The Stopping Place

by Helen Slavin

  I couldn’t hold Garganey Watch still. I turned it face down on the desk. I was struggling to hear the voices over the yomping of my heartbeat, struggling to fold my arms against myself, to still my shaking hands. I was going to be sick.

  In the toilets I couldn’t look at my face in the mirror, I could only swish at it with cold water. The coldest, letting the tap run and run.

  ‘Ruby?’ It was Martha; the book club ladies were leaving now. Mrs Atkinson was long gone. Thursdays were her yoga night. ‘Ruby, it’s time to close.’

  Angharad and Ellen were standing at Books In. ‘I’ve parked at the bank Martha…’ Angharad fumbled for her keys in a leather bag the size of a small cow. She always gave Martha a lift home after book club. ‘Fancy Giovanni’s or do you want to try the new Thai Palace?’

  ‘One vote for Thai Palace.’ Ellen put her hand in the air. Martha opened her mouth to speak but Tierney’s voice came out.

  ‘Oh, that’s all right ladies, Martha’s with me tonight.’ He chinkled his car keys in a gesture that resembled nothing more than a gaoler taunting a prisoner.

  Ellen glared at Tierney. ‘Martha?’

  ‘Let me know what the Thai Palace is like,’ Martha said quietly. Tierney was tracing the line of her vertebrae with his ignition key. Angharad and Ellen left, talking conspiratorially past the chickenwired doors. I saw the look between them, the look of anxiety and puzzlement.

  I did not reach for my belongings. Instead I reached for the trolley, began stacking returns from the counter. ‘I should just do this…’

  ‘I think we’ve finished for today. I’ll see you tomorrow, Ruby.’ Martha moved to shut down the computer terminals. I saw her hand was shaking as she reached for the mouse. Tierney hitched himself up onto the desk. Marlon Brando in The Wild One.

  He reached down for my handbag, which I had carefully left under the desk so that I could come back in a moment.

  ‘Goodnight Ruby,’ Tierney said, unwinking. His eyes gave me a direct alpha-male look but there was not one flicker of recognition in his face, only contempt.

  I stepped out into the lobby. The lights were already off in here and the heating had shut down so it was very cold, very stony. Queen Victoria looked very disapproving.

  ‘Do not leave,’ she seemed to say. ‘We are going to regret this.’ I looked at her for a long time. It seemed the blanked out stones of eyes followed me. I thought of the sculptor, presented with a block of stone and seeing Queen Victoria squatting inside it. I wondered how many other fragments of the same cliff face were scattered across the landscape, the other stone dead eyes looking out from library niches and elaborate pigeon-perch plinths.

  I moved to touch her. At full stretch I could only reach her hem and I found myself tucking my body into the gap between the statue and the niche wall. I let the coolness of stone filter up into my fingertips. I felt the stone before it was stone, when it was mud and clay and sea creatures, before it was crushed and compacted beneath the prehistoric seas. I have been crumpled and bent and twisted into this and then at last, I have been chiselled and chipped away and become something not me.

  Outside, the eight o’clock bus rumbled and sighed and then the lights switched off in the main library.

  * * *

  There was the sound of a cup or glass falling off the desk. I slung my bag across myself, shoulder to chest and, sinking to all fours, I sneaked back in. In through the chickenwired door and a very sharp left into fiction. I had a notion of movement by the desk. Martha sitting on the desk, Tierney before her pinning her legs, his hands gripping her wrists.

  ‘Let me down Mac,’ she was whispering. ‘No. Let me down…’

  He was laughing, low and dark and not loosening his grip. By now I was standing tall in the far corner, shielded from their view by the stacked shelf of sale books, removed from circulation stamped all over them.

  ‘Mac, I’m serious let me…’

  ‘I’m serious. Let me.’ He was snaffling at her like a truffle pig and she was squirming backwards, which I wanted to yell out to her not to do but it was too late. She slithered on the countertop and with her hands gripped in his she couldn’t save herself. Legs sliding, feet scrabbling, she was under him.

