‘No,’ I answered.
She clicked her tongue and shook her head. ‘Fishing?’ She searched about in a drawer and pulled out a bag of orange boiled sweets and offered me one.
I refused.
‘Dancing then,’ she enquired politely. I shrugged.
‘I’ve tried everything,’ said Jean crossly.
‘Perhaps this is part of the problem,’ Doctor Diamond suggested with a sweet bulging in her cheek.
She sauntered over to the window, thinking. Her teeth were milky white.
‘You say she won’t sleep?’ she purred.
‘That’s right.’
I waggled my tongue.
‘How long?’ she asked, gliding back to her desk.
‘A long time.’ Jean blushed, squeezing the straps of her handbag.
Doctor Diamond looked slowly at Jean for the first time, taking in her thin body, and the dark shadows under her eyes, and wrote something on a piece of paper that she handed over.
‘That’s for you,’ she said with a kind wink.
Jean was relieved. Perhaps she was addicted to tranquillizers?
‘Is Gertrude eating?’
‘Yes. She’s eating.’
The doctor returned to her seat and drummed her fingers on a sheet of paper. I yawned. It felt as if we had been in there for hours.
What about her father; I mean your marriage?’ she asked Jean suddenly.
Jean smacked her pale lips together and coughed.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Any particular tensions?’
‘No.’
There was another breathy pause.
‘There’s nothing the matter with her physically,’ she announced breezily. ‘Apart from a gullible heart.’
A gullible heart? I preserved the phrase and placed it up my sleeve, so that I could look at it later under a magnifying glass.
‘Is that a defect?’ snapped Jean, pacing up and down, looking like she might kick the furniture.
‘Not really. I’m sending her to see a friend of mine,’ she decided with a manly flick of her hair. ‘She needs to talk to someone.’
She wrote another note.
‘It really isn’t my fault,’ Jean protested with a ragged cry.
‘I know,’ sighed Doctor Diamond sadly. ‘But she’s just a child isn’t she?’
Jean looked at me as if for the first time. What did she think I was? A dog?
‘Gullible heart!’ muttered Jean as she dragged me down the street. ‘She must be a student. I’ve never seen her before.’
Some of Doctor Diamond had stuck to my skin, and I could still smell her on my hands. I thought the opposite. I thought Doctor Diamond was on my side. And even though I was only eight I believed that she too had a gullible heart, and in this condition we were comrades.
Frank
‘Gert, are you there?’
‘Is that you Frank?’
‘You were always getting into bed with me, do you remember?’
‘Yes.’
‘You were like an animal, snuffling and snorting and pulling the covers off.’
‘It was the only safe place that’s why.’
‘Is that what you thought?’
‘Yes, that’s what I thought.’
‘I miss you sometimes Gert. No-one ever gets into bed with me here.’
‘Or me.’
‘How did we ever get to be so alone?’
‘That’s what I keep thinking.’
‘My stomach doesn’t ache any more.’
‘Oh, good.’
‘Gert, you’ve got to stop blaming everyone.’
‘I’m not. I’m just thinking things through.’
‘But where are you going to end up?’
‘Don’t ask me. Look at you.’
‘But I’m different. We were always different.’
‘You mean you were cleverer.’
‘No. I was weaker.’
‘Are you telling me to pull myself together?’
But Frank didn’t answer. He was always doing that. Walking off just as conversations got interesting. Disappearing.
Carmen Leaves
A few days after we went to see Doctor Diamond I was lying on the polished lawn looking up at a cloud in the shape of a train, that ran along rails made from the tracks of aeroplanes, carrying Japanese tourists home. Inside the house my parents were shouting. Carmen, our cleaning lady, had handed in her notice. Her overalls, that hung in the cloakroom, had disappeared. For days Jean had worn a tranquillized, overcast face, and roamed the house in a dreamy fret. George wouldn’t stop laughing, and the more he laughed, the more the mercury in the barometer in the high parlour rose.
That day it was very, very hot.
