More Accidents
Abbie didn’t look like me or either of her possible fathers. In her nappy she looked like a balding, middle-aged businessman sunbathing. She used to dribble with ecstasy as she wriggled into her kangaroo pouch for our long walks around London. I talked to her, long before she could talk back, staring into her face as she huddled inside my coat. Some of the age I’d escaped seemed to have pickled my daughter: she had heavy lids above her blue eyes and frown lines.
You had never made jealous scenes about any of my flirtations or affairs. But when I fell in love with my baby you behaved like a rejected schoolboy. Incredulous, disgusted, you watched as I cuddled and worshipped and changed and fed her. The first few times I saw you with Abbie I was reminded of Mr Punch and the baby; I rushed over to take her before your boredom became destructive. You never offered to help, and your work became conveniently demanding. More and more, you stayed away, and I didn’t ask too many questions about what you were up to. I was happy in the enchanted circle I made with my daughter and, although I knew you felt left out, I couldn’t find a way of including you.
One afternoon, when Abbie was three, we returned to what I thought was an empty house and marched in, singing and laughing. Suddenly I saw you on the dark stairs. You looked very tall and pale and thin, and your deep blue eyes glared at us like two rodents in a cage, fighting viciously. Abbie ran to me and buried her face against my coat. ‘Leo, you frightened us. I thought you were still in Sicily. You look so – sinister.’
‘Sorry to be the spectre at your feast. What a pity you didn’t marry a cosier man, David, for instance. If I’d known you were going to slide into bovine domesticity as soon as you got the chance I would have left you in Hoxton.’ Abbie wailed, not understanding our words but picking up the feelings behind them all too well.
All our rows were about the kind of child she should be. You wanted her to have a nanny, to go to a formal school and later a boarding-school, to join the upper-middle class we had bought our way into. I wanted your money and my daughter but not the pompous conventions that would take her away from me. I won all the rows and kept Abbie, but somewhere along the way I lost you. You were our acerbic sugar daddy, paying the bills and then disappearing behind closed doors or on mysterious trips I never asked enough questions about. Our talk became functional, our love-making became more aggressive and then fizzled out.
Now she’s nine. Although I’ve tried to give Abbie an ordinary childhood, she’s stronger, more complex and self-contained than other children of her age. I can’t take her for granted. I find her endlessly fascinating, rather as the old toy maker must have felt about Pinocchio. As I watch her develop I feel better about myself, as if my daughter’s life is a continuation of my own but deeper and richer. When adults ask her what she wants to be when she grows up, Abbie says, ‘I want to be a proper person’; and when other children ask what her father does she replies either ‘He’s in an aeroplane’ or ‘He’s driving his big car.’ I don’t know, or choose to know, much more than that about your movements. I suppose I’ll never know for sure who her father is. There’s a test now that determines paternity – but how could I subject Abbie to it? She might end up in some medical textbook, a freak, the subject of television documentaries.
Yes, I want her to be ordinary. Last Christmas in New York you did your best to broadcast your powers. So now you’re trying to upstage Superman and Jesus with your miracles, as I screamed when Abbie boasted about your flight together. You said I was jealous, that I wanted Abbie all to myself. Rubbish. I just wanted to protect her from your dangerous attempts to impress her.
Since that night you and I have hardly spoken to each other. You go away for months at a time. And the accidents have started again. In February poor Charles blew his brilliant brains out to evade the scandal over his underworld connections. Toby and Katrina’s perfect marriage fell apart just after Christmas, and Toby was sectioned. He hanged himself. Then, last month, Katrina set fire to her flat and burnt to death with all her children.
I confront you with my suspicions.
‘What? Jenny, you’re so paranoid. I wasn’t even in the country when poor Charles and Toby and Katrina died.’
We’re standing on the stairs, hissing at each other because Abbie has just gone to bed. Not in front of the child. You’re dressed in a sharp suit and dark glasses, your luggage is in the hall because you’re catching a night flight to Moscow. I follow you downstairs.
