by Adrian White
WHERE THE RAIN GETS IN
by Adrian White
Part 1
The difficulty for Katie McGuire each day was to find a new place to cut. Both her inner thighs were scarred from years of cutting and although each laceration was little more than a nick, the cumulative effect was a mess. The trouble was that in the early days, when Katie first discovered this release, she hadn't had the reserve and self-control she now possessed. She had cut with the abandon of the explorer so early gashes were real gashes. These longer scars were still visible over twenty years later and Katie avoided cutting across them because it made her wince. Whether it really hurt more, she didn’t know. There was a numbness in these old scars that meant her skin had lost its sense of touch (wasn’t that the point?), but it hurt her inside, in her tummy it seemed, and only on really bad days would she deliberately open old sores. But most days, and this was one of those days, just a little nick of a reminder would do.
First though, her bath – this was Katie’s luxury, her indulgence and her peace. Katie set her alarm for six-thirty in the morning. This was unnecessary because she woke immediately before the alarm went off but she let it be anyway. She used the radio alarm to catch the news because, although a lot of it was nonsense, it was essential she knew what nonsense was being spoken. There was a world out there and she was a part of it, a very real part of it – to the extent that she sometimes helped shape it – and the radio news was her first contact. At six-thirty there were only the briefest of headlines but they were enough to bring her around before the inane music and D.J. chatter took over until seven. News, weather – five minutes already gone. What was to say how many things had already gone through Katie’s head? She slept well and enjoyed that slept-well feeling each morning. Her body felt good below the covers, not yet stirred into action but ready as soon as Katie gave the word.
She’d stopped seriously working out years before but did enough to maintain the hard-earned body of her youth. Of course, back then the gym was part of a crazy collective life that made exercise fun rather than a bore. When there’s a whole crowd of you pushing each other on, when you know that all the other members hate you as they wonder how the owners ever let this crew join and is there a time when they’re not here so that others might exercise in peace? And where do they get their money from: they never seem to work? Katie and her crowd must have seemed pretty intimidating to the other members, but they never gave it a second thought. They were never truly out of order, just loud and so obviously together, there being at times up to twenty of them, mostly fewer, but always three. Always three.
So Katie, who always had a good body anyway – good as in well looked after – no, not well looked after because already back then her abusive lifestyle was taking its toll, but good as in athletically fit and strong and at a weight suitable to her height – Katie gave her body a good grounding in those years that she would have had to go out of her way to lose in later life. Common sense in what she ate, walking to the station each morning and badminton once a week: these things kept her well, and this wellness was all she hoped for these days.
Was it important to her?
It was important she felt well for herself, and it was important she looked good for the world.
Katie explored her body as she lay in bed but never with her hands; she travelled her body with her mind. She’d taken what she could from yoga and enjoyed the relaxation technique of concentrating first on one part of her body and then on the next. Toes, feet and ankles; what did they mean by ‘feel your ankles’? Imaginary feelings? Imaginary bullshit? Maybe, but she continued up to her calves, her shins and her knees. Yes, she liked these parts of her body; she knew her body was what would be regarded as beautiful. She skipped over her thighs. Her hips, her tummy, her shoulders and arms, strong arms, she’d always liked her arms; taking her time over her hands and fingers, touching each of her finger tips with each of her thumbs.
Enough for now, it was time to move. Ten minutes gone – if she ran her bath now she could be lying in it, clean and relaxed by the time for the news proper. She pushed back the covers and stood on the hard wood floor, stretched her hands to the ceiling and felt again the strength in each of her limbs.
Cats have it right, she thought.
She walked through to the bathroom, still in her pyjamas. Although it was officially spring – well, official to Katie who went by the equinox; she’d never really got to grips with the Irish definition of when the seasons started and finished, mainly because she just dismissed them as wrong – there was a distinct chill in the air. Katie used a storage heater to warm the apartment through in the evening, plus a peat fire when she really felt the need, but she never set the timer for the morning, preferring a fresh start to the day rather than a muggy heat. She knew it wouldn’t be to everybody’s taste, but then what would she care about that? This wasn’t some economy drive – there was never any shortage of hot water, always plenty of hot water – just a preference, possibly from her childhood, when mornings in the house were a lot colder than now.
She leant over the bath to the taps, turning on the hot water and placing the plug in the bath. Requirement number one when looking for this apartment, for any apartment, was the bath. A good shower was a beautiful thing, and sometimes only a shower would do, but in the morning Katie had to have her bath. Even this simple turning on of the hot tap and hearing the water flow, a sound so familiar and commonplace, did something for Katie each day and she always took a second or two to let it register, to let it wash over her. She could live without it – she could live without anything, this she knew for a fact – but while she had the choice, she chose not to live without her bath.
