Flying Under Bridges

by Sandi Toksvig

  ‘Members of the jury, how do you find?’ says the learned judge.

  ‘Guilty, my Lord.’

  ‘On what grounds?’

  ‘Footwear alone, my Lord.’

  Fact — Dr Walker, a woman surgeon serving in the American Civil War, was arrested and imprisoned for wearing men’s clothing. She had won a bronze star for her wartime services but this did not stop the horror of her adoption of what she called ‘rational dress’. This involved her wearing a top hat, frock coat and cravat, which I don’t think is entirely rational for war but then it probably beats hell out of a corset and large hooped skirt. The fact of her being a woman was only discovered after she was wounded and captured by the Confederates. They discovered her true sex and let her go. She was in and out of prison after that for popping on trousers until she founded a women’s commune on a farm near Oswego. It was women only and they all had to swear to wear men’s clothing and be celibate. They had their own judges and police system, and bicycles and horses were available for recreation, although no one was permitted to ride side-saddle. Before her death, Dr Walker finally received a special dispensation from Congress granting her the right to wear men’s clothes. She wasn’t entirely noble. As well as her fight for sartorial freedom, she also insisted on having her photograph taken in a makeshift coffin with a stuffed hummingbird. Just when you think you’ve found a hero they turn out to be as flawed as the rest of us.

  Mother came to stay in July. Adam had been to the printers with John. When they came back I was drinking a small sherry in my kitchen. I’d been over to see you and I couldn’t get started after that. Tom and Shirley were coming for dinner, Shirley had her big news and William was dropping off Mother from the hospital. I started to feel cross. I was sick of cooking. Why couldn’t Adam cook for his children? I tried to remember when was the last time Adam had made me coffee or changed the sheets or…

  John helped Adam set up Mother’s bed in the dining room. I couldn’t watch. I had to do something. There was so much going on in my head. I was worried about Tom, dreading Mother moving in and one of you had told me Patrick thought he was gay and I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

  I had that feeling again of being trapped in my house. I thought I would burst with restlessness. As I went through the hall, Claudette… that’s the cat. I’m sorry if some of this seems so mundane. I’m sure that’s what the shrink thinks. The thing is it may be the detail of my life but the deed is in the detail, that’s what he doesn’t understand. Anyway, Claudette chose the moment of my getting up to launch herself at me from behind. She scratched and spat for a while and then slunk off. I wondered if Tom could do something with her.

  He stuffs animals. Not all the time but too often for most. Well, you’ve seen them. They’re all over the house. The otter at the front door, a rather sinister fox in the guest loo, an eagle with a gleam in his eye resting on the television in the sitting room, three field mice cavorting on the landing and unnamed birds swooping on every windowsill.

  Definition — Taxidermy: the lifelike representation of animals, especially birds and mammals, by the use of their prepared skins and various supporting structures.

  I did wonder if he could do something with Claudette but I suspected the creatures were supposed to be dead first. Claudette made me think of Tom. I was thinking about Patrick and now I thought about my own son. Not that I thought Tom was gay. I mean, I wouldn’t have minded. I wouldn’t have minded any kind of passion for my boy. Oh, he’s wonderful with animals and nature and the world but nothing just for himself. I don’t remember him ever having a girlfriend. I don’t remember him ever having anybody. I told the psychiatrist that I quite wanted Tom to have Stendhal Syndrome. I asked him if he knew that one but Big Nose shook his head. I knew he’d look it up as soon as I left. Fancy having time to be a psychiatrist and not knowing all the syndromes. I told him about it.

  ‘I read about it in the paper. There was this very nice young man from Oxford, second year I think, who went on holiday to Florence. Anyway he was forcibly admitted to the psychiatric wing of some hospital because of Stendhal Syndrome. Apparently he doesn’t speak much any more but does marvellously detailed drawings of the genitalia of other patients.’

