by Joe Stretch
Colin met Deaks a week ago. They got talking about women. They got on, found it easy to talk. Both single men, relatively bored, both strangely bowled over by the sight of heavily pregnant women. Deaks is thirty years old. He has matted brown hair like twisted thread and has been corrupting the maternity ward for five years.
This room is surely colder than it should be. The air is fresh and lacks the chemical scent of death that exists in most wards of the hospital. Colin’s been working as a cleaner here for three months: Deaks is his only friend. Colin looks to Deaks for guidance, as this is his first expedition into the ward at night. Deaks is breathing heavily, his vital organs sloshing about in randy panic. If you were to shave Deaks’s head and remove a small square of skull, then you could peer through and view a brain of the richest crimson.
‘Which beds have agreed?’ whispers Colin, his bowels loose because of the nerves, a light fart creeping silently from his arse.
‘That one there, and the third one along from the far wall.’ Deaks points a finger towards the end of the ward. In the bed in front of him, a sleeping woman snorts and adjusts her position. He and Colin hold their breath, then exhale as the woman begins to purr once more. The women are fast asleep.
There is a peaceful humming sound coming from certain pieces of medical equipment, just enough to drown out the soft whispering of the two men and the sound of their careful footsteps. If we’d met Deaks earlier, we’d know a little more about him. We could have shaved his head, cut his skull and perved on his brain. Yeh, it would’ve been ace. But we didn’t meet him earlier. It’s my fault, forgive me.
These secretive missions in the dead of night are not new for Deaks. They have been happening on a regular basis for years. They’re usually undertaken alone, but, occasionally, he’ll invite a like-minded person along, like he’s done tonight with Colin. Deaks has become adept at befriending the frightened women of the Antenatal Ward. Women whose pregnancies have become problematic and difficult to predict. Women for whom the prospect of completing their pregnancies in the outside world would be too risky. They must be monitored, looked after and kept safe.
‘The one at the end’s young. Better for you, Colin.’
‘Fine.’
Over the past five years, Deaks has successfully decoded the emotional compositions of these fearful women. He can earn their trust with a few carefully turned phrases. He can put them at ease and share the burden of their uncertainty and excitement. When he’s confident they trust him, he begins to articulate his plans. He offers to visit them late at night, to comfort them. He describes it as an effective form of therapy, a helpful way of getting them through these knife-edge days. He says it’s not strictly allowed, but, if they wish, he will visit them and perform a secret and sensuous massage. Only occasionally do they agree. Certain women take to the idea, find it quite exciting and surprisingly therapeutic. Deaks believes the women need him. He is a carer. A Florence Nightingale. A sensible and giving man – a fully qualified nurse. Right now, he’s silently drawing a thin white curtain around one of the beds. Out of the corner of his eye, he monitors Colin, as he makes his way down the ward to do the same.
For Colin, this night could not have come sooner. Deaks approached him last week, having noticed the look in his eye and his religious devotion to the sweeping and mopping of the Antenatal Ward. His decision to cut down his hours at the university office and apply for cleaning work at the hospital was starting to make sense. For the past three months he has diligently swept the floors, made it clean for the ladies. He has marvelled at their large stomachs and tricky, spitty breathing. When Deaks proposed he join him on a night-time voyage to meet and soothe the women, his brain warmed in its bloody sauce. He felt like weeping. Salty tears seeping from within his dried white mind. He felt like he was thawing slightly, coming back to life.
One, two, three. Colin counts the beds from the far wall. He admires how the bedclothes have been dragged over the curved shapes of the patients. So this one’s mine, he thinks, staring at a sleeping girl through the thin light of the room. A few strands of blond hair dangle out from within the covers. But no face as yet. He wonders how her face will seem. He walks silently along the side of her bed, noticing a pale, porcelain hand leaking out from under the covers. He unties the curtain and slowly guides it along the rail and around the bed. They’re alone.
This is the first time Colin has been alone with a woman in over a year. His hands and knees are shaking nervously. She’s still asleep. How will I wake her? he thinks. Should I rock her gently until she’s awake? Say hello? Will she be expecting Deaks? This is absolutely incredible.
