The Private Parts of Women

by Lesley Glaister

  She heaves herself up, her knee stinging badly, and takes Blowski’s mug into the kitchen to rinse. Fancy asking Inis to get her shopping! She feels cross, tetchy, having someone else knowing her business, knowing even what she eats, doing things in her own kitchen as if she’s quite at home. The cheek of the young. Although she can’t go out, not feeling so shaky, all at sixes and sevens. She will have to allow herself to be helped. Not that it won’t be a relief to stay put, away from strangers’ eyes. As long as she doesn’t let Inis any further in. Something niggles her, something else, oh the photographs, yes, whatever possessed her to offer herself up like that! Must have fallen more heavily than she thought, got a knock on the head.

  She tips the tea-leaves into her kitchen compost tidy and goes upstairs, feeling restless, the stairs need a brush, there are dust balls at the corners, a brush and a wipe, only a five-minute job, but not now. From her back-bedroom window she looks down at her garden. Her kneeling cushion is still where she left it on the concrete – lucky she didn’t crack her head on that edge. Inis’s smalls are dripping on the line – though it looks like rain. From above you can properly appreciate how organised Trixie’s garden is but not how rich. It is like a mouth pursed on secrets at this time of year, all the buds and bulbs are invisible shoots of promise.

  The room is small and square. Her bed is single, there is a chest of drawers, a ladderback chair and a clothes rail swathed in plastic. There is no mirror, but one painting, which she’d kept near her since childhood, of girls gathering wild flowers. Trixie pulls the plastic off the rail. She unbuttons her cardigan and unzips the front of her dress. She stands in her slip and ruined stockings for a moment, then takes some different things from the rail: a navy-blue serge skirt which will nowhere near do up and has a long mend all down the side; a crimson blouse, a navy jacket, also several sizes too small, and last of all, and almost reverently, a black bonnet with a fraying red band. Despite her grazed knee, Trixie kneels on the floor to pray, the pain of the rough carpet pressed by her weight against the sore place brings tears to her eyes but almost pleasurable tears. It is a pleasure to suffer pain in prayer. When she wears these clothes now, now that she is whole and normal she feels that any evil use they have been put to is, if not forgotten, forgiven. She nearly burnt them once, thought it best to rid the world of a Salvation Army uniform defiled, but now she is grateful that she didn’t. She sends her mind back to before and, hauling herself up, picks up her tambourine and begins to sing. When her voice comes out strong and clear she knows she is forgiven, that she is healed and whole, that God is hearing her, she sings:

  Jesus, save me through and through,

  Save me from self-mending:

  Self-salvation will not do,

  Pass me through the cleansing,

  which makes her think of washing-machines, and a soul as pure and blameless as a Persil-white tea-towel pegged out in the sun.

  She sings for an hour until her strength gives out and when she finishes, the silence is dreadful. She strains her ears for the sound of Inis next door but she is so quiet, ideal of course to have a quiet neighbour but there seems something almost sneaky about such complete silence all the same. What sort of person goes without a television in this day and age? Just for a moment she catches herself missing the sound of the butcher shouting at his wife or the dreadful so-called music of their children.

  But, as she divests herself of her Salvation Army uniform and struggles back into her crimplene dress and buttons her cardigan she banishes the ungrateful thought. Inis is good, kind and helpful. Beggars can’t be choosers when all’s said and done. Blowski’s forever blethering on about the Social Services, home-helps, guardian angels (ha), but Trixie is not having that sort of carry on, not in her house, not nosing strangers. She could afford the most luxurious nursing-home there is, satin sheets no doubt and whirlpools and black-pudding and champagne for breakfast every day (that is, if she drank) but no. None of that razzmatazz is for her. Here she’ll stay until she goes out feet first, her money secure in the bank and in stocks and bonds and goodness knows what else, all safely bequeathed to the Salvation Army, because there was nothing in her father’s will to stipulate the recipient of the money after her death. He never thought of that.

