The Woman who Loved an Octopus and other Saint's Tales

by Imogen Rhia Herrad

  Anyway, I came home that evening and there were the condoms, on my plate at the tea table, if you please. And Mum and Da with faces like thunder, demanding an explanation. So I told them the truth.

  I thought they’d praise me for my forethought.

  Did they, hell! They set up a lament about how I obviously didn’t trust them enough to come and talk to them and get advice before embarking on such a big step. (The word ‘sex’ wasn’t mentioned once.)

  I said we hadn’t really embarked on anything yet, and that I didn’t see why I should get advice if we weren’t doing anything. Or even if we did.

  I can see that that was a tactical error now, but at the time I was just really peed off that they were behaving like I was a little kid, when I’d been acting really sensibly and responsibly and everything.

  I said, ‘You knew I was going out with Tariq, we’ve been going out for ages!’

  And my Da said that as far as he and Mum knew that had only been a kids’ thing, only because I was friends with Aneesa. And how were they supposed to know if I didn’t tell them?

  ‘Well, excuse me,’ I said, ‘if I’ve been going out with a boy for almost two years and haven’t said anything about having split up, then obviously I’m still going out with him, right?’

  Wrong. It was only much later that I thought, maybe Mum and Da didn’t want to know, maybe they didn’t want to take Tariq and me seriously because they were hoping I’d grow out of him or something?

  I mean, excuse me. I thought they were the adults. Adults are supposed to be mature, innit. You’d think I’d come home and told them I was pregnant, the way they carried on. And then it slowly came out that they weren’t only peed off about the condoms and me growing up and all, but about who I was going to use them with, if you know what I mean. That’s when my Da said that stupid sentence.

  ‘We’ve got nothing against Tariq,’ he said – and that was obviously not true anyway. ‘We’ve got nothing against Tariq, but we must think about your future.’

  I really wanted to point out that I had thought about the future, that that was why I’d bought the flaming rubbers, but I’m not completely stupid and I reckoned it wasn’t a good time to say that just then.

  So my Da went on, ‘If he was one of the New Middle Class, now. They have very capable doctors and solicitors.’

  I didn’t even get it at first. ‘Who,’ I said. ‘They?’

  ‘People like Tariq’s father and mother,’ my Da said without blushing. My Mum looked uncomfortable.

  ‘You mustn’t think that we’ve got anything against them!’ she said.

  I still didn’t get it. ‘Why should you?’ I asked, and she went red and pressed her lips together.

  ‘What’ve Tariq’s Mum and Dad got to do with it, anyway?’ I said. ‘I mean, it’s not like we’re going to get married or anything. I mean, not for ages, anyway.’

  ‘I should think not,’ my Da said, and that’s when I finally clicked.

  ‘But we might,’ I said – to see if I was right.

  ‘That’s exactly what your mother and I are worried about,’ my Da said pompously. ‘You’re far too young to make that sort of decision. You’ve no idea what a marriage with somebody from this sort of... um... background will mean.’

  ‘What background?’ I asked, all innocent.

  ‘You know perfectly well what I mean!’ he said, getting annoyed.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘You’re a flaming racist, that’s what! You want to tell me that I can’t go out with Tariq because he’s Asian. You don’t want us to stay together and maybe get married and have kids because then your precious grandchildren would be mixed race and Muslim. You probably think Tariq and Aneesa and their Mum and Dad are terrorists because they’re Muslims!’

  I was screaming by then, I was so furious!

  ‘I think that’s really disgusting and small-minded of you,’ I said, and I said that on purpose because my Da was always going round saying how open-minded we were in our house, and not like other people; and how we always travelled abroad and broadened our minds and stuff, and were really clever and progressive. So I said, ‘That’s really small-minded of you’ – because it was.