‘You!’ Jean stood by the garden door, swaying, and blackbirds changed places in the trees.
‘Why me?’ bellowed George.
The clouds curled into shoals of slippery mackerel and swam across the sky.
‘It’s your fault Gert’s not normal. The doctor said so.’
‘What am I supposed to have done for Christ’s sake! Anyway Gert’s fine!’ George’s voice drummed a steady beat. ‘Gert needs knots.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘She drifts about. She needs tying down.’
‘What do you know about children?’
‘I’m just saying.’
‘She’s disturbed!’ There was a stormy pause. Then Jean yelled with the force of a hurricane, ‘KNOTS!’ and guffawed nastily.
The laugh stopped as abruptly as it had started. The mackerel were replaced by inky scribbles. It started to rain.
Jean herself was drizzling softly.
She breathed out loudly, ‘And Carmen.’
‘What about Carmen?’
A drop of salty rain fell onto my lips.
‘You know what I mean.’
‘I don’t know anything. I thought she had bad legs.’
‘Bad legs? Sure!’
The clouds turned into a great gaping mouth. The argument travelled up the stairs and re-emerged from another window.
‘She might end up in a mental home!’
‘There’s nothing the matter with her.’
‘How do you know? You don’t know anything.’
There was a crash, followed by loud moans and sobs. A door slammed. George’s footsteps mashed the pavement as he strode up the street.
Jean wailed, ‘What will people think?’
The clouds reared up and became a psychiatrist. I closed my eyes. I was suddenly terribly tired. I could hear Jean’s feet on the grass. They sounded weary too.
‘Gert?’ she mumbled.
I didn’t answer.
‘Gert!’ she barked.
I sat up. I was covered in wet grass cuttings.
‘Carmen has gone,’ she said.
‘Why?’ I asked nonchalantly.
‘Because of her legs,’ stated Jean grimly.
‘Oh.’ I lay down again.
‘Gert,’ Jean started again. ‘Do you know how lucky you are?’
Her face was a brown paper bag. She was twisting her hands into parcel string. She wanted something from me but I wasn’t sure what.
‘Oh yes,’ I said.
‘Good,’ said Jean and turned back to the house.
What I Thought
Carmen was cleaning the back parlour; a room with no windows, like a priest’s hole. It smelt of mice and punishment. It was a room I never played in. She was on her knees, polishing the rough oak floorboards when she heard a noise behind her; a scuttling and a hoarse breath. She swung round, rag in hand and there was George. He was so tall that he filled the whole doorway, and the room was suddenly dark. He walked in and looked at her. He was green. He held out his hands. They were claws, and his mouth was full of teeth. His eyes were narrow slits. He got down on his knees. Then he bit Carmen’s ankle, so that it bled. She fought him off with her fists and sat on him, but she knew that once he had got the taste of her
blood on his lips he would try again. That’s why Carmen left. That’s what I thought anyway.
The Cotton Club
I made the mistake of asking Eva out without having any particular destination in mind, so she took control of our date like the captain of a ship. I was to sail into more foreign territories; in this case, a wine bar.
I was nervous and alarmed. I thought I was the lover and she was the loved, but I was beginning to feel courted myself. I spent hours getting ready and ironed my clothes twice. When I put them on I looked like a cutout, I inspected my shadowy face in the mirror. It was the face of a person who was unused to light. I had creases round my eyes. My hair was cut in a schoolgirl bob. My mouth still had difficulty smiling.
I was meeting Eva and her best friend Gwenny at the Cotton Club, a wine bar in a part of town where I would never normally dare to go. I couldn’t refuse.
On the way there a labrador got on the train without an owner. Everyone asked the dog what it was doing, but the dog didn’t answer and was aloof. It got off three stops later. The train was misty with hairspray and men’s aftershave. Everything shone apart from me. Young women glittered and boys had a patent sheen. I looked at my reflection in the train window, and saw how papery I was. I was used to being with Eva in the toilet, but I didn’t know how I would feel in the Cotton Club, without a hand dryer to fiddle about with.