He moves closer and peels back the top of the duvet. The girl turns gently in her sleep. Her head’s pointing directly upwards. Flower petal eyelids. Colin is frozen, his heart feeling like a fire alarm. The girl is nice looking, incredibly young, maybe seventeen. Jesus. He touches her hair. The poor girl. Her eyes: they’re opening. Fuck. Her eyes are opening. Petals wilting. They’re staring right at his. Am I an awful man that should be killed?
‘Hello,’ says the girl, yawning, her whole body flexing and coming to terms with itself. The small child is in her womb, chilling perhaps, or sleeping. She’s so young. Shouldn’t she have had an abortion? Was she raped? No, she’s smiling slightly, it can’t have been rape. She’s at peace with her situation, more likely it was just an accident. An experiment with a silly boy at a house party. It went wrong, but then she wanted it. I wanna keep it, she thought, I’m not too young. Maybe her parents backed the idea, said they would help her out financially. Shit, shit, shit. Colin is still rooted to the spot like some guy visiting a terminally ill friend and not knowing quite what to say. You’re going to die. What to say? You’re going to die. How’s the food?
‘Deaks said he couldn’t make it tonight,’ she whispers. Thank fuck, she knows, thinks Colin, wondering if he’ll be able to get away with saying nothing at all. He just wants to feel her, touch her skin with his hands. Is that so bad? Ha, he wants to eat her in delicate little bits. Dilute himself and be happy and wet and touched.
‘Well?’ says the girl, rising slightly and supporting herself on her elbows. She’s wearing no make-up, but her features are young enough to be naturally defined. They’re yet to be threatened by gangs of wrinkles and burst blood vessels. Fifteen, she could be fifteen. For a second, Colin sees the moment when her child was conceived. A black-eyed boy on top of her, pus beating round the pimples of his cheeks. Ah, he flinches and the memory falls, down his windpipe, sliding through his veins and landing with a splat among the contents of his stomach. Relax. Relax.
‘Colin.’
‘Sorry?’
‘My name is Colin. I’m a cleaner.’
‘Oh right, not a nurse? My name is Melissa.’
Colin steps forward as if flames all over his body are beginning to catch, fire up and lick at his chin. His skin’s melting and he’s loving it, loving the heat and the feeling of finally burning down. Fuck. He feeds both his hands under the cover where it’s incredibly humid. Like a rain forest, his fingers walking the terrain, the ruffles in the bedsheet, the cleanness, Jesus, the heat. A few inches in and he hits torso, wrapped in cotton. A thigh. A hip. He touches it, the thin, second-skin fabric heated by her body. Knicker elastic; keep calm.
‘Deaks just massages, strokes me gently.’
‘I know, it’s fine.’
Under the covers, Colin begins to drag Melissa’s nightie up her body, passing it from hand to hand until he reaches the seam and drags it up over her belly and discards it. His right knee is up on the bed for support. His arms have elevated the bed covers well above her body. His hands hover above what he knows to be her naked and bloated stomach. Like a conjurer, a healer. His fingers fall slowly, quivering, like a helicopter landing, waiting to touch down. When will it come? Her skin, her hot skin. What does the foetus make of this? wonders Colin. The child, what’s the child thinking? Nothing, it can’t know, surely, it’s asleep. It’
s way past its bed time.
‘They’ve said it’s a girl,’ says Melissa, her suspicions growing as Colin’s eyes shut with desire. He waits for touch down. Seconds happen. ‘I was really hoping for a little boy,’ she says.
But Colin can’t hear. There should be an almighty hiss as his hands connect with her belly, but there isn’t. No sound at all. The palms of his hands. Her body. The baby girl. Melissa’s stomach is like an African drum: a bongo, pig skin pulled taut across wood. But hot, hot and wet. A greenhouse in summer. Colin circulates both his hands around her stomach, fingers erect and stretched apart, adapting to the contours of this stack of skin, sliding everywhere in her sweat.
His hands move all over her because they must. They must know every part of this flesh. Around her extruded belly button, around the seams of her stomach where the stretched skin disappears and the soft, silk-like sensation begins. Colin’s fingers reach the summit of her belly, then come skiing down, right to where her body levels out and his wrists scrape along the prickly waistband of her underwear. Then down, further, down, of course. Colin, who doesn’t touch women, runs his fingers lightly over Melissa’s knickers, feeling the tendony, featherlike contents. Then back up, over the belly and down to her breasts which seem muscular and strained. He kneads them until they feel free and mobile. The charity. The healer.