  And I said, ‘And we haven’t flaming done anything yet anyway, but you don’t believe me, do you, you don’t trust me! You’ve such filthy minds and you’re stupid racists, you’re not thinking about my future at all, are you, you’re thinking about what the neighbours will say, and Gran and Taid! And I’m ashamed that you’re my parents, I wish Mr and Mrs Ahmed were my parents!’

  And then I ran out of the house like a little kid, and banged the door and went on a bus and went to the beach. I always go to the sea when I’m upset or worried or happy.

  When Tariq and I first got together I had to go on a three hour walk along the sea front because I was so happy. We had our first kiss there as well, in the dunes. It was really romantic even though it’s such a touristy place and we were knee deep in fish-and-chip wrappers and stuff; it was still great, and he tasted really, really wonderful with the sea salt on his lips.

  I was thinking of that as I sat on the bus on the way down to the sea front, and I started to cry. I was in such a rage, and I thought of how happy we were together, Tariq and me, and how Mum and Da didn’t see that at all, how it didn’t matter to them.

  And then I thought, All right, if they don’t want me like that, then I’m moving out. It wasn’t just the thing with the condoms, and how they talked about Tariq. There’d been other things as well. Like that time when they’d stopped me going to the cinema with my mates because it was two days before my fifteenth birthday, and we wanted to see a Certificate 15 film, and my Da had rung up the cinema and told them that his underage daughter was trying to get into that film, and they stopped me going in! It was just, like, so humiliating! So anyway, there I sat on that bus, thinking about all that stuff, and suddenly I thought: I can’t stand this one more day. I’m moving out.

  And, you know, I was thinking at the back of my mind that I’d only move out as a sort of warning. Or to show Mum and Da that I was almost grown up, and that I was a real person, an almost-adult person who could make her own decisions, and that I wanted to be treated like an adult, you know?

  I stomped up and down the sea front, and then I went really close to the sea, and it was a windy day and really big, noisy waves, and I went and screamed and screamed into the waves until I was all hoarse. But afterwards I felt better.

  I rang Tariq on my mobile and told him what had happened, and that I had decided to move out. He was worried at first, and said, ‘What are you going to live on?’ But I said I’d thought about that, and I would get a job and stuff, work in a call-centre or whatever, and that I thought anyway it would only be for a bit, until my parents saw that we were serious.

  He wasn’t really sure at first, but then we met up and we talked it all through, and slowly he was beginning to like the idea as well.

  So anyway, that’s what we did. We found this little flat, and I thought I’d probably have to work the checkouts at Kwik Save, but I was really lucky and got this job in an office; not great but it paid for my half of the rent and stuff, and I loved the independence.

  Mum and Da didn’t believe it at first when I told them what I was going to do, and that I was moving in with Tariq. I thought they’d take me more seriously, but instead they started yelling and screaming at me, and then they said they were going to stop me because I was too young, and it was against the law and they’d get an injunction or something and go to court – I mean, I couldn’t believe it. I thought we’d sit down and talk.

  And they just never came round.

  It’s been more than a year now and they’re not even talking to me. I mean, I still try to ring them from time to time but they just put the phone down when they hear my voice, even Mum. I don’t know why. It makes me really sad, and even Tariq can’t always help. How can they be like that?

  We moved to Liverpool, Tariq and me, a few we
eks ago, because it was just getting too difficult back home. His parents are sort of OK about us – well, I mean, they did have forty fits, but they’d never throw Tariq out, you know what I mean? And they didn’t call me names, ever. And Aneesa’s really great and supportive and everything, but it was doing me in having to walk past my house in the street and knowing I couldn’t go there. I tried, but my parents were just really icy and said they didn’t think we’d have anything to talk about. I’d made my bed and now I must lie in it, and it wasn’t any good coming to them for help. That just set me off again and I screamed at them until they closed the door in my face.

  Shit.

  Aneesa is still living at home, and since I’ve got the new job here and she got her new computer, we’ve been on the email all the time.