  Fact — Stendhal Syndrome is very rare but is a recognised psychiatric condition. Named after a French novelist who had a very extreme reaction to the church of Santa Croce. In recent years a number of visitors to great centres of art like Florence have had unexpectedly intense emotional reactions to certain masterpieces when seeing them for the first time. The sufferer becomes ‘emotionally disorientated’ after viewing a moving piece of art. The effect can be so profound that the visitor loses the power of speech and several people have been found wandering about Florence and Rome completely incoherent and unable to look after themselves.

  Apparently he was struck down in the Uffizi Gallery in front of Giotto’s Madonna in Glory, which I looked up. It’s Mary and the baby. Nice picture. She looks like a mum. The young man was taken to hospital after he was spotted crawling in the undergrowth of the Bóboli Gardens with a pizza on his head. Since then he hasn’t spoken at all.’

  ‘At all?’ says the shrink.

  ‘Well, except to ask for more pepperoni,’ I say.

  ‘Pepperoni?’

  ‘No, sorry. I made that bit up. The pizza, you see? It’s quite taken him over. All he does all day is draw what the paper called ‘pornographic’ sketches. Mainly giant penises, I think. Do you know what’s funny?’ Big Nose shook his head. Nothing it seems is funny. ‘There have been no Italians among the Stendhal Syndrome patients, but then the Italians aren’t too big on repressed emotion, are they?’ I stopped and knew I was being stared at.

  ‘Eve, why do you keep all this stuff in your head?’ he asks.

  ‘Because it’s true. It’s a fact. It’s extraordinary. It’s out there in the world and…’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And I’m not.

  Charity Begins at Home

  And a leper came to Jesus beseeching him, and kneeling said to him, ‘If you will you can make me clean.’ Moved with pity, he stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him,

  ‘I will; be clean.’

  (MARK 1:40—42)

  I was bleeding again and I had to sort myself out all the time. William, Adam and John were installing Mother in the dining room when I came downstairs. They got her into bed and then disappeared for a beer in the kitchen. Mother sat up and began the routine that from then on never wavered.

  ‘Who ha, who ha!’ came the call, whether she wanted tea, a biscuit or the loo. She had become a small child again. Now she paid me back for every sacrifice she had ever made for me. Claudette lay ready for attack in the hall. I dodged past her and into Mother’s den. My mother. She was so helpless, this woman whose life had been one long opera of her own devising. I didn’t understand what had happened. My father, my gentle, kind father.

  I wiped and fed her, cleaned and changed her. I don’t think anyone should wipe their mother’s bottom. ‘Who ha!’ she called, and banged things to get my attention. She was my grown-up child. Once she was sorted I sat with her till she fell asleep. I was going to have sparkling dinner parties in the dining room once the kids had grown up. Now it smelt of death. My own death. The wallpaper was yellow and I couldn’t remember if it had always been yellow or if it had gone yellow. It didn’t look like my sort of colour at all. I could feel my chest tightening. I couldn’t look down because my feet weren’t my own and now I seemed to be in someone else’s house. I don’t know how it had happened but I was in the wrong body in the wrong house. I started sweating and tried to think about something else.

  Rabbit stew. Salad and rabbit stew. Tom could have salad and the rest of us would have stew. Adam loves rabbit. Adam loves rabbit… I sat reading the paper till I was sure Mother had gone off.

  The Guardian front page had a story about some of the Romanian refugees. They had been to Glasgow and back though some a
dministration error. Families travelling through the night to places where no one wanted them. They were angry and there had been some trouble. Now the opposition was calling for detention camps for all incomers whatever their status. I suddenly decided I couldn’t just sit any longer. So I got up, put away my cleaning things and… sat down again. I could feel blood trickling from me. Another pair of pants ruined.

  Adam came upstairs while I was changing. He came into the bedroom looking very serious. The avocado plant, I guessed. I’d accidentally killed one of his avocado plants and I thought he’d seen it. But he hadn’t. It was worse than that.

  ‘Eve, we need to talk.’ He looked so grim that all sorts of stupid things ran through my head. Maybe he was having an affair or dying. I imagined my whole life being turned upside-down and I didn’t mind. I didn’t mind at all.

  ‘It’s about my injury,’ he whispered.

  ‘What injury?’