His eyes stare down at the ground, then directly at Melissa’s face which appears more alert than at ease. For Colin, all this can never be enough. He brings his leg down from the bed, pauses for a second then bows forward, head first under the covers. Hot air is gassing his mouth, like he’s not breathing at all but suffocating. It’s pitch black and steamy. He pushes his cheek up against Melissa’s body, skids his lips around and around her stomach, wetting his entire face in her perspiration. Drinking it. This is it, something; a feeling, hot flesh, a lovely feeling. Desire. Confusion. He wants this, wants this magic for ever. He is gasping with pleasure.
‘Colin, stop.’
A muffled noise. A voice from outside the covers, not Melissa’s. Shit. And oh fuck. Colin pauses, closing his eyes, pressing their lids against stretched skin.
‘Colin, stop.’
Colin edges out slowly, lifting the cover back over his head and placing it down by Melissa’s side. His eyes are reddening. His hair is disturbed and sticks out in strange directions. His mouth is open, lips rendered indistinct by perspiration.
‘Get the fuck out of here,’ whispers Deaks, as if he’d rather be shouting at the top of his voice. What have I done wrong? thinks Colin, despairing. He’d massaged her, that’s all, that’s what she wanted. What the fuck is he complaining about?
‘Get out of here, Colin. I’ll deal with it,’ says Deaks, touching Melissa on the shoulder and gesturing towards the glowing EXIT sign above the door. Colin ignores him and stares at Melissa. She’s fucking fine. What is his problem? He half expects Melissa to leap to his defence, say she was enjoying it and ask Deaks what the fuck his problem is. But she doesn’t. She’s just staring at Deaks, a look on her face like she’s just been dunked by bastards into an ice-cold swimming pool. Colin leaves in silence.
It’s five minutes before the text message from Deaks comes in. It tells Colin to meet him at the Wishing Well. Neutral territory, away from the doctors and their large and effective ears. It’s another five minutes until Deaks is sitting down in the Wishing Well opposite Colin. No food or drink. What the fuck is his problem?
‘Well, what was that about, Colin?’ says Deaks, tapping an unlit fag on to the grey tabletop. Colin says nothing. ‘She said you felt her fucking tits. Do you have any idea how careful I have to be? How much trouble we’d be in if a woman complained?’ Again, Colin elects not to reply. He’s thinking about his school days in Stretford; the relentless bollockings, the speechless lust, rushing home to wank into a sports sock. Ha, his innards crease into a smile. The pretty-shitness of life. The painted veil. He looks up at Deaks, who exhales melodrama: ‘She said you tried to finger her.’
‘She’s lying,’ Colin replies, leaning back on his chair, looking around the cafeteria. A few tired people wait for news of life or death. It’s a grey area: Deaks massages the women, helps them but also helps himself. He needs the women and they need him. It’s convenient. But, of course, he can’t take it as far as he’d like. He can’t fuck them or wank over them directly. He sticks within certain boundaries, so as to make it all last: his life, his sanity, his caring sessions with the women.
At an adjacent table, a gingernut in a yellow dressing gown burps horrendously. Colin and Deaks share a glance, then listen as she spews a pink mess on to the table. There’s a commotion involving endless reams of paper towels and the drip-drip of sick on to the floor. The mood changes and Deaks leans in towards Colin sympathetically.
‘You have to take what you can get in this life, Colin. If you can’t fuck pregnant women, then you do the next best thing: you touch them and care for them.’
‘I don’t want to have sex with them,’ says Colin, watching the sickly gingernut being led away at snail’s pace. It’s true, he doesn’t want to have sex with a pregnant woman. It’s fascination, only fascination.
But Deaks is not convinced: ‘Bullshit,’ he barks. ‘I saw you under the covers. The feeling of fucking the already fucked is the feeling that has changed my life.’
Colin flicks his head violently to one side and performs an exaggerated swallow. Deaks smiles an unhappy smile.