‘There have been too many accidents and coincidences, Leo. Gerry, George, Nat, Hari and now our three closest friends – and God knows how many during the war. You always destroy your instruments. I’m afraid for Abbie …’
‘I’ve never lifted a finger against her. Or you. One-lifers are so fragile, it doesn’t take much to kill them. Toby’s madness started with paranoid delusions, you know. You should be careful, Jenny.’
Your car comes, you leave, but my fear stays in the house. It’s only now, when I’m ceasing to love you, that I realize just how much I once did, like an illness that can only be diagnosed when the corpse is dissected. There’s been a lot of sex between us but very few declarations of feeling. Yet I can see now that loving you was always there, my background and foreground. Even when I lived in Italy and told myself I was independent I knew I could always go back to you. What did I get eternal youth for if not to share it with you?
When you’re away I don’t miss you as I once did but think uneasily about you and dream. The dreams are horrible. I try to forget them, but there’s one that keeps recurring. I fall asleep on the sofa in my study, thinking I’m alone in the house. The door opens and shadowy figures in white gowns and masks drift into the room and surround me. They bend over me, inject me, cut me, subject me to some mysterious ritual. I can see them but can’t speak or move. Suddenly I see your face behind one of the masks. We stare at each other, but no words come.
I’ve become even more anxious about Abbie. I take her to school, pick her up, never leave her alone in the house. You and I no longer make love. I sleep in our double bed, and when you’re in London you sleep in one of the spare rooms. Celibacy makes me tense and bad-tempered – a few weeks ago, this familiar train of thought was interrupted by my femunculus:
Why don’t you just admit you’re feeling randy and go out and pick someone up?
Oh, it’s you, is it? Where have you been?
I’ve been around, listening, watching you bury yourself in that child, pretending you still love Leo because you can’t cope without him. So, find yourself a toyboy.
It’s not that easy. What about AIDS? Supposing the guy’s a psychopath or a thief? Anyway, I don’t like the idea of sex without feelings.
Better than no sex at all. You didn’t used to be so squeamish. Come on, let’s get you dolled up. What’s the point in having a 25-year-old body if you don’t flaunt it? Abbie’s staying the night with her friend Emily.
So I’ve become more adventurous again. I take myself out to pubs and bars where I pick up men. It’s all rather impersonal, but I don’t hate myself as I did during the war. I’ve changed and so have the times. I’ve always known that sex is my drug, and now, in my nineties, it’s fun to walk into a bar and watch men half my age fall in lust with me. I never spend more than a night with any of my casual partners or give them my phone number. I’m only doing what men have always done; most of the men I pick up are married and have children.
I have a luxurious bath, wash my hair, perfume my still young body and make up my still young face. Smiling at myself in the mirror, I remind myself that sex is the one great proof of vitality. In the beginning there was sex, before poets came along and invented romantic love. I put on my strappy green dress and green high-heeled sandals and totter over to the Hilton, which is always full of sad-eyed Eurocrats.
Don’t look at his eyes, I remind myself as I sit on a stool in the bar and smile at the man beside me. Anton is a French computer programmer, mid-thirties, good-looking and well dressed. It
’s relaxing to speak French again, easier to flirt in another language. The eyes I’m trying not to look at are brown, and he has beautiful hands with long spatular fingers that make me envy his computers. I want to be programmed by him, tuned to forget my mechanical failures. After a few drinks we go upstairs, sneak into his single room and lie together on his bed. This is love’s most neutral face: sex as recreation; orgasm as a consumer service. We tell no lies and break no hearts. Politely, gently, we come and go.
I’m a repulsive old hypocrite, I think as I wait outside Abbie’s school the next morning. But so, probably, are most of these other parents. And so will our children be when they grow up. It’s so hard to reconcile different kinds of love.
‘What’s adultery, Mummy?’ my daughter asks.
‘It’s what adults do,’ I reply without thinking. Something in me has died.