  He almost banged the dressing table in temper. ‘Don’t make this more difficult than it is. My… personal injury.., from my trousers. I am worried about it. I think maybe we should test it out. You know… test it out… this evening.’

  It was not entirely romantic but I was too busy standing in front of the decapitated avocado plant to really notice. ‘Right. Good idea,’ I said.

  He and John went into the garage to do men things while I got on with the supper. I really didn’t want to cook. Especially not two meals. I got the rabbit for Adam out of the freezer and defrosted it in the microwave. It was smaller than I’d thought so I made frozen chicken escallops with mash and gravy for me, Shirley and John, and something readymade and brown from Marks & Spencer for Tom.

  Shirley came home. I’d been up in the woods with Tom that day and it made me look at Shirley again. They’re so different, my kids. I mean, I know that they both came from Adam, but you wouldn’t guess it to look at them. I shouldn’t be the least bit surprised to discover that the milkman had actually fathered one while I was asleep. They’re both wonderful, but where Tom is so… relaxed, Shirley is so organised. She always looks neat, well turned out. While Tom was bunking-off school in the woods, she was always studying, doing well. My daughter was going to be our little lawyer and my son was probably going to need one. I hugged her and wanted to ruffle her hair. Untidy her a bit. She handed over her gift for me.

  ‘Camembert, Mum! All the way from Boulogne. I got Nana a present too,’ she announced. ‘Actually we got hers in Dover —some paints. She used to love to paint.’

  ‘That’s a lovely idea, darling.’

  ‘It was John’s idea. He suggested it.’

  Great. The man was brimful of ideas. Perhaps he had thoughts on what to do with a used speculum. It’s a long story. I didn’t get a chance to ask. John came out of the garage and he and Shirley went into the dining room and spent a happy hour with Mother, a tray of poster paints and an old roll of woodchip wallpaper from under the stairs. Free of paint-by-number lines and able to see with her new glasses, Mother produced some rather fine things. Actually, they were wonderful. Great splashes of blue and orange paint with streaks of red and yellow. The sort of thing Shirley had done at playgroup. I put a very bright one up on the fridge with a magnet shaped like a Cornish pasty.

  Tom arrived full of good cheer. ‘That’s wonderful,’ he breathed when he saw Mother’s painting. He stood looking at it. He kept grinning at it and no one could get his attention. Adam wheeled Mother in to join us. We had to eat in the kitchen now that she slept in the dining room. The WRVS had given us a wheelchair, which was nice but it had a wonky wheel so it made great gouges in the kitchen wall whenever Adam tried to move her.

  ‘Oh, Adam, she doesn’t have to come in,’ I said.

  ‘Nonsense,’ he said, because he didn’t deal with her all day. ‘She needs the company.’

  ‘Who ha, who ha,’ said Mother urgently. I’d got the hang of the different tones of ‘who ha’.

  ‘She wants her handbag. Shirley, darling, go and get Nana’s handbag.’

  ‘Mum, couldn’t Tom have washed his hair? Can’t you get him to wash his hair?’

  ‘A hair wash would be the least he could do,’ echoed Adam.

  ‘Nana’s bag!’ I repeated, wishing they’d leave Tom alone.

  Mother sat up to table, clutching her bag and looking bewildered. I had tried with her hair but it was no use. Now that she didn’t eat properly and her hair stuck up, she looked like a surprised stick insect. Tom stood transfixed in front of the fridge. It was the perfect Oxo family meal.

  ‘Tom sit down. Have some salad. Do you good.’

  Tom looked briefly at the food. ‘You shouldn’t take it for granted that you’re entitled to eat fresh salad all year round.

  People don’t think about the cumulative environmental damage that is done by planes and trucks as they rush fruit and veg to us out of season.’

  ‘The old swimming baths are up for sale,’ Adam announced, while I dished up.

  I smiled at Shirley. ‘I can’t wait, darling, you’re going to have to tell me the news. What have you decided? Durham.

  Exeter … it’s not Oxford, is it? No. A scholarship?’

  ‘It’s not about university, Mum.’

  ‘It isn’t?’ My stomach tightened. Something didn’t feel right. Adam seemed to be having a conversation on his own.