  Cold sweat seemed to spring out of every pore I possessed. She didn’t have words now, just grunts and barks. Tierney’s kisses were hard, his body a wall. Then with a carpeted crump he was all over the floor. Unable to decide which to clutch first, his broken coccyx or his bruised cock. Martha moved to help him up and he shoved her aside.

  ‘If you weren’t playing so fucking hard to get,’ he hissed at her. ‘Christ.’

  ‘Mac.’

  ‘What the fuck are you playing at Martha?’

  ‘I don’t want to play. Mac, we’re done with. Believe me this time. I’ve said. Time and again…’ Clear and without any waver in her voice. ‘I mean it. We’re done with. No more.’

  ‘What?’ he was on his feet now and was leaning on her for support, his arm around her, his frame towering over her, his voice sharpened with sarcasm. ‘Didn’t catch that Martha, what did you say?’

  ‘It’s over. You know it.’

  His low, dark laugh came again and his gold-ringed paw clamped around her face and tilted it towards him. His lips brushed her face, her cheek, her forehead, her lips, her neck. I remembered the sexual charge I had felt at the exhibition, only now it was the superfuelled panic of adrenaline. He pulled her towards him and kissed her on the mouth. Martha was struggling but he had lifted her too high, she was beyond tiptoe now.

  ‘I’m not done.’

  Martha pushed at him. His hands lifting her skirt up over her hips.

  ‘No…Mac, no.’

  ‘This is about Anita isn’t it? Fuck Anita. She doesn’t care.’

  ‘I don’t want you.’

  The sound of his hand slapping at her bottom. His low rumbled laugh. ‘Stop misbehaving.’

  ‘No. Stop…I don’t…want…to…’ Martha’s toes touched the carpet briefly before he slung her back up onto the countertop. The computer keyboard skittered off, dangled by its curly wire. For too many moments I could see only a churning, flailing mass of darker darkness and the restrained grunts of Martha and the tear of clothing as she pulled free. His grunt as one hand let her slip so the other could grasp her. Martha was panting. Again, his low dark laugh as he picked her off the counter. A rending of fabric that ripped through me. A flash of whiteness, of her torn underwear, as he cast it aside. Martha scrabbling backwards, his hairy hand feeling its way spider-like into her left bra cup as she did so.

  Which is when I switched the lights on. Five switches set into a shiny brushed steel plate just by the Baroness Orczy shelf. Click.

  Click. Click. Click. Click. They flickered on in ranks, starting at the back over the reference section and chasing forwards.

  ‘Shit.’ Tierney, belt unstrapped, leapt back from the desk. Spooked. Suddenly released, Martha slid too far backwards, falling with an awkward thud over the counter. I was negotiating my route under cover of crime fiction, science fiction and fantasy, making that last doubled-over-keep-out-of-sight leap towards occult and spiritual before darting, cat-like, under the counter. Martha was picking herself up with a nasty bruise starting under her eye.

  ‘Who’s there? Who the fuck is that?’ Tierney’s voice struggled not to squeak at the ends. He was re-strapping his buckle now, tugging the belt tight as if it was holding up a pair of six-shooters instead of his designer trousers. ‘Come out you bastard!’

  So I did. ‘Martha, I forgot, we were supposed to pick up the archive boxes from County Hall at nine-thirty. Remember? Mrs Atkinson had to reschedule because of the conference.’

  Martha, grey lipped, avoided my eye. Tierney spun to face me, aghast.

  ‘WHAT?…HOW THE FU…?’

  ‘Sorry, I was at the bus stop and then I remembered. It’s the census stuff she’s collating for that Moving Forwards conference next week. The conservator’s coming in in
the morning. I’ve got a taxi waiting and I’ve called Maureen to tell her we’re running late. I’m so sorry Martha. I’d completely forgotten…’

  I couldn’t look at Tierney. Only at torn Martha, the red flare of carpet burn angry across her face. I clutched up her bag and coat, carried them like a shield as I moved towards her.

  ‘You’re kidding me? Right? This is a wind-up?’ Tierney tried to sneer. I shoved Martha towards the door, really shoved her, like someone herding educationally subnormal sheep. He took a step towards us and I lashed around.

