s charity does. The patients can choose whether to take part, but the staff aren’t given an option. It takes me a whole night to make the doll for my contribution. I work with pieces of twine for the hair and use offcuts from the clothing that Neil has left behind. His running gear, for example: he phased it out when he started to wear natural fibres only. In his fitness phase, he’d insisted on wearing black hi-tech roll necks with luminous inserts along the stitching. He slunk out of the flat like a thief. Where was he going?
I sleep an hour and wake up at 6:30 a.m. with the alarm on my phone ringing.
In this dream his bald skull is lying before me. It is freshly shaved, for the first time in a while, the skin irritated along the grooves made by the electric razor. He’s come back to bed. He’s said sorry. All is good again. He’s lying with his back to me. I cling to it and match my toes to his. I reach up my hand to stroke his face but find only a flat surface, smooth on all sides and dotted by the braille of his stubble.
The doll I produce looks like a miniature goth who might hang out in Camden. I email Melissa to tell her I am done and she immediately rings me back on my mobile, insisting I go to her house to drop it off, even though it’s a Saturday. What she actually says is, ‘Come over, sweetheart, I’ll show you my collection.’ I stifle a laugh; she sounds like an old pervert. And perhaps she is a little perverse, since she seems to be unable to restrain herself from showing off her wealth, her thorough happiness.
I fuss nervously over what shoes to wear to Melissa’s house. Will my brown heels look dirty on her cream carpet? They do. The dolls are sitting in rows in the tall gilded cabinet. They look out of place, like adopted children, but perhaps that is the point and that is after all what the charity is about. Melissa is fretting; she asks me if I have a few minutes to listen as she practises her speech for tomorrow.
‘A variety of representatives … from different sectors … will come to the conference,’ she says. I agree to stand in as a representative. She hands me a cup of herbal tea. I want to go home. ‘If you’ve ever thought of adopting a child …’ she begins.
In this dream I am a young dog. I am running and I am blind with pain, blind with blood. My muzzle has been hit and I don’t know where I’m running.
Mona’s niece is pregnant again. Mona has many nieces and nephews, but this niece is known for having all the babies. This must be either her third or her fourth. To spice things up a little, she’s documenting this new pregnancy closely.
‘Fernanda is arty,’ says Mona. ‘Her husband Vasco is a photographer. He takes pictures of the bump.’
They update Mona on the progress once a week. In the photos, Fernanda is always wearing black, posing with her side to a white wall. The shadow of her belly grows like the phases of the moon.
‘Why the black?’ I ask Mona.
‘After, they make a video,’ she says, ‘with the photos from every day.’
I google ‘photos 9 months pregnant’. I am confronted by a list of stop-motion videos. I realize that Fernanda and her husband are not unique practitioners but are operating within a specific artistic niche. I trawl from link to link for a long time, well into the night. It is very nice in the flat at night, very quiet, peaceful. He is never coming back. I sleep two hours; wake up at 6:30 a.m., eat five spoonfuls of sugar.
In this dream I am leaning against a wall. A photographer whose face I cannot see – the heavy blanket of his old-fashioned camera is hiding his head – takes photo after photo of me against the white wall. Every time the shutter clicks, my shadow imprints itself on to the wall, remains there long after the flash has disappeared. The photographer holds up his left hand to signal ‘stay still’, as he takes the same photo, photo after photo. With each flash the shadow behind me grows larger, like gunpowder residue, like a dark halo the same shape as my body.
Alanna snatches Mona’s reading glasses from her desk, positions them on the tip of her nose, turns to me and whispers in a nasal tone: ‘After pregnancy, once they have stitched you back together, the position popularly known as “doggy-style” is the recommended position to perform penetrative sex. Says on Mumsnet.’
A nurses’ in-joke: Mumsnet is full of terrible trash and the amateur medical advice is borderline criminal.
Alanna turns towards Mona, pushes the glasses up the bridge of her nose, shoots her an alarmed look. ‘You might want to notify Fernanda.’ Alanna doesn’t smile, but that’s part of the comedy of it: the professional voice, the butterfly spectacles. What she does is wink and that too is spot-on in character.