  ‘I don’t know what you could use it for but it’s a big space.’

  John reached over and patted my hand. ‘It’s all right, Mrs Marshall. It’s good news.’ He smiled at me, he smiled at Shirley, actually he smiled at everyone. ‘Shirley has been saved.’

  ‘Saved?’

  ‘I’ve found God, Mum,’ said Shirley.

  Adam chortled and finally joined the conversation, saying rather too heartily, ‘Found God! Didn’t know he was missing.’ This observation was followed by total silence.

  ‘Your idea, John?’ I managed.

  Shirley smiled at him. ‘Well, we talked about it on the way to France and then John introduced me to the church this morning. It was like a miracle.’ John and Shirley gooed at each other.

  ‘This rabbit tastes funny’ said Adam, poking it with his knife.

  Tom had taken the painting off the fridge and was staring at it. He looked at the table for a moment and said, ‘I think it could be one of my squirrels.’

  ‘But it didn’t have any skin on,’ I said.

  Tom nodded. ‘No, I used that for something else.’

  I felt bewildered. Not about the squirrel, although Adam said it had ruined his digestion. It could have been worse. The freezer is full of odd things. I might easily have thought the budgie was just a very small chicken. I was bewildered about Shirley. Of course it was fine to find God but she looked different. Distant somehow. I kept staring at her and she and John kept smiling. That was why I wasn’t paying attention to Mother.

  Mother was not eating. I had put a plate of food in front of her out of habit but I was expecting to feed her when everyone was finished. She could just about move her right side. With her left hand she was clutching her handbag and slowly reaching out with her right to grab bits of rabbit stew and chicken escalope, dripping with gravy, and place them in her bag. The mash was next and then some of the vegetables.

  ‘Mother!’ I yelled loud enough for Tom to come away from the fridge. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Who ha, who ha,’ came the reply.

  ‘Oh, God.’ I got up but I was in a rush to stop the last of the gravy being scooped up as well. Never the graceful mover, I tripped as I stood and fell headlong into Adam. I put my hand out to save myself and landed right in his lap. He leapt up with the pain to his injured member and pushed me away. Still intent on Mother, I hurtled forward and tried to grab her bag to stop her filling it. For a woman of sixty-five who had had a stroke, she was remarkably strong. As I grabbed the handle she pulled it away from me but I couldn’t let go. My hand had caught in the strap and I fell forward, pulling Mother from her wheelchair and on to th
e floor.

  ‘Who ha, who ha!’ yelled Mother, and let go of the bag. The wretched container, pregnant with supper, flew towards the fridge where Mother’s art work was covered in a mix of gravy, potato and bits of squirrel.

  After the terrible supper we had coffee in the garden. The low sun didn’t help the slight headache I had and I felt quite sick. Tom went back to base camp and John took Shirley off for a pray or something. When Adam and I got into bed, I was feeling really low. He limped in from the bathroom holding both hands across his manhood.

  ‘Please, don’t ask me to perform,’ he moaned. ‘I can’t. I just can’t I didn’t. Instead I lay looking at his broken and sellotaped avocado plant.

  ‘Adam,’ I said, ‘I’ve been thinking.’ Which, of course, didn’t quite cover the day I’d had. ‘I was thinking that I could do with some more help around the house.’ If we could talk about his penis then I could make a big, bold feminist statement. The only thing I had really got out of my consciousness-raising was that Adam did nothing to help and we both lived here. I wanted some time to myself. I wanted to come in some days and find my dinner ready. I wanted to share— ‘You’re right’ said Adam. Well, I could have fallen on the floor. ‘You do too much and we need to make a change. I’m sorry, I should have done something about it before.’ He leant over and patted me on the arm. ‘I’ll get you a cleaner.’

  A cleaner? I was reading in the paper that a group of scientists have discovered that some schools of whales have different accents from others. They taped some whales in the Pacific and then some in the Atlantic and somewhere else and they all use the same sort of noises but slightly differently. The scientist said it was the same language with a different accent. I think Adam and I had the same accent but different languages.