by Johnny Mains
‘Maybe we could move,’ J asked one night in bed. Andrew had always regaled her with his stories of foreign travel yet he looked uncomfortable at the suggestion.
‘I can’t, J, I’m tied here.’
‘Why?’ she asked. He wasn’t particularly enthused about his job, though it allowed him to work from home. He’d never introduced her to friends or family, in fact he was frustratingly vague about all family ties. What was keeping him here?
‘I’d never get out of this mortgage,’ he said, taking her hand. ‘I’m up to the hilt in debt, I’m afraid.’
Marry for worse and not for better sprang to mind, but she swept it away with for better or worse.
J woke in the middle of the night, conscious that someone was watching her. Andrew was asleep at her side, his snoring obscuring the sound of something above. She wanted to reach for the bedside lamp but she couldn’t move. She stared back in the blackness and listened hard.
She heard footsteps on the mezzanine.
She lay still, willing the noise to repeat itself, wondering if she had heard it at all. She waited, gripping Andrew in readiness.
A creeping movement this time. Unmistakable now. Something was up on the mezzanine. Her mind conjured the image of a person walking up there, sneaking about in the dark.
She shook Andrew awake.
‘There’s someone up there,’ she whispered, pointing in the darkness.
Andrew looked about, barely comprehending. He switched on the bedside lamp, flooding the room with light. ‘What?’
‘I heard a noise,’ she repeated, ‘up there,’
Andrew sighed. ‘Oh. That. Sometimes birds get into the attic. It’s happened before. They’re protected, would you believe. Allowed to nest up there.’
‘It didn’t sound like birds,’ J said.
‘Listen, J, there’s nothing to worry about.’
‘But Andrew –’
‘I’ll check it out in the morning if you like.’ And with that he turned off the light.
Burden.
Bird-den.
She imagined a room full of birds in flight. She watched them orbiting an attic space, circling it again and again and again, until she drifted back to sleep.
J was in the wedding aisle again, stacking the shelves with images of happy couples, garters, and wedding cakes. Since her engagement she spent longer in this part of the shop than any other, arranging the cellophane-wrapped cards in order of preference instead of price codes. The manager, Sharon, a girl barely out of college, was more interested in her mobile phone than what J did. She barely noticed that J had neglected the birthday and bereavement aisles, along with the balloons and silly string display.
J looked around the shop. It expressed every sentiment but the one she felt. She couldn’t stop thinking about the birds in the attic. Andrew’s conviction that there was nothing to worry about had been enough for her to go to sleep. But the birds had swooped into her dreams instead and flown around and around her mind like an inky whirlwind. It wasn’t just the birds; J hadn’t liked the way Andrew had cut her off, refusing to listen to her as if she hadn’t said anything at all. Was that what she was expected to do? To accept Andrew’s word on the subject despite her misgivings, to honour and obey him?
Yet he’d been so considerate before she left for work that day. He’d made her breakfast in bed and promised to check the attic when she left. He said that maybe the wedding stress was getting to her. He’d help more with organising the venue and the caterers. He added that he didn’t expect her to take his name if she didn’t want to. They were a modern couple after all. He’d happily be a Burden.
J knocked the cards from their stand and they fell like confetti. What were a few birds in the attic compared to the albatross about her neck?
J stooped to pick up the cards from the floor. Warm Wedding Wishes, To the Happy Couple, May Your Nest Be Filled With Joy. J slipped the last card into her apron pocket.
J went home sick that afternoon but sat in the café opposite Andrew’s flat instead, watching for him to leave. She felt like a criminal casing the joint. She sipped her second tea and considered what she really knew about the man she was marrying. Freaks and perverts, her mother’s voice chimed.
Andrew emerged an hour later, his Bag For Life folded neatly under his arm, presumably on his way to the supermarket. J would have adequate time; she could be in and out without him ever knowing. It was only when she stood in the bedroom, staring up at the mezzanine, that she wondered whether she was breaking some moral law, committing some breach of trust. He hadn’t exactly forbidden her to go up there, but then why the need for such secrecy? Maybe she should just leave it be.
Just a peek.
So she hauled the bedside drawers across the room, stacked a table on top and a chair from the living room. She stood back, assessing her crude ladder, then began her ascent.
The mezzanine was more spacious than she imagined, unfurnished and bare, with no signs of decorating. It had a perfect view of the room below and the bed in the centre. J imagined something monstrous watching them sleep, like a gargoyle on a Gothic façade, looking down while they made love.
She turned her attention back to the mezzanine and saw a small door in the wall that presumably led into the loft, though something closer drew her eye. Coiled up at the edge of the platform was a rope ladder. But what was the point of it being up here, J thought? Unless someone could throw it down?
J moved towards the door, trying not to think of the fairytale she’d been told as a child, of the princess with the extraordinarily long hair. The princess who was locked away from the world with her unusual name: Rapunzel.
The door opened onto a dark and musty space. J moved through the darkness, through a rank and pungent smell. She followed it while her eyes adjusted and began to discern shapes.
A stained mattress lay in the middle of a room, amid a scattering of black feathers. It was a nest, but not for birds. Someone lived up here.