  She wrote to me about the stories my parents have been telling people. They’re saying that I moved away because of the strain. That I was attacked and assaulted and that I had a nervous breakdown and have gone away to my aunt and uncle’s to recover. And the really weird thing, Aneesa writes, is that hardly anybody says, ‘But didn’t she move in with her boyfriend? Didn’t she have this job in an office?’ It’s as if they’ve forgotten. It’s only been a few months, and already this legend of my parents is stronger than reality.

  But it can’t last. Can it?

  Non

  Fifth or sixth century

  The daughter of a provincial petty king or chieftain, Non was probably a nun. She was raped by the King of Ceredigion. When she fell pregnant she herself was blamed for this sign of what was deemed her ‘sexual incontinence’, and excluded from the convent.

  She left to live in a hut near the cliffs at Bryn y Garn (today St Non’s Bay), where she gave birth during a raging tempest. During labour, she is said to have pressed her fingers into a nearby rock with such force that the marks are still visible.

  She later founded convents in Wales and Cornwall, as well as in Brittany, where she is said to be held in higher regard than even her famous son, St David.

  I used to be able to fly.

  I would fly to work, but then people started commenting on how I climbed in through the window every morning. I took it as a compliment at first, but after I’d been taken aside a couple of times by motherly types and given gentle hints about what they called my ‘oddity’, and how this wouldn’t do my career any good, I decided to land in the park across the street and walk up the stairs like, apparently, everybody else.

  I thought they all flew. I assumed they just didn’t let on during the working day, reserving it for after hours, when they’d hover in the garden over their roses, bobbing on the breeze and enjoying the scent.

  But they thought that I was odd.

  I think they’re afraid. They even strap their children down in their buggies so that they don’t lift off where people can see.

  I wanted to have a career, so I adapted and began to walk in public as well. I tended to do the flying only when nobody was watching. My manager knew, but he didn’t seem to mind.

  We usually went out on a Friday night, whoever was still in the office at the time; it was that sort of place. Sometimes it was just the manager and me, but he always behaved OK. I could talk to him intelligently, which isn’t something you often find in a boss.

  Only one evening it ended differently.

  I still can’t remember all of it. I remember the lights in the bar; strobe lights, so it must have been a club, and it was late. I remember drinking a bit but not being drunk and the police confirmed that; I was well under the limit for driving. Only I didn’t drive; he gave me a lift home and I didn’t see why not; it was the middle of January, sleeting and raining. ‘You won’t have much fun flying home in that,’ he said and I agreed. ‘Save you the cab fare.’

  I accepted, he’d done it before when the weather was bad, and I knew him for a safe driver; I would never have thought it of him. Then we’re in his car and he’s driving not to my house but somewhere else, and I’m surprised, and there’s his hand on my thigh and I’m confused and from then on it doesn’t make sense.

  I remember a face above me. Breathing.

  I remember feeling surprised, disbelieving. There are hands on me. His hands. They find their way under my clothes although I’m struggling. They slap me across the face when I say No.

  Then it’s dark. And cold.

  Cold.

  I don’t know where I am.

  There is no pain.

  Yet.

  All I feel is cold.

  So cold.

  I’m dead. I can see myself lying huddled on the ground. I can see the man getting up. I know there is a man but I’ve forgotten who he is. I know something has happened just now but I’ve forgotten what it was.

  The man is breathing heavily. He tidies himself up, straightens his clothes. He does not look at me.

  He tells me to get up and back into the car.

  He drives me home.

  He opens the car door and waits until I get out and kisses me on the cheek and says goodnight.

  I walk up to my front door and hear him drive away. I am tired and my legs are unsteady so I sit down on my doorstep.

  Then there is a long time of nothing.

  A pain pierces through the deadness and something pulls me, pulls me like a current. Smell hits me. A wall of sound. I sit still while everything roars around me.