In this dream I am aware that Alanna suffers from a very rare although non-infectious disease and that, whether by shyness or il
lness, she cannot bear to be touched. In the dream we are trying to figure out a permanent solution to the issue. It seems several attempts to fix her have been made, with little success prior to this particular dream. The experts have given up. We are sat in her kitchen drawing diagrams in large notebooks, trying to come up with something that might cure her. As we discuss it, I experience the feeling that we are the only two people left in the world. I can’t comfort her: touch triggers the illness. The dream is truncated: it ends before we reach a satisfying conclusion.
One evening I open my eyes in a dark room. I don’t know what time it is and I don’t know where I am. I don’t remember falling asleep, but I obviously have. My temple hurts from resting on something hard. There’s something hard in my throat. A hand pats my head gently. I have not moved at all so I can’t be sure if I woke up to the touch of the hand or if the hand has been touching me all along or if the hand knows I am awake now and that is why it’s touching me. It is a very solid, gentle, repetitive touch.
‘We’ve all been there, darling. Don’t you worry,’ says Mrs O’Toole. ‘It’s much harder when it’s your first. Then you get used to it.’
The thing about Mrs O’Toole is that she’s so used to giving advice that she will attempt to do so even when she has no clue what she’s talking about. Not knowing either, I thank her, because it feels good, for a moment, to be looked after.
TOMATOES
Nearly Ten Years Earlier
17/06/2006
We’re here!
I’ve just finished unpacking. The guy at reception said the residence is half empty, so he gave us a free upgrade. So nice of him – he even remembered our names! This trip is finally looking up. Our new room is MASSIVE! Even Beadle looks a little bit pleased. She let me have the bed next to the window, which let’s face it, is the best spot, all bright and sunny. I think monks or nuns owned this building back in the day because from my bed I can see the inner courtyard and it has a well in the middle like people used to live here. It’s so weird to think these are student halls the rest of the year. Italian students have it pretty good! It’s got a cool east London vibe. There’s vintage stuff in here that’s probably worth some serious bucks: a vintage aquamarine table and two huge twin wooden wardrobes stuffed full of prickly blankets in pastel colours like duck egg and baby pink and chick yellow. And the ceilings are hand-painted and in between the two beds there’s a nook in the wall, with a ceramic statue of the Virgin Mary inside. Beadle said it freaks her out. Obviously. Is there anything in the world that doesn’t freak her out? But I think it’s so beautiful here, the garden in full bloom with peonies and hydrengaes (sp?).
⋆
Just chilling out in the halls of residence after dinner. Trying to digest some of this food before I can go to bed. The good news is: everything they say about Italy is true. I had a massive plate of pasta for four quid and the man called me ‘blondie’ and gave me limoncello on the house. Bad news: dining alone is NO FUN. I had to smoke a lot of cigarettes and pretend to be an American film star to feel OK about it. Beadle said she would join me at the restaurant but she never turned up. When I came back the light was already off though I could tell she had been to the shops, because there was a bag at the foot of her bed with some teabags or sugar in it, I don’t know. Although maybe she brought it from home. She’s totally the kind of person who brings teabags from home when she goes on holiday. My mum does.
Xoxo Ally
P.S. I didn’t text Mike goodnight back. I can do this! I am an ADULT.
18/06/2006
Jesus Christ.
Just got back to our room and I’m fucking EXHAUSTED. Totally worth it though! Today was SO GOOOOOOD.
Turns out Beadle had done her homework really well – nothing strange about that, she always does her homework, just I never had her down as an A student. Then again, I don’t know that much about her. She’s a new friend. I remember her from school, vaguely, but I never really spoke to her much before college. Back then I had Trace and Franki and I can’t really remember who she used to hang out with. Me and the girls were in our own little world, which is why they sometimes said we were cliquey but really what’s wrong with enjoying each other’s company? Surely people are allowed to pick and choose who their friends are. You don’t have to be equally nice or friendly to everyone. And let’s be honest, nobody likes everyone, and anyone who says they do is a big fat liar. Anyway my friendship with Beadle today goes to show I’ve grown out of that phase.
It’s like this morning she woke up a new person. When I opened my eyes she was already up, going through her stuff. I asked her what she wanted to do and I expected her to say the usual, ‘Whatever you want to do, Alanna,’ which always pisses me off, like it’s my responsibility to make sure other people have a good time. To my surprise she said a walk down to the Colosseum would be nice to start with. She jumped in the shower and came out twenty mins later wearing this yellow dress I’ve never seen her wearing before. It really looked quite flattering on her! She has a nice figure?!! Beadle, my girl! I mean she’s so awkward I don’t think I ever thought of her as having a body. She could look good if she tried a little harder.