She straightened to a standing position and looked at her face in the cabinet mirror, the briefest of glances that signified, what – maybe nothing? She left the bathroom, the water still running into the bath, and went on through to her living room/kitchen. She took the water filter jug from the fridge and poured enough to fill the cup she took from the drainer. She then poured the water from the cup into a pan standing on the cooker hob, turning on the heat and replacing the lid on the pan. The water jug she refilled from the tap and returned to the fridge. She took a camomile teabag from a box in the cupboard – the press, she thought, the press – placed the teabag in the cup and then it was back into the living area for more yoga, again customized to her own needs.
She knelt in the middle of the floor with her back straight and her palms face down on her lap. She breathed through her nose as she accustomed herself to this position. On the third intake of breath she deliberately took in more air and tried to direct the air to her stomach. She was aware of the stupidity of this – naturally the air went to her lungs – but she tried none the less to let the air expand her stomach and her stomach only. She also tried to regulate her breathing and slow it down, taking deeper and longer breaths. When she felt she had mastered this – only a matter of about thirty seconds or so – she further extended the intake of breath and allowed the air first to her stomach and then up into her chest. She tried to imagine the motion of the air as a wave on the seashore, flowing in and flowing out of her body. The simple suggestion of a wave had stuck in her mind for many years now, and would probably stay with her for the rest of her life.
What was she thinking? That good posture was as important as they claimed? Or that breathing from the stomach really did work; that it had a calming effect, and if it worked here it would work in more stressful situations?
The water in the pan was about to come to the boil and the bath was just about run. On her final deep breath Katie opened her arms to the side, raised them up above her head and brought the palms of her hands together, holding the breath as she
held the position before letting out the air and letting down her arms. She stood and returned to the kitchen, turning off the heat and pouring the water into the cup with the teabag.
In the bathroom Katie caught the hot water before it ran cold. There was just enough space to add some cooler water but Katie didn’t bother – she liked her bath water hot, hotter than most people could tolerate and she had her thermostat set at exactly that temperature. She took off her pyjamas and hung them on the handle of the bathroom door. She stepped into the bath water and, as ever, the temperature made her gasp. All her measured breathing from the yoga was replaced by short intakes of breath as she tried to accustom her body to the heat. First one foot and then the other; this was the easy part. Before she had a chance to reconsider, she grabbed the handles at the side of the bath and lowered herself to a sitting position. The sensation was close to deliberately scolding herself with boiling water, as if she’d poured in the water directly from the pan, but she forced herself to slide further down in the bath so her whole body was immersed in the water. She could feel the blood ringing in her ears and she knew this wasn’t good for her body but, in a way that she couldn’t explain, it was right for her.
She’d heard once about a girl who bathed each day in a solution of bleach and cold water – part of a never-ending need for cleanliness – and Katie knew she was not so different herself. Her heart went out to the girl even though they’d never met because Katie understood the compulsion to do that every day. For Katie though, it wasn’t the cleanliness and it wasn’t the pain – it was the oblivion. Whatever else might happen to her during the day, whoever she might meet and whatever she might do, this moment of complete aloneness was the closest the world would ever see of the real Katie McGuire.
Katie’s body became gradually accustomed to the temperature of the water. She was conscious of time passing, and she listened to the news headlines as they were read out on the radio. This was followed by a review of the day’s papers and, when she heard the more in depth news analysis, Katie knew it was time to move. She washed herself and stood in the bath. She pulled out the plug and the water began to drain away. She reached across for a towel and gently dabbed at her wet body; her skin was inflamed with the heat of the bath water and felt tender to the touch of the towel. She looked at herself properly for the first time that day in the cabinet mirror – it reflected the upper part of her body – and she challenged her reflection, forcing herself to look at her blotched skin.
“Not so beautiful now, are we?” she asked her reflection. Katie felt this conflict every day, between how the world perceived her beauty and how she believed herself to be.
She stepped out of the bath before the water had completely drained away and sat on the bathroom chair. For the first and only time that day she examined the scars along her inner thigh. She reached across to the shelf below the cabinet for a packet of flat, open razor blades, the type that used to be fitted onto safety razors with a screw. Each blade was individually wrapped in a paper envelope and Katie picked one out before returning the outer packet to the shelf. She unwrapped the blade and with absolutely no hesitation she cut into the skin of her thigh.
“You have to stay ugly,” she said quietly.
She replaced the blade in the wrapper and threw it into the bin – truly, a disposable razor. She reached for a packet of cotton pads and dabbed one onto the cut to stop the flow of blood. She held the pad with her fingers and then, as she stood, she pushed her legs together to keep it in place.
Time was pressing now. If she was honest with herself, plucking her eyebrows took the best part of ten minutes each morning. She refused to set the alarm any earlier though, or to change her routine just to give herself longer on her face, despite the fact that she always ending up rushing out the door. She kept her make-up to a minimum, but this no effort look was becoming harder to maintain each morning. She brushed her hair and tied it back, away from her face. Before leaving the bathroom, she let the pad fall away from the skin between her legs. She put it into the bin along with the razor blade and went through to the bedroom to dress.