In fact, I had done so well with Eva that I was cracking under the pressure. Perhaps I was deluding myself, I thought. I had no idea how she saw me. And if she got to know me would she find me too intense? And of course she could be heterosexual through and through; revolted by any overture. But there was something about the manner in which she held her head that gave me hope. I was sure she wasn’t a man’s woman; she was too undiluted.
The first person I saw when I pushed my way through a crowd of naked arms was the bright woman whom I had seen meeting Eva outside the institute. She turned to me with a warm look of recognition.
‘This is Gwenny,’ said Eva. ‘I told you about her.’
Gwenny had the flanks of a racehorse and a short sharp skirt. She fell over Eva like water splashing against a rock. She stamped on the ground with her fierce high shoes. She cooed.
‘Oh Gert... so here you are!’ and the words made me feel as if I might belong.
Eva gurgled with mirth and kept looking at me as if Gwenny was a wild child she couldn’t control. They both had bare shoulders and red lips. I was out of place in a man’s shirt, but for the time being that didn’t seem to matter. When they spoke to me I laughed in response. If my attention strayed then Gwenny would nudge me and wink.
We were standing by the door of the Cotton Club, holding white wine and sodas. The place was a mass of moving bodies; arms above heads, carrying drinks; standing around the bar as if it was an auction, shouting and waving money at the slippery bar staff.
When Eva went to the bar I was left pressed up to Gwenny’s tasselled top. She leant towards me and shouted.
‘Eva talks about you all the time. She says the old institute wouldn’t be the same without you.’
‘Vice versa.’
‘What?’
‘I feel the same.’
‘Say it a bit louder... the speaker is next to my ear!’
‘She’s wonderful!’ I shouted as the record stopped. Gwenny’s face broke into a grin, and if she had a tail she would have wagged it.
‘Are you married?’
‘No.’
‘Going out with anyone?’
‘No.’
‘Are you not that type?’
Our eyes met. Gwenny tapped her nose. I wasn’t sure of this territory. It might be safe, and on the other hand, it might not.
The Cotton Club was decorated with plastic ferns that swept across your face. There was a wet T-shirt competition going on behind a screen with images of the Deep South painted onto it. The staff wore raggy shorts and cut-off vests. We were jammed into a sweaty embrace with each other. I was very close to Eva and we were all drunk. Redundant miners’ sons passed pints of lager above our heads. The whole room was moving with the beat of a familiar song.
Then two vested boys elbowed into our affectionate triangle and stuck their fat chins into my face. They had shaved jowls and wet necks and Eva and Gwenny insulted them gleefully. The boys asked the same question over and over again.
‘Are you coming to Fat Betty’s with us?’
Gwenny and Eva refused vehemently, and the words bounced back and forth, but even I could see it was a ritual of which I was not part.
Then one of the boys jerked his sharp thumb in my direction.
‘Who’s this, your brother?’
Eva and Gwenny howled with laughter, their arms around my shoulder. Eva screamed, ‘That’s Gert... she’s a lass, you great idiot!’ and the boy frowned at me strangely for a few seconds. He knew. He had smelt me out.
I told them that I had a headache. Eva and Gwenny walked me down the street to the train station; one on each arm. The lads followed, jeering and whistling. It was a Spanish dance around us, with stamping feet and arms in the air; a drama happened every yard. A girl wept on the cobbles; a half naked man cupped the blood running out of his nostrils and wiped it into the hair he had shampooed so carefully. A couple kissed as if they wanted to meld into one tongue, a group of five danced a jig, three men embraced as if they had just scored a goal, a huge woman in a long black dress berated a taxi driver with a twenty pound note. Eva and Gwenny implored me to stay, to come to Fat Betty’s, but I was too scared by it all. I couldn’t keep up.