I lie in bed alone, missing what you once meant to me. I’ve smothered the flames of my desire, but other feelings stir, the volcanic ashes of our love. In this room, on this mattress, we made love thousands of times, said things we could only say to each other. Or so it seemed – yes, I’m quite sure – that was love, killed by me when I insisted on having a baby against your will. It’s very hard to accept that I can’t have romantic and maternal love at the same time, that one has driven out the other.
Most nights I stay at home with Abbie, and the intimacy of these evenings together, when we cook and talk and draw and play in the warm kitchen, satisfies me. I enjoy the security I never had with my own mother. For twenty years I poured my energy into this house and loved it even more than my villa in Rapallo. I used to feel utterly safe here but not any more. Nothing I can define or pin down, just a general sense of unease and misery, of danger that rustles in corners and scurries behind walls.
Wrapped in a white towel, I stare at myself in the bathroom mirror. Suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, I glimpse the pale despairing face of a drowning child in the bath I’ve just left. When I whip around to look, there’s nothing there. My eyes play tricks – or are they seeing what has always been here? This morning, as I came upstairs, I saw Nat just above me, weeping. Impossible, I remind myself. She died more than a quarter of a century ago.
Now, more than ever, I need to hold on to reality. If there had been no child I would have left you years ago. Whatever that contract means – and there are days when I think it doesn’t mean anything at all – I wouldn’t have stayed with you after I stopped loving you. As it is, I believe that the best thing for Abbie is to stay in this house with her familiar routine and her occasional father.
Today you came back after two months in Moscow. ‘You’re too possessive,’ you say, watching disapprovingly as I iron Abbie’s clothes and make her lunch-box for tomorrow. ‘She needs to be more independent. You should send her to boarding-school. She needs to get away from you.’
I try not to allow you to wind me up, but I’m already tightly wound, my rage ticking like a bomb. ‘She’s only nine.’
‘When you were her age you weren’t coddled and packed in cottonwool like this. It’s a most unnatural childhood.’
‘I knew a damned sight too much when I was nine. Anyway, what right have you got to barge in after two months and tell me how to bring her up?’
‘She’s my daughter, too – or so you claim.’
‘I hope not. The older she gets, the more I hope she’s just an ordinary child.’
Then I realize that Abbie, who is supposed to be watching Blue Peter in the next room, is standing in the doorway. You pick her up and swing her around.
‘Hello, Daddy. Where did you go?’
‘I went off to Russia, my lovely. Making lots of money for you and your mummy to spend.’
‘Good.’ Abbie calmly accepts the embroidered blouse you have brought her and returns to her programme.
‘Don’t talk to her about money like that,’ I hiss. We move upstairs to the living-room, where we can attack each other in peace.
‘Why not? Is it too vulgar for you? You spend enough of it. I just got the Visa statement.’
‘I’m not extravagant. You’re the one who has to have handmade shoes and chauffeur-driven limos and crates of champagne.’
‘It’s cheaper to buy it by the crate. Anyway, why shouldn’t I? I make the money around here, and I enjoy it.’
‘I hate your flashy lifestyle; it’s got nothing to do with me.’
‘Oh no, you just live here.’
‘I’d be happy to live more simply.’
‘Really? Perhaps you should move back to your dear old bedsit on top of the station.’
‘I hate you.’ Suddenly it’s true; not a hysterical attack but a statement of fact. If love’s a boat on a stormy, shark-infested sea then I’ve well and truly fallen out of it. I’m floundering in the ocean now, lungs, mouth and nostrils filling up with salty water, Abbie clinging to me as I go under.
‘This is a ridiculous argument, I don’t know why we’re having it. Of course you and the child will stay here. But please stop insulting me and try to behave more like my –’
‘Your what? Wife? Lover? Employee? Friend? Enemy? I don’t know and neither do you. We don’t love each other any more, and don’t you dare start quoting that contract at me.’
‘You’ve changed.’
‘Yes. It’s called having a mind of my own.’
‘You’ve become so hard and bitter. You’re ungrateful, Jenny. If it wasn’t for me you’d be in your grave by now.’
‘If it wasn’t for Abbie I think I’d want to be. But I’m still very much alive, Leo. And I don’t want to spend eternity with you any more than you do with me.’