  ‘I mean it,’ I quoted, and he got the message. He snatched up his jacket and I could smell the scorn wafting off him like burnt biscuits, distinct and tangible. I kept myself between him and Martha as we got through the chickenwire door.

  ‘Keys, Martha.’ She looked benumbed but she handed them to me.

  ‘The lights,’ she said, turning backwards. It was like dancing as I stepped myself into her and moved her again towards the doors. Tierney outside the circle as if I had cast magic, a silver net to protect us. ‘What about the lights?’ she repeated.

  ‘What about them?’ I kept my voice low, calm; didn’t look at her as I pushed her into the safe circle of the revolving doors.

  Out in the street there was no taxi. I improvised, cursing the impatient driver, and started to hurry her off in the vague direction of County Hall. Tierney, it seemed, had a silver net all his own to cast. His parting shot was not goodbye.

  ‘This isn’t done with. I’ll see you again.’ Before he turned and walked towards his flashy car, parked in the corner of the bank carpark. It made a delighted squeal as he kerchunked the alarm. At least someone was pleased to see him.

  Kasa wa nanbon nokotte iru ka wakarimasen

  I don’t know how many umbrellas are left

  Would Tierney scare that easily? No. But I wasn’t aiming for scared. I was satisfied with shamed. I was content with embarrassed. All of these were personal attacks of the deepest violence, because these were the punishments he would inflict upon himself. You can recover from a severed arm or the loss of an eye. You can move forwards and arrive at terms. A wound to your pride never heals. It festers. It seeps.

  Martha and I had walked further and further, saying nothing. The Thai Palace was bright and sparkling and so were Angharad and Ellen Freethy. I was cold and red and shaking but clear: Martha was not to go home. No one asked why, Angharad simply offered accommodation at her place. She would drop Martha in at the library on her way to school. No trouble, no trouble at all, she drove past the library every morning.

  I had missed the last bus again. Last buses and I are destined never to meet. Now I walked back to the flat, my brain ticking over. I was scared, but there was also the adrenaline surge of what I had done. Of what I had managed to do. I had not run away.

  As I started up the hill I knew it was time to stop picking over it all like some leftover chicken carcass. If I could start to slough it from my head now I might manage to fall into some sort of sleep back at the flat.

  I let down the tyres on the bike, still blocking the hallway. The hem of my coat now bore the oily teethmarks of the chain. Inside, my hands were shaking as I put the kettle on. I didn’t need to switch on the light. Miss Nudey downstairs had her garden lighting on.

  A soft rain began to patter at the window as I stood at the table, looking out. She was in the garden, clothed tonight, taking a pair of frothy silk knickers from the line. Except, as I watched, she moved indoors leaving the knickers stranded on the line in the mizzling rain. A moment later and the lights blinked out.

  I stood in the darkness, sipping hot tea and watching the ghostly underwear begin to flap and panic in the building wind. Why bother hanging them out when a storm is coming?

  Bait. Miss Nudey was trying to lure the knicker thief.

  But surely she was missing the point. The point was he liked knickers that had been worn. Stained and bleached out, fraying elastic. He desired full briefs that covered belly buttons, not for him your high-cuts or your thong. 100% cotton and the gift of a stray pubic hair curled into the elastic. He wanted comfort and control, not danger.

  Are scanties empowered? Is all that tarting about really a woman at home with her sexuality? Or are the 100% granny pants the ones genuinely imbued with the freedom of choice, the rebellious non-conforming to the myth of knickers?

  * * *

  Next morning in the staffroom I put the kettle on and stood looking out across the park. I heard the door go behind me and instantly I saw her reflection. I tried not to spin round, not to react in any way. There was a tinny sound.

  ‘You forgot to put the lid on again Ruby.’ It was all Martha said to me that day.

  She looked tired. She didn’t speak much, only answering borrower queries, hardly looking up from the computers all day. Not answering the phone.

  ‘Martha, you were sitting right beside it, how could you not hear it ringing?’ Mrs Atkinson quizzed.