‘They let me do it sometimes, you know? Once a year or so, a woman comes along who wants it. Imagine that. I can’t afford to lose my chance. That’s why you messing around tonight is so serious.’
An enormous tea urn blows steam from its loose-fitting lid. There is a smell of old food. Colin notices a few drops of pink vomit that the sleepy staff neglected to clean up. He can’t imagine having sex with a heavily pregnant woman. Partly because he’s unimaginative, and partly because the prospect of such pointless touching makes his lips scrunch with upset terror. ‘Why?’ he says. ‘Why do you fuck them, Deaks?’
Deaks’s smile widens. His teeth are bared. ‘Because I really, really want to,’ he begins. ‘It’s a feeling I have. A desire. The same reason your hair is dripping in that girl’s sweat.’
Instinctively, Colin spikes his hair with his hand. It stands on end. His eyes are open wide and bright. It’s uncommon for Colin to speak to anyone and he feels unusual, like a new person. He even feels a little more normal, despite the fact he’s in a hospital cafeteria discussing the merits of sex with pregnant women. Deaks continues to persuade.
‘Everybody has their fetish, Colin. Chances are you’re beginning to find your own.’
‘No,’ Colin replies. He stares at the cheap tabletop and senses that, deep down, he’d rather be dead. Better to be dead than staring at this tabletop. He slams his hands down and stands up. Deaks’s head bows and Colin fights the temptation to bring many plates smashing down on to his crown. Colin grimaces and breathes. Words drop from his mouth like a slow strand of thick spit.
‘I feel . . . that it’s not sex . . . It’s like I’ve just discovered the origin of myself and the rest of us . . . and it was innocent . . . and I’m surprised.’
It’s three-thirty on Monday morning and this is a black and sooty world. The lights of the cafeteria appear to be locked in a process of dimming. Getting darker and darker. This plastic room contains not a single drop of natural light. It’s just a space that humans have locked themselves in to eat, drink and wait on news of the sick. The air isn’t air at all, but a liquid that we bob about in.
Colin, who is certain he doesn’t wish to make love to a pregnant woman, but is nonetheless fascinated by their concept, is leaving the hospital. He’s working his way down flights and flights of steps. Outside, the air is iced glass; splintering slowly and dramatically all around. There is the possibility of snowfall, Colin stamps his stone feet on the stone ground, searching for the light of traffic and the bus home.
And, of
course, the early morning lights of the city begin to glow and nudge at the blacked-out windows of the bus. And, of course, the bus contains people. Tired ones, for whom the scrolling red and blue lights of Rusholme are like a dream; the types of shapes and colours you see when you shut your eyes.
Colin’s pale-blue bedroom is almost certainly both cold and odorous. But, in truth, it seems to simply stink of a disgusting coldness. Like it’s entirely unified, bound by frost and sharp ice. He picks his way across the warzone floor. It’s no man’s land at Christmas; cheerful and still, but bloodstained by battle. His wet bedsheets work against the warming instincts of his body. Oh, it’s winter and it’s always so cold. He brings his legs up into his body so his knees are resting just below his chin. He shivers, remembering the warmth of Melissa’s belly, picturing her lying in that hospital bed. He falls into her sleep.
19
Drinking Formaldehyde
SHE WON’T COME, thinks Johnny. There’s no way she’ll come. He’s sitting in one of Withington’s fashionable bars, frequented by second-year students and reluctant estate agents. The walls of the bar have had large planks of dark wood grafted on to them. They’re decorated in memorabilia: old football pennants, photos of forgotten movie stars, oil paintings of an older world. Or rather, a younger world. Yes, a younger world, of course. We are an ancient civilisation, the eldest and weariest society. Johnny feels old and indifferent.
It’s a terrible sign that Rebecca is already fifteen minutes late. It’s a terrible sign that Johnny has already finished the cup of tea he ordered on arrival. The waitress, who seems simplistic and happy, is eyeing him carefully. Does he require more tea? Johnny hasn’t met Rebecca in a while. After that day at the park, they saw less and less of each other. He phoned her, but she was always busy with university or whatever. In the three months that have passed, Johnny has lost his grip on the society of enjoyment, casual coffee and laughter. He’s so upset.