After they’d gone, merging with the boys who waited with their tongues hanging out for me to disappear, I was at a loose end. I didn’t want to go home where I would be faced with my own social failure. I walked away from the train station and out of the crowds to Paradise. As I walked into the small bar there was a concentrated hush. It was ladies’ quiz night. From Sodom and Gomorrah to a girl guides’ camp, I thought. I whispered my order to the barmaid who had a pencil in her hand and was trying to remember the names of the seven dwarfs. Irritated, she poured me a whisky, and informed me I’d missed the history section.
I sat down randomly, next to a lesbian dentist who was bent over her quiz form as if it was a mouth.
When the quiz ended the bar collectively stretched and cheered, and everyone ran to it. I was drunk; so drunk that I stayed very still and pretended I wasn’t there.
Then Barbara, my ex-girlfriend, appeared, her light hair done up in the style of a light bulb, and in a leather jacket that was ripped around the collar.
‘Gert, I’m back!’ she bubbled. ‘I thought I’d find you here,’ she said, and tripped off to get more drinks. I was rather pleased to see Barbara. She looked blurred and French. She plonked herself down after kissing me three times and started to tell me about Marseille. She had met a crane driver there called Monique who spat and rode a motor bike. She showed me a photograph of her and Monique astride the bike. Barbara was smoking Gauloise which I thought was a bit of a cliche. I asked her if she was in love, and she leant over to my ear and whispered, ‘Monique was very butch. She’s got a beard and everything. I had to get away from her... you know,’ and pulled up her sleeve to show me what looked like hard pebbles on the skin of her arms.
‘Cigarette burns,’ she sighed happily.
‘Monique did that?’ I was horrified.
‘No, I did it. That’s why I came back. Monique said I had to pull myself together. She doesn’t like smoking.’
It was hard to follow Barbara’s logic, so I just patted her hand.
‘Poor Barbara!’ I muttered, but she beamed back at me and went and got me another whisky.
I started to tell Barbara about the institute, and Eva, and the Head Curator but the words were falling out of the wrong side of my mouth. I think Barbara must have taken something because she laughed whenever I spoke. After I had fallen off my chair she said she’d get a taxi for us both and take me home. Then I was in the st
reet with Barbara and vomiting onto a neat pile of blue broken glass which reminded me of something.
You should be careful rats don’t gnaw the corners.
I swung on Barbara’s lapels and snorted. I breathed all over her with my foul breath and told her she was my best and only friend.
Then I passed out.
I woke up in my own bed shouting for Barbara who appeared in a motherly fashion and said shush. She climbed into bed beside me holding a plastic bowl which she put helpfully under my chin.
I pushed the bowl away and Barbara told me to go to sleep, and I did, with my head under her arm, smelling her French perfume which reminded me of gutters.
Then I was dreaming rhat I was standing in the street with Jean. We were outside the Cotton Club, which was closed. It was just before dawn, and Jean stepped gingerly across the uneven cobbles, gathering her coat around her. It had a stain on it, the colour of blood. Starlings were yawning and shuffling on the ledges. The pavement was covered with the remains of the previous night; bits of clothing, uneaten chips, jewellery, broken bottles, coins and vomit.
We tiptoed along together. Then, gradually, I realized that we were not alone. People were appearing from back alleys and behind parked cars. They were a race I had never seen before, with the wrinkled features of pixies. They started to sift through the rubbish that lay around us, pocketing anything that shone, searching for lost earrings, watches and cufflinks.
Jean appeared bleak, as if this was a world she would rather not know about.
Then as the light broke there was a sound like a vast wave; a deafening roar of rushing water. From around the corner came a corporation cleaning machine, which gushed green slimy disinfectant, and then with whirring brushes, Brilloed the pavements clear of all that was left.
As it approached, this dragon, the scavengers retreated, arms full of their findings, mumbling, and rattling the coins in their pockets. Then, as the sun came up, the cleaning was done and the road was spotless.
Jean turned to me and said, ‘Now do you see how lucky you are?’
I woke up on the floor, freezing cold, with the plastic bowl lying upside down beside me. Barbara had gone, leaving a torn piece of paper stuck to the toilet bowl, that I only saw when I vomited. It read, ‘Au revoir, ma chérie.’
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