  But we were sitting right beside Mrs Milligan later and no one heard the doorbell of doom ringing in her head. I had already noted that Mrs Milligan too was struggling today. She had had a protracted hushed conversation with Joachim the French student in the lobby as she headed out for her lunchbreak. He had been reassuring her about something, had even reached out one of his big, square hands and patted at her shoulder from his great height. He was wearing a heavy sheepskin jacket in a pale golden colour that matched his wild hair and tinted up the ruddy skin of his face. It looked like something he had caught, skinned and eaten only that day. But for all the savage edges to him, there was something wise in that gesture.

  Now she was standing near to the window and staring out. She had been standing like that for some minutes and suddenly something seemed to give in her. I looked out, beyond. There were some playgroup kids in the park dressed in fluorescent green tabards. Their playgroup leader was helping them collect autumn leaves. Overhead a plane winked white in the bitter autumn sunshine.

  A shiver went through her, a spasm. Martha spotted that, and saw too that Mrs Milligan had gone way beyond clinging to the sofa for safety. Martha was the first to spot that Mrs Milligan was going under, and it was Martha’s hand that reached out and saved her. I was busy rifling the biscuit tin.

  ‘Mrs Milligan?’ No response. Martha told me much later that looking into Mrs Milligan’s eyes was very scary at that moment. Martha said it was like looking into the darkest part of the night sky. You could see the tears falling inwards like imploding stars.

  ‘Mrs Milligan, what’s happened?’

  I dropped the biscuit tin then, as Mrs Milligan’s entire body seemed to flex. She lifted the armchair closest to the window and threw it straight at the glass with a scream that seemed to come from her feet and reverberate through every bone in all our bodies. I leapt and saved the chair, falling awkwardly by the washing-up cupboard.

  It made no difference to the window. It looked as if the metal studded end of the left leg had caught it, but I think we all knew better. It was the resonant raw grief of that scream that shattered it. Martha caught Mrs Milligan as she started to crumple, folding up as if she had expelled her Self with that scream.

  Martha held her, stroked her hair as Mrs Milligan sobbed into her fifties print shirt, ruining the nap on her vintage velvet maxi skirt. We sat there, amongst the diamonds of glass.

  Her son Alex was leaving the country. Was on a plane at that moment, heading for the other side of the world, for New Zealand and a new life away from his divorce. She had been at the airport the night before to let him go.

  Harvey gave her a lift home, with an open offer to trawl the supermarket if she needed anything. I thought that what Mrs Milligan needed could not be found on the supermarket shelves.

  * * *

  Much later, after dark, I emerged from the library and made my way across town to the redbrick Technical College. I moved down the corridor to Room 47A and sat at the far back, next to the bookcase.

  When I
started Intermediate Japanese, for the first few sessions or so, Setsuke didn’t ask me any questions and I laboured for a while under the delusion that my skill at invisibility knew no bounds. Then the more logical part of my brain told me that the real reason was she knew I had never attended Beginners’ Japanese.

  Until the first time I answered a question. A question directed at the tall suited man at the front who always thought a cheery smile would cover for his lack of diligence in doing homework.

  ‘Dochira no tatemono ga toshokan desu ka?’—Which building is the library?

  Of course he was unable to answer, for it was my question. Formed for me. A tumbleweed silence fell and then the words came out of me like a spell.

  ‘Ano tatemono ga toshokan desu.’

  That building is the library.

  Setsuke’s gaze shifted towards me. A smile glimmered in her eyes and she gave a nod before moving on to see if anyone else could locate the fishmonger.

  I liked to be at the class. It wasn’t just that if I left the library and headed back to the flat it seemed like a lot of evening to cover. I liked the school smells of the building, the bright lights, the wrought ironwork of the old staircases. Most of all, I liked to hear Setsuke speak Japanese. She had a beautiful smile that shimmered with feeling. It made me wonder what she was thinking as she tried to twist her mother tongue around us.

  Have you noticed that when you are in a foreign country you imagine the conversations around you are all important, eloquent, intellectual? Once you understand, you can hear that it is all the same wherever you are, the football, the price of shoes, the location of the bus station and the as-yet-unapprehended knicker thief.

  Japan was not here. What had led her to this classroom and these people? I know that I liked to be there because I felt she might be someone who would understand me, someone I would not have to explain things to in Broken English or Intermediate Japanese. Mythology, of course.