  Much later, there is a light in my eyes. I am being taken to hospital, examined, having samples taken from me before I am allowed to wash. I do not know who I am. I do not know what has happened. They tell me I rang 999 on my mobile after it happened (after what happened? Everybody just says ‘it’), that I rang the police and an ambulance and screamed and raged, but I can’t remember anything of that.

  For weeks afterwards, everything is grey. I have become an old woman, weak and breathless, barely alive. I shrink from light, from noise, from touch, from life around me.

  I cannot fly any more.

  I want to die. For a long time, I want to die, but I don’t.

  I don’t and I don’t and I don’t. I am enraged that I am still alive. I roam the rooms of my house. I can’t settle down to anything. I scream. I wail. I hurl glasses and plates against the walls. I cry and howl and yell. I break planks of wood against door frames, slam the windows and break their glass panes.

  One day, I slam the front door behind me and see a large crack appearing right across it.

  Splinters of memory are coming back. A streetlight. The yap of a small dog in the distance. The scream of an ambulance. Music through an open car window, too loud for anyone to hear my voice over it. The look on the face above me. The mouth opening, a voice issuing, telling me to be quiet. Telling me that I wanted this. Telling me where to put my hands, ordering me to smile, to say that this is good.

  Despair like a dead thing inside me. Craven fear and shame and helplessness.

  I wonder why nobody asked me if I wanted to press charges. In fact, a solicitor advised me against it. It would be my word against the man’s, the solicitor said, and the conviction rate in these cases was very low. According to the man, it was consensual sex, he said. According to the man, I liked a little rough and tumble. I did not have any witnesses, he said. I had been out with the man and I did not really have a case, he said.

  I was too numb to say anything.

  I wonder why nobody shoved a knife into my hand and urged me to cut the bastard into strips, for my greater good and that of the community.

  I know who he is, the man who violated me.

  I know where he lives, so I go there to watch him, and to follow him when he is next going to venture out alone.

  I am going to have my revenge.

  A tooth for a tooth. An I for an I. He has killed the best part of me. So now I will do the same for him. A death for a life. My life.

  But when I see him, the breathlessness comes back. I cower in the shadows, hiding myself, afraid of what he will do if he sees me. The pain echoes through my body,
as though the body was a thing separate from me with its own memory. I can do nothing but stand there, helpless, and watch him move off out of sight.

  I hate myself.

  I have no courage. I will not dare go back and try again.

  I have failed. He is stronger. I am weak, I am nothing.

  I go home, and see the crack across my front door. I am furious with myself for having run away. I slam the door shut behind me, and a large piece of plaster falls from the ceiling. I kick the skirting-board, and there is a hole in the wall.

  Next morning I am on my watch again.

  I am still surprised by the fear that crashes over me like a wave when I see him. I am breathless, and wet with sweat. I follow him on unsteady feet. My hands shake. I feel sick and small and weak. I follow him. He turns round once, his eyes sweeping over me as if he is looking for someone, something.

  He does not even recognise me. I am nothing to him. I shake again, but this time it is with anger.

  I will make him remember.

  I wait until the time comes for my next bleeding, and then I spend almost a whole day taking off my clothes and stuffing them between my thighs, until everything is covered in red stains.

  When evening comes, I look for him. I find him at home, by himself, which is lucky. He is sitting out on the terrace. I tear the lock out of his front door and go inside.

  At the sound of my footsteps he looks up. ‘Who is that?’ he asks, squinting into the shade.

  I say my name in a voice that comes out weak and breathless, and he smiles. He smiles at me. At me.

  ‘Well, hello there,’ he says. His voice is hearty. ‘I haven’t seen you for ages! Not since... ’ He reflects. ‘Not since our little outing, in fact.’ He still smiles.

  I feel as though I have been slapped. Again. I cannot find my voice.

  I only move out onto the terrace because that’s what I had planned to do. I cannot think. I want to run away. I feel like I have been given a second chance, the chance to run away, but I am too stunned to do anything except move out onto the terrace because that’s what I’d planned to do.