  ROOKS

  I fetched Trixie’s shopping – eggs, yoghurt, plasters, Germolene – but I did not stay and talk. She was all right, recovered, she’d been singing, I’d heard her. I’d worked in the darkroom most of the rest of that day, exposing trees and holes in the road. When I’d finished I was dazzled and despondent. They didn’t add up to anything. Every print shouted, so what?

  And there were the blown-up faces of Robin and Billie, and Richard’s dark eyes shining innocence of what was about to happen. I thought, what if I go back, now, I could, I could just go back. There is nothing here I would not leave like that, a snap of the fingers, without a backward glance. Standing among the glossy familiar faces, I allowed myself a day-dream. I could be back in a few hours. I imagined walking in. The gasps of surprise, the children’s delight. Robin running to me, jumping up, his legs round me, hard shoes, wet kisses on my cheek. An open baby smile from Billie who might say ‘Mama’ for the first time, seeing me, remembering me. My face buried in her velvet fragrant skin. Richard’s more measured relief, his firm lips against mine, his dark eyes promising, later … Precious infant bodies in the bath, clean pyjamas, kisses, stories. Then Richard would cook something, no, no, we’d get a takeaway, he’d fetch a bottle of my favourite Cabernet Sauvignon from the off-licence, and pick up flowers from the garage on the way home. He would understand. He would not be angry. After dinner we’d … But there it all dissolved because I cannot open up. I do not want to make love. That is gone. I can’t remember how it feels to want it, that ramming, sticky closeness, that ridiculous expenditure of energy. Richard panting in my ear, thrusting over and over. Him taking my groans of discomfort, or simply the air being banged audibly from my lungs as sounds of pleasure. And anyway it might not be like that. What if I got back and the children looked at me without recognition? What if Richard was out with another woman? What if they didn’t want me back?

  I could not sleep last night, and today, to occupy myself, to keep myself away from Trixie, away from the temptation to flee again, I went to Blackpool. The train was almost empty, February isn’t a Blackpool sort of month. The tall buildings along the front sulked. It had snowed in Lancashire and heaps of it slumped against the fronts of the gift shops. OPEN AT EASTER or CLOSED TILL EASTER said curled signs in the windows. The red and white-striped canopy outside a café where I stopped for coffee had torn with the weight of the snow that melted through in long, sloppy drips. I found one gift shop that was open. A man in an anorak sat by a fan-heater, eating Jaffa Cakes and watching snooker on a black-and-white television. He jumped when I entered.

  All the bright things looked sad: faded plastic buckets and spades, a net of swirly plastic balls, foam-rubber flip-flops, a half-inflated porpoise. I stood looking at a rack of dirty postcards – man with bulging swimming trunks holding fish, busty woman in bikini saying, Oooh what a whoppa! man pulsating with pride – gulping back the tears that tried to come. Robin would have loved this shop. He would have wanted to buy something, anything, it didn’t matter what. He always wanted a bit of wherever he went to keep, my Robin.

  I bought two sticks of rock, gaudy pink with white inside and the word BLACKPOOL running through it in red letters. The man took my money morosely, hardly taking his eyes from the grey balls rolling on the grey table. He said nothing and neither did I. For a minute I felt a sort of complicitous misery that was nearly cheering.

  I went out of the fusty, almost-warmth of the shop into the blade of the wind. I crossed the road to the beach. I wore a thick sweater, a long wool coat, a woollen hat that the wind wanted, sheepskin mittens and a long scarf, but still I could feel the wind on my skin that tightened and goose-pimpled. My nipples were screwed up so tight they hurt, my ears ached a
nd the gold of my earrings burnt cold through the perforations in my ears. Tears ran from my eyes, not of true sorrow, but only of sorry-for-myselfness. The tide was out and the beach vast and flat and empty but for a minute figure in the distance with a prancing dog.

  The brown sand was powdered with white snow which scrunched more softly under my boots than the sand. Sometimes the wind snatched up a handful of the snow and flung it in a gritty flurry in the air. I walked towards the sea where the sand was wet and brown. As I walked, each footstep blanched the sand and then, when I turned to look the footprint had filled with water. The sea moaned. Despite the wind it was not very rough, the waves were small and messy. It was no colour but grey and the foam was yellow. Gulls flew and blew like so much litter in the sky.