J looked around in alarm. A squatter? But the ladder implied that Andrew knew.
J stepped backwards, the smell suddenly stronger. Something was close. Something was watching her. She scanned the room and saw the whites of wild eyes staring back at her from a blackened face in the dark.
The figure was filthy, hunched over in the gloom. J could make out a tangle of hair, a ripped and tattered nightdress, a strong abhorrent feminine smell. And at her feet, a coil of rope tied at her ankle.
Why would she be tied here? Why wouldn’t she scream? And then she saw. She nearly screamed herself.
The woman had no mouth.
J moved closer – it was a trick of the light, surely, but the woman’s face was oddly smooth where her mouth should have been and her face was expressionless and vacant, except for her eyes which blazed with rage at J’s intrusion.
The wild woman moved so fast that J barely had time to react. She managed to stumble back, through the impossibly small door, back onto the mezzanine. Crouching, she tried desperately to unroll the ladder but her hands were shaking and the figure was at the door, rushing towards her, hands clawing at the air.
J remembered the night she met Andrew. The ridiculous chrome staircase in the trendy bar. Bar None. How she had to concentrate on each step.
And J was falling, landing on the tower she’d made, scattering the furniture like a house of cards. She landed hard against the floor, knocking the breath from her chest so she had nothing with which to scream.
Burden-Blithe did have a ring to it. Double barrels were the trend nowadays, but she’d always thought it cruel forcing someone else to share her Burden. Tempting as it was to let someone else carry it with her, she’d rather simply be rid of the whole thing.
Just Blithe, she thought. How did the song go? Be you blithe and bonnie. Bonnie and Clyde. Blithe and Bonnie, Bonnie and Clyde, Jekyll and Hyde
. Some partnerships were destined for infamy.
J shook her head clear and she looked up at the mezzanine, remembering what she’d seen. She put her hand to her temple and was surprised to find she was bleeding.
Some couples amalgamated their surnames. A stab at gender equality, no doubt, merging parts of their names to make something wholly original. Smith and Jones became Smones or Jith. J smiled but felt a stabbing sensation behind her eyes. Burden-Blithe would be Burthe or Blurden. Bludgeon, she thought, looking up at the mezzanine.
Andrew deposited the groceries in the kitchen and walked through to the bedroom. The rope ladder was down and he smiled, undoing his shirt and pulling off his trousers. In just his underpants, he climbed up.
‘Honey, I’m home,’ he called.
He moved through the darkness with familiarity. ‘Where are you, Mary?’ he said.
He smiled more broadly when he saw Mary lying face down on the mattress, her nightdress pulled up, waiting for him.
‘So you want your turn do you?’ he said. ‘Happy to see me?’
‘Ecstatic,’ said a voice behind him.
Andrew turned and saw J hunched in the dark, a bloodied gash on her brow.
‘What are you doing here?’
‘I could ask the same of you. Checking for birds?’
He looked at his feet.
‘I found your little secret.’
Andrew made to object but J merely glanced toward the figure on the mattress. Andrew could see that J had tied her down with the rope.
‘There shouldn’t be any secrets between a husband and wife.’
Andrew sighed. ‘I tried to tell you that very first night. I tried to tell you about my trouble and strife. My –’
‘Wife.’
J had seen the gold band on the wild woman’s finger as she’d lunged at her, pushing her back down to earth.
‘I was too young,’ Andrew said. ‘She was so different. I didn’t notice that she wasn’t quite right.’
‘You didn’t notice? You would have married me,’ J said. There was a name for what he was. Her mind struggled over the syllables – a polygamist. There was a name for what she was, too, though she wasn’t ready to say it.
Andrew wiped the tears from his eyes. ‘I still want to marry you. I’d do anything for you, J. Just name it.’
For a moment J saw the Blithe she’d met on the first night. But he’d lured her with false promises and a name that was already taken.
‘I should have divorced her,’ he said, ‘but I’m all she has. She needs me.’
More likely the other way around, J thought. ‘You’re still making the most of your conjugal rights, I see.’
Andrew covered himself with his hands. ‘I know it’s hard to understand, but I’m bound here. I’m tied.’
Mrs Blithe – the name was already occupied. That made her the other woman. She wasn’t wife material at all.
She’d wanted so much to be blithe. Blithe and Bonnie. Bonnie and Clyde. Jekyll and Hyde. A life a crime. She would have done anything for him. She had. She’d done it for his name’s sake. Names ache.
‘You need to untie her, J,’ Andrew said, walking towards the mattress. J thought it was a bit rich considering that he was the one who’d tied Mary up in the first place. The old ball and chain. J didn’t like his tone but she let it go because of what she had done.
As Andrew edged closer he saw it too.
‘J?’ he whispered.
‘I finished the decorating,’ she said evenly, pointing at the blood on the walls.
There had been a lot of it, more than J had expected. So much that it had drenched the wild woman’s face, obscuring her features. J wondered whether she had imagined the absence of lips, the pink slip of a tongue. Either way, Mary was his silent partner now.
Andrew collapsed onto the mattress, taking Mary’s limp hand in his. He sobbed into the bloodied sheets.