I’ve been cowardly and dishonest for so long. I could take Abbie today, leave this house, find a job. Somehow I’d keep a roof over our heads. But even then I wouldn’t be free of you. I’ve always avoided thinking about the meaning of that contract, but now it’s caught up with me. I could leave you, destroy my contract, be natural at last, wither and die – but then who will look after Abbie? It would be dangerous to leave her alone with you; Molly loves her, but she’s gaga – oh, my dearest child, what have I done?
I wake in the middle of the night with pain clutching my heart where my love for you used to be. Chaos surges from my empty heart to my aching head to the cruel silence of the watching house. The beautiful illusion of a happy childhood I’ve woven for Abbie has been torn and shredded like a spider’s web attacked by a broom. Unable to sleep, I wander the house, pass her room and open her door to check on her.
Pale, shadowy, masked figures surround her bed. I scream, push through them and see blood on Abbie’s white bedspread. She wakes and starts to cry as the figures vanish, except for one who turns to me. It’s you, you take off your mask and try to embrace me, murmuring reassurances. I push you away violently and fall asleep on Abbie’s bed.
When I wake up I’m still in Abbie’s room. The dream, if it was a dream, is still so vivid that I search for bloodstains on her bed, scars on her body, but find nothing.
On the way to her school this morning I give a one-pound coin to a beggar who hands me a leaflet. I stuff it into my bag. Later, I take it out and look at it. On the cheap yellow paper there are drawings of cards, a hand and what are presumably meant to be crystal balls, which look vaguely pornographic:
Mrs Strega. Palm, Tarot Card, Crystal Ball and Others. I will show you with your own eyes how to expel Sorrow, Sickness and Pain. What your Eyes see your Heart must believe and then your Heart will be convinced. Talisman Available. I will break Curses and Destroy the powers of Witchcraft, Black Magic and Bad Luck. I have the Wisdom, the Power and the Knowledge to heal and cleanse Body, Mind and Soul of any Unnatural Energies or Evil Influences. Remember I am a true Psychic born with Power. If you are Unhappy, Discouraged or Distressed I can help you. I will tell you who your Friends and Enemies are and if the one you love is True or False. I will spear all Time and Energy to protect you. I can also help in Legal Matters and Exams.
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br /> 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed. All Major Credit Cards Accepted.
Perhaps I could do worse. The alternative is to go into therapy like most of the women I know.
I dial Mrs Strega’s number and make an appointment. At lunchtime I ring the bell of a seedy basement flat near Earls Court. The door’s opened by a woman who introduces herself as Mrs Strega and who leads me into a dark, low-ceilinged room where she sits at a round table covered with a green cloth. She’s true to fairground type, a Middle Eastern cockney with a coarse face caked with makeup, hennaed hair and fat arms jangling with baubles.
‘So you’ve finally come.’
‘What do you mean? I only got your leaflet this morning.’
‘We’ve been calling out to you for years. I don’t know if we can help now. You’ve got yourself into such a terrible mess.’
‘Yes, I suppose I have, although I don’t see how you could know about it. I don’t think cards and crystal balls are going to do much for me.’
‘No, it’s too late for that.’
I hold out my hands to her in a helpless gesture. As she grips my right hand in her rough, warm one I smell nicotine, sweat and a sickly musk perfume. She draws me nearer and examines my palm, then drops it with a sigh. ‘I can’t read it. Your original lines are all crossed and jumbled.’
The temptation to confide is irresistible. She can’t possibly know my story – and yet, if she does, it’s a relief. ‘What about Others? What are they?’
‘Do you want to go down there?’
Maybe I’m going to be mugged or raped. Maybe there’s some connection between this tacky old crone and you. But if I don’t go I’ll always wonder what would have happened. ‘Yes. I’ll go down.’
She leads me into a small, tiled room like an old-fashioned pantry, lifts a trap-door in the floor and I see a flight of stone steps plunging down into blackness.
Loving Mephistopeles Page 20