Turns out she had a proper itinerary. We went to the Colosseum and she explained that gladiators used to fight lions there and stuff, which was kind of cool because you could see the real place where they shot the movies. She can talk much better Italian than I can manage with my phrasebook. She said it’s because she took Spanish and Latin in school and that Italian is not too hard to work out if you know a bit of those languages. Sort of a mix between the two. The girls and I all took French of course because French is sophisticated. I put Beadle’s skills to the test to buy ice cream and it worked. SO THAT’S GOOD ENOUGH FOR ME.
Xoxo Ally
P.S. No word from M. Might he have finally got the hint?
P.P.S. Beadle still didn’t come out for dinner.
23/06/2006
SORRY FOR RADIO SILENCE. I knew I would be shit at this. I’m trying!
But we’ve been doing so much over the last few days that whenever I’m home all I want to do is eat something and pass out. I genuinely have moments where I feel like I’m getting the flu I am THAT tired. So much for our relaxing holiday!
I don’t know where Beadle finds the energy to do it all, especially as she never seems to eat any food. This morning I’d had enough of having to sneak behind her back and have dinner alone every evening, so I decided to confront her about it. She said something under her breath which I didn’t fully catch, about a gluten allergy and keeping to a mostly vegan diet. It’s nonsense. Franki went vegan for a while and I don’t know many people who can put it away like that girl. Sometimes she would pretend she was drunker than she was just to attack some cheddar. Most girls are weird about eating and stuff. When I was fifteen sometimes I ate so much chocolate that I couldn’t stop until I made myself really sick and I had to throw it all up. I stopped doing it after a while. This is something else. She makes excuses so she doesn’t have to watch me eat, like I have a disgusting fetish or something. None of us wants to put on weight but there’s no reason to be this bloody mental about it.
We’ve already seen all the main touristy bits of Rome and I know it’s a big city but I kind of wish we could just have a retail therapy day or a day to sleep in or just wander around and relax. That would be part of the experience, wouldn’t it?
A
24/06/2006
Saw the inside of the Pantheon for fifteen whole Italian euros and sorry but there is literally nothing in there, just a bunch of old stones. Bit bored of old stones at this point. Brought home a takeaway pizza to surprise Beadle instead of going to the restaurant. I thought we could have an early night. When I got in she wasn’t there so I ate it all in the bath. I didn’t even care that I was dripping tomato sauce everywhere in the water. It was disgusting – it looked like I’d been bleeding – but I sat in there anyway until it became cold. At some point, I heard the door open. Ruth
was home. I only came out of the bathroom when I heard her get into bed and the click of her bedside lamp going off.
A
25/06/2006
Wasted a whole day on a trip to Ostia, just because the guidebook said it was ‘worth the trip’. Ha ha ha. It’s like Brighton with less piercing stores and no actual fun stuff to do. Haven’t heard from Mike for like three days. Fuck that pea head. God I feel miserable.
A
28/06/2006
OK I’m actually done with this shit.
I honestly don’t know how I thought coming out here with Beadle was a good idea. I should’ve known better. She’s always been an obsessive little loser. She is like a sixty-year-old. We’re like a sixty-year-old couple, making polite conversation, then turning in for the night at 9 p.m. WHAT IS MY FUCKING LIFE. Thank God there’s no Radio 4 here or we’d be catching up on The Archers like my granny. Two days before we go home and what does she do? She plans a trip to THE VATICAN. ‘But the fresco in St Peter’s is breath-taking. Look!’ And she shows me her stupid Lonely Planet again. I don’t give a fuck about the fucking fresco! And you can’t see shit in those black-and-white pictures. ‘Really, it’s an INVALUABLE piece of history!’ I don’t give a fuck about the Pope either and the only time I enjoy looking at nuns is in horror movies when they get possessed and their heads start to spin. Beadle’s too meek and I’m too nice and so she gets it her way, so maybe, really, she’s too clever and I’m too stupid, I don’t even know any more. All I know is I am done with her today. So I’ve stayed behind. Fuck venting in this notebook like I’m a schoolgirl, too. It’s sunny outside, I’m going for a walk.
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