There couldn’t be any lawful impediment in the way of their happiness, but J saw now that Andrew would always be tethered. A memory was stronger than a name.
Blithe and Bonnie, Bonnie and Clyde, Jekyll and Hyde.
The names soared around and around in her mind like birds in flight. J flew with them, barely noticing that she’d forced the rope around Andrew’s neck. That she’d pushed him down onto the marital bed, that she’d made him stare into what was left of the face he’d made his vows to.
Afterward, J climbed back down the rope ladder. The pressure on her neck and shoulders had eased and she walked into the world standing tall, ready to make a name for herself.
Come Into My Parlour
REGGIE OLIVER
Will you walk into my parlour?’ said the Spider to the Fly,
’Tis the prettiest little parlour that ever you did spy;
The way into my parlour is up a winding stair,
And I’ve a many curious things to shew when you are there.’
from The Spider and the Fly by Mary Howitt (1799–1888)
Somehow I always knew that there was a problem with Aunt Harriet.
She was my father’s only sister – step-sister, as it happens – and older than he was by eleven years. She was unmarried and her work was something to do with libraries: that much was clear, but the rest was rather a mystery. She lived in a small flat near Victoria Station in London which we heard about but never saw, but she often used to come to stay with us – rather too often for my mother’s taste. In fact, the only time I ever remember my parents ‘having words’, as we used to say, was over Aunt Harriet yet again coming down for the weekend.
‘Yes, I know, I know, dear,’ I heard my father say. ‘But I can’t exactly refuse her. She is my sister.’
‘Exactly,’ said my mother. ‘She’s only your sister. You can say no to her occasionally.’
But apparently my father couldn’t. Fortunately she did only stay for weekends, that is, apart from Christmas, but I’ll come to that later.
At that time we lived in Kent and my father commuted into London by train every weekday morning. Where we lived was semi-rural; there were places to walk and wander: there were woods and fields nearby. I like to think that my younger sister and I had a rather wonderful childhood; if it were not for Aunt Harriet.
Am I exaggerating her importance? It is a long time ago now, but I rather think I’m not. I suspect that she loomed even larger then than she does in my memory.
She was a big, shapeless woman who always seemed to be wearing several layers of clothing whatever the weather. She dyed her hair a sort of reddish colour and rattled a little from the various bits of jewellery she had about her. (She was particularly fond of amber.) Her nose was beaky and she carried with her everywhere an enormous handbag, the contents of which remained unknown.
When she came she brought with her an atmosphere of unease and discontent. She never allowed herself to fit in with us. If we wanted to go for a walk, she would stay behind. If we decided to stay indoors, she would feel like going out. She rarely took part in any game or expedition we had planned, and when she did there was always a fault to find with the arrangements. On the other hand, almost invariably she wanted, often at the most inconvenient times, to ‘have a talk’ as she put it, with my father. He never refused her demands and so they would go into his study, often for several hours, to have their talk.
I once asked my mother what it was all about.
‘They’re probably discussing the Trust,’ she said.
I never really understood this Trust. I once asked my father about it but he refused to reveal anything. Many years later, after my father’s death, I searched among his papers for evidence of it and could find nothing. The little I knew came at second hand from my mother. She said that some distant relation had left a sum of money jointly to my father and Aunt Harriet, and Aunt Harriet was always trying to get more i
ncome from it, or do something mysterious called ‘breaking the Trust’ so that she could extract a lump sum for her personal use.
I don’t think my aunt ever really cared about my sister and me as people, but she would ask us the kind of questions that grown-ups tend to ask: questions that are almost impossible to answer. ‘How are you getting on at school?’ ‘Have you made any nice friends there?’ I don’t think she would have been interested in our answers even if they had been less boring and evasive than the ones we gave her.
Mealtimes were especially grim. In the first place Aunt Harriet was a vegetarian and my mother, out of courtesy I suppose, insisted that we were also vegetarian during her stays. That meant doing without a Sunday Roast which we resented. My mother was not a great cook at the best of times, but she was particularly uninspired in her meatless dishes. Then, during the meal, Aunt Harriet would either be silent in such a way as to discourage conversation from us, or indulge in long monologues about office politics in the library service. This always struck us – that is, my sister and me, and probably my parents too – as horribly boring. We gathered from her talk that work colleagues were always trying, as she said, ‘to put one over’ on her, and she was always defeating them.
In spite of this, you may be surprised to know, I came to be fascinated by her. I suppose it was because she was, at the same time, such a big part of our lives, and yet so remote. Her life in London, apart from those dreary office politics, was a closed book. She never talked about going to theatres or concerts or exhibitions or watching sport. She didn’t even really talk about books. She never mentioned any friends. It was this mystery about her that started all the trouble.
It began, I suppose, one Sunday in September when I was nine, and Aunt Harriet was then approaching sixty. We had just finished lunch and the meal had not pleased Aunt Harriet. It had been, if I remember rightly, Cauliflower Cheese, not one of my mother’s cooking triumphs admittedly, but perfectly edible. My aunt’s complaint had been that my mother should have made an effort to supply something more original from the vegetarian repertoire.