  I took shots of the pattern of my footprints in the sand, the snow footprints on the drier sand, the closed-up shops, the juxtapositions of lilos and snow, the torn canopy outside the café, I unwrapped a stick of rock as I walked back to the station. There was a small grey picture of Blackpool. The pink was sticky on the Cellophane. I sucked hard at the sweet mintiness as I walked until I’d sucked it into a long sharp point. It made my tongue sore. The word BLACKPOOL slid back in tiny red distorted letters where it was uncovered by my sucking.

  And now I’m back. Now what?

  Sometimes this house feels like a cage. It is night again. I’ve eaten fish and chips and drunk a pot of coffee. Stupid, now I won’t sleep again. I went to Blackpool this morning because I couldn’t sleep last night. I only went to sleep as morning came and then something woke me, suddenly, and I didn’t know where I was. It was as if something had come loose and I couldn’t catch it. Like trying to catch a dream but I was trying to catch what was real. And then I remembered. It was so quiet. I held my breath and listened – I could hear nothing. And the sound of nothing was terrible in my ears because it should have been a treat. For Christ’s sake, that is what I wanted, that is what this is all about, or part of it, me being here. And then when I was awake I found I was heartbroken, really as if there were deep fissures in my heart that ached and welled blood in all the wrong directions. And the morning I left home came pressing in on me and that is why I went to the station and went anywhere that was further away from home, and the train to Blackpool was the first one going north that came.

  Now I won’t sleep and that morning will come back. You can only stall memory, not staunch it.

  Billie woke us up as usual. Richard fetched her from her cot, took off her wet nappy, put on a dry one, gave her a bottle and brought her back to bed with us. She snuggled between us, sucking noisily on her rubber teat. She felt like a live toy in her zip-up fluffy-yellow sleep-suit with its cold plastic footsoles. I kept my eyes closed when I felt her face close to mine. She kept saying ‘Dadababa,’ and blowing splashy raspberries, her new favourite noise and then laughing. I turned away from her and hid my face under the quilt.

  ‘Shhhh,’ Richard said. ‘Let Mummy sleep.’ He pulled Billie away on to his side of the bed but she wanted to play, so eventually he got up with her and went out, closing the door behind him leaving me in peace. I opened my eyes a crack and looked at the clock. Five past six. I had another hour, I was just drifting off when Robin opened the door and came in.

  ‘Mummy?’

  ‘Go away.’

  ‘But Mummy, I need a carrot for my snowman. He do need a nose don’t he?’

  ‘Has it snowed then?’ I asked from under the quilt, my interest snagged.

  ‘No, but it is winter, isn’t it?’

  ‘Go away,’ I said. I had hardly ever said that to him before. I did not shout it. I lay with my head covered. I heard him sigh, a terribly adult sigh and the door closed behind him with a disappointed click. And then I could not get back to sleep. I was wide awake and filled with guilt. He is only four. He is a lovely boy, my first child, my truest love. And I told him to go away and suddenly it was terrible that he had obeyed me, with that resigned sigh. Why had he not refused to go, climbed into bed with me, plagued me with his icy sharp toes and his questions?

  I could hear them in the kitchen if I strained my ears. The low grumble of the radio spilling news, Richard’s calm deep voice, the sounds of spoons in bowls, Billie’s occasional shriek, the upward swing of Robin’s questions. At seven o’clock, I knew, Richard would bring me a cup of tea. He would put it down quietly beside the bed, bend over, find my face amongst the quilt and my tangled hair, kiss me and say, ‘Tea, darling.’ Knowing this made me start to cry and then I found I could not stop.

  My dad used to bring me tea every morning. His dressing-gown cord would be tied as neatly round his stout middle as string round a parcel. He’d put it down quietly but he wouldn’t say a word. He brought my mum and me tea in bed every morning and even poured Bonny a bowl of tea to lap with her morning Bonio. Remembering that increased my tears and as I lay sobbing I floated above myself amazed. I could not imagine where all the tears were coming from. It was as if there was a reservoir that I should have drawn on in the past. If I’d known, if I’d shed the tears gradually over the years, perhaps it wouldn’t have burst like that. Perhaps I wouldn’t be here. How can I know?

  Richard came in with my tea.

  ‘Oh darling,’ he said when he saw that I was crying, for there was no hiding it. The tears leapt from my eyes and my throat was hollowed with sobs. ‘Whatever is it? Oh sweetheart.’ He tried to hold me but I couldn’t let him. He stood awkwardly by the bed. From downstairs Robin shouted and Billie screeched. I could see him torn, see him sway towards the door, his eyes fixed on me.

  ‘Go and see,’ I sobbed. I didn’t want this bloody patient man staring at me.

  ‘I’ve got to shave,’ he said. ‘I’ll sort them out … we’ll have to talk … I can’t leave you like …’

  I put my head under the pillow where it was cool. My mouth was full of tears and hair. A dream came floating back to me, a dream so sad and terrible it made me moan aloud. I pushed it out of my head, thought, instead, about later.

  I could just imagine it. Another day achieved. The children in bed. Bathed and put there by Richard who came in like the Lone Ranger every teatime just in time to save the day. If I hadn’t cooked the meal by the time he’d finished, he’d start slicing onions and tipping rice or pasta into a pan. We would eat and drink a glass of wine. Then he’d wash up while I threw a few toys in a box. Then he’d put on a CD, Mozart perhaps, and we’d sit together on the futon. He’d put his arm round me and his armpit would smell of sweat reminding me that he’d worked hard all day and not had a moment to himself, not time for a shower. And he’d ask me what’s up.

  ‘Is it the …?’ he’d say. Fitting, that. The dot dot dot, the nothing. The baby that never was.

  I lay under the pillow until it got too hot. The radiator was creaking out its warmth now, the pillow was sodden. When I pulled my face out I could hear cartoons in the distance. That showed that this was an emergency – there is a rule in our house, no TV in the mornings. I could hear the buzz of Richard’s razor in the bathroom. I got out of bed. The tears had ceased but my chest and shoulders shook spasmodically. I went into the bathroom to pee. Richard looked round, he pulled his mouth to one side the better to shave his cheek. He switched off the razor and tapped it on the edge of the wash basin. The fine black dust of his bristles fell out with a scorched smell.

  ‘Oh, you’re up,’ he said. ‘Good.’

  He bent to kiss me but I turned my face aside. I didn’t want to be kissed, certainly not while sitting on the lavatory.

  ‘So you’re all right?’ he asked. ‘I don’t like to leave you all upset but …’ He indicated his watch.

  ‘I’m fine.’ I flushed the toilet and went to the basin to wash. He hovered in the bathroom doorway. I wondered who he was and what he was doing here and why he was so fucking kind. ‘Absolutely fantastic,’ I said. ‘Just go.’ I turned to look at him. I hated his skin when it was just shaved, it reminded me of fish skin with the scales scraped of
f. I didn’t like his droopy shoulders or his look of concern.

  ‘Sure?’

  ‘I think I can just about manage.’

  ‘I don’t want you just about managing, I want you to …’

  ‘Just fuck off,’ I said. His face stiffened.

  ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘Right, I’ll just fuck off then and leave you to just fucking manage. Fine.’ He went out of the bathroom looking as if he might cry. We did not do this. We did not swear at each other. Particularly, he did not swear.

  ‘He’s wonderful,’ people said, all my friends, his patients, his family. ‘Aren’t you the lucky one to have a man like that.’

  And oh yes, yes, I was lucky. I can’t fault him. He looks good. He works hard. He is faithful, I’m pretty sure. He’s a GP, forever climbing out of bed in the night to go to someone’s aid, sorting out the children, doing most of the housework, never reproaching me. I stopped working hard. I tried to but after the children, particularly after Billie, it all drizzled away, all my energy, enthusiasm. I couldn’t manage the house or the children. Dirt and mess grew and flourished like jungle plants faster than I could clean. And I lost my patience with the children.