No one would ever know because no one would ever need to know.
Her clothes at least gave Katie no grief in the morning. She’d adopted a look years ago – smart, business, professional – and had kept to it ever since. It wasn’t exactly sexless because however hard she tried Katie couldn’t completely conceal what was so obviously a part of her; but it was more or less what you’d expect a male investment banker to wear – only on a woman. For the first few years in this job, Katie had always worn trousers, both for practical purposes and also as part of the fight for the right to wear them at work. But as dress codes changed and Katie became both more confident and more senior, she also relaxed enough to wear the occasional skirt. She prepared all her clothes for the week on the preceding Sunday, so each morning it was a simple matter of dressing for the day.
She aimed to be out the door by seven-thirty but always found she was sitting drinking her tea at this time, writing out her own private list for the day. Some of the items featured on the list day after day, and were copied out from the previous day’s list. So, for example, exercise and diet were the first two items each day; diet as in to maintain a healthy diet, not a diet to lose weight. These items were meant as a reminder to Katie to be conscious of her health and to take care with how she lived her life. If she could keep a check on her intake of fruit, salad and vegetables it was a reliable way of looking after her body. Other regular items on the list were her evening engagements, such as badminton or the cinema. She preferred to do activities like this straight from work – especially if they were on in town – rather than come home and then go out again. She liked her sleep, particularly during the week while she was working – so different to the old days – but she had nothing planned for this evening except a little shopping for a few basic groceries. She wrote these down to the right of her sheet of notepaper.
Katie’s tea was now cool enough to drink. She fetched her coat from the bedroom and switched off everything that needed to be switched off. She checked the time, which was now seven thirty-seven, put on her coat and went out the door. Her apartment was one of only two on this floor; there were a French couple living in the door opposite to her own, but they kept different hours to Katie and she rarely saw them. This was just how Katie liked it – she liked knowing they were there and they seemed really nice but they didn’t need Katie and she didn’t need them.
She had a woolly hat in her pocket that she put on her head when she felt the cold morning air. She wasn’t concerned with how it made her look; keeping warm was much more important – that and the fact that her hat bore no label or logo. It was a brisk twenty-minute walk to the DART station each morning, and the thought of missing this train encouraged Katie to step out briskly. She didn’t want to wait in the cold and the carriages on the next train would be so much fuller and uncomfortable. There were a few other regular walkers from the estate – a lovely, private collection of apartments set in their own grounds – and Katie could judge if she was on time or slightly late by whom she saw. She knew this was nonsense because the other residents could be as late as she was, but no matter. She enjoyed the walk each day and it was only ever spoiled by heavy rain and wind; then she wished she had a car to keep her dry. On days like today, though, she felt oh so superior to all the lazy bastards who drove to the station.
Katie’s fellow walkers were the first test of her anonymity. She loved the fact that what mattered most was the speed at which she walked – should she pass by this guy on the pavement in front, or slow down slightly, or cross over to the other side of the street? Were they both in good time for the train, and, if so, why was that woman running into the station? These people had no idea about the private Katie back in her apartment, and they never would have. There was nothing she wanted to know about them, and there was nothing they would ever know about her – except, of course, that she liked to catch the sev
en forty-five train in the morning.
Naturally, there were the same faces each morning on the station platform, but Katie had found this wherever she lived. More often than not, she wasn’t waiting long enough at the station to let it bother her. She could see the light of the train coming towards her along the track. She chose not to buy a newspaper from the kiosk – trying to read on the train wasn’t always a pleasure and besides, there was no shortage of newspapers at work. She preferred to use the time of the journey – just over twenty minutes or so – to let her mind wander. If she concentrated on anything, it was on her breathing.
Katie looked up at the route plan for the DART above the carriage window and smiled. The stations were laid out on a single straight line, much as they do for the various lines on the London Underground. Twice every working day, Katie was reminded of a set of questions she’d seen years ago on University Challenge. The route maps of three metro systems in Europe were shown in outline on the screen, and the contestants had to guess the city from the map. While none of the featured cities had quite as extensive a network as London, they all had more than a single track. Dublin’s DART system would seem like a branch line for these other cities – something like the track from Newcastle to Whitley Bay – and not what you’d expect from a country’s capital city. If you were being kind, you could add in the new Luas tram system, but it wasn’t as though the trains and the trams were inter-connected in any meaningful way.
And still no rail connection to the airport, thought Katie.
When she included this observation in her weekly column for the Sunday Independent, the response was fairly predictable. First there was the ‘Well, if you don’t like our country then you can fuck off back to where you came from’ reaction; and second there was the ‘It’s our city and we know it’s not perfect but we love it anyway.’