I expect that was why he hit me more, not less, as I got older and bigger. He wanted me to know that he was stronger.
‘You’re a freak!’ he’d jeer. ‘You’ll never find a man!’
My mother had long given up saying anything by that stage.
I just went on training every day, until every muscle in my body hurt. They did that often enough, anyway, so it didn’t make much of a difference.
It was a sort of travelling circus that rescued me; Billy Graham meets Billy Smart, if you can imagine that. Roll up, roll up and find the Lord! Sounds daft, doesn’t it, but it worked. I know, because that’s how I found the Lord.
I was about sixteen when they came to our town, though I looked older.
Posters for GOD’s Circus were plastered all over the place. It was a big spectacle in a place where nothing ever happened. Everybody was dying to go, although nobody admitted it. It was so tacky. But they all went, anyway. There was the tent with its flashing lights. Large banners announced the likes of Samson, the Strongest Man on Earth, Lazarus Whom GOD Miraculously Raised From His Sickbed (not from the dead, though) and Mary Magdalen, The Sinner Who Repented And Found Life In GOD.
Now I didn’t much care for the repentant sinner, a miserable, wailing female – though I did notice that heads went up when she talked about her Life of Sin with a lot of unnecessary detail. After that, the preacher came on. His voice would have filled the big tent even without a microphone. Words flowed out of him like a river. He carried us all along in his current. Drops of sweat flew and glistened in the light. It was marvellous.
‘And now, Ladies and Gentlemen!’ he shouted. ‘Let’s see which of you are inspired by the Spirit of THE LORD!’ The way he said GOD and THE LORD, you could hear that they were all made up of capital letters. The Virgin got just a capital initial. ‘I give you Samson, the Strongest Man on Earth!’
On came a great lardy hulk of a man with a ruined nose and a shining bald skull. He looked like a prize fighter. It turned out he’d been a prize fighter – ‘but then he found THE LORD! And now he fights in the corner of THE LORD! Gentlemen, which of you wants to chance a bout with the great Samson?’
Well, you know how it is. At first they’re all shy. Girls look at their boyfriends from under their lashes. Mates elbow each other. Wives restrain husbands who couldn’t wrestle open a marmalade jar. No one makes a move. God only knows what I thought I was doing.
I jumped up.
‘I will!’ I yelled. I thought it could be a sort of dress rehearsal. If I could beat this one, I was ready for my stepfather.
The preacher wasn’t sure what to make of me. ‘Gentlemen!’ he cried. ‘Will you let yourselves be upstaged by a lady?’
Something came over me, and I’m not saying it wasn’t the spirit of the Lord. ‘Looks like it,’ I said. That got me a few laughs.
By that time I was on the stage. I took off my jacket and handed it to the preacher.
‘Right,’ I said, rolling up my sleeves, flexing my muscles. The strongest man on earth looked on, not best pleased. He probably didn’t like the idea of having to whack a girl in public.
He needn’t have worried.
Lord, it was fun. We went for seven rounds, then I had him on the boards. It took him a bit longer than that to come round again.
The preacher did some quick thinking.
‘Behold the Handmaid of THE LORD!’ he roared, hauling up my hand. ‘Behold, a miracle! David hath overcome Goliath!’
He offered me a contract that night, and Samson’s job. ‘A lady wrestler!’ he said. ‘That’ll draw the crowds!’
It did. For the next eleven years, I fought for God.
The first six or seven of them, I even believed. God had seen me in my ungainly strength and taken mercy on me. He had seen my misery and found me a way out of it. He gave me a place in life where I could do His work and do what I did best.
I learned that there were others like me: girls who like men well enough, but who like other women better. I learned that not everybody thought I was a freak. I learned that some people thought all those muscles were really cool.
All was well with the world.
Then after a while, things wore thin. I’d had my miracle, but nothing else happened. I had articles written about me and my picture taken – Hazel, The Strongest Lady on Earth! – but nothing else happened.
Until one night, when the challenge to beat The Muscular Christian was taken up, for the first time, by another woman. You’d think there’d have been a few over the years, but no. By that time, I’d pretty much given up hope.
And then there she was, all glorious six-and-a-half foot of her.
We wrestled, Lord, how we wrestled! After the fight on the stage was over – which I had only just won – after my night on the stage was finally over and I could slip out and hope and pray to find her, we returned to our wrestling, in her bed.
The next day, I gave in my notice. As soon as I could, I returned to live with her. I settled down. I found work as a handywoman.
Life was good.
Then after a while, things wore thin.
I longed for my life on the road. I didn’t like being tied down in one place. I missed the buzz of being on stage, the laughter and the cheers and the applause.
She wanted her freedom back. She missed going out with her mates. She said she missed being normal.
‘What d’you mean, normal?’ I said. ‘At six foot six?’ She hated being reminded of her height.
‘You know what I mean,’ she said. ‘Normal. As in going out with a bloke.’
Her mates had backed off pretty quickly when they’d found out that I wasn’t just her new lodger. Good riddance to the silly, small-minded cows as far as I was concerned.
‘I see,’ I said. ‘Time for that again, is it? I’m a pervert. You’re a straight woman who just happens to be sleeping with a lesbian. Shame the world can’t see that.’
‘Oh, shut up, Hazel!’ she snapped. Last night one of her friends had cut us dead in the pub, and it still bothered her.
‘Just face the flaming facts. You aren’t bloody normal. Whatever normal is. Neither am I. So what? Why d’you want to be like everybody else?’
‘Because we can’t all be as grand as you. The Strongest Woman on Earth!’
‘Oh, stop it!’ I said, and gave her a playful push. She pushed me back. I put her in an arm lock. She bit my hand and rammed her elbow in under my ribs. I pinned her against the wall. She kissed me. I kissed her back.
We made love.
I enjoyed a good fight. So did she. It just bothered her that I was the stronger one. And it bothered her that she was taller than me. I’d always been looking for a woman I could look up to. So, presumably, had she. Correction. She had probably been looking for a man to look up to. Tough luck I came along.
She wanted us to stop going out together in public.
‘I love you, Hazel,’ she said, as we lay cuddled up in bed together. ‘I really really do. But I’ve practically not seen any of my friends for months now! You know how it is... a small town... people talk.’
‘I know how it is,’ I said. ‘I’m from one too. I live in one now. It’s not a problem.’
‘Well, it is for me,’ she said shortly.
‘Ashamed of me, are you? You stupid little bitch. Don’t forget who you’re insulting!’ Eleven years of hearing myself called the strongest woman on earth had left their mark. I’d started to believe in it myself.
‘Chosen by God, were you?’ she jeered. ‘Chosen to join his freak show!’
Nobody called me that. I hit her across the face. ‘You stupid, big, lumbering giant!’
She flinched. I enjoyed that.
‘Freak, freak!’ she screamed. ‘Was a stupid lumbering giant all you could find then? Would nobody else look at you?’
I pinned her arms down and started slapping her face. ‘You,’ I said, breathless, ‘are nothing but a freak yourself.’ Slap. ‘And you’re thick as well. Ju
st look at you!’ Slap. ‘Six and a half foot tall, and you think if you hunch over a bit people will think you’re little and delicate! You’re big!’ Slap. ‘BIG!’ Slap. ‘Now, personally, I like big women, but as you just very helpfully pointed out, they’re not everybody’s cup of tea.’
She threw me off and knocked my head against the wall. ‘Pervert! Freak!’
Something splintered somewhere. It might have been a piece of furniture, or her, or me. We didn’t let it stop us.
‘Let – me – go!’ I gasped. Her arm was across my throat. I couldn’t breathe. She was winning. I couldn’t allow that. She wasn’t the world’s strongest woman. God was on my side, not hers. ‘Let me go!’
She flew half-way across the room. Crashed into a couple of chairs. Slowly got up. Her mouth was bleeding, redder than lipstick.
She licked her lips, touched a finger to them. Grinned.
‘Not bad, soldier,’ she said, taking a couple of unsteady steps in my direction. ‘Come and get me then.’
‘You’re mine,’ I said, drawing a big red H on her like a cattle brand. It was only lipstick, but it looked real enough. ‘Mine. Remember that.’
She was trying on a new top in front of the mirror. She was going to go out with her mates. Without me.
‘They’ll come round eventually,’ she said over her shoulder, adjusting a strap. ‘Just give them time. They’ll have to get used to it. I bloody have to get used to it myself!’ She smiled at me.
‘That looks really good on you,’ I said.
‘You think so?’ Her smile got warmer.
‘Mmm. Brings out your figure. Makes you look really slim. And tall.’
She tried not to flinch, but she did. She hated that word.
I liked putting the knife in like that.
‘You bitch,’ she said, her voice flat.
‘Have a nice evening with those morons you call your friends,’ I said. ‘Maybe you’ll pick up some really nice blokes. Oops. Sorry. Maybe they’ll pick up some really nice blokes.’
She looked at me in the mirror. ‘Maybe I’ll pick up a nice bloke too. Thought of that?’
I hadn’t.
‘Sure,’ I said. ‘Be really nice for him to dance with his face in your cleavage. Such as it is. Be careful he doesn’t stub his nose against your breastbone.’
She pretended not to hear, sprayed on some scent and was gone.
When she got back, I’d rearranged the bedroom.
What was left of the bed was burning in the living-room fireplace. What was left of the mirror was going to give somebody a lot of bad luck for some time to come. Her bad luck started when she walked into one of the splinters.
I was waiting for her behind the door. It was three in the morning.
‘Had a nice evening?’ I asked.
She whirled round. She had her new top on back to front.
I ripped it off her.
She kicked my legs out from under me.
‘Not only are you a loser,’ she said clearly, ‘but a bad one. You’re leaving. I want you out of here by tomorrow.’ And she turned round to leave.
Bad move. Stupid move. Did she think I was just going to accept this? I grabbed hold of one of her legs and brought her crashing down next to me. I rolled over and pinned her to the floor with my weight.
‘Did you get laid then?’ I asked. ‘Did you get fucked by a real man?’
She stared back. ‘They find me attractive, you know. I may be a freak, but at least I’m not a pervert... ’
You’re a freak! You’ll never find a man!
I had to shut her up. I couldn’t let her get away with this.
That’s why I’d done all the weight training and everything.
So that nobody would call me those names ever again.
I had to show her.
I had to show her that I was the strongest woman on earth.
Winifred
Sixth or seventh century
Also known as Gwenfrewi or Gwenffrwd.
Surprisingly, no records at all exist for this famous saint before the twelfth century, and her story bears striking parallels to elements in the Vita of a much older saint, which may well have been ‘borrowed’ in the later writing of Winifred’s story. The healing well at Holywell was certainly well known and well visited since Roman times at least, but no particular legend appears to have been attached to it until the twelfth century.
According to the legend, Winifred was the daughter of Teuyth, a local chieftain and warlord, and his wife Gwenlo. Her maternal uncle was St Beuno, who taught her with a view to preparing her for life as a nun. One Sunday, when her parents were in chapel and Winifred alone at home, a local princeling came by and attempted to assault her. When she tricked him and managed to run away, he followed her in a rage and cut off her head. At the spot where her head fell, a spring bubbled up: St Winifred’s Well. St Beuno then wrought a miracle and put her head back on her shoulders. Winifred chose to dedicate herself to a holy life.
I suppose you could say I lost my head over him. That’s what they’re saying back home; only they twisted it all and now it’s just lies and nothing else.
For a start, he wasn’t rich or anything like that.
That was the problem.
And he never ever tried to rape me. I ran away with him.
* * *
My family didn’t like Tariq very much.
Not only did he have wrong-coloured skin; but he’s not even one of the New Middle Class. That’s my Da’s expression.
If he was one of the New Middle Class, now. They have very capable doctors and solicitors.
They. If they are diligent and hardworking, they can get to be capable. Not brilliant. Not composers, or painters, or Archbishops, or Prime Ministers. Or my boyfriend.
But Tariq isn’t even like that. His Dad’s a shopkeeper, you know, corner shop. He’s even learned some Welsh and was in the local paper for it. And obviously Tariq and Aneesa learned Welsh in school, so between that and Urdu and English they’re trilingual, really. They’re Welsh, do you know what I mean? Born and bred here. When they went away to Leeds or London to visit their grandparents and aunties and uncles, they were homesick for the hills and the sea and the bilingual sign-posts. They struggled with Urdu and talked to each other in Welsh half the time.
Aneesa was my best friend, all the way from Year Four. I’d known Tariq as well, obviously, but only as Aneesa’s brother, not, like, as a person.
Then one day I went back to her house for tea after school. It was during Ramadan and I’d fasted all day along with her. I was fourteen and very earnest. All my other friends had long since discovered boys and flirting and dancing and snogging, only I was still into books. I was a bit of a late starter. Aneesa was a little bit into boys and flirting, but she had also just discovered History. What she called ‘our own history’ – of where her parents had come from, Pakistan and India; and the Partition and the fight for Independence and stuff even before that. She said that suddenly her horizon had become dramatically bigger.
Aneesa is like that. Always off on a quest somewhere, being inspired by things.
Anyway, I hadn’t really known about all the stuff she was talking about now; not really known, you know? Not like things that happened to real people like her Mum or her Dad. They’d just been things from the history books in school, or on the telly sometimes. Not real.
So I was sort of interested too, and thought I’d do a project about the Partition for history; it’d be dead easy really, I’d just have to follow Aneesa round for a bit and basically record everything she said, and then write that down properly and find a few pictures and stuff in the library, and there I’d be, project done.
So I went home with her that day for tea, and there was Tariq like I’d seen him dozens of times before, in the door to her room; I can still see him now, standing there and smiling at her and then at me and suddenly it was like I’d never really seen him before, like there was a spotlight trained on him so that I could
see nothing else, only that smile and those eyes and what a beautiful neck he had and I thought, I want to be a vampire and bite him. And then Aneesa said something and I’d no idea what. I went beet red and mumbled something, and Tariq smiled again and went to his room, and I had to try to say something intelligent to Aneesa, and pretend my brain hadn’t turned into a jellyfish.
Well, you know. I was in love, basically.
He was gorgeous, Tariq was. We went about holding hands a lot, and going off into the dunes and kissing and stuff, and it was great. I said, I don’t want to do anything, you know, really really serious, not yet, and he was cool with that, and I think maybe he was relieved as well, because he’d not gone out with anyone before either.
I don’t know why my parents were such ages finding out; I mean, it’s not like we tried to hide anything. There wasn’t anything to hide, if you know what I mean, we weren’t doing anything, nothing really really serious; not like Karen in my class who got pregnant and had to leave before her GCSEs. I didn’t want that, I wanted to go on to college or maybe university and do something with my life, you know, and so did he, we had time; we could wait.
And I’d got some condoms out of a machine, just in case.
Funny, really, because I thought I was being grown up and sensible. I’d got them just in case, because sometimes I thought, I don’t really want to wait, I want to, you know, do it, like, now! Because what we were doing felt so good. And if we did, it’d be better to have something handy. But my Mum found them in my jeans pocket when she turned them out for the wash, although I’d asked her not to do that anymore, I thought I was old enough to do my own clothes, you know. But she said she’d had a machine nearly full, and was looking for something to put in it to fill it up, and so she just went through my clothes which were on the floor anyway, she said, as though that was a reason. And she said it just went to show that obviously I had things to hide and that was why I didn’t want her to go through them, which was not true.
The Woman who Loved an Octopus and other Saint